Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/840

Rh 814 ROME [TOPOGRAPHY AND agger, is in parts about 33 feet from the front one, but it varies in this respect ; in other parts the agger appears to have been more PLAN OF WALL. (. 10. 20. 30. 40. 90. -11.6 X 9.0 X 11.6--- AGGER. Fio. P. Section and plan (double scale) of wall and agger of Servius. A, A. Undisturbed earth of fossa. B. Earth heaped up to form the agger. C. Road at brink of f >ssa. D. Wall and buttress. E. Back retaining wall of agger. F. Level to which the fossa was filled up and built upon under the empire. than 50 feet thick. Between the railway station and the Dogana a fine lofty piece of the front wall remains, with traces of the Porta Viminalis and of the lower back wall. Unfortunately the whole of the bank or agger proper has been removed, and the rough back of the great retaining wall exposed. Both tufa and peperino are used; the blocks vary in length, but average in depth the usual 2 Roman feet. The railway cutting which has destroyed a great part of the agger showed clearly the section of the whole work : the strata of different kinds of soil which appeared on the sides of the foss appeared again in the agger, but reversed as they naturally would be in the process of digging out and heaping up. Dionysius (ix. 68) states the length of the agger to have been 7 stadia that is, about 1400 yards which agrees (roughly speaking) with the actual discoveries. Originally one road ran along the bottom of the foss and another along its edge ; the latter existed in imperial times. But the whole foss appears to have been filled up, probably in the time of Augustus, and afterwards built upon ; houses of mixed brick and opus reticulatum still exist against the outside of the great wall, which was itself used as the back wall of these houses, so that we now see painted stucco of the time of Hadrian covering parts of the wall of the kings. Another row of houses seems to have faced the road mentioned above as running along the upper edge of the foss, thus forming a long street. As early as the time of Augustus a very large part of the wall of the kings had been pulled down and built over, so that even then its circuit was difficult to trace (Dionys., iv. 13). A very curious series of masons' marks exists on the buildings of the regal period, es- pecially on the stones of the agger wall and those of the small cellse on the Palatine near the Scalae Caci. They are deeply incised, usually on the ends of the blocks, and aver- ON THE AOC ER WALL Fio. 10. Masons' marks on walls of the regal period. age from 10 to 14 inches in length : some are single letters or monograms ; others are numbers ; and some are doubtful signs, e.g., 4,, which may be the numeral 50 or the Etruscan CH. Fig. 10 shows the chief forms from the Palatine and Esquiline. 1 The Servian city did not include what is now the most crowded part of Rome, and which under the empire was the most architect- urally magnificent, 2 namely, the great Campus Martius, which was probably to a great extent a marsh. It was once called Ager Tarquiniorum, but after the expulsion of the Tarquins was named Campus Martius from an altar to Mars, dating from prehistoric times (Liv., ii. 5). 8 Of that wonderful system of massive arched sewers 4 by which, as Dionysius (iii. 68) says, every street of Rome was drained into the Tiber considerable remains exist, especially of the Cloaca Max- ima, which runs from the valley of the Subura, under the Forum (see Plate VII.), along the Velabrum, and so into the Tiber by the 1 See Bruzza, in Ann. Inst., 1876, p. 72 ; Jordan, Topogr., 1. p. 259. 2 It was specially that part of the Campus Martius which was named after the Circus Flaminius that was remarkable for its architectural splendour. 3 On this whole subject consult Nibby and Cell, Le Mura di Roma, 1820 ; Piale, Port* del Jtecinto di Servio, 1833 ; Becker, De Romas Mwris, Leipsic, 1842 ; Lanciani, Ann. Inst., 1871, p. 40, Mm. Tnst., ix. pi. xxvii., also Ann. Inst., 1857, p. 62, and Mon. Inst., vi. pi. iv. ; Quarenghi, Le Mura di Roma, 1880 (taken from Lanciani) ; comp. Vitruvius, i. 5. < See Liv., i. 38, 56 ; Dionys., iv. 44. round temple in the Forum Boarium ; it is still in use, and well preserved at most places. Its mouth, an archway in the great quay wall (ndXr) Atcrrf} nearly 11 feet wide by 12 high, consists of three rings of peperiuo "voussoirs," most neatly fitted. The rest of the vault and walls is built of mixed tufa and peperino. 5 Pliny (H.N., xxxvi. 24) gives an interesting account of what is probably this great sewer, big enough (he says) for a loaded hay-cart to pass along. The mouths of two other similar but smaller cloacae are still visible in the great quay wall near the Cloaca Maxima, and a whole network of sewers exists under a great part of the Servian city. Some of these are not built with arched vaults, but have triangular tops formed of courses of stone on level beds, each pro- jecting over the one below, a very primitive method of construc- tion, employed in the Tulliauum (see fig. 11). The great quay Great wall of tufa and peperino which lined both banks of the Tiber for a quay considerable distance also belongs to the regal period, and was a wall. work of great solidity and strength ; it is now mostly destroyed by the action of the river. In later times this massive wall was ex- tended, as the city grew, all along the bank of the Campus Martius, and, having lost its importance as a line of defence, had frequent flights of stairs built against it, descending to the river. Some of these are shown in one of the fragments of the marble plan (see Jordan, For. Ur, Rom. Frag. 169). In 1879 a travertine block was dredged up inscribed P. BARRONTVS. BARBA. AED. CVR. GRADOS. REFECIT, dating from the 1st century B.C. This records the repair of one of these numerous river stairs. The name "pul- chrum littus " is not a classical term, but simply a translation of Plutarch's Kdi] #KT??. 6 The Tullianum is probably, next to the remains of Roma Quad- Tulli rata, the earliest of the existing buildings of Rome. It is partly cut in the tufa rock of the Capitoline Hill and partly built of 2 -feet blocks of tufa, set with thin beds of pure lime mortar, in courses projecting one over the other (see fig. 11). Its name is probably de- rived, not from Servius Tullius, as Varro (v. 151) asserts, but from an early Latin word, tullius, a spring of water ; its original use was probably that of a cistern or well. It was closed by a conical vault, arched in shape, but not construc- tionally an arch, very like the so-called "tomb of Agamemnon " at Mycenaj, and many early Etrus- can tombs. When the upper room with its arched vault, also of tufa, H-.10 Tmilf tliA FIG- 11. Plan and section of the Tullianum or " Mamer- c IT. tine prison." A. Opening in floor over the Tulliammi. upper part OI the g > 3. g ijd tufa rock. C, C. Branch of cloaca. D, E. cone seems to Position of modern stairs and door. F, F. Front wall have been re- of P rison witl1 inscription of 22 A.D. G. Probable ori- j j a x ginal top of Tullianum. moved, and a flat ' stone floor (a flat arch in construction) substituted. This cannot be other than the "career . . . media urbe imininens foro" of Livy (i. 33), who speaks also (xxxiv. 44) of an "inferiorem car- cerem," and at xxix. 22 of a criminal being put in the Tul- lianum. That its use as a cistern was abandoned is shown by the cloaca which leads from it, through the rock, to a branch of the Cloaca Maxima. This horrible place was used as a dun- 5 Mommsen is mistaken in his assertion that travertine is used in the vault of this cloaca ; and hence his argument as to its being of later date falls to the ground. 6 A great quay wall with arched cloaca, similar in style to those in Rome, PLAN Ta. accept Tarquinius Priscus.