We must remember, also, that the Bordelletto, the Ortaccio, and in general all the low-lying districts on either side of the Tiber, were not provided with drainage. The Cloaca Maxima and the drain of the Circus Flaminius answered at intervals their old purpose, so far as the increase in the level of the city would allow it; but more frequent were the cases in which either the silt deposited by the overflowing river, or the accumulation of refuse, would stop the flow of the sewage and turn the neighborhood into a deadly quagmire. These occurrences were periodical in the hollows of the Forum Augustum and of the Campo Vaccino; in fact, a bridge had been thrown over the stream of liquid poison to keep open the communication with the church and monastery of Santa Maria Liberatrice. The topographers and archæologists of the sixteenth century, in describing the ruins and excavations of the Forum, refer to this bridge under the name of "Ponticello" as to a well-known landmark; and Martin Heemskerk has left a memorandum of it in the sketch-book formerly in the possession of the Parisian architect Destailleurs, and now in the Imperial Museum at Berlin. The same noxious stream is seen crossing the Campo Vaccino diagonally from the church of Sant' Adriano to that of Santa Maria Liberatrice, in the panoramic view dedicated in 1763 to Count Rezzonico, nephew of Clement XIII, by the celebrated engraver Giuseppe Vasi. The name of Pantano the Bog still given to the forum of Augustus owes its origin to the same cause. The Pantano extended from the southern boundary of the forum of Trajan to beyond the Argiletum, and being very much in favor with the vegetable growers and market gardeners of the district, it brought a considerable revenue to the Knights Templars of San Basilio, to whom it belonged. Pius V and Prospero Boccapaduli put an end to the dis graceful speculation in 1570 by filling up the bog to the level of the present Via Alessandrina. The cemeteries, of which there were as many as there were parish churches, convents, and hospitals, furnished another source of infection, being in contact with the houses of the living. Thus the corpses of the unfortunate who died in the hospital of San Giovanni, in the island of the Tiber, at the rate of a hundred and fifty a month, were buried in a yard directly under the windows of the ward in which the sick lay. The stench (foetor cadaverum) became so foul that the Town Council, at the sitting of April 27, 1591, voted funds for the opening of another burial-place "away from the inhabited quarters, and not prejudicial to their health." Many of these hotbeds of disease have been rediscovered in my time. I remember, in particular, those of Santa Maria Nuova, of the Pantheon, of San Sebastiano in Pallara, of San Marcello de Via Lata, of San Nicolao de Calcarario, of San Ciriaco de Camilliano, and of Santa Maria in Campitello. The largest of all, adjoining the hospital of Santa Maria delle Grazie, occupied one half of the Basilica Julia, the layer of human remains being from six to eight feet in thickness. Flaminio Vacca' relates the following remarkable discovery: "While Bernardo Acciajuoli was excavating his garden on the Quirinal, on the site of the baths of Constantine, he entered two underground vaulted passages, the outer end of which was cut off by a wall built in a hurry and out of the perpendicular. Beyond this obstacle, which was removed without difficulty, the cellars appeared to be full of human bones. Bernardo Acciajuoli being my friend, I was sent at once to investigate the matter. The 1 Memorie di varie antichità trovate in diversi luoghi della città di Roma, scritte da Flaminio Vacca nel 1594. Published by Carlo Fea in 1790, n. 112. first thing I noticed on entering the crypts was that between the upper layer of bones and the top of the walled ceiling there was an empty space, about four feet high, which space allowed us to reach the end of both cellars, sinking knee-deep in the crumbling mass of skeletons. Each gallery was ninety feet long, twenty-six wide. Now as the ceilings of both were intact, without loopholes or skylights, it is evident that these poor people must have died and their corpses must have been heaped up layer after layer all at once, whether in consequence of an outbreak of the plague or of a wholesale massacre of citizens I cannot say. The empty space above must have been caused by the sinking of the mass, after the corpses were turned into skeletons; and the hasty manner in which the walls were built at each end shows how anxious the masons were to escape from the ghastly place." Another discovery of the same kind was made in the seventeeth century in the garden belonging to the Barberini palace, while workmen were laying the foundations of the pedestal for the obelisk which the brothers Curzio and Marcello Saccoccia had discovered in 1570, in the circus of the Varian Gardens beyond Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, and which, after many wanderings, has now been set up again in the central avenue of the Pincio Gardens. Pietro Sante Bartoli, who watched the Barberini excavations in the interest of science, speaks of a "stanzone" or hall fifty feet high, filled with a "quantità grandissima di ossa umane.' Many of the parish cemeteries, abandoned or very seldom in use, served as receptacles for the refuse of the city, whenever the sleepy authorities remembered to collect it from the streets, into which it was first dumped from the windows. There was virtually an office in the capital called "officium immunditiarum urbis," but we must consider it more as |