y wall.

The _ustrina_ which were connected with the Mausoleum of Augustus and
the ara of the Antonines have already been described in chapter iv.
Another institution, that of _columbaria_, or _ossaria_, as they would
more properly be called, owes its origin to the same cause. Columbaria
are a specialty of Rome and the Campagna, and are found nowhere else,
not even in the colonies or settlements originating directly from the
city. They begin to appear some twenty years before Christ, under the
rule of Augustus and the premiership of Maecenas. Inasmuch as the
Campus Esquilinus, which, up to their time, had been used for the
burial of artisans, laborers, servants, slaves, and freedmen, was
suppressed in consequence of the sanitary reforms described by
Horace,[121] and was buried under an embankment of pure earth, and
converted into a public park; as, moreover, the disappearance of the
said cemetery was followed closely by the appearance of columbaria, I
believe one fact to be a consequence of the other, and both to be part
of the same hygienic reform. No cleaner, healthier, or more
respectable substitute for the old _puticoli_ could have been
contrived by those enlightened statesmen. Any one, no matter how low
in social position, could secure a decent place of rest for a paltry
sum of money. The following inscription, still to be seen in the
columbarium discovered in 1838, in the Villa Pamfili,--

[Illustration:
T.PACIAECVS.T.L
ISARGVRVS _A.I.PINARIAe
Q.L.MVRTINI_]

has been interpreted by Huelsen to mean that Paciaecus Isargyros had
sold to Pinaria Murtinis a place for one _as_. Tombstones often
mention transactions of this kind, and state the cost of purchase for
one or more loculi, or for the whole tomb. Friedlaender, in a
Koenigsberg Programm for October, 1881,[122] has collected thirty-eight
documents concerning the cost of tombs; they vary from a minimum of
two hundred sestertii ($8.25) to a maximum of one hundred and
ninety-two thousand ($8,000).

There were three kinds of columbaria: first, those built by one man or
one family either for their own private use, or for their servants and
freedmen; second, those built by one or more individuals for
speculation, in which any one could secure a place by purchase; third,
those built by a company for the personal use of shareholders and
contributors.

As a good specimen of the columbaria of the second kind we can cite
one built on the Via Latina, by a company of