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For me I confess this folly spoiled the convent, and the convent all but spoiled the view; for I kept thinking how fine it would have been to emerge upon the old pillars and sculptures from the lava pavement of the Via Triumphalis, which wanders grass-grown and untrodden through the woods.

Ha! that's grand about its being so much better than the vana gloria triumphalis only take care of the scanning there " "If it was but English. Something like this: "For what is equal to the fame Of forgetting self in the aim? That's not right, but " "Ethel, Norman, what are you about?" cried Flora. "Do you mean to go to Cocksmoor to-day?"

From the fact that this pavement is laid with blocks such as are always used in roads, from the cippus at the corner of the basilica to keep off wagon wheels, from the fact that this piece of pavement is in direct line from the central gate of the town, and last from the inscription and its provenience, I conclude that we have in this pavement a road leading directly from the Porta Triumphalis through the forum, alongside the basilica, then turning back of it and continuing round to the delubra and precinct of the temple of Fortuna Primigenia, and that this road is the SACRA VIA of Praeneste.

As a matter of fact there was such a gate, and I believe it was called the PORTA TRIUMPHALIS. An inscription of the age of the Antonines mentions "seminaria a Porta Triumphale," and this passing reference to a gate with a name which in itself implies a gate of consequence, so well known that a building placed near it at once had its location fixed, gives the rest of the proof necessary to establish a central entrance to the city in front, through a PORTA TRIUMPHALIS.

In the discussions on the temple and the forum, pages 42 and 54, I think it is proved that the Sacra Via of Praeneste was the ancient road which extended from the Porta Triumphalis up through the Forum, past the Basilica and round behind it, to the entrance into the precinct and temple of Fortuna Primigenia.

The great manufacturing center of Roman bricks was the district between the viae Triumphalis, Cornelia, and the two Aureliae, now called the Monti della Creta, which includes the southern slopes of the Vatican ridge and the northern of the Janiculum. Here also, as at Pozzo Pantaléo, the traces of the work of man are simply gigantic.

There is ivy enough for a thyrsus, and I almost feel ready to enact a sort of Bacchus triumphalis 'for jollitie, as I see it already planted, and looking in at me through the window. I never thought to see such a sight as that in my London room, and am overwhelmed with my own glory. And then Mr. Browning's note!

When Sulla rebuilt the city, and laid out a forum on the level space directly south of and below the town, he made another road from the west to correspond to the old ascent from the east, and brought them together at the old central gate, which he enlarged to the PORTA TRIUMPHALIS. In the open square in front of the basilica had stood the statue of some famous man on a platform of squared stone 16 x 17-1/2 feet in measurement.

Then, although these did not join them till they reached the Porta Triumphalis, or the Gate of Pomp, attended, each of them, by lictors having their fasces wreathed with laurel, came the Caesars. First went Vespasian Caesar, the father. He rode in a splendid golden chariot, to which were harnessed four white horses led by Libyan soldiers.

The soldiers conducted him over the Pons Triumphalis, as if giving involuntary testimony to his triumph, and they led him farther toward the Naumachia and the Circus.