much like ordinary water, being very cool and fresh, with a slight medicinal taste.  He also pointed our attention to a rugged hollow in the wall of the staircase, and told us that this was the print of St. Peter’s head in the hard stone, said to have been produced as he stumbled and fell against it, coming down the stair a chained prisoner.  It requires no small amount of devotional credulity to recognise the likeness or to believe the story.

But there is no need for having recourse to such ecclesiastical legends in order to produce a solemn impression in this chamber.  Its classical associations are sufficient of themselves to powerfully affect the imagination.  There is no reason to doubt the common belief that this is the identical cell in which the famous Jugurtha was starved to death.  The romantic history of this African king is familiar to all readers of Sallust, who gives a masterly account of the Jugurthine war.  When finally defeated, after having long defied the Roman army, his person was taken possession of by treachery and carried in chains to Rome, where he adorned the triumphal procession of his conqueror Marius, and was finally cast into this cell, perishing there of cold and hunger.  What a terrible ending to the career of a fierce, free soldier, who had spent his life on horseback in the boundless sultry deserts of Western Africa!  The temperature of the place is exceedingly damp and chill.  Jugurtha himself, when stripped of his clothes by the executioners, and let down into it from the hole in the roof, exclaimed with grim humour, “By Hercules, how cold your bath is!” A more hideous and heart-breaking dungeon it is impossible to imagine.  Not a ray of light can penetrate the profound darkness of this living tomb.  Sallust spoke of the appearance of it in his day, from the filth, the gloom, and the smell, as simply terrific.  The height of the vault is about sixteen feet, its length thirty feet, and its breadth twenty-two feet.  It is cased with huge masses of volcanic stone, arranged in courses, converging towards the roof, not on the principle of the arch, but extending horizontally to a centre, as we see in some of the Etruscan tombs.  This peculiar style of construction proves the very high antiquity of the chamber.

This cell played the same part in Roman history which the Tower of London has done in our own.  Here, by the orders of Cicero, were strangled Lentulus, Cethegus, and one or two more of the accomplices of Catiline, in his famous conspiracy.  Here was murdered, under circumstances of great baseness, Vercingetorix, the young and gallant chief of the Gauls, whose bravery called forth the highest qualities of Julius Caesar’s military genius, and who, when success abandoned his arms, boldly gave himself up as an offering to appease the anger of the Romans.  Here perished Sejanus, the minister and son-in-law of Tiberius, who was detected in a conspiracy against the emperor, and richly deserved his fate on account of his cruelty and treachery.  Here also was put to death Simon Bar-Gioras, the governor of the revolted Jews during the last dreadful siege of Jerusalem, who was taken prisoner, and after gracing the triumph of the emperor Titus at Rome, shared the fate which usually happened to captives after such an exhibition.