e onion, was
emitted, which gave rise to its modern Italian name--Marmo Cipolla.
This repulsive quality, however, disappeared quickly on exposure. The
finest specimens of this marble in Rome are the forty-six columns in
the Church of St. Paul's, outside the gate, which belonged originally
to the Basilica AEmilia in the Forum, founded about forty-five years
before Christ, and were transferred to the new building when the
venerable old church, in which they had stood for fifteen hundred
years, was destroyed by fire. Nothing too can be finer than the two
rows of Ionic columns of Hymettian marble which divide the immense
nave of Santa Maria Maggiore from the side aisles. There are eighteen
on either side, each upwards of eight feet in circumference, and are
supposed to have been taken from the Temple of Juno Lucina, whose site
is assigned by antiquaries to the immediate vicinity. Similar rows of
fluted Doric columns of the same marble, ten on each side, adorn the
Church of St. Pietro in Vincoli. They are ancient, and belonged to
some temple or basilica of the Forum. There are also five ancient
pillars of Hymettian marble in the upper Church of San Clemente, taken
from the same prolific source. The wall which surrounds the unique
choir or presbytery of this most interesting old church is also
composed of great slabs of Hymettian marble, taken from the original
subterranean church and hastily put together. Some of the ancient
pillars of Hymettian marble belonging to the peristyle of the temple
of Ceres and Proserpine, still as widely spaced as they used to be,
adorn the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, built on the foundation
of that shrine; while twenty-four remarkably fine fluted Corinthian
columns of the same material divide the triple nave of Santa Sabina on
the Aventine, and are supposed to have belonged to the ancient Temple
of Juno Regina, erected by Camillus after the destruction of the
Etruscan city of Veii. Hymettian marble was one of the first--if not
actually the first--species introduced into Rome. In the year of Rome
662, Lucius Crassus the orator brought to the city six columns of it,
each twelve feet in height, with which he adorned his house on the
Palatine Hill, receiving, on account of this circumstance, from Marcus
Brutus the nickname of the Palatine Venus. At the present day the
marble is used for corner-stones in the ordinary houses of Athens.

Another livid white marble, somewhat resembling the Hymett