although
he knew nothing of their import, detected the fact of the obelisk
being a mere imitation. It was cut and engraved at Syene by order of
the emperor Domitian, who designed it to adorn his villa on the Lake
of Albano. From thence it was removed by the usurper Maxentius to the
circus on the Appian Way, founded by him, and named after his son
Romulus. It is now on the site of the old Circus Agonalis, whose form
and boundaries are marked out by the houses of the Piazza Navona.
Surmounted by the Pope's device of a dove with an olive branch, a vain
substitute of heraldry for sacred symbolism, and standing on an
artificial rock-work about forty feet high, composed of figures of
Tritons and nymphs, disporting themselves amid plashing fountains and
marble foliage, the whole subject is incongruous and utterly opposed
to the simplicity and majesty of the ancient monuments.

Near the Pantheon there is a pair of obelisks which were brought from
the East, and stood together before the temple of Isis and Serapis,
which is supposed to have been situated on the site of the Dominican
Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. They were found when digging the
foundations of the church in 1667, along with an altar of Isis, now in
the Capitoline Museum. One of these obelisks was erected by Clement
XI. in 1711, in front of the Pantheon, in the midst of the fountain of
the Piazza. Its height is only about seventeen feet, and the
hieroglyphics on it indicate that it was constructed by Psammeticus
II., the supposed Hophra of Hebrew history. This same monarch also
constructed its twin-fellow which now stands in the Piazza Minerva in
the near neighbourhood. The celebrated sculptor Bernini, when
re-erecting it at the command of Pope Alexander VII. in 1660, had the
exceedingly bad taste to balance it on the back of a marble elephant,
the work of his pupil Ferrata; on account of which absurd incongruity
Bernini received from the satirical Roman populace the nickname of
"The Elephant." Only one obelisk in Rome was not restored or
re-erected by any Pope, viz. that which stands in the beautiful
grounds of the Villa Mattei in the Coelian Hill. It was found near the
Capitol on the site of an ancient temple of Isis, and was presented by
the magistrates to the owner of the villa, a great collector of
antiquities. It is said that when it was raised in 1563, on its red
granite pedestal, the mason who superintended the work incautiously
rested his hand on