Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/678

Rh 654 P R J& P E, popes to be a great check on their freedom of action. In the hands of Henry YIII. praemunire became eventually a lever for the overthrow of papal supremacy. The last ancient statute concerning praemunire, until the Reforma tion, was the 2 Hen. IV. c. 3 (1400), by which all persons who accepted any provision from the pope to be exempt from canonical obedience to their proper ordinary were subjected to the penalties prescribed. Bishop Stubbs, 1 in summing up his account of the various statutes of prse- munire, succinctly says of them that they were intended to prevent encroachments on and usurpations of jurisdiction on the part of the pope, and he adds that the more import ant statute was that of 16 Rich. II. c. 5 (1392), which he describes as one of the strongest defensive measures taken during the Middle Ages against Rome, and which was called for in consequence of the conduct of the pope, who had forbidden the bishops to execute the sentences of the royal courts in suits connected with ecclesiastical patron age. Tomlins (Law Diet.) states that there is only one instance of a prosecution on a praemunire to be found in the state trials, in which case the penalties were inflicted upon some persons for refusing to take the oath of allegi ance to Charles II. It may be added that on an indict ment for pnemunire a peer might not be tried by his peers. See Coke, Instil. ; Collier, Ecd. Hist., 1708; Hallam, Middle Ages, 1868 ; Stephen, Comrn., 1853, and Hist. Crim. Law ; and Stubbs, Conatit. Hint., 1880. PR/EXESTE (now PALESTRINA), a very ancient city of Latium, lies 22 miles east of Rome on a spur of the Apen nines facing the Alban Hills. To the natural strength of the place and its commanding situation Praeneste owed in large measure its historical importance. The local tradition (adopted by Virgil) named Calculus, son of Vulcan, as founder. From the remains of Cyclopean masonry and other indications the foundation of the city has been referred to the 8th century B.C., and objects in metal and ivory discovered in the earliest graves prove that as early as this or the following century Praeneste had reached a considerable degree of civilization and stood in com mercial relations not only with Etruria but with the East. At this time the city was probably under the hegemony of Alba Longa, then the head of the Latin League. In 499, according to Livy, Praeneste withdrew from the Latin League and formed an alliance with Rome, but this state ment seems irreconcilable with a passage in Dionysius Halicarnensis (Ant. Horn., v. 61). After Rome had been weakened by the Gallic invasion (390), Praeneste joined its foes in a long struggle with Rome. The struggle cul minated in the great Latin War (340-338), in which the Romans were victorious, and Praeneste was punished for its share in the war by the loss of part of its territory. It was not, however, like the other Latin cities, embodied in the Roman state, but continued in the position of a city in alliance with Rome down to the Social War, when it, like the rest of Italy, received the Roman franchise (90 or 89). As an allied city it furnished contingents to the Roman army and possessed the right of exile (jus exility, i.e., persons banished from Rome were allowed to reside at Praeneste. To judge from the works of art and inscrip tions of this period (338 to 90 B.C.), it must have been for the place a time of prosperity and even luxury. The nuts of Praeneste were famous and its roses were amongst the finest in Italy. The Latin spoken at Praeneste was some what peculiar. 2 In the civil wars of Sulla the younger 1 Constit. Hist, of En y. (1880)7iiir356 sy. _ 2 Thus the Praenestines shortened some words : they said conin for ciconia, tammodo for tantummndo (Plaut, True., iii. 2, 23; Id. Trlnum., Hi. 1, 8 ; cp. Comment, on Festus, p. 731, ed. Lindemann)[ and inscriptions exhibit the forms Acmemeno and Tondrvs for Aya- memno and Tyndarus. They said nefrones for nt/rendes in the sense &amp;gt;f testiculi, and iongitio for nntio (Festus, s.v. &quot;nefrendes&quot; and &quot;tongere&quot;). Cp. Quintilian, Instit., i. 5, 56. Marius was blockaded in the town by the Sullans (82 B.C.) ; and on its capture Marius slew himself, the male inhabitants were massacred in cold blood, and a military colony was settled on part of its territory. It was prob ably about this time that the city was extended from the hill to the plain and that the temple of Fortune was enlarged so as to include much of the space occupied by the ancient city. Under the empire Praeneste, from its elevated situation and cool salubrious air, became a favour ite summer resort of the wealthy Romans, whose villas studded the neighbourhood. Horace ranked it with Tibur and Baia3, the Bath and Brighton of Rome. Augustus resorted thither ; here Tiberius recovered from a danger ous illness, and here Hadrian built himself a villa. Anto ninus erected a palace to the east of the town. Amongst private persons who owned villas at Pnenestu were Pliny the younger and Symmachus. But Pneneste was chiefly famed for its great temple of Fortune and for its oracle, in connexion with the temple, known as the &quot; Praenestine lots &quot; (sortes Prynestinx). As extended by Sulla the sanctuary of Fortune occupied a series of six vast terraces, which, resting on gigantic sub structions of masonry and connected with each other by grand staircases, rose one above the other on the hill in the form of the side of a pyramid, crowned on the highest terrace by the round temple of Fortune proper. This immense edifice, probably by far the largest sanctuary in Italy, must have presented a most imposing aspect, visible as it was from a great part of Latium, from Rome, and even from the sea. The goddess Fortuna here went by the name of Primigenia (First-Born, but perhaps in an active sense First-Bearer) ; she was represented suckling two babes, said to be Jupiter and Juno, and she was especially Avorshipped by matrons. 8 The oracle of the Prajnestine lots was very ancient and continued to be con sulted down to Christian times. Constantine and Theodo- sius forbade the practice and closed the temple. In 1297 the Colonna family who then owned Prasneste (Palestrina) revolted from the pope, but in the following year the town was taken and razed to the ground. In 1437 the city, which had been rebuilt, was captured by the papal general Cardinal Vitelleschi and once more utterly destroyed. It was rebuilt and fortified by Stefano Colonna in 1448. In 1630 it passed by purchase into the Barberini family. Praeneste was the native town of ^Elian and in modern times of the great composer Palestrina. The modern town of Palestrina, a collection of narrow and filthy alleys, stands on the terraces once occupied by the temple of Fortune. On the summit of the hill (2546 feet), nearly a mile from the town, stood the ancient citadel, the site of which is now occupied by a few poor houses (Castel San Pietro) and a mined mediaeval castle of the Colonnas. The magnificent view embraces Soracte, Rome, the Alban Hills, and the Campagna as far as the sea. Considerable portions of the southern wall of the ancient citadel, built in very massive polygonal (Cyclopean) blocks of limestone, are still to be seen ; and the two walls, also polygonal, which formerly united the citadel with the lower town, can still be traced. The ruins of the villa of Hadrian stand in the plain near the church of S. Maria 3 Hence Fernique (Etude sur Preneste) ingeniously conjectures that Fortuna was originally a goddess of maternity, and that the view of her functions as a goddess of chance was later, being due to the in fluence of Greek mythology, in which Chance (Ti^x 1 ?) was a goddess. Fortuna contains the same root asferre, &quot; to bear.&quot; Fernique observes that the worship of Fortuna was often associated with that of Feronia. Statuettes in terra-cotta representing a woman with a child at her breast have been found at Prreneste. These are supposed by Fernique to be votive offerings, representing not the goddess but the mothers who offered them at the shrine in fulfilment of vows. Fortuna was some times represented in the form of two (or possibly more) females, so at Antium (Macrobius, Sat., i. 23, 13 ; Sueton., Cal., 57), and perhaps at Praeneste (Statius, Sylv., i. 3, 80) ; in one of the Roman temples of Fortuna there was a mysterious veiled figure. Analogous to Fortuna in her double capacity as prophetess and patron of mothers was Car- menta, and she too was sometimes represented in double form (Ovid, Fasti, i. 617 sq. ; Aulus Gellius, xvi. 16).