The hills, which were crowded by a dense population in ancient Rome, are now for the most part deserted; the plain, which was deserted in ancient Rome, is now thickly covered with inhabitants.
The plain was bounded on two sides by the Quirinal and Capitoline hills, which were both in the hands of the Sabines, but it had no connection with the Latin hill of the Palatine. Thus it was dedicated to the Sabine god, Mamers or Mars, either before the time of Servius Tullius, as is implied by Dionysius, or after the time of the Tarquins, as stated by Livy.
Tarquinius Superbus had appropriated the Campus Martius to his own use, and planted it with corn. After he was expelled, and his crops cut down and thrown into the Tiber, the land was restored to the people. Here the tribunes used to hold the assemblies of the plebs in the Prata Flaminia at the foot of the Capitol, before any buildings were erected as their meeting-place.
The earliest building in the Campus Martius of which there is any record, is the Temple of Apollo, built by the consul C. Julius, in B.C. 430. Under the censor C. Flaminius, in B.C. 220, a group of important edifices arose on a site which is ascertained to be nearly that occupied by the Palazzo Caetani, Palazzo Mattei, and Sta. Caterina dei Funari. The most important was the Circus Flaminius, where the plebeian games were celebrated under the care of the plebeian ædiles, and which in later times was flooded by Augustus, when thirty-six crocodiles were killed there for the amusement of the people.[288]
Close to this Circus was the Villa Publica, erected B.C. 438, for taking the census, levying troops, and such other public business as could not be transacted within the city.
Here, also, foreign ambassadors were received before their entrance into the city, as afterwards at the Villa Papa Giulio, and here victorious generals awaited the decree which allowed them a triumph.[289] It was in the Villa Publica that Sylla cruelly massacred three thousand partisans of Marius, after he had promised them their lives.
"Tunc flos Hesperiæ, Latii jam sola juventus,
Concidit, et miseræ maculavit ovilia Romæ."
Lucan, ii. 196.
The cries of these dying men were heard by the senate who were assembled at the time in the Temple of Bellona (restored by Appius Claudius Cæcus in the Samnite War), which stood hard by, and in front of which at the extremity of the Circus Flaminius, where the Piazza Paganica now is, stood the Columna Bellica, where the Ferialis, when war was declared, flung a lance into a piece of ground, supposed to represent the enemy's country, when it was not possible to do it at the hostile frontier itself. Julius Cæsar flung the spear here when war was declared against Cleopatra.[290]
"Prospicit a templo summum brevis area Circum.
Est ibi non parvæ parva columna notæ.
Hinc solet hasta manu, belli prænuncia, mitti;
In regem et gentes, cum placet arma capi."
Ovid, Fast. vi. 205.
Almost adjoining the Villa Publica was the Septa, where the Comitia Centuriata of the plebs assembled for the election of their tribunes. The other name of this place of assembly, Ovilia, or the sheepfolds, bears witness to its primitive construction, when it was surrounded by a wooden barrier. In later times the Ovilia was more richly adorned; Pliny describes it as containing two groups of sculpture—Pan and the young Olympus, and Chiron and the young Achilles—for which the keepers were responsible with their lives;[291] and under the empire it was enclosed in magnificent buildings.