The catacomb of the Scipios differs from most of the other burial places which surround it, on account of the retention by the gens Cornelia of the old Latin custom of burying in coffins, instead of burning the corpse of the deceased. Most of the burying places on the Monte d’Oro are arranged in the manner called a columbarium by the Romans, from the resemblance of the niches in it to the holes in a pigeon-house.[119] Four of these columbaria have been excavated in the Vigna Codini, near the Porta S. Sebastiano, and are now to be seen in almost perfect preservation. They consist of a square pit roofed over, and entered by a staircase. The roof is supported by a massive square central column, and the whole of the sides of the pit and of the central column are pierced with semicircular niches, containing earthenware jars filled with ashes. In one of the columbaria in the Vigna Codini there is room for 900 jars. Most of the names which are inscribed above each niche upon a marble tablet are those of imperial freedmen, or servants of great families or public officers, and other persons of the middle class of life, and are therefore of little historical interest. The ashes of some few of a somewhat higher grade, are placed in small marble sarcophagi or urns, but no persons of distinguished rank appear to have been buried in this way. There are, however, few places in Rome where the ordinary manners and customs of the ancient Romans are more vividly placed before the eye than here, and the very insignificance of some of the details exhibited is somewhat striking. In one corner we find the ashes of a lady’s maid attached to one of the imperial princesses; in another, those of the royal barber; and in another, a favourite lapdog has been admitted to take his place among his mistress’s other faithful servants. [Sidenote: Arch of Drusus.] Not far from these columbaria, and close to the Porta S. Sebastiano, the Via Appia is spanned by a half ruinous archway, of which little but the core remains, the marble casing having long been torn off. It was probably originally ornamented with eight columns, two only of which now remain standing on the side next the modern gateway. These have shafts of Numidian marble (giallo antico), and composite capitals with Corinthian bases. Upon the top of this arch is a brick ruin apparently belonging to the Middle Ages, as the style of building is similar to that called opera saracenica by the Italians. It was probably a part of a fortified tower, placed upon the arch, resembling that which formerly surmounted the Arch of Titus.