The stone was in the main Grotta Oscura tufa, which he knew from Tenney Frank’s studies to have been in use in the year (378 B.C.) in which Livy says the censors contracted to have a wall built of squared stone. Furthermore, some of the Esquiline tombs already mentioned, containing mid-fourth century artifacts, were outside the line of the Grotta Oscura wall, while some of the tombs containing archaic artifacts were inside. The Romans rarely buried their dead within a city wall: the inference is that at the date of the earlier tombs, Rome had no proper ring-wall, while by the date of the later (fourth-century) tombs a circuit wall had been built. The Great Drain through the Forum is also of Grotta Oscura, and is therefore probably to be dated in 378, like the wall, though some feeder lines are in cappellaccio, which, as we have seen, was the earliest volcanic stone the Romans used, and we know—because we know the Forum swamp was drained by 575 B.C.—that there must have been some sort of drainage system—possibly open ditches—earlier than 378.
But Säflund found Fidenae tufa also. This he knew, again from Frank’s study, to have been in use from about 338 B.C. down into the second century. It had been used to patch the wall in places. What more appropriate time for such repairs than when Hannibal was threatening the city, in 217 B.C.? Thereafter, Roman and Latin colonies, advanced bases, served her in the office of a wall, and her own fortifications were allowed to fall into disrepair.
But there are places in Rome’s wall where Monteverde stone has been used for arches, rising from footings set in concrete; in other places the wall has a concrete core faced with Anio tufa. Säflund knew that concrete was little in use in Roman building before 150 B.C., and that it had become a favorite material by Sulla’s time (see p. [129]). Sulla had marched on Rome in 88 B.C. and taken it; he must have reinforced the wall to keep his enemy Marius from duplicating his own feat. And Sulla included the bridgehead on the far side of the Tiber in his circuit, reinforced the Aventine Hill, and added ballistae (great catapults for shooting stones) in arched casemates flanking the main gates.
Fig. 3.9 Rome, “Servian” Wall of 378 B.C., surviving stretch beside Termini railway station. (Photo Paul MacKendrick)
Thus Säflund distinguished three building periods for the so-called “Servian” Wall, though none as early as King Servius Tullius. One section of earth work or agger, on the Quirinal Hill, faced in part with small blocks of cappellaccio, looked older than 378 B.C., and Säflund knew from observations at Ardea, Cerveteri (and, as we now know, Anzio) that the use of the earthwork was standard in the sixth century to reinforce weak places on hilly sites. Some early sixth-century sherds, but none later, were found under the agger. This helps to confirm that the agger was a part of Rome’s sixth-century, genuinely Servian defenses, never a complete ring-wall, but an adjustment and reinforcement of natural defenses, later incorporated into the circuit wall of 378 B.C. A splendid stretch of the facing of this reinforced agger, 100 yards, survives today by the Termini railroad station ([Fig. 3.9]).
But Säflund’s careful observations did more than redate the wall in its several phases. By comparison of the mason’s marks, hacked in Greek letters on the heads of the Grotta Oscura blocks only, with similar marks found on the blocks of the fortifications of the Euryalus above Syracuse, in Sicily (built in the late fifth century B.C. by Dionysius I), Säflund was able to demonstrate that Rome’s wall was built by Sicilian workmen, Rome not having the manpower or the skill at the time. (Dionysius for his wall had employed 6000 men and 500 yoke of oxen.)
The wall of 378 B.C. is evidence that Rome had emerged from the doldrums into which the Republic had begun to sink. Before 390 B.C. she had depended on men, not walls. The Gallic sack had proved her not invincible, and had also, as war emergencies will, produced a new sense of solidarity. The wall symbolizes it, and so does the bill passed in 367 B.C. (while the wall was still under construction), opening the highest office in the Republic to plebeians. Thus a reinforced oligarchy was formed, which by 338 B.C. could beat its once powerful enemies, the neighboring settlements linked in the Latin League; proudly (even arrogantly) mount the beaks of enemy ships on the new Rostra; and embark upon a career of Manifest Destiny in Italy. The Republic had reached adulthood.
Fig. 3.10 Rome, Largo Argentina, temples. (G. Lugli, Monumenti Antichi, 3, fac. p. 32)