A.D. 271, Jan. 11people. The Sibylline books enjoined ceremonies of a more harmless nature, processions of priests in white robes, attended by a chorus of youths and virgins; lustrations of the city and adjacent country; and sacrifices, whose powerful influence disabled the barbarians from passing the mystic ground on which they had been celebrated. However puerile in themselves, these superstitious arts were subservient to the success of the war; and if, in the decisive battle of Fano, the Alemanni fancied they saw an army of spectres combating on the side of Aurelian, he received a real and effectual aid from this imaginary reinforcement.[1]
Fortifications of RomeBut, whatever confidence might be placed in ideal ramparts, the experience of the past, and the dread of the future, induced the Romans to construct fortifications of a grosser and more substantial kind. The seven hills of Rome had been surrounded by the successors of Romulus with an ancient wall of more than thirteen miles.[2] The vast inclosure may seem disproportioned to the strength and numbers of the infant state. But it was necessary to secure an ample extent of pasture and arable land against the frequent and sudden incursions of the tribes of Latium, the perpetual enemies of the republic. With the progress of Roman greatness, the city and its inhabitants gradually increased, filled up the vacant space, pierced through the useless walls, covered the field of Mars, and, on every side, followed the public highways in long and beautiful suburbs.[3] The extent of the new walls, erected by Aurelian, and finished in the reign of Probus, was magnified by popular estimation to near fifty ;[4] but is reduced by accurate measurement to about twenty-one miles.[5] It was a great but a melancholy labour, since
- ↑ Vopiscus in Hist. Aug. p. 215, 216 [xxvi. 19 and 20] gives a long account of these ceremonies, from the Registers of the senate.
- ↑ Plin. Hist. Natur. iii. 5. To confirm our idea, we may observe that for a long time Mount Caelius was a grove of oaks, and Mount Viminal was over-run with osiers; that in the fourth century, the Aventine was a vacant and solitary retirement; that, till the time of Augustus, the Esquiline was an unwholesome burying ground ; and that the numerous inequalities remarked by the ancients in the Quirinal sufficiently prove that it was not covered with buildings. Of the seven hills, the Capitoline and Palatine only, with the adjacent valleys, were the primitive habitations of the Roman people. But this subject would require a dissertation. [It is now generally admitted that Pliny must have meant the circumference of the city as divided by Augustus into 14 regions.]
- ↑ Expatiantia tecta multas addidere urbes, is the expression of Pliny.
- ↑ Hist. August, p. 222 [xxvi. 39, 2] . Both Lipsius and Isaac Vossius have eagerly embraced this measure.
- ↑ See Nardini, Roma Antica, l. i. c. 8. [Compare Jordan, Topographie der Stadt Rom im Alterthum, i. 340 sqq.]
