Chapter 5

A Senate is mentioned in the inscriptions C.I.L., XIV, 2990, 3000, 3001, 3002.

Decuriones populusque colonia Prænestin., C.I.L., XIV, 2898, 2899; decuriones populusque 2970, 2971, Not. d. Scavi 1894, P. 96; other mention of decuriones 2980, 2987, 2992, 3013; ordo populusque 2914; decretum ordinis 2991; curiales, in the late empire, Symmachus, Rel., 28, 4.

NOTES:

[1]

Strabo V, 3, II.

[2]

We know that in 380 B.C. Præneste had eight towns under her jurisdiction, and that they must have been relatively near by. Livy VI, 29, 6: octo præterea oppida erant sub dicione Prænestinorum. Festus, p. 550 (de Ponor): T. Quintius Dictator cum per novem dies totidem urbes et decimam Præneste cepisset, and the story of the golden crown offered to Jupiter as the result of this rapid campaign, and the statue which was carried away from Præneste (Livy VI, 29, 8), all show that the domain of Præneste was both of extent and of consequence.

[3]

Nibby, Analisi, II, p. 475.

[4]

Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 11, n. 74.

[5]

Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 227 ff.; Marucchi, Guida Archeologica, p. 14; Nibby, Analisi, p. 483; Volpi, Latium vetus de Præn., chap 2; Tomassetti, Delia Campagna Romana, p. 167.

[6]

Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 11.

[7]

Nibby, Analisi, II, p. 484 from Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, III, i, p. 301.

[8]

Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 402.

[9]

Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 277, n. 36, from Epist., 474: Bonifacius VIII concedit Episcopo Civitatis Papalis Locum, ubi fuerunt olim Civitas Prænestina, eiusque Castrum, quod dicebatur Mons, et Rocca; ac etiam Civitas Papalis postmodum destructa, cum Territorio et Turri de Marmoribus, et Valle Gloriæ; nec non Castrum Novum Tiburtinum 2 Id. April. an. VI; Petrini, Memorie Prenestine, p. 136; Civitas prædicta cum Rocca, et Monte, cum Territorio ipsius posita est in districtu Urbis in contrata, quæ dicitur Romangia.

[10]

Ashby, Papers of the British School at Rome, Vol. I, p. 213, and Maps IV and VI. Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 19, n. 34.

[11]

Livy VIII, 12, 7: Pedanos tuebatur Tiburs, Prænestinus Veliternusque populus, etc. Livy VII, 12, 8: quod Gallos mox Præneste venisse atque inde circa Pedum consedisse auditum est. Livy II, 39, 4; Dion. Hal. VIII, 19, 3; Horace, Epist, I, 4, 2. Cluverius, p. 966, thinks Pedum is Gallicano, as does Nibby with very good reason, Analisi, II, p. 552, and Tomassetti, Delia Campagna Romana, p. 176. Ashby, Classical Topography of the Roman Campagna in Papers of the British School at Rome, I, p. 205, thinks Pedum can not be located with certainty, but rather inclines to Zagarolo.

[12]

There are some good ancient tufa quarries too on the southern slope of Colle S. Rocco, to which a branch road from Præneste ran. Fernique, Étude sur Préneste, p. 104.

[13]

C.I.L., XIV, 2940 found at S. Pastore.

[14]

Now the Maremmana inferiore, Ashby, Classical Topog. of the Roman Campagna, I, pp. 205, 267.

[15]

Ashby, Classical Topog. of the Roman Campagna, I, p. 206, finds on the Colle del Pero an ampitheatre and a great many remains of imperial times, but considers it the probable site of an early village.

[16]

Fernique, Étude sur Préneste, p. 120, wishes to connect Marcigliano and Ceciliano with the gentes Marcia and Cæcilia, but it is impossible to do more than guess, and the rather few names of these gentes at Præneste make the guess improbable. It is also impossible to locate regio Cæsariana mentioned as a possession of Præneste by Symmachus, Rel., XXVIII, 4, in the year 384 A.D. Eutropius II, 12 gets some confirmation of his argument from the modern name Campo di Pirro which still clings to the ridge west of Præneste.

[17]

The author himself saw all the excavations here along the road during the year 1907, of which there is a full account in the Not. d. Scavi, Ser. 5, 4 (1907), p. 19. Excavations began on these tombs in 1738, and have been carried on spasmodically ever since. There were excavations again in 1825 (Marucchi, Guida Archeologica, p. 21), but it was in 1855 that the more extensive excavations were made which caused so much stir among archæologists (Marucchi, l.c., p. 21, notes 1-7). For the excavations see Bull, dell'Instituto. 1858, p. 93 ff., 1866, p. 133, 1869, p. 164, 1870, p. 97, 1883, p. 12; Not. d. Scavi, 2 (1877-78), pp. 101, 157, 390, 10 (1882-83), p. 584; Revue Arch., XXXV (1878), p. 234; Plan of necropolis in Garucci, Dissertazioni Arch., plate XII. Again in 1862 there were excavations of importance made in the Vigna Velluti, to the right of the road to Marcigliano. It was thought that the exact boundaries of the necropolis on the north and south had been found because of the little columns of peperino 41 inches high by 8-8/10 inches square, which were in situ, and seemed to serve no other purpose than that of sepulchral cippi or boundary stones. Garucci, Dissertazioni Arch., I, p. 148; Archæologia, 41 (1867), p. 190.

[18]

C.I.L., XIV, 2987.

[19]

The papal documents read sometimes in Latin, territorium Prænestinum or Civitas Prænestina, but often the town itself is mentioned in its changing nomenclature, Pellestrina, Pinestrino, Penestre (Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. II; Nibby, Analisi, II, pp. 475, 483).

[20]

There is nothing to show that Poli ever belonged in any way to ancient Præneste.

[21]

Rather a variety of cappellaccio, according to my own observations. See Not. d. Scavi, Ser. 5, 5 (1897), p. 259.

[22]

The temple in Cave is of the same tufa (Fernique, Étude sur Préneste, p. 104). The quarries down toward Gallicano supplied tufa of the same texture, but the quarries are too small to have supplied much. But this tufa from the ridge back of the town seems not to have been used in Gallicano to any great extent, for the tufa there is of a different kind and comes from the different cuts in the ridges on either side of the town, and from a quarry just west of the town across the valley.

[23]

Plautus, Truc., 691 (see [Probus] de ultimis syllabis, p. 263, 8 (Keil); C.I.L., XIV, p. 288, n. 9); Plautus, Trin., 609 (Festus, p. 544 (de Ponor), Mommsen, Abhand. d. berl. Akad., 1864, p. 70); Quintilian I, 5, 56; Festus under "tongere," p. 539 (de Ponor), and under "nefrendes," p. 161 (de Ponor).

[24]

Cave has been attached rather more to Genazzano during Papal rule than to Præneste, and it belongs to the electoral college of Subiaco, Tomassetti, Delia Campagna Romana, p. 182.

[25]

I heard everywhere bitter and slighting remarks in Præneste about Cave, and much fun made of the Cave dialect. When there are church festivals at Cave the women usually go, but the men not often, for the facts bear out the tradition that there is usually a fight. Tomassetti, Della Campagna Romana, p. 183, remarks upon the differences in dialect.

[26]

Mommsen, Bull. dell'Instituto, 1862, p. 38, thinks that the civilization in Præneste was far ahead of that of the other Latin cities.

[27]

It is to be noted that this Marcigliana road was not to tap the trade route along the Volscian side of the Liris-Trerus valley, which ran under Artena and through Valmontone. It did not reach so far. It was meant rather as a threat to that route.

[28]

Whether these towns are Pedum or Bola, Scaptia, and Querquetula is not a question here at all.

[29]

Gatti, in Not. d. Scavi, 1903, p. 576, in connection with the Arlenius inscription, found on the site of the new Forum below Præneste in 1903, which mentions Ad Duas Casas as confinium territorio Prænestinæ, thought that it was possible to identify this place with a fundus and possessio Duas Casas below Tibur under Monte Gennaro, and thus to extend the domain of Præneste that far, but as Huelsen saw (Mitth. des k.d. Arch, Inst., 19 (1904), p. 150), that is manifestly impossible, doubly so from the modern analogies which he quotes (l.c., note 2) from the Dizionario dei Comuni d'Italia.

[30]

It might be objected that because Pietro Colonna in 1092 A.D. assaulted and took Cave as his first step in his revolt against Clement III (Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 240), that Cave was at that time a dependency of Præneste. But it has been shown that Præneste's diocesan territory expanded and shrunk very much at different times, and that in general the extent of a diocese, when larger, depends on principles which ancient topography will not allow. And too it can as well be said that Pietro Colonna was paying up ancient grudge against Cave, and certainly also he realized that of all the towns near Præneste, Cave was strategically the best from which to attack, and this most certainly shows that in ancient times such natural barriers between the two must have been practically impassable.

[31]

To be more exact, on the least precipitous side, that which looks directly toward Rocca di Cave.

[32]

To anticipate any one saying that this scarping is modern, and was done to make the approach to the Via del Colonnaro, I will say that the modern part of it is insignificant, and can be most plainly distinguished, and further, that the two pieces of opus incertum which are there, as shown also in Fernique's map, Étude sur Préneste, opp. p. 222, are Sullan in date.

[33]

Fernique, Étude sur Préneste, map facing p. 222. His book is on the whole the best one on Præneste but leaves much to be desired when the question is one of topography or epigraphy (see Dessau's comment C.I.L., XIV, p. 294, n. 4). Even Marucchi, Guida Arch., p. 68, n. 1, took the word of a citizen of the town who wrote him that parts of a wall of opus quadratum could be traced along the Via dello Spregato, and so fell into error. Blondel, Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'école française de Rome, 1882, plate 5, shows a little of this polygonal cyclopean construction.

[34]

Nibby, Analisi, II, p. 511, wrote his note on the wall beyond San Francesco from memory. He says that one follows the monastery wall down, and then comes to a big reservoir. The monastery wall has only a few stones from the cyclopean wall in it, and they are set in among rubble, and are plainly a few pieces from the upper wall above the gate. The reservoir which he reaches is half a mile away across a depression several hundred feet deep, and there is no possible connection, for the reservoir is over on Colle San Martino, not on the hill of Præneste at all.

[35]

The postern or portella is just what one would expect near a corner of the wall, as a less important and smaller entrance to a terrace less wide than the main one above it, which had its big gates at west and east, the Porta San Francesco and the Porta del Cappuccini. The Porta San Francesco is proved old and famous by C.I.L., XIV, 3343, where supra viam is all that is necessary to designate the road from this gate. Again an antica via in Via dello Spregato (Not. d. Scavi, I (1885), p. 139, shows that inside this oldest cross wall there was a road part way along it, at least.)

[36]

The Cyclopean wall inside the Porta del Sole was laid bare in 1890, Not. d. Scavi, 7-8 (1890), p. 38.

[37]

Nibby, Analisi, II, p. 501: "A destra della contrada degli Arconi due cippi simili a quelli del pomerio di Roma furono scoperti nel risarcire la strada Tanno 1824."

[38]

Some of the paving stones are still to be seen in situ under the modern wall which runs up from the brick reservoir of imperial date. This wall was to sustain the refuse which was thrown over the city wall. The place between the walls is now a garden.

[39]

I have examined with care every foot of the present western wall on which the houses are built, from the outside, and from the cellars inside, and find no traces of antiquity, except the few stones here and there set in late rubble in such a way that it is sure they have been simply picked up somewhere and brought there for use as extra material.

[40]

C.I.L., XIV., 3029; PED XXC. Nibby, Analisi, II, p. 497, mentions an inscription, certainly this one, but reads it PED XXX, and says it is in letters of the most ancient form. This is not true. The letters are not so very ancient. I was led by his note to examine every stone in the cyclopean wall around the whole city, but no further inscription was forthcoming.

[41]

This stretch of opus incertum is Sullan reconstruction when he made a western approach to the Porta Triumphalis to correspond to the one at the east on the arches. This piece of wall is strongly made, and is exactly like a piece of opus incertum wall near the Stabian gate at Pompeii, which Professor Man told me was undoubtedly Sullan.

[42]

Marucchi, Guida Arch., p. 19, who is usually a good authority on Præneste, thinks that all the opus quadratum walls were built as surrounding walls for the great sanctuary of Fortuna. But the facts will not bear out his theory. Ovid, Fasti VI, 61-62, III, 92; Preller, Roem. Myth., 2, 191, are interesting in this connection.

[43]

I could get no exact measurements of the reservoir, for the water was about knee deep, and I was unable to persuade my guides to venture far from the entrance, but I carried a candle to the walls on both sides and one end.

[44]

At some places the concrete was poured in behind the wall between it and the shelving cliff, at other places it is built up like the wall. The marks of the stones in the concrete can be seen most plainly near Porta S. Martino (Fernique, Étude sur Préneste, p. 104, also mentions it). The same thing is true at various places all along the wall.

[45]

Fernique, Étude sur Préneste, p. 107, has exact measurements of the walls.

[46]

Fernique, Étude sur Préneste, p. 108, from Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 43, considers as a possibility a road from each side, but he is trying only to make an approach to the temple with corresponding parts, and besides he advances no proofs.

[47]

There seems to have been only a postern in the ancient wall inside the present Porta del Sole.

[48]

Many feet of this ancient pavement were laid bare during the excavations in April, 1907, which I myself saw, and illustrations of which are published in the Notizie d. Scavi, Ser. 5, 4 (1907), pp. 136, 292.

[49]

Marucchi, Guida Arch., p. 57 ff. for argument and proof, beginning with Varro, de I. 1. VI, 4: ut Præneste incisum in solario vidi.

[50]

Cecconi, Storia di Palestrina, p. 43.

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