ed the Temple and brought thousands of them, in the
train of Pompey's thousands, to build the Colosseum; and the wisest
among them, if they be faithful and believing Jews, as many are, ask
themselves whether this great change, which looks so like improvement,
is really for good, or whether it is the beginning of the end of the
oldest nation of us all.

[Illustration]

REGION XII RIPA

In Italian, as in Latin, Ripa means the bank of a river, and the Twelfth
Region took its name from being bounded by the river bank, from just
below the island all the way to the Aurelian walls, which continue the
boundary of the triangle on the south of Saint Sebastian's gate; the
third side runs at first irregularly from the theatre of Marcellus to
the foot of the Palatine, skirts the hill to the gas works at the north
corner of the Circus Maximus, takes in the latter, and thence runs
straight to the gate before mentioned. The Region includes the Aventine,
Monte Testaccio, and the baths of Caracalla. The origin of the device,
like that of several others, seems to be lost.

The Aventine, ever since the auguries of Remus, has been especially the
refuge of opposition, and more especially, perhaps, of religious
opposition. In very early times it was especially the hill of the
plebeians, who frequently retired to its heights in their difficulties
with the patricians, as they had once withdrawn to the more distant Mons
Sacer in the Campagna. The temple of Ceres stood in the immediate
neighbourhood of the Circus, on the line of approach to the Aventine,
and contained the archives of the plebeian AEdiles. In the times of the
Decemvirs, much of the land on the hill was distributed among the
people, who probably lived within the city, but went out daily to
cultivate their little farms, just as the inhabitants of the hill
villages do today.

If this were not the case, it would be hard to explain how the Aventine
could have been a solitude at night, as it was in the time of the
Bacchic orgies, of which the discovery convulsed the republic, and ended
in a religious persecution. That was when Scipio of Asia had been
accused and not acquitted of having taken a bribe of six thousand pounds
of gold and four hundred and eighty pounds of silver to favour
Antiochus. It was in the first days of Rome's corruption, when the
brilliant army of Asia first brought the love of foreign luxury to Rome;
when the soldiers, enriched with booty, began to hav