Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/135

Rh defensible, there was constructed the new "stronghold" (arx, capitolium ), containing the stronghold-spring, the carefully enclosed "well-house" (tullianum), the treasury (ærarium), the prison, and the most ancient place of assembling for the burgesses (area Capitolina), where still in after times the regular announcements of the changes of the moon continued to be made. Private residences of a permanent character on the other hand were not permitted in earlier times on the stronghold hill; and the space between the two summits of the hill, the sanctuary of the evil god (Ve-Diovis), or as it was termed in the later Hellenizing epoch, the Asylum, was covered with wood, and probably intended for the reception of the husbandmen and their herds, when inundations or war drove them from the plain. The Capitol was in reality as well as in name the Acropolis of Rome, an independent castle capable of being defended even after the city should have fallen: its gate was probably placed towards what was afterwards the Forum. The Aventine seems to have been fortified in a similar style, although less strongly, and to have been preserved free from permanent occupation by settlement. With this is connected the fact, that for purposes strictly urban, such as the distribution of the introduced water, the inhabitants of Rome were divided into the inhabitants of the city proper (montani), and the guilds of the Capitoline and Aventine districts. The space enclosed