The Oldest Ruin

The oldest ruin in Rome is a fragment of the wall which Romulus built to enclose the city. It dates, therefore, back to 753 B.C., according to the accepted Latin chronology. The best account of it may be found, with photographic pictures of the most characteristic parts, in John Henry Parker's "Archaeology of Rome." "Palatine hill," says this author, "has been so long built over, and the buildings renewed so many times, that it is difficult to see the original plan. Nevertheless, the demolition of the buildings, and the recent excavations, have brought a great deal of it to light." Proofs of the antiquity of the ruined wall of Romulus are manifold, and all the recent discoveries by excavation combine in the opinion of advanced scholars, to prove the substantial truth of the first book of Livy. Besides the wall of Romulus, there are but few relics of the kingly period in Rome. The most important of these are the Mamertine prison and the Cloaca Maxima. The Mamertine prison is situated beneath the Church of St. Giuseppe, and consists of two cells, one above the other, excavated in the tufa rock. The researches of Mr. J. H. Parker and other antiquarians (1870-71) have shown that these cells led into much more extensive prisons, capable of holding hundreds of prisoners. A flight of steps leads down from the church to the upper cell, which is fitted up as an oratory, for tradition has given a certain sanctity to the Mamertine prison. Here, it is asserted, St. Peter was confined during the reign of Nero; the pillar to which he was chained is shown, and the fountain which miraculously sprang up that he might baptize his jailers.

The lower cell seems to have been a quarry, and its only opening is the one through which the stones may have been drawn up. The cell is in the form of a hollow globe, twenty feet in diameter. It is hardly possible to imagine a more horrible dungeon, and yet it must be there that Jugurtha was starved to death, as well as many other notable state prisoners. This pit, with no outlet except a bottle neck, was a twin sister to the dungeon into which Jeremiah was let down with cords, and which might well have inspired his lamentations.--Jer. XXXVIII. 6. The Cloaca Maxima is the famous drain built by Tarquinius Priscus, fifth King of Rome, to dry the marsh lands of Velabrum. It extended from the River Tiber to the Forum, and is still used, after a lapse of more than 2400 years, for the purpose for which it was originally intended. Strabo tells us that the Cloaca was of sufficient height to admit a wagon laden with hay. Agrippa, who cleaned out the Cloaca, navigated the whole length in a boat. The mouth of the Cloaca is visible on the river a little to the right of the Temple of Vesta. While these are the oldest ruins of Roman work, there are no monuments in the city of such undoubted antiquity as the twelve Obelisks, which the various emperors brought from Egypt, as memorials of their triumphs, and which the popes have so judiciously applied to the decoration of the city, each closing a vista.