The _high-ways_ do not, however, appear to have been the earliest sites of tombs. According to Fosbroke, "the veneration with which the ancients viewed their places of sepulture, seems to have formed the foundation upon which they raised their boundless mythology; and, as is supposed, with some probability, introduced the belief in national and tutelary gods, as well as the practice of worshipping them through the medium of statues; for the places where their heroes were interred, when ascertained, were held especially sacred, and frequently a temple erected over their body, hallowed the spot. It was thus that the bodies of their fathers, _buried at the entrance of the house_, consecrated the vestibule to their memory, and gave birth to a host of local deities, who were supposed to hold that part of the dwelling under their peculiar protection. Removed from the dwelling-houses to the highways, the tombs of the departed were still viewed as objects of the highest veneration."[14] [14] Encyclopaedia of Antiquities, p. 64. Our readers may remember that the ancient Romans never permitted the dead to be buried within the city,[15] a practice well worthy the imitation of its modern inhabitants. One of the Laws of the Twelve Tables was Hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito, neve urito, (neither bury nor burn a dead body in the city.) But this law must be understood with this limitation, that the Senate occasionally granted exemption from it, to distinguished individuals, though so rarely, that a tomb within the walls of Rome seems to have been considered a reward of the most pre-eminent virtue. [15] See an Interesting Inquiry on Burying in Vaults, by an esteemed Correspondent, since deceased--in vol. xv. of _The Mirror_. The tombs of the Romans were characterized by their impressive grandeur. The Roman satirists, Juvenal and Horace, censure the pomp and splendour of the tombs, particularly those on the Via Appia. "On that 'Queen of Ways,' and way to the Queen of Cities, were crowded the proud sepulchres of the most distinguished Romans: and their mouldering remains still attest their ancient grandeur." Again, "those who have traced the long line of the Appian Way, between its ruined and blackening sepulchres, or stood in the Street of Tombs that leads to the Gate of Pompeii, and gazed on the sculptured magnificence of these marble dwellings of the dead, must have felt their solemnity, and admired their splendour."[16] [16] Rome, &c., vol. ii.