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CHAPTER III.

THE CITY ON THE TWO HILLS.

THE next most important event after the foundation of Rome, was the incorporation of its fortress and people into one with the Sabine settlement on the neighbouring Capitoline Hill, anciently Mons Saturnius. The legend recording this has come down through one of the historians of Rome in these words: "Both those hills had been encompassed with one wall already" (Dionys. Hal., ii. 66); that is to say, by the time of Numa's accession. Of this wall we have some important remains; but these could not be expected to be equally prominent with the records of the first wall on the Palatine, which was never thrown into the body of the city, to be built over at pleasure, or removed as the wants of its inhabitants might require. The hill of Saturn lies nearly due north of the Palatine, inclining to the west, and is separated from it by a valley, anciently a marsh. The distance between the Porta Romana and the foot of the steps leading up to the Capitol is about 135 yards. Geologists say that the Capitoline was originally a promontory of the Quirinal: there was a depression between them, but this has been deepened by cutting a foss in it. It has two eminences: one to the south, the famous Tarpeian rock; and, separated from it by a natural depression or saddle, the northern one against the Quirinal.

Over the ridge on the north-western face the ground falls towards the Campus Martius: and below the ridge on the south-eastern face towards the Forum, rises an immense pile of massive buildings, the lowest portions of which are very ancient. These served as the municipal offices of old Rome, under the name Tabularium, and they are used for the same purpose in the modern city. The Tar is of a much harder stone than the Palatine, be Tufa of a compact nature, and partly of the compact Peperino. Its great steepness made natural fortress, so that no mound or palisade to secure the edge of the cliff; of this neglect took advantage, by scaling the height with ladder says that the Capitolium as well as the Forum was incorporated into the city by Titus Tatius; a sius affirms that Romulus held the Palatine and (the latter for pasture-ground), Tatius the Capito he had first occupied, and the Quirinal.

The Mons Saturnius is the smallest in area hills of Rome, not much larger than the site Roma Quadrata: easily fortified, it became an Arx for the occupants of the adjacent pastures. Roman and Sabine communities were in positi gous to each other. When the two peoples into one, their two citadels with the intervening came one city, civilly and militarily, and enclo one wall. Dionysius says this was done when tl of Vesta was built; and when it had been done, rock or hill of Saturn's mount became the Capi strongest fortified centre. The boundaries of thi on the north, outside the foss and wall, a leve the bank of the Tiber, known as the Campus Ma flooded and left a swamp: on the east the vall deep nor broad, separating it from the Quirina west the valley of the Tiber, and on the south the l ground between it and the Palatine, with the ma upon the level ground, in which was a wide and In the eastern part of this foss the Forum Ron made: another, the cattle market, Forum Bo placed at the south-western corner of the foss, (

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The City on the Two Hills.

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Porta Janualis. The foss then turned northward, and in it a third market, Forum Olitorium, for vegetables stood. On the north side of this market stands the great semicircular theatre of Marcellus, with its lower columns buried considerably by the raising of the old foss-way to the level of the street. The foss then turned to the east along the north side of the rock: part of the Ghetto, or Jews' quarter, is built in it; and the Porta Triumphalis of the Cæsars, now the porch of St. Angelo's church, was built across it. The foss then passed on to the modern S. Mark'ssquare, its northernmost point; and thence, towards the south, struck along under the east side of the rock in the narrow gorge between the Capitoline and Quirinal, which was afterwards widened to admit the Forum of Trajan : the Forum of Julius Cæsar was also made in it, uniting the Forum Romanum to that of Augustus.

Next, the wall of the united city on the two hills has also been traced out, and as it confirms the legend related by the historian, it is of high interest and importance. Dionysius says (lib. ii. c. 66), "Numa, after his election, did not remove the particular temples belonging to the Curiæ, but erected one temple common to them all between the Capitoline and Palatine hills. For both these had already been encompassed with one wall, the Forum in which the temple was built lying between them." Such was the tradition recorded by this writer only: but the tradition was true, and it accounts for the remains of this great wall as we now find them. Its line can be clearly made out. On the north side of the Capitoline the scarped cliffs were considered sufficient protection. The wall was joined on to its foot near the north-eastern corner, crossing the old foss described above. In that foss, as was usual, a road was made, which is still a street (Via di Marforio), and the wall crosses that street at its northern end, forming • See Note C, p. 31.

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a ridge athwart it. Excavations made in it lai tufa wall forming this ridged. The line of wall across the southern end of the Forum of Trajan houses in the street. It will be understood tha of old Rome lies buried and sometimes twice b only by burrowing among cellars and foundations buildings that the remains of the old town are archæologist finds them by patient search, and n intelligible to the scholar. The line of wall straight from west to east, and joined on to that Quirinal which was afterwards scooped away Trajan's Forum. It then turned to the right, or here it still remains standing for a considerabl forming the eastern wall of the Forum of Augu as the mediæval fortress Torre dei Conti, wh upon the site of another very ancient fortress. Augustus' Forum was that of Nerva, called a Transitorium: the wall on its northern side is bu vertine stone, the kind usually employed unde pire, and this separates the two Fora. But it is a right angle into a tower of the great second v of fortification, at about one-third of the latte Half of the old tower is still visible behind the magnificent structure, fifty feet high and twelve of the usual great blocks of tufa.

On the south side of this Forum after leaving now dei Conti, the line of wall turns again angle towards the west: it is not visible, but the houses in the street, the backs of w upon the wall. At the corner of the next conspicuous marble columns of the Altar of built up against it, and the cornice is built up hind these columns is an ancient doorway, c entrances of the united city. At the easternme

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the enclosure was the outlying or detached work, forming part of the defences of the Palatine, called the Velia: this was, in fact, the lower portion of the westernmost spur of the Esquiline, where it approaches most nearly to the Palatine. A great foss cut it off from the rest of the hill, which foss still exists in the street called the Via del Colosseo. Varro, however, states that it constituted part of the Palatine; and perhaps, considering the near proximity of the two hills, the Arx in the primitive occupation could not be safe unless this promontory were added to it as a wing. Traces of the second wall, after it had passed round the eastern side of the Velia, are found outside the so-called Temple of Venus and Rome, opposite the Colosseum. Thence the line continued onward perfectly straight, near the site of the Arch of Constantine, and past the whole south-eastern face of the Palatine; turning again to the northwest, some remains of it are visible in a garden behind the houses, and the line passes on to the fine masonry in the bases of the buried tower under the church of S. Anastasia.

This structure made a strong fort at the foot of the Palatine, just at the point where the wall, leaving the hillside, would turn again westward and run across the valley, to the Pulchrum Littus on the bank of the Tiber, an important part of this second line of defence. This is a massive wall of tufa built against that river's bank for about half-a-mile, beginning at the Porta Trigemina and extending to the bridge on the island, or Pons Fabricius. For the most ⚫ part it is concealed by the quantity of sand and soil thrown up against it by successive floods of the Tiber, but it is visible at intervals in several places. The mouth of the great sewer, Cloaca Maxima, with its triple concentric arch, is evidently inserted in it, that is, an aperture has been made in an earlier wall to introduce the mouth of the drain. This wall served a double purpose: first, to protect the • See Note E, p. 31.

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