Identifier: cu31924020498980 (find matches)
Title: Wanderings in the Roman campagna
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Lanciani, Rodolfo Amedeo, 1847-1929
Subjects: Art
Publisher: Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin company
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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roceedings of themeeting. There are two centres of interest to be visited atPalestrina, — the lower, which includes the forum, thel)asilica, the solarium, the icrarium, the temple wherethe responses were given, the cave in which the sorteswere kept in the box of olive wood, and the secret pas-sage connecting the temple with the cave; and the upper,comprising the round shrine and the baronial palace ofthe Barberini, in a hall of which the famous mosaic flooris now exhibited. The forum is represented by the modern piazza, thebasilica by the cathedral church of wS. Agapito. Thesun-dial described by Varro and illustrated by Maruc- THE LAND OF GREGORY THE GREAT 239 chi ^ is engraved above the entrance door of the basilica.The serarium or treasury, in which the fees paid to thesortilegi were stored away in safes belonging to themunicipality, was discovered in 1872. It is a vaultedcrypt twenty-one feet deep, fourteen wide, opening onthe forum, under the vestibule of the temple, a veritable
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Foro prirnitivo Sun Dial Plan of oracle strong-room, doubly protected by its religious consecra-tion and by its walls of massive masonry. An inscrip-tion facing the door names the aedile M. Anicius andM. Mersieius as the builders of this jierarium. The Temphim Fortunse Primigeniee, used until latelyfor a wine cellar and lumber room for the episcopalseminary, is one of the most perfect specimens of Italicarchitecture of Sullas time to be found in central Italy. Varro, De Lingua Latino, vi, 4 ; Marucchi, Di un antichissimoorologio solare recentemente scoperto in Palestrina, in Annali Istituto,1884, p. ^80. 240 WANDERINGS IN THE ROiVIAN CAMPAGNA Its apse, hewn out of the live rock, has three recesses orniches, the purpose of which has been a subject of muchcontroversy; its great interest, however, Hes in the factthat within its walls the mosaic, now in the baronialpalace, was discovered at the beginning of the seven-teenth century. Prince Federico Cesi, the founder ofthe Accademia dei Li

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