There are no beaks shown on the relief; but along the tufa wall, at regular intervals of 3 feet 4 inches, are cut grooves 6½ inches wide and 1½ inch deep: in these grooves are holes which, if they were to sustain beaks, would give thirty-six for a single row, and seventy-two for a double row.
We doubt if these grooves and holes were for beaks. They were more probably for the supports of the marble casing; they do not go completely through the wall.
Some authorities call these remains on the Clivus the Rostra Vetera, or the original Rostra. But it does not answer classic description, and the construction shows it to be of late date. It does not stand on the Comitium, or before the Curia, nor under the old shops. Besides, it looks down the Forum; so from here how could Gracchus have turned from the Senate House and Comitium towards the Forum?
THE UMBILICUS
was a monument marking the centre of the Roman world. The ruin of the Umbilicus is at the side of the Arch of Septimius Severus, at the end of the Rostra ad Palmam. Its pyramidal shape upon a round base can easily be distinguished.
THE ASYLUM OF ROMULUS.
This was between the Clivus Capitolinus and the Pass of the Two Groves (Via Arco di Septimo Severo), under the Capitoline Hill, and served afterwards as an advanced fort to the citadel. "He opened a sanctuary, in the place where the enclosure now is, on the road down from the Capitoline [Temple], called the Pass of the Two Groves" (Livy, i. 8). "He surrounded it with a high stone wall" (Ovid, "Fasti," iii. 231). The gate leading into it was called the Porta Pandana—"ever-open gate" (Solinus, i. 13. See Plutarch, in "Romulus;" Dionysius, ii. 15; Florus, i. 1; Varro and Festus). The remains of the tufa wall exist on the left of the Clivus, in front of the Temple of Saturn.
THE CLOACA MAXIMA,
or great drain, begun by Tarquin the Great, containing a large stream of water rushing along, as it did over two thousand years ago, is exposed to view at the east end of the Basilica Julia.
It was finished by Tarquin the Proud, B.C. 556 (Livy, i. 38, 55).