believe, no higher authority can be quoted than that of Justin.*

The reliefs on the sarcophagi generally represent the same set of subjects as appear to have been favourites with the ancients, and to have been ready made for any purchaser: such as the "Boar Hunt," Diana and Endymion, the Battle of the Amazons. One of these, in the Sala del Fauno, is evidently the copy of some excellent original; nothing can be more striking or correct than the design, especially of the captives on the rim of the cover, but the workmanship is of very inferior quality.

In this Museum, as at the Vatican, everything is ancient. The statues are raised on pedestals which are, themselves, sepulchral cippi, or inscribed marbles. The Antinous stands on a stone which contained the ashes of a freed woman in the family of Tiberius Cæsar, whose beauty and accomplishments are extolled in a long epitaph not altogether worthy of the Augustan age; the name was Claudia Homonæa. The stone on which the Faun stands contains an inscription to a certain Petronius: Nobilitatis culmini-Litterarum et eloquentiae fulmini-Auctoritatis Exemplo-Provisionum et dispositionum magistro-Humanitatis-Devotionis, &c. This prodigy was Proconsul of Africa in the reign of Valens, whose bust in another room is worthy of the style of

*

But the Amazons checked the growth of the right breast. See Grote's Hist. of Greece, chap. xi. p. 292, note.

the panegyric; compare it with the inscription on Scipio Barbatus, or Scipio Asiaticus: "HE SUBDUED KING ANTIOCHUS." It may be remarked that, besides other tokens of barbarism, the Petronian eulogy gives us something like the jingle of rhyme.

The antiquities of the Conservators' palace, if they were all authentic, would be the most interesting of Roman remains. The Fasti Consulares have, since my first visit, received some small additions, and a large record of the merit of Pius VII. in placing them there. In one of the fragments Mark Antony is called Triumvir. The imperial fragments were found at the Sapienza. But many of the names given to the marbles and bronzes in this quarter of the Capitol are more than questionable. The Duillian column is modern, and the fragments of inscriptions on it are copies; the colossal bronze fragments, said to belong to a statue of Commodus, are not certainly his. The Geese called the saviours of the Capitol may be ancient, but they look like ducks. The Boy extracting the thorn is not what it is called, the Shepherd Martius; the bronze Junius Brutus is a baptism; the Cæsar is a forgery; so are the Appius Claudius, the Mithridates, the Ariadne, the Sappho, the Virgil, the Cicero, and the Poppaa. No such uncertainty attaches to the collection of modern worthies in the Protomoteca, many of them removed from the Pantheon; but most of the recent busts were supplied by the munificence of Canova.

The name PROTOMOTECA, and the regulations under

which admission may be obtained into this Temple of Fame, written in old Latin (e. g. siet for sit), are sufficiently pedantic; but there is nothing very classical in the guardians of this repository, for they are no other than the Conservators of Rome, assisted by the various academies, and referring to the final decision of his Holiness for the time being. One of the rules lays down that none but those notoriously possessed of a genius of the first order, and none but the dead, shall have a place in the collection-yet the busts seemed to me to have increased exceedingly since 1822—and if such men as Sterne, the architect of the Braccio Nuovo (though he had much merit) are to be admitted, another room will soon be wanted for the reception of these memorials. The law against admitting the living was violated for the sake of the sovereign, for Leo XII. was already there in 1828.

The modern Romans at one time declared that flattery of the living was infamous; but they repented of their decree, and having removed the stone on which it was inscribed, replaced it by a milder sentence, denouncing only those who, WITHOUT GOOD CAUSE, should propose to receive a statue to a reigning pope or his relations. The sufficing reason included the enlargement of the papal dominions, the service of the people, or any other exploit above the common, by which the great man of the day might appear to have deserved to be remembered by posterity. Since the Senate and Roman People of 1634 relented from their former stern severity, more

than 200 years have elapsed, and not one sovereign has ruled them whose good deeds might not, by his contemporary Conservators and Academies, be allowed to have done something above the common run of kings.

This is the inscription:

Quod in malas adulatorum artes sancitum erat, id ne civibus de republica præter morem meritis officiat, atque adeo in ingrati animi vitium ducat assentationis fuga-Visum est Senatui Populoque Romano assentiente Principe vetus decretum æqua ratione moderari, atque amoto lapideo decreti monumento aliud his consignatum verbis reponere.

Infamiæ nota inurendos tantummodo eos atque a publicis officiis removendos qui sine causa maximum reipub. commodum respiciente de erigendis statuis aut insignibus viventi Principi aut Princip. sanguinis conjunctis in Senatu verba fecerint. Non autem illos qui vel aucta ditione vel servato Populo vel re quapiam in commune bonum supra communem modum gesta meruisse posteritatis memoriam videbantur.-Die 26 mens. Jan. 1634.

CHAPTER XIII.

CAPITOLINE ASCENTS.

THE excavations of late years have done much, if not all that can be wanted, towards the discovery of the ancient ascents from the Roman Forum to the Capitol. I found in 1854 that many more of the basalt polygons of the Clivus Capitolinus had been laid bare than were discoverable in 1843. The direction in which that famous road ascended the hill is now distinctly seen. It passed from the Arch of Severus under the three columns, once called the Temple of Jupiter Tonans, and now ascribed either to Saturn, or Vespasian and Titus. It then turned under the temple of the eight columns, given by some to Saturn, by others to Vespasian; thence its present progress is soon stopped by the mound on which the modern ascent has been raised. It proceeded, however, in all probability, pretty much in the direction of the modern pathway up the Monte Caprino. My late friend Antonio Nibby is accused of having stopped the further clearing of the ascent, because he was afraid it would disprove his plan in regard to the direction of the Clivus Capitolinus, and also to the site of the great Temple of the Capitoline Jupiter