THE MAMERTINE AND TULLIAN PRISONS.

The claims of these dungeons to the highest antiquity are indisputable. A terrific interest is attached to them, for in the upper chamber were imprisoned, and in the underground cell were put to death, many of those whose names recall the most interesting passages of Roman story. Here Manlius was a captive; and those who descend into the lower compartment may be sure that they are in the same dark and loathsome pit where Jugurtha was starved to death; where Lentulus, Cethegus, and the other Catilinarian conspirators were strangled by order of Cicero; where Sejanus was put to death; and where Simon, the leader of the Jews, was slain at the moment that the chariots of Vespasian and Titus ascended the Triumphal Way to the Temple of the Capitoline Jupiter.

Let any one, just before he descends into these dungeons, read Plutarch's description of Jugurtha's death, and he will never forget it as long as he lives: “It is “said,” relates the biographer, “that when he was led “before the car of the conqueror he lost his senses. “After the triumph he was thrown into prison, where, “whilst they were in haste to strip him, some tore his “robe off his back, and others, catching eagerly at his “earrings, pulled off the tips of his ears with them.