Note 1169 — Chapter VIII · Rome
Reading edition
For other public works ascribed to the Tarquin dynasty see Livy I. 45; Dion. Hal. IV. 26 (Servius, temple of Diana on the Aventine).
Livy I. 44 (agger, fosse, and wall of Servius; cp. Strabo V. 234); Livy I. 36–8 (well begun by Priscus); Dion. Hal. III. 67; Aur. Vict. de Vir. Ill. 6 (wall of Tarquinius Priscus); Eutrop. I. 6 (walls and cloacae of Tarquinius Priscus).
Pliny, N.H. III. 9 (agger of Tarquinius Superbus on the East side of the city).
It was in the reputed period of the Tarquins that the people of Latium seem to have first learned to make walls of squared stones, Pinza, Bull. Comm. 1897, pp. 228 f.
Serv. ad Aen. XII. 603 f. (Cass. Hem., second century B.C.), (Superbus, cloaca), Pliny, N.H. XXXVI. 24 (Priscus, cloaca), the Chronographer of 354 A.D., Joh. Laur. Lyd. (sixth century), de Mens. IV. 24, Joh. Antioch. (seventh century), F.H.G. IV. p. 553, Isidore of Seville (seventh century), Etym. V. 27. 23, Suid. (tenth century), s.v. Σούπερβος, all say that Tarquinius Superbus introduced into Rome penal labour (see below, p. 226) in mines and quarries. There appear to have been quarries on the slopes of the Capitol which may have been worked in the regal period. Pais argues that they could not have been worked before the fifth century because they were called lautumiae, a name borrowed from Siceliot Greek: his view is based on the groundless assumptions (i) that a Siceliot word could not reach Rome before the fifth century, and (ii) that the quarries cannot be older than their name. In point of fact the quarries have been inferred from the name being frequently applied by Livy in his third decade to a prison known also as the Tullianum, Varro, L.L. V. 151, or Mamertine prison, or more recently as the church of San Pietro in Carcere. The prison is one of the most ancient structures in Rome, and has been compared with the beehive tombs of Greece.
The whole Capitol and Palatine are completely catacombed to a great depth by shafts and passages of most uncertain dates, discussed by Boni, J.R.S. III. pp. 247–250, and called by him favissae. Can Boni’s favissae, or any part of them, be the lautumiae of the Tarquins? See Dion. Hal. IV. 44.