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No worship was equally popular among the lower orders of the population in the capital: when the senate ordered the temples of Isis constructed within the ring-wall to be pulled down, no labourer ventured to lay the first hand on them, and the consul Lucius Paullus was himself obliged to apply the first stroke of the axe ; a wager might be laid, that the more loose any woman was, the more piously she worshipped Isis.
The beautiful custom of commencing the formation of new cities by tracing a furrow with the plough along the line of the future ring-wall shows how deeply rooted was the feeling that every commonwealth is dependent on agriculture.
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.
Most of the towns thus established were formed not by bringing colonists from a distance, but by the suppression of villages and the collection of their inhabitants within the new ring-wall; only in Nicopolis Pompeius settled the invalids and veterans of his army, who preferred to establish a home for themselves there at once rather than afterwards in Italy.
Some of these statements may perhaps be correct; and it is apparently not the result of accident that the building of the new ring-wall is associated both as to date and author with the new organization of the army, which in fact bore special reference to the regular defence of the city walls.
Tradition indeed assigns the different works to different kings the senate-house to Tullus Hostilius, the Janiculum and the wooden bridge to Ancus Marcius, the great Cloaca, the Circus, and the temple of Jupiter to the elder Tarquinius, the temple of Diana and the ring-wall to Servius Tullius.
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.
Suddenly the Romans beheld columns of Sulla's army take their station at the bridge over the Tiber and at the Colline and Esquiline gates; and then two legions in battle array, with their standards at their head, passed the sacred ring-wall within which the law had forbidden war to enter.
The beautiful custom of commencing the formation of new cities by tracing a furrow with the plough along the line of the future ring-wall shows how deeply rooted was the feeling that every commonwealth is dependent on agriculture.
Earliest Limits of the Roman Territory Let us notice first of all the earliest boundaries of the Roman territory. Towards the east the towns of Antemnae, Fidenae, Caenina, and Gabii lie in the immediate neighbourhood, some of them not five miles distant from the Servian ring-wall; and the boundary of the canton must have been in the close vicinity of the city gates.
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