"Nec rigida mollior æsculo."
Horace, Odes, iii. 10.
"Altior ac penitus terræ defigitur arbos,
Æsculus in primis."
Virgil, Georgics, ii. 290.
This is the first mention we have of this street. The victors of the Pythian games were crowned with a chaplet made of beech leaves before the bay (laurel) was used; hence Ovid,—
"Æsculeæ capiebat frondis honorem."
Met. i. 449.
Suetonius ("Augustus," xxx.) says, "He divided the city into regions and streets, ordaining that the annual magistrates should take by lot the charge of the former, and that the latter should be superintended by wardens chosen out of the people of each neighbourhood." Pliny ("N. H.," iii. 9) says, "The city is divided into fourteen regions, with two hundred and sixty-five cross streets under the guardianship of the Lares."
The pedestal of the Apollo, leader of the Muses (No. 516), in the Vatican Museum, is an altar dedicated to the Laribus Augustis, Genius Cæsarum, by four street officials; on the left of which is the Genius of Augustus, similar to the statue, 555, in the Sala Rotonda.