Part 13 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SERVIAN WALLS.]

At the end of the fifth century, the baths are mentioned by Sidonius Apollinaris as still used, but at the time of the visit of the anonymous writer of the Einsiedlen MS., probably about A.D. 850, they were evidently in ruins. Among the ruins have been found, from time to time, a number of busts of the Emperors Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, and Constantine, and also the well-known busts of philosophers now in the Farnese collection at Naples.

The great fountain now in front of the railway station is supplied by the water brought along the course of the ancient Aqua Marcia.

[Sidenote: The Servian Agger.]

The Agger of Servius, which has now been so much levelled and destroyed, ran between the Church of S. Maria degli Angeli and the present walls.

This enormous rampart has been described by Dionysius. He says that the ditch outside was more than one hundred feet broad at the narrowest part and thirty feet deep, and that a wall stood upon the edge of the ditch supported by the agger, which was of such ma.s.sive strength that it could not be shaken down by battering rams or breached by undermining the foundation. Dionysius gives the length of the agger as seven stadia, and Strabo as six, which, taking the stadium at 202 yards, nearly corresponds to 1400 yards. The breadth he states at fifty feet. That this ditch and wall were the work of some of the later kings there can be no doubt, but it cannot be determined what part each took in their erection. The final completion of the whole undertaking is ascribed to Tarquinius Superbus, who deepened the ditch, raised the wall, and added new towers. The additions made by him can be distinguished in the portion brought to light by the modern excavations in the railway cutting.[109]

Excavations which have been made in this part of the agger from time to time, and the extensions of the city in this direction have brought to light an enormous wall buried in the earth, constructed of huge blocks of peperino. This is probably the wall mentioned by Dionysius, which in his time stood outside the rampart on the edge of the ditch. The remains of buildings of the imperial times have been found placed upon and outside of this wall, and it is probable that the whole ditch is now filled with such remains, and most part of the wall buried in them.

The central railway station stands close to this agger, and cuttings have lately been made through it to make room for the station, by which new portions of the wall have been disinterred. All these excavations have proved the truth of Dionysius's description, the wall having been found on the outer side of the original agger, which is easily distinguishable from the rubbish in which it is buried by being composed of clean soil unmixed with potsherds and brickbats. The wall probably ran from the southern end of the agger along the back of the Esquiline and Caelian in the direction of the modern Via Merulana and Via Ferratella. In this portion must be placed the Porta Querquetulana and the Porta Caelimontana, but their exact situation is unknown.[110]

[Sidenote: The Praetorian Camp.]

Near the Porta Pia, to the north-east of the church of S. Maria degli Angeli, the square of the Castra Praetoria projects from the Avails. This permanent camp was established under Tiberius by Seja.n.u.s; subsequently Aurelian made use of the four outer walls of this camp as a part of his fortification, and therefore Constantine, when he abolished the Praetorian Guard, pulled down the side towards the city only. The porta dec.u.mana of the camp is still to be seen though it is now walled up, and also the porta princ.i.p.alis dextra, but the porta princ.i.p.alis sinistra has disappeared or perhaps never existed. The camp was enclosed by a wall at least as early as the time of Pertinax and Julian, for here occurred that memorable and most melancholy scene in Roman history, when the Praetorian guards shut themselves within their camp after the murder of the reforming Emperor Pertinax and put up the throne to auction. Julian and Sulpicia.n.u.s were the bidders. The soldiers let down a ladder and allowed Julian to get up upon the wall, says Herodian, for they would not open the gates before they heard how much would be offered. Sulpicia.n.u.s was not allowed to mount the wall. They then bid one against the other, and at last they ran up the price little by little to five thousand drachmas to each soldier. Julian then impatiently outbid his rival by offering at once six thousand two hundred and fifty, and the Empire was knocked down to him. This was not by any means the first or only time that the fate of the Empire had been decided here.[111]

The chief power in the Roman state had lain within these walls of the Praetorian camp since the time when Tiberius consented to allow their designing colonel, Seja.n.u.s, to establish the Praetorian guards in permanent quarters, and the readers of the historians of the Empire will recall the many vivid pictures of their rapacity and violence. To go to the Praetorian camp and promise a largess to the guards was the first duty of a Roman emperor.

The eastern side of the camp, which is probably the only one now retaining its original form, measures 500 yards, and the southern 400 yards. The latter seems to have been partly pulled down, and the northern side has also been altered. Aurelian's Wall did not exactly meet the two angles of the camp towards the city, but its course was here determined by the houses and buildings in the vicinity which it was desirable to protect.

The walls of the camp were, according to Bunsen, at first only fourteen feet high, but were raised by Aurelian and fortified with towers. Some parts of the walls doubtless consist of the original brickwork of Aurelian's time, as the masonry bears the marks of great age, and is of a most regular and solid style. A few of the soldiers' quarters are still left, consisting of rows of small low arched rooms similar to those on the Palatine and at Hadrian's Villa near Tivoli.[112]

[Sidenote: Porta Chiusa.]

In the angle formed by the projecting wall of the Praetorian camp and the Aurelian Wall, there is a gate now walled up and called simply by the name of the Porta Chiusa. This gate is one of the mysteries of Roman topography. It is not mentioned by Procopius or by the anonymous writer of Einsiedlen, yet it seems too large and important to have been altogether omitted. That a gate would be required here in Aurelian's Wall, at least before Constantine's reign, while the camp was still occupied, seems probable. No pa.s.sage would be allowed to the public through the camp, and besides the Porta Nomentana, another gate would be wanted for the convenience of persons resorting to the camp from the country with supplies of provisions, or on business of various kinds, or for the shopkeepers who would naturally live within the walls near the camp. It may have been closed when the camp was abolished by Constantine, and that part of the city became comparatively empty, and it would thus in the time of Procopius, or the anonymous writer of Einsiedlen, have been long blocked up and forgotten or perhaps concealed by other buildings. This may account for their silence.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE AVENTINE AND CaeLIAN HILLS.

[Sidenote: The Servian walls.]

Before the end of the regal period there was an enlargement of the limits of the city in which the Aventine and Caelian were comprehended. Dionysius, Livy, and Aurelius Victor all relate that Tarquinius Priscus undertook the building of a new stone wall for the defence of the whole of the new quarters of the city, but that he did not live to finish it. The design was carried out by Servius Tullius, who also constructed the enormous agger called by his name, and still partly remaining at the back of the Esquiline, Viminal and Quirinal Hills. Before this great work was accomplished we must suppose that each suburb, as it grew out of the original settlement, was defended by a new piece of fortification, but these fortifications were, as Dionysius describes them, only temporary and hastily erected for the nonce. The expressions of Livy and Aurelius would lead us also to the conclusion that they were not of stone, but probably were entrenchments of earth. Rome then became the capital of Latium; she had lately united all her citizens, the Montani, the Collini, and the other freeholders living within the districts of Servius by a complete military organisation, and her powers were directed by a form of government which has always proved best calculated for the production of great public works. A new stone wall was accordingly planned on a vast scale, and the drainage of the low-lying parts of the city was effected about the same time by colossal sewers. The king having the whole control of the finances of the state could appropriate large sums of money for works of public utility, and could also doubtless command the labour of immense gangs of workmen. The Servian walls and the Cloacae of Rome are to be looked upon as the parallels in the History of Rome to the pyramids of Egypt, the walls of Babylon, and of Mycenae and Tiryns. They point to a time of concentrated power and unresisting obedience, when the will of one man could direct the whole resources of the community to the accomplishment of a comprehensive design.

With the exception of a small portion which has been discovered in the depression between the north-western and south-eastern parts of the Aventine, another portion upon the Servian Agger, and a few remnants on the Quirinal in the Barberini and Colonna Gardens,[113] no remnants of the Servian walls are now to be seen, and we have to infer their probable extent from the nature of the ground, the rough estimate given by Dionysius of the s.p.a.ce which they enclose, and the positions of the gates as described by various ancient authors. It may be safely concluded that, wherever it was possible, advantage would be taken of the sides of the hills, and the wall would be made to run along their edges. Thus the course of the wall on the outer side of the Capitoline, Quirinal, Esquiline and north-eastern part of the Aventine can be ascertained with tolerable certainty, and the agger serves as a guide along the back of the Viminal and Quirinal. The princ.i.p.al difficulty lies in the portions between the Capitoline and Aventine along the river bank, in the s.p.a.ce to the south of the Caelian, and at the Hill of S. Saba and S. Balbina, where there is but little indication in the nature of the ground to guide us.

In the time of Dionysius, who died about B.C. 10, the Servian Wall was already so much covered with buildings of various kinds, that he speaks of it as difficult to trace, and therefore, naturally enough, we find at the present day that nearly the whole has disappeared under heaps of rubbish.

The portion brought to light in 1855 under the south-eastern slope of the Aventine was accidentally discovered by digging in the vineyards not far from the Porta S. Paolo, for the purpose of clearing the ground from ma.s.ses of brickwork. This portion, some of which has since been covered with earth again, was 104 feet in length, 50 feet high, and 12 broad. The breadth shows the great solidity and strength of the construction. The original height was probably greater, as Mr. Braun remarks, and a parapet was placed upon the top. Some parts of this ruin are covered with reticulated work, and on others great ma.s.ses of masonry have been placed which belonged to dwelling-houses. Mr. J. H. Parker has since been able to clear this fragment of wall, thus doing a very great service to Roman Archaeology. No monumental antiquities have been found in these excavations earlier than the imperial times. A stamp bearing an inscription was discovered near one of the more modern arches, and dates from the reign of Trajan.

At the time when these walls were built, the stone generally used for such purposes was the hard tufa. The greater part of the Cloaca Maxima, and the remnants of these Servian walls, are composed of this material. It is hewn into long rectangular blocks, which are placed (in builders' phrase alternately headers and stretchers) sometimes across and sometimes along the line of the wall, in order to gain greater strength. No cement is used, but the stones are carefully fitted together and regularly shaped.

It must here be observed that the rectangular shape and horizontal position of the blocks in this stonework by no means disprove its high antiquity. It is true that the so-called Pelasgian walls are built in a totally different style, for the stones in them are polygonal. But this difference of shape in the stones arises from a difference in the material. All the so-called Pelasgian walls in Italy are built of a stone which naturally breaks into polygonal ma.s.ses; but tufa stone is found in the quarry in horizontal layers, and is most easily cut into a rectangular shape. The inference sometimes drawn from horizontally laid masonry that it indicates a more advanced state of art than polygonal cannot be relied upon as certain. The arch in this ruin is of a later date and may have been an embrasure for a catapult.[114]

[Sidenote: Porta Capena.]

The situation of no gate in the Servian Avails can be determined so completely as that of the Porta Capena. We know that part of the Aqua Marcia pa.s.sed over it, whence it was called the dripping gate (Madida Capena) by Martial and Juvenal. It was therefore in the valley below the Caelian Hill, and we should, judging from the form of the ground, naturally place it where the hill, on which S. Balbina stands, approaches the Caelian most nearly. A striking confirmation of this conjecture has been discovered. The first milestone on the Appian Road was found in 1584 in the first vineyard beyond the present Porta S. Sebastiano--the Vigna Naro--and, measuring back one mile from it, we come exactly to this spot.

This milestone is now placed on the steps leading up to the Capitoline Museum. Milestones and horse-blocks were erected on all the great roads by Caius Gracchus before the milliarium aureum was put up in the Forum by Augustus, and it is probable that the distances were always measured from the gates. Mr. Parker carried on excavations for some time to find the exact position of the Porta Capena, and he discovered some of the piers of the aqueduct which pa.s.sed over the gate in the garden of the Convent of S.