Caius Cestius's sepulchre however, without the walls, on the other side, is one of the most perfect remains of antiquity we have here. Aurelian made use of that as a boundary we know: it stands at present half without and half within the limit that Emperor set to the city; and is a very beautiful pyramid a hundred and ten feet high, admirably represented in Piranesi's prints, with an inscription on the white marble of which it is composed, importing the name and office and condition of its wealthy proprietor: C. Cestius, septem vir epulonum. He must have lived therefore since Julius Caesar's time it is plain, as he first increased the number of epulones to seven, from three their original institution. It was probably a very lucrative
office for a man to be Jupiter's caterer; who, as he never troubled himself with looking over the bills, they were such commonly, I doubt not, as made ample profits result to him who went to market; and Caius Cestius was one of the rich contractors of those days, who neglected no opportunity of acquiring wealth for himself, while he consulted the honour of Jupiter in providing for his master's table very plentiful and elegant banquets.
That such officers were in use too among the Persians during the time their monarchy lasted, is plain from the apocryphal story of Bel and the Dragon in our Bibles, where, to the joy of every child that reads it, Daniel detects the fraud of the priests by scattering ashes or saw-dust in the temple.
But I fear the critics will reprove me for saying that Julius Caesar only increased the number to seven, while many are of opinion he added three more, and made them a decemvirate: mean time Livy tells us the institution began in the year of Rome 553, during the consulate of Fulvius Purpurio and Marcellus, upon a motion of Romuleius if I remember. They had the privilege granted afterwards of edging the gown with purple like the pontiffs, when
increased to seven in number; and they were always known by the name Septemviratus, or Septemviri Epulonum, to the latest hours of Paganism.
The tomb of Caius Cestius is supposed to have cost twelve thousand pounds sterling of our money in those days; and little did he dream that it should be made in the course of time a repository for the bones of divisos orbe Britannos: for such it is now appointed to be by government. All of us who die at Rome, sleep with this purveyor of the gods; and from his monument shall at the last day rise the re-animated body of our learned and incomparable Sir James Macdonald: whose numerous and splendid acquirements, though by the time he had reached twenty-four years old astonished all who knew him, never overwhelmed one little domestic virtue. His filial piety however; his hereditary courage, his extensive knowledge, his complicated excellencies, have now, I fear, no other register to record their worth, than a low stone near the stately pyramid of Jupiter's caterer.
The tomb of Cæcilia Metella, wife of the rich and famous Crassus, claims our next attention; it is a beautiful structure, and still
called Capo di Bove by the Italians, on account of its being ornamented with the oxhead and flowers which now flourish over every door in the new-built streets of London; but the original of which, as Livy tells us, and I believe Plutarch too, was this. That Coratius, a Sabine farmer, who possessed a particularly fine cow, was advised by a soothsayer to sacrifice her to Diana upon the Aventine Hill; telling him, that the city where she now presided—Diana—should become mistress of the world, and he who presented her with that cow should become master over that city. The poor Sabine went away to wash in the Tyber, and purify himself for these approaching honours[AF]; but in the mean time, a boy having heard the discourse, and reported it to Servius Tullius, he hastened to the spot, killed Coratius's cow for him, sacrificed her to Diana, and hung her head with the horns on, and the garland just as she died, upon the temple door as an ornament. From that time, it seems, the ornament called Caput Bovis was in a manner consecrated to Diana, and her particular votaries used it on their tombs. Nor could one easily
account for the decorations of many Roman sarcophagi, till one recollects that they were probably adapted to that divinity in whose temple they were to be placed, rather than to the particular person occupying the tomb, or than to our general ideas of death, time, and eternity. It is probably for this reason that the immense sarcophagus lately dug up from under the temple of Bacchus without the walls, cut out of one solid piece of red porphyry, has such gay ornaments round it, relative to the sacrifices of Bacchus, &c.; and I fancy these stone coffins, if we may call them so, were often made ready and sold to any person who wished to bury their friend, and who chose some story representing the triumph of whatever deity they devoted themselves to. Were the modern inhabitants of Rome who venerate St. Lorenzo, St. Sebastiano, &c. to place, not uncharacteristically at all—a gridiron, or an arrow on their tombstone, it might puzzle succeeding antiquarians, and yet be nothing out of the way in the least.
[AF] A circumstance alluded to and parodied by Ben Johnson in his Alchemist. See the conduct of Dapper, &c.