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Updated: May 2, 2025
Numerous altars, pedestals, and fine specimens of sculpture in marble and peperino, have been disinterred in this spot, and they are now arranged to advantage at the foot of the huge pile fronting the road.
The earliest tombs along the Appian Way were constructed of these different varieties of building materials. The sarcophagi of the Scipios were hollowed out of simple blocks of peperino stone; and the sculptor's art and the material in which he wrought were worthy of the severe simplicity of the heroic age.
This terrible tragedy, which terminated the independent existence of the Alban power, took place in the fields around here; and on the right-hand side of the road are three huge circular mounds, overgrown with long rich grass, planted with tall cypress and ilex trees, and surrounded at the foot with a wall of huge peperino blocks, which antiquarians have determined to be the tombs of the five slaughtered combatants the farther mound being that of the two Horatii, the second that of one of the Curiatii, and the third that of the other two Curiatii.
The materials employed for substantial building were various; in the older days red and black tufa a stone so soft as to require protection by a layer of stucco; later the dark-brown peperino, the golden-creamy travertine, marble white and coloured, and concrete.
It was accidentally discovered in 1780, in consequence of a peasant digging in the vineyard to make a cellar, and breaking through a part of the vaulted roof of the tomb. Then was brought suddenly to light the celebrated sarcophagus of plain peperino stone, which contained the remains of the Roman consul, Lucius Scipio Barbatus, after having been undisturbed for nearly twenty-two centuries.
I may remark, that I saw at Terceira, in the Azores, a crater of tuff or peperino, very similar to these of the Galapagos Archipelago. It at first appears very singular, that all the craters formed of tuff have their southern sides, either quite broken down and wholly removed, or much lower than the other sides.
The lake of Albano, one of the most beautiful sheets of water in the world, is about six miles in circumference, and surrounded by beds of peperino, a variety of tuff presenting a bright, undecomposed aspect when newly broken.
The ring-wall further embraced the Caelian and the whole space of the Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal, where a structure likewise but recently brought to light on a great scale on the outside composed of blocks of peperino and protected by a moat in front, on the inside forming a huge earthen rampart sloped towards the city and imposing even at the present day supplied the want of natural means of defence.
On every side are innumerable tokens of a vast expenditure of human toil, and love, and sorrow; and it seems as if it had been all thrown away. For two miles and a half from the tomb of Cæcilia Metella I counted fifty-three tombs on the right and forty-eight on the left. The margin of the road on either side is strewn with fragments of hewn marble, travertine, and peperino.
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