HIER. ALTERIUS AEDILIS SECUNDO } CURABANT
PAULUS BUBALUS AEDILIS SEXTO }
ANNO DOMINI MDLXXXI.
"The quæstors led the man [Spurius Cassius] to the top of the precipice that commands the Forum, and in the presence of all the citizens threw him down from the rock. For this was the established punishment at that time among the Romans for those who were condemned to die"—A.U.C. 269—(Dionysius, viii. 78).
If we look back up the street we came down, the height will be seen in the garden above us. It must be remembered that the top of the hill has been levelled, and the valley below filled in thirty feet; allowing for this there would have been a fall of upwards of 160 feet. The steps on our left formed the third ancient approach to the arx, the Centum Gradus, up which the Vitellians climbed when they took the citadel. On the site of the garden above stood
CAMILLUS'S TEMPLES TO CONCORD AND JUNO.
The first Temple of Concord of which we have any notice was that dedicated by Camillus, A.U.C. 388.
"When the dictator was one day sitting on the tribunal in the Forum, the people called out to drag him from his seat; but he led off the patricians to the senate house. Previous to his entering it he turned towards the Capitol [this shows that the senate house was not on the Capitol, as some would have us believe; for if so, he would not have turned towards the Capitol before entering the senate house—he would have already faced it], and besought the gods to put a happy end to the present disturbances, vowing to build a temple to Concord when the tumult should be appeased.... Next day they assembled and voted that the temple which Camillus had vowed to Concord should, on account of this great event, be built upon a spot viewing from a height the Forum and place of assembly" (Plutarch, in "Camillus"). Ovid, speaking of the same temple ("Fasti," i. 640), says: "Fair Concord, the succeeding day places thee in a snow-white shrine, near where elevated Moneta raises her steps on high: now with ease wilt thou look down upon the Latin crowd. Now have the august hands of Cæsar restored thee,"—referring to its rebuilding by Tiberius, A.D. 11. From both these authors we learn that it had a commanding prospect, and Ovid adds that it was near the Temple of Moneta, which was likewise founded by Camillus, A.U.C. 411, as we learn from Livy (vii. 28, and vi. 20. See Plutarch). "The site chosen was that spot in the Citadel where the house of Manlius had stood." The site of the Temple of Concord was on the Tarpeian Rock, at the top of the Centum Gradus, and Camillus's Temple of Moneta was near it.
Livy (xxvi. 23) says: "In A.U.C. 542, at the Temple of Concord, a statue of Victory, which stood on the summit of the roof, being struck by lightning, and shaken at its base, fell and stuck among the ensigns of the goddess which were on the pediment." This temple, with a statue of Victory upon the summit, is represented on a coin of Tiberius, who restored it.
Under the wall, on our left, which supports the garden, some blocks of tufa, in situ, are the remains of the Temple of Concord, and the wall in the garden of the German Embassy is part of the Temple of Juno.