Art. 7.—ARCHÆOLOGICAL AND TOPOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH IN AND NEAR ROME, 1908-1928.

1. Storia degli Scavi di Roma e notizie intorno le collezioni romane di antichità. By R. Lanciani. Vols III, IV. Rome: Loescher, 1907-1912.

2. Ancient Rome. By S. B: Platner. Second Edn. Boston, U.S.A.: Allyn and Bacon, 1911. (Reprinted, 1918.) 3. Formæ Urbis Romæ Antiquæ. By H. Kiepert and Ch. Hülsen. Second Edition. Berlin: Reimer, 1912.

4. The Roman Forum. By Ch. Hülsen. Second Edition. Rome: Loescher, 1909.

5. The Forum and the Palatine. By Ch. Hülsen. Translated by H. H. Tanzer. New York: Bruderhausen,

1928.

6. La Zona Archeologica di Roma. By G. Lugli. Rome: G. Bardi, 1924; and translated by G. Bagnani under the title The Classical Remains of Rome and its Vicinity. Vol. I. Rome: G. Bardi, 1928.

7. A Topographical Dictionary of Rome. By the late S. B. Platner and Dr Thomas Ashby. Oxford University Press (forthcoming).

8. Ostia. By G. Calza. Translated by R. Weeden-Cooke. Milan and Rome: Bestetti and Tuminelli, n.d.

9. La Villa Sabina di Orazio (in Monumenti dei Lincei, XXXI, col. 457-598). By G. Lugli. Rome: Bardi, 1926. 10. Horace at Tibur and the Sabine Farm. By G. H. Hallam. Second Edn. Harrow School Bookshop, 1922. 11. Forma Italiæ: Regio I, Latium et Campania. Vol. 1, Ager Pomptinus. Pars I, Anxur-Tarracina; Pars II, Circeii. Descripsit Josephus Lugli. Rome: Danesi, 1926-1928.

THE progress of archæological and topographical research in Rome and its vicinity during the period under review has been considerable, and it is not yet by any means at an end; for, however desirable it might be to proclaim a close time for excavation until we have had leisure to absorb the results, it is not possible to do so under the present circumstances. In fact, the excavations of the Forum and the Palatine, the central sites, not only of Rome itself, but of the Roman world, are not by any means complete. They have not as yet

reached a point at which they could be suspended without leaving a feeling of dissatisfaction in the mind of every one; and the reports of what has hitherto been done, which had already fallen regrettably far behind, are now, owing to Prof. Boni's long illness which ended in his death in 1924, very seriously in arrear. Before the committee which has charge of the publication can begin to give us the full results of its labours, it will undoubtedly have to complete the clearing of such sites as the Basilica Emilia and the garden of the Villa Mills (which, it is already abundantly clear, formed part of the site of the palace of Domitian, and cannot have contained the temple of Apollo); and if the results of the difficult stratigraphical work which Boni did are ever to be given to the world, it may have to reopen a number of his section pits, which were scattered all over the Forum. But along with these sites, which have long been secured to public possession in perpetuity, there has been a strong desire on the part of the present Government of Italy to bring to light some of the more important monuments of Imperial Rome, which lie in the inhabited portion of the city, and to free them from the accretions of subsequent ages by which they were disfigured and concealed.

Then, again, the development of the modern city as such has been and is still going on; so that the processes of change which we noticed in Rome at the beginning of a previous article upon this same subject,* have continued with even greater rapidity during the last twenty years, during which the population has once more doubled itself. The rate of growth has been more rapid than that of any other city in Italy, and the pace shows no signs of slackening. This is due to the increase in the trade and wealth of the country, and the desire of the new regime to place Rome, as the capital of Italy, on a level with the capitals of other great European countries. The city has now extended far beyond the Aurelian walls on almost every side, the new quarters not having been, as every one now recognises that they should have been, concentrated on the high ground on the east, near the railway station, but allowed to grow up haphazard; and the result has been, 'Quarterly Review,' No. 416, July 1908, pp. 101-122.

as was predicted, a compromise between the imperious needs of modern life and the desire to preserve the character of the city of Rome which is not altogether satisfactory, and will become more difficult to maintain as time goes on. Traffic in the centre of Rome is already sufficiently difficult to regulate; but the streets cannot be widened without pulling down numerous buildings of considerable artistic or historic interest-or, we may say at least, even if these are preserved, without destroying their surroundings and therewith much of their charm. The promoters of some of the newest schemes for the embellishment of the capital seem to be entirely oblivious of the fact that the 'isolation' of an ancient monument, such as the Pantheon, will in all probability make it look, not grandiose, but insignificant. And if the remains of the Mausoleum of Augustus are to be freed from the mean houses which enclose them, and made the terminal point of a new Via Imperiale, according to Signor Brasini's ambitious scheme, the result will be even more disastrous; for it is now a mere ruin of great interest, but of no particular beauty: its original proportions are no longer preserved, and none of its external facing is left; whereas the Mausoleum of Hadrian still retains something of its ancient appearance and scale.

In the circumstances, while the special bibliography of the subject has enormously increased, and numerous articles and monographs have been written on individual buildings and problems, the authors of topographical works dealing with the city as a whole have mainly confined their activities to the production of new editions; for the moment has not come, and, so so far as one can see, will not come for a considerable time, when it will be possible to take stock quietly of the additions to our knowledge, and produce a topographical treatise which is not liable to be superseded for some considerable period. It is, further, greatly to be deplored that the sudden death of Edmondo Gatti

* My own experience in preparing for the press the 'Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome,' of which Prof. Platner had done about threequarters before his untimely and sudden death in 1921, has shown that it is impossible to reach finality, and that changes are so constantly occurring that alterations would perpetually be necessary were one to strive to be absolutely up to date.' In it will be found, however, full references to more detailed publications, which it is impossible to enumerate here.

has deprived us of the hope that Lanciani's Forma Urbis Roma' would within a reasonably near future be brought and kept up to date; so that such a work would lack the solid basis of a really good and recent archæological plan of Rome. In the meantime, however, we may to some extent be consoled by the reflection that the delay will render it possible to incorporate the results of the renewed study of the fragments of the Marble Plan of Rome of Septimius Severus, which has been undertaken by a committee of which Hülsen is a member. Hülsen's book on the Forum and the Palatine, published during the present year, is a very readable and well illustrated account of what has been done up to the present, with an excellent bibliography; though those who desire to follow the course of discovery on the spot will regret that circumstances have prevented the publication of a third edition of the Roman Forum' and of a similar volume dealing with the Palatine in a portable form. The need has been to a considerable extent supplied by Lugli's handy volume, which, especially in its English form, will be found very welcome, though it naturally does not go into quite so much detail. This deals with the central area of the ancient city, which, as every one knows, does not by any means coincide with that of medieval Rome. Indeed, a considerable space has been definitely preserved from encroachment, and is now the property of the nation, extending from the Colosseum to the Porta Appia (S. Sebastiano) of the Aurelian wall, and including the Circus Maximus (the excavation of which has just been begun), the first section of the Via Appia, the therma of Caracalla, etc. The third and fourth volumes of Lanciani's 'Storia degli Scavi,' which take us to the beginning of the 17th century, are, like the first two, a mine of information; and it is greatly to be hoped that this valuable work may be continued.

If we now turn to the additions to our knowledge of ancient Rome which have been made by the discoveries of the past twenty years, we shall find practically nothing of first-rate importance to record in the Forum, while a considerable advance has been made in the investigation of the Palatine. The researches into the lower strata at the south-west corner of the hill, which

had been commenced by his predecessor Vaglieri, were unfortunately abandoned by Boni as soon as he assumed charge of the Palatine-although it would certainly have been far more satisfactory to have attempted to arrive at some definite result-and the interpretation of what has been found is by no means easy.

Two archaic circular cisterns built in soft grey tufa (cappellaccio), one with a beehive vault, the other open to the air, may be assigned to the seventh or sixth century B.C.; and there would appear to be remains of tombs or hut foundations or both; while, as Hülsen remarks, 'it becomes obvious that structures of large blocks which students formerly liked to call "Romulean" are really to be dated as from a much later period, perhaps not earlier than the fourth century B.C.'

Another chamber with a beehive roof, lined with blocks of the same kind of soft tufa, was found in 1914 under the north-eastern part of the peristyle of the Domus Augustiana (the palace as rebuilt by Domitian); in the centre of it a circular shaft descends to two rockcut passages, which form a right-angled triangle, and then meet again in a domed chamber, also cut in the rock. At the time of its discovery this was explained as the mundus, a holy place connected with the worship of the gods of the underworld, and often identified with 'Roma Quadrata' in the more restricted sense-not as the four-cornered city that Romulus founded on the Palatine, but as a shrine in which were kept various sacred objects connected with its foundation. Some scholars still hold to this theory-or, as there were probably more mundi than one, call it at least a mundus. The question is, however, as yet unsettled, for the name, as restricted to the mundus, may be a late antiquarian invention. Much information has also been gained concerning the condition of the Palatine in the first century before Christ, when it was known to have been mainly occupied by the houses of wealthy Romans, such as Cicero and his brother, his rival Hortensius, Milo, Mark Antony, and others; and while it is not possible to identify the exact sites of these buildings (with one exception, to which we shall immediately allude), the remains of several nameless houses of the end of the Republic may be pointed out.