Tripadvisor
Posted on 06/22/2020 9:20:37 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Caius Cestius, a very wealthy Roman, chose for his tomb a pyramidal shape rather than the traditional circular one (see Tomba di Cecilia Metella, which was built at approximately the same time); we know that he had been praetor (an annually elected magistrate), tribune of the people and epulonum, a member of a group of seven priests who supervised the solemn sacrificial banquets; he was a brother of the Cestius who built a bridge at Isola Tiberina and he was a friend of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, son-in-law of Emperor Augustus. An inscription found in the burial chamber inside the pyramid quotes Agrippa among the living friends of Caius Cestius; because Agrippa died in 12 BC, the construction of the pyramid is set before that year. An inscription on the pyramid says that it was completed in 330 days. You may wish to see the imposing mausoleum built at Gaeta by L. Munatius Plancus, another epulonum of that period. In 275 AD when the walls were built the pyramid was considered a sort of useful tower and it became part of the curtain; this fact saved it because it was maintained and not deprived of its Lunense (from Carrara) marble facing.
(Excerpt) Read more at romeartlover.it ...
Neat!
I’ve been past it a couple of times but was not familiar with its story, except that it was a tomb.
A bad sign when they had to start building walls around ROME....
Rome always had walls, from as early as 8th century BC.
The Aurelian walls in this case superceded the earlier Servian walls, as the city outgrew them.
There were a couple more lines of walls built later.
Interesting topic: http://nolli.uoregon.edu/wallsOfRome.html
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