Note 54 — Chapter IV · PART I. THE AQUEDUCTS.
Reading edition
Canina published a volume on what he considered to be the Temple of Spes, by the side of the Porta Maggiore (as before mentioned); but a few years afterwards those ruins were pulled down to make room for a modern guard-house. In doing so, the inscription of the dedication to Hercules was found by the architect, Felice Cicconetti, and sent to the Vatican Museum. This statement was made to me some years since by Signor Cicconetti himself, and was confirmed by his friend, Signor Simelli, the photographer, who said he had seen it.
The fact is now denied by the Roman archæologists, and when challenged by the Cavaliere Visconti to shew him the inscription in the Vatican Museum, they say they cannot now remember anything about it; and the stone with the inscription upon it has not been found. It is printed by Dr. Henzen in his collection of Inscriptions as then in the warehouse of the Vatican Museum; but he considers it to have belonged to a wayside altar only, not to a temple.
The twin reservoirs are very near the same spot; but the place where the Aqua Appia enters Rome is in the gardens of the Sessorium, some distance from the gate, to the east of it. An old specus certainly runs along the Cœlian Hill, nearly under the Neronian Arcade, and part of it is now used for the Aqua Felice. I have been along it for more than a quarter of a mile, from near the Porta Maggiore to the Lateran. The Aqua Felice is carried down a sharp incline into that old specus, and the metal pipes on the slope are still supported on brickwork of the first century, probably part of the Marcian Arcade, when rebuilt in that part by Frontinus. The old specus runs on (or ran on, it is said to be now interrupted,) to the reservoir on the Cœlian Hill, at the Arch of Dolabella.
That a part of the eastern side of Rome went by the name of Spes Vetus, is said to be proved by a curious graffito upon the bottom of an amphora, found in 1871 in the excavations in the Exquiliæ, near the Porta Maggiore, of a cobbler’s stall, in that district:—
TYCHICI SVTORIS A. SPEM VE TERE.
This piece of terra-cotta is of the first century of the Roman Empire; but at what period the name and address of the cobbler was scratched upon it, is a question not so easily answered.