n the fire of Commodus, which
destroyed at the same time many important buildings in the Forum. The
worship of Vesta was prohibited by Gratianus in the year 382 of our
era, and the public maintenance of the Vestal Virgins abandoned, in
spite of the protestations of Symmachus and the forlorn hope of the
pagan party. Great as was the reverence paid to the shrine of Vesta,
not being a temple in the proper sense of the term, as it was not
consecrated by augury, it had not the right of sanctuary. Mucius
Scaevola, the unfortunate Pontifex Maximus, was murdered beside the
altar by order of Marius, and his blood sprinkled the image of the
goddess; and Piso Licinianus, the adopted son of Galba, after the
assassination of that emperor beside the Curtian Lake in the Forum,
was dragged out from the innermost shrine of the temple, to which he
had fled for refuge, and barbarously massacred at the door. But it is
impossible to dwell upon all the remarkable events with which this
haunted shrine of Rome's earliest and most beautiful worship is
associated. Certainly no greater object of interest has been exhumed
among all the antiquities of the Eternal City than the little round
mass of shapeless masonry which has been identified beyond all
reasonable doubt as the basement of the world-renowned temple, the
household hearth of old Rome.

Opposite the Temple of Vesta, at the north-east corner of the Forum,
where it ends, is the magnificent facade of the Temple of Antoninus
Pius and Faustina, the most perfect of all the Roman temples. There
are six splendid Corinthian columns in front and two at the sides,
each composed of a single block of green ripple-marked Cipollino
marble, about forty-six feet in height and five feet in diameter, with
bases and capitals of marble, originally white, but now rusty and
discoloured by age; all beautifully proportioned and carved in the
finest style of ancient art. These columns were buried to half their
height in medieval times; and houses were built up against and between
them, the marks of whose roofs are still visible in indentations near
their summits. These houses were removed, and the ground excavated
down to the bases of the columns in the sixteenth century by Palladio,
revealing a grand flight of marble steps, twenty-one in number,
leading up to the temple from the street. The excavations at that time
were made for the purpose of finding marbles and building materials
for the Church of St. Peter's