ARCHAEOLOGY. 



21 



perial, republican, kingly, or even prehistoric 

 strata whenever it was possible to do so with- 

 out injuring the later or higher structures; 

 and some interesting discoveries have been made 

 of ancient remains under and in front of the 

 pronaos of the temple standing on the site of 

 the very ancient statue of Saturn (which was 

 erected after the great fire of Carinus) where 

 the ruins of the three former structures have 

 been found. A difference of level of 1.8 milli- 

 metre exists between the Comitium of the kings 

 and that of the late empire. At the lower or 

 older level were discovered a platform of tufa 

 from the lautumiw 3.64 millimetres wide, 2.60 

 millimetres deep, on which stood two oblong ped- 

 estals, which proved to be those of the lions men- 

 tioned by Varro and Dionysius; a conical ped- 

 estal, also of tufa, 0.77 millimetre in diameter, 

 standing on a slightly curved plinth, on the west 

 side of the platform; an inscribed stela, slightly 

 pyramidal in shape, measuring 0.47 millimetre by 

 0.57 millimetre at the base, and irregularly 

 broken about the middle of its original height; 

 and a tufa platform, which may possibly repre- 

 sent the original rostra. These four relics are 

 all differently ornamented, and have all been pur- 

 posely injured and broken by the violence of man. 

 The deed of destruction was afterward expiated 

 by a sacrifice, the remains and traces of which 

 form a layer of votive offerings about half a 

 metre in thickness. 



In digging through the rude pavement and the 

 embankment of rubbish beneath it on the line 

 separating the Comitium from the Forum, Cava- 

 liere Boni came upon an inclosure about 12 feet 

 long and 9 feet wide, screened by a marble para- 

 pet on three sides, and paved with slabs of black 

 Tenarian marble. This inclosure with its pave- 

 ment is believed to be one of the structures re- 

 stored by Diocletian and Maxentius, and there- 

 fore to have been considered by them impor- 

 tant to preserve. An association is suggested of 

 it with a passage in Festus, reading, " Niger 

 lapis in Comitio locum funestum significat." The 

 same author says that the spot had been selected 

 for the burial of Romulus, the founder of the 

 city, but, as the hero had been bodily carried up 

 to heaven by his father, Mars, the funeral plot 

 had been given up to Faustulus " nutricius suus." 

 Dionysius asserts (I, 87) that near the rostra, 

 but within the area of the Comitium, a stone lion 

 of archaic workmanship was supposed to mark 

 the site of the grave of Faustulus. Varro speaks 

 of two stone lions guarding, as it were, the grave 

 of Romulus in the same corner of the Comitium. 

 The remains of the pedestals of both of these 

 lions have been found. These discoveries are re- 

 garded by M. Rudolfo Lanciani as " showing how 

 wrong we have been in disbelieving every particu- 

 lar of Roman traditional history previous to the 

 Punic wars, and the inscriptions on the monu- 

 ments associated with them, comprising the old- 

 est written documents of Roman history, as the 

 most important ever found in Rome." The in- 

 scription on the stela has been studied by Signor 

 G. .F. Gamurrini, who finds that it was cut in 

 the very early style, called povo-rpofrfSv, in which 

 the lines run alternately backward and forward, 

 from right to left and from left to right, or, as 

 the etymolog}^ of the word indicates, like the 

 turning of the oxen in plowing. This style of 

 writing was given up by the Greeks before the 

 end of the sixth century B. c. The lines in the 

 present inscription, however, are perpendicular 

 instead of being horizontal. They cover the four 

 principal faces of the stone, with an extra line 

 on one of the flattened corners. Unfortunately, 



the top of the stone is broken, so as to make 

 every line incomplete alternately at the begin- 

 ning and the end. The characters in which the 

 inscription is cut are those of the earliest italic 

 derivation from the Chalcidian alphabet. An- 

 other evidence of its great antiquity is given by 

 the three vertical dots by which the words are 

 separated. This peculiar style of interpunctua- 

 tion is to be found only in inscriptions (Attica, 

 Laconia, Elis, Argos, Etruria) dating from the 

 end of the seventh and the beginning of the 

 sixth centuries B. c. The stela, Prof. Lanciani 

 says, shows how exact the early. Roman annalists 

 and historians were when they speak of " leges 

 Regiae " and public treaties engraved on stone in 

 a language that could not be understood. All 

 these documents were supposed to have been lost 

 in the Gaulish fire, and this is the only one known 

 that partially escaped destruction then. Prof. 

 Luigi Ceci, of the University of Rome, reads 

 the inscription and supplies the missing words 

 as follows: 



1. QUOI Ho[rdas ueigead, ueigetod S]AKROS 



[S]ESED. 



2. soR[das, sakros sed~\. 



3. [eidJiAsiAS EEGEI Lo[i6a adferad ad rem 



(Z]EVAM. 



4. QUOS R[e# per mentore~\M. KALATOREM HAP- 



[ead endo ada]Giov, loux MENTA CAPIAD, 

 DOTA vfot-ead]. 



5. [7m]M ITE RI K[oised nounasias *]M. 



6. QUOI HAVELOD NEQu[aw sled dolod mal]ov, 



DIOVE ESTOD. [git] oi vovioD [sacer Diove 

 estod] . 

 His Latin translation is: 



1. Qui fordas consecret, consecrate sacellum ver- 



sus [or, ad sacellum]. 



2. Sordas [viz., qui sordas consecret, consecrate] 



seorsum a sacello. 



3. Idibus regi liba adferat ad rem divinam [viz., 



ad sacrificium] . 



4. Quos Rex per augurem Kalatorem induhapeat 



[viz., consecratum admittat] adagio [viz., 

 carmine] precibus auspicia capiat, dona vo- 

 tiva voveat. 



5. Itemque rei [divinae] curet Nonis ibi. 



6. Qui auspicio nequam sit dolo malo, lovi esto. 



Qui voto [viz., nequam sit dolo malo] sacer 

 lovi esto. 



Prof. Lanciani remarks as the most salient lin- 

 guistic specialty of this document " the great 

 number of words great in comparison to the 

 total that do not appear in the Latin language." 

 Its date is assigned by him to about the middle 

 of the sixth century B. c. It is therefore one cen- 

 tury older than the Prsenestine fibula of Manios 

 (Corpus Inscriptionum XIV, 4123), and two cen- 

 turies older than the vase of Duenos. Prof. Ceci 

 observes, in communicating his version of the in- 

 scription to the Italian Minister of Public In- 

 struction, that while he will not say that the dis- 

 covery of the stela marks the downfall of the 

 modern hypercritical school, especially German, 

 " one thing is certain, it will shake the faith of 

 the many who believed blindly in the word of 

 Niebuhr and Ihne, and will revive the hopes of 

 the few who trusted to the authority of Livy, 

 and had faith in the historical foundation of early 

 Roman traditions." 



Explorations were also made in the Basilicas 

 ^Emilia and Regia, and along the Sacra Via. 



Greece. New Law concerning Antiquities. 

 It having been found that the recognition of 

 the landowner's right of property in archaeo- 

 logical finds implied in the old law opened the 

 way for abuse, and that extensive thieving was 



