a term applied in modern times to any sepulchral edifice erected for the reception of a monument, but which originally signified the sepulchre of Mausolus, a magnificent structure erected to the King of Caria by his queen Artemisia, at Halicarnassus, c.e. 353. The most eminent architects and artists of the time, of the Ionian and Attic schools, were employed by this pious queen to raise this splendid monument to the memory of her deceased husband, the dynast of Caria. Philoecus and Satyrus were intrusted with the architecture; while the great Attic artists, Scopas, Bryaxis, Leochares, and Timotheus or Praxiteles, were employed on the sculptural decorations. These sculptors worked each at a face of the building, emulous of each other, and passionately devoted to their splendid undertaking. The queen died, but the artists continued their labours, and did not withdraw their hands until they had rendered it one of the seven wonders of the world.

Pliny's description of this structure (Hist. Nat. xxxvi. 5), though the most complete which we possess, is nevertheless in many respects unsatisfactory. This writer informs us that the building was an oblong quadrangular cella, 63 feet from N. to S., 411 feet in circumference, and 374 feet in height; decorated with a peristyle of 36 columns, and carried up into a pyramid, surmounted at the apex by a marble quadriga, executed by Philoecus, one of the architects. The entire edifice has a total height, from base to summit, of 140 feet. The discrepancy between the total and the partial heights can only be got over on the assumption that the peristyle was elevated on a basement; and the apparent discrepancy between the lengths of the faces and the total circuit, can only be explained by supposing that the structure stood upon an elevated inclosure, with a perimeter of 440 feet, the length given by the Bamberg MS. Direct measurement of it is impossible, for unfortunately this magnificent edifice no longer exists; the very site of it is doubtful, and the only remnant of its former splendour is to be found in the Budrum Marbles in the British Museum. These precious fragments of the handiwork of those devoted artists were collected in 1846 around the walls of Budrum, now occupying the site of the ancient Halicarnassus. Many of the slabs and columns of the Mausoleum were, in the fifteenth century, worked into the fortifications of this modern city; yet recent travellers cherish the hope that, from the materials still in existence, the plan of this famous sepulchral edifice may yet be restored. (For an examination of the proposed restoration, see a very able essay, with illustrations, On the Sculptures from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, by Charles Newton, in the Classical Museum for July 1847.)

The Roman mausolea were for the most part built in a series of circular terraces, after the manner of the regus. Those of Augustus and Hadrian were the most celebrated; the latter of which has been converted into the Castello di St Angelo, the fortress of modern Rome, while the former has been reduced almost to a heap of ruins.