columns of Rome are
the ten large ones in the Church of San Lorenzo outside the walls. In
the volute of the capital of one of them a frog has been carved, which
identifies it as having formerly belonged to the Temple of Jupiter or
Juno, within the area of the Portico of Octavia. Pliny tells us that
both temples were built at their own expense by two wealthy
Lacedaemonian artists, named Sauros and Batrakos; and, having been
refused the only recompense they asked--the right to place an
inscription upon the buildings,--they introduced into the capitals of
the pillars, surreptitiously, the symbols of their respective names, a
lizard and a frog.

The most precious of the old marbles of Rome is the _Rosso antico_.
Its classical name has been lost, unless it be identical, as Corsi
conjectures, with the Marmor Alabandicum, described by Pliny as black
inclining much to purple. For a long time it was uncertain where it
was found, but recently quarries of it have been discovered near the
sea at Skantari, a village in the district of Teftion, which show
traces of having been worked by the ancients. From these quarries the
marble can only be extracted in slabs and in small fragments. This is
the case, too, with all the red marbles of Italy, which, in spite of
their compact character, scale off very readily, and are friable,
vitreous, and full of cleavage planes, in addition to which they are
usually only found in thin beds, which prevents their being used for
other purposes than table-tops and flooring-slabs. The predominance of
magnetic iron ore, to which they owe their vivid colour, has thus
seriously affected the molecular arrangement of the rocks. It is
probable that _rosso antico_, like the Italian red marbles, belongs to
one or other of the Liassic formations, which, in Italy as well as in
Greece and Asia Minor, constitutes a well-marked geological horizon by
its regular stratification and its characteristic ammonite fossils.
The quantity found among the Roman ruins of this marble is very large;
many of the shops in Rome carving their models of classical buildings
in this material. But the fragments are comparatively small. When used
in architecture they have been employed to ornament subordinate
features in some of the grander churches. The largest specimens to be
seen in Rome are the double-branched flight of seven very broad steps,
leading from the nave to the high altar of Santa Prassede. Napoleon
Bonaparte, a few months