In the sixth century Procopius describes Ostia as lacking walls, and he complains that the road from Ostia to Rome did not follow the course of the river, and was therefore useless as a towing-path. This is eminently true still. The road goes through scenery of various kinds, some rather English-looking, though none very striking; the Tiber makes a far less important feature than we might have looked for. But, if Ostia had no walls in the days of Belisarius, it had no lack of walls in earlier days. The most interesting, from one point of view, among the ruins of Ostia are the remains, forming part of two sides of a square, of the primitive wall, a dry wall of massive stones, belonging no doubt to the period of the first foundation. These were clearly ruinous when the later brick buildings were reared; the wall was broken down, and men built against and upon it; they plastered it; they chamfered its stones for the convenience of plastering, as best suited their purpose. The flourishing town of the second century may well have been wall-less. Rome herself at that date had no defence. The wall of Servius had ceased to serve any military purpose, and the wall of Aurelian was not yet. The history of Ostia from the ninth century onwards, from the vain attempt of Gregory the Fourth to turn Ostia into _Gregoriopolis_, belongs to another, though almost adjacent, site. New Ostia, with its castle, its cathedral, its gateway, its one or two narrow streets, but with seemingly hardly a dozen inhabitants, is a sadder sight than old Ostia, with no inhabitant except the stalwart _custode_, who defends himself against Ostian air by daily doses of quinine. Yet the castle of Cardinal Estouteville ranks high among picturesque fortresses; the cathedral shows a mixture of classical and Gothic detail for which nothing in Rome prepares us; fragments of ancient work lie around; the staircase of the bishop's palace, the palace of the first among cardinals, is rich in ancient inscriptions. But we hasten on to the older site. There is something specially striking in its half-excavated state. We tread the ancient pavement, between the ancient houses, of a street dug out of a cornfield on either side. The wall of Ancus loses itself in a bank of earth. Here a house, there a temple, is dug out, leaving just space enough to see it among surrounding blades of corn. At Pompeii, too, the diggings are not finished; but there one part is dug, another is not; here we thread our way along what is dug with the far greater mass of the undug to right and left of us. So far we are content; the undug may soon be promoted to the state of the dug, and Mother Earth is a safe keeper of antiquities. It is otherwise with Father Tiber. When he is close on one side of us, there is, as our guide truly tells us, no small danger. He once, as Horace witnesses, set forth to destroy the monuments of Numa at Rome; he is clearly minded to do the like by the monuments of Numa's grandson at Ostia.