during the
last century in the Vigna Sassi. Sulla is the first Cornelius whose
body was burned; but this he ordered done to avoid retaliation, that
is to say, for fear of its being treated as he had treated the corpse
of Marius. Both systems are mentioned in the law of the twelve tables:
_hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito neve urito_, a statement which
shows that each had an equal number of partisans, at the time of the
promulgation of the law.

This theory is confirmed by discoveries in the prehistoric cemeteries
of the Viminal and Esquiline hills, which contain coffins as well as
cineraria, or ash-urns. The discoveries have been published only in a
fragmentary way, so that we cannot yet follow their development stage
by stage, and determine at what periods and within what limits the
influence of more civilized neighbors was felt by the primitive
dwellers upon the Seven Hills. One thing is certain; the race that
first colonized the Campagna was buried in trunks of trees, hollowed
inside and cut to measure, as is the custom among some Indian tribes
of the present day. In March, 1889, the engineers who were attending
to the drainage of the Lago di Castiglione--the ancient
Regillus--discovered a trunk of _quercus robur_, sawn lengthways into
two halves, with a human skeleton inside, and fragments of objects in
amber and ivory lying by it. The coffin, roughly cut and shaped, was
buried at a depth of fourteen feet, in a trench a trifle longer and
larger than itself, and the space between the coffin and the sides of
the trench was filled with archaic pottery, of the type found in our
own Roman necropolis of the Via dello Statuto. There were also
specimens of imported pottery, and a bronze cup. The tomb and its
contents are now exhibited in the Villa di Papa Giulio, outside the
Porta del Popolo.

When Rome was founded, this semi-barbaric fashion of burial was by no
means forgotten or abandoned by its inhabitants. We have not yet
discovered coffins actually dug out of a tree, but we have found rude
imitations of them in clay. These belong to the interval of time
between the foundation of the city and the fortifications of Servius
Tullius, having been found at the considerable depth of forty-two feet
below the embankment of the Servian wall, in the Vigna Spithoever.
They are now exhibited in the Capitoline Museum (Palazzo dei
Conservatori), together with the skeletons, pottery, and bronze
_suppellex_ they contained.

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