United States or Marshall Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The base was quite rough and shapeless, and must have been sunk into the soil of the court, so that the flutes began at the level of the pavement. M. Place suggests that it may have been a milliarium, from which all the roads of the empire were measured. We do not know that there is a single fact to support such an unnecessary guess.
Cum ergo secundum Astrologos, totus terrae circuitus sit 31500. milliarium, octo stadijs pro milliario computatis, et septinginta stadia respondeant ad vnum gradum, quod patet ad latitudinem terrae, perambulaui 66733. stadia cum vno tertio, quae faciunt 4170. leucas Geometricas cum dimidia vel prope.
The old wall was about three miles in circumference, beginning near the present site of the Tower, and some slight traces of it remain. The "London Stone" on Cannon Street was the central stone or milliarium from which distances were measured and the great Roman highways started. A worn fragment of this stone, protected by iron bars, now stands against the wall of St. Swithin's Church.
Thus, strange as it may appear, the Milliarium Aureum of the Roman Forum has had much to do with the origin of our most ancient and important towns, and with the formation of the great lines of railway that now carry on the enormous traffic between them.
At the western corner of the Arch of Severus are the scanty remains of a tall conical pyramid, about fifteen feet in diameter, which is identified as the Umbilicus Romæ, placed in the exact centre of old Rome. Not far from it stood the Milliarium Aureum, or Golden Milestone, on which were inscribed all the distances of roads without the walls.
Word Of The Day