brick-facing, probably of the time of Nero; all had been richly decorated with marble linings and mosaics. The line of the street was parallel to that of the later Aurelian wall, which at this part was built against the back of this row of houses. At the same time, behind the line of houses were uncovered fine peperino and tufa piers of the aqueduct rebuilt by Augustus, one arch of which forms the Porta S. Lorenzo. These interesting remains have all been completely destroyed. A fine house of the end of the 1st century A.D., with richly decorated walls, was exposed in June 1884 against the slope of the Quirinal, near the Palazzo Colonna; it was immediately destroyed to make room for new buildings.
The praetorian camp was first made permanent and surrounded with a strong wall by the emperor Tiberius (Suet. Tib. 37). Owing to the camp being included in the line of the Aurelian wall, a great part of it still exists; it is a very interesting specimen of early imperial brick-facing. The wall is only Praetorian camp. 12 to 14 ft. high, and has thinly scattered battlements, at intervals of 20 ft. The north-east gate (Porta Principalis Dextra) is well preserved; it had a tower on each side, now greatly reduced in height, in which are small windows with arched heads moulded in one slab of terra-cotta. The brick-facing, is very neat and regular,—the bricks being about 112 in. thick, with 12-in. joints. On the inside of the wall are rows of small rooms for the guards. Part of the Porta Praetoria also remains. This camp was dismantled by Constantine, who removed its inner walls; the outer ones were left because they formed part of the Aurelian circuit. The present wall is nearly three times the height of the original camp wall. The upper part was added when Aurelian included it in his general circuit wall round Rome. The superior neatness and beauty of Tiberius's brick-facing make it easy to distinguish where his work ends and that of the later emperors begins. Owing to the addition of the later wall it requires some care to trace the rows of battlements which belong to the camp.
The Pantheon is the most perfect among existing classical buildings in Rome. The inscription on the frieze of the portico (M . AGRIPPA . L . F . COS . TERTIVM . FECIT) refers to a building erected by Agrippa in 27 B.C., consecrated to the divinities of the Julian house (Mars, Venus, etc.) under the name Pantheon. Pantheum (“all-holy”); cf. Dio Cass. liii. 27; Plin. H.N. xxxvi. 43. It was sometimes used as the meeting-place of the Fratres Arvales before they began to meet in the temple of Concord (C. I. L. v. 2041). Pliny mentions the sculpture by the Athenian Diogenes which adorned it, and its capitals and dome covering of Syracusan bronze (xxxiv. 7). It was long supposed that the present rotunda was the Pantheon of Agrippa; but this was destroyed in the great fire of A.D. 80 (Oros. 7, 12; Hieron. Abr. 2127); and recent investigations have shown that the rotunda is a work of Hadrian's reign, bricks of that period having been found in all parts of the building. Excavations have made it probable that the site of the rotunda was previously occupied by an open piazza, whose pavement of coloured marbles has been discovered beneath the flooring, and that Agrippa's Pantheon covered the present piazza and faced southward. The present portico has been reconstructed; it is probable that Agrippa's portico had ten columns in the front. The ceiling of the portico too was of bronze, supported by hollow bronze girders,[1] which remained till Urban VIII. melted them to make cannon for S. Angelo; the bronze weighed 450,000 ℔. The bronze tiles of the dome were stolen long before by Constans II., in 663, but on their way to Constantinople they were seized by the Saracens. The portico has eight columns on the front and three on the sides, all granite monoliths except the restored ones on the east side,—sixteen in all. The capitals are Corinthian, of white marble; the tympanum (ἀετός) of the pediment was filled with bronze reliefs of the battle of the gods and the giants.[2] The walls of the circular part, nearly 20 ft., thick, are of solid tufa concrete, thinly faced with brick. The enormous dome, 142 ft. 6 in. in span, is cast in concrete made of pumice-stone, pozzolana and lime; being one solid mass, it covers the building like a shell, free from any lateral thrust at the haunches. On the face of the concrete is a system of superimposed relieving arches in brick. These no longer possess any constructive value, but were designed to preserve the stability of the dome whilst the concrete became firmly set. Round the central opening or hypaethrum still remains a ring of enriched mouldings in gilt bronze, the only bit left of the bronze which once covered the whole dome. The lower storey of the circular part and the walls of the projecting portico were covered with slabs of Greek marble; a great part of the latter still remains, enriched with Corinthian pilasters and bands of sculptured ornament. The two upper storeys of the drum were covered outside with hard stucco of pounded marble. Inside the whole was lined with a great variety of rich oriental marbles. This magnificent interior, divided into two orders by an entablature supported on columns and pilasters, has been much injured by alteration.[3] About 608 the Pantheon was given by Phocas to Boniface IV., who consecrated it as the church of S. Maria ad Thermae of Agrippa. Martyres. In 1881–82 the destruction of a row of houses behind the Pantheon exposed remains of a grand hall with richly sculptured entablature on Corinthian columns, part of the great thermae of Agrippa, which extend beyond the Via della Ciambella. A great part of the thermae appears from the brick stamps to belong to an extensive reconstruction in the reign of Hadrian[4] (see Baths).
Close by the Pantheon is the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, which stands (as its name records) on or near the site of a temple to Minerva Chalcidica (Plan, No. 12), probably founded by Pompey the Great, c. 60 B.C. (Plin. H.N. vii. 97), and restored by Domitian. Adjoining this were temples to Isis and Serapis, a cult which became very popular in Rome in the time of Hadrian; large quantities of sculpture, Egypto-Roman in style, have been found on this site at many different times.[5]
Several of the barracks (excubitoria) of the various cohorts of the vigiles or firemen have been discovered in various parts of Rome. That of the first cohort (Plan, No. 29) is buried under the Palazzo Savorelli; that of the second (Plan, No. 30) was on the Esquiline, near the so-called temple of Minerva Firemen's barracks. Medica; that of the third (Plan, No. 31) was near the baths of Diocletian. The most perfect is that of the seventh cohort (Plan, No. 34), near S. Crisogono in Trastevere, a handsome house of the 2nd century, decorated with mosaic floors, wall-paintings, &c.[6]
The excavations made in exposing the ancient church of S. Clemente brought to light interesting remains of different periods; drawings are given by Mullooly, St Clement and his Basilica (1869), and De Rossi, Bull. Arch. Crist. (1863), 28.
Some remains exist of the Golden House of Nero, which, including
its parks, lakes, &c., covered an incredibly large space of ground,
extending from the Palatine, over the Velia and the site
of the temple of Venus and Rome, to the Esquiline, filling
the great valley between the Caelian and the Esquiline
Golden House
of Nero.
where the Colosseum stands, and reaching far over the
Esquiline to the great reservoir now called the “Sette Sale.” No
other extravagances or cruelties of Nero appear to have offended
the Roman people so much as the erection of this enormous palace,
which must have blocked up many important roads and occupied
the site of a whole populous quarter. It was partly to make
restitution for this enormous theft of land that Vespasian and Titus
destroyed the Golden House and built the Colosseum and Thermae
of Titus on part of its site. Adjoining the baths of Titus were those
built on a much larger scale by Trajan. Under the substructions
of these extensive remains of the Golden House still
exist;[7] and at
one point, at a lower level still, pavements and foundations remain
of one of the numerous houses destroyed by Nero to clear the site.
The great bronze colossus of Nero, 120 ft. high (Suet. Nero, 31),
which stood in one of the porticus of the Golden House, was moved
by Vespasian, with head and attributes altered to those of Apollo
(Helios), on to the Velia; and it was moved again by Hadrian,
when the temple of Rome was built, on to the base which still exists
near the Colosseum. Several coins show this colossus by the side
of the Colosseum.
Under the Palazzo Doria, the church of S. Maria in Via Lata, and other neighbouring buildings extensive remains exist of a great porticus, with long rows of travertine piers; this building is designated on fragments of the marble plan with the words SAEPT . . . LIA. This must be the Saepta Julia. Saepta Julia, begun by Julius Caesar, and completed by Agrippa in 27 B.C., as the 'voting place for the Comitia Centuriata, divided into compartments, one for each century. The building contained rostra, and was also used for gladiatorial shows. Under the later empire it became a bazaar and resort of slave-dealers.
That curiously planned building on the Esquiline, in the new Piazza Vit. Emmanuele, where the so-called trophies of Marius once were placed (see Du Pérac, Vestigj, pl. 27), is one of the numerous castella or reservoirs from which the water of the various aqueducts was distributed in the quarters they were meant to supply, and may perhaps be identified with the Nymphaeum Alexandri built
- ↑ A drawing of this interesting bronze work, by G. A. Dosio, is preserved in.the Uffizi at Florence (No. 1021).
- ↑ On the architrave is cut an inscription recording the restoration of the Pantheon by Severus in 202.
- ↑ The bronze door is not in its present form antique, having been recast by order of Pius IV.
- ↑ The plan of the whole group, including the Pantheon, is given by Palladio (op. cit.). The recent discoveries are given by Lanciani, Not. d. Scavi (1882), p. 357, with a valuable plan. See also Geymüller, Documents inédits sur les Thermes d'Agrippa (Lausanne, 1883); Beltrami and Armanini, Il Panteon (1898); Durm, Baukunst der Römer, ed. 2, pp. 550 ff.; Rivoira, Rivista di Roma (1910), p. 412.
- ↑ See Lanciani in Bull. Comm. Arch. Rom. (1883), and Marucchi, ibid. (1896); Fea, Miscell. ccliv. 112. Part of the Serapeum is shown on fragments of the marble plan, which have been pieced together by Huelsen (Jordan, Topographie der Stadt Rom. i. 3, pl. x.).
- ↑ See Visconti, La stazione della Coorte VII. de' Vigili (1867).
- ↑ See De Romanis, Le antiche camere esquiline (1822). It should be noted that the paintings said to have belonged to the baths of Titus really decorated the Golden House, over which the baths of Titus and Trajan were built.
