steep steps, on the west side of the hill, up the face of the Tarpeian Rock, which is supposed to have commenced nearly from the present site of the Piazza Montanara ;* and the other, the Clivus Capitolinus, is believed to have been on the side of the Velabrum, looking towards the Aventine; thus all the three ascents of the Palatine were extremely near each other, being on the south-west and west sides of the hill. There was no ascent whatever on the north, nor, it is believed, on the east side.

I must long since have exhausted your patience with this tedious account of the Capitol; but who can tread its soil without seeking to recall to memory or imagination what it once was? Who can gaze, even upon one solitary stone of the citadel of Republican Rome, without endeavouring to penetrate the obscurity of time, and catch even a faint uncertain glimpse of that sacred seat of the virtues and the liberties that have fled for ever?

Yes! long ages of ruin have since rolled away-deep degradation has covered it, and the darkness of oblivion has settled upon it-and yet, does not the light that once shone here, still shed its brightness through the world?

* Livy, (lib. viii.) places it at the Forum Olitorium, on the site of which the Piazza Montanara is generally supposed to stand,

LETTER XVI.

THE AVENTINE.

WE spent this morning in visiting the Aventine, the most western of the Seven Hills. It is divided from the Palatine by the Valley of the Circus Maximus, and round its northern base the Tiber flows. It is said to have derived its name from Aventinus, a King of Alba, who was buried here in a laurel grove, which was preserved to a very late period upon this mount.*

It was added to Rome, as I have already mentioned, by Ancus Martius, and peopled by the captive inhabitants of Politorium, Tellenæ, and Ficanæ, three Latin villages at a short distance from Rome, which he destroyed. The whole, or at least the greater part of this Mount, must have been included in the wall of Servius Tullius. Some antiquarians, indeed, have chosen to assert, that it was first added to Rome by the Emperor Claudius; but no authority can be adduced in support of their

* Pliny, in his Nat. Hist. mentions the Laureto, on the Aventine.

opinions, and an irresistible weight of evidence can be brought against it.* Besides, how, in the name of common sense, could Rome be the city of the Seven Hills, if it was confined to six ?+

In the early ages of Rome, indeed, it is certain that the whole neither of the Esquiline nor Aventine hills was inhabited. We read in Livy of nightly meetings of the disaffected‡ being held upon the former, to the great alarm of the Senate; and the two armies that joined in rebellion against the tyranny of the Decemvirs, encamped upon the latter. But from the prodigious extent of the Aventine, which is computed by Dionysius Halicarnassus to be three miles in circumference, it is not surprising that there was abundant room for encampments at that early period.

But though the wall of Servius Tullius, which was not enlarged till the time of Aurelian, certainly included at least more than half of the Aventine Mount, the part of it without the walls is believed not to have been comprehended within the Pomærium until its sacred circle was extended by Claudius. The Aventine has two distinct summits, and indeed it might almost be called two hills, for they are divided by a valley; but I do not find

* Livy, book i. chap. 33.-Dionysius Halicarnassus, ii, iii, and iv; and Strabo, book v. Vide Nardini, lib. i. cap. 5. for a crowd of authorities, and a long dissertation in proof of it. + Septemque una sibi muro circumdabit arces. Virgil, lib. vi.

Livy, lib. ii. c. 28.

Ibid. lib. iii. c. 50.

that they were ever distinguished by different names. Near the base of the most southern of its heights, are the gigantic ruins of the Baths of Caracalla; but it is the northern summit which overhangs the river, that we must now ascend. It was this that Remus chose for the site of his inauspicious augury, and which, long before that period, was famed for the exploits of Hercules, who pursued the robber Cacus to his den on this mount. The entrance to this cave did not, it seems, overhang the river; and indeed it would have been utterly impossible for Cacus, or any other person, to have dragged the oxen up this precipice backwards by their tails. As it was, he must have had his own troubles in pulling them, in this manner, all the way from the banks of the river where they were grazing,† to that part of the hill facing the Palatine, where the opening of his den was situated. Hercules, as soon as he awoke, was guided to the place by their lowings; and, after vainly endeavouring to force open the mouth of the cave, went round to the side that overlooks the river, hurled down a rock that formed the back of it, and opened for himself a passage to his revenge.

But being modestly of opinion that Virgil tells the story rather better than I do, I will refer you to him.

In consequence of this invention of breaking open the cavern, Hercules, who piously ascribed it to Jove, dedicated an altar to Jupiter the In

* Vide Livy, book i. chap. 7.

+ Virgil, lib. viii.

ventor, at the foot of the hill, near the river, and raised another at the same time to himself, under the name of Hercules the Victorious. This must

not be confounded with the Ara Maxima, or great altar, which was dedicated to Hercules by his contemporary, Evander, at the base of the northwestern corner of the Palatine Hill; was enclosed by Romulus within the line of his furrow; and was venerated from the earliest to the latest period of Roman story.

The Altar of the Elician Jove, (Jovis Elicii) which stood upon the Aventine Hill, was erected by Numa, in order to draw down upon earth the King of Heaven, invisible in the terrors of his lightnings and thunderbolts. The process of accomplishing this, Numa learnt from a drunken Faun, or, according to some authorities, from the rural deities Faunus and Picus, whom he had contrived to intoxicate by mixing the waters of the fountain on the Aventine, which they frequented, with wine and honey; and having caught them in this situation, he tied them with cords, in spite of their Proteus power of transformation, till they grew sober, and let him into the secret.*

* Vide Ovid. Fast. ii. iii.; and Plutarch, in his Life of Numa, who is pleased to give us the receipts, (consisting of a mixture of onions, human hairs, and live pilchards,) by which a mortal could thus controul the Deity. He declares it to be in use to this day;" but neither the inspired Numa, nor the drunken Fauns, had the wit to invent the charm discovered by Benjamin Franklin.