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And will the Como boys become sparkling little Plinies? "I must see the grown-up Pliny's noble brow and my Calpurnia's eyes and the Tartarean frown of Tacitus, who, I hear, is with you. Quadratus says you are at the smallest of your Como villas. The mood suits me. At Tusculum or Tibur or Praeneste or Laurentum you might have longed for me in vain.
Once in 1297 and again in 1437 the forces of the Pope destroyed the town to crush the great Colonna family which had made Praeneste a stronghold against the power of Rome. There are a great many reasons why Praeneste offers the best opportunity for a study of the municipal officers of a town of the Latin league.
She suspected that her charge must be the victim of some enchantment, of some evil spell; and in their talk she questioned her with infinite curiosity concerning her acquaintance with Basil, her life in the convent at Praeneste, her release and the journey with Marcian.
Rome and Praeneste seemed destined to be ever at cross purposes, and their ancient rivalry grew to be a traditional dislike which remained mutual and lasting.
There are no references in literature to aqueducts which brought water to Praeneste. Were we left to this evidence alone, we should conclude that Praeneste had depended upon reservoirs for water. But in inscriptions we have mention of baths, the existence of which implies aqueducts, and there is the specus of an aqueduct to be seen outside the Porta S. Francesco.
At the close of this period the Roman burgess-body, in a tolerably compact mass, filled Latium in its widest sense, Sabina, and a part of Campania, so that it reached on the west coast northward to Caere and southward to Cumae; within this district there were only a few cities not included in it, such as Tibur, Praeneste, Signia, Norba, and Ferentinum.
As this was the other of the two great roads which ran to the north without getting out on the Roman Campagna, it is certain that Praeneste considered it in her territory, and probably kept the travel well in hand.
Prodigies announced from many places at the same time, augmented the terror: in Sicily, that several darts belonging to the soldiers had taken fire; and in Sardinia, that the staff of a horseman, who was going his rounds upon a wall, took fire as he held it in his hand; that the shores had blazed with frequent fires; that two shields had sweated blood at Praeneste; that redhot stones had fallen from the heavens at Arpi; that shields were seen in the heavens, and the sun fighting with the moon, at Capena; that two moons rose in the day-time; that the waters of Caere had flowed mixed with blood; and that even the fountain of Hercules had flowed sprinkled with spots of blood.
Engraving on metal, which in Latium decorated not the hand-mirror, as in Etruria, but the toilet-casket with its elegant outlines, was practised to a far less extent in Latium and almost exclusively in Praeneste.
To me, after a comparative study of this wall and the one at Norba, the two seem to date from very nearly the same time, and no one now dares attribute great antiquity to the walls of Norba. But the rest of the cyclopean wall of Praeneste is very ancient, certainly a century, perhaps two or three centuries, older than the part from the Portella down.
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