stand here. The walls are covered with fantastic paintings of figures, with horses, dogs, leopards, and other animals, all of rude execution, but still fresh in form and colour. The inner chamber is surrounded by a shelf laden with vases and cinerary urns, and in its centre stood the brazier in which perfumes were burnt.

These are the sights usually seen at Veii; but if possible another two hours should be devoted to ascending the hill of the Arx, called by the natives Piazza d' Armi, which may be reached by a little path winding through the brushwood above the Columbarium. Of late years this has been decided to be the citadel of Veii, formerly supposed to have occupied the rock of Isola Farnese, which was separated from the rest of the city by a deep glen, so that, had it been the citadel, Camillus by its capture would not, as Livy tells us, have obtained immediate possession of the town.

These heights, now cultivated with crops, amongst which fragments of votive terra-cotta offerings may still be found in abundance, formed the citadel whose fourteen wars are matters of history, and which, having been successfully able to resist the whole forces of Rome during an eight years' siege, was at last only taken (B. C. 393) by a stratagem.

'It was a time of truce round the walls of Veii; and many who from living so near had known each other before the war, would often fall into discourse. In this manner the inhabitants heard of the prodigy of the (Alban) lake: and a soothsayer was impelled by destiny to scoff at the efforts of the Romans, the futility of which was foretold in the prophetic books. Some days after, a Roman centurion invited the soothsayer to come into the plain between the walls and the Roman trenches, to hear an account of a portent that had fallen out at his house, and to teach him in what way to appease the gods: the aruspex was seduced by the reward promised him, and incautiously let himself be led near the Roman lines. On a sudden the stout centurion seized the old inan, and dragged him, an easy prey, into the camp. From hence he was carried to Rome before the senate; where he was forced by threats to speak the truth, and, loudly bewailing the destiny that had infatuated him to betray the secret of his nation, confessed that the Veientine books of fate announced that, so long as the lake kept on overflowing, Veii could not be taken, and that if the waters were to reach the sea, Rome would perish. Not long afterwards the ambassadors returned from Delphi, and brought an answer to a like effect: whereupon the tunnel was begun, in order that the lake might cease to overflow, and that the water drawn from it might be spread through the fields in ditches. This work was carried on unremittingly; and the Veientines learnt that the fatal consummation, on which their ruin hung, was at hand. They sent an embassy to implore forbearance; but they found no compassion. The chief of the envoys, before they quitted the senate-house with the unrelenting answer, warned the Romans once more of the penalty that would inevitably await them: for, as certainly as Veii was now doomed to fall, so surely did the same oracles foretell that, soon after the fall of Veii, Rome would be taken by the Gauls. Nobody listened to him.

Camillus was already commanding as dictator before the city, and was unsuspectedly executing the work which opened the way for its destruction. The Romans seemed to be standing quietly at their posts, as if they were waiting the slow issue of a blockade which could not be forced. But the army was divided into six bands; and these, relieving one another every six hours, were labouring incessantly in digging a mine, which was to lead into the citadel of Veii, and there to open into the temple of Juno.

'Before the assault was made, the dictator inquired of the senate, what was to be done with the spoil. Appius Claudius, the grandson of the decemvir, advised selling it for the benefit of the treasury, that it might supply pay for the army without need of a property tax. This was opposed by P.

Licinius, the most eminent among the plebeian military tribunes: he even declared it would be unfair if none but the soldiers then on the spot were to have a share in the booty, for which every citizen had made some sacrifice or other. Notice, he said, ought to be given, for all who wished to partake in it to proceed to the camp. This was decreed; and old and young flocked toward the devoted city. Hereupon, as soon as the water was dispersed over the fields, and the passage into the citadel finished, Camillus made a vow to Matuta, a goddess highly revered on the adjacent Tyrrhenian coast, and addressed prayers to Juno, whose temple covered the way destined to lead the Romans into the city, with promises that she should receive higher honours than ever. Nor were his adjurations fruitless. To the Pythian Apollo, whose oracle, when it encouraged the Romans to put faith in the words of the aruspex, demanding an offering for Delphi, he vowed a tenth of the spoil. Then at the appointed hour, the passage was filled with cohorts: Camillus himself led the way. Meanwhile the horns blew the signal for the assault; and the countless host brought scaling ladders, as if they meant to mount the walls from every side. Here the citizens stood expecting the enemy, while their king was sacrificing in the temple of Juno. The aruspex, when he saw the victim, declared that whoever brought the goddess her share of the slaughtered animal would conquer. This was heard by the Romans underground. They burst forth and seized the flesh; and Camillus offered it up. From the citadel they rushed irresistibly through the city, and opened the nearest gates to the assailants.

"The incredible amount of the spoil even surpassed the expectations of the conquerors. The whole was given to the army, except the captives who had been spared in the massacre, before the unarmed had their lives granted to them, and who were sold on account of the state. All objects of human property had already been removed from the empty walls; the ornaments and statues of the gods alone were yet untouched. Juno had accepted the vow of a temple on the Aventine. But every one trembled to touch her image; for, according to the Etruscan religion, none but a priest of a certain house might do so without fear of death. A body of chosen knights, who took courage to venture upon removing it from its place, proceeded to the temple in white robes, and asked the goddess whether she consented to go to Rome. They heard her voice pronounce her assent: and the statue of its own accord followed those who were leading it forth.

'While Camillus was looking down from this temple on the magnificence of the captured eity, the immense wealth of which the spoilers were amassing, he called to mind the threats of the Veientines, and that the gods were wont to regard excessive prosperity with displeasure; and he prayed to the mighty queen of heaven to let the calamity that was to expiate it be such as the republic and he himself could support. When after ending his prayer he turned round to the right, with his head veiled according to custom, his foot stumbled, and he fell. It seemed as if the goddess had graciously appeased destiny with this mishap and Camillus, forgetting the foreboding which had warned him, provoked the angry powers by the unexampled pomp and pride of his triumph. Jupiter and Sol saw him drive up with their own team of white horses to the Capitol. For this arrogance he atoned by a sentence of condemnation, Rome by her destruction.'-Niebuhr,' History of Rome,' ii. 476.

From this time, with the exception of a brief revival under the Empire, the site of Veii has been desolate. In A.D. 117 Florus (in allusion to the Etruscan city) wrote," Who knows the site of Veii? It is hard to credit our annals.'

The fact being that Roman Veii did not precisely coincide with Etruscan Veii and never flourished.

Within the citadel of Veii (the Piazza d' Armi of the present day), there was a temple held in great veneration dedicated to Juno. Excavations in 1667 made by Cardinal Chigi, according to Pietro Sante Bartoli, brought to light an Ionic temple with enriched frieze and pediments. The columns and marbles were purchased by Cardinal Falconieri in order to adorn a chapel in the Church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini. Hard by was found a thick layer of votive offerings, so abundant that Rome is full of terra-cotta fragments of heads, hands, feet, &c. In 1889, the late Empress of Brazil caused further excavations to be made here, resulting in an unparalleled find of these objects, and a great enrichment of the list. The Palazzo delle Colonne in Piazza Colonna, is decorated with Ionic columns brought from Veii.

There are many other points which may be visited in or near the circle of the ancient city. Such is the Scaletta, a staircase of uncemented blocks of masonry near the Porta Fidenate, which attracted much attention thirty years ago, but is now greatly mutilated; and most especially the Arco di Pino, a very picturesque arch in the tufo, on the east of the city, near the large tumulus called La Vacchereccia.1 None of the dangers now await travellers which are described by Mrs. Hamilton Gray.

'Isola is a sweet quiet-looking hamlet, but about three weeks after our visit forty of the inhabitants were taken up as leagued banditti, and brought to Rome. The master of the inn was one of their leaders, and said at times to have given his guests human flesh to eat-detected by a young surgeon, who found a finger in his plate.'-Sepulchres of Etruria.

The tufo rock of Isola itself is perforated with tombs, and formed the necropolis of the town.

Such, then, is Veii-once the most powerful, the most wealthy city of Etruria, renowned for its beauty, its arts, and refinement, which in size equalled Athens and Rome, in military force was not inferior to the latter, and which for its site, strong by nature and almost impregnable by art, and for the magnificence of its buildings and the superior extent and fertility of its territory, was preferred by the Romans to the Eternal City itself, even before the destruction of the latter by the Gauls,-now void and desolate, without one house or inhabitant, its temples and palaces level with the dust, and nothing beyond a few fragments of walls, and some empty sepulchres, remaining to tell the traveller that here Veii was. The plough passes over its bosom, and the shepherd pastures his flock on the waste within it. Such must it have been in the earlier years of Augustus, for Propertius pictures a similar scene of decay and desolation.

Et Veii veteres, et vos tum regna fuistis ;
Et vestro posita est aurea sella foro;
Nunc intra muros pastoris buccina lenti
Cantat, et in vestris ossibus arva metunt."

"Veil, thou hadst a royal crown of old,

And in thy forum stood a throne of gold!—
Thy walls now echo but the shepherd's horn,
And o'er thine ashes waves the summer corn."

1 Those who ride may visit this on the way to or from Rome.

How are we to account for this neglect? The city was certainly not destroyed by Camillus, for the superior magnificence of its public and private buildings were temptations to the Romans to desert the Seven Hills. But after the destruction of Rome by the Gauls Veii was abandoned, in consequence of the decree of the senate threatening with the severest punishment the Roman citizens who should remain within its walls; and Niebuhr's conjecture is not perhaps incorrect, that it was demolished to supply materials for the rebuilding of Rome, though the distance would preclude the transport of more than the architectural ornaments. Its desolation must have been owing either to the policy of Rome which proscribed its habitation, or to malaria; otherwise a city which presented so many advantages as almost to have tempted the Romans to desert the hearths and the sepulchres of their fathers would scarcely have been suffered to fall into utter decay, and remain so for nearly four centuries.'-Dennis.

A leading feature in all the views from Veii is the conical hill called Monte Musino (1134 ft.) six miles distant. This curious place may be reached by following the Via Cassia as far as the posthouse of Baccano, the ancient Ad Baccanas,' twenty miles from Rome. It is situated in the crater of a volcano, M. dell' Impiccato, afterwards a lake, which gave origin to the Cremera, and was 21⁄2 miles in diameter. Two miles farther north lies Campagnano (Albergo di Sante Narcisi), a village on a hill to itself with some mediaeval remains. Hence a path runs eastward for five miles to Scrofano,1 which has many Etruscan tombs and lies at the foot of Monte Musino, easily ascended from thence. The hill is conical, and is cut into three terraces whose origin is attributed to the presence here of the Altar of the Etruscan Venus, Ara Mutiae, and her temple, some remains of which can be traced. The crest of Monte Musino is much used by the Survey Department as a convenient point, like M. Gennaro, for triangulations. Near the summit is a cave. The whole is crested by an oak-grove which has been preserved intact owing to the superstition of the inhabitants of Scrofano, who believe that the felling of the trees would be followed by the death of the head of each family. This belief is current also at Marino near Frascati as to the Sacro-bosco. On the top of the hill a treasure is supposed to be buried, and protected by demons, who would arouse a tempest were any attempt made to discover it. The view is striking.

Between Baccano and the Lake of Bracciano lies the Lago di Martignano, spoken of by Frontinus as the Lacus Alsietinus, whence the aqueduct called Aqua Alsietina, twenty-two miles in length, carried water to supply the Naumachia of Augustus in the gardens of Caesar. The channel of the aqueduct is still well preserved. The crater containing this lake was 2 miles in diameter.

Twenty-four miles from Rome on the Via Cassia beyond Ponte del Pavone, is the large inn of Le Sette Vene,' near which there is a small Etruscan bridge in good preservation. From near this the ancient Via Annia leaves the Via Cassia, which went to Nepi and passed on by Falerii. The Cassia travels on to Monterosi (Albergo dell' Angelo).

1 Sacrofano.

2 Springs of the Treia.

From Veii there is a carriage-road connecting with the Via Flaminia near the ninth mile from Rome, whence may be visited the extraordinary Pietra Pertusa, or tunnelled rock. The passage extends some eighty feet, and is twelve feet wide and twelve feet in height. Old oak roots are now splitting the rock in various directions. The crevices are loaded with adiantum and anemones. probably dates back to the time of the Flavian Emperors. Thence, visiting the tower of Malborghetto, we pass by Prima Porta to Rome. The little bridge of two arches over the Cremera, on the road, is ancient.

It