PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

THE PRIMITIVE FORTIFICATIONS.

THIS portion of my work is the necessary foundation of the whole; unless I can establish this securely, and make such a demonstration of it that nobody can deny it, I cannot expect my readers to follow me with confidence in other parts of my work.

But this I am prepared to do; what I have to prove is that the incidental notices of buildings are so entirely confirmed by the existing remains, as to shew that

THE OLD ROMAN TRADITIONS CONTAIN THE

TRUE HISTORY OF THE CITY OF ROMEa.

These traditions were handed down from father to son as a sacred trust for future generations, with such minute accuracy that they fit the existing remains dug out within the last twenty years in so remarkable a manner, as to appear almost marvellous. The legends tell us that the original settlement of the Romans was upon the Palatine Hill, a well-chosen site for a fortress of moderate extent; a low hill surrounded by swamps on all sides is a very strong natural position, and having a navigable river near to it to secure provisions was a great advantage.

At the north end of this hill, the point nearest to the hill of Saturn, just where we should expect to find it, we do find an oblong fortress, with walls visible on three sides of it (the fourth side being concealed by the palaces of the Cæsars). These walls are of the earliest kind. of construction, they are built of large blocks of tufa split off the rocks or beds of this soft stone, and not cut with any iron tool, consequently the surface is not quite smooth, and the vertical joints between them are wide enough to insert a cane; each stone is a ton weight, or as Dionysius says, is a load for a cart, which is the same thing; and they are placed together against the cliff alternately lengthwise and crosswise, for greater strength. The legends further tell us that when these early settlers on the Palatine found it necessary to go to war with the Sabines, who were valiant enemies, (and in a strong position on the hill of Saturn opposite, rather too close to their own fortress,) they thought it necessary to raise the walls of the Palatine, and began to do so.

See Note A, at the end of the Introduction.

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Precisely at the point where we should expect to find them, at that corner of the Palatine Hill which is nearest to the hill of Saturn, we find a series of bastions built against the wall, to serve as buttresses to raise it higher. These are of the same early construction as the other walls, but they have only been carried to the height of ten or twelve feet from the ground, and then are suddenly left unfinished; they have not been disturbed, but have been afterwards used as foundations for other buildings. None of these old walls were known until the last ten years, they have now been thrown open to sight for the first time for many hundred years; they were not visible in the time of Augustus, when Livy and Dionysius wrote, but had then long been used as foundations only, and entirely forgotten.

Of the Second Wall of Rome, which enclosed the two hills in one city, we have also considerable remains, which have not so much been discovered, as explained by the other discoveries; the two hills thus united became a very strong military fortress, almost impregnable, especially when the Velia, which from the nature of the ground would have been the weakest point, was made a very strong one by cutting off this promontory from the Esquiline Hill by a very wide and deep foss, still remaining visible, and now called the Via del Colosseo, because that street runs in it. This foss was one of the great FossÆ QUIRITIUM, which naturally went round the outer wall of the city of the Quirites, Romulus and Tatius, on the two hills; these fossæ entirely isolated this great fortress from the adjacent territory on three sides, the fourth being the Tiber, and this of course greatly strengthened the position.

Whoever laid out the plan of

"THE WALL THAT ENCLOSED THE TWO HILLS IN ONE CITY"," must have been a first-rate military engineer; the whole scheme is drawn out with wonderful skill and foresight, and calculated for eternity. Knowing the liability to, have his walls undermined by the great floods to which the Tiber is subject, he saw the necessity of building such a wall on the bank as would effectually protect all within it, and he built the enormous wall which still goes by the name of the Pulchrum Littus, which formed the west wall, and has kept the Tiber in check for so many centuries, with no signs of giving way. This appears to have been the first work of the Quirites; having thus secured the foundations, they could go on with confidence. The cliffs of the two hills supplied the north and south walls, the Velia and the great wall to connect it with the Capitol protected the eastern side of the great fortress of the united city.

b Dionysius, bk. ii. c. lxvi.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION OF PART I. XV

In tracing out the line of this Second Wall, excavations and researches in cellars, &c., have been made in various places where it was found necessary, and always found to agree with this true history; a part of this wall has long been known as the Forum of Augustus, but a Forum or market-place did not require to be enclosed on one side only by a wall fifty feet high and twelve feet thick, such as we have here. There are also remains of large round towers, hitherto unobserved, one has the Tor de Conti built upon it, but the walls of the base are of an enormous thickness, and not of medieval construction. Another near to it is between the Forum of Augustus and the Forum of Nerva, only about a fourth of it is standing, but it is fifty feet high and twelve feet thick, and a wall of travertine, of one-third the height and thickness, which is of the time of Nerva, is built into the old wall, so as to make it evident that the old tufa wall was standing there when the travertine wall was built. On the outside of this wall, in the east side, also there is a series of arches nearly level with the ground, the tops of them only being visible, the lower part entirely buried. This has been done by filling up the old foss-way outside the wall, and the arches were originally passages from that road into the Forum. The temple of Mars Ultor also is evidently built up against this old wall because it stood there; there are nine round marble columns in front of this temple (of which the bases remain in the cellars of the nuns), but the end column against the wall, instead of being round, is a flat pilaster, obviously because the wall stood there.

This lofty wall is the curtain-wall that connected the Palatine fortress at its strongest point (the Velia) with the Capitoline proper at the east end. Advantage was taken of this lofty curtain-wall by the engineers of Augustus, to make use of it as a sort of enclosure on one side of his Forum, but there was none on the other side.

All these remains can only be explained by the legends, because the legends contain history; they are confirmed by these walls, and the walls cannot be explained in any other manner.

It should be mentioned, that the remains of many of the ancient cities on the hills of Italy have been examined, to see whether they agree with this idea of the Roman traditions being true or not, and in no instance have I found any reason to think that they do not agree with it; some of them are evidently of earlier date than Rome, as is shewn by the construction, but then there was reason to believe that they were of earlier date from traditions respecting them

See the Catalogue of Historical Photographs appended to this Part, especially the "Historical Construc

tion of Walls." Under the head of "Primitive Fortifications," a sufficient list of examples is given to shew that

also. At that remote period, none of them can be considered to have any more positive history than these traditions afford. In the early Greek settlements the arx or citadel is cut out of the rock on the point of a hill, as at Cæri (Cervetri), and Syracuse. In the latter case, not fortifications only, but chambers also, are cut out of the rock, and yet in almost all instances there are gaps in the rocks, which are filled up with walls built across them, of more or less early character. At Tusculum and Alatri also the original city is cut out of the rock. Where the building-material is the same, these walls are of the same character as the early Roman walls. This is the case even at Syracuse; in other cases, where the buildingmaterial is hard, and will only split into large blocks of polygonal form, the walls are necessarily built in that manner. This is the case at Alatri, where the walls of a part of the arx or citadel are of this character. But there we have a doorway, with steps, and large clumsy niches for statues, which can hardly belong to the original period. In many cases, as at Cære, there are three distinct periods half-a-mile from each other—the original arx; then the early Roman or Etruscan period, with the burial-ground, and the tomb of the Tarquins and thirdly the medieval city. The same thing may be observed more or less perfect in several instances. None of these in any degree contradict the Roman legends, but rather confirm them, when all the circumstances are taken into account.

In other parts of this work I have followed the same plan, of first examining the construction of the existing building from the earliest part to which I can get access, the foundations if possible, and in getting at these I have generally been successful. I thus make out the history of the building from the walls themselves, before I look for what anybody has said about it; but having ascertained the probable dates of the principal parts of the building, I then endeavour to find historical notices of it from authors the most nearly contemporaneous. I may not always succeed in fitting these exactly to the building, but this has generally been from want of time for making the necessary researches.

During that time we have endeavoured to study the history of every building in Rome, so far as they appear to be worth the trouble, and especially the history of the successive walls and gates of the city; we soon found that there must have been four successive walls to the city of Rome; the remains of the first wall, called Roma Quadrata, situated on that part of the Palatine where we should expect to find them, are of the earliest character of construc

it is the general rule that the walls of the old cities always do agree with and

support that of Rome, unless under special circumstances easily explained.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION OF PART I. xvii

tion that is found anywhere with the same building-material; so much of this is now visible, that it is generally acknowledged without question. This consists of the oblong space on the Palatine Hill, where the walls of that period are visible on the north-west and south sides; on the east side they are concealed by the palaces of the Caesars built upon them; and on the west side we see that Roma Quadrata, which has been the arx or citadel only, has been separated off from the rest of the hill by an enormous foss 200 ft. long and 40 ft. deep. This had been treated as a valley in the time of the Republic, and several buildings erected in it, of which there are considerable remains. At the end of the first century, of the time of Domitian, the officials wanted to have a great state palace on this part of the Palatine, but could find no level space large enough for the purpose, and for that reason filled up the great foss. When Signor Rosa first discovered this about 1866, he ordered a portion to be left open to shew these remains of some great building of the time of the Republic, of which nothing more is known. One of these walls is very massive, and evidently belonged to a building of importance; it is just at the west end of the great state hall of Domitian, called also Ædes Publica, and Ædes Imperatorum.

At the eastern end of this great hall another of these trenches, with transverse walls, is left open; it passes through what is called the bath-chamber of Livia, where there is a fine fresco on the vault, which is of the time of Augustus; the foss forms the south side of Roma Quadrata. At the opposite end, or north-west corner of this, excavated about 1870, a series of bastions were found built against the cliff, which is faced by a wall evidently for the purpose of carrying that wall higher.

It was the custom in the earliest kind of fortifications to trust mainly to the cliffs themselves, or if walls were built up against them, they were not carried up any higher than the scarped work that had been cut away. But in this instance we are told by Dionysius that Romulus had found it necessary to carry the walls of Roma Quadrata higher, when he found that he had to contend with so valiant an enemy as Tatius, King of the Sabines, probably also because he knew that one corner of his fortress on the hill of Saturn was rather too close to the opposite corner of Roma QuadThe bastions were only carried about 20 ft. above the level. on which they stand, when the work was suddenly suspended by the interference of the Sabine women between their husbands and their fathers or brothers.

rata.

• Dionys. ii. 37.