Fidenæ.
From the villa of the White Hens we looked across to the arx of Fidenæ as one of the main points in the view. The hill of Castel Giubeleo seems planted there by the hand of nature as a border-defence of Latium against Etruscan attacks. Yet both strong sites and other things sometimes fail to discharge the exact functions which seem to have been laid upon them by the hand of nature. The post which seems designed as the Latin bulwark against the Etruscan does, as a matter of fact, play its chief part in history in the character of an Etruscan outpost on Latin soil. Whether Fidenæ was really such an outpost in the strict sense, whether it was a remnant of the wider Etruscan dominion of the days when the Tiber was not a border-stream, or whether it was a Latin town which, from whatever cause, chose to throw itself on the Etruscan side, it is not only as the enemy of Rome, but as the ally of Veii, that Fidenæ made itself memorable. If we accept the received story, the war which brought about the ruin of Fidenæ was caused because its people slew the envoys of Rome in obedience to the hasty, perhaps misinterpreted, words of a Veientine king. The king who thus took so little heed of the law of nations of course paid his forfeit, and the Royal spoils won from Lars Tolumnius by Aulus Cornelius Cossus formed one of the most cherished relics of the early days of Rome. We may believe the details of the story or not; but the spoils at least were real, if the witness of Augustus Cæsar is to be believed.
Each of the roads which lead out of Rome—since the railway came, there is practically only one way which leads into Rome—has its own special interest, and the Salarian way is certainly not inferior to the Cassian or the Flaminian. We leave the city by that which in its material fabric is the most modern, which in its associations is perhaps the most historic, of all the gates of Rome. The Salarian gate in the wall of Aurelian may be looked at as in some sort drawing to itself the memories of the neighbouring Colline gate in the wall of Servius. He who fought before the Colline gate, he who entered by the Colline gate, could hardly fail to march over the ground where in the new system of defence the Salarian gate was to arise. The Colline gate on the high ground of the Quirinal hill was the weakest point of Rome; it was therefore specially strengthened in the Servian line of defence. It was the point by which most of the early invaders of Rome marched in or strove to march in. There the revolted troops entered to put down the tyranny of the decemvirs; there the Gauls came in after the slaughter of the Allia; to that gate Hannibal drew near, and those who did not understand Hannibal said that he hurled his spear over it. Before the Colline gate Rome had for the last time to struggle for the dominion of Italy in the fight between Sulla and Pontius Telesinus. And when the Colline gate had given way to the Salarian, it was at the new entrance to Rome that the enemy came in whose coming declared that her political dominion over the world had ceased, but that her moral dominion was stronger than ever. "At midnight the Salarian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet." And if these gates were a centre of fighting, they were also, in a strange and special way, a centre of burying. Along this road, as along others, we mark the broken tombs here and there, two pre-eminently just outside the present gate; but this quarter supplies one strange contrast in the matter of burials which is not to be found elsewhere. Outside the Colline gate was the living tomb of unchaste vestals; not far beyond the Salarian we come to the Christian cœmeterium Priscillae. We go on; we descend the hill, the northern slope of the Quirinal, and find ourselves in the alluvial ground of Tiber and Anio. We have now come near to the meeting of the streams; Anio is spanned by a bridge which at first sight might seem to be wholly a thing of yesterday, but which in truth has lived and gone through much from the earliest times to the latest. Broken down and rebuilt over and over again, from the wars of Narses to those of Garibaldi, its main arch is indeed of the newest workmanship; but if we go down to the banks we see the smaller side arches, which must have been ancient when they were crossed by Hannibal, perhaps hardly new when they were crossed by Cossus. A few steps further, and we come to another record of change; an ancient tomb has grown into a mediæval tower; the mediæval tower now proclaims itself as an "osteria"; but we feel hardly tempted to try its powers of entertainment. We are now fairly in the low ground; the hills of Rome lie behind us; the hills beyond Tiber which skirt the Flaminian way rise to our left; the hills of Fidenæ are before us. To the right lies the ground between the Salarian and the Nomentane road where Phaon had his villa and where his master Nero came by his end. Presently the road, and its companion the railway, pass close under hills to the right and, at one point, with Tiber close by them to the left. A little further on they pass between hills on either side, a loftier and isolated height to the left, a range of lower hills, broken by more than one stream and its valley to the right. We are in the heart of forsaken Fidenæ, in the pass which divides its soaring akropolis by the river from the body of the city on the inland side.
The arx of Fidenæ, now the hill of Castel Giubeleo, is not, indeed, a height like that of Tusculum or that of Cortona; but it comes nearer to them than anything to be found at Veii or Rome. A bend of the river leaves a rich alluvial flat between its bank and a hill which on that side rises steeply enough. Here the men of the faithless Latin city could look out to their friends beyond the river, over the mouth of the small but famous stream of Cremera, over the hills on either side, the Fabian outpost, the future home of Livia, far away, if not to Veii itself, yet to points further off than Veii. The view from the arx of Fidenæ and the view from the hill of Livia complete one another. Inland we see Rome on its hills; but we must again remark that when Fidenæ was, Rome sent up no lofty towers and cupolas to mark its place against the horizon. At our feet we see the lower hills occupied by the rest of the town, surely a modern settlement compared with the original arx. We go over its site and round its site, we mark its tombs, its cloaca, the place where its gates once were. The walk in the valley by the brook between the lower hill of Fidenæ and the hill which lies between Fidenæ and Rome brings the features of the place well out. It was no small gain for Veii to have such a confederate on Latin ground as the strong post which we are compassing. We can well understand why Rome on the first opportunity swept Fidenæ utterly away, while the existence of Veii had to be endured for a generation longer.
As at Veii, so at Fidenæ, the traces of the living are gone—yet more utterly at Fidenæ than at Veii. The traces of the dead are far more plentiful, though Fidenæ has nothing to set against the painted tomb of Veii. The city, doubtless, perished after the war in which Cossus won the spoils of Tolumnius. Strabo speaks of Fidenæ as a deserted place, the possession of a single man. Yet the potestas of Fidenæ—perhaps its dictator—may have lingered on, as such dignitaries have lingered on in the boroughs once threatened by Sir Charles Dilke.