ie 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
Excavation of the Atrium: In October, 1883,' in the course of the exca- 
vations east of the Forum at the foot of the Palatine, there was discovered 
near the temple of Vesta a building which, from the inscriptions and statues 
found in and near it, was recognized at once as the house of the Vestal 
Virgins, the Atrium Vestz.? During the next three months the whole of the 
imperial Atrium, with the exception of the rooms on the southwest, was 
excavated. In 1899 the work, which had been left unfinished in 1884, was 
resumed, and in 1901, after the demolition of the church of S. Maria Libera- 
trice, the remaining rooms on the south and west, which before that time 
had been inaccessible, were uncovered.* The excavations were carried below 
the level of the imperial period and the scanty remains of the earlier republican 
Atrium‘ were laid bare, wherever this was not rendered impossible by the 
presence of later structures. During the following two years the excavations 
in the Atrium and in the buildings adjacent to it were brought to completion. 
Previous Plans and Opinions: Of the results of the excavations of 1883- 
84, the first authoritative accounts published were those of Lanciani® and 
Jordan.® Their plans of the Atrium’ differed but little and were in their 
main features correct; they were in agreement also concerning the history 
of the building in considering it an architectural unit and the work of a single 
period. But in their opinions regarding the specific period to which its 
construction was to be assigned, they disagreed widely. Jordan, basing 
his conclusions on the presumable date of the inscription over the edicula® 
and the dates of a number of brick-stamps,° held that the building was the 
work of Hadrian”. The edicula is, however, as Lanciani pointed out," not 
structurally united to the Atrium and need not therefore be of the same 
1 For discussion of the exact date, see Not.d.Scavi, +See plan A, walls indicated in red. 
1883, 371, 470, n.1. Jordan, Der Tempel * Not. d. Scavi, 1883, 434ff. Cf. Ruins and Excava- 
der Vesta, 5, n. 5. tions, 40, 226ff. 
2 In the fifteenth century, in the search for marbles © Bull. dell’ Inst., 1884, 88ff. Cf. Der Tempel der 
to supply the limekilns, a number of statues Vesta, 25ff. 
with inscribed bases were brought to light, 7 Lanciani, Not. d. Scavi, 1883, plate xxu. Cf. 
leading to the supposition that the site was Ruins and Excavations, figs. 72 and 92. 
that of the burial-place of the Vestals. Jordan, Der Tempel der Vesta, plate 1. 
3 Not. d. Scavi, 1899, 325-333; 1900, 159-191. 8 Jordan, Der Tempel der Vesta, 27 et al. 
Bull. comun., 1899, 253-256; 1902, 30; ° Jordan, /. c., 28ff. 
1903, 70-78. Huelsen, Roem. Mitth.,xvu, 1° Jordan, /. ¢., 28. 
goff, UBull, dell’ Inst., 1884, 149. 
