DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.847#0184
TAEQUINIA. 171
What a scene it will be, when this vast necropolis
disgorges all the long forgotten dead, with memory
and name unknown, those who lived upon the earth
while yet it was young—the great, and the mighty,
and the honoured, and the feared, of a distant age,
which seems to us a mysterious fable! But their
life, though unimportant to us as a dream, was to
them an awful reality; and all its acts are inscribed
in the great book of record. May so grand an
instance of perishable humanity as is visible in
the obscure traces of this great forgotten nation,
preach to us a sermon on our own paltry instability,
and on our need of heavenly wisdom, while yet there
is time to use it!
On entering the Camera delle Iscrizioni, we per-
ceived above the door two tigers, as if ready to spring
on the bold violator of the repose of the tomb, and
on either side a faun with a cup in his hand, lying re-
cumbent on a frieze, composed of party-coloured
lines, which go all round the chamber, and at the
foot of each faun stands a goose. On the right
hand of the door a sacrifice is represented. A
naked and beardless youth, with a nondescript in-
strument in his right hand, stoops over a sort of
gridiron, on which he is about to roast a bluish
fish, which he holds in his left. Opposite this youth
stands a naked old man with a beard, who appears
to command him, and who holds in one hand a long
rod, perhaps the badge of his priestly dignity.
Suspended from the wall are two fillets or chap-
lets, with which it was common for the ancients to
i 2
What a scene it will be, when this vast necropolis
disgorges all the long forgotten dead, with memory
and name unknown, those who lived upon the earth
while yet it was young—the great, and the mighty,
and the honoured, and the feared, of a distant age,
which seems to us a mysterious fable! But their
life, though unimportant to us as a dream, was to
them an awful reality; and all its acts are inscribed
in the great book of record. May so grand an
instance of perishable humanity as is visible in
the obscure traces of this great forgotten nation,
preach to us a sermon on our own paltry instability,
and on our need of heavenly wisdom, while yet there
is time to use it!
On entering the Camera delle Iscrizioni, we per-
ceived above the door two tigers, as if ready to spring
on the bold violator of the repose of the tomb, and
on either side a faun with a cup in his hand, lying re-
cumbent on a frieze, composed of party-coloured
lines, which go all round the chamber, and at the
foot of each faun stands a goose. On the right
hand of the door a sacrifice is represented. A
naked and beardless youth, with a nondescript in-
strument in his right hand, stoops over a sort of
gridiron, on which he is about to roast a bluish
fish, which he holds in his left. Opposite this youth
stands a naked old man with a beard, who appears
to command him, and who holds in one hand a long
rod, perhaps the badge of his priestly dignity.
Suspended from the wall are two fillets or chap-
lets, with which it was common for the ancients to
i 2