III. The Southern Quarters (Ancient Rome).
This part of our description of Rome embraces the southern
portion of the city, beginning with the Capitol, and extending east-
wards as far as the Lateran: i. e. the hills of the Capitol, Palatine,
Aventine, Cælius, and the S. slope of the Esquiline. This was the
most important quarter of the Republican and Imperial city, but
lay waste and deserted from the early part of the middle ages down
to our own times. Recently it has lost much of its characteristic
aspect owing to the construction of new quarters, consisting largely
of tenement houses of the most Philistine appearance. A number
of ancient churches, as well as the imposing collections of the
Capitol and Lateran are situated in this district.
a. The Capitol.
The Capitol, the smallest but historically the most important of
the hills of Rome, consists of three distinct parts: the N. summit
with the church of Aracoeli (164 ft.); the depression in the middle
with the piazza of the Capitol (98 ft.); and the S.W. point with the
Pal. Caffarelli (156 ft.). It was on this piazza, the Area Capito-
lina, that Romulus is said to have founded his asylum; it was here
that popular assemblies were afterwards held; and it was here, in
the year 133 B.C., on the occasion of the suppression of the revolt
of Tiberius Gracchus, that the blood of the citizens flowed for the
first time in civil warfare. The N. peak was occupied by the Arx,
or citadel, with the Temple of Juno Moneta ('the warner'), beside
which, from 269 B.C. onwards, stood the mint of the Senate (comp.
Plan, p. 308). The S.W. summit was the site of the great Temple of
Jupiter (comp. Plan, p. 286), built by Tarquinias Superbus, the
last of the kings, and consecrated in 509 B.C., the first year of the
Republic. This temple was 800 ft. in circumference, and possessed
a triple colonnade on the front and sides and three cellæ, that of
Jupiter being in the middle and one for Juno and Minerva on each
side. In the year 83 B.C., during the civil war between Sulla and
Marius, the temple was burned down, and the same fate overtook
it in A.D. 69, on the occasion of the struggle between Vespasian
and Vitellius. Magnificently restored by Domitian, this temple
continued to be the most sacred shrine of the Roman world until
the 6th century.
During the early middle ages the hill was in the possession of
the monastery of Sancta Maria de Capitolio (Aracoeli). The name
of Monte Caprino, or hill of goats, applied to the S.E. height,
testifies to its desertion. The glorious traditions, however, which
attached to this spot, gave rise to a renewal of its importance on