ROMA QUADRATA.
5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 19, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41.
Romulus, the son of Rhea Silvia and Mars, founded Rome on the Palatine Hill, above the Tiber, 753 B.C., on the site of the Arcadian city of Evander, near the Lupercal, where the wolf had given him suckle. The city was built after the Etruscan rites, and surrounded by a massive wall, in a quadrangular form, whence it was called Roma Quadrata. See "Walls of Rome," [page xvii] .
THE THREE GATES OF ROMA QUADRATA.
Pliny (iii. 9) informs us that the city was entered by three gates.
PORTA MUGONIA (14),
situated on the east of the hill, the site of which has been identified by Varro ("L. L." 164):—
"Moreover, I observe that the gates within the walls are thus named; that at the Palatine 'Mucionis' (from 'mugitus,' lowing), because through it they used to drive out the cattle into the pastures around the old town."
PORTA ROMANA (40).
At the middle of the western side, at the commencement of the ascent on the Via Nova, called the Clivus Victoriæ in commemoration of the victory of Romulus over Acron. The remains were discovered March 1886. Varro says:—
"The other, called Romulana, was so called from Rome, the same which has steps into the Nova Via at the shrine of Volupiæ."
Festus, speaking of the same gate, says:—
"But the Porta Romana was set up by Romulus above the foot of the Hill of Victory, and this place is formed of tiers of steps disposed in a square. It is called Romana by the Sabines in particular, because it is the nearest entrance to Rome from the side of the Sabines."
PORTA CARMENTA (8).
Authorities on the subject say that the name and position of the third gate are lost.
Now we contend that the mass of ruins called the Scali Caci are the remains of the third gate, and that that gate was the Porta Carmenta, as distinctly stated by Virgil in his description of the meeting of Æneas and Evander, "without the gates." "Thus, walking on, he spoke, and showed the gate, since called Carmental by the Roman state; then stopping, through the narrow gate they pressed" (Virgil, "Æn.," viii.). The position corresponds with his description, and is just the spot where a gate would be required. The remains consist of two different early periods—immense blocks of soft tufa of the Arcadian period, and blocks of hard brown tufa of the time of Romulus, corresponding with the material of which his wall is built.
The Porta Carmenta was to the south, and is thus mentioned by Propertius (iv. 1):—
"Where rose that house of Remus upon tiers of steps, a single hearth was once the brothers' modest reign."
We suppose he uses the name of Remus here instead of Romulus on account of the rhythm.
Solinus gives this description of it:—
"It [Roma Quadrata] begins at the wood which is in the area of Apollo, and ends at the top of the stairs of Caius, where was [once] the cottage of Faustulus."
Plutarch says ("Romulus," xx.):—
"Romulus dwelt close by the steps, as they call them, of the fair shore, near the descent from the Mount Palatine to the Circus Maximus. There, they say, grew the holy blackthorn tree, of which they report that Romulus once, to try his strength, threw a dart from Mount Aventine, which struck so deep that no one could pluck it up, and grew into a trunk of considerable size, which posterity preserved and worshipped as one of the most sacred things, and therefore walled it about.
"But, they say, when Caius Cæsar was repairing the steps about it, some of the labourers digging too close, the root corrupted, and the tree quite withered."
Now, in this passage, we think we have an explanation of why it is called the Stairs of Caius, not Cacus. This name does not refer to Cacus, the shepherd robber, who had his cave on the Aventine, but, as we learn from the above passage from Plutarch, to Caius the emperor, who was nicknamed Caligula from his having worn the sandals so-called of the Roman troops—he having been brought up in the camp on the banks of the Rhine, Caius being his proper name. He, as we have seen, repaired these steps, and so they were called after him; but that was not their previous name. The question arises, What was that name? Why, none other than the Porta Carmenta, the missing third gate of Roma Quadrata, "the gate since called Carmental by the Roman state."
It was up this gateway that the Romans brought the Sabine women when they ran off with them in the Circus Maximus. Valerius Antias says they were five hundred and forty-seven in number; Plutarch says there were six hundred and eighty-three, and that the event took place on the 18th of August.
But before this the gate had another name, the original name in the Arcadian period. We know from Virgil and Diodorus Siculus that it existed before the time of Romulus, and was incorporated by him into his city. Let us see what that name was.
"Hercules, after he had gone through Liguria and Tuscany, encamped on the banks of the Tiber, where Rome now stands, built many ages after by Romulus, the son of Mars. The natural inhabitants at that time inhabited a little town upon a hill, now called Mount Palatine. Here Potitius and Pinarius, the most eminent persons of quality among them, entertained Hercules. There are now at Rome ancient monuments of these men; for the most noble family, called the Pinarii, remains still among the Romans, and is accounted the most ancient at this day. And there are Potitius's stone stairs to go down from Mount Palatine (called after his name), adjoining to that which was anciently his house" (Diodorus Siculus, iv. 1). Thus we see that the spot was originally called the Stairs of Potitius.
Virgil ("Æn.," viii.) informs us that Potitius, the Arcadian high priest, instituted the worship of Hercules; and that the priests were selected from the Pinarian house.
"When the new walls were built by Servius Tullius, one of his gates was named Carmentalis after the above tradition; the original Porta Carmenta having become obsolete."
The valley between the Palatine and Aventine, the site of the Circus Maximus, was formerly the Murzian Lake or bay, formed by an arm of the Tiber, and these stairs led down to the fair shore (Pulcrum Littus, Καλὴ Ἀκτή )—that is, to the shore of the lake, where Æneas landed—and this had nothing to do with the banks of the Tiber, which would hardly be called a fair shore by Plutarch. Virgil calls it "the strand."
The above name was also given to one of the temples.