THE PALATINE

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 119, 16 November 1936, Page 9

THE PALATINE

SITE OF EARLIEST ROME

The Palatine Hill, Irom which earth has been taken for the mausoleum of Marshal Pilsudski, was, according to tradition, the site of the earliest settlement at Rome. The "hut of Romulus" stood on the southern brow of the hill above the Scalae Caci furthest removed from the Forum, and this was presumably the aristocratic quarter of the day. Fragments of temples and palaces of the fifth and sixth centuries have been found in this area, as have j two cisterns of early workmanship and, blocks of an early town wall.

In the day of Cicero the Clivus Victoriae, the street which ran near the crest of the hill, was lined with the palaces of important men: Cicero, Catullus, Crassus, Metellus, Scaurus, and several members of the family of Claudius. After the second Punic War many of the nobles are incidentally mentioned as living on the Palatine, especially on the northern brow of the hill which overlooks the Forum. During the Empire a large part of the hill was gradually covered by the expanding Imperial Palace. The first palace of Augustus rose south of the centre on property confiscated from the republican nobles. The Claudian emperors, especially Tiberius and Caligula, built extensively on the old properties of the family. Nero enlarged the Augustan Palace, connecting it with the Tiberian structure. Vespasian abandoned the Palatine Palace for more modest quarters, but Domitian moved into the Augustan structure, enlarging it with various apartments and halls. As early as the day of Augustus the word palatium began to designate the Imperial Palace. A confusion of walls has marked one of the most venerated sites in Rome. (From the area of Cybele's temple steps lead down to the stone platform on which the rethatched hut of Romulus apparently stood in Cicero's day. A stone water trough about the platform indicates that the building was incapable of bearing its own water gutter. South of this and at a lower level the stone has borings which.seem to mark the position of poles of an early straw hut. The north-east quarter of the hill is still occupied by St. Sebastian and St. Bonaventura, and what buildings stood I there in antiquity is unknown.