At a distance of about seven minutes' walk is an enormous circular
tomb, with a medieval tower of lava stones erected upon it, called the
_Torre di Selce_; but there is nothing to indicate who was interred in
it, though it must have been a person of some celebrity at the time.
An inscription upon a tomb beside it naively tells the passer-by to
respect the last resting-place of one who had a shop on the _Via
Sacra_, where he sold jewellery and millinery, and was held in much
estimation by his customers. Beyond this point there is nothing of any
special interest to arrest our attention, till we come to a
considerable mass of ruins, consisting of broken Doric columns of
peperino, part of a rough mosaic floor and brick pavement, and
fragments of walls lined with tufa squares in the _opus reticulatum_
pattern. These remains are supposed to mark the spot on which stood
the Temple of Hercules, erected by Domitian, and alluded to in one of
the epigrams of the poet Martial. Near this spot are the tomb of the
consul Quintus Veranius, who died in Britain in the year 55 of our
era; a lofty circular tomb, to some one unknown, with a rude
shepherd's hut on the top of it, to which the peasants have given the
name of Torraccio; and the tomb of a marble contractor. It may be
remarked, in connection with this last mentioned tomb, that a Roman
statuary had his workshops for the manufacture of sepulchral monuments
and sarcophagi on the Appian Way, which were of great extent, judging
from the quantity of sculpture, finished and unfinished, found on the
spot. All the sculpture was manifestly copied from Greek originals,
for it is hardly conceivable that such groupings and expressions as
we see in these bad copies could have been first executed by such
inferior artists. In this neighbourhood were the villa and farm of the
poet Persius, and portions of the wall are still standing. At the
ninth milestone are the tomb and the remains of the villa of the