nk,--and the southern end of the long hill was a wilderness of sand
and brushwood.

[Illustration: MAMERTINE PRISON]

In the deep Mamertine prison, behind the Tabulary of the Forum, it was
customary to put to death only political misdoers, and their bodies were
then thrown down the Gemonian steps. 'Vixerunt,' said Cicero, grimly,
when Catiline's fellow conspirators lay there dead; and perhaps the
sword that was to fall upon his own neck was even then forged. The
prison is still intact. The blood of Vercingetorix and of Sejanus is on
the rocky floor. Men say that Saint Peter was imprisoned here. But
because he was not of high degree Nero's executioners led him out across
the Forum and over the Sublician bridge, up to the heights of Janiculum.
He was then very old and weak, so that he could not carry his cross, as
condemned men were made to do. When they had climbed more than half-way
up the height, seeing that he could not walk much farther, they
crucified him. He said that he was not worthy to suffer as the Lord had
suffered, and begged them to plant his cross with the head downward in
the deep yellow sand. The executioners did so. The Christians who had
followed were not many, and they stood apart weeping.

When he was dead, after much torment, and the sentinel soldier had gone
away, they took the holy body, and carried it along the hillside, and
buried it at night close against the long wall of Nero's circus, on the
north side, near the place where they buried the martyrs killed daily by
Nero's wild beasts and in other cruel ways. They marked the spot, and
went there often to pray. Lately certain learned men have said that he
was crucified in the circus itself, but the evidence is slight compared
with the undoubted weight of a very ancient tradition, and turns upon
the translation of a single word.

Within two years Nero fell and perished miserably, scarcely able to take
his own life to escape being beaten to death in the Forum. In a little
more than a year there were four emperors in Rome; Galba, Otho and
Vitellius followed one another quickly; then came Vespasian, and then
Titus, with his wars in Palestine, and then Domitian. At last, nearly
thirty years after the apostle had died on the Janiculum, there was a
bishop called Anacletus, who had been ordained priest by Saint Peter
himself. The times being quieter then, this Anacletus built a little
oratory, a very small chapel, in which three or four persons could k