Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/681

 PRAENESTE. colonial rank and condition. Cicero mentions it by the title of a Colonia (Cic. in Cat. i. 3); and though neither Pliny nor the Liber Coloniarum give it that appellation, its colonial dignity under the Empire is abundantly attested by numerous inscriptions. (Zunipt, de Colon, p. 254 ; Lib. Colon, p. 236 ; Orell. Imcr. 1831, 3051, &c.) A. GeUius indeed has a story that the Praenestines applied to Tiberius as a favour to be changed from a colony into a Municipium ; but if their request was really granted, as he asserts, the change could have lasted for but a short time. (Gell. iV. A. xvi. 13 ; Zumpt, I. c.) We find scarcely any mention of Praeneste to- vrards the decline of the Western Empire, nor does its name figure in the Gothic wars which followed : but it appears again under the Lombard kings, and bears a conspicuous part in the middle ages. At this period it was commonly known as the Civitas Praenestina, and it is this form of the name — which is already found in an inscription of a. d. 408 (Orell. Inscr. 105) — that has been gradually cor- rupted into its modern appellation of Palestrina. The modern city is built almost entirely upon the site and gigantic substructions of the temple of Fortune, which, after its restoration and enlarge- ment by Sulla, occupied the whole of the lower slope of the hill, the summit of which was crowned by the ancient citadel. This hill, which is of very considerable elevation (being not less than 2400 feet above the sea, and more than 1 200 above its immediate base), projects like a great buttress or bastion from the angle of the Apennines towards the Alban Hills, so that it looks down upon and seems to command the whole of the Campagna around Rome. It is this position, combined with the great strength of the citadel arising from the elevation and steeDne.ss of the hill on which it stands, that rendered Praeneste a position of such importance. The sit* of the ancient citadel, on the summit of the hill, is now occupied by a castle of the middle ages called Castel S. Pietro : but a con- siderable part of the ancient walls still remains, constructed in a very massive style of polygonal blocks of limestone ; and two irregular lines of wall of similar construction descend from thence to the lower town, which they evidently served to connect with the citadel above. The lower, or modem town, rises in a somewhat pyramidal manner on successive terraces, supported by walls or facings of polygonal masonry, nearly resembling that of the walls of the city. There can be no doubt that these successive stages or terraces at one time belonged to the temple of Fortune ; but it is probable that they are of much older date than the time of Sulla, and pre- viously formed part of the ancient city, the streets of which may have occupied these lines of terraces in the same manner as those of the modern town do at the present day. There are in all five successive terraces, the highest of which was crowned by the temple of Fortune properly so called, — a circular building with a vaulted roof, the ruins of which remained till the end of the 13th century, when they were destroyed by Pope Boniface VIII. Below this wa,s a hemicycle, or semicircular building, with a portico, the plan of which may be still traced ; and on one of the inferior terraces there still remains a mosaic, celebrated as one of the most perfect and interesting in existence. Various at- teinjits have been made to restore the plan and elevation of the temple, an edifice wholly unlike any other of its kind ; but they are all to a great extent PRAENESTE. 665 conjectural. A detailed account of the existing remains, and of all that can be traced of the plan and arrangement, will be found in Nibby. (Din- torni, vol. ii. p. 494 — 510.) The celebrity of the shrine or sanctuary of Fur- tune at Praeneste is attested by many ancient writers (Ovid, Fast. vi. 61; Sil. Ital. viii. 366 ; Lucan, ii. 194 ; Strab. v. p. 238), and there is no doubt that it derived its origin from an early period. Cicero, who speaks of the temple in his time as one of great antiquity as well as splendour, gives us a legend derived from the records of the Praenestines concerning its foundation, and the in- stitution of the oracle known as the Sortes Prae- nestinae, which was closely associated with the worship of Fortune. (Cic. de Div. ii. 41.) So ce- lebrated was this mode of divination that not only Romans of distinction, but even foreign potentates, are mentioned as consulting them (Val. Max. i. 3. §1; Liv. xlv. 44; Propert. iii. 24. 3); and though Cicero treats them with contempt, as in his day obtaining credit only with the vulgar, we are told by Suetonius that Tiberius was deterred by religious scruples from interfering with them, and Domitian consulted them every year. Alexander Severus also appears, on one occasion at least, to have done the same. (Suet. Tih. 63, Bomit. 15; Lamprid. Alex. Sev. 4.) Numerous inscriptions also prove that they continued to be frequently con- sulted till a late period of the Empire, and it was not till after the establishment of Christianity that the custom fell altogether into disuse. (Inscr. ap. Bormann, pp. 212,213; Orelli, Inscr. 1756 — 1759.) The Praenestine goddess seems to have been spe- cially known by the name of Fortuna Primigenia, and her worship was closely associated with that of the infant Jujiiter. (Cic. de Div. I. c; Inscr. ut sup.) Another title under which Jupiter was spe- cially worshipped at Praeneste was that of Jupiter Imperator, and the statue of the deity at Rome which bore that appellation was considered to have been brought from Praeneste (Liv. vi. 29). The other ancient remains which have been dis- covered at Palestrina belong to the later city or the colony of Sulla, and are situated in the jilain at some distance from the foot of the hill. Among these are the extensive ruins of the villa or palace of the emperors, which appears to have been built by Hadrian about A. D. 134. They resemble much in their general style those of his villa at Tivoli, but are much inferior in preservation as well as in extent. Near them is an old church still called Sta Maria della Villa. It was not far from this spot that were discovered in 1773 the fragments of a Roman calendar, sup- posed to be the same which was arranged by the grammarian Verrius Flaccus, and set up by him in the forum of Praeneste. (Suet. Gramm. 17.) They are commonly called the Fasti Praenestini,and have been repeatedly published, first by Foggini (fol. Romae, 1779), with an elaborate commen- tary; and again as an apjiendix to the edition of Suetonius by Wolf (4 vols. Svo. Lips. 1802); also in Orelli (Inscr. vol. ii. p. 379, &c.). Not- withstanding this evidence, it is improbable that the forum of Praeneste was so far from the foot of the hill, and its site is more probably indicated by the discovery of a number of pedestals with honorary inscriptions, at a spot near the SW. angle of the modern city. These inscriptions range over a period from the reign of Tiberius to the fifth century, thus