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Updated: May 31, 2025
Meantime, a great massacre of the Jews took place at Damascus. Then those in Jerusalem who had pursued after Cestius called a general assembly in the Temple, and elected their governors and commanders.
The Roman legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, after the defeat of the Romanizing party by the Zealots, himself marched on Jerusalem in the autumn of 68 C.E. with two legions. But he failed ignominiously to quell the revolt.
Close to the Porta San Paolo is the great tomb of the Roman magnate, Gaius Cestius, which was built before the birth of Christ. One can hardly miss seeing it, because it is near one of the most sacred pilgrimage places of Rome, the grave of John Keats. Each traveler makes his own Rome; and the memories which he takes away are the memories which he brought with him.
Andrea della Valle, the site where Caesar was murdered, and thence to the Farnese Palace, the noble court of which I entered; thence to the Piazza Cenci, where I looked at one or two ugly old palaces, and fixed on one of them as the residence of Beatrice's father; then past the Temple of Vesta, and skirting along the Tiler, and beneath the Aventine, till I somewhat unexpectedly came in sight of the gray pyramid of Caius Cestius.
Seeing the whole country around in arms, and the Jews swarming on all the heights, Cestius withdrew his army and retired in the night, leaving 400 of his bravest men to mount guard in the camp and to display their ensigns, that the Jews might be deceived. But at break of day it was discovered that the camp was deserted by the army, and the Jews rushed to the assault and slew all the Roman band.
"At the base of the pyramid stand two marble columns, which were found beneath the ground, and re-erected by some of the popes. One foot, which is all that remains of the colossal statue in bronze of Caius Cestius, that formerly stood before his tomb, is now in the Museum of the Capitol." The situation of this tomb is one of melancholy picturesqueness.
The Cemeterio degli Inglesi, or the Protestant burial-ground, stretches calmly and beautifully below the Pyramid of Cestius. The site was admirably chosen, nothing can be more poetically and religiously sepulchral than this most attractive spot. It is worth a thousand churches. No one can stand long there without feeling in full descent upon his spirit the very best influences of the grave.
In this nefarious policy he received the countenance of Cestius Gallus, the prefect of Syria, who, imitating the maxims of his lieutenant, studiously drove the natives to insurrection, in order that their cries for justice might be drowned amid the clash of arms. But he forgot that there are limits to endurance even among the most humble and abject.
William was buried in the Protestant cemetery, of which Shelley had written a description to Peacock in the previous December. "The English burying-place is a green slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever beheld.
The aqueduct, of which so many arches still meet the eye as you cross the Campagna, was the work of Nero's predecessor, Claudius, and it still bears his name the Aqua Claudia. Where now you go out of the gate to St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls there stood more free and visible than now that pyramid of Cestius, close to whose shadow lie the graves of the English Shelley and Keats.
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