Rambles in Rome / An Archæological and Historical Guide to the Museums, Galleries, Villas, Churches, and Antiquities of Rome and the Campagna

by S. Russell Forbes

THE STATUE OF POMPEY,

at whose feet great Cæsar fell.

"There was a statue of Pompey, and it was a work which Pompey had consecrated for an ornament to his theatre."

"Either by accident, or pushed hither by the conspirators, he expired at the pedestal of Pompey's statue, and dyed it with his blood" (Plutarch).

"Augustus removed the statue of Pompey from the senate house, in which Julius Cæsar had been killed, and placed it under a marble arch, fronting the curia attached to Pompey's theatre" (Suetonius, "Aug." xxxi.).

The statue is eleven feet high, and was found in 1553 in the Vicolo di Lentari; it was under two houses, and the proprietors could not agree as to whom it should belong, when Pope Julius II. gave them five hundred gold dollars for it, and presented it to Cardinal Capodifero. In 1798–99 the French carried this statue to the Colosseum, where they performed Voltaire's "Tragedy of Brutus" to the original statue. To facilitate moving it, they cut off the extended arm; hence the join.