After crossing the Almo, two huge shapeless masses of ruins may be seen above the vineyard walls:  that on the left is said to be the tomb of Geta, the son of the Emperor Severus, who was put to death in his mother’s arms by order of his unnatural brother.  Geta’s children and friends, to the number, it is said, of twenty thousand persons, were also put to death on the false accusation of conspiracy; among whom was the celebrated jurist Papinian, who, when required to compose a defence of the murder—­as Seneca was asked by Nero to apologise for his crime—­nobly replied that “it was easier to commit than to justify fratricide.”  But so capricious was Caracalla that he soon afterwards executed the accomplices of his unnatural deed, and caused his murdered brother to be placed among the gods, and divine honours to be paid to him.  It was in this more humane mood that the tomb whose ruins we see on the Appian Way was ordered to be built.  The tomb on the right-hand side of the road is a most incongruous structure as it appears at present, having a circular medieval tower on the top of it, and a common osteria or wine-shop in front; but the old niches in which statues or busts used to stand still remain.  It was long supposed to be the mausoleum of the Scipios; but it is now ascertained to be the sepulchre of Priscilla, the wife of Abascantius, the favourite freedman of Domitian, celebrated for his conjugal affection by the poet Statius.  Covered with ivy and mural plants, the monument has a very picturesque appearance.

The road beyond this rises from the valley of the Almo, and passes over a kind of plateau.  It is hemmed in on either side by high ugly walls, shaggy with a profusion of plants which affect such situations.  The wild mignonette hangs out its pale yellow spikes of blossoms, but without the fragrance for which its garden sister is so remarkable; and the common pellitory, a near ally of the nettle, which haunts all old ruins, clings in great masses to the crevices, its leaves and ignoble blossoms white with the dust of the road.  Here and there a tall straggling plant of purple lithospermum has found a footing, and flourishes aloft its dark violet tiara of blossoms; while bright tufts of wall-flower send up their tongues of flame from an old tomb peering above the wall, as if from a funeral pyre.  The St. Mary thistle grows at the foot of the walls in knots of large, spreading, crinkled leaves, beautifully scalloped at the edges; the glazed surface reticulated with lacteal veins, retaining the milk that, according to the legend, flowed from the Virgin’s breast, and, forming the Milky Way in mid-heaven, fell down to earth upon this wayside thistle.  Huge columns of cactuses and monster aloes may be seen rising above the top of the walls, like relics of a geologic flora contemporaneous with the age of the extinct volcanoes around.  But the most curious of all the plants that adorn the walls is a kind of ivy which, instead of the usual dark-greenish or black berries, bears