her own friends, for her husband had divorced her in order to marry a
beautiful and rich young heiress, whose guardian he had been.

Passing on the same side of the road two or three tombs of obscure
persons whose names alone are known, we come at the sixth milestone to
one of the most extraordinary sepulchral monuments of the Appian Way,
called the _Casale Rotondo_. This monument marks the limit to which
most visitors extend their explorations. It is circular, like the tomb
of Cæcilia Metella; but it is of far larger dimensions, being nearly
three hundred and fifty feet in diameter. In the fifteenth century
this colossal ruin was converted into a fortress by the Orsini family;
and of the remains of this fortification a farmhouse and other
buildings were constructed, and these now stand on the summit,
surrounded by a tolerably-sized oliveyard and garden, with a sloping
grass-grown stair leading up to them on the outside. Notwithstanding
their dislike of death and their horror of dead bodies, the modern
Romans have no more repugnance to the proximity of tombs than their
ancestors had. Shepherds fold their sheep and goats in the interior of
the old tombs, whose walls are blackened with the smoke of the fires,
and retain an odour of human and animal occupancy more disagreeable
than any which the original tenants could have exhaled; and it is by
no means unfrequent to find a wine-shop, with a noisy company of
wayfarers regaling themselves, in a sepulchre that happens to be
conveniently situated by the wayside. So far as can be ascertained,
the original appearance of the _Casale Rotondo_ seems to have been
that of an enormous circular tower, cased with large blocks of
travertine, covered with a pyramidal roof of the same material carved
into the semblance of tiles, and surmounted with appropriate
sculpture. It was surrounded with a wall of peperino, supporting at
intervals vases and statues; and on the outside were semicircular