And It Is My Will That Neither Slave
Nor Freedman Shall Be Interred With Me In The Said Tomb; That If
Any Such There Be, They Shall Be Removed, And The Roman Law
Obeyed, In Preserving In The Antient Form The Sepulchre According
To The Will Of The Testator.
If they act otherwise without just
cause, it is my will that the whole estate, which I now bequeathe
To my children, shall be applied to the Reparation of the Temple
of the God Sylvanus, at the foot of Mount Viminalis; and that my
Manes [The Manes were an order of Gods supposed to take
cognisance of such injuries.] I shall implore the assistance of
the Pontifex maximus, and the Flaminisdiales in the Capitol, to
avenge the Impiety of my children; and the priests of Sylvanus
shall engage to bring my remains to Rome and see them decently
deposited in my own Sepulchre. It is also my will that all my
domestic slaves shall be declared free by the city Praetor, and
dismissed with their mothers, after having received each, a suit
of cloaths, and a pound weight of pure silver from my heirs and
Executors. - At my farm in Lusitania, July 25. During the Viriatin
war.
My paper scarce affords room to assure you that I am ever, - Dear
Sir, Your faithful, etc.
LETTER XXXIII
NICE, March 30, 1765.
DEAR SIR, - YOU must not imagine I saw one half of the valuable
pictures and statues of Rome; there is such a vast number of both
in this capital, that I might have spent a whole year in taking
even a transient view of them; and, after all, some of them would
have been overlooked. The most celebrated pieces, however, I have
seen; and therefore my curiosity is satisfied. Perhaps, if I had
the nice discernment and delicate sensibility of a true
connoisseur, this superficial glimpse would have served only to
whet my appetite, and to detain me the whole winter at Rome. In
my progress through the Vatican, I was much pleased with the
School of Athens, by Raphael, a piece which hath suffered from
the dampness of the air. The four boys attending to the
demonstration of the mathematician are admirably varied in the
expression. Mr. Webb's criticism on this artist is certainly
just. He was perhaps the best ethic painter that ever the world
produced. No man ever expressed the sentiments so happily, in
visage, attitude, and gesture: but he seems to have had too much
phlegm to strike off the grand passions, or reach the sublime
parts of painting. He has the serenity of Virgil, but wants the
fire of Homer. There is nothing in his Parnassus which struck me,
but the ludicrous impropriety of Apollo's playing upon a fiddle,
for the entertainment of the nine muses. [Upon better information
I must retract this censure; in as much, as I find there was
really a Musical Instrument among the antients of this Figure, as
appears by a small statue in Bronze, to be still seen in the
Florentine Collection.]
The Last Judgment, by Buonaroti, in the chapel of Sixtus IV.
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