Little Work on the Wonders of the New and Old City of Rome

Concerning the Walls and the Circuit of the City of Rome

The walls of the Great City of Rome [once] possessed 634 towers with battlements, ramparts, walkways, and shelters for the watchmen. But now, in truth, the towers number 365. The circuit of the City is said to have comprised 20,000 paces term: pace (original: "passus"). A Roman unit of distance roughly equal to five feet., according to the testimony of Pliny Pliny the Elder, author of the Natural History. and Vopiscus Flavius Vopiscus, one of the purported authors of the Historia Augusta.. However, the historian Flavius original: "Flauius." Likely referring to Flavius Biondo, the 15th-century humanist whose work Roma Instaurata was a primary source for Roman topography. writes that the Emperor Aurelian Emperor from 270–275 AD, who built the massive walls that still bear his name. expanded the circuit of the City to 50,000 paces and built up the banks of the Tiber. In our own time, however, including the Janiculum and the Vatican Two hills on the west bank of the Tiber; the Vatican was enclosed by its own walls, the Leonine Walls, in the 9th century., I judge the distance to be scarcely fifteen thousand paces. These walls were destroyed several times by the barbarians, but were later restored in many places by various Popes.

Poggio

Our fellow Florentine Poggio Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), a famous humanist scholar whose writings on Roman ruins were highly influential., in the first book of his On the Vicissitudes of Fortune original: "de uarietate fortunae." This work famously lamented the decay of Rome’s ancient grandeur. addressed to Pope Nicholas V, writes: "Why should I now complain of that which brings even me to a state of stupor as I review it: the walls of the City, so afflicted by manifold disaster, so uprooted from their foundations, that not only is their former location lost, but not even a single trace can be seen; the very memory of all the ancient walls has been erased. For those which you see now are new, made of brick; they were begun after the eight-hundredth year Poggio refers to the late 8th century AD, when the city's defenses were in dire need of repair., once the earlier ones were destroyed. They were first begun by Hadrian Pope Hadrian I (reigned 772–795), who significantly repaired the city walls. with a contribution of one hundred pounds of gold from the peoples of Etruria Tuscany; the Pope levied a tax or requested aid from these regions for the defense of Rome., then completed by one Gregory and likewise by another Pope of the same name Popes Gregory II and Gregory III.. Thus, the work of different Popes returns a varied..."