Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/516

4 ROMAN EXPLORATION FrND. di Mauro continues to make plans and drawings of all the antiquities that are discovered from time to time. Dr. Uori (who has just been njipointed Professor of Archaeology in the Univci-sity of Home) had also obtained permission for us to do many things by asking for them in his own name that would not have been granted if asked in the name of an Enc'lishman, owing to the local jealousy of strangei-s, which is notorious in italv, and is one of the most striking: jn'oofs of the ignorance of the people.*^ Tiie payments to Dr. Gori include many small items, such as the rent of the cellars, which we have ascertained to be the underground chambers of the great Prison of the Kings of Rome, agreeing exactly with the legendary history preserved by Livy. The donation to the excellent monks of S. Agnes was to enable them to make excavations in that portion of their Catacomb which is between the Cluu-ch and the Mausoleum and Baptistery of Constantia, by wiiich we are enabled to show that an original entrance to it was through a pagan tomb, and that four other pagan tombs have a comnumication from the lower chambei-s into the Catacomb. This is a demonstration that the Catacombs were general cemeteries for three or four centuries, and were not excJusiveh/ Christian as the Roman Catholic authorities have always taught. One of the entrances to the Catacomb of S. Prretex- tatus and to that of Calixtus is also through a pagan tomb, and there is rea.son to believe that this was also the case in that of S. Priscilla, We have not only taken plans, sections, drawings, and photographs of all the antiquities that have been found, but have also had pljotogi-aphs taken, not only of the fresco paintings, but of the plans and drawings, BO that for a trilling expense the historical student in any part of Europe can now obtain accurate information on all the long-disputed questions respecting the historical topography of Rome. Our historical pho- tographs are distinguished from all others (as we liave said) by the use of a six-foot rule painted alteniatcly black and white, ])laced against the wall to measure tiie size of the stones or the thickness of the bricks, which are the safest guides to the dates of the biiilding. The first i)rin- ciple of the modern science of arclueologj' is that the construction of the walls and the architectural details are the same at the same period every- where. Thus by selecting some one wcU-kuown historical building as a type of each pericjd, we have a certain guide to the date of all other buildings of the same architectural character. We are assured by tiio jthotographers that our piiotographs arc hi<^hly ap])rcciatcd by the wcll- uducated (Germans, who buy many more of them than either the l-lnglish or the Americans. As it is cpiite possible and probulile that this will be tiie last account of the expenditure of the Kund that 1 shall have to render, it will bo useful to recapitulate what luus been done with the help of this Fund, not only directly by excavations, but iiidireelly also, by inciting others to emulation, and by exploring what has been done by otiiers at the same time. It will be more interesting to take the objects made out in their chronological order, not only in the topographical one,— the latter is more useful on the spot., the former to j)crsons at a distance. 1. Wo have ascertained that a very ancient wall of tufa, of the character in use at the time of the foimdation of Home, exists on three Hides of Roma Qiifidnitfi, an oblong space at the north end of the Palatitio Hill, with a wide and large fosse on the southern side of it, the earth