In spite of many modernizations, the last by Cardinal Rasponi in 1685, this building retains externally more of its ancient character than most Roman churches, in its fine campanile and the old brick walls of the nave and apse, decorated with terra-cotta friezes. The portico is entered by a narrow arch resting on two granite columns. The entrance-door and the altar have the peculiar mosaic ribbon decoration of the Cosmati, of 1190. The frescoes are all modern; in the tribune, are the deluge and the baptism of Christ,--the type and antitype. Of the ten columns, eight are simple and of granite, two are fluted and of porta-santa, showing that they were not made for the church, but removed from some pagan building--probably from the temple of Ceres and Proserpine. Near the entrance is a very picturesque marble _Well_, like those so common at Venice and Padua, decorated with an intricate pattern of rich carving. In the opposite vineyard, behind the chapel of the Oleo, very picturesquely situated under the Aurelian Wall, is the _Columbarium of the Freedmen of Octavia_. A columbarium was a tomb containing a number of cinerary urns in niches like pigeon-holes, whence the name. Many columbaria were held in common by a great number of persons, and the niches could be obtained by purchase or inheritance; in other cases, the heads of the great houses possessed whole columbaria for their families and their slaves. In the present instance the columbarium is more than usually decorated, and, though much smaller, it is far more worth seeing than the columbaria which it is the custom to visit immediately upon the Appian Way. One of the cippi, above the staircase, is beautifully decorated with shells and mosaic. Below, is a chamber, whose vault is delicately painted with vines and little Bacchi gathering in the vintage. Round the walls are arranged the urns, some of them in the form of temples, and very beautifully designed, others merely pots sunk into the wall, with conical lids, like pipkins let into a kitchen-range. A beautiful vase of lapis-lazuli found here has been transferred to the Vatican. * * * * * Proceeding along the Via Appia, on the left by a tall cypress (No. 13) is the entrance to _the Tomb of the Scipios_, a small catacomb in the tufa rock, discovered in 1780, from which the famous sarcophagus of L. Scipio Barbatus, and a bust of the poet Ennius,[195] were removed to the Vatican by Pius VII. "The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless Of their heroic dwellers." _Childe Harold._