errands and in various costumes-vehicles, horsemen, and foot-passengers, soldiers and laborers, Romans and foreigners became more crowded and confusing. The houses grew closer. They were already in Rome. It was impossible to define the commencement of the city. Its populous portions extended far beyond the limits marked out by Servius. The ancient wall, with its once sacred pomoerium, was rather an object for antiquarian interest, like the walls of York or Chester, than any protection against the enemies, who were kept far aloof by the legions on the frontier.

Yet the Porta Capena is a spot which we can hardly leave without lingering for a moment. Under this arch-which was perpetually dripping1 with the water of the aqueduct that went over it had passed all those who, since a remote period of the Republic, had travelled by the Appian Way,-victorious generals with their legions returning from foreign service, emperors and courtiers, vagrant representatives of every form of Heathenism, Greeks and Asiatics, Jews and Christians. From this point entering within the city, Julius and his prisoners moved on, with the Aventine on their left, close round the base of the Cœlian, and through the hollow ground which lay between this hill and the Palatine; thence over the low ridge called Velia, where afterwards was built the arch of Titus to commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem; and then descending, by the Sacra Via, into that space which was the centre of imperial power and imperial magnificence, and associated also with the most glorious recollections of the Republic. The Forum was to Rome what the Acropolis was to Athens, the heart of all the characteristic interest of the place. Here was the Milliarium Aureum, to which the roads of all the provinces converged. All around were the stately buildings, which were raised in the closing years of the Republic, and by the

1 Mart. iii. 47. Hence called the moist gate by Juvenal, iii. 10. Compare Mart. iv. 18. It was doubtless called Capena, as being the gate of Capua. Its position is fully ascertained to have been at the point of union of the valleys dividing the Aventine, Cœlian, and Palatine. Both the Via Latina and Via Appia issued from this gate. The first milestone on the latter was found in the first vineyard beyond the Porta S. Sebastiano (see Map).

2 This was a branch of the Marcian aqueduct.

3 We must not forget that close by this gate was the old sanctuary of Egeria, which in Juvenal's time was occupied by Jewish beggars. See Sat. iii. 13, vi. 542, already referred to in p. 133.

"The ridge on which the arch of Titus stands was much more considerable than the modern traveller would suppose: the pavement, which has been excavated at this point, is fifty-three feet above the level of the pavement in the Forum. This ridge ran from the Palatine to the Esquiline, dividing the basin in which the Colosseum stands from that which contained the Forum: it was called Velia. Publicola excited popular suspicion and alarm by building his house on the elevated part of this ridge."- Companion Volume to Mr. Cookesley's Map of Rome, p. 30.

5 This slope, from the arch of Titus down to the Forum, was called the Sacer Clivus. 6 See p. 308.

earlier Emperors. In front was the Capitoline Hill, illustrious long before the invasion of the Gauls. Close on the left, covering that hill, whose name is associated in every modern European language with the notion of imperial splendor, were the vast ranges of the palace- the "house of Cæsar" (Phil. iv. 22). Here were the household troops quartered in a prætorium 1 attached to the palace. And here (unless, indeed, it was in the great Prætorian camp outside the city wall) Julius gave up his prisoner to Burrus, the Prætorian Præfect, whose official duty it was to keep in custody all accused persons who were to be tried before the Emperor.

1

This doubt, which of two places, somewhat distant from each other, was the scene of St. Paul's meeting with the commander-in-chief of the Prætorian guards, gives us the occasion for entering on a general description of the different parts of the city of Rome. It would be nugatory to lay much stress, as is too often done, on its "seven hills: " for a great city at length obliterates the original features of the ground, especially where those features were naturally not very strongly marked. The description, which is easy in reference to Athens or Edinburgh, is hard in the instance of modern London or ancient Rome. Nor is it easy, in the case of one of the larger cities of the world, to draw any marked lines of distinction among the different clases of buildings. It is true, the contrasts are really great; but details are lost in a distant view of so vast an aggregate. The two scourges to which ancient Rome was most exposed revealed very palpably the contrast, both of the natural ground and the human structures, which by the general observer might be unnoticed or forgotten. When the Tiber was flooded, and the muddy waters converted all the streets and open places of the lower part of the city into lakes and canals, it would be seen very clearly how much lower were the Forum and the Campus Martius than those three detached hills (the Capitoline, the Palatine, and the Aventine) which rose near the

1 We think that Wieseler has proved that the πрarúрov in Phil. i. 13 denotes the quarters of the household troops attached to the Emperor's residence on the Palatine. See the beginning of Ch. XXVI.

2 The establishment of this camp was the work of Tiberius. Its place is still clearly visible in the great rectangular projection in the walls, on the north of the city. In St. Paul's time it was strictly outside the city. The inner wall was pulled down by Constantine.

8 This is the accurate translation of Acts xxviii. 16. The Profectus Prætorio was already the most important subject of the Em

peror, though he had not yet acquired all that extensive jurisdiction which was subsequently conferred upon him. At this time (A.D. 61) Burrus, one of the best of Nero's advisers, was Prætorian Præfect.

Trajan says (Plin. Ep. x. 65) of such a prisoner, "vinctus mitti ad Præfectos Prætorii mei debet." Compare also Joseph. Ant. xviii. 6, quoted by Wieseler, p. 393.

The writer has known visits paid in the Ripetta (in the Campus Martius) by means of boats brought to the windows of the first story. Dio Cassius makes three distinct references to a similar state of things.

river, and those four ridges (the Cœlian, the Esquiline, the Viminal, and the Quirinal) which ascended and united together in the higher ground on which the Prætorian camp was situated. And when fires swept rapidly from roof to roof, and vast ranges of buildings were in the ruins of one night, that contrast between the dwellings of the poor and the palaces of the rich, which has supplied the Apostle with one of his most forcible images, would be clearly revealed, the difference between structures of "sumptuous marbles with silver and gold," which abide after the fire, and the hovels of "wood, hay, stubble," which are burnt (1 Cor. iii. 10-15).

If we look at a map of modern Rome, with a desire of realizing to ourselves the appearance of the city of Augustus and Nero, we must in the first place obliterate from our view that circuit of walls, which is due, in various proportions, to Aurelian, Belisarius, and Pope Leo IV.2 The wall through which the Porta Capena gave admission was the old Servian enclosure, which embraced a much smaller area; though we must bear in mind, as we have remarked above, that the city had extended itself beyond this limit, and spread through various suburbs, far into the country. In the next place, we must observe that the hilly part of Rome, which is now half occupied by gardens, was then the most populous, while the Campus Martius, now covered with crowded streets, was comparatively open. It was only about the close of the Republic that many buildings were raised on the Campus Martius, and these were chiefly of a public or decorative character. One of these, the Pantheon, still remains, as a monument of the reign of Augustus. This, indeed, is the period from which we must trace the beginning of all the grandeur of Roman buildings. Till the civil war between Pompey and Cæsar, the private houses of the citizens had been mean, and the only public structures of note were the cloaca and the aqueducts. But in proportion as the ancient fabric of the constitution broke down, and while successful generals brought home wealth from provinces conquered and plundered on every shore of the Mediterranean, the city began to assume the appearance of a new and imperial magnificence. To leave out of view the luxurious and splendid residences which wealthy citizens raised for their own uses, Pompey erected the first theatre of stone, and Julius Cæsar

1 Suetonius mentions floods and fires together, Aug. 29, 30. The fire-police of Augustus seems to have been organized with great care. The care of the river, as we learn from inscriptions, was committed to a Curator alver Tiberis.

2 The wall of Leo IV. is that which encloses the Borgo (said to be so called from the

word burgh, used by Anglo-Saxon pilgrims) where St. Peter's and the Vatican are situated. 3 Till the reign of Augustus, the houses of private citizens had been for the most part of sun-dried bricks, on a basement of stone. The houses of Crassus and Lepidus were among the earlier exceptions.

This theatre was one of the principal or