The oldest monument of Roman masonry is the remaining portion of a cloaca in this district, commonly identified with the Cloaca Maxima of Livy, which reaches from a spot near the church of S. Giorgio in Velabro and the Janus Quadrifrons to the Tiber bank near the Ponte Rotto. The ancient archway has been broken open here, and can be reached by descending into a hollow near the Janus Quadrifrons. Near the Janus Quadrifrons, at the above-mentioned spot, seven cloacæ unite and pour their waters into the still extant portion of the Cloaca Maxima, so that a large stream is constantly flowing through it. These branch sewers are built with solid brick arches, but the main archway, though fronted with modern brickwork, consists of massive blocks of tufa, and at short intervals of every few yards has an arch of travertine introduced, to add to its solidity and strength. The original size of the archway, one-third of which is now choked up with mud, was twelve feet four inches high, and ten feet eight inches wide. Strabo and Pliny say that a cart loaded with hay could pass through some of the Roman sewers, and certainly in the case of this cloaca, it would not be impossible to do so were it cleared of mud.
M. Agrippa, the Haussmann of Rome, is said, when ædile, to have traversed the main sewer in a boat. The whole length of this remaining portion is at least three hundred and forty yards, and it makes several bends, following probably the direction of the ancient streets. The mouth is still visible, when the Tiber is not high, at a spot called the Pulchrum Litus, near the round temple usually called the Temple of Vesta. The immense size is due to the fact that it was not only a sewer for refuse, but a drain for the lake of the Velabrum, and the many land springs of the Forum, and must be classed with the emissarium of the Alban Lake and other gigantic undertakings of the kind, such as the cuniculus at Veii, executed about B.C. 539. For a distance of about forty feet from the mouth the cloaca is constructed of a triple arch of peperino, mixed with some blocks of tufa, but throughout the rest of its course it consists of a single arch of tufa with occasional bands of travertine. The masonry along the embankment of the shore on each side, is partly of peperino and partly of tufa and travertine blocks laid along and across alternately.
Livy gives the early history of this extraordinary work in his first Book. In the thirty-eighth chapter he ascribes the commencement of the undertaking of draining the Velabrum and Forum to Tarquinius Priscus, and in the fifty-sixth he says that Tarquinius Superbus completed the Cloaca Maxima as a receptacle for the refuse of the whole city. Dionysius agrees in giving the same account of the origin of the system of cloacæ, and Pliny enumerates the cloacæ among the wonders of the great metropolis, and expressly mentions Tarquinius Priscus as entitled to the credit of having first originated this great work of public utility. His words are—“Seven streams, after traversing the city, are united and their water so compressed into one channel as to sweep everything along with it like a torrent, and when a great body of rain-water is added to this the very walls are shaken by the agitated waters; and sometimes the Tiber rises and beats back into them, and vast opposing masses of water meet and struggle, yet the solidity of their masonry resists and stands firm. Huge weights are carried over them, whole buildings undermined by fire or by some accident fall upon them, earthquakes shake the very ground around them, yet they have lasted for seven hundred years from the time of Tarquinius Priscus almost uninjured, a monument of antiquity which ought to be the more carefully observed since it has been passed over in silence by some of our most celebrated historians.”
The Tarquins are said to have compelled the Roman people to work at these huge structures, just as the kings of Egypt and Assyria exacted task-work from their subjects; but in palliation of the cruelties alleged against them by the historians it must be noted that in the one case buildings of permanent public service were built, while in the other, only the vanity of a despot was flattered.
Fortuna Virilis.
Not far from the Janus Quadrifrons, and close to the Pons Æmilius, or Ponte Rotto, stands a small temple, now converted into the church of S. Maria Egiziaca, which presents an unsolved problem in Roman topography. The substruction of this temple, which has been laid bare, consists of tufa cased with travertine. The form of the temple is that called tetrastylos by Vitruvius, having four Ionic columns in front and seven at the sides. The four front columns and two on each side, forming the pronaos, originally stood clear, but are now enclosed within the wall of the church. The remaining five on each side with those at the back were half columns set against the wall of the cella. The shafts of the half columns are of tufa, but the bases and capitals, with the entablature and the columns of the pronaos, are of travertine. On the frieze and cornice are the remains of ornamental work, which is now rendered almost invisible by the stucco with which the walls have been covered. The Ionic volutes on the corner capitals of this temple are in the later style, while the side capitals are in the usual style.
This building has usually been supposed to be the temple dedicated by Servius Tullius to Fortuna Virilis, and situated on the bank of the Tiber. The passage of Dionysius upon which this supposition rests is as follows: “Servius Tullius built two temples to Fortune, one in the Forum Boarium, and the other upon the bank of the Tiber.”[81]
It is most probable, as Reber suggests, that we have here the Temple of Servius dedicated to Fortune without any special title. Dionysius, as we have seen, places this in the Forum Boarium, and Livy describes it as intra portam Carmentalem, and mentions it in tracing the course of a conflagration between the Salinæ near the Porta Trigemina and the Porta Carmentalis. But there was another temple, that of Mater Matuta which stood close to the Temple of Fortune, and there is no evidence showing to which of the two the ruin in question belonged. Both were founded by Servius, and reckoned among the most venerable relics of ancient Rome. Becker urges the claims of the Temple of Pudicitia Patricia, which Livy places in the Forum Boarium near the round Temple of Hercules, to this site. But this was merely a small shrine, containing a statue and not a templum. So far as an opinion can be formed of the date of the temple from the materials and style of architecture, it seems to belong to the later republic.
So-called Temple of Vesta.
On the Piazza della Bocca della Verità, at a short distance from the temple we have just been considering, stand the remains of a small round temple commonly called the Temple of Vesta. Perhaps of all the ruins of Rome this is the most familiar to the eye of the tourist. A considerable part of the cella is still standing, ornamented with a simple and elegant cornice. Round this stand nineteen graceful Corinthian columns of white marble. The entablature is unfortunately destroyed, and the rude modern tiled roof with which the building has been capped completely spoils the picturesque effect of the ruin.