Page:EB1911 - Volume 23.djvu/638

REGIONES]

In spite of the extensive growth of the city under the republic no addition was made to the four regiones of Servius till the reign of Augustus, who divided the city and its suburbs into fourteen regiones. The lists in the Notitia and Curiosum are the chief aids in determining the limits

of each, which in many cases cannot be done with any exactness (see Preller, Die Regionen der Stadt Rom (1846) and Urlich's Codex Topographicus (Würzburg, 1871)). Each regio was divided into vici or parishes, each of which formed a religious body, with its aedicula larum, and had magistri victorum. The smallest regio (No. II.) contained seven vici, the largest (No. XIV.) seventy-eight.

The list is as follows:—

The walls of Aurelian (see fig. 7), more than 12 m. in circuit, enclosed almost the whole of the regiones of Augustus, the greater part of which were then thickly inhabited. This enormous work was begun in 271, to defend Rome against sudden attacks of the Germans and other northern races when the

great armies of Rome were fighting in distant countries. After the death of Aurelian the walls were completed by Probus in 280, and about a century later they were restored and strengthened by the addition of gate-towers under Arcadius and Honorius ( 403), in place of the earlier gateways of Aurelian; this is recorded by existing inscriptions on three of the gates. At many periods these walls suffered much more from the attacks of the Goths (Procop, Bell. Goth. iii. 22, 24), and were restored successively by Theodoric (about 500), by Belisarius (about 560), and by various popes during the 8th and 9th centuries, and in fact all through the middle ages. A great part of the Aurelian wall still exists in a more or less perfect state; but it has wholly vanished where it skirted the river, and a great part of its trans-Tiberine course is gone. The best-preserved pieces are between Porta Pinciana and Porta Salaria (in which breaches have lately been made for streets), and between the Lateran and the Amphitheatrum Castrense. The wall, of concrete, has the usual brick-facing and is about 12 ft. thick, with a guard's passage formed in its thickness. Fig. 13 shows its plan: on the inside the passage has tall open arches, which look like those of an aqueduct, and at regular intervals of about 45 ft. massive square towers are built, projecting on the outside of the wall, in three storeys, the top storey rising above the top of the wall. The height of the wall varies according to the contour of the ground; in parts it was about 60 ft. high outside and 40 inside. Necessaria, supported on two travertine corbels, projected from the top of the wall on the outside beside most of the towers. The Einsiedeln MS. gives a description of the complete circuit, counting fourteen gates, as follows:—

Porta S. Petri (at the Pons Aelius, destroyed); P. Flaminia (replaced by P. del Popolo); P. Pinciana (in use); P. Salaria (now P. Salara); P. Nomentana (replaced by P. Pia); P. Tiburtina (now P. S. Lorenzo); P. Praenestina (now P. Maggiore); P. Asinaria (replaced by P. San Giovanni); P. Metrovia or Metroni (closed); P. Latina (closed); P. Appia (now P. S. Sebastiano); P. Ostiensis (now P. S. Paolo). On the Janiculan side, P. Portuensis (destroyed); P. Aurelia (now Porta San Pancrazio). Besides these there was a gate, now closed (Porta Chiusa), to the south of the Castra Praetoria; and in all probability a gate on the right bank of the Tiber, replaced by the modern Porta Settimiana.

These existing gates are mostly of the time of Honorius; each is flanked by a projecting tower, and some are double, with a second pair of towers inside. Several have grooves for a portcullis (cataracta) in the outer arch. The handsomest gate is the P. Appia, with two massive outer towers, three stages high, the upper semicircular in plan. Many of the gates of Honorius have Christian symbols or inscriptions. The general design of all these gates is much the same—a central archway, with a row of windows over it and two flanking towers, some square, others semicircular in plan. In many of the gates older materials are used, blocks of tufa, travertine, or marble. The doors themselves swung on pivots, the bottom ones let into a hole in the threshold, the upper into projecting corbels,

At many points along the line of the Aurelian wall older buildings form part of the circuit—near the Porta Asinaria a large piece of