PONS FABRICIUS,
now called Ponte dei Quattro Capi, from the four-headed Janus upon its balustrades. From the inscription, and from Dion Cassius (xxxvii. 45), we learn that it was erected, B.C. 61, by L. Fabricius, Curator Viarum. Horace (S. ii. 3) says that "Stertinius advised the would-be suicide Damasippus to return cheerfully from the Fabrician Bridge." It has two arches. The bridge leads to
THE ISLAND OF THE TIBER.
"The Tarquins had sacrilegiously converted the best part of the Campus Martius to their own use. When they were expelled, it happened to be harvest time, and the sheaves then lay upon the ground; but as it was consecrated, the people could not make use of it. A great number of hands, therefore, took it up in baskets and threw it into the river. The trees were also cut down and thrown in after it, and the ground left entirely without fruit or produce for the service of the god. A great quantity of different sorts of things being thus thrown in together, they were not carried far by the current, but only to the shallows, where the first heaps had stopped. Finding no further passage, everything settled there, and the whole was bound still firmer by the river; for that washed down to it a deal of mud, which not only added to the mass, but served as a cement to it, and the current, far from dissolving it, by its gentle pressure gave it the greater firmness. The bulk and solidity of this mass received continual additions, most of what was brought down by the Tiber settling there. It was now an island sacred to religious uses. Several temples and porticoes have been built upon it; and it is called in Latin inter duos pontes—the island between the two bridges" (Plutarch, in "Publicola").
The island in the Tiber is an alluvial formation, and thus far the legend is correct in ascribing its origin to the accumulation of rubbish and drifted sand. In remembrance of the vessel which bore the statue of Æsculapius from Epidaurus to Rome, the entire island was faced with stone, and made to assume the form of a ship, in which was placed the temple of the god.
Some of the immense blocks of travertine composing the facing, and representing the hull of the ship, may still be seen in the monastery garden of the Church of S. Bartolomeo in Isola. Ladies are not admitted to the monastery.
"In the island of the Tiber, just prior to the death of Otho, the statue of Julius Cæsar turned from west to east, a circumstance said likewise to have happened when Vespasian took on him the empire" (Plutarch).
In the Piazza is a monument to SS. John, Francis, Bartholomew, and Paulinus. The interior of the church is embellished with fourteen ancient columns, and in the choir are the remains of an early mosaic.
The island on the farther side is connected with the mainland by