had rolled upward disclosing
the scene of the happiest hours in the short life of Antinous.

An exquisite circular palazzita lay before them, islanded by a
marble-lined canal five metres broad from an encircling portico, whose
roof was supported by forty Corinthian columns of precious _giallo
antico_. Noting the important part played by water in this construction,
the canal fed by fountains, whose pipes and mechanism plainly showed
within the statues which ornamented the rotunda, Ligorio hastily
concluded that this was the Emperor's natatorium or swimming pool. But
the feminine elegance of the fairy-like suite of apartments, to which
the canal served as a moat; the presence of drawbridges worked from the
centre, thus cutting off or affording communication with the colonnade
at the will of the occupant, and evidences that the canal itself was a
_nympheum_ or aquatic garden, among whose rose-coloured lotus blossoms
white swans glided, flamingoes darted, and tall clusters of papyrus
screened the porticoes from the gaze of passers, favoured the conclusion
that this pavilion of all delight was designed for some beautiful woman
royally beloved. The frieze of loves, mounted upon hippocampi
imitating the games of the circus, which Ligorio copied in the vestibule
of the Villa Pia formed a part of the decoration lavished here.

[Illustration: _Alinari_

Villa Pia in the Garden of the Vatican

Pirro Ligorio, architect]

The conspicuous situation of the palazzita between the basilica and the
imperial apartments, to which its encircling colonnade served as a
corridor of communication, indicated that the lady was not a favourite
of low degree, to be hidden away in some Rosalind's bower of the immense
labyrinthine palace, while the most valuable statues in the entire
villa, such as the replica of the Cnidian Venus by Praxiteles, the Eros
bending the bow, by the same master, made this temple of love and Venus
a fitting pavilion for an empress. Such it may well have been, for here
was found the sculptured portrait of Faustina, the wife of Antoninus
Pius, Hadrian's successor, who resided in the villa both before and
after the death of Antinous.

She was the beautiful mother of a more beautiful daughter of the same
name, an empress in her turn, and both branded by a historian of the
time as infamous.

Swinburne's apostrophe in _Ave Faustina Imperatrix_ applies equally to
the portrait bust of mother or daughter: