1909-] CARTER— EVOLUTION OF THE CITY OF ROME. 



itself is concerned, in the minds of the conten.^oraries and succes- 

 sors of Cato a wall at that time nearly two hundred years old 

 would be easily associated with the kingdom and might readily 

 be named after the most famous of the kings, Servius Tullius. 

 There are in other words no traces of a real Servian wall either 

 preserved in monumental form for the topographer or found in the 

 historical records. The occasional references found in Livy to the 

 gates of what we know as the " Servian Wall," in connection with 

 events which happened at or before the Gallic catastrophe, are most 

 rightly explained as anachronisms, and they offer no difficulty to 

 one who is accustomed to the vagaries of the Roman historians.-^ 

 On the contrary, it is on the face of it extremely unlikely that 

 an enlargement of the city limits would have been necessary so 

 soon after the building of the large encircling wall which we at- 

 tribute to the Etruscans. Yet, as a matter of fact, the so-called 

 " Servian Wall " includes a much larger space than the wall of the 

 " Four-Region City."-^ It includes on the northeast the high table- 

 land where the Quirinal and the Viminal unite, but still more im- 

 portant it includes the Aventine. It is the inclusion of the Aven- 

 tine which creates the chief difficulties in understaftding the history 

 of Rome until after the Gallic catastrophe. Let us try the experi- 

 ment of considering the Aventine as a suburb and of reading our 

 history under such a condition.-^ The city which the Etruscans 

 founded and in which Servius Tullius lived, and according to our 

 present assumption the only city of Rome until after the Gallic 



addition to Ancus Martius (Cicero de rep. 2, i8; Dionys. Hal. 3, 43; Strabo, 

 p. 234 M ; Liv. r, 23'' de vir. ill. 5). The difference of opinion regarding the 

 Caelian is still more marked. On the whole question compare Jordan, 

 " Topographic," II., p. 206, 207. 



^^ E. g., Livy (5, 41) speaks of the Gauls as entering by the Porta Collina, 

 referring doubtless to the gate in the " Servian " wall, as it existed in his day. 



"At this point the reader may be inclined to challenge these statements 

 and to ask what we know of the course of the wall of the Four Region City. 

 Of the wall itself we know nothing, but we do know that it lay inside the 

 pomerium, and we know approximately the course of the pomerium, and to 

 what extent it in its turn lay inside the Servian wall. 



^ It may require a certain amount of practice to conduct this experiment 

 successfully, just as it takes practice to eliminate the arch of Severus in 

 reconstructing the Forum of the Republic and early empire. 



