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Updated: May 13, 2025
The tower itself reminded one of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or some other of the tombs that still stand near Rome. It was in fact the mausoleum which it had pleased the father of the present owner to have erected for himself during his lifetime.
Wishing to insure the fidelity of Pompey the Great, by a nearer tie of blood, he bade him divorce his present wife, and forcing Aemilia, the daughter of Scaurus and Metella, his own wife, to leave her husband, Manius Glabrio, he bestowed her, though then with child, on Pompey, and she died in childbirth at his house.
The energy employed by Montfanon had only ended in somewhat tempering the conditions four balls to be exchanged at twenty-five paces at the word of command. The duel was fixed for the following morning, in the inclosure which Cibo owned, with an inn adjoining, not very far distant from the classical tomb of Cecilia Metella.
On a marble panel below the frieze an inscription in bold letters informs us that this is the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, daughter of Quintus Metellus, who obtained the sobriquet of Creticus for his conquest of Crete, and wife of Crassus.
In former times the rows of sepulchres must have extended without interruption along all the straight, level miles between the tomb of Caecilia Metella and that of Casale Rotondo, forming an elongated cemetery where the powerful and wealthy competed as to who should leave the most colossal and lavishly decorated mausoleum: such, indeed, was the craving for survival, the passion for pompous immortality, the desire to deify death by lodging it in temples; whereof the present-day monumental splendour of the Genoese Campo Santo and the Roman Campo Verano is, so to say, a remote inheritance.
To lie here among my brethren with such an epitaph, would be higher honor for me than a mausoleum like that of Caecilia Metella." They walked on as before. "How sweet," said Marcellus, "is the death of the Christian! Its horror has fled. To him it is a blessed sleep, and death, instead of awakening terror, is associated with thoughts of rest or of victory."
And then, about three o'clock, we returned to the hamper. Luncheon under such circumstances always means dinner, and we arranged ourselves for a very comfortable meal. To those who know the tomb of Cecilia Metella no description of the scene is necessary, and to those who do not, no description will convey a fair idea of its reality.
And what a vision it was to picture all the tremendous tombs on the right and left of the glorious pavement which the legions trod on their return from the conquest of the world! That tomb of Caecilia Metella, with its bond-stones so huge, its walls so thick that the middle ages transformed it into the battlemented keep of a fortress!
A short time ago the ground in the vicinity was a green surface, level, except here and there a little hillock, or scarcely perceptible swell; the tomb of Cecilia Metella showing itself a mile or two distant, and other rugged ruins of great tombs rising on the plain.
They picnicked in the tomb of Cæcelia Metella, flirted in the palace of the Cæsars not in the classical manner, however, got cold by moonlight in the Colosseum, and went sketching in the Baths of Caracalla, which last amusement generally ended in the gentlemen and ladies drawing each other, and returning delighted with the study of art in 'dear Rome.
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