--I am afraid I have caught one of the colds which the Roman
air continually affected me with last winter; at any rate, a sirocco has
taken the life out of me, and I have no spirit to do anything. This
morning I took a walk, however, out of the Porta Maggiore, and looked at
the tomb of the baker Eurysaces, just outside of the gate,--a very
singular ruin covered with symbols of the man's trade in stone-work, and
with bas-reliefs along the cornice, representing people at work, making
bread. An inscription states that the ashes of his wife are likewise
reposited there, in a bread-basket. The mausoleum is perhaps twenty feet
long, in its largest extent, and of equal height; and if good bakers were
as scarce in ancient Rome as in the modern city, I do not wonder that
they were thought worthy of stately monuments. None of the modern ones
deserve any better tomb than a pile of their own sour loaves.
I walked onward a good distance beyond the gate alongside of the arches
of the Claudian aqueduct, which, in this portion of it, seems to have had
little repair, and to have needed little, since it was built.
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