A little beyond the Circus of Caracalla[159] rises the mausoleum of Cecilia Metella, a beautiful edifice, built by Crassus, in honour of his wife. It is of considerable height and great thickness: in the centre is a hollow space reaching from the pavement to the top of the building. In the concavity was deposited the body in a marble sarcophagus, which in the time of Paul III. was removed to the court of the Farnesian palace. The solidity and simplicity of this monument are worthy of the republican era in which it was erected, and have enabled it to resist the incidents and survive the lapse of two thousand years. “At the end of the Velabrum,” says Dupaty, “I found myself on the Appian way, and walked along it for some time. I there found the tomb of Cecilia Metella, the daughter of that Crassus whose wealth was a counterpoise to the name of Pompey and the fortune of Cæsar. I entered the tomb, and set myself down on the grass. The flowers which displayed their brilliant colours in the corner of the tomb, and as I may say amid the shades of death; the noise of a swarm of bees who were depositing their honey between two rows of bricks, while the surrounding silence rendered their pleasing humming more audible; the azure of the sky forming over my head a magnificent dome, decorated alternately by flying clouds of silver and of purple; the name Cecilia Metella, who perhaps was beautiful, and possessed of the tenderest sensibility, and who most certainly was unfortunate; the memory of Crassus; the image of a distracted father who strives by piling up stones to immortalize his sorrow; the soldiers, whom my imagination still behold combating from the height of this tower;—all these and a thousand other impressions gradually plunged my soul into a delicious reverie, and it was with difficulty I could leave the place.” The portico of Octavia stood upon the Flaminian Circus and the theatre of Marcellus; it was erected by Augustus, in honour of his sister Octavia. This portico formed a parallelogram, composed of a double row of two hundred and seventy Corinthian columns of white marble, adorned with statues, enclosing a court, in which were two temples, dedicated to Jupiter and Juno, a library, and a large hall for the exhibition of paintings. A small portion of the portico, being one of the entrances, is all that now remains. Many of the pillars are, however, supposed to be built up in the neighbouring houses. The general use, porticoes were put to, was the pleasure of walking or riding in them; in the shade in summer, and in winter in the day; like the present piazzas in Italy. Velleius Paterculus, when he deplores the extreme corruption of manners that had crept into Rome upon the conclusion of the Carthaginian war, mentions particularly the vanity of the noblemen, in endeavouring to outshine one another in the magnificence of their porticoes, as a great instance of their extraordinary luxury. Juvenal thus alludes to them:—