THE PONTE ROTTO,
anciently the Pons Æmilius. This bridge, intended to unite the nearer bank of the river with Trastevere, but rendered impassable by the fall of several arches in 1598, whence its name of the Ponte Rotto, was commenced in the censorship of M. Æmilius Lepidus and M. Fulvius Nobilior, in the year of the city 573, and was completed by P. Scipio Africanus and L. Mummius. From the first of these it took its name. "Marcus Fulvius made contracts for piers for a bridge over the Tiber; on which piers Publius Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius, censors many years afterwards, caused the arches to be raised" (Livy, xl. 51). It is the same from which the body of Elagabalus was thrown with a stone attached to it, after having been dragged through the Circus.
In January 1886, to the eternal disgrace of the acting mayor, Duke Torlonia, and the municipal authorities of Rome, the remaining half of the oldest bridge over the Tiber was wantonly and unnecessarily destroyed in the works going on for the embankment of the river, the city fathers leaving one arch in the centre of the river as a monument of their folly. From this arch a suspension bridge is to be thrown to the Trastevere side. The Cloaca Maxima has been diverted into the Tiber below S. Paul's, in order to prevent the back-wash into the city. A little lower down was