Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/783

 ROMA. &c,, which are often used without any precise signi- fication. With these prehminary remarks we shall proceed to examine the question as to which summit was oc- cupied by the Capitoline temple. And as several arguments have been adduced by Becker (Handb. ■pp. 387 — 395) in favour of the SW. summit, which he deems to be of such force and cogency as " com- pletely to decide " the question, it will be necessary to examine them seriatim, before we proceed to state our own opinion. They are chiefly drawn from nar- ratives of attempts to surprise or storm the Capitol, and the first on the list is the well-known story of Herdonius, as related by Dionysius of Halicarnas- sus (x. 14) : " Herdonius," says Becker, " lands by night at the spot where the Capitol lies, and where the hill is not the distance of a stadium from the river, and therefore manifestly opposite to its western point. He forces a passage through the Camiental gate, which lay on this side, ascends the height, and seizes the fortress {(ppovptov). Hence he presses forwards still farther to the neighbouring citadel, of which he also gains possession. This narrative alone suffices to decide the question, since the Capitol is expressly mentioned as being next to the river, and the Carmental gate near it : and since the band of Herdonius, after taking possession of the ■western height, proceeds to the adjoining citadel" (p. 388). In this interpretation of the narrative some things are omitted which are necessary to the proper under- standing of it, and others are inserted which are by no means to be found there. Dionysius does not say that Herdonius landed at the spot where the Capitol lies, and where the hill is only a stade from the river, but that he landed at that part of Rome where the Capitoline hill is, at the distance of not quite a stade from the river. Secondly, Becker assumes that cppovpiov is the Capitol, or, as he calls it, by begging the whole question, " the western height." But his greatest misrepresentation arises from omitting to state that Dionysius, as his text stands, describes the Carmental gate as left open in pursuance of some divine or oracular command (kuto, Ti ^fiT(paTov); whereas Becker's words (" er dringt durch das Carmentalische Thor") would lead the reader to believe that the passage was forced by Herdonius. Now it has been shown that the Porta Carmentalis was one of the city gates; and it is im- possible to believe that the Romans were so besotted, or rather in such a state of idiotcy, that, after build- ing a huge stone wall round their city at great ex- pense and trouble, they should leave one of their gates open, and that too without a guard upon it ; thus rendering all their elaborate defences useless and abortive. We have said withotit a guard, be- cause it appears from the narrative that the first obstacle encountered by Herdonius was the (ppovpiov, which according to Becker was the Capitol; so that he must have passed through the Vicus Jugarius, over the forum, and ascended the Clivus Capitolinus without interruption. It is evident, however, that Dionysius could not have intended the Carmental gate, since he makes it an entrance not to the city but to the Capitol (kpal TtvAai tov KairiTOjAiou) ; and that he regarded it as seated upon an eminence, is plain from the expression that Herdonius made his men ascend through it (ayaSigatras tV Svvafxiv). The text of Dionysius is manifestly corrupt or inter- polated ; which further appears from the fact that when he was describing the real Carmental gate ROMA. "63 (i. 32), he used the adjective form Kap/jLevTis (jrapa rats Kapiu.evTia-1 TruAais), whilst in tlie present in- stance he is made to use the form Kapfxevrivos. Her- donius must have landed Jefo?« the line of wall running from the Capitoline to the river, where, as the wall was not continued along its banks, he would have met with no obstruction. And this was evidently the reason why he brought down his men in boats; for if the Carmental gate had been always left open it would have been better for him to have marched overland, and thus to have avoided the protracted and hazardous operation of landing his men. It is clear, as Preller has pointed out (Schneidewin's Plii- lologus i. p. 85, note), that Dionysius, or rather per- haps his transcribers or editors, has here confounded the Porta Carmentalis with the Porta Pandana, which, as we have before seen, was seated on the Capitoline hill, and always left open, for there could hardly have been two gates of this descrip- tion. The Porta Pandana, as we have already said, was still in existence in the time of Varro (/,. L. v. § 42, MiilL), and was in fact the entrance to the ancient fort or castellum — the tppoi'pioi' of Diony- sius — which guarded the approach to the Capitoline hill, of course on its E. side, or towards the forum, where alone it was accessible. Thus Solinus: " lideni (Herculiscomites) et montemCapitolinum Saturnium nominarunt, Castelli quoque, quod excitaverunt, por- tam Saturniam appellaverunt, quae postmodum Pan- dana vocitata est" (i. 13). We also learn from Festus, who mentions the same castrum, or fort, that it was situated in the lower part of the Clivus Capitolinus. " Saturnii quoque dicebantur, qui castrum in imo clivo Capitolino incolebant" (p. 322, MiilL). This, then, was the ^ppovpiov first captured by Herdonius, and not, as Becker supposes, the Capitol : and hence, as that writer says, he pressed on to the western height, which, however, was not the Capitol but the Arx. When Dionysius says of the latter that it adjoined, or was connected with, the Capitolinm, this was intended for his Greek readers, who would otherwise have supposed, from the fiishion of their own cities, that the Arx or Acropolis formed quite a separate hill. The story of Herdonius, then, instead of being " alone decisive," and which Becker ( Warming, pp. 43, 44) called upon Braun and Preller to explain, be- fore they ventured to say a word more on the subject, proves absolutely nothing at all ; and we pass on to the next, that of Pontius Cominius and the Gauls. " The messenger climbs the rock at the spot nearest the river, by the Porta Carmentalis, where the Gauls, who had observed his footsteps, afterwards make the same attempt. It is from this spot that Manlius casts them down " (p. 389). This is a fair representation of the matter; but the question re- mains, when the messenger had donib the rock was he in the Capitol or in the Arx ? The passages quoted as decisive in favour of the former arc the following : " Inde (Cominius) qua proximum fuit a ripa, per praeruptum eoque neglectum hostium custodiae saxum in Capitolinm evadit." (Liv. v. 46.) " Galli, seu vestigio notato humano, sen sua .sponto animadverso ad Carmentis saxoium adsccnsu aequo — in sumnuim evasere" (76.47). Now, it is plain, that in the former of these passages Livy means the Capitoline hill, and not tiie Capitol strictly so called; since, in regard to a small space, like the Capitol Proper, it would be a useless and absurd distinction, if it lay, and was known to lie, next the river, to say that Cominius mounted it " where it