the town of Rome, on the lower slopes of
the Volscian mountains, 1300 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 6463. It
occupies the site of the ancient Volscian town of Cora, the foundation
of which is by classical authors variously ascribed to Trojan settlers,
to the Volscians (with a later admixture of Latins), and to the Latins
themselves. The last is more probable (though in that case it was the
only town of the Prisci Latini in the Volscian hills), as it appears
among the members of the Latin league. Coins of Cora exist, belonging at
latest to 350-250 B.C. It was devastated by the partisans of Marius
during the struggle between him and Sulla. Before the end of the
Republic it had become a _municipium_. It lay just above the older road
from Velitrae to Terracina, which followed the foot of the Volscian
hills, but was 6 m. from the Via Appia, and it is therefore little
mentioned by classical writers. It is comparatively often spoken of in
the 4th century, but from that time to the 13th we hear hardly anything
of it, as though it had almost ceased to exist. The remains of the city
walls are considerable: three different _enceintes_, one within the
other, enclose the upper and lower town and the acropolis. They are
built in Cyclopean work, and different parts vary considerably in the
roughness or fineness of the jointing and hewing of the blocks; but
explorations at Norba (q.v.) have proved that inferences as to their
relative antiquity based upon such considerations are not to be trusted.
There is a fine single-arched bridge, now called the Ponte della Catena,
just outside the town on the way to Norba, to which an excessively early
date is often assigned.

At the summit of the town is a beautiful little Doric tetrastyle temple,
belonging probably to the 1st century B.C., built of limestone with an
inscription recording its erection by the _duumviri_. It is not known to
what deity it was dedicated; and there is no foundation for the
assertion that the porphyry statue of Minerva (or Roma) now in front of
the Palazzo del Senatore, at Rome, was found here in the 16th century.
Lower down are two columns of a Corinthian temple dedicated to Castor
and Pollux, as the inscription records. The church of Santa Oliva stands
upon the site of a Roman building. The cloister, constructed in
1466-1480, is in two storeys; the capitals of the columns are finely
sculptured by a Lombard artist (G. Giovannoni in _L'Arte_, 1906, p.
108). There ar