could ever after be his equal in this species of folly. Curio, consequently, found himself compelled to fall back upon his own resources, and to think of some new device of his own.” The points on which this account agrees with the Colosseum are so remarkable, that there can hardly be a doubt that the enormous building of Scaurus was on this site, and the old tufa walls of the substructure must have belonged to his building. This was the earliest amphitheatre, and in none of the other amphitheatres built in imitation of it do we find similar old tufa walls, although in other respects some are exact copies of the Colosseum. AMPHITHEATRE OF NERO. Some persons interpret a passage in the Annals of Tacitus[242] to mean, that the amphitheatre of Nero was in the Campus Martius, but this is only a wrong interpretation of the passage; he is speaking of the great wooden amphitheatre which Julius Cæsar built there, and which was repaired and restored to use in the second consulate of Nero (A.D. 56). He mentions foundations and beams only, and especially says it was of little importance. The time of Nero was a great building era in Rome, and he no doubt repaired all the public buildings that required it. THE GREAT DRAIN. There is considerable difficulty at the present time (in 1876) in obtaining correct information on the subject of the great drain, which carried off the water from the substructures. The entrance to it from the south-east end, under the entrance for animals, has been mentioned before, with the sluice-gate, which lifted up like a portcullis, and the grooves for it remain. Openings into it, covered with modern iron gratings, are seen in the floor of the passage, and across the mouth of it is an ancient iron grating. This great and deep drain carried the water in a straight line beyond the outer wall of the building, and just at this point a steam engine was placed in the years 1874 and 1875 to pump out the water, which gushed out of the earth a little further on, in the direction of the church of S. Clement, with a divergence to the south towards the Cœlian Hill. This water was very abundant, but it appeared more like the continuous stream of an aqueduct than a natural spring of water; it was at a very low level, quite 30 ft. underground. At a considerably higher level, and near the surface of the ground, was an aperture into the brick _specus_ or conduit of an aqueduct of the third century, in which the water was flowing steadily along from west to east; this continued all the summer of 1874, and the water was always flowing. This aperture was closed in the summer of 1875, and the whole _specus_ buried again; where the water was sent to is not known to any one but the persons employed, and they say that this water had little to do with the other water which they pumped out, although both were always good clear limpid streams of drinking water. The water was pumped out and conveyed