320 SEPULCHRES OF CAMPANIA. 



street of sepulchres, where numberless tombs and sarcophagi 

 attest, at each step, the monumental grandeur of the Romans. 

 But their private tombs were of a different description; they 

 were placed under ground, and consisted of tiers of small 

 niches, each of which held one or several urns. Here the 

 master and the slave were buried together, and all that lived 

 in one family, shared the same cemetry. 



ESTHER. 



This kind of family vault was called a columbarium, from 

 its resemblance to the holes in which pigeons build their 

 nests. 



It was so; but let us now proceed to the tomb of which you 

 have the model, and which is one of the sepulchres of the 

 Greeks of Campania. 



ESTHER. 



Are they all of the same construction? 



MRS. F. 



No; the tombs in Magna Grsecia vary in their form and 

 structure. Some are dug in the tufa, or rock; others are built 

 of stone or brick, forming" a room or chamber. Sometimes 

 the bodies were burned, and the ashes placed in a cinerary 

 urn, and buried in the ground, without any protection except, 

 perhaps-, a square stone over it. A porphyry urn was so dis- 

 covered at Cuma, and to this mode of interment we are in- 

 debted for one of the finest painted vases in the Museum at 

 Naples. It is called, from the subject depicted upon it, 

 " The last night of Troy." For its form, design, preserva- 

 tion, and the fineness of its varnish, it stands in the first class 

 of its kind. It was found in 1797, at Nola, so celebrated for 

 its vases, and was enclosed in a vase of coarse earthenware, 

 in order to protect it. It was full of human ashes, and buried 

 merely in the ground. 



