a al certainly earlier than Nero, the foundations of which have recently been brought to light.* Returning to the Palatine, we may notice the removal of the familiar Villa Mills, where Lady Blessington passed her last evening in Rome, in company with two well-known antiquaries, Sir William Gell (who at first was part owner of it) and Edward Dodwell. The disappearance of such a landmark may be regretted, though no one could pretend that its Strawberry Hill Gothic architecture of a century ago was in the best taste. But apparently it would have cost more to keep it up than to pull it down-so much more solid were the ancient Roman walls than those of last century-and at least what is left of the residential portion of Domitian's palace will be visible, though not so much as the views of the 16th century show us. Between the Villa Mills and the uppermost seats of the Circus Maximus lay a great peristyle, the complete excavation of which would mean the sacrifice of a group of beautiful cypresses; but a staircase leading down to its level has recently been cleared, which is especially remarkable for its modern character. It descends on one side of a light well, at the bottom of which was a fountain, paved with slabs of white marble, so that as much light as possible might be reflected into the adjoining rooms by arched openings arranged for the purpose. The excavation of the Circus Maximus has barely begun; but when it is completed, even though not very much is likely to be found, it will certainly be an important link between the Palatine and the Passeggiata Archeologica, an enclosed park which extends south-eastwards from it so as to include the site of the Porta Capena and the first portion of the Via Appia (though the wide curving avenue which leads through it is not a good representation of the straight, narrow highway which, as yet unexcavated, lies several feet below) and the Baths of Caracalla. In the Baths themselves interesting investigations have been carried out; a great deal of further light has been thrown on the arrangements for storage, service, and drainage in this immense structure, the planning of which below ground is even more marvellous than it is above the surface, with its complicated foundations and its network of corridors and passages. It has been made quite clear that the central hall was in no way heated, and that the name 'tepidarium' must, here and elsewhere (e.g. in the Baths of Diocletian, the central hall of which is now the church of S. Maria degli Angeli), be given up. The outer enclosure or peribolus which enclosed the main block of the thermæ has also been studied, and one of the rooms has been found to be a library, with traces of its internal arrangements-low steps leading up to niches, in which the manuscripts were kept, and pedestals for busts between the niches. A corresponding hall at the other end of the stadium is entirely ruined. In one of the subterranean passages under these subsidiary buildings a very large sanctuary of Mithras was placed in the fourth century after Christ; its internal arrangements are very well preserved, and it is, therefore, of considerable interest. Another important Mithræum, of a considerably earlier date, under the church of S. Clemente, originally discovered in 1861, has been freed from the water which until lately rendered it inaccessible; and it too adds considerably to our knowledge of this interesting cult, the popularity of which was largely due to the hope of a new life which it gave to those to whom the traditional state religion had nothing to offer. * It is opposite to the point at which Hülsen would place the entrance to the precinct of Apollo, and would certainly have interfered with its symmetry. † 'Idler in Italy,' III, 1. We may now turn to the Imperial Fora, where a considerable amount of work has already been done, and more must follow, as soon as the long-delayed solution of the traffic problem of the access from the modern Via Cavour to the Piazza Venezia, through the narrow space between the Quirinal and the Capitol, is taken in hand. For the moment the first measure that has been decided upon is the boring of a tunnel under the Capitol, which will render it possible to divert a considerable amount of traffic (and notably all the trams) from the Piazza Venezia. But a complication has arisen from the fact that, not only are the two temples which were known to exist in front of the Teatro Argentina unexpectedly well preserved and interesting, but a third and a fourth have recently come to light; so that the systematisation of the whole area presents unexpected difficulties. In the meantime, the whole of the north-east half of the Forum of Augustus, with the temple of Mars Ultor, has been cleared, and an extremely impressive ensemble has thus been created. With the exception of the three columns already visible, the superstructure of the temple has almost entirely disappeared, having been sacrificed for the construction of a medieval church, built by Basilican monks in the ninth century. This has now been completely removed, and the temple reconstructed as far as possible, the steps and podium being fairly well preserved. The large semicircular apse or exedra on the south-east side of the forum had already been cleared in 1888-1889, but the Arco dei Pantani, the main opening in the great enclosure wall of the Forum, was filled up to a considerable height, and has only now been opened. It was never used for vehicular traffic, being traversed by steps, and the same was the case with the three smaller openings to the north-west of the temple. The marble decorations of the north-west exedra, which have been found in a shocking state of mutilation, and have been carefully pieced together as far as possible, may well be held to justify the elder Pliny's opinion that the Forum of Augustus, the Basilica Emilia,* and the Temple of Peace (of which we cannot judge, as no fragment of it has so far come to light) were the three most beautiful buildings in the world. It apparently contained a hall with a base of an acrolithic colossal statue (possibly the colossal statue of Augustus of which Martial speaks), the ante-chamber to which had a colonnade with some extremely beautiful figures of Caryatides which are only preserved in fragments. In or about the year 1230 the remains of the Forum became the property of the Knights of S. John; and to the reconstruction of their palace in 1465 belong some beautiful Gothic windows and a Renaissance loggia with decorative paintings. The investigation of the Forum Transitorium has so far made but little progress; but important work has been done in the Forum of Trajan. The north-eastern hemicycle, partly cleared in 1828 and again studied by Boni in 1906, has been connected with a series of stairways and chambers, which lead up to the higher level above it. Here a road called the Via Biberatica ran along the upper curve of the hemicycle; and on it opened a great hall, which is something like a basilica in plan: the vaulting springs from corbels, which are placed in the piers by which the lateral galleries are supported. A number of other brick structures extend almost as far as the medieval Torre delle Milizie; and similar buildings have been found in the garden of the former Villa Aldobrandini, now the Istituto Internazionale per il Diritto Privato. * 'Quarterly Review, July 1908, p. 110. On the other side of the Capitol, at the southern extremity of the Campus Martius, lie the portico of Octavia and the theatre of Marcellus, both of which are in process of being cleared from the modern houses which have up till now in large measure concealed them from view, and are being excavated down to their original level. The portico was in reality erected by Augustus in the name of his sister, while the theatre was a memorial of his well-beloved nephew; and it is a curious coincidence that the excavation of the interior of the Mausoleum of Augustus has led to the discovery of a block of marble bearing inscribed upon it the names of Marcellus and his mother. Marcellus was the first whose remains were placed in the mausoleum ; and it is again a coincidence that the base of a statue of Nerva, the last individual, so far as we know, to find a permanent restingplace here, should also have come to light in the comparatively limited portion that it has been possible to examine. A good deal has been found out concerning its internal structure, though it will be well to await the conclusion of the excavations before going further into detail. It is only to be deplored that Cordingley's restoration * was inevitably made without full knowledge of what had been discovered; though he had been able to ascertain that the mausoleum had a circular external wall (constructionally unimportant, but decoratively supremely so), and that the great semicircular niches which occupy so prominent a place on all the plans were purely constructional. One of the discoveries which has undoubtedly excited * In 'Papers of the British School at Rome,' x. 1 the public mind as much as any that has been made in Rome during recent years, has been that of the subterranean basilica on the left of the Via Prænestina, just outside the Porta Maggiore. The circumstances in which it occurred were indeed sufficiently remarkable. During the war, in 1917, the earth gave way beneath the main railway line out of Rome, the embankment of which, it was found, lay at that point precisely over the light shaft of the vestibule. Investigations were made, and it was soon seen that the shaft had given light and air to a most remarkable underground building, which, having a nave with an apse and two aisles separated from it by four arches supported by massive masonry pillars, anticipated in a most unexpected manner the form of the primitive Christian church, and gave the death-blow to numerous theories that had been advanced as to its origin. Not less remarkable were the stucco reliefs which decorated both the vestibule and the basilica itself, the former showing traces of colour, the latter being pure white. Their subjects were many and various, and often difficult of interpretation-so much so, that they have given rise to considerable discussion. Some scholars consider that they fit in with what we know of the tenets of Pythagoreanism, with its hell on earth and heavenly paradise, and, therefore, believe the building to have been the place of worship of a Pythagorean sect; others see in it the hall of a funerary college whose tombs were in the neighbourhood, but whose members, as Mrs Strong maintains, 'aimed at the higher and purer forms of mysticism,' the subjects alluding in every case to initiation and purification; while others * prefer (though I cannot find myself in agreement with them) to see in it merely a place of burial, and find no more recondite symbolism in the reliefs than the triumph of life over death persisting through them all. In the same district of Rome, a couple of years later, a remarkable tomb of the period of the Severi came to light during the construction of a garage, with paintings the interpretation of which has proved perhaps even * The chief representative of this view is Bendinelli, who is responsible for the fully illustrated official publication in 'Monumenti dei Lincei,' XXXI (1927), 601-859. |