Physical Structure of the Site of Home. IX 



softer texture, contains no fragments of volcanic products, and 

 fewer shells. That the bed of recomposed granular tufa is also 

 of fresh water origin, is clear, from its containing also land 

 shells. 



The part of the hill from which it is supposed criminals were 

 thrown is still precipitous, but its present section was produced 

 in the fifteenth century, by the fall of a large portion of the rock. 

 Its present height is about sixty feet ; its base having been 

 raised by repeated accumulations of fallen portions of the rock, 

 and the ruins of the buildings which these buried. 



There are many ancient excavations in the stony tufa, the 

 quarries from which building stones were obtained, before they' 

 began to use the Peperino {i. e. Lapis Albanu^), and the Tra- 

 vertino {i. e. Lapis Tiburtinus), both of which will be described 

 hereafter. Some of the most ancient structures of which re- 

 mains still exist upon this hill, appear to have been built before 

 these quarries were opened, being of a different kind of stone. 

 The Tabularium, in which the public records were kept, and 

 some others, are built of the peperino found in the neighbour- 

 hpod of the Gabian Lake, the Lapis Gabinus. 



These stone quarries (Latomiae) were used as prisons. That 

 called Tullianum, which is described by Sallust, was formed in 

 one of them. Quarries of the stony tufa, similar to that of the 

 Capitoline hill, must have been previously opened in other places, 

 for the arch of the Cloaca Maxima is composed of it. The 

 walls of the city raised by Servius TuUius are composed of 

 square blocks of it. It was cut into the form of bricks, and 

 used as such, as may be seen in the theatre of Marcellus ; and 

 in later times, in the walls of the fortress near the tomb of Cae- 

 cilia Metella. This stone, when spoken of by the Roman 

 authors, has often the specific name of Lapis quadratus^ or 

 Saxum quadratum, applied to it ; and when these phrases are 

 used by Livy and Vitruvius, may they not be referring to a par- 

 ticular character in this stone, rather than to stones cut into a 

 square form, or, as we say, squared by the mason ? Is it not 

 probable that this name was given to it, from the property it has 

 of splitting in the direction of the cleavage into quadrangular 

 masses, just as the Germans designate a sandstone possessing a 

 similar property quadersandstein. Thus, when Livy spea|£^_ ot 



