Quintus Pleminius, who had done good service to the republic in the second Punic war, but who afterwards had been sent in chains to Rome, on account of the enormities which he had practised in the government of the town of Locri, was incarcerated in this prison. In the year 194 B. C. certain games were being performed in the city; and while the minds of all were taken up with the sight of them, Quintus Pleminius procured persons to agree to set the city on fire, at night, in several places at once, so that in the consternation of a nocturnal tumult, the prison might be broken open. The matter, however, was disclosed by persons privy thereto, and communicated to the senate; and Pleminius was immediately put to death in the lower cell. The accomplices of Catiline, too, expiated their guilt in this prison. The celebrated African king, Jugurtha, also, in the same place closed his last days. His melancholy end is thus described by Plutarch:— “Marius, bringing back his army from Africa into Italy, took possession of the consulship the first day of January, and also entered Rome in triumph, showing the Romans what they had never expected to see; this was the king Jugurtha prisoner, who was a man so wary, and who knew so well to accommodate himself to fortune, and who united so much courage to his craft and cunning, that none of his enemies ever thought that they would have him alive. When he had been led in the procession he became deranged, as they say, in his understanding; and, after the triumph, he was thrown into prison; when, as they were stripping him of his tunic by force, and striving in eager haste to take from him his golden ear-ring, they tore it off, together with the lower part of his ear. Being then thrust naked into the deep cavern, he said, full of trouble, and smiling bitterly, ‘Hercules! how cold is this bath of yours!’ Having struggled, however, for six days, with hunger, waiting in suspense till the last hour, from his passionate desire to live, he met with the just rewards of his wicked deeds.” In this prison, also, Perseus, the captive king of Macedonia, lingered many years in hopeless misery; and in one of its cells, also, St. Peter was imprisoned nine years. Next to the Mamertine prisons, in point of antiquity, but greatly above them as a work of labour and art, was the CLOACA MAXIMA. The first sewers in Rome were constructed by Tarquinius Priscus. The Cloaca Maxima was the work of Tarquin the Proud.