A Study of the Topography and Municipal History of Praeneste Part 8

And too it can as well be said that Pietro Colonna was paying up ancient grudge against Cave, and certainly also he realized that of all the towns near Praeneste, Cave was strategically the best from which to attack, and this most certainly shows that in ancient times such natural barriers between the two must have been practically impa.s.sable.]

[Footnote 31: To be more exact, on the least precipitous side, that which looks directly toward Rocca di Cave.]

[Footnote 32: To antic.i.p.ate any one saying that this scarping is modern, and was done to make the approach to the Via del Colonnaro, I will say that the modern part of it is insignificant, and can be most plainly distinguished, and further, that the two pieces of opus incertum which are there, as shown also in Fernique's map, etude sur Preneste, opp. p.

222, are Sullan in date.]

[Footnote 33: Fernique, etude sur Preneste, map facing p. 222. His book is on the whole the best one on Praeneste but leaves much to be desired when the question is one of topography or epigraphy (see Dessau's comment C.I.L., XIV, p. 294, n. 4). Even Marucchi, Guida Arch., p. 68, n. 1, took the word of a citizen of the town who wrote him that parts of a wall of opus quadratum could be traced along the Via dello Spregato, and so fell into error. Blondel, Melanges d'archeologie et d'histoire de l'ecole francaise de Rome, 1882, plate 5, shows a little of this polygonal cyclopean construction.]

[Footnote 34: Nibby, a.n.a.lisi, II, p. 511, wrote his note on the wall beyond San Francesco from memory. He says that one follows the monastery wall down, and then comes to a big reservoir. The monastery wall has only a few stones from the cyclopean wall in it, and they are set in among rubble, and are plainly a few pieces from the upper wall above the gate. The reservoir which he reaches is half a mile away across a depression several hundred feet deep, and there is no possible connection, for the reservoir is over on Colle San Martino, not on the hill of Praeneste at all.]

[Footnote 35: The postern or portella is just what one would expect near a corner of the wall, as a less important and smaller entrance to a terrace less wide than the main one above it, which had its big gates at west and east, the Porta San Francesco and the Porta del Cappuccini. The Porta San Francesco is proved old and famous by C.I.L., XIV, 3343, where supra viam is all that is necessary to designate the road from this gate. Again an antica via in Via dello Spregato (Not. d. Scavi, I (1885), p. 139, shows that inside this oldest cross wall there was a road part way along it, at least.)]

[Footnote 36: The Cyclopean wall inside the Porta del Sole was laid bare in 1890, Not. d. Scavi, 7-8 (1890), p. 38.]

[Footnote 37: Nibby, a.n.a.lisi, II, p. 501: "A destra della contrada degli Arconi due cippi simili a quelli del pomerio di Roma furono scoperti nel risarcire la strada Tanno 1824."]

[Footnote 38: Some of the paving stones are still to be seen in situ under the modern wall which runs up from the brick reservoir of imperial date. This wall was to sustain the refuse which was thrown over the city wall. The place between the walls is now a garden.]

[Footnote 39: I have examined with care every foot of the present western wall on which the houses are built, from the outside, and from the cellars inside, and find no traces of antiquity, except the few stones here and there set in late rubble in such a way that it is sure they have been simply picked up somewhere and brought there for use as extra material.]

[Footnote 40: C.I.L., XIV., 3029; PED XXC. Nibby, a.n.a.lisi, II, p. 497, mentions an inscription, certainly this one, but reads it PED x.x.x, and says it is in letters of the most ancient form. This is not true. The letters are not so very ancient. I was led by his note to examine every stone in the cyclopean wall around the whole city, but no further inscription was forthcoming.]

[Footnote 41: This stretch of opus incertum is Sullan reconstruction when he made a western approach to the Porta Triumphalis to correspond to the one at the east on the arches. This piece of wall is strongly made, and is exactly like a piece of opus incertum wall near the Stabian gate at Pompeii, which Professor Man told me was undoubtedly Sullan.]

[Footnote 42: Marucchi, Guida Arch., p. 19, who is usually a good authority on Praeneste, thinks that all the opus quadratum walls were built as surrounding walls for the great sanctuary of Fortuna. But the facts will not bear out his theory. Ovid, Fasti VI, 61-62, III, 92; Preller, Roem. Myth., 2, 191, are interesting in this connection.]

[Footnote 43: I could get no exact measurements of the reservoir, for the water was about knee deep, and I was unable to persuade my guides to venture far from the entrance, but I carried a candle to the walls on both sides and one end.]

[Footnote 44: At some places the concrete was poured in behind the wall between it and the shelving cliff, at other places it is built up like the wall. The marks of the stones in the concrete can be seen most plainly near Porta S. Martino (Fernique, etude sur Preneste, p. 104, also mentions it). The same thing is true at various places all along the wall.]

[Footnote 45: Fernique, etude sur Preneste, p. 107, has exact measurements of the walls.]

[Footnote 46: Fernique, etude sur Preneste, p. 108, from Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 43, considers as a possibility a road from each side, but he is trying only to make an approach to the temple with corresponding parts, and besides he advances no proofs.]

[Footnote 47: There seems to have been only a postern in the ancient wall inside the present Porta del Sole.]

[Footnote 48: Many feet of this ancient pavement were laid bare during the excavations in April, 1907, which I myself saw, and ill.u.s.trations of which are published in the Notizie d. Scavi, Ser. 5, 4 (1907), pp. 136, 292.]

[Footnote 49: Marucchi, Guida Arch., p. 57 ff. for argument and proof, beginning with Varro, de I. 1. VI, 4: ut Praeneste incisum in solario vidi.]

[Footnote 50: Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 43.]

[Footnote 51: The continuation of the slope is the same, and the method of making roads in the serpentine style to reach a gate leading to the important part of town, is not only the common method employed for hill towns, but the natural and necessary one, not only in ancient times, but still today.]

[Footnote 52: Through the courtesy of the Mayor and the Munic.i.p.al Secretary of Palestrina, I had the only exact map in existence of modern Palestrina to work with. This map was getting in bad condition, so I traced it, and had photographic copies made of it, and presented a mounted copy to the city. This map shows these wall alignments and the changes in direction of the cyclopean wall on the east of the city.

Fernique seems to have drawn off-hand from this map, so his plan (l.c., facing p. 222) is rather carelessly done.

I shall publish the map in completeness within a few years, in a place where the epochs of the growth of the city can be shown in colors.]

[Footnote 53: I called the attention of Dr. Esther B. Van Deman, Carnegie Fellow in the American School of Cla.s.sical Studies in Rome, who came out to Palestrina, and kindly went over many of my results with me, to this piece of wall, and she agreed with me that it had been an approach to the terrace in ancient times.]

[Footnote 54: C.I.L., XIV, 2850. The inscription was on a small cippus, and was seen in a great many different places, so no argument can be drawn from its provenience.]

[Footnote 55: This may have been the base for the statue of M. Anicius, so famous after his defense at Casilinum. Livy XXIII, 19, 17-18.

It might not be a bad guess to say that the Porta Triumphalis first got its name when M. Anicius returned with his proud cohort to Praeneste.]

[Footnote 56: Not. d. Scavi, 7-8 (1890), p. 38. This platform is a little over three feet above the level of the modern piazza, but is now hidden under the steps to the Corso. But the piece of restraining wall is still to be seen in the piazza, and it is of the same style of opus quadratum construction as the walls below the Barberini gardens.]

[Footnote 57: Strabo V, 3, II (238, 10): [Greek: erymnae men oun ekatera, poly derumnotera Prainestos].]

[Footnote 58: Plutarch, Sulla, XXVIII: [Greek: Marios de pheygon eis Praineston aedae tas pylas eyre kekleimenas].]

[Footnote 59: Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 282; Nibby, a.n.a.lisi, II, p. 491.]

[Footnote 60: Petrini, Memorie Prenestine, pp. 180-181. The walls were built in muro merlato. It is not certain where the Murozzo and Truglio were. Petrini guesses at their site on grounds of derivation.]

[Footnote 61: Petrini, Memorie Prenestine, p. 248.]

[Footnote 62: Also called Porta S. Giacomo, or dell'Ospedale.]

[Footnote 63: Petrini, Memorie Prenestine, p. 252.]

[Footnote 64: Closed seemingly in Sullan times.]

[Footnote 65: The rude corbeling of one side of the gate is still very plainly to be seen. The gate is filled with mediaeval stone work.]

[Footnote 66: There is a wooden gate here, which can be opened, but it only leads out upon a garden and a dumping ground above a cliff.]

[Footnote 67: This was the only means of getting out to the little stream that ran down the depression shown in plate III, and over to the hill of S. Martino, which with the slope east of the city could properly be called Monte Glicestro outside the walls.]

[Footnote 68: This gate is now a mediaeval tower gate, but the stones of the cyclopean wall are still in situ, and show three stones, with straight edge, one above the other, on each side of the present gate, and the wall here has a jog of twenty feet. The road out this gate could not be seen except from down on the Cave road, and it gave an outlet to some springs under the citadel, and to the valley back toward Capranica.]

[Footnote 69: This last stretch of the wall did not follow the present wall, but ran up directly back of S. Maria del'Carmine, and was on the east side of the rough and steep track which borders the eastern side of the present Franciscan monastery.]

[Footnote 70: The several courses of opus quadratum which were found a few years ago, and are at the east entrance to the Corso built into the wall of a lumber store, are continued also inside that wall, and seem to be the remains of a gate tower.]

[Footnote 71: See page 28. This gap in the wall is still another proof for the gate, for it was down the road, which was paved, that the water ran after rainstorms, if at no other time.]

[Footnote 72: This gate is very prettily named by Cecconi, Spiegazione de Numeri, Map facing page 1: l'antica Porta di San Martino chiusa.]

[Footnote 73: Since the excavations of the past two years, nothing has been written to show what relations a few newly discovered pieces of ancient paved roads have to the city and to its gates, and for that reason it becomes necessary to say something about a matter only tolerably treated by the writers on Praeneste up to their dates of publication.]

[Footnote 74: Ashby, Cla.s.sical Topog. of the Roman Campagna, in Papers of the British School at Rome, Vol. 1, Map VI.]

[Footnote 75: This road is proved as ancient by the discovery in 1906 (Not. d. Scavi, Ser. 5, 3 (1906), p. 317) of a small paved road, a diverticolo, in front of the church of S. Lucia, which is a direct continuation of the Via degli Arconi. This diverticolo ran out the Colle dell'Oro. See Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 20, n. 37; Fernique, etude sur Preneste, p. 122; Marucchi, Guida Archeologica, p. 122.]

[Footnote 76: This road to Marcigliano had nothing to do with either the Praenestina or the Labicana. Not. d. Scavi, Ser. 5, 5 (1897), p. 255; 2 (1877-78), p. 157; Bull. dell'Inst., 1876, pp. 117 ff. make the via S.

Maria the eastern boundary of the necropolis.]