estates like provision was made for persons of humbler station. [Illustration: FIGURE 196. EXTERIOR OF TOMB AT POMPEII] §422. The Tombs.--The tombs, whether intended to receive the bodies or merely the ashes, or both, differed widely in size and construction with the different purposes for which they were erected. Some were for individuals only, but these in most cases were strictly public memorials as distinguished from actual tombs intended to receive the remains of the dead. The larger number of those that lined the roads were family tombs, ample in size for whole generations of descendants and retainers of the family, including guest-friends (§185), who had died away from their own homes, and freedmen (§175). There were also the burial-places of the _gentēs_ (§21), in which provision was made for all, even the humblest and poorest, who claimed connection with the _gēns_ and had had a place in its formal organization (§22). Others were erected on a large scale by speculators who sold at low prices space enough for an urn or two to persons too poor to erect tombs of their own and without any claim on a family or gentile burying-place. In imitation of these structures others were erected on the same plan by burial societies formed by persons of the artisan class, and others still by benevolent men, as we have seen baths (§373) and libraries (§402) erected and maintained for the public good. Something will be said of the tombs of all these kinds after the public burying-places have been described. [Illustration: FIGURE 197. SECTIONS OF TOMB SHOWN IN FIGURE 196] §423. The Potter's Field.--During the Republic the Esquiline Hill, or at least the eastern part of it, was the place to which was carted all the refuse of the city that the sewers would not carry away. Here, too, were the gravepits (_puticulī_) for the pauper class. They were merely holes in the ground, about twelve feet square, without lining of any kind. Into them were thrown the bodies of the friendless poor, and along with them and over them the carcasses of dead animals and the filth and scrapings of the streets. The pits were kept open, uncovered apparently even when filled, and the stench and the disease-breeding pollution made the hill absolutely uninhabitable. Under Augustus the danger to the health of the whole city became so great that the dumping grounds were moved to a greater distance, and the Esquiline, covered over pits and all with pure soil to the depth of twenty-five feet, was made a park, known as the _Hortī Maecēnātis_.