THE CAPITOLIUM VETUS.
To the right from the gardens, the Via Quirinale brings us to the new Via Nazionale. Where this winds round is a piece of a wall of the kings. Plutarch ("Numa," xiv.) and Solinus (i. 21) tell us that Numa lived upon the Quirinal, where he built an arx (Hieron. i. 298), called, after the Capitoline Hill was so named, Capitolium Vetus. In it was a temple to Jupiter (Varro, "L. L." v.; Martial, v. 22). In those days a tongue jutted out here towards the Capitoline Hill, and this piece of wall bars the way to it, so it is probably a piece of the arx that defended the tongue.
The lofty brick tower is
THE TORRE DELLE MILIZIE,
within the precincts of the Convent of S. Catherina di Sienna, supposed to have been built upon a cella formerly occupied by Trajan's soldiers. This tower is called by the Roman valets de place "Nero's Tower," from his having sat there and fiddled whilst Rome was burning. Now, as this tower was built in 1210 by Pandolfo della Suburra, the senator, it could not have been the tower Nero fiddled on. Besides, Suetonius says, "This fire he [Nero] beheld from a tower in the house of Mæcenas," which was on the Esquiline, where remains have been recently found.
The Via Panisperna, to the left, descends into the valley between the Quirinal and Viminal hills. In the valley to the left of the street is
THE CHURCH OF S. AGATA IN SUBURRA,
where the heart of O'Connell is deposited. Keeping straight on, up the slope of the Viminal, Via Panisperna, at the top of the hill is
THE CHURCH OF S. LORENZO,
who is said to have been martyred under Claudius II., A.D. 269, having been cooked to death on a gridiron. Here are also the relics of S. Crispin and S. Crispinian. The church is on the site of the baths of the daughter-in-law of Constantine, Olympia. The two seated statues, Menander and Posidippus, in the Vatican, were found here, and were for a long time worshipped as saints.