"Le jeune Romulus, étant mort, fut placé au rang des dieux, dans cet olympe qui s'écroulait. Son père lui éleva un temple dont la partie inférieure se voit encore, et le cirque lui-même fut peut-être une dépendance de ce temple funèbre, car les courses de chars étaient un des honneurs que l'antiquité rendait aux morts, et sont souvent pour cela représentées sur les tombeaux."--_Ampère, Emp._ ii. 360. These ruins are very picturesque, backed by the peaks of the Sabine range, which in winter are generally covered with snow. The opposite hill is crowned by the _Tomb of Cecilia Metella_, daughter of Quintus Metellus Creticus, and wife of Crassus. It is a round tower, seventy feet in diameter. The bulls' heads on the frieze gave it the popular name of Capo di Bove. The marble coating of the basement was carried off by Urban VIII. to make the fountain of Trevi. The battlements were added when the tomb was turned into a fortress by the Caëtani in the thirteenth century. "About two miles, or more, from the city gates, and right upon the roadside, is an immense round pile, sepulchral in its original purpose, like those already mentioned. It is built of great blocks of hewn stone, on a vast, square foundation of rough, agglomerated material, such as composes the mass of all the other ruinous tombs. But, whatever might be the cause, it is in a far better state of preservation than they. On its broad summit rise the battlements of a mediæval fortress, out of the midst of which (so long since had time begun to crumble the supplemental structure, and cover it with soil, by means of wayside dust) grow trees, bushes, and thick festoons of ivy. This tomb of a woman has become the dungeon-keep of a castle; and all the care that Cecilia Metella's husband could bestow, to secure endless peace for her beloved relics, only sufficed to make that handful of precious ashes the nucleus of battles, long ages after her death."--_Hawthorne, Transformation._ "There is a stern round tower of other days, Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone, Such as an army's baffled strength delays, Standing with half its battlements alone, And with two thousand years of ivy grown, The garland of eternity, where wave The green leaves over all by time o'erthrown;-- What was this tower of strength? within its cave What treasure lay so lock'd, so hid?--a woman's grave. "But who was she, the lady of the dead, Tomb'd in a palace? Was she chaste and fair? Worthy a king's--or more--a Roman's bed? What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear? What daughter of her beauties was the heir? How lived--how loved--how died she? Was she not So honoured--and conspicuously there, Where meaner relics must not dare to rot, Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot?