Identifier: ancientlegendsof00pais (find matches)
Title: Ancient legends of Roman history
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Pais, Ettore, 1856-1939 Cosenza, Mario Emilio, 1880-1966, tr
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead & Company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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labrum, and notthe Forum. Likewise, I do not find in the passages quoted any argu-ment in favor of the statement that Mons Tarpeius origi-nally indicated only the southern portion of the hill, wherethe temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was afterwards erected.In fact, the passages of the ancient writers which referto the change of name from Mons Tarpeius to Mons Capi-tolinus do not compel us to agree, with modern critics,that the northern portion of the Capitoline was not calledMons Tarpeius also.5 Against such entirely arbitrary conclusions I shall opposethe inscription of Flavia Epicarides, priestess of thegoddess Virgo Ccelestis. It was found in 1892, in exca-vating for the monument to Victor Emmanuel II.,—that is,while excavating in that region of the Capitoline where thearx and the temple of Juno Moneta had been. In thisinscription Flavia Epicarides is called a priestess of thegoddess Virgo Cselestis, the most propitious deity of thisregion of the Mons Tarpeius.6 The expression Mons
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THE SAXUM TARPEIUM in Tarpeius, consequently, equally with Mons Capitolinus,indicated the northern as well as the southern portion ofthe Capitoline. There are necessary, then, quite differentarguments from those hitherto employed to establish thesite which the ancients described with the name SaxumTarpeium. I do not stop to discuss minutely various other passagesfrom which it has been wrongly deduced that the SaxumTarpeium was not far from the Capitolium. These pas-sages are, in my opinion, very ambiguous, and lend them-selves to different interpretations. For instance, we read inTacitus that, in the siege of the Capitol in 69 A.D., sincethe entrance had been barricaded, the various approachesto the Capitol were attacked near the grove of the asylum,and where the Tarpeian Rock is reached by the one hun-dred steps.7 I fail to see how, from this passage, it can beunhesitatingly deduced that this stairway was on the south-ern portion of the hill, upon which the Capitolium wassituated. Th

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