Moses, Henry [Editor]: A collection of antique vases, altars, paterae, tripods, candelabra, sarcophagi, &c.: from various museums and collections (Mailand, 1814)

S E P U L C H E E S. 57

incrusted with Tiburtine stones of an immense size. An ele
gant frieze of marble runs round the whole, ornamented
with rams' heads joined together with festoons, above which
are pateras and other decorations. The beautiful sarcopha-
gus, in which lay the body of Cascilia, stood a few years
ago in the court of the Farnese palace. Untouched by bar-
barous hands this sepulchre would have lasted while the
earth remained : but in the low age, during the civil wars
of the Roman barons, it was converted into a castle, and
they built a parapet and port-holes round its top. Pira-
nesi* has not only published plates of this sepulchre, but
has described the method by which the huge stones and
marbles used in this building might have been raised. The
Moles Hadriani, or Mausoleum of Hadrian, was the most
superb sepulchral monument ever constructed at Rome. A
square base of a great height supported a vast rotunda, sur-
rounded with an open portico of Corinthian columns, Be-
tween the columns and above the cornice of this portico
were placed many statues. On each corner of the square
base was a man holding a horse, much in the same attitude
with those that stood in Constantine's baths on the Quiri-
nal hill, which has led some antiquaries to suppose that
Constantine had taken them from this monument. The
whole of this stupendous tomb had been incrusted with

* Ant. Rom. torn, iii, tav. 4-9, 50, 51, 52, 53, 3i.