Читать книгу Rambles in Rome - S. Russell Forbes - Страница 14

These seem to have been commenced by Tarquinius Priscus, and completed by Servius Tullius, and so called by his name.

"He [Tarquinius Priscus] was the first who built the walls of the city [of which the structure was extemporary and mean] with stones, regularly squared, each being a ton weight" (Dionysius, iii. 68).

Tarquinius (616 B.C.) "intended also to have surrounded the city with a stone wall, but a war with the Sabines interrupted his designs" (Livy, i. 36).

"He set about surrounding with a wall of stone those parts of the city which he had not already fortified, which work had been interrupted at the beginning by a war with the Sabines" (Livy, i. 38).

"He [Servius] surrounded the city with a rampart, trenches, and a wall, and thus extended the Pomœrium," 578 B.C. (Livy, i. 44).

"As the Esquiline and Viminal Hills were both of easy access from without, a deep trench was dug outside them, and the earth thrown up on the inside, thus forming a terrace of six stadia in length along the inner side of the trench. This terrace Servius faced with a wall, flanked with towers, extending from the Colline to the Esquiline gate. Midway along the terrace is a third gate, named after the Viminal Hill" (Strabo, v. 3).

"Tullius had surrounded the seven hills with one wall" (Dionysius, iv. 14).

The seven hills were not surrounded, strictly speaking. Each hill formed a bastion, and aggers, or curtains of earth faced with stone, were built across the valleys, uniting these bastions. The Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal, being ridges jutting out of the table-land and not isolated hills, had one long agger built across their necks.

"Some parts of these walls, standing on hills, and being fortified by nature itself with steep rocks, required but few men to defend them, and others were defended by the Tiber. … The weakest part of the city is from the gate called Esquilina to that named Collina, which interval is rendered strong by art; for there is a ditch sunk before it, one hundred feet in breadth where it is narrowest, and thirty in depth. On the edge of this ditch stands a wall, supported on the inside with so high and broad a rampart that it can neither be shaken by battering-rams nor thrown down by undermining the foundations. This rampart is about seven stadia in length and fifty feet in breadth" (Dionysius, ix. 68).

This grand agger can be traced almost in its entire extent, as also the smaller aggers. There seems to have been no wall—that is, stone or earth fortification—between the Aventine and Capitoline, the Tiber being considered a sufficient defence.

"The city, having no walls in that part next the river, was very near being taken by storm" (Dionysius, v. 23) when Lars Porsena advanced to attack the city, after having taken the Janiculum, intending to cross the river by the only bridge, which, as we know, was defended by Horatius Cocles, and broken down by the Romans in his rear.

The walls of Servius Tullius were strengthened at the time of the war with Gabii.

"Tarquinius Superbus was particularly active in taking these precautions, and employed a great number of workmen in strengthening those parts of the city walls that lay next to the town of Gabii, by widening the ditch, raising the walls, and increasing the number of the towers" (Dionysius, iv. 54).

"On the eastern side it is bounded by the Agger of Tarquinius Superbus, a work of surpassing grandeur; for he raised it so high as to be on a level with the walls on the side on which the city lay most exposed to attack from the neighbouring plains. On all the other sides it has been fortified either with lofty walls or steep or precipitous hills; but so it is that its buildings, increasing and extending beyond all bounds, have now united many other cities to it" (Pliny, iii. 9).

"After Camillus had driven out the Gauls, both the walls of the city and the streets were rebuilt within a year" (Plutarch, "Cam." 32).

"The legions being brought to Rome, the remainder of the year was spent in repairing the walls and the towers," 350 B.C. (Livy, vii. 20).

"They received a charge from the senate to strengthen the walls and towers of the city," 217 B.C. (Livy, xxii. 8).

After the republic was firmly established, and the boundaries of the state enlarged, the walls of the city became obsolete, and it was to all intents and purposes an open city until the time of Aurelian.

"All the inhabited parts around it [the city], which are many and large, are open, and without walls, and very much exposed to the invasion of an enemy. And whoever considers these buildings, and desires to examine the extent of Rome, will necessarily be misled, for want of a certain boundary that might distinguish the spot to which the city extends, and where it ends. So connected are the buildings within the walls to those without, that they appear to a spectator like a city of an immense extent" (Dionysius, iv. 13).