immortal painter. The Italian Government
has entirely excavated the ruins, and thus set at rest the numerous
controversies among antiquaries regarding its true name.

The temple of Castor and Pollux probably dates as far back as the year
487 before Christ, when the dictator Postumius vowed to build a
monument in commemoration of his victory at the great battle of Lake
Regillus, with which the mythical history of Rome closes. It recalls
the well-known romantic legend of the mysterious interference of the
Dioscuri in that memorable struggle which Macaulay has woven into one
of the most spirited of his Lays. The temple is supposed to have been
erected on the spot where the divine Twins announced the victory to
the people in the Forum at the close of the day. About twenty feet
from the eastern corner of the temple are slight remains of a shallow
oval basin, which has been identified as the lake or fountain of
Juturna, the wife of Janus, the Sabine war-god, where the Dioscuri
washed their armour and horses from the blood and dust of the fray. It
was probably at first a natural spring gushing out of the tufa rock of
the Palatine Hill, but being dried up, it became in later times a
_lacus_ or basin artificially supplied with water. For long ages
afterwards the anniversary of the great battle was celebrated every
year on the fifteenth of July by a splendid pageant worthy of the
greatness of the empire. The Roman knights, clothed in purple robes,
and crowned with olive wreaths, and bearing their trophies, first
offered sacrifice in the shrine of Castor and Pollux, and then formed
a procession, in which five thousand persons sometimes took part,
which filed in front of the temple and marched through the city.

The original building having stood for nearly five hundred years, it
began to exhibit signs of decay, and accordingly it was rebuilt upon
the old foundations by Augustus, and dedicated by Tiberius. The podium
or mass of rubble masonry therefore which we see beneath the three
columns at the present day belongs to the time of the kings, while the
columns themselves belong to the imperial period. Caligula used the
temple as a vestibule to his palace on the Palatine Hill immediately
behind. On the brow of that hill, separated only by the pavement of
the modern street, projects a labyrinth of vaults, arches, and broken
walls, a mighty maze of desolation without a plan, so interspersed
with verdure and foliage that "it looks as