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'Where, asked he, 'should I go to breathe the sea air, and preserve the voice with which the gods have gifted me, and which men say I should preserve for the benefit of mankind? Is it not Rome that injures me; is it not the exhalations of the Subura and the Esquiline which add to my hoarseness?
It was not only on the castle fields, but at the Porta San Giovanni, the Porta San Lorenzo, the Villa Ludovisi, and on the heights of the Viminal and the Esquiline that unfinished, empty districts were already crumbling amidst the weeds of their deserted streets. After two thousand years of prodigious fertility the soil really seemed to be exhausted.
Nero still further extended the precincts of the imperial palace, and included the Esquiline. The great fire which occurred in his reign, A.D. 65, and which lasted six days and seven nights, destroyed some of the most ancient of the Roman structures surrounding the Palatine, and very much damaged the Forum, to say nothing of the statues and treasures which perished.
The little altars of terra-cotta with figures that have recently been brought to light on the Esquiline correspond in style of representation as in that of ornament exactly to the similar votive gifts of the Campanian temples. This however does not exclude Greek masters from having also worked for Rome.
It was resolved that the consuls should encamp in the neighbourhood of the Colline and Esquiline gates; that Caius Calpurnius, the city praetor, should have the command of the Capitol and the citadel; and that a full senate should be continually assembled in the forum, in case it should be necessary to consult them amidst such sudden emergencies.
But before they had reached it in the darkness, the voice of Nazarius was heard, full of pain, "Lord, they took her with Ursus to the Esquiline prison. We are carrying another body! They removed her before midnight." Petronius, when he had returned home, was gloomy as a storm, and did not even try to console Vinicius.
Having united their forces, they first utterly laid waste the Latin territory: when none met them to avenge the wrong, then indeed, to the great exultation of the advisers of the war, they approached the very walls of Rome, carrying their depredations into the district around the Esquiline gate pointing out to the city in mocking insult the devastation of the land.
Upon this the commons, uncertain what sort of consuls they were to have, held nightly meetings, some of them upon the Esquiline, and others upon the Aventine hill, that they might not be confused by hasty resolutions in the forum, or take their measures inconsiderately and without concert.
Northeastward lies the seething Suburra; the yellow river runs beyond the Velabrum and the cattle market to the west; southward rise the enchanted palaces of Cæsar; due east is the Esquiline of evil fame, redeemed and made lovely with trees and fountains by Mæcenas, but haunted even today, say modern Romans, by the spectres of murderers and thieves who there died bloody deaths of quivering torture.
Baths, both public and private, were already beginning to come into fashion; of these more will be said later on. The water for drinking was collected in large castella, or reservoirs, and thence distributed into public fountains, of which one still survives the "Trofei di Mario," in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele on the Esquiline.
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