Of Christianity, whether above or below ground, Herodes Atticus knew little and doubtless cared less. The despised sect aroused but faint interest in the upper classes, and the most scathing reproaches on their voluntary degradation were addressed to any of the latter who joined it or manifested pity for its sufferers. But Atticus had a warm and generous heart in his bereavement; it is said that he gave away great sums in charity, and one can scarcely doubt that some of these gifts relieved the wants of the poor Christians who begged for alms along the Appian Way, and, as we shall presently see, served the Church so notably in times of persecution, both before and after the days of Herodes Atticus. The estate of the latter covered all the ground on the right from the third to the fourth milestone of the famous road, and he had vowed during Annia Regilla’s lifetime that he would make it the most beautiful as well as hospitable of all the suburban villages. Now, he laid out what was afterwards known as the “Pagus Triopius” in lovely gardens, baths, and temples, where all his friends, rich and poor, were invited to enjoy their share of his wealth by an inscription over one of the gates, which ran, “This is the abode of hospitality.” After his acquittal from the abominable accusation brought against him by his brother-in-law, he offered all his wife’s jewels to the Temple of Ceres and Proserpine, asking Heaven to smite him if he had been guilty of the imagined crime; then he built her a magnificent tomb in a garden laid out for that purpose—a garden which he called “The Field of Sepulchre” and in which only her direct descendants were to be laid forever. In reading all the story of this true lover (translated—for Greek is still Greek to me—from the very full inscriptions found at the Pagus, and from the writings of Philostrates and Pausanias) I could not help reflecting how few direct ways true love has of manifesting itself—for one and the same was the thought of Abraham, insisting on buying and holding for his very own the field of Mamre, to bury Sara in—and the preoccupation of the highly cultured Greek to enshrine the remains of his beloved Annia, where, by all human prevision, they could never be disturbed. Also, the beloved Annia’s tomb has crumbled into dust. All that is left of Herodes Atticus’ garden is the ilex grove and the ruined nymphæum with the broken statue and the clear fountain, which, as a little girl, I knew as the grotto of Egeria.