Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/515

 HOMAN EXPLORATION FUXD. To tliosc who have not seen these accounts for previous years, and who do not know Rome, some explanation of them seems necessary. Tlie fund is open to all the world, and the anti([uities of Rome are of equal interest to the inhabitants of all the provinces of the old Roman empire. Amonp; the contributors to this fund have been a well known and distinguished lady who wishes to remain anonymous, and who con- tinues to give a hundred pounds a year to it, H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, the Univei'sity of Oxford, the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Societe Archeol(jgi([ue de France (of which the venerable ^L de Caumout, the father of French archjeology, was the founder and the acting head for forty 3'ears), and several individual members of both the P^nglish and French societies. Among them are other persons of dis- tinction, such as the Marquis of Westminster, the Marquis of Salisbuiy (Chancellor of the University of Oxford), Gore Langton, Esq., M.P., and other members of both Houses of Pai-liament. AncnJKOLOGY is neces- sarily neutral and international ; the Pope and the King of Italy, xI. Thiers and the Emperors of Germany and Russia, might each subscribe to it with propriety, if they liked to do so. The payments require explanation to strangers. The Cavaliere Guidi is a dealer in antiquities, who has for many years kept a gang of navvies in his employment ; and they are excellent excavators, and very careful to preserve all ol)ject3 found ; but the object of our excavations has not been to look for statues or other works of art, but to investigate the historical topography of Rome by means of these excavations (and we have always found what we have looked for). Guidi and his men were frequently employed by the Pope ; and wheii we found the short agger of Servius Tullius from the clifis of the Ctelian, to those of the Aventine, with the aqueducts iipon it, and the remains of the Porta Capena in it, Guidi induced his Holiness to go and see it, and his Holiness said there was no denying that this was part of the wall of Servius Tullius (which had previously been denied by the local antiquaries). Dr. Fabio Gori is a friend of Guidi, and hixs been long accustomed to direct his men in their researches, and he is a learned antiquary. Being a native of Subi:co, not of Rome, he is more free from the prejudices of the local school, or what are called the " Roman traditions" (which are only the conjectures of former generations of local antiquaries during the last three centuries). Dr. Gori was of gi'cat service to us in tracing out the line of the aqueducts from Sul>iaco to Rome, and accompanied his friend Signor Ernesto di Mauro, the surveyor, in making the excellent map of their course from Subiaco to Rome on which also the other anti- quities are marked, and being on a very largo scale it is by far the best map of theanticpiities of the Canipagna that has ever been made. Signor