The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

WHERE THE APOSTLE PAUL WAS IMPRISONED.

527

every one has hurled a stone at its head when he has had
opportunity, till the figure itself is nearly destroyed.
We studied the Roman Forum, with Ciolfi, till we gained
a comprehension of it. It covered about four acres, and
was not simply a place for orators. For here were located
a court of justice, public exchange, public square, house of
representatives, market' place, and public assembly. It
must have been a superb spectacle in its prime, with its
beautiful temples, arches, and statues, the magnificent manifestations of Rome's power, luxury, and art. But the hand
of time has been laid heavily upon it. Temples, arches,
rostra, and columns have fallen, till but a few crumbling
relics remain. Rome has been fought, besieged, stormed,
plundered and sacked, again and again, for twelve hundred
years, up to 1870, and has been made to drink to tje dregs
of the cup which she had often pressed to the lips of other
cities. Immense accumulations of refuse and debris have, in
consequence, buried ancient Rome under the modern city,
fifteen, twenty, thirty, and forty feet deep. And the
original site of the Roman Forum lies twenty feet under the
soil of to-day.
We could not leave the Capitoline Hill and the Roman
Forum without a visit to the historic dungeon, known as the
Mamertine Prison. It consists of two chambers, one below
the other, the real dungeon seeming to have been hollowed
out of the eternal rock. It was formerly accessible only
through a hole in the vaulted ceiling. For twenty-three
centuries it has witnessed most terrible scenes of torture and
suffering, and its stone floors have been wet with the blood
of emperors, chieftains, senators, kings, and royal captives.
It is affirmed that the Apostle Paul was immured in this
dungeon, while awaiting execution by the order of Nero, and
these pitiless walls undoubtedly resounded with his praise