Thus, there are two of them under the great staterooms on the north-east side of the peristyle of the palace of Domitian, which have been built right over them, and have thus led to their preservation. The earlier of the two, under the so-called Lararium, has paintings belonging to the first phase of the second Pompeian style, which are entirely architectural, and have no figured decoration, being confined to the imitation of marble slabs and friezes and rusticated masonry. In one of the rooms, however, is a fine group of two griffins, with a plant with large volutes between them, executed in relief in white stucco on a red ground.

The frescoes of the other house, lying under the Basilica, belong to the later phase of the second Pompeian style, and include some fine paintings with various small scenes in an elaborate architectural framework. The perspective of this framework is here, as in other cases, largely fictitious, and it seems to me impossible to resist the conclusion that the art of scene painting for the theatre must have had a very considerable influence upon decorations of this kind. These particular frescoes were copied a couple of centuries ago by Francesco Bartoli, Pier Leone Ghezzi, and Gaetano Piccini, and their elaborate coloured drawings are still preserved in the Topham Collection in the Library at Eton, in the Coleraine Collection at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the Hofbibliothek at Vienna, and at the Vatican.* Unfortunately their accuracy is not altogether above reproach; in fact, when Dr Topham found discrepancies, especially in the colours, between some of his drawings and those at Holkham, and complained to his agent, the latter informed him that Bartoli was in the habit of keeping his original notes and sketches entirely to himself, and, indeed, of deliberately introducing arbitrary variations of detail and colour for fear the drawings might be copied or engraved by others; and he assured his patron that he might rest content that his collection was 'the most correct of any of the drawings that have come from Bartoli's hands.'

We can point to the sites of a few other Republican houses on the Palatine which have been obliterated by the buildings of the Empire, so that little more than mere traces exist; but there is one house, which has paintings of the same period as that just described, which met with a very different fate. Ever since its discovery in 1869 (though a fragment of fresco* from it was found in 1730, so that the excavators must have come on it at that date and gone no further), it has been known as the house of Livia, but it has also been identified with the house of Germanicus. Recent study has, however, shown that we have in it, in all probability, the 'modest dwelling of Hortensius, which was remarkable neither for size nor elegance' in which Suetonius tells us that Augustus lived.

Why, after all, should the house of Livia alone have been spared when all the other houses of the same kind were buried under the foundations of the far more splendid palaces of the Empire? If we contemplate the huge substructions which first Tiberius, then Domitian, and then Hadrian erected on the northeast side of the hill (the last-named constructing enormous arches over the Clivus Victoria) when it would have been so easy to destroy or build over this particular house, we shall realise that there must have been some special reason for its preservation. And if this is the house of Augustus we must with O. L. Richmond seek the atrium in which the Senate met on the further side of the (modern) road at the southwest; and the temple of Apollo must be identified with the great podium facing south-west, i.e. towards the Aventine, which lies close by. Recent excavations have still more clearly shown what might have been ascertained before-that this temple was only constructed after the destruction of another dwelling-house at the very end of the Republican period; and, as we have record of the construction of the temple of Apollo after the battle of Actium, whereas the history of the temple of Jupiter Victor or Propugnator is practically unknown to us, it is natural that we should think that the demolition of this house took place at the time when it was necessary to provide a site for this great sanctuary. Nor is this the only argument in our favour; though, on the other hand, it must be admitted that certain portions of our literary evidence, and especially Ovid's famous description of the arrival of his book in Rome, while its author languished in exile,* fits in better with another site-the area of the Vigna Barberini, above the arch of Titus, which is that favoured by Hülsen.

Here, however, all that is visible seems to belong to the time of Domitian; but we can, as a fact, see nothing but the supporting walls by which the area is surrounded; and it is greatly to be wished that this knotty point of Roman topography might be settled by excavation; for, though the Temple was destroyed by fire in 363 A.D., it must, one would think, have left some traces behind. The new excavations, coupled with careful study of the remains already exposed to view, in which, among others, Prof. Esther B. Van Deman has taken a prominent part, have also added considerably to our knowledge of the history of the Palatine during the first century of the Empire. While Augustus was content with a modest dwelling, Tiberius erected a large palace on the northwest summit of the hill, overlooking the Forum. The site is now occupied by a lovely garden; and excavation, if undertaken (and the plan is, as a fact, already known to us), would probably produce but little, as the depth of soil is not great. But at the bottom of the hill we have considerable traces of a great peristyle which must have been the extension constructed by Caligula, 'who built out a part of the palace as far as the Forum, making the temple of Castor and Pollux its vestibule Suetonius tells us. With it must have been connected a monumental approach to the Palatine, resembling probably that which Domitian and Hadrian constructed after the palace of Tiberius had been destroyed by the fire of Titus-a series of inclined planes immediately behind the huge 'complex' of buildings including the 'temple of Augustus't and the church of S. Maria Antiqua.

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On the other, the south-east, summit of the Palatine the first emperor of whose activity we have certain traces is Nero. The remains of earlier structures which have come to light under the peristyle and the triclinium of Domitian's palace are rightly attributed to the Domus Transitoria. They must have been found in a far better state of preservation in 1721, but, as Elisha Kirkhall records in the text to his coloured engravings* (in which he calls them 'Augustus' bath'), they were 'barbarously defaced and broken in pieces. and the broken pieces sent to Parma.' The main portion visible on the lower level consists of a sunk garden, with a magnificent fountain all along one wall; in the centre were two pavilions with small columns, with garden beds between them. On one side is a room (fortunately not found in 1721) with extremely beautiful paintings, representing scenes from the Homeric cycle, of remarkable richness and delicacy-as is also what remains of the polychrome marble pavement and wall facing. These frescoes have unfortunately not yet been published; but two other rooms on the other side, which have been accessible since 1721, and were known as the Baths of Livia, have frequently been illustrated. There is also a very large latrine, interpreted by some as a machinery chamber for a hydraulic lift. On the upper floor, which lies only three or four feet below the pavements of the palace of Domitian (which had one floor only for the most part, so that these earlier structures were buried deep below ground), is a very fine marble pavement of bold design, which, when excavated, showed the clearest possible traces of damage by fire-and that fire undoubtedly the fire of Nero. For between these remains of the Domus Transitoria (so-called because it was intended to join the Palatine to the Gardens of Mecenas on the Esquiline) there are some irregular curving foundations, which must belong to what little Nero was able to do on the Palatine in the course of the construction of the great Domus Aurea. The main palace of the Golden House was, of course, situated above the Colosseum, and was destroyed and covered up by the Baths of Trajan.

*

Recent investigations have rendered many more of its rooms accessible, and a number of other paintings-most of them already known to the artists of the Renaissance -have been brought to light. The poverty of their execution is remarkable, if they are compared with those of the Domus Transitoria; and the fame of the painter Fabullus who executed them could only have rested on a few special rooms, and not on the decorations as a whole. Good or bad, however, Roman painters almost invariably suffered from self-imposed limitations. Instead of treating a wall as a whole, they began by subdividing it into small sections by means of an architectural framework, and then painting comparatively small scenes in the spaces that remained. As I have already pointed out, the smallness of the paintings of the columbaria, 'which was well enough adapted for the decoration of little chambers with their tiny niches, was imitated by the artists of the time of Nero in the decoration of the lofty rooms of which they were fond, where, however, it was most unsuitable.' The main palace of the Domus Aurea, which lies under the Therme of Trajan, is now included, with the thermæ themselves, in a separate park, which was only recently inaugurated, and will thus be preserved from further damage or encroachment. But there are various outlying sections of it-and, notably, the vestibule, which was situated on the site later occupied by the temple of Venus and Rome, and was approached by a monumental portico on each side of the Sacra Via, which was converted into a private avenue by Nero, whose appropriation of the whole of the centre of Rome gave rise to more than one epigram at his expense. The massive foundations of these porticoes have been identified by Prof. Van Deman, but little remains of the superstructure; most of the travertine blocks of the pillars have been pilfered by searchers for building material, but have left their impressions upon the concrete of the later brickfaced walls, which were built between the arcades when they were converted into storehouses. Besides the porticoes on each side of the Sacra Via, there were others flanking the Clivus Palatinus as far as an arch, attributed to Domitian, but