CAPITOL, a celebrated rock, or hill, at Rome, whereon stood many ancient edifices, with the house of Romulus, &c.
Among the many celebrated edifices that formerly occupied this hill, the principal was the Asylum, erected by Romulus in order to people his new city. The house of Romulus was composed of canes, rushes, &e. ; and every year the priests superstitiously repaired it with similar materials. here was the Tabularium, or Archive, where were deposited the laws and consulta of the senate, and every other public act, written on tables of bronze. Vespasian repaired the Capitol, and had three thousand new tables made, the former having been defaced when the library and other buildings were destroyed by lightning. It is supposed to have stood where the arches and Doric columns are now seen, behind the Senators' Palace, towards the Campo Vaccino. Here was the Curia There also stood the house of Manlius, the defender of the rock, destroyed on account of the treachery of its master. The temple of Juno Moneta was built on its
site. The number of temples on this hill was very consider able : some make them amount to sixty. But the great quantity of statues in marble, metal, silver, and gold, erected to heroes who had deserved well of the republic, causing great confusion, Augustus removed great part of them to the Campus Martins.
All these noble edifices, once the ornament of the mistress of the world, have filllen a victim to the ravages of time, and the still more destructive plunder of invading barbarians. At first this hill was only accessible from the south; but after the Campus Martins was inhabited, another road was opened towards the north. The first among the moderns who pro moted the decoration of the Campidoglio was Pope Paul Ill. who, after a design of Bonarrotti,construeted the spacious steps.