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The portions formed of peperino blocks, which are bound with iron clamps, have only been added in connection with subsequent labours of repair. 20. -Ratio Tuscanica,: cavum aedium Tuscanicum. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 31; comp. Comp, above, XIV. Development of Alphabets in Italy. I. XIII. Handicrafts I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods I. XII. Pontifices
The friends had turned into the Sacred Way. A moment later they arrived at the Forum lined with its rows of booths nestled away beneath massive porticoes of peperino, and with its columned temples standing like divine sentinels about or sweeping away up the rugged slope of the Capitoline to where the great fane of Jupiter Capitolinus shed its protecting glory over the destinies of Rome.
It was the mausoleum of a long line of the most illustrious names in Roman history patriots and heroes, whose virtues and honours were hereditary. Originally the sepulchre stood above ground, and the entrance to it was by a solid arch of peperino, facing a cross-road leading from the Appian to the Latin Way; but the soil in the course of ages accumulated over it, and buried it out of sight.
It was surrounded with a wall of peperino, supporting at intervals vases and statues; and on the outside were semicircular stone seats for the benefit of weary wayfarers. This wall is now grown over with turf, but it can be distinctly traced all round; and the hollow space between it and the tomb is covered with thick grass, and is sometimes filled with water like a fosse.
The position near the coast of all the craters composed of this kind of tuff or peperino, and their breached condition, renders it probable that they were all formed when standing immersed in the sea; considering this circumstance, together with the remarkable absence of large beds of ashes in the whole archipelago, I think it highly probable that much the greater part of the tuff has originated from the trituration of fragments of the grey, basaltic lavas in the mouths of craters standing in the sea.
The ring-wall further embraced the Caelian and the whole space of the Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal, where a structure likewise but recently brought to light on a great scale on the outside composed of blocks of peperino and protected by a moat in front, on the inside forming a huge earthen rampart sloped towards the city and imposing even at the present day supplied the want of natural means of defence.
Amongst the vents filled with ash and agglomerate, the most remarkable is that of Carrick-a-raide, near Ballycastle. It forms this rocky island and a portion of the adjoining coast, where the beds of ash are finely displayed; consisting of fragments and bombs of basalt, with pieces of chalk, flint, and peperino, which is irregularly bedded.
There are also several quarries called Anician in the territory of Tarquinii, the stone being of the colour of peperino. The principal workshops lie round the lake of Bolsena and in the prefecture of Statonia. This stone has innumerable good qualities.
The lower beds, to the thickness of several hundred feet, consist of the resin- like stone, with embedded fragments of lava. The upper beds, which are between thirty and forty feet in thickness, are composed of a thinly stratified, fine-grained, harsh, friable, brown-coloured tuff, or peperino. This mass contains white calcareous matter in small patches.
This is rendered almost certain by the proof of a continuance of business relations between the two places. The greater number of the big tombs of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. are of a peperino from Cave, and a good deal of the tufa used in wall construction in Praeneste is from the quarries near Cave, as Fernique saw.
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