Crassus, born of the woman who lay in this tomb before us, after
earning great distinction in Gaul as Cæsar's legate, accompanied his
father to the East, and was much beloved on account of his noble
qualities and his feats of bravery against the enemy. While
endeavouring to repulse the last fierce charge of the Parthians, he
was wounded severely by an arrow, and finding himself unable to
extricate his troops, rather than desert them he ordered his
sword-bearer to slay him. When the news of his son's fall reached the
aged father, the old Roman spirit blazed up for a moment in him, and
he exhorted his soldiers "not to be disheartened by a loss that
concerned himself only." In this last triumph of a nobler nature he
disappears from our view; and he who built this magnificent monument
to the mother of his gallant son had himself no monument. More
fortunate than her husband, whose evil manners live in brass,--less
fortunate than her son, whose virtues have been handed down for the
admiration of posterity,--Cæcilia Metella has left no record of her
existence beyond her name. All else has been swallowed up by the
oblivion of ages. Whether her husband raised this colossal trophy of
the dust to commemorate his own pride of wealth, or his devoted love
for her, we know not. He achieved his object; but he has given to his
wife only the mockery of immortality. The substance has gone beyond
recall, and but the shadow, the mere empty name, remains.

Built up against this monument are the remains of the castle in which
the Gaetani family long maintained their feudal warfare, with
fragments of marble sculpture taken from the tomb incorporated into
the plain brick walls. And on the other side of the road, in a
beautiful meadow, covered with soft green grass, are the ruins of a
roofless Gothic chapel, showing little more than a few bare walls and
gables built of dark lava stones, with traces of pointed windows in