keeper of the library of Apollo in the imperial palace on the
Palatine. A most pathetic lamentation in verse is made by one Julia
Prima over the ashes of her husband; and an inscription, along with a
portrait of the animal, records that beneath are the remains of a
favourite dog that was the pet of the whole household--a little touch
of nature that links the ages and the zones, and makes the whole world
kin. The whole of this region, called Monte d'Oro, for what reason I
know not, seems to have been a vast necropolis, in which not only
Columbaria for their slaves and freedmen were built by the great
patrician families, but also family vaults for the wealthier middle
classes were constructed and sold by speculators, just as in our
modern town cemeteries.

Very near the modern gate of the city the road passes under the
so-called Arch of Drusus. It consists of a single arch, whose keystone
projects on each side about two feet and a half beyond the plane of
the frontage; and is built of huge solid blocks of travertine, with
cornices of white marble, and two composite columns of African marble
on each side, much soiled and defaced, which are so inferior in style
to the rest of the architecture that they are manifestly later
additions. The whole monument is much worn and injured; but it is made
exceedingly picturesque by a crown of verdure upon the thick mass of
soil accumulated there by small increments blown up from the highway
in the course of so many centuries. It was long supposed that
Caracalla had barbarously taken advantage of the arch to carry across
the highway at this point the aqueduct which supplied his baths with
water. But the more recent authorities maintain that the arch itself,
so far from being the monument of Drusus, was only one of the arches
built by Caracalla in a more ornamental way than the rest, as was
commonly done when an aqueduct crossed a public road. This theory does