Caius Cestius’s sepulchre however, without the walls, on the other side, is one of the most perfect remains of antiquity we have here.  Aurelian made use of that as a boundary we know:  it stands at present half without and half within the limit that Emperor set to the city; and is a very beautiful pyramid a hundred and ten feet high, admirably represented in Piranesi’s prints, with an inscription on the white marble of which it is composed, importing the name and office and condition of its wealthy proprietor:  C.  Cestius, septem vir epulonum.  He must have lived therefore since Julius Caesar’s time it is plain, as he first increased the number of epulones to seven, from three their original institution.  It was probably a very lucrative office for a man to be Jupiter’s caterer; who, as he never troubled himself with looking over the bills, they were such commonly, I doubt not, as made ample profits result to him who went to market; and Caius Cestius was one of the rich contractors of those days, who neglected no opportunity of acquiring wealth for himself, while he consulted the honour of Jupiter in providing for his master’s table very plentiful and elegant banquets.

That such officers were in use too among the Persians during the time their monarchy lasted, is plain from the apocryphal story of Bel and the Dragon in our Bibles, where, to the joy of every child that reads it, Daniel detects the fraud of the priests by scattering ashes or saw-dust in the temple.

But I fear the critics will reprove me for saying that Julius Caesar only increased the number to seven, while many are of opinion he added three more, and made them a decemvirate:  mean time Livy tells us the institution began in the year of Rome 553, during the consulate of Fulvius Purpurio and Marcellus, upon a motion of Romuleius if I remember.  They had the privilege granted afterwards of edging the gown with purple like the pontiffs, when increased to seven in number; and they were always known by the name Septemviratus, or Septemviri Epulonum, to the latest hours of Paganism.

The tomb of Caius Cestius is supposed to have cost twelve thousand pounds sterling of our money in those days; and little did he dream that it should be made in the course of time a repository for the bones of divisos orbe Britannos:  for such it is now appointed to be by government.  All of us who die at Rome, sleep with this purveyor of the gods; and from his monument shall at the last day rise the re-animated body of our learned and incomparable Sir James Macdonald:  whose numerous and splendid acquirements, though by the time he had reached twenty-four years old astonished all who knew him, never overwhelmed one little domestic virtue.  His filial piety however; his hereditary courage, his extensive knowledge, his complicated excellencies, have now, I fear, no other register to record their worth, than a low stone near the stately pyramid of Jupiter’s caterer.