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 p414  Porta Raudusculana

Article on p414 of

Samuel Ball Platner (as completed and revised by Thomas Ashby):
A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome,
London: Oxford University Press, 1929.

Porta Raudusculana: a gate in the Servian wall, mentioned next to the porta Naevia by Varro (LL V.163), who says that it was called raudusculana quod aerata fuit. Festus (275) gives alternative explanations: Rodusculana porta appellata, quod rudis et inpolita sit relicta, vel quia, raudo, id est aere, fuerit vincta, while according to Val. Maximus (V.6.3) the name came from bronze horns affixed to the gate in memory of the praetor Genucius Cipus, from whose forehead horns had sprung as he was passing through it on his way to war. This was interpreted as an augury that he would be king if he returned to Rome, and to avoid this disaster to his country, he remained abroad. The most probable explanation of the name is that the gate was strengthened with plates or hinges of bronze.

The existence of a vicus portae R(a)udusculanae in Regio XII (CIL VI.975) is evidence for the location of this gate on the eastern part of the Aventine. The vicus is generally thought to be a continuation of the Vicus Piscinae Publicae (q.v.), and if so, the porta was in the depression between the two parts of the hill, at the junction of the modern Viale Aventino and the Via di Porta S. Paolo (Jord. I.1.234; HJ 184; Gilb. II.295‑206, 308‑309; Merlin 120, 129; BC 1891, 211 n.).

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