This part of the city was finally destroyed by the great fire, when Robert Guiscard burned Rome from the Lateran to the Capitol, in 1084. During this long period of nearly seven hundred years the Atrium Vestæ underwent many changes and received other tenants, for the new excavations show that it had been inhabited after the Vestals were abolished. At the rear of the first pedestal a terra-cotta jar was discovered, containing a brooch bearing the name of Pope Martin III., 943-46; a gold coin of the Eastern Emperor Theophilus (827-42); and eight hundred and thirty Anglo-Saxon silver coins of Alfred the Great (871-900), Edward (900-24), Edgar Athelstan (925-41), and Edmund I. (941-48)--four kings of Northumbria--and of Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury (889-923). We may presume that this money was brought to Rome by some English tourist, who left his all and fled when the building was finally destroyed by fire; or that it formed part of a donation of "Peter's Pence." Ethelwulf, the English king during the time of Leo IV. (845-57), was the first English prince who gave tribute to the See of Rome; and as such his portrait is to be seen in _chiaro-oscuro_, by Caravaggio, in the Stanze of the Incendio del Borgo in the Vatican. After running a course of one thousand and eighty years, Gratian in 367 "refused the office of Pontifex Maximus, and abolished the functions of the Vestal Virgins" (Zosimus, iv.), which were finally suppressed by Theodosius in 392. "Theodosius directed his attention towards the suppression of idolatry, and issued a law commanding the demolition of idolatrous temples." "The faithful emperor Theodosius interdicted these rites and consigned them to disuse" (Theodoret, v. 21). The Bishop of Rome and his clergy came by right, as heads of the established religion, into the possessions of the defunct faiths, and inhabited the quarters of the Vestals, assuming the title of the head of the ancient religion, Pontifex Maximus, a title held to the present day--a dignity two thousand six hundred and forty years old, the oldest title in the world. THE PALLADIUM. In the centre of the peristylium, just coming to the surface and occupying the whole of the width of the open court, are the foundations of an octagonal edifice in brick, with ribs running from the angles to a central circle. Here, doubtless, was the shrine in which was kept the Sacred Palladium, or fatal token of the empire of the Romans. "Fatale pignus imperii Romani" (Livy, xxvi. 27). "Kept under the safeguard of Vesta's temple" (_ibid._ v. 52). This was a statuette of "Minerva, by no male beheld" (Lucan, ix. 994). "The Vestals alone were permitted to behold the Trojan Minerva" (_ibid._ i. 598). "That fell from heaven" (Dionysius, ii. 67). It seems it was originally kept in the Temple of Vesta itself (Pliny, vii. 45; Ovid, "T." iii. 1, 39).