are the remains of a tomb which must be exceedingly interesting to
every classical scholar. The inscription indicates that it is the tomb
of Quintus Cæcilius, whose nephew and adopted son, Titus Pomponius
Atticus, as Cornelius Nepos tells us, was buried in it. This
celebrated Roman knight was descended in a direct line from Numa
Pompilius. Withdrawing from the civil discords of Rome, he took up his
abode in Athens, where he devoted himself to literary and philosophic
pursuits and acquired a knowledge of the Greek language so perfect
that he could not be distinguished from a native. At the Greek
capital, the then university of the world, he secured the devoted
friendship of his fellow-student Cicero, whose brother was afterwards
married to his sister; and to this intimacy we owe the largest portion
of Cicero's unrivalled letters, in which he describes his inmost
feelings, as well as the events going on around him. The uncle of
Atticus, the brother of his mother, whose family tomb we are now
examining, left him at his death an enormous fortune, which he had
amassed by usury. Atticus added greatly to it by acting as a kind of
publisher to the authors of the day--that is, by employing his
numerous slaves in copying and multiplying their manuscripts. He kept
himself free from all the political factions of the times, and thus
managed to preserve the mutual regard of parties who were hostile to
each other,--such as Cæsar and Pompey, Brutus and Antony. He reached
the age of seventy-seven years without having had a day's illness;
and when at last stricken with an incurable disease, in the spirit of
the Epicurean philosophy, since he could enjoy life no longer he
starved himself to death, and was interred in his uncle's tomb on the
Appian Way. Almost side by side with this ruin is the sepulchre of the
family of Cicero's wife, the Terentii, who were related to Pomponius
Atticus by the mother's side. In all likelihood Terentia herself,
Cicero's brave and devoted but ill-used wife, was interred here with