QUINTILIORUM CONDINI ET MAXIMI, from which it became evident that the villa was the same place which Vopiscus and Dion Cassius mention as the property of the Quintilii, consuls in the year A.D. 151, under Antoninus Pius, and victims of the spite of Commodus in A.D. 182.[132] Commodus seized their property, and the villa became one of his favourite residences. The great extent of the ruins explains the circumstance related by Herodian, that the emperor, being in the back part of the villa, could not hear the shouts of the infuriated mob on the Appian Road, who were demanding the life of Cleander.[133] The ruins which extend along the side of the road, are plainly fragments of a kind of vestibule or grand entrance to the imperial villa. They consist of a nymphæum or grand fountain, and a row of chambers intended for slaves’ lodgings. The fountain is supplied with water by an aqueduct, the arches of which can be seen at the seventh milestone, where it leaves the lava rocks, and crosses the country towards Marino, at a higher level than even the Aqua Claudia. This nymphæum and aqueduct are built of opera mista, which shows that they are probably the work of the Constantinian Age. The principal mass of the villa itself stood nearly half a mile from the old Appian Road, on the edge of the rocks of basaltic lava. Between them and the road the space was occupied by gardens and ornamental summer-houses and ponds. Nibby describes the chief ruins as having belonged to a richly ornamented fountain, and a suite of bathing-rooms of great grandeur. One spacious saloon, the walls of which form a picturesque ruin, as seen from the new post road to Albano, stands on the edge of the rising ground, and commands a magnificent view of the whole of the Alban and Sabine Hills and the city of Rome. Near this was a small theatre, from which the cipollino columns of the entrance to the Tordinone Theatre in Rome were taken. An immense quantity of valuable sculpture, now in the Roman museums and palaces, was discovered by excavations here in 1787 and 1792. Among these sculptures was a splendid statue of Euterpe, now in the Galleria dei Candelabri, a tiger now in the Hall of Animals; and the busts of Lucius Verus, Diocletian, and Epicurus, Socrates, the Isis and Antinous in the Vatican, with numerous Sileni, Fauns, and Nereids. [Sidenote: Casale Rotondo.] Between the sixth and seventh milestones from the Porta Capena there is a large round ruin 300 feet in diameter, called Casale Rotondo, now supporting a house and olive orchard upon the top. The fragments of sculpture found here have been arranged on the face of a wall, close to the pile of ruins. The name Cotta was found on an inscription belonging to this, and hence it has been supposed to be the tomb of the gens Aurelia, who bore the surname of Cotta. On the left are the arches of the aqueduct which supplied the Villa of Commodus.