the Gothic War, but was repaired by Belisarius; or, as
some say, by Narses. The most remarkable incident connected with it
since that period was the triumphal entry into the city of Marco
Antonio Colonna, after the victory of Lepanto over the Turks and
African corsairs in 1571. This famous battle, one of the few great
decisive battles of the world, belongs equally to civil and
ecclesiastical history, having checked the spread of Mohammedanism in
Eastern Europe, and thus altered the fortunes of the Church and the
world. The famous Spanish poet Cervantes lost an arm in this battle.
The ovation given to Colonna by the Romans in connection with it may
be said to be the last of the long series of triumphal processions
which entered the Eternal City; and in point of splendour and ceremony
it vied with the grandest of them,--prisoners and their families,
along with the spoil taken from the enemy, figuring in it as of old. A
short distance outside the gate, the viaduct of the railway from
Civita Vecchia spans the Appian Way, and brings the ancient "queen of
roads" and the modern iron-way into strange contrast,--or rather, I
should say, into fitting contact; for there is a resemblance between
the great works of ancient and modern engineering skill in their
mighty enterprise and boundless command of physical resources, which
we do not find in the works of the intermediate ages.

Beyond the viaduct the road descends into a valley, at the bottom of
which runs the classic Almo. It is little better than a ditch, with
artificial banks overgrown with weeds, great glossy-leaved arums, and
milky-veined thistles, and with a little dirty water in it from the
drainings of the surrounding vineyards. And yet this disenchanted
brook figures largely in ancient mythical story. Ovid sang of it, and
Cicero's letters mention it honourably. It was renowned for its
medicinal properties, and diseased cattle were brought to its banks to
be healed. The famous _simulacrum_, called the image of Cybele,--a
black meteoric stone which fell from the sky at Phrygia, and was
brought to Rome during the Second Punic War, according to the
Sybilline instructions,--was washed every spring in the waters of the
Almo by the priests of the goddess. So persistent was this pagan
custom, even amid the altered circumstances of Christianity, that,
until the commencement of the nineteenth century, an image of our
Saviour was annually brought from the Church of Santa Martina