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the original, is in every respect admirable; and it is to be regretted that a somewhat similar disposition cannot be adopted in the British Museum, since the impression conveyed to the mind by seeing those objects which are usually crowded into glass-cases in museums, placed as they were originally found, is far more deep and lasting. On the top of a wall enclosing the garden of a hospital are arranged twelve figures of men and women the size of life, in the usual recumbent posture; one of them had an inscription carved on the cushion upon which he rested, and another held with both hands a scroll with three lines upon it. From Toscanella we passed to Viterbo, where, in the court-yard of the museum, we saw six or eight similar figures, all resembling those Etruscan ones of stone in the British Museum, and retaining a faint tinge of the red paint which was intended to beautify their faces.

From Viterbo we visited Castel d' Asso, anciently Castellum Axia, and considered by Sir William Gell to be probably the necropolis of Voltumna, now Viterbo; at the distance of three miles from which we came to a valley of considerable width, bounded by precipitous rocky sides with a river at the bottom. The remains of a castle erected in the middle ages are visible at the junction of two valleys, but they are insignificant in extent, with no remarkable features in the building, and resembling in a great measure the ruins of feudal castles attached to old towns in England. A small branch of the main valley leads to the plain above, and on each side of this lesser valley, as well as for a few hundred yards to the right and left after reaching the main valley, very remarkable carvings in the rock are to be seen. It would seem that a man wishing to appropriate a tomb for himself, or building one for his friend, selected a portion of rock at the top of the cliff varying in height and width from ten to thirty or even forty feet, then smoothed the face of it, leaving the summit rough, but in all cases contriving to leave in relief upon the face of the rock a kind of door-case, but no door; for the real access to the sepulchral chamber is always some feet below this sham door; above the door-case there is a sort of rude entablature, and upon what may be called the frieze an inscription in Etruscan characters is occasionally found. On one side or other of each distinct monument there is a straight and narrow flight of steps; and it is difficult to assign any particular use to this appendage to each tomb, as the top of the monument is nothing more than bare rock left in its rough state; and they seem to have contented

themselves with adorning the side which faced the valley. The aperture, three or four feet under the sham door, is narrow and low, and leads to a chamber usually about five feet in height and varying in shape, but generally with a square pillar left in the living rock. We saw neither painting nor ornament of any kind in the chambers. Many of the apertures are impassable, owing to the roots and bushes which choke them up. With regard to the inscriptions, they consist of one, two, or at most three words, of which no satisfactory interpretation has hitherto been given: the greater part of the sepulchres have no inscription at all; and the whole necropolis does not contain more than eight or nine which have any. In the lesser valley there may be thirty tombs, and ten on each side, whether you turn to the right or the left in the greater valley; but Castel d' Asso can scarcely be called a valley of tombs, for that expression would imply that the tombs continued a long distance, which is far from being the case; they are found in one particular spot, and are not very numerous nor far apart, therefore cannot occupy much space. It appeared to us that certain writers who have described Castel d' Asso have suffered themselves to indulge in rhapsody and exaggeration, and thereby have given a false estimate of its importance. The real entrance to the sepulchral chamber could never have been concealed; for the superincumbent mass of rock carved, and in some instances inscribed, points out distinctly the existence of a burialplace; of course therefore, as soon as the natural rapacity of mankind overcame the superstitious awe for the dead, the doors were burst open and the contents rifled; but there is no need to suppose that violence has been used to detach fragments of the carved rocks; the natural effects of the weather are sufficient to account for the occasional splitting of pieces of the rock here as well as on other cliffs. The passage in Cicero's oration pro A. Cæcina, in which Castellum Axia is incidentally mentioned, does not give any description of the castle, but merely alludes to it as happening to be near the estate concerning which there was a lawsuit. Cicero only relates that the plaintiff, "A. Cæcina cum amicis ad diem venit in Castellum Axiam: ex quo loco fundus is de quo agitur, non longe abest." Orat. pro Cæcina, c. 7.

We cannot agree with Mrs. Hamilton Gray respecting the inscriptions which are legible on some of these tombs. That lady has copied seven inscriptions from the Annals of the Archæological Society, and these seven we tested, comparing them with the

originals, and found to be correct. Mrs. Gray says, "Their meaning, to a certain extent, I know perfectly: they expressed the name of the deceased, and his title, his age, and, in a rare instance or two, the year in which he died; but, according to a computation now unknown, and at the end of all this was the touching sentence, 'Rest in peace."" Now of these seven inscriptions three consist but of one word each, namely, ineisl, scasueh, and ecasuth; three others of two words each, namely, arnthal ceises, urinatess luies, and ls uthin; and one consists of three words, thus, ecasu inesl tetnie. Sir William Gell has hazarded a conjecture that the inscription of the three words may mean, “Adieu in peace, Titinius ;" and, therefore, perhaps four of the seven inscriptions may be considered as disposed of; but how shall we elicit from the remaining ones either name, title, age, or date? All is the merest conjecture. At Castel d' Asso there seems to have been very little variety of taste respecting monuments; for the mausoleums of rock, though varying extremely in size, differ but little in style: there is the same peculiar door-case, and over it an entablature bearing an inscription or not; but in no case is there any ornamental carving of men or animals. On either side of the sham door all is plain and smooth; but there is a striking contrast between the imposing magnificence of some of these solid mausoleums and the mean entrance and low and inconvenient arrangement of the actual sepulchre: the former were of course designed to catch the eye of the traveller, but they have also served to point out where the tomb was when the despoiler came; and thus this cemetry has shared a very different fate from those of Vulci and Toscanella, where such was the art of concealment, that it requires much skill and experience to discover the sepulchral chambers at all.

On leaving Viterbo we ascended the Ciminian hill, which is still covered by a forest which was considered by the Romans for a long period as a boundary difficult to pass. In descending the Roman side of the mountain we saw in the hollow of an ancient crater, the "lacus Ciminius," now called Lago di Vico; and the extensive view comprehended the regions which were once inhabited by those people enumerated by Virgil in the lines:

Hi Fescenninas acies, quosque Faliscos,
Hi Soractis habent arces, Flaviniaque arva,
Et Cimini cum monte lacum, lucosque Capenos."

Eneid vII. 695.

Continuing our descent from the Ciminian lake we reached Ronciglione, which does not contain any antiquities, and indeed it is doubtful whether it be an ancient site, though Gell is inclined to suppose that there was an ancient population here, in order to account for some sepulchral chambers which are found in a rocky glen below the town. Hence a few miles bring the traveller to Sutri, the reputed birth-place of Pontius Pilate, situated on a long narrow strip of ground with a deep valley on each side; the houses are all built round the edge of the rock, and beneath their foundations fragments of Etruscan walls of tufo are distinguishable; and especially below a building now used as a prison several courses of stone appear, but the lines are straight, and there is nothing of a Cyclopian style about the work, which, nevertheless, may be referred to the earliest period at which the spot was inhabited, and when once built would serve as substructions for any subsequent fortification. In the rocks of the valleys near Sutri are cut numbers of sepulchral caves; they are not however remarkable as having any particular form, but are rude and irregular, and wholly devoid of ornament. At a quarter of a mile from the Porta Romana there is a very remarkable amphitheatre cut in the rock; it is situated at the point of junction of two valleys, the piece of land which separates them becoming narrower and narrower, until it terminates in an abrupt rock: and here it is fair to conjecture that there had originally been a stone quarry, which when luxury and refinement increased, and the love for spectacles became universal, was fashioned by the Sutrians so as to form an excellent amphitheatre. The length of the oval extends almost from one valley to the other, but at the west end the entrance to the arena was by a short tunnel in the rock: at the east end the hollow of the theatre comes so near to the edge of the rock, that there is not even material to form an arch over the corresponding entrance, but it is of exactly the same width as the tunnel, and, like it, leads straight to the arena. In the tunnel to the right and left as one enters there is a passage which contains a flight of steps conducting to a "vomitorium," situated in the second "præcinctio;" but at the east end where there is no tunnel, the spectators had access to their seats by a straight covered passage at the side of the entrance to the arena, which led by means of steps from the valley below to an aperture corresponding with one of the "vomitoria" at the opposite end. Thus, the public had access to their places only by three covered ways, and the gladiators

&c. passed immediately to the arena, round which below the "podium" was a low gallery with openings at the two principal entrances; and this was probably used as a place of retirement for the performers, as in fact it led to nothing, the whole superincumbent mass being perfectly solid. The arena when we saw it was sown with corn, and, doubtless, by successive vegetation, raised far above its original level. With respect to the whole "cavea," it is to be borne in mind that there is no masonry whatever; where the rock happens to fail there the symmetry must fail also. For instance, on the northern side, besides the "podium" and two "præcinctiones,” and a flat surface above the seats, all of which are complete all round, there is a high perpendicular wall of rock, and below it a slope upon which many persons could sit; whereas on the south side there is not near so much accommodation, because the hill falls away and is quite perpendicular outside, so that the spectators would be in danger of falling over unless protected by an artificial rail. It is remarkable that in many places, especially the higher parts of the "cavea," the seats are by no means well defined; this may arise, partly from the effect of weather in smoothing down the edges of the seats, partly from the circumstance of the amphitheatre, belonging as it did to an obscure provincial town, not being carefully completed: at all events, as it exists now, the dignified persons who occupied the lower "sedilia” would run the risk of being disturbed by the rude people who sat above them rolling down, so steep and illformed is the bank where the seats ought to be. There is a peculiarity in this theatre which we never observed in any other built in the usual manner; on the level of the lowest " præcinctio," at equal distances from the great entrances on both sides of the "cavea," two seats are visible, separated from the regular benches which form the "cunei," and placed in a kind of hollow in the rock, so that the persons occupying them (not more than two in each) were under a sort of alcove, and thus distinguished from the rest of the spectators. The length of the arena is about sixty paces, and the breadth thirty. In passing along the road to Rome from Sutri the amphitheatre would not be observed, for the division of the rock which serves as an entrance on that side is no way remarkable; but when once inside the effect is very striking, owing to the excellent preservation of all parts; and, in fact, our guide informed us that it had been used of late years for bullbaiting, or some such exhibition. It now forms part of the enclo

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