Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/860

Rh 832 ROME [TOPOGRAPHY AND have been of wood even in the imperial period. 1 Its exact site is doubtful, but some existing foundations near the foot of the Aven- tiiie, near the Marmoratum, may have been the supports of its wooden piers. The first stone bridge was completed in 142 B.C., when the conquest of Etruria and the defeat of Hannibal had put an end to fears of invasion ; it was called the Pous jEmilius, after the pontifex maximus 3 M.- jEmilius Lepidus, its founder. It was also called Pons Lapideus to distinguish it from the wooden Sublician bridge. The modern Ponte Kotto is on the site of this ; but the existing three arches are mediaeval. An ancient basalt-paved road still exists, leading to the bridge from the Forum Boarium. The Pons Fabricius unites the city and the island (Insula Tiber- ina) ; Livy (ii. 5) gives the fable of the formation of this island from the Tarquiu com, cut from the Campus Martins and thrown into the river. The bridge derived its name from L. Fabricius, a curator viarum in 62 B.C.; its inscription, twice repeated, is L. FABRICIVS. C. F. CVtt. VIAR. FACIVNDVM. COERAVIT. Like the other existing bridges, it is built of great blocks of pcperino and tufa, with a massive facing of travertine on both sides. Corbels to support centering were built in near the springing of the arches, so that they could be repaired or even rebuilt without a scaffolding erected in the river-bed. The well-preserved Pons Cestius, prob- ably named after L. Cestius, prsefectus urbi in 46 B. c., unites the island and the Janiculan side ; on the marble parapet is a long in- scription recording its restoration in 370 by Gratian, Yalentinian, and Valens. The next bridge, Ponte Sisto, is probably on the site of an ancient bridge called in the Notitia Pons Aurelius. Marliano gives an inscription (now lost) which recorded its restoration in the time of Hadrian. The Pons Mlms was built in 135 by Hadrian to connect his mausoleum with the Campus Martius ; it is still well preserved, and is now called the Ponte S. Angelo (see Dante, Infer., xviii. 28-33). Its inscription, now lost, is given in the Einsiedeln MS. IMP. CAESAR. DIVI. TRAIANI. PARTHICI. FILIVS. DIVI. NERVAE. NEPOS. TRAIANVS. HADRIANVS. AVG. PONT. MAX. TRIE. POT. XVim. COS. HI. P. P. FECIT. The Pons Mlius is shown on coins of Hadrian. A little below it are the foundations of another bridge, probably the Pons Neronianus of the Mirabilia, called also Vaticanus, built probably by Nero as a way to his Vatican circus and the Horti s Regiones of Augustus. gus- 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 iones. of Augustus, who divided the city and its suburbs into fourteen regiones, the first six of which embraced the original four of Servius. The lists in the Notitia and Curiosum are the chief aids in deter- mining the limits of each, which in many cases cannot be done with any exactness (see Preller, Die Regional der Stadt Rom, 1846, and Uhlrichs, Codex Topograph., Wiirzburg, 1871). Each regio was divided into vici or parishes, each of which formed a religious body, with its aHlicula larium, and had magistri vicorum, the low- est in rank of the Roman magistracy. The smallest regio (No. II.) contained seven vici, the largest (No. XIV.) seventy-eight. The list is as follows : I. or Porta Capena, extended to the Aurelian Porta Appia. II. or Ccelimontana, the Coelian Hill. III. or Isis et Serapis, included the valley of the Colosseum and the adjoining part of the Esquiline. IV. or Tcmplum Pads et Sacra Via, included the Velia, most of the Subura, the fora of Nerva and Vespasian, the Sacra Via, and also buildings along the north-east side of the Forum Magnum. V. or Esquilina, north part of the Esquiline and the Viminal. VI. or Alta Semita, the Quirinal as far as the praitorian camp. VII. or Via Lata, the valley bounded on the west by the Via Lata, and by the neighbouring hills on the east. VIII. or Forum Romamtm, also included the fora of Julius, Augustus, and Trajan, and the whole Capitoline Hill. IX. or Circus Flaminius, between the fiber, the Capitol, and the Via Lata. X. or Palatium, the Palatine Hill. XI. or Circus Maadmus, the valley between the Palatine and the Aventine, with the Velabrum and Forum Boarium. XII. or Piscina Publica, between the Ccelian and the Aventine, and beyond the Via Appia, including the site of Caracalla's thermae. XIII. or Aventinus, the hill, and the bank of the Tiber below it. XIV. or Transtibcrina, the whole district across the river and the Tiber Island. 4 relian The walls of Aurelian (see Plates VI. and VIII.), more than 12 11. miles in circuit, were mainly built to enclose the regiones of Augus- tus, the greater part of which were then thickly inhabited. This 1 See Varro, L. L., v. 83 ; Ov., Fast., v. 622 ; Tac., Hist., i. 86. 2 The bridges were specially under the care of the pontifox maximus, at least till the later years of the republic (Varro, L. L., v. 83). 3 See Piale, "Antic. Ponti," in Attl d. Pont. Accad., 1831 ; and Becker, De Murit et Portis, Leipsic, 1842. Jordan, and Uhlrichs, the regionary catalogues of buildings are given by Nardini, Rom. Ant., ed. Nibby, 1818-20, the whole of which valuable work is arranged in accordance with these lists. 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. 6 After the death of Aurelian the walls were completed by Probus in 280, and about a century later they Avere restored and strengthened by the addition of gate -towers under Arcadins and Honorius (395-425), in place of the earlier gateways of Aurelian ; this is recorded by existing inscriptions on several of the gates. 8 At many p. Tin.;'. these walls suffered much from the attacks of the Goths (Procop., Bell. Goth., iii. 22, 24), and were restored successively by Thcodoric (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 most perfect piece is that in the gardens of the Villa Liulovisi. Other well- preserved pieces are by the Porta Appia, and between the Latcran and the Amphitheatrum Castrense. The wall, of concrete, has the usual brick-facing and is about 12 feet thick, with a guards' passage formed in its thickness. Fig. 25 shows its plan : on the inside the THREE WINDOWS. IX Or THESE OPEN ARCHES BETWEEN EACH PAIR OF TOWERS. 40. so. rr. FIG. 25. Aurelian's wall ; plan showing one of the towers and the passage in thickness of wall. passage has tall open arches, which look like those of an aqueduct, and at regular intervals of about 45 feet massive square towers are built, projecting on the outside of the wall, in three stories, the top story 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 feet 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 all the gates, fourteen in number, as follows : Porta S. Petri (destroyed) ; P. Flaminia (in use) ; P. Pinciana (closed) ; P. Salaria (destroyed in 1870) ; P. Nomentana (closed) ; P. Tiburtina (in use, now called P. S. Lorenzo) ; P. Pranestina (in use, now Porta Maggiore) ; P. Asinaria (closed) ; P. Metrovia (closed) ; P. Latina (closed) ; P. Appia (in use, now called P. S. Sebastiano) ; P. Ostiensis (in use, now P. S. Paolo). On the Jani- culan side, P. Portensis (destroyed) ; P. Aurelia (in use). One gate, known as the P. Chiusa, is omitted in this list, owing to its being blocked up in the time of the Einsiedeln writer. Its ancient name is not known. 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 (cata- racta) in the outer arch. The handsomest gate is the P. Appin, with two massive outer towers, three stages high, the upper semi- circular 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, traver- tine, 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 build- ings form part of the circuit, near the Porta Asinaria a large piece of the Domus Laterana, a house of the 3d century which gave its name to the Lateran basilica, and a little farther on, by S. Croce in Gerusalemrae, the Amphitheatrum Castrense ; the latter, of about the end of the 1st century A.D., has two tiers of arches and en- gaged columns of moulded brick on the outside. Between the P. Prrenestina and the P. Tiburtina comes a large castellum of the Aqua Tepula. The Pratorian Camp forms a great projection near the P. Nomentana. Lastly, the angle near the Porta Flaminia, at the 5 Vopiseus, Aurel.. 21, 89 ; Zosimus, i. 37, 49 ; Rutrop., ix. 15. 6 The inscriptions run thus S. P. Q. R. IMPP. CAESS. D. D. INVIC- TISSIMIS. PRINCIPIBVS. ARCADIO. ET. HONORIO. VICTORIBVS. AC TRIVMPHATORIBVS. SEMPER. AVGG. OB. INSTAVRATOS. VRBIS. AETERNAE. MVROS. PORTAS. AC. TVRRES. EGESTIS. IMMENSIS. RVDERIBVS the rest refers to honorary statues erected to commemorate this work.
 * See Jordan, For. Vrb. Rom., Berlin, 1875. Besides the -works of Preller,