_To face p. 98_, vol. ii. ] Again M. de Montaigne was persuaded, considering the space occupied by this vast tomb, that the present age failed to realise its full extent, and that the greater part of the sepulchre itself must be buried. As to this, one has only to consider the base off-cast of a great city; how out of the fragments of broken tiles and pots from ancient days, a mound has been heaped together of so vast a size that it equals in height and breadth several natural mountains (he compared this mound as to height with the hill of Gurson, and judged it to be double the width).[89] It seemed to represent an express decree of the Fates to make plain to the world how they had conspired to render this city glorious and paramount; to bear witness to its grandeur by so strange and extraordinary a token. He declared it was hard to understand--considering how narrow was the space occupied by some of the hills, and notably by the most famous, the Capitol and the Palatine--how such a large number of buildings could be there bestowed. Looking only at the remains of the Temple of Peace by the side of the _Forum Romanum_ (of which one may still behold the recent ruin, like that of a vast mountain broken up into divers ugly crags), it was apparent that two such edifices could hardly have found room on the entire summit of the Capitol, where there were twenty-five or thirty temples, besides several private houses. But in sooth the various conjectures which have been adopted for the delineation of this ancient city possess scarcely any verisimilitude, seeing that the very site thereof has changed its contour beyond measure, and that certain of its valleys have been filled up. To wit, in the lowest-lying spots, as, for instance, in the Velabrum, which, on account of its situation, received the sewage of the city, and had a lake in its midst, there is now to be found a hill as high as the other natural hills adjacent thereto.[90] All this has come about by the accumulation of the ruins and fragments of the huge buildings, the Monte Savello being nought else than a portion of the theatre of Marcellus. M. de Montaigne did not deem that an ancient Roman would recognise the site of his city were he to behold it. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF JANUS _From Piranesi’s Views of Rome_ _To face p. 98_, vol. ii. ]