defensible, there was constructed the new "stronghold" (arx, capitolium[1]), containing the stronghold-spring, the carefully enclosed "well-house" (tullianum), the treasury (ærarium), the prison, and the most ancient place of assembling for the burgesses (area Capitolina), where still in after times the regular announcements of the changes of the moon continued to be made. Private residences of a permanent character on the other hand were not permitted in earlier times on the stronghold hill;[2] and the space between the two summits of the hill, the sanctuary of the evil god (Ve-Diovis), or as it was termed in the later Hellenizing epoch, the Asylum, was covered with wood, and probably intended for the reception of the husbandmen and their herds, when inundations or war drove them from the plain. The Capitol was in reality as well as in name the Acropolis of Rome, an independent castle capable of being defended even after the city should have fallen: its gate was probably placed towards what was afterwards the Forum.[3] The Aventine seems to have been fortified in a similar style, although less strongly, and to have been preserved free from permanent occupation by settlement. With this is connected the fact, that for purposes strictly urban, such as the distribution of the introduced water, the inhabitants of Rome were divided into the inhabitants of the city proper (montani), and the guilds of the Capitoline and Aventine districts.[4] The space enclosed
- ↑ Both names, although afterwards employed as proper names of locality (capitolium being applied to the summit of the stronghold hill that lay next to the river, arx to that next to the Quirinal), were originally appellatives, corresponding exactly to the Greek ἄκρα and κορυφή; every Latin town had its capitolium as well as Rome. The proper local name of the Roman stronghold hill was Mons Taipeius.
- ↑ The enactment ne quis patricius in arce aut capitolio habitaret probably prohibited only buildings of stone, which apparently were often constructed in the style of fortresses, not ordinary and easily removable dwelling-houses. Comp. Becker, Top. p. 386.
- ↑ For the chief thoroughfare, the Via Sacra, led from that quarter to the stronghold; and the bending in towards the gate may still be clearly recognize! in the turn which it makes to the left at the arch of Severus. The gate itself must have disappeared under the huge structures which were raised in after ages on the Clivus. The so-called gate at the steepest part of the Capitoline Mount, which is known by the name Janualis, or Saturnia, or the "open," and which had to stand always open in time of war, evidently had merely a religious significance, and never was a real gate.
- ↑ Three such guilds are mentioned (1) the Capitolini (Cicero, ad Q. fr. ii. 5. 2), with magistri of their own (Henzen, 6010, 6011), and annual games (Liv. v. 50; Preller, Myth. p. 202); (2) the Mercuriales (Liv. ii. 27;
