the same, the wall was never really breached till the advent of heavy artillery, when Garibaldi’s men attacked the Porta San Pancrazio in 1849. * * * * * What Richmond’s work has done is to epitomize, in the history of a work of Roman engineering, Rome’s decline and fall. This is the latest point in ancient history to which our survey will take us. In the 1300 years since the Palatine huts we have, with archaeology’s help, traced Rome’s rise to grandeur and her agonizing decline. Spiritually, Rome never fell. The Papacy in a sense is the ghost of the Roman Empire sitting crowned upon its grave: the symbol is the Popes’ palace-fortress installed in Hadrian’s mausoleum, or St. Peter’s basilica overlying what is in part a pagan cemetery. It will be appropriate in the final chapter to confront Caesar with Christ, by describing a late Imperial hunting lodge in Sicily, and a tomb beneath the high altar of St. Peter’s, which by the fourth century A.D. was believed to be the last resting place of the apostle who was a fisher of men. 13 Caesar and Christ In the official Italian archaeological journal _Notizie degli Scavi_ for 1951 were reported recent excavations of a grandiose villa near Piazza Armerina, in central Sicily, which had already received some notoriety in the press, for depicting “Bikini girls” in very brief bathing suits (Fig. 13.1). Of this villa traces had always existed above ground, and as early as 1754 the discovery had been reported there of a “temple” (probably the basilica numbered 30 in the plan, Fig. 13.2), with a mosaic floor. In 1881 the trilobate complex (46) was excavated, and in 1929 the great Sicilian archaeologist Paolo Orsi, the expert on prehistoric remains on the island, dug there. Major funds--500,000 lire--made possible large-scale excavation between 1937 and 1943, as a part of _Il Duce’s_ plans for a major celebration of the bimillennary of Augustus’ birth. After the war, government support to the tune of 5,000,000 lire (which inflation reduced in value to $8,000, only a tenth as much as the earlier grant) made it possible to finish excavating the villa and to take steps to preserve _in situ_ the mosaics which are its chief glory. This is one of the few excavations on Italian soil whose chief avowed intent was to encourage tourism, and it has succeeded. Piazza Armerina is a boom town, boasting a new hotel, and its narrow streets are choked with sightseeing busses. [Illustration: FIG. 13.1 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, “Bikini girls” mosaic. (B. Pace, _I Mosaici di Piazza Armerina_, Pl. 15)]