There are no other undisturbed tombs of the Caesars in existence. Hers is almost the last, and the very small last, of a great succession. What thoughts of a great empire in ruins do not force themselves on one in the confined walls of this little chamber! What a woman was she whose ashes lie there! She saw and aided the ruin of the empire; but it may be said of her, that her vices were greater than her misfortunes. And what a story is her life! Born to the purple, educated in the palace at Constantinople, accomplished but not handsome, at the age of twenty she was in Rome when Alaric besieged it. Carried off captive by the Goths, she became the not unwilling object of the passion of King Adolphus, who at length married her at Narbonne. At the nuptials the king, in a Roman habit, occupied a seat lower than hers, while she sat on a throne habited as a Roman empress, and received homage. Fifty handsome youths bore to her in each hand a dish of gold, one filled with coin, and the other with precious stones,--a small part only, these hundred vessels of treasure, of the spoils the Goths brought from her country. When Adolphus, who never abated his fondness for his Roman bride, was assassinated at Barcelona, she was treated like a slave by his assassins, and driven twelve miles on foot before the horse of his murderer. Ransomed at length for six hundred thousand measures of wheat by her brother Honorius, who handed her over struggling to Constantius, one of his generals. But, once married, her reluctance ceased; and she set herself to advance the interests of herself and husband, ruling him as she had done the first one. Her purpose was accomplished when he was declared joint emperor with Honorius. He died shortly after; and scandalous stories of her intimacy with her brother caused her removal to Constantinople; but she came back again, and reigned long as the regent of her son, Valentinian III.,-- a feeble youth, who never grew to have either passions or talents, and was very likely, as was said, enervated by his mother in dissolute indulgence, so that she might be supreme. But she died at Rome in 450, much praised for her orthodoxy and her devotion to the Trinity. And there was her daughter, Honoria, who ran off with a chamberlain, and afterward offered to throw herself into the arms of Attila who wouldn't take her as a gift at first, but afterward demanded her, and fought to win her and her supposed inheritance. But they were a bad lot altogether; and it is no credit to a Christian of the nineteenth century to stay in this tomb so long.