ROME 



781 



possibly about the date assigned to the foundation 

 of the city. Remains of this earliest wall have 

 been discovered in the course of recent excavations. 

 The steep slopes were scarped, and a retaining 

 wall, consisting <>f large stones fitted together with- 

 out mortar, was built up from the base of the slope, 

 rendering the hill almost impregnable. The Pala- 

 tine was thus made into a sort of artificial plat- 

 form, rising some 100 feet above the surrounding 

 valleys, and was called the 'square city '(.Koran 

 quadrata). In the time of the later or Etruscan 

 kings at least five of the settlements on the seven 

 hills had been surrounded by separate defences. 

 These fortified hills, with the marshy hollows be- 

 tween them, were then enclosed by a huge rampart 

 or agger of earth, faced with an exterior wall of 

 unmortared masonry, which is still in one place 50 

 feet in height, with an inner retaining wall of 

 similar construction. Outside the rampart was an , 

 enormous fosse, which from recent excavations 

 appears to have been in some places 30 feet in 

 depth and 100 feet in breadth, from which the 

 materials for the agger were obtained. In the 

 construction of this rampart the older walls, which 

 ran along the crests of the Palatine and Capitoline 

 hills, were utilised, as is indicated by the fact that 

 the agger can only be traced where it crossed the 

 intervening valleys, or where it protected the spurs 

 where they joined the tableland. The agger, 

 begun probably by Tarquinius Prisons, has re- 

 ceived the name of Serving Tullius, by whom prob- 

 ably the portion which included the Quirinal and 

 the Esquiline was completed. A considerable 

 fragment of this part of the agger may be con- 

 veniently examined in the goods yard of the rail- 

 way station. An excellent cross section is exposed 

 on the northern crest of the Quirinal in the Via di 

 S. Nicola <li Tolentino, and a further extension 

 may be traced in the gardens of the Barbetini and 

 Colonna palaces. A vcrv perfect fragment may 

 also be seen in the valley below the southern slope 

 of the Aventine. 



For 800 years, tijl the reign of the Emperor 

 Aurelian, the Servian agger formed the only 

 defence of the city. The wall which bears the 

 name of Aurelian is to a great extent identical 

 with the present walls. It enclosed the suburbs 

 which had grown up beyond the Cielian, the 

 Esmiiline, and the Quirinal, and included two 

 additional hills, the Pincian, and part of the Jan- 

 iciilum, as well as the low-lying ground near the 

 Tiber called the Campus Martius, which now forms 

 the busiest and most densely populated part of the 

 modern city. The Aurelian Wall, as it is called, 

 was begun l>y Aurelian in 271 A.D., and completed 

 by the Emperor Probus in 280. It was restored 

 and partially rebuilt by Honorius, and repaired by 

 Belisarius. It is 12 miles in circuit. The Leonine 

 Wall, enclosing the Vatican Hill and the remainder 

 of the Janiculum, was built by Leo IV. in 848. In 

 1527 some additional space on the Vatican was en- 

 closed, and bastions to strengthen the weak parts 

 of the old wall were added. At the present time 

 populous suburbs have arisen to the east and north 

 beyond the walls, while to the south extensive 

 spaces within the wall are uninhabited. In 1888 

 no less than 1465 acres, chiefly on the Cielian and 

 the Aventine, were occupied by vineyards, fields, 

 and gardens, while public gardens and squares 

 occupied 106 acres. 



To the period of the kings belongs the Cloaca 

 Maxima, a huge arched sewer of Etruscan masonry, 

 which drained the marshy hollow between the 

 Capitoline, Palatine, and Esquiline hills. A por- 

 tion of this valley became the Forum Romamim, 

 at once the market and the place of political 

 iiK-fting for tin- Uomiin, Sabinc, and Latin tribes, 

 who occupied the surrounding hills. The Cloaca 



Maxima (q.v.), though the oldest and best known 

 of the sewers, is rivalled in magnitude by two 

 other ancient sewers which enter the Tiber nearly 

 at the same point. The so-called Mamertine 

 prison at the foot of the Capitol, now conse- 

 crated as the subterranean church of S. Pietro in 

 Carcere, was a deep vaulted well from which, and 

 from the Tiber, the water-supply must have been 

 obtained during the regal period. When Rome 

 was supplied with water by aqueducts from the 

 Alban lulls and the Apennines this well, perhaps 

 the most ancient structure in Rome, was converted 

 into a dungeon, in which state-prisoners, among 

 them Jugurtha and the Catiline conspirators, were 

 confined. That St Peter, by whose name the well 

 is known, was ever confined here is a mere legend, 

 of no authority or probability. 



In the great aqueducts we have the most notable 

 remains of the Republican period. The oldest was 

 the Aqua Appia, constructed by Appius Claudius 

 Csecus in 312 B.C., which brought water from 

 springs upwards of seven miles distant from the 

 city. The Anio Vetits, 43 miles long, was com- 

 menced in 273 B.C., and brought water from the 

 river Anio. The Aqua Marcia, 62 miles in length, 

 was constructed in 144 B.C., and brought water 

 from the Alban hills at a level sufficiently high to 

 supply the Capitol. The Aqua Julia, the Aqua 

 Claudia, and the Anio Novus, constructions even 

 more gigantic, date from the imperial age. Alto- 

 gether there were fourteen of these aqueducts, 

 with an aggregate length of 351 miles. These 

 vast structures, striding on their huge arches 

 across the Campagna, and still bringing copious 

 supplies of water from the Apennines and the 

 Alban hills, are among the most striking features 

 of modern Rome. A portion of one of these 

 aqueducts was utilised in the construction of the 

 Aurelian Wall, the arches being simply built up 

 with masonry. The remains of the enormous 

 arches by which the water of the Aqua Claudia, 

 was brought across the deep valley between the 

 Cifilian and the Palatine also exhibit the vast scale 

 of these erections (see AQUEDUCT). 



In the time of the Republic the centre of the 

 public life of the city was the Forum Romanian, an 

 oblong space, containing about 2^ acres, surrounded 

 by shops (tabenue}. It was traversed by the Via 

 S'li-rti, a winding road, along which triumphal pro- 

 cessions passed to the Capitol. The great blocks 

 of lava with which this road was paved still, for 

 the most part, remain in situ. The Temple of 

 Vesta and the House of the Vestal Virgins stood 

 on one side of the Forum beneath the Palatine, 

 and on the other side was the Regia, or House 

 of the Pontifex Maximus. Close by were the 

 rostra, the beaks of captured Carthaginian ships, 

 between which was the platform from which orators 

 harangued the people. Farther to the north-east 

 was the Senate House, whose walls are preserved in 

 those of the church of S. Adriano ; the neighbour- 

 ing church of SS. Luca e Martina being constructed 

 out of the offices of the Senate House. Beyond the 

 Senate House stood the Treasury and the Tabu 

 lariiim. In course of time the open space of the 

 Forum became surrounded and occupied with 

 stately public edifices, of which the most conspicu- 

 ous remains are the eight columns of the Temple 

 of Saturn, built in 491 B.C., the Colonnade of 

 the Twelve Great Gods (denrum consentium), the 

 Temples of Concord, of Castor and Pollux, built 

 in 490 H.C., of Vesta, of Julius Cresar, of Vespasian, 

 and of Faustina. We see also the foundations of 

 the Triumphal Arch of Augustus, the vast ruins 

 of the Basilica Julia, the base of the column of 

 1'hocas, and the milestone from which all Roman 

 roads were measured. To the north of the Forum 

 stands the Triumphal Arch of Septimiu Severus, 



