Passages in which the Temple of Spes occurs in Livy.
“At the time when this disaster happened, Caius Horatius and Titus Menenius were in the Consulship. Menenius was immediately sent against the Etruscans, elated with their victory. He also was worsted in battle, and the enemy took possession of the Janiculum; nor would the City, which besides the war was distressed also by scarcity, have escaped a siege (the Etruscans having passed the Tiber), had not the Consul Horatius been recalled from the country of the Volscians. So near indeed did the enemy approach to the walls, that first the engagement was at the temple of Spes, in which little was gained on either side; again at the Porta Collina, in which the Romans gained some small advantage, and this, though far from decisive, yet by restoring to the soldiers their former courage, qualified them the better to contend with the enemy in future[60].”
“At Rome a dreadful fire raged during two nights and one day; everything between the Salinæ (or salt wharf) and the Porta Carmentalis was levelled to the ground, as were the Æquimælian and the Jugarian streets. The fire catching the temples of Fortuna, of mater Matuta and of Spes, on the outside of the gate, and spreading to a vast extent, consumed a great number of buildings, both religious and private[61].”
“After this, in pursuance of a decree of the Senate, and an order of the people, an assembly of election was held by the city prætor, in which were created five commissioners for repairing the walls and towers, and two sets of triumvirs: one to search for the effects belonging to the temples, to register the offerings; the other to repair the temples of Fortuna and mater Matuta within the Porta Carmentalis, and likewise that of Spes on the outside of the gate, which had been consumed by fire the year before[62].”
“He agreed with contractors for building a theatre near the Temple of Apollo, and for embellishing the Temple of Jupiter in the Capitol, and the columns around it; he also removed from those columns the statues that stood incommodiously before them, and took down the shields and military ensigns of all sorts which were hung upon them. Marcus Fulvius made contracts for more numerous and more useful works—a haven on the Tiber, and piers for a bridge across it, on which piers Publius Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius, censors, many years after, caused the arches to be erected; a court of justice behind the new bankers’ houses, and a fish-market, surrounded with shops for private sales; also a forum and porticus, on the outside of the Porta Trigemina; another porticus behind the dockyard, and one at the Temple of Hercules; also a temple of Apollo Medicus, behind that of Spes, near the bank of the Tiber[63].”
It will be observed that all these passages apply to the well-known Temple of Spes near the bank of the Tiber, of which there are considerable remains now in the church of S. Nicolas in Carcere, and do not apply to a Temple of Spes at the Porta Maggiore.
The word specus is used by Vitruvius in the sense of a covered water-course:—
“But if there should be mounds in the middle between the walls and the fountain-head, it must be so contrived that the water-channel (specus) be dug under the earth, and poised on the top[64].”
And at a later period by Hirtius:—