build and adorn his new palace.  A golden urn containing ashes is said to have been discovered at the same time; but if so, it has long since disappeared.  On a marble panel below the frieze an inscription in bold letters informs us that this is the tomb of Caecilia Metella, daughter of Quintus Metellus,—­who obtained the sobriquet of Creticus for his conquest of Crete,—­and wife of Crassus.  She belonged to one of the most haughty aristocratic families of ancient Rome, whose members at successive intervals occupied the highest positions in the state, and several of whom were decreed triumphs by the senate on account of their success in war.  Her husband was surnamed Dives on account of his enormous wealth.  He is said to have possessed a fortune equal to a million and a half pounds sterling; and to have given an entertainment to the whole Roman people in a time of scarcity, besides distributing to each family a quantity of corn sufficient to last three months.  Along with Julius Caesar and Pompey, he formed the famous first Triumvirate.  While the richest, he seems, notwithstanding the above-mentioned act of munificence, to have been one of the meanest of the Romans.  He had no steady political principle; he was actuated by bitter jealousy towards his colleagues and rivals; and that unsuccessful expedition which he undertook against the Parthians, in flagrant violation of a treaty made with them by Sulla and renewed by Pompey, and which has stamped his memory with incapacity and shame, was prompted by an insatiable greed for the riches of the East.  On the field he occupied himself entirely in amassing fresh treasures, while his troops were neglected.  The manner of his death, after the defeat and loss of the greater part of his army, was characteristic of his ruling passion.  Tempted to seek an interview with the Parthian general by the offer of the present of a horse with splendid trappings, he was cut down when in the act of mounting into the saddle.  His body was contemptuously buried in some obscure spot by the enemy, and his hands and head were sent to the king, who received the ghastly trophies while seated at the nuptial feast of his daughter, and ordered in savage irony molten gold to be poured down the severed throat, exclaiming, “Sate thyself now with the metal of which in life thou wert so fond.”

There is one incident connected with this most disastrous campaign upon which the imagination loves to dwell.  Publius, the younger son of Crassus, born of the woman who lay in this tomb before us, after earning great distinction in Gaul as Caesar’s legate, accompanied his father to the East, and was much beloved on account of his noble qualities and his feats of bravery against the enemy.  While endeavouring to repulse the last fierce charge of the Parthians, he was wounded severely by an arrow, and finding himself unable to extricate his troops, rather than desert them he ordered his sword-bearer to slay him.  When the news of