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The little company worked its way back to the Forum, not, as now, a half-excavated ruin, the gazing-stock for excursionists, a commonplace whereby to sum up departed greatness: the splendid buildings of the Empire had not yet arisen, but the structures of the age were not unimposing. Here, in plain view, was the Capitoline Hill, crowned by the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and the Arx.
Sangallensis and Augusteus are practically the only pieces of books we have which are written in the old square capitals, like those of the Roman inscriptions. Sangallensis consists of a few leaves which were found by Von Arx, a librarian of St. Gall, in the bindings of books in that abbey's library. This copy was once at the Royal Abbey of St. Denis.
He had a number of scholars around him, some of whom he provided for liberally, even giving them landed estates, while others earned at least a livelihood as officers in his army. In his citadl 'arx Sismundea' they used to hold discussions, often of a very venomous kind, in the presence of the 'rex', as they termed him.
Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres. But I can no other. I am a woman. May Mantua never entrust her fortunes to the like of me again! Come with me, I will release thee." She unlocked his chains; she guided him through the secret passage under the moat; they stood at the exit, in the open air. "Fly," she said, "and never again draw sword against thy mother.
There are besides no water reservoirs inside the wall of the arx. This supply of water, however, failed, and it must have failed rather early in the city's history, perhaps at about the time the lower part of the city was walled in, for the great reservoir on the Corso terrace seems to be contemporary with this second wall.
This is the beginning of almost every great historical European town; it is an arx or acropolis overhanging its own tilth or ager; and though in many cases the town came down at last into the valley, retaining still its old name, yet the remains of the old earthworks or walls on the hill-top above often bear witness to our own day to the original site of the antique settlement upon the high places.
* The Piazza del Campidoglio is really a depression between the Capitolium proper and the northern height called the Arx. It is supposed to have been the exact site of Romulus's traditional Asylum. Trans.
The most ancient of these, and the ones which were in the earliest circle of the cyclopean wall, are five in number: Porta S. Francesco, the gate into the arx, Porta S. Cesareo, Porta dei Cappuccini, and the postern at the corner where the early cyclopean cross wall struck the main wall.
One sees at a glance that the whole slope of the mountain from arx to base is continued by a natural depression which would make an ideal boundary for Praenestine territory. Nor is the topographical proof all. No inscriptions of consequence, and no architectural remains of the pre-imperial period have been found across this valley.
The circuit of the earliest cyclopean wall and natural ramparts of the contemporaneous citadel and town of Praeneste was as follows: An arc of cyclopean wall below the cap of the hill which swung round from the precipitous cliff on the west to that on the east, the whole of the side of the arx toward the mountains being so steep that no wall was necessary; then a second loop of cyclopean wall from the arx down the steep western edge of the southern slope of the mountain as far as the present Porta San Francesco.
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