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Updated: May 31, 2025
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.
Why should I speak of Lucius Cinna? whose extraordinary integrity, proved under many trying circumstances, makes the glory of his present admirable conduct less remarkable; he has altogether disregarded the province assigned to him; and so has Caius Cestius, a man of great and firm mind. Who are there left then to be delighted with this heavensent allotment? Lucius Antonius and Marcus Antonius!
In this way the description of Keat's resting-place beneath the pyramid of Cestius, which was also destined to be Shelley's own, is introduced: Who mourns for Adonais? oh come forth, Fond wretch! and show thyself and him aright.
But there are not many well-defined monuments of it remaining in Rome. The chief are the bust of Euripides in the Vatican, and the outside casing of the pyramid of Caius Cestius, near the Protestant cemetery, now so weather-beaten and stained with dusky lichens that it is difficult to identify the material of which it is composed.
The army has a good excuse to offer for its conduct: "We knew Thermopylae would be safe since we left Spartans to guard it." Cestius Pius. You have shown, Spartans, how base it were to fly by so long remaining still. All have their privilege. The glory of Athens is speech, of Thebes religion, of Sparta arms.
The grave of John Keats is one of few in the old burying-ground, and lies almost in the shadow of the pyramid of Caius Cestius; and I could not help thinking of the wonder the Roman would have felt could he have known into what unnamable richness and beauty his Greek faith had ripened in the heart of the poor poet, where it was mixed with so much sorrow.
That of Cestius, who died within the last thirty years before Christ, is 116 feet high and 98 feet square at the base. It is constructed with bricks and covered with marble blocks. Upon the Cemetery of St. Lorenzo, "the great modern burial-ground of Rome," I saw one or several small monuments or head stones which were in the form of pyramids.
It will be something to say in after years, that I have seen one year open in Rome that, while my distant friends were making up for the winter without, with good cheer around the merry board, I have walked in sunshine by the ruins of the Coliseum, watched the orange groves gleaming with golden fruitage in the Farnese gardens, trodden the daisied meadow around the sepulchre of Caius Cestius, and mused by the graves of Shelley, Keats and Salvator Rosa!
Nevertheless, the gathering was a large one, and the contrast between the scene passing in that remote and quiet corner of old Rome under the cypresses and in the shade of the pyramid of Caius Cestius, and that which was at the same time being enacted in the Corso, was about as great as can well be conceived. We had it all to ourselves.
In the court, on the opposite side of the Capitol, there is an admirable statue of a lion devouring an horse, which was found by the gate of Ostia, near the pyramid of Caius Cestius; and here on the left hand, under a colonade, is what they call the Columna Rostrata, erected in honour of Caius Duilius, who first triumphed over the Carthaginians by sea.
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