"The seventh is called, at present, the Porta Major, formerly the Sircurana [Siracusan Prænestina] and the Lavicanian Way, which leads to S. Helena." "The eighth is the Porta S. Johannis, which by the ancients was called Assenarica (Asinaria)."

"The ninth gate is called Porta Metrosa (Metronia), and in front of both these run the Latin Way."

"The tenth is called the Latin Gate and Way."

"The eleventh is called the Appian Gate and Way. There lie S. Sebastian, and Quirinus."

"The twelfth Gate and Way is called the Ostiensian, but, now, S. Paul's, because he lies near it in his church."

"The thirteenth is called the Portuan Gate and Way."

"The fourteenth is the Aurelian Gate and Way, which now is called Porta S. Pancratii, because he lies near it in his church"."

To the above extracts reference will be made in the succeeding section. The mode of spelling the names of some of the gates is evidently corrupt, but the context leaves no doubt as to their identification.

In A.D. 1157 some portion of the wall was restored by the Senate, as we see by the inscription recording it on the inside of the Porta Metronia.

In the thirteenth century we have another description of the walls in the tract of Martinus Polenus, De Romanæ Urbis Exordio, which

"Sed, ne quid honori desit, adjiciam et portarum numerum, et multitu dinem sacrorum cinerum; et, ne quis obscuritate verborum se causetur a cognitione rerum rejici, erit sermo quotidianus et levis.

"Prima porta Cornelia, quæ modo dicitur Porta Sancti Petri, et Via Cornelia. Juxta eam ecclesia beati Petri sita est, in qua corpus ejus jacet, auro et lapidibus parata. . . .

"Secunda porta Flaminea, quæ modo appellatur Sancti Valentini, et Via Flaminea; et cum ad pontem Molbium pervenit, vocatur Via Ravennana,

"Septima porta modo Major dicitur, olim Sircurana dicebatur, et Via Lavicana, quæ ad beatam Helenam tendit. . . .

"Octava porta Sancti Johannis, quæ apud antiquos Assenarica dicitur.

"Nona porta Metrosa dicitur, et coram istis ambabus Via jacet Latina. "Decima porta et Via Latina dicitur. . . .

"Undecima porta et Via dicitur

quia ad Ravennam ducit. Ibi in primo Appia. Ibi requiescunt sanctus Sebas

milliario foris sanctus Valentinus in sua ecclesia requiescit.

"Tertia porta Porciniana, et via eodem modo appellata; sed cum pervenit ad Salariam nomen perdit: et ibi prope, in eo loco qui dicitur Cucumeris, requiescunt martyres Festus Johannes," &c.

'Quarta porta et Via Salaria, quæ modo Sancti Silvestri dicitur. . . . "Quinta porta Numentana.

"Sexta porta et Via Tiburtina, quæ modo dicitur Porta Sancti Laurentii.

tianus et Quirinus. . .

"Duodecima porta et Via Ostensa dicitur, modo Porta Sancti Pauli vocatur, quia juxta eam requiescit in sua ecclesia.

"Tertiadecima porta et Via Portuensis dicitur. . . .

66

Quartadecima porta et Via Aurea, que modo Porta Sancti Pancratii dicitur, quia juxta eam requiescit in ecclesia sua," &c. (Willelmi Malmesbir. Gesta reg. Angl., lib. iv. c. 2, ed. Th. Duffus Hardy, vol. ii. pp. 539-544- )

is curious, being written entirely from the clerical point of view with reference to the churches.

"It has 360 towers, in circuit it is 22 miles, besides the Trastevere and the Leonine city, including which it is said to be 42 miles. . . . The principal gates are the Porta Capena, which is called S. Paul's, near the sepulchre of Remus ; Porta Appia, which leads to [the chapel of] Domine quo vadis and the Catacombs ; Porta Latina, near which is the church of S. Johannes in Oleo; Porta Asinaria Lateranensis; Porta Metronii, where the stream enters the city; Porta Lavicana, which is called Major, which is near S. Croce ; Porta Taurina or Tiburtina, which is called S. Lorenzo; Porta Numentana, which leads to S. Agnes; Porta Salaria, which leads towards S. Sabina; Porta Pinciana, which is near the church of S. Felice on the Pincio; Porta Flaminia, which is near the church of S. Maria del Popolo, and by which we go to the Milvian bridge; Porta Collina, which is near the Temple of Hadrian, near the bridge of S. Peter. In the Trastevere are three gates, and in the [Leonine] city three "."

There are several ignorant errors in this description, shewing that the writer was not well acquainted with the localities, and these are so similar to those in the Mirabilia Urbis Roma that there is little doubt they were both taken from the same source. Besides the exaggeration of the extent of the city, the Porta Capena is confused with the Porta Ostiensis or S. Paolo; the pyramid of Cestius is called the sepulchre of Remus; the Sabine towns to which the Porta Salaria leads are confused with S. Sabina; the Porta Collina is transposed to the bank of the Tiber, opposite the Mausoleum of Hadrian, that is, from the eastern to the western side of the city". These errors prove the work to be of an ignorant age, and written originally by some one not conversant with the place, and two persons could hardly have fallen into the same errors. Still these medieval descriptions of the walls are curious and interesting.

The Mirabilia of the thirteenth century enumerates 361 towers, 44 castles, and 900 propugnacula or turrets. It also gives twelve gates and five posterns, exclusive of the Transtiberina. The gates are thus enumerated in the Mirabilia :—

1. Capena; 2. Appia; 3. Latina; 4. Mitroni; 5. Asinaria (Lateranensis); 6. Lavicana or Major; 7. Taurina; 8. Nomentana; 9. Salaria; 10. Pinciana; 11. Flaminia; 12. Cellina, or Cornelia; and in the Transtiberina, Septimiana, Aurelia, and Portuensis.

Boniface IX., A.D. 1389-1404, and Martin V., 1417—1431, repaired the walls. Boniface also strengthened the fortifications of the castle of S. Angelo, and built the high tower on the Capitol.

lib. i. c. 4, 5, Basle, 1559, (apud Nibby, Mura di Roma, p. 280.)

Unless the name should be spelt Cellina, as it is in the Mirabilia; if so, all other traces of this name have dis

appeared along with the gate itself. Possibly it is the one called Aurelia by Procopius, and Cornelia in the extract from William of Malmesbury.

In the beginning of the fifteenth century Leonardus Aretinus * mentions that the wall near the Janiculum had fallen down in several places; it is now a picturesque ruin by the side of the road up to a villa, this road is in the old foss, the earth on the other side of the wall being many feet above it.

In a document of this period we find the Porta del Popolo first mentioned :—

"In the year 1404. The King Ladislaus, after high mass, retired from the palace which was at the top of S. Peter's steps (the Vatican), and went out through the Porta Viridaria (the garden-gate), and entered [Rome] over the Ponte Molle, and through the gate of S. Maria del Popolo, and also entered through the arch near the church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, and went through the Piazza della Colonna (Antoniana), and made Galeot of Normandy a Knight in front of his own house. And the said King rode through the Via di Torre de' Conti towards the church of the Lateran, where he abode for one night."

In 1407 a part of the wall near the Monte Testaccio was destroyed by the vassals of the Savelli coming from Albano, and in the same year the Colonnas destroyed a part of the wall between the Porta Maggiore and the Porta S. Lorenzo. These and other parts of the wall were repaired by Ladislaus, King of Naples, in 1408, but the same king took down another part of the wall in 1413, near the monastery of S. Croce, to effect his own entrance, and stationed his forces in the Lateran ".

In 1431, after the death of Martin V., (a Colonna,) Poggio Bracciolini, a Florentine, wrote his treatise De Varietate Fortunæ, in which he says that he had measured the walls of the city, and found them only ten miles without the Leonine city in the Trastevere.

"Adversus Janiculum monia erant nonnullis locis vetustate collapsa, hæc quoque loca armatis complebantur.' (Leonardi Aretini rer. suo temp. in Ital. Gest. Comment. ap. Murat. Rer. Ital. Script., t. xix. col. 923, D.)

"Anno 1404. . . recessit dictus dominus rex Ladislaus de Palatio in capite scalarum Sancti Petri post missam majorem, et exivit per Portam Viridariam, et intravit per pontem Moli, ac etiam per Portam Sanctæ Mariæ dello Popolo, et intravit etiam per arcum juxta ecclesiam Sancti Laurentii in Lucina, et ivit per regionem Columnæ, et fecit Militem Galeottum de Normannis ante domum dicti Galeotti; et equitavit dictus dominus Rex per viam Torre dello Conte versus ecclesiam Lateranensem, et ibi fecit residentiam per unam noctem." (Diarium Romanum, ap. Murator. Rer.

K

Ital. Script., vol. xxiv. col. 974, B.)

"A di 6. di Giugno i Colonnesi, co gli altri cacciati da Roma, ruppero il muro di Roma tra la porta di Santa Maria Maggiore, e la porta di San Lorenzo, ed entrarono in Roma." (Cron. di Bologna, ap. Murat. Rer. Ital. Script., t. xviii. col. 593, B.)

"Inter alia mala per eum perpetrata fuit confessus, quod de Anno Domini 1407, de mense Februarii, fuit unus de principalibus ad frangendum murum in loco videlicet qui dicitur Testacia. Multum esset scribendum mala per eum perpetrata." (Diarium Romanum ab anno MCCCCIV. usque ad MCCCCXVII. auct. Ant. Petri; ap. Murat. Rer. Ital. Script., t. xxiv. col. 988, C.)

Diario della città di Roma Scritto da Stefano Infessura, ibid., vol. iii. part 2, col. 1120, B.

SECTION IV.

DESCRIPTION OF THE CIRCUIT OF THE Walls.

In the previous section a rapid survey has been taken of the events which had any influence on the destruction, repair, or alteration of the wall, from the time of Aurelian down to the fifteenth century. Incidental notices of historians and poets have been referred to, and though few in number, and seeming of little importance, they are on the whole not difficult of reconciliation with the existing remains.

To avoid repetition, and to make the account clear, it will be best to follow a topographical arrangement, and pass round the circuit of the wall, pointing out as far as possible the work of the different periods already briefly referred to.

In this the description of the anonymous writer of the Itinerary of Einsiedlin will be of service, as he describes exactly what he saw existing in his own time, namely, in the ninth century.

He begins his survey at the north-west corner, starting from the gate of S. Peter's in the direction of the Porta Flaminia [or del Popolo], and going round the whole circuit of the city returns to the same point again.

I. "From the gate of S. Peter's, with its gate (towers), to the Flaminian gate— 16 towers, 782 merlons of the battlement, 3 postern gates, 4 pairs of corbels", 107 large external windows, 66 small windows, (or oillets?)."

It is probable that this gate of S. Peter, from which he commences his circuit, was at the city end of the fortress connected by two bridges with the Hadrianum, one the Pons Ælius, the other usually called by modern topographers the Pons Triumphalis. The remains of this bridge are visible some hundred yards westward of the Ponte S. Angelo, but all traces of the gate have disappeared. It probably stood between the two bridges, and had two roads branching from it. The Via Triumphalis, which went under the Porta Triumphalis in

b The necessaria (which is the word used by the Chronicler) were constructions corbelled out from the wall. They were used primarily for getting rid of the refuse from the camp, but in case of the wall being attacked, they also served for throwing down missiles on the heads of the enemy beneath.

It is called τῇ γεφύρα τῇ Αἰλίᾳ (Pons Ælius) by Dion Cassius (Cassii Dionis Cocceiani Rerum Romanarum,

1. Ixix. c. 23; ed. Imm. Bekker, t. ii. p. 332, Lipsiæ, 1849, 8vo.), who says, "His body was placed in the tomb which he had built on the bank of the Tiber, near the Ælian bridge, because the tomb of Augustus was full." The writer, however, of Hadrian's life, Spartianus, gives the honour of a bridge, as well as the tomb, to that Emperor. See note at the end of this Section.

the Porticus of Octavia, and passed the Theatres of Marcellus and Pompey, had here passed across the bridge. The road on the other side was probably the Via Aurelia Nova, which is referred to in inscriptions, and which was a branch from the main Aurelian way which entered the enceinte by the Porta Janiculensis, now Porta di S. Pancrazio.

In this part the wall has been too much destroyed for anything to be made out beyond the lower part of the towers on the bank of the river, which remain with houses built upon them. The parts that remain are of concrete of early character, probably of the time of Sylla, or at least, they could hardly be later than Augustus. They are little more than substructures, and it is therefore probable that they had not been rebuilt by Aurelian, as was the case with that part of the wall next the Tiber at the southern end of the city below the Emporium, where his work remains very distinctly, while here not a vestige is seen. Nor have we far to look for an explanation. Between the time of Augustus and Aurelian, the large and strong fortress had been built, originally called the Hadrianum, afterwards the castle of S. Angelo, which encloses the Mausoleum of Hadrian, rendering this side of the city comparatively free from danger of attack, and therefore not needing the rebuilding of the wall, which was thought necessary in other parts.

It is, however, still a doubtful question whether this part of the wall, between the Ponte S. Angelo and the angle near the Porta del Popolo was rebuilt, or rather carried higher as in other parts, by Aurelian or not. There are the lower portions of some mediæval brick towers in this part, but whether any part of the brickwork is of the time of Aurelian or not is difficult to ascertain, since they are much altered and mixed up with modern walls.

Part of the wall between the Tiber and the Porta Flaminia was rebuilt by Nicolas V., in 1451, as appears from an inscription on the fourth tower from the river; and again rebuilt by Alexander VII. in 1662, as recorded also on the second tower in another inscription. The two flanking towers of the gateway were built by Sixtus IV., A.D. 1480, along with the church of S. Maria del Popolo, on the eastern side of it. The gateway itself was built by Vignola, under Pius IV., in 1561. The lower part of these towers is faced with square blocks of marble taken from a tomb which stood on part of the site of the Piazza del Popolo, supposed to have been the tomb of Nero. The church of S. Maria del Popolo was originally built by Pascal II. in 1099, as a protection against the At the end of the present section this fortress will be fully described,