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It is formed, or at least encrusted, with large blocks of white marble; a door in the base opens into a gallery terminating in a small room, ornamented with paintings on the stucco, in regular compartments. In this chamber of the dead, once stood a sarcophagus that contained the remains of Cestius.
This morning I walked as far as the gate of San Paolo, and, on approaching it, I saw the gray sharp pyramid of Caius Cestius pointing upward close to the two dark-brown, battlemented Gothic towers of the gateway, each of these very different pieces of architecture looking the more picturesque for the contrast of the other.
By a window at the end of the passage, one could see, far away, the Alban Hills, looking like a blue mountain-range, half hidden in white haze, and nearby one could see the trees in the Protestant cemetery and the pyramid of Caius Cestius close to them. Caesar felt a sort of deep repugnance for the people shut up here, remote from life and protected from it by a lot of things.
After the mausolea of Augustus, and Adrian, which I have already mentioned, the most remarkable antient sepulchres at Rome, are those of Caius Cestius, and Cecilia Metella.
Seventeen years later, they were a power in Rome; they had lent Julius Cæsar enormous sums, which he repaid with exorbitant interest, and after his death they mourned him, and kept his funeral pyre burning seven days and nights in the Forum. A few years after that time, Augustus established them on the opposite side of the Tiber, over against the bridge of Cestius and the island.
As fee he makes them promise him a picture, which, as it is only the strongest constitutions which can resist the powerful drugs he administers, he generally selects from the effects of the deceased, deposited at the Pyramid of Cestius. He takes the best of them, and others into the bargain.
Peter was imprisoned; the monument of Caius Cestius, which is entirely uninjured, in form of a pyramid, near which the Protestants are buried; the Cloaca Maxima, built by Tarquin, etc. Besides the obelisk near the Porta del Popolo, that raised in the pontificate of Pius VI., on mount Cavallo, is deserving of notice.
Doubtless, in his time, a prominent citizen like Caius Cestius was a leading member of the temple in his neighborhood, and regularly attended sacrifice: it would have been but decent; and yet I fancied that a man immersed like him in affairs might have learned with surprise the inner and more fragrant meaning of the symbols with the outside of which his life was satisfied; and I was glad to reflect that in our day such a thing is impossible.
The attempt at a swift rush across one border made by Cestius Gallus, ended in a failure, which was only wiped out four years later after the Romans, under Vespasian and Titus, had first overrun Galilee and Samaria and mastered the strongholds round the Judæan borders. This was the policy followed, a thousand years later, by Saladin.
Eustace says: "The solidity and simplicity of this monument are worthy of the republican era in which it was erected, and have enabled it to resist and survive the lapse and incidents of two thousand years." Rome, &c., vol. ii. Classical Tour, vol. i., p. 407. Next is the grey pyramidal Tomb of Caius Cestius, in the fields called Prati del Popolo Romano, on the western side of the Aventine Hill.
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