SEP. C. CESTII
* the tomb of a C. Cestius, possibly the praetor who is mentioned once by Cicero (Phil. iii. 26; cf. RE iii. 2005). In any case he died before Agrippa, 12 B.C. (CIL vi. 1375), and the monument dates from that period. It is a pyramid, standing in the angle between the Via Ostiensis and the street which skirted the south-west side of the Aventine, directly in the line of the later Aurelian wall close to the Porta Ostiensis. It is of brick-faced concrete covered with slabs of white marble, is 27 metres high and about 22 square, and stands on a foundation of travertine. In the interior is the burial chamber,1 5.95 metres long, 4.10 wide and 4.80 high. On the east and west sides, about halfway up, is the inscription recording the names and titles of Cestius, and below, on the east side only, another which relates the circumstances of the erection of the monument (CIL vi. 1374). In front of the west side two bases of statues were found in 1660,2 each with an inscription recording its erection by the heirs of Cestius (CIL vi. 1375). In the Middle Ages this monument was called sepulcrum Remi (Petrarch, Ep. vi. II; Poggio de var. Fortunae, Paris 1723, p. 7, ap. Urlichs 236; De Rossi, Piante pl. ii. I), and meta or sepulcrum Romuli (Jord. ii. 430; BC 1914, 395; cf. also HJ 179-180; NA 1910, 193-204; Reber 540-542; Middleton ii. 284-286; DuP 137-139; RA 15, 16).