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. Broken
tablets, retaining a few letters of the epitaphs of the dead;
mutilated statues and alto-relievos; drums and capitals of pillars; a
hand or a foot, or a fold of marble drapery,--every form and variety
of sculpture, the mere crumbs that had fallen from a profuse feast of
artistic beauty, which nobody considers it worth while to pick up, lie
mouldering among the grass. At frequent intervals, facing the road,
you see with mournful interest the exposed interiors of tombs, showing
that beautiful and curious _opus reticulatum_, or reticulated
arrangement of bricks or tufa blocks, which is so characteristic of
the imperial period, and rows upon rows of neat pigeon-holes in the
brickwork, which contained the cinerary urns, all robbed of their
treasures, their tear-bottles, and even their bones. Ruthless popes
and princes have done their best during all the intervening ages to
destroy the monuments by taking away for their own uses the marble and
hewn stone which encased them, leaving behind only the inner core of
brick and small stones imbedded in mortar which was never meant to be
seen. Pitying hands have lately endeavoured to atone for this
desecration by lifting here and there out of the rubbish heap on which
they were thrown some affecting group of family portraits, some choice
specimens of delicate architecture, some mutilated panel on which the
stern hard features of a Roman senator look out upon you, and placing
them in a prominent position to attract attention. But though they
have endeavoured to build up the fragments of the tombs into some
semblance of their former appearance, the resuscitation is even more
melancholy than was the former ruin. Their efforts at restoration are
only the very graves of graves. In some places a side path leading off
the main road to a tomb has been uncovered, paved with the original