RECENT FINDS IN ROME The city of Rome still yields a constant stream of ancient works of art. The Government has secured possession of the Capitoline hill and with characteristic zeal at once ordered the excavation of the site of Rome's chief temple. The massive foundations of Tarquin's structure were laid bare and found to agree with the dimensions recorded by ancient authorities (Not. d. Sc., vol. xviii., 1921). Unfortunately, none of the decorative terra-cottas of the old temple have as yet come to light, but an interesting deposit of early votive objects have been found not far from it. On the Palatine the rear of the Imperial palace was cleared in 1905, and excellent wall paintings and mosaics of the Claudian and Neronian periods brought to light in abandoned rooms beneath. In similar rooms found under the front of the palace were discovered wall decorations of great historical interest dating from the Ciceronian period (see ROME, Palatine). Recently the so-called "Villa Mills" has been stripped of its modern decorations to facilitate the exam ination of the walls which prove to be ancient. The most valuable treasure yielded by the Palatine in recent years is the exquisite but still unpublished Nike.
The Government has now excavated a large part of the Augus tan Forum. The numerous architectural fragments found from the Temple of Mars Ultor, the portico near by and the marble cover ing of the enclosing wall are of great beauty and precision, and several inscriptions of historical importance have also come to light. This excavation is continuing north-west into Trajan's forum and south-east into Nerva's forum. Furthermore the Theatre of Marcellus has been freed from its clutter of ugly shops, the temple of Fortuna in the Forum Boarium, two unidentified temples near S. Nicola dei Cesarini have been liberated, and the Mausoleum of Augustus is being thoroughly studied.
Many rooms of Nero's "Golden House" near the Colosseum were cleared. The debris had been searched long ago for works of art, but the walls, protected by the super-imposition of Ha drian's buildings, were found to be decorated in a style resembling that of the "Claudian" rooms of the Palatine. The small and richly coloured panels set in embroidered stucco are excellently executed but overloaded in design, as are the Renaissance loggia arabesques which they inspired. In many places on the walls were found the signatures of Renaissance artists who had crawled over the debris to study the ceiling decorations (partial report in Jahrb. Arch. Inst., 1913, p. 217). Among statues recently found there should be mentioned, besides the Nike, an excellent portrait of Augustus (Not. d. Sc., 191o, 223), an "Artemis" from Aricia (Jahrb. Arch. Inst. 1922, I 12) , an excellent bronze representing a youth of the Julio-Claudian house, taken to New York (Am. Jour. Arch., 1915). Furthermore, some forgotten fragments of great importance, which have long been lying and awaiting study in the basement of the Vatican, include a fine head from a Par thenon metope and a good copy of one of the "Tyrannicides." During the World War there was discovered under the railway outside of Porto Maggiore a mysterious underground "Basilica" in almost perfect preservation, probably of the Ist century A.D. It had been built by sinking shafts in which the concrete walls and the piers of the nave were moulded. After a concrete vault had been cast over the walls, the enclosed earth had been removed and the walls and ceiling plastered and very richly stuccoed in low relief with mythological and genre scenes. It is, perhaps, the best preserved monumental structure of the Roman world, and the lavish stucco work, though not quite as delicate as that of the house found in the Farnesina garden, shows an ease and freedom of execution which gives it high rank. Scholars incline the belief that it was the meeting-place of a group devoted to some mystical cult (Carcopino, La Basilique Pythagoricienne, 1927). The tomb of the Aurelii found on the Viale Manzoni (Mon. Ant., 1922) has awakened much comment because of its excellent figures in fresco and the Christian symbolism that some of the paintings seem to contain. There is a seated figure before a flock that seems to symbolize Christ as judge. Eleven excellent stand ing figures have with less certainty been identified with the Apos tles. The new excavations of imperial Rome constantly disclose the evidence of oriental cults. The two largest Mithraea known have also come to light in this period, one under S. Clemente, the other under the baths of Caracalla (Not. d. Sc., 1912). The tomb of the Scipios has at last been carefully examined and restored.
Beneath the church of San Sebastian were found a number of decorated columbaria of the i st century made for pagan crema tion, which in the 2nd century were converted into Christian burial places. The area was then levelled off and a room for funeral banquets constructed. The walls of this room contained a great number of invocations to Peter and Paul rudely scratched. These finds will have an important place in early Christian his tory (Not. d. Sc., 1923). Recent restorations of the churches of
Santa Sabina, S. Quattro Coronati and S. Giorgio in Velabro have also revealed earlier structures of value to church history. In the rapid expansion of Rome since 1918 a very large number of tombs with sarcophagi, hundreds of important inscriptions, and three new series of catacombs have been found. These have been reported with commendable speed in the Notizie degli Scavi.
Outside of Rome the most important excavations in Latium have disclosed Horace's villa on his Sabine farm (Mon. Antichi, 1926, 457), an important votive deposit at Tivoli, details of Domitian's palace at Albano, of Hadrian's villa near Tivoli, a splendid and very old temple with fine terra-cottas at Lanuvio (Mon. Ant., vol. 27, 1921), valuable fragments of a pre-Julian calendar at Anzio (Not. d. Sc., vol. xviii., 1921), and a very im portant part of the seaport town of Ostia. At Ostia the finds are so numerous that a mere enumeration would require pages. The walls and gates of the oldest settlement (4th century ?), which Virgil seems to describe in his 7th book, have been disclosed; the more extensive wall of the 1st century B.C. has been traced throughout, and two of its excellently constructed gates cleared; the Forum of the late republic has been excavated, a temple of Rome and Augustus found at one end, and beneath the pavement of the Forum a series of barrack-rooms and offices of the oldest town. Many new temples, the offices of the city guard, the offices of the foreign shippers, the large cistern of the city, numerous State granaries, the foundations of what seems to be the earliest Temple of Jupiter, the municipal senate house, a very interesting safety storage house, and much else can now be studied. Of par ticular interest in revealing the plan of city dwellings are the extensive ruins of the "Casa di Diana" which, rising to three or four storeys, contained many suites of independent apartments which received their light through windows opening to the streets. This rather than the Pompeian type of dwelling we must now assume for the city of Rome. (See Calza, Guida di Ostia, 1925, and continued reports in Notizie d. Scavi.) The excavations at Pompeii in 1925 yielded a magnificent Greek bronze Ephebus, perhaps the best work of art that the buried city has disclosed. The work of clearing the western part of the city has progressed uninterruptedly. A large number of houses of moderate size with fair wall paintings have been found, among them several of religious import—a Cybele group, a Pom peian Venus, a group of the twelve gods, and a series of interest ing mythological scenes (Not. d. Scavi, 1927 ff.). Of particular interest are several houses with picturesque balconies, and an office decorated with representations of armour, supposed by some to be the headquarters of the iuvenes, the ancient "boy scouts." The newly found structures have been carefully restored and the paintings well protected from weathering and decay, but until recently publication has not always kept pace with excavations.
Finally, very important excavations have been diligently and carefully conducted on the Greek sites of lower Italy and Sicily. Gabrici published in two sumptuous volumes the discoveries made before the World War at Cumae (Mon. Ant., vol. xxii.). Since Cumae was for centuries the Greek tutor of Italian barbarians, these volumes are indispensable to students of Greek and Italian history. Unfortunately, the excavations of the Temple of Apollo, the home of the sibyl whose oracles brought so many Greek rites to Rome, were stopped by the World War and left incomplete, but the sibyl's cave has been excavated in honour of Virgil's 2oth centenary. In southern Italy Orsi has excavated Locri, Caulonia, Medma and other sites with striking finds of Greek vases, remark ably fine architectural decorations in terra-cotta, early Greek en tablatures of great beauty, and large numbers of terra-cotta votive figures of no mean artistic value. ("Caulonia," Mon. Ant., vol. xxiii. [1914-16], Oldfather, Locri in Pauly-Wissowa ; Not. d. Sc., 1917 for Medma.) At Ciro in Calabria he has found a remark able head of an acrolithic Apollo of about 46o B.C. (Atene e Roma, 1925), and at Velia the remains of three important temples.
Orsi has also published the finds from an important archaic Temple of Megara Hyblaea in Mon. Ant., p. I io, (1921). But the most important work of the kind has been Orsi's extensive excavations in Syracuse, especially of the site and ruins of the great Temple of Athena. Here were found a rich store of objects from pre-Greek huts, of early Greek edifices and especially many exquisitely executed fragments of the 5th-century temple (Not. d. Sc., 191o, and Mon. Ant., 1918, pp. The State has also begun a thorough-going archaeological survey of Italy, the first fascicle of which has been published by Prof. Lugli. (See also