hich marked
its limits, buried the plough, the instruments of sacrifice, and other
votive offerings, in a round hole, excavated in the centre of the
marked space. The round hole was called _mundus_, and its location was
indicated by a heap of stones, which in course of time took the shape
of a square altar. The _mundus_ of ancient Rome was located in the
very heart of the Palatine, in front of the Temple of Apollo, and the
altar upon it was named the _Roma Quadrata_. This name has been much
discussed, and it has even been applied to the Palatine city itself,
although it is an established fact that there is, strictly speaking,
no connection between the two. The controversy has been resumed lately
by Professor Luigi Pigorini in a paper still unpublished which was
read at the sitting of the German Institute, December 17, 1890; and by
Professor Otto Richter in his pamphlet _Die aelteste Wohnstaette des
roemischen Volks_, Berlin, 1891.

In view of the ignorance of ancient writers on this subject, and the
almost absurd definitions they give of the word, we had come to the
conclusion that the altar had been removed or concealed by Augustus,
when he built the Temple of Apollo and the Portico of the Danaids, in
28 B. C. A remarkable inscription discovered September 20, 1890 (to
which I shall refer at length later), by mentioning the Roma Quadrata
as existing A. D. 204, shows that our opinion was wrong, and that the
old altar, the most venerable monument of Roman history, had survived
the vicissitudes of time, and the transformation of the Palatine from
the cradle of the city into the palace of the Caesars.

In December, 1869, when the nuns of the Visitation were laying the
foundations of a new wing of their convent on the area of the Temple
of Apollo,[44] I saw a line of square pilasters at the depth of
forty-one feet below the pavement of the Portico of the Danaids, and
in the centre of the line a heap of stones, either of tufa or
peperino, roughly squared. It is more than probable that, in 1869, I
did not think of the Roma Quadrata, and of its connection with those
remains, so deeply buried in the heart of the hill; but I am sure that
a careful investigation of that sacred spot would lead to very
important results.

THE ARA OF AIUS LOCUTIUS. In 1820, while excavations were proceeding
near the western corner of the Palatine (at the spot marked No. 7, on
the plan, page 106, of "Ancient Rome"), an altar was discovered, of
a