ib. Lowest Story, two Doorways cut in the Rock only Steep Staircase to the Offices of the Ærarium, mentioned by Cicero THE ÆRARIUM, called after Saturn by Suetonius and Varro That it was part of this building is shewn by Tacitus, Cæsar, Cicero, That this building was of great extent is shewn by several authors ib. 41 Temple of Saturn, and Stairs from it to the offices of the Treasury One Temple of Concord within the wall of the Arx, not two Wall to enclose the Hill of Saturn and the Palatine in one City The line of this wall traced by existing remains of it Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on the Tarpeian rock, built by the Ruins of it remain on the summit of the Tarpeian rock HOUSE OF HORTENSIUS, purchased by Augustus, site and remains of 55 The Remains, called the House of Augustus by Rancourail and the Roman antiquaries, are part of the Palace of Domitian, whose The Senate added State Apartments to it. Remains both of the original house and of the additions to it, excavated in 1869–70. ib. Augustus was born in another part of the Palatine, and the house in which he was born was afterwards made a temple in his honour Palace of Tiberius was on the west side towards the Circus Maximus Remains of it faced with Opus Reticulatum of his time Bridge of Caligula carried an Aqueduct, and a road from the Palatine CHAPTER III. THE DIFFERENT MODES OF CONSTRUCTION EMPLOYED IN ANCIENT ROMAN BUILDINGS, AND THE PERIODS WHEN EACH WAS FIRST INTRODUCED. THE building-materials employed in Rome-besides marble for ornament—are stone, clay for bricks, sand, lime. The varieties of stone are : I. Tufa, a volcanic sandstone, generally soft and of a light yellow, almost white in summer when it is dry, or some varieties light red, called by Vitruvius, lapis ruber. The tophus of Vitruvius is not the same as the tufa of Rome, but corresponds to the pumex (VI.) Tufa is called by Virgil and Pliny tofus. e The ancient quarries of this are in the Coelian, Aventine, and Capitoline hills, the modern ones in the Campagna'. The walls of Romulus are entirely of this material, and were probably built from quarries in the Palatine Hill itself, or cut out of the trenches of the original fortifications. The arches and vaults of the Cloaca Maxima and of the Mamertine Prison are of tufa. II. Lapis Albanus, now called peperino, also a volcanic sandstone, but hard and rough, the surface covered with knobs of flint, resembling pepper-corns, hence the name. There are ancient quarries at Albano, near the gate of the town; another near Alba-Longa, on Monte Cavo. The one at Marino, still in use, is also ancient; the colour is gray with a tinge of green. In this Chapter I have been much indebted to an essay on the subject by the Cavaliere C. L. Visconti, written for the British Archæological Society of Rome. See Vitruvius de Architectura, lib. ii. c. 7. When tufa is wet and exposed to the weather it is often of quite a dark colour, looking at a distance almost black; it is a very porous stone, and absorbs the moisture. d Virgilii Georgic., lib. vii. v. 214. • Plinii Nat. Hist., lib. xvii. s. 4. ! See Brocchi-Suola fisico di Roma, for a description of the quarries of tufa on the hills of Rome. There are also very large ancient quarries of tufa on the bank of the river Anio, near the sources of the Aqua B Appia, on the edge of the meadows of Lucullus, and another series nearer to Rome called the Caves of Cervaro. It is supposed that the stones for the great Wall of Servius Tullius were brought from these quarries, and were floated down the Anio on rafts. Tufa varies very much in hardness and other qualities, as well as in colour. The different layers or beds of it in Rome and in the Campagna vary very much in thickness also, but the beds are generally about ten or twelve feet thick, alternately hard and soft. Some of the latomia, lautumiæ, or quarries of the Palatine, are visible in the excavations made by the Emperor of the French, near the foundations of the temple said to be that of Jupiter Stator. Of this material are part of the agger of Servius Tullius; the great wall fifty feet high and twelve thick, on the eastern side of the Forum of Augustus, (with the wall of travertine on the north side of the Forum Transitorium inserted in it, about a fourth of the height,) also the wall on the opposite side of the latter forum, on the greater part of which the backs of the houses are built, but a part has been cased with marble, and had the fine cornice and detached marble columns of the Temple of Pallas built up against it. III. Lapis Gabinus, called sperone; this resembles the peperino so much that it is not always easy to distinguish them, but peperino is harder than sperone. The ancient quarries are at Gabii. The triple arch at the mouth of the Cloaca Maxima, inserted in the tufa wall called the Pulchrum Littus—the Arco de Pantano', also inserted in the great tufa wall of the Kings-the substructure of the Tabularium,—and the Ponte di Nono—are all of this material. These two stones resist fire, and were ordered by Nero to be used A.D. 64, after the great fire in Rome. The Lapis Gabinus is also believed to have been used originally, before even the peperino. IV. Lapis Tiburtinus, called travertino or travertine, a limestone, the ancient quarries of which are between Tibur or Tivoli and Aquæ Albulæ, near the river Anio. The stone was probably floated down to Rome on rafts. It is white when new, and becomes a warm yellow. The columns of the temple of the Sibyl-the tomb of the Plautia family at Tivoli-the tomb of Cæcilia Metella—and the Colosseum, are well-known examples of this stone. It is the stone generally used in the buildings of the first three centuries of the Christian era in Rome. V. Silex, called selce, a basaltic lava resembling iron in colour, and almost as hard; it gives out sparks when struck with iron. Several currents of this lava cross the Campagna, coming from the crater, now the Lake of Albano, and extending near to Rome: one reaches as far as the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, two miles from Rome on the Via Appia. It is used for concrete, and pavements. It was first used for this latter purpose in A.U.C. 578 (B.C. 145), as mentioned by Livy (xli. 28). VI. Pumex, or pumice-stone, is a very light material, calcareous and full of holes, which is chiefly used for vaulting. The quarries are on Mount Vesuvius. The vaults of the Colosseum and the Pantheon are of this light material. See Cossi-Trattato delle pietre antiche, p. 70. This name is applied also to flint. Pliny calls it Lapis Tusculanus, Nat. VII. Later, or brick'. The walls of Babylon", and Persepolis, and other ancient cities, were of brick, frequently sun-dried only, and the only cement used in them was bitumen. The Roman bricks are well burnt in kilns, and cemented with good limemortar; the earliest are made from the mud of the Tiber. They are not found in Rome before the time of Camillus, and were generally used as external brick linings to concrete walls to make a smooth surface, which was sometimes to be afterwards faced with marble slabs, or to be covered with bronze plates, as at the Pantheon of Agrippa. The most ancient bricks are flat, like tiles, mixed with Pozzolana sand, very well made and very hard. VIII. Materia", or mortar, made with lime and sand. The sand is of two kinds; Fossicia, or river sand, and Pozzolana, (Pulvis Puteolanus). The quarries of this sand extend over the Campagna on the eastern and southern side of Rome, and are often many miles long, in corridors or roads always at the same level underground, with many branches, and with sidings at intervals to enable the carts to pass each other; the entrances to them are walled up when they are abandoned. The best Pozzolana sand is always rough; it crackles in the hand when rubbed, and leaves no stain on a white dress, as Vitruvius mentions. The Materia, or mortar, if well made, consists of three parts of sand, and one of lime. The lime should always be quite fresh; the mortar then becomes as hard and durable as natural concrete stone. Pounded brick, or sometimes pounded stone, or the dust of stone made in sawing it, is often used instead of Pozzolana sand, in countries where the sand cannot readily be obtained. Whitewash was made with river sand and broken pottery, and should be half lime according to Vitruvius. A particular kind of mortar or cement was used for the aqueducts in the time of the Empire, called in Latin, opus signinum, in Italian, coccio pesto. This is made of broken brick or pottery with good fresh lime, always used hot. This particular kind of cement is in general a certain indication of an aqueduct, or of one of the reservoirs or filtering-places belonging to them; but it is sometimes used for floors, also to keep out the moisture from the soil beneath, as in the chambers of the Mamertine Prison, when it was partly rebuilt in the time of the Emperor Tiberius. See Vitruvius, lib. ii. c. 3, de teria; also c. 4, de arena (or sand); Lateribus. c. 5, de calce (or lime); c. 6, de pulvere Puteolano. Herodotus, Clio, i. 178. "See Vitruvius, lib. ii. c. 9, de Ma CONSTRUCTION.-OPUS QUADRATUM. This is the earliest kind of construction in stone, and should be divided into several periods. The stones are squared but not necessarily square, they are usually oblong, and in the earliest examples these large stones are laid alternately lengthwise and crosswise like the modern bricks, called Flemish bricks, generally used in England. The earliest and best example in Rome is the wall on the Palatine, called the Wall of Romulus, which is decidedly of Etruscan character, the same as the walls of Fiesole, of Perugia, Cortona, Volterra, and other Etruscan cities, where the material is the same. But this character is not confined to the Etruscan cities, it is the construction of that period, it is found equally in the Latin cities, with slight variation, as at Alba Longa, in the walls of the Arx, and at Gabii, and many other parts of Italy, far away from Etruria. It belongs generally to an early period, but not by any means always; it depends more on the material, and the quarries that the stone comes from, than anything else. In the temple of Solomon at Jerusalem, the earliest building of the kind of which we have any record, the walls were of large blocks of stone, very similar to those of the walls of the kings at Rome, only larger, and as a general rule the older a wall is the larger the stones are; but this must of course depend on the building material. All the ornamentations were of cedar-wood and bronze (as will be seen by the following extracts): "And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains; beside the chief of Solomon's officers which were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work. And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house. And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stonesquarers so they prepared timber and stones to build the house. . . . And the house which king Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was threescore cubits (90 feet), and the breadth thereof twenty cubits (30 feet), and the height thereof thirty cubits (45 feet). And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was the length thereof, according to the breadth of the house; and ten cubits was the breadth thereof before the house. And for the house he made windows of narrow lights. And against the walls of the house he built chambers round about, both of the temple and of the oracle: and he made chambers round about the nethermost chamber was five cubits broad, and the middle was six cubits broad, and the third was seven cubits broad: for without in the wall of the house he made narrowed rests round about, that the beams should not be fastened in the walls of the house. And the house, when it was in building, was built of • See Vitruvius, lib. ii. c. 8, de generibus structuræ. |