A HILL-TOP STRONGHOLD. 263 



that succeeded the first glorious flush of the military 

 empire, Fsesulse must have kept up its importance 

 unchanged. The remains of the Eoman theatre on the 

 slope behind the cathedral great stone semicircles 

 carved on a scale to seat a large audience betoken a 

 considerable Eoman town. And from a very early period 

 it seems to have possessed a Christian church, whose 

 first bishop, according to a tradition as good as most, was 

 a convert of St. Peter's, and was martyred, says his 

 legend, in the Neronian persecution. The existing 

 cathedral, its later representative, is still an early and 

 very simple Tuscan basilica, with picturesque crypt and 

 raised choir, of a very plain Eomanesque type. It looks 

 like a fitting church for the mother-town of Florence ; it 

 seems to recall in its own cold and austere fabric the 

 more ancient claims of the sombre Etruscan hill-top 

 city. 



It was the middle ages, however, that finally brought 

 down Fiesole in earnest to the plain. Pisa had been the 

 earliest Tuscan town to attain importance and maritime 

 supremacy after the dark days of barbarian incursion ; 

 but as soon as land-transit once more assumed general 

 importance, Florence, seated on the great route from the 

 north to Eome by Siena, and commanding the passage of 

 the Arno and the gate of the Apennines, naturally began 

 to surpass in time its distanced rival. As early as the 

 Eoman days a bridge is said to have spanned the Arno 

 on the site of the existing Ponte Vecchio. The mediaeval 

 walls enclosed the southern tete da pant within their 

 picturesque circuit, thus securing the passage of the river 

 and giving Florence its little Janiculus, the Oltrarno. 



