William Aldis Wright,The Journal of Philology
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THE JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT THE JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY. certain, stood on the slope below the site now occupied by the church of S. Giuseppe dei Falegnami and the ancient well-house called the Mamertine Prison, and this is exactly the position which the Sabines, descending from the Quirinal and posting themselves in the Forum valley, would occupy between the two hills. Mommsen, in his admirable discussion of the topography of the north end of the Forum, mentions this passage of Pro- pertius and suggests that the lacus serviliiis is the Jbns re- ferred to (Ann. dell' Inst. xvi. 302). But the locus a&rvilivs was on the side of the Capitoline nearest to the Palatine, and therefore on the opposite side to that from which Tatius was imagined by Propertius to have approached the Forum. Pro- pertius must have had the Curia as restored by Augustus in his mind, and this was certainly near the Comitium and at the north-west comer of the Forum. The lower chamber of the building now called the Career is constructed in a conical shape by the gradual projection of the stones forming the sides. This mode of building is of a very early date, and is found in the Eegulini Galassi tomb at Caere in Etruria, and in well-houses at Tusculum and at Fiesole and Cortona. See DenniA«, Etruria, Vol. Ii. pp. 46, 128, 451, and Gell, Topography of Rome, p. 432, where repre- sentations of the tomb and the well-house are given. The well at Tusculum shews most clearly what the nature of this Roman watering-place originally was. We have there the truncated conical dome where the spring water collects, and near it are some troughs supplied from it with water which were evidently washing troughs, or troughs from which horses might be watered. Propertius had a horse's watering trough of this kind in his imagination when he wrote the line "Bellicus ex illo fonte bibebat equus." In the legend, as it was known to Propertius, Tarpeia drew the water for her water-jug at the fountain-head, whence it ran down the slope to the troughs in the Forum where the horses could drink. The building as it now stands was not consecrated as St Peter's prison before the 9th century (Hemans, Monuments of Rome, p. 110), and the name TulUanum' was possibly derived AROHJEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS. from the ancient structure having been a well-house. Festus gives an interpretation of the word Tullivs as meaning a stream of water. (Festus, p. 353 ed Miiller.) He quotes from the Ajax of Ennius an instance of the use of the word tuUii corresponding to the cvpiyye; "arteries" of Soph. Aj. 1412 and the avXiv ira,¬Lyy<iy "gush of blood" of Hom. Od. XXII. 18. Corssen Lat. Spr. IL p. 171 connects the name Tullius with the root toZ tid, which would seem to point to the meaning "a place for drawing water." Tiburtes tullias occurs in Plin, N. H. XVII. 16. 26, where tullias probably refers to the well- known cascades of the Anio at Tibur. A tecta Flaminiaque recens. This passage has been wrongly explained by commentators as referring to the tecta via outside the Porta Capena. Their misUike arises from ignorance of the fact (well known to Roman archaeologists) that there were two tectce vice at Home, as is rightly stated in Forcellini's Lexicon s. v. recta via. These tectcB vice were no doubt similar to the Porticoes at Bologna which lead from the Porta Saragozza to the Madonna di S. Luca, and from the Porta Maggiore to the church of Gli Scalzi. One of them was placed between the Porta Capena and the temple of Mars outside the walls, and was intended to secure a con- venient passage for the votaries who went to dedicate their armour at the temple after a successful engagement or a happy escape. This custom is referred to in Propertius IV (v). 3. 71, "Armaque cum tulero Portae votiva Capenae subscribam salvo grata puella viro." A grand procession of the Order of Knights (transvectio equitum, Li v. IX. 46 ; Ov. Fast. vi. 191) was conducted on the Ides of Quintilis every year from this temple of Mars to the Capitol to give thanks for the aid of the Dioscuri at the battle of Regillus, and other religious ceremonies were carried on just outside the Porta Capena, as for instance those con- nected with the Lapis Maualis. Thus a considerable traffic similar to that which passes through the Porta Saragozza at THE JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY. Bologna, passed along the road between the gate and temple, and was sheltered by a via tecta. The other path which was sheltered by a portico was on the Campus Martius near the Flaminian road between the old Porta Ratumena and the later Porta Flaminia, now the Porta del Popolo. This latter is the via tecta to which Martial refers in VIII. 75. 2, as quoted above, where he connects it with the Flaminian road. A further description of it as the Via For- nicata ad Campum is given in Liv. xxii. 36. 8, shewing that it was a vaulted archway. The Roman house of Martial's friend Julius Martialis seems to have been near this via tecta, for his villa was on the Monte Mario to which the approach from the Flaminian road would be much nearer than from the Porta Capena. See Mart. ill. 6. 6, "hunc quaeres prima) in limine tectae," and Mart. IV. 64. 1, "Juli jugera pauca Martialis Longo Janiculi jugo recumbunt"; and 23, "Cum sit tam prope Milvius." Seneca, Apol. 13. 1, speaks of this via tecta as near the altar of Dis, where Claudius descended ad inferos. Claudius was buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus, which was near the southern end of this via tecta. Gallienus (Hist. Aug. Gallien. 18) seems to have designed a grand extension of this via tecta to the Milvian bridge. Qua vicina pluit Vipsanis porta columnis. A mistake has been made in the interpretation of this line by commentators from their ignorance of the position of the Roman aqueducts. Schrevelius in his variorum edition of Martial's epigrams, followed by Paley and Stone, identifies the porta here mentioned with the Porta Capena, because the Porta Capena is in several passages of the Roman poets called madida from the Aqua Marcia which passed over it. But the porta here spoken of was 'vicina Vipsanis co- lumnis,' and the 'Porticus Vipsania' was probably a portion or a continuation of the Porticus Polas built by Pola, Agrippa's sister (Dion Cass. LV. 8), and perhaps connected with the Porticus EuropaB (Mart. ii. 14. 3). This colonnade was in sight ARCH^OLOOICAL INTERPRETATIONS. 7 of Martial's house on the Quirinal (Mart. Ep. I. 108. 3), and we may infer from the name Vipsania that it was a part of the buildings of Agrippa near his Thermae on the Campus Martins. Thus the water which dripped from the porta must have been that of the Aqua Virgo, from which Agrippa sup- plied his baths. And it appears that the Aqua Virgo was carried over the arch of Claudius discovered in 1650, which crossed the Via Lata, now the Corso, near the Palazzo Sciarra, and was built in memory of Claudius' expedition to Britain in A. D. 43. Another archway was also discovered at the same time by which the Aqua Virgo was carried over a street parallel to the Via Lata but nearer to the Pantheon. One of these two archways is plainly alluded to by Martial, and thus the position of the Porticus Vipsania is approximately determined. The extent of this Porticus is shewn by the fact mentioned by Tacitus (Hist. I. 31) and Plutarch (Galba 25) that troops could be quartered in it. (To he continued) R. BURN. ON CERTAIN ENGINEERING DIFFICULTIES IN THU- CYDIDES' ACCOUNT OF THE ESCAPE FROM PliATiEA. Bk. III. 20a_"4. A CAREFUL consideration of the account given of this event by Thucydides, aided by modem research, will, I think, tend to throw considerable doubts over his accuracy, in this respect at leajst, as an historian. I am not aware that such doubts have been raised in any history of Greece, with the exception of that by Sir George Cox\ He has put forward, at some length, in an appendix, the views I propose to bring more fully before the reader; and in doing so, he has acknowledged his obligations to me as the author of the doubt. The question is, I think, both interesting and important ; for the character of a great historian is impugned, if not for truthfulness, at least for accuracy. In the year B. C. 429, two years after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, the Peloponnesians, led by King Archidamus, marched against Plataea. This was done at the desire and the instance of the Thebans, who were the implacable enemies of the Plataeans. As the Flataeans, advised by Athens, had rejected the offer of remaining neutral, their city was at once invested by the Lacedaemonian army. And here follows, in Thucydides ii. 75 a_" 8, a most interesting and circumstantial account of the siege, which it is necessary to my purpose to epitomise. The first operation was to barricade the city all round with trees cut from the spot, to prevent any further egress of the citizens, tov iirjieva Irt i^iivai. The next was, to cany a mound on an inclined plane to the level of the top of the wall.