it.  A golden urn, containing the ashes, is said to have been discovered at the same time.  That Caecilia Metella, for whose dust this magnificent monument was raised, was the daughter of Metellus, and the wife of Crassus, is all we know.  “Her husband, who was the richest and meanest of the Romans, had himself no grave.  He perished miserably with a Roman army in the deserts of the East, in that unsuccessful expedition against the Parthians which has stamped his memory with incapacity and shame."[17] The rude battlements on the top of the tower, and all the old walls and fortifications which surround it, are the work of the Gaetani family, who long maintained their feudal warfare here.  Forsyth observes:—­“Crassus built this tomb of travertine stone 24 feet thick, to secure the bones of a single woman; while the adjoining castle had but a thin wall of soft tufo to defend all the Gaetani from the fury of civil war.”  Eustace says:  “The solidity and simplicity of this monument are worthy of the republican era in which it was erected, and have enabled it to resist and survive the lapse and incidents of two thousand years."[18]

    [17] Rome, &c., vol. ii.

    [18] Classical Tour, vol. i., p. 407.

Next is the grey pyramidal Tomb of Caius Cestius, in the fields called Prati del Popolo Romano, on the western side of the Aventine Hill.  This ancient monument remains entire, an advantage which it owes partly to its form, well calculated to resist the action of the weather, and partly to its situation, as it is joined to the walls of the city, and forms part of the fortification.  Its base is about 90 feet square, and it rises, according to Eustace, about 120 feet in height.  It is formed, or at least encrusted, with large blocks of white marble; a door in the base opens into a gallery terminating in a small room, ornamented with paintings on the stucco, in regular compartments.  In this chamber of the dead, once stood a sarcophagus that contained the remains of Cestius.  “At the base of the pyramid stand two marble columns, which were found beneath the ground, and re-erected by some of the popes.  One foot, which is all that remains of the colossal statue in bronze of Caius Cestius, that formerly stood before his tomb, is now in the Museum of the Capitol."[19]

[19] Rome, &c., vol. ii.—­From the monument we learn that he
was the contemporary of Caesar and Augustus, but his name
does not appear in the annals, or the literature of that
eventful and enlightened period; of his wealth, and of
his pride, this magnificent tomb is a sufficient record: 
but of his merits or his virtues, no trace remains.  The
inscription only tells us he was one of the seven
Epulones, whose office was to furnish and to eat the
sacred banquets offered to Jupiter and the Gods.