early hill fortresses might The one from the Esqui

valley, in order that the outer part of the serve to protect the approach to the gate. line to the Cœlian passes under the north end of the Church of S. Clement, where it has been excavated by Father Mullooly, and remains visible. The one from the Cœlian to the Aventine is not far from the Palatine and the Circus Maximus. It was excavated in 1868 and 1869, and again in 1871, under my direction, and the remains of the Porta Capena found in it. The sill of that gate, which remains in situ, at first discovered in 1868, is only three yards wide; this is in accordance with the laws of the Twelve Tables. In the excavation of 1871, it was discovered that the Porta Capena had two arches. We find one of the gates of Pompeii of the same size, the Porta della Marina. It will be remembered that in some of the hill-fortresses of the Jews there was room for only two persons to pass at the gates ".

Another short agger must have gone across the valley between the two parts of the Aventine, from the site now occupied by S. Sabba to that of S. Prisca; from thence the cliffs of the Aventine, and then the Tiber, were the boundary of the city on the west as far as the Capitol. Against the bank of the river a tufa wall was built by the kings, called the Pulchrum Littus, part of which remains visible, with the mouths of the Marrana and of the Cloaca Maxima left in it. The arches over each of these openings are of later date than the sides. That over the Marrana is mediæval, with a mill built over it; that of the Cloaca Maxima is said to have been erected in the time of Camillus, after the capture of Veii, of cut stone (lapis gabinus), inserted in the older wall of tufa.

Another of these short aggers went from the Tiber to the west end of the Capitol, with three gates in it, and one more from the east end of the Capitol to the Quirinal; then the cliffs of the Quirinal complete the circuit of the city. The ground at the foot of the Capitol is so entirely built over and altered by modern streets, that these two short aggeres cannot now be traced". The great foss on

u This small size of the gates is mentioned as a peculiarity of the hill forts to defend the passes. Other gates we know were larger.

▾ There are remains of a massive wall of tufa under the church of S. Angelo in Pescheria, which is not an improbable line for that agger and wall. On the eastern side of the Capitol, the ridge in the line of the Via di Marforio is caused by that agger; a part of the wall of tufa was recently exposed to

view in rebuilding the house, No. 82, in that street. It went in a direct line across the south end of the Forum of Trajan towards the Quirinal, under the Torre delle Milizie. The Via di Marforio originally turned at a sharp angle outside of the agger to the gate. The Lautumia of the Mamertine Prison are now cellars under the houses in the southern part of that street, and partly under the street itself, which is modern in that part.

the north side and at the two ends of the Capitol can be traced. The part between the Capitol and the Quirinal was widened by Trajan to make his forum in it; but on the eastern side of the City the three hills (called colles) are only promontories from high table-land, and on this side the great agger of Servius Tullius was made for more than a mile, connecting the cliff at the north end of the Quirinal to that on the east side of the Esquiline. This completed the fortifications of the city proper, but it was usual in all fortifications to have a wall of enclosure called an enceinte, forming a double line of defence; and Tarquinius Superbus, the last of the kings, began another great agger, parallel to that of Servius Tullius, but some distance to the east of it. On part of this bank the aqueducts were carried, and afterwards made into part of the Wall of Aurelian. This external fortification was of much greater extent than was necessary for the population of Rome at that period, and the enormous labour required for it caused the great rebellion, under Brutus, which ended in the establishment of the Republic. The agger of Servius Tullius has long been considered as an established historical fact, and it can be distinctly traced along its whole length. Part of it was destroyed in making the railway, which cuts through it obliquely; at this point part of the bank faced with the wall of tufa is left visible, and the great inner foss, with a paved road at the bottom of it, twenty feet below the surface, was shewn in digging the foundations of the new railway station. A street of the time of the early Empire had been made on each side of this agger, or bank of earth. The backs of the houses were built into the bank, which was excavated for the purpose, so that there were no back windows to the houses. From this cause the agger was, in this part, entirely concealed in the time of the Empire, and it is only the demolition of the houses that has brought it to light again".

The existence of a great outer agger of Tarquin is disputed by some of the local antiquaries; but it is perfectly evident that the high Wall of Aurelian is built upon older fortifications of less height, probably those called mania, which consisted of a bank and foss. Such a bank would be faced with a wall of tufa, destroyed in making the high wall, or used as a foundation for it; but the old stones were used in many parts above-ground also, as on the south side of the Prætorian camp. Several of the gates are before the time of Aurelian, as is evident from the construction and by inscriptions upon

The remains of some of these houses were excavated, in 1868 and 1869, by

four of the young Roman Princes, who united for that purpose.

two of them. The Wall known by the name of Aurelian is in parts also built against a scarped cliff, in many places the ground being from ten to twenty feet higher within than it is in the road on the outside of the wall.

Many of the original cities conquered by the Romans have never been inhabited since they were taken; their walls remain, but the walls only, or they are nearly all that remains. Sometimes a Roman colony has been settled within the old walls, probably in part to defend them, and hinder an enemy from making use of them. They were sometimes inhabited in the middle ages also, as at Gabii, where we have a medieval church made out of a tomb of the first or second century. At Veii, the insula was originally a detached fortress to defend the approach to the city; this became a village, and is still inhabited. Collatia became a medieval castle, now called "Lunghezza." In other cases, as at Fidenæ, the scarped cliffs and traces of the gates are all that remain visible. It was not until after the introduction of lime-mortar into general use that houses of stone began to be built, and public buildings were erected before private houses.

The seven hills were not occupied all at once, but one after the other as they were required, and each was previously inhabited and fortified as it was wanted. The Palatine was the original fortress; to this the hill of Saturn, afterwards the Capitol, was united during the life-time of Romulus, and the Aventine had been taken possession of chiefly as pasture-ground about the same period. The Cœlian was added very soon afterwards; according to Varro in the life-time of Romulus, and according to Cicero about a century after his death, in the time of Tullus Hostilius. This was the traditional history, confirmed by existing remains, and that it was currently believed by the Romans in the time of the Empire, is evident from every writer on the subject at that period.

The three lower hills, the Viminal, Quirinal, and Esquiline had always been used as pasture-ground by the Sabines, who had the hill of Saturn for their arx or Capital, and were made part of THE CITY OF ROME by Servius Tullius, who erected his agger to

The construction of the Porta Ardeatina is clearly of the first century, and of about the time of Nero, the best period of brickwork in Rome. This gate, which is between the Aventine and the Porta di S. Sebastiano, or Appia, has long been closed. The Via Ardeatina, or road to Ardea, either passed through this gate, or began there. This very ancient road can be traced

in the vineyards as far as the chapel called "Domine quo vadis," about halfa-mile on the Via Appia; at that point the Via Ardeatina goes to the right and the Appia to the left, and it is evident that the line of the Via Appia has been made to deviate to the left for a short distance in order to avoid the Via Ardeatina, which must therefore have existed when the Via Appia was made.

protect them and incorporate them in the fortifications. About two centuries of rapid growth were required before the whole were fortified, but Rome soon acquired the name of the City of the Seven Hills. It is mentioned in that manner by Terentius Varro, writing about a century before the Christian era, as a customary designation; and he mentions the earthworks in defining the Subura, which he says was under the wall of earth of the Carinæ, that is, the bank on which a row of wooden cottages with keels or gableends had been built. He further quotes Junius to the same effect".

The existing remains of the primitive earthworks and early buildings of the city of Rome can only be explained by accepting the legendary history as it was recorded in the time of the Empire. Taking the words of the classical authors of that period in their full and natural meaning, and comparing them with the remains, all is clear; the plan and arrangement of the city, and the construction of the buildings agree with this history quite as well, if not better, than with the theories of some modern writers. Sufficient attention has not hitherto been paid to the plan of the original city, as compared with other early fortified cities, or to the dates of the buildings as shewn by their construction. This deficiency it is one of the objects of the present work to supply.

The art of fortification has continued with little alteration from the time of the Etruscans, or before them, until the introduction of artillery; even in our own day it has been found that the primitive mode of fortification, by means of earthen mounds and deep trenches or ditches, is still the most effectual, and every military engineer must take advantage of the natural levels of the country.

The mounds or small hills on which Rome was built afforded excellent opportunities for making almost impregnable fortifications. Each hill was a separate fortress originally, with the sides scarped into perpendicular cliffs, a terrace at the foot of the cliff, formed by the earth thrown down in the process of scarping, and beyond that a wide and deep foss, with usually a road at the bottom of it. There is no plan of Rome in which the ancient earthworks, elevations of the hills, and the different terraces on the sides of them in many instances, and especially the wide and deep trenches, the fosse and foss-ways of the primitive fortifications, are laid down, and

these have had immense influence on the whole subsequent plan and arrangement of the city a.

The custom of scarping the edge of a hill into a vertical cliff, and building a wall up against it to support the earth in that position when necessary, is found in all primitive fortifications of the time of the early Romans, and earlier in the Etruscan cities. The custom, moreover, was continued down to the Middle Ages, the medieval fortifications in Gaul and Britain being often built on old earthworks made at the time the country was defended against the Romans, or of which they had taken possession when required, and often by the Romans themselves, who fortified their camps in the same manner. It is far more common to find a castle or fortified city of any early date on the top of a hill with scarped cliffs than anywhere else; the walls of many medieval castles are built against the scarped cliff up to the level of the hill, and the upper part of the wall is carried up on this foundation. The foss-ways of the Romans, or of their time, are found all over Gaul and Britain, protected or covered by the bank or banks on the side of them; sometimes there is one bank only, with the road in the foss by the side of it; sometimes two, with the road between them.

The order in which the hills are recorded to have been fortified in succession seems perfectly natural, and is borne out by the existing remains of the original walls of the Esquiline, Viminal, and Aventine being of rather later character than those of the Palatine. A hill or mound, of which the sides have once been cut into perpendicular cliffs, can never be brought back to its original form again; it always remains a scarped hill, however it may be concealed in parts by buildings of later ages, although the foss may be more or less filled up. The primitive fossa were of very large dimensions, often twenty or thirty feet deep and very wide; such trenches are not easily filled up entirely, and may always be traced on examination. The width must necessarily be regulated by the nature of the ground and the situation, but the depth seems to have been

The plan which approaches most nearly to an accurate survey, is that of Nolli, on eight sheets, published in 1748, but in this no attempt is made to indicate the differences of level.

Canina's large map is chiefly traced from that of Nolli, with some attempt to place the fragments of the marble plan upon it. This is the best plan of ancient Rome now extant. The official plan, called del Censo, is considered to be the best plan of modern Rome, but it is not published, and is not easily ac