Near the bottom of the eminence on which Tivoli stands, are the ruins of the vast and magnificent villa built by the emperor Adrian. In this were comprehended an amphitheatre, several temples, a library, a circus, a naumachia. The emperor also gave to the buildings and gardens of this famous villa the names of the most celebrated places; as the Academia, the Lycæum, the Prytaneum of Athens, the Tempe of Thessaly, and the Elysian fields and infernal regions of the poets. There were also commodious apartments for a vast number of guests, all admirably distributed with baths, and every conveniency. Every quarter of the world contributed to ornament this famous villa, whose spoils have since formed the principal ornaments of the Campidoglio, the Vatican, and the palaces of the Roman Princes. It is said to have been three miles in length, and above a mile in breadth. Some antiquarians make it much larger; but the ruins, now remaining, do not mark a surface of a quarter of that extent. At no great distance, they shew the place to which the Eastern Queen Zenobia was confined, after she was brought in triumph to Rome by the emperor Aurelian. The town of Tivoli is now wretchedly poor; it boasts however greater antiquity than Rome itself, being the ancient Tibur, which, Horace informs us, was founded by a Grecian colony. Tibur Argæo positum colono Sit meæ sedes utinam senectæ. Ovid gives it the same origin, in the fourth book of the Fasti. ——Jam mœnia Tiburis udi Stabant; Argolicæ quod posuere manus. This was a populous and flourishing town in remoter antiquity; but it appears to have been thinly inhabited in the reign of Augustus. Horace, in an Epistle to Mæcenas, says, Parvum parva decent. Mihi jam non Regia Roma, Sed _vacuum Tibur_ placet——