The garden of the Pincio is very small, but beautifully laid out. At a crossroads is placed an Obelisk, brought from Egypt, and which the late discoveries in hieroglyphics show to have been erected there, in the joint names of Hadrian and his empress Sabina, to their beloved Antinous, who was drowned in the Nile A.D. 131.
From the furthest angle of the garden we look down upon the strange fragment of wall known as the Muro-Torto.
"Le Muro-Torto offre un souvenir curieux. On nomme ainsi un pan de muraille qui, avant de faire partie du rempart d'Honorius, avait servi à soutenir la terrasse du jardin du Domitius, et qui, du temps de Bélisaire, était déjà incliné comme il l'est aujourd'hui. Procope racconte que Bélisaire voulait le rebâtir, mais que les Romains l'en empêchèrent, affirmant que ce point n'était pas exposé, parce que Saint Pierre avait promis de le défendre. Procope ajoute: 'Personne n'a osé réparer ce mur, et il reste encore dans le même état.' Nous pouvons en dire autant que Procope, et le mur, détaché de la colline à laquelle il s'appuyait, reste encore incliné et semble près de tomber. Ce détail du siége de Rome est confirmé par l'aspect singulier du Muro-Torto, qui semble toujours près de tomber, et subsiste dans le même état depuis quatorze siècles, comme s'il était soutenu miraculeusement par la main de Saint Pierre. On ne saurait guère trouver pour l'autorité temporel des papes, un meilleur symbole."—Ampère, Emp. ii. 397.
"At the furthest point of the Pincio, you look down from the parapet upon the Muro-Torto, a massive fragment of the oldest Roman wall, which juts over, as if ready to tumble down by its own weight, yet seems still the most indestructible piece of work that men's hands ever piled together. In the blue distance rise Soracte, and other heights, which have gleamed afar, to our imagination, but look scarcely real to our bodily eyes, because, being dreamed about so much, they have taken the aerial tints which belong only to a dream. These, nevertheless, are the solid framework of hills that shut in Rome, and its broad surrounding Campagna; no land of dreams, but the broadest page of history, crowded so full with memorable events, that one obliterates another, as if Time had crossed and recrossed his own records till they grew illegible."—Hawthorne.
In early imperial times the site of the Pincio garden was occupied by the famous villa of Lucullus, who had gained his enormous wealth as general of the Roman armies in Asia.
"The life of Lucullus was like an ancient comedy, where first we see great actions, both political and military, and afterwards feasts, debauches, races by torchlight, and every kind of frivolous amusement. For among frivolous amusements, I cannot but reckon his sumptuous villas, walks, and baths; and still more so the paintings, statues, and other works of art which he collected at immense expense, idly squandering away upon them the vast fortune he amassed in the wars. Insomuch that now, when luxury is so much advanced, the gardens of Lucullus rank with those of the kings, and are esteemed the most magnificent even of these."—Plutarch.
Here, in his Pincian villa, Lucullus gave his celebrated feast to Cicero and Pompey, merely mentioning to a slave beforehand that he should sup in the hall of Apollo, which was understood as a command to prepare all that was most sumptuous.
After Lucullus—the beautiful Pincian villa belonged to Valerius Asiaticus, and in the reign of Claudius was coveted by his fifth wife, Messalina. She suborned Silius, her son's tutor, to accuse him of a licentious life, and of corrupting the army. Being condemned to death, "Asiaticus declined the counsel of his friends to starve himself, a course which might leave an interval for the chance of pardon; and after the lofty fashion of the ancient Romans, bathed, perfumed, and supped magnificently, and then opened his veins, and let himself bleed to death. Before dying he inspected the pyre prepared for him in his own gardens, and ordered it to be removed to another spot, that an umbrageous plantation which overhung it might not be injured by the flames."
As soon as she heard of his death, Messalina took possession of the villa, and held high revel there with her numerous lovers, with the most favoured of whom, Silius, she had actually gone through the religious rites of marriage in the lifetime of the emperor, who was absent at Ostia. But a conspiracy among the freedmen of the royal household informed the emperor of what was taking place, and at last even Claudius was aroused to a sense of her enormities.
"In her suburban palace, Messalina was abandoning herself to voluptuous transports. The season was mid-autumn, the vintage was in full progress; the wine-press was groaning; the ruddy juice was streaming; women girt with scanty fawnskins danced as drunken Bacchanals around her: while she herself, with her hair loose and disordered, brandished the thyrsus in the midst, and Silius by her side, buskined and crowned with ivy, tossed his head to the flaunting strains of Silenus and the Satyrs. Vettius, one, it seems, of the wanton's less fortunate paramours, attended the ceremony, and climbed in merriment a lofty tree in the garden. When asked what he saw, he replied, 'an awful storm from Ostia'; and whether there was actually such an appearance, or whether the words were spoken at random, they were accepted afterwards as an omen of the catastrophe which quickly followed.