mpted to seek an interview with the Parthian general
by the offer of the present of a horse with splendid trappings, he was
cut down when in the act of mounting into the saddle. His body was
contemptuously buried in some obscure spot by the enemy, and his hands
and head were sent to the king, who received the ghastly trophies
while seated at the nuptial feast of his daughter, and ordered in
savage irony molten gold to be poured down the severed throat,
exclaiming, "Sate thyself now with the metal of which in life thou
wert so fond."

There is one incident connected with this most disastrous campaign
upon which the imagination loves to dwell. Publius, the younger son of
Crassus, born of the woman who lay in this tomb before us, after
earning great distinction in Gaul as Caesar's legate, accompanied his
father to the East, and was much beloved on account of his noble
qualities and his feats of bravery against the enemy. While
endeavouring to repulse the last fierce charge of the Parthians, he
was wounded severely by an arrow, and finding himself unable to
extricate his troops, rather than desert them he ordered his
sword-bearer to slay him. When the news of his son's fall reached the
aged father, the old Roman spirit blazed up for a moment in him, and
he exhorted his soldiers "not to be disheartened by a loss that
concerned himself only." In this last triumph of a nobler nature he
disappears from our view; and he who built this magnificent monument
to the mother of his gallant son had himself no monument. More
fortunate than her husband, whose evil manners live in brass,--less
fortunate than her son, whose virtues have been handed down for the
admiration of posterity,--Caecilia Metella has left no record of her
existence beyond her name. All else has been swallowed up by the
oblivion of ages. Whether her husband raised this colossal trophy of
the dust to commemorate his own pride of wealth, or his devoted love
for her, we know not. He achieved his object; but he has given to his
wife only the mockery of immortality. The substance has gone beyond
recall, and but the shadow, the mere empty name, remains.

Built up against this monument are the remains of the castle in which
the Gaetani family long maintained their feudal warfare, with
fragments of marble sculpture taken from the tomb incorporated into
the plain brick walls. And on the other side of the road, in a
beautiful meadow, covered with soft green grass, are the ru