Lucus Aventino suberat niger ilicis umbra,
Quo posses viso dicere, numen inest.
In medio gramen, muscoque adoperta virenti
Manabat saxo vena perennis aquæ.
Inde fere soli Faunus Picusque bibebant.[174]
By mingling wine and honey with the waters of their spring, Numa snared the gods, and compelled them to tell him how he might learn from Jupiter the knowledge of his will, and to reveal to him a charm against thunder and lightning.[175]
The Sabine king Tatius, the rival of Romulus, was buried on the Aventine "in a great grove of laurels," and, at his tomb, then called Armilustrum, it was the custom, every year, in the month of October, to hold a feast for the purification of arms, accompanied by martial dances. A horse was at the same time sacrificed to Janus, the Sabine war-god.[176]
Ancus Martius surrounded the Aventine by a wall,[177] and settled there many thousands of the inhabitants of Latin towns which he had subdued. This was the origin of the plebs, who were soon to become such formidable opponents of the first colonists of the Palatine, who took rank as patricians, and who at first found in them an important counterpoise to the power of the original Sabine inhabitants, against whom the little Latin colony of Romulus had hitherto been standing alone. The Aventine continued always to be the especial property and sanctuary of the plebs, the patricians avoiding it—in the first instance, it is supposed, from an impression that the hill was of evil omen, owing to the story of Remus. In B.C. 416, the tribune Icilius proposed and carried a law by which all the public lands of the Aventine were officially conferred upon the plebs, who forthwith began to cover its heights with houses, in which each family of the people had a right in one floor,—a custom which still prevails at Rome. At this time, also, the Aventine was included for the first time within the pomœrium or religious boundary of the city. Owing to its being the "hill of the people," the commons henceforth held their comitia and elected their tribunes here; and here, after the murder of Virginia, to whom the tribune Icilius had been betrothed, the army assembled against Appius Claudius.
Very little remains of the numerous temples which once adorned the hill, but their sites are tolerably well ascertained. We still ascend the Aventine by the ancient Clivus Publicius, originally paved by two brothers Publicii, who were ædiles at the same time, and had embezzled a public sum of money, which they were compelled to expend thus—
Parte locant clivum, qui tune erat ardua rupes:
Utile nunc iter est, Publiciumque vocant.[178]
At the foot of this road was the temple of Luna, or Jana, in which Tatius had also erected an altar to Janus or the Sun.
Luna regit menses; hujus quoque tempora mensis
Finit Aventino Luna colenda jugo.[179]
It was up this road that Caius Gracchus, a few hours before his death, fled to take refuge in a small Temple of Diana, which stood somewhere near the present site of S. Alessio, where, kneeling before the statue of the goddess, he implored that the people who had betrayed him might never be free. Close by, singularly enough, rose the Temple of Liberty, which his grandfather Sempronius Gracchus had built. Adjoining this temple was a hall where the archives of the censors were kept, and where they transacted business; this was rebuilt by Asinius Pollio, who added to it the first public library established in Rome.