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This webpage transcribes an article published in the Supplementary Papers of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome, Volume I, pp108‑140 and Plates XIII‑XVI (1905) Text and images are in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know!

Carsioli

 p108  A Description of the Site and the Roman Remains,
with Historical Notes and a Bibliography

The traveler who crosses the Italian peninsula in an easterly direction from Rome takes the Sulmona railway and enters the Sabine Mountains at Tivoli (Tibur). Thence he follows the route of the ancient Via Valeria up the beautiful Anio valley past Vicovaro (Varia or Vicus Variae) and reaches in about an hour the picturesque town of Arsoli.​1 This lies a little north of the springs that supply the modern Aqua Marcia, as they did the ancient. Portions of their conduits he will probably have seen along the way.

Leaving Arsoli, he enters a narrow rocky pass traversed by a tributary of the river Anio, coming from the north; and here, about opposite to the village of Riofreddo, he may see, on the east side of the railway-line, under the modern highway, a well-preserved single-arched Roman bridge, which belonged to the Via Valeria, the Ponte di San Giorgio (Fig. 1).2

Another ancient bridge still better preserved is the Ponte Scutonico​3 (Fig. 2), which lies about 2 km back toward Rome, far below the railway, southwest of Arsoli, from which it may be easily reached. It has particular interest as the most important remnant of Roman road-building in these parts, and is repeatedly referred to below (pp131, 132). Figure 3 shows the top of it, looking eastward, with the road-pavement of irregular flat blocks of limestone still in situ.

Soon after passing the Ponte di San Giorgio and the station of Riofreddo, the traveller arrives at the lonely station of Pereto-Il Cavaliere (called on the Maps, Plate XIII, simply Il Cavaliere),​a where he should descend to visit Carsioli. Beyond stretches an extensive plain, — the Piano del Cavaliere, — not unlike the plains of  p109 northern Greece, cultivated by the inhabitants of the neighboring villages, but almost without a house or tree (Fig. 4).

It is drained by the little river Turano, which flows rapidly northwestward, lies about 600 m above sea-level, and is encircled by gray limestone mountains scantily wooded and in winter often capped with snow.​4 Between the plain and the highlands on the west, however, there extends from Il Cavaliere toward the north and northwest a plateau with deeply eroded contours. It is about 40 m to 60 m higher than the lowest part of the plain, somewhat wooded, and hence known as Bosco di Oricola, a hill-town toward the south, to which it now belongs.5

Along the eastern edge of this plateau lies a narrow and very irregular spur,​6 stretching northward independently of it. This spur is the site of the ancient town of Carsioli,​7 which was originally a settlement of the Aequi or Aequiculi, but is said to  p111 have been occupied in about 300 B.C. by a colony of 4000 Romans. The place then became strong fortress, guarding the line of advance into the central Apennines. It flourished more or less for many centuries, and fell into decay in the Middle Ages. The date of its final abandonment is not exactly known. The Panorama on Plate XIV is a good view from the east of the entire site, outlined by its trees against the mountains to the south and west. Only a few humble stone cottages and reed huts (capanne) stand upon it now.

The rock underlying the soil is a brownish-gray volcanic tufa of rather fine but earthy grain, similar to that found in the Valle di Cona below Subiaco (Gori, Da Roma a Tivoli e Subiaco, etc., 1855, part IV, p34, or Giornale arcadico, tomo CLXXXII (1864), p114). It resembles peperino somewhat, but is less speckled. In the surrounding alluvial lowlands lie stagnant waters, which give rise to malarial fevers in the summer months. To the west there were, when Gori wrote about fifty years ago, bogs and malodorous sulphur-springs, which, he says, made spending the night in this neighborhood impossible. Of the springs we noticed nothing, but even now the tillers of the soil stay only for the winter season at Carsioli, or Civita Carenza as they call it, returning in April to Oricola. They raise Indian corn and other grain, grapes and apples, but do not cultivate the olive. For this, as already Ovid has remarked (loc. cit.), the climate is too cold.

The remains of Carsioli were found and identified​8 by the famous Holstenius (Lukas Holste, 1596‑1661) in May, 1645:

 p112  He describes them in the following words:

Holstenius also points out that Cluverius​12 was wrong in believing that the Roman Carsioli occupied the site of the modern Arsoli.

Since his day the remains have been repeatedly mentioned, and occasionally visited by archaeologists.

Mutius Phoebonius, in his Historiae Marsorum Libri Tres (Naples, 1678), says:

(p116)

Figure 5. — A Section of the Map of Diego Revillas, 1735 See pp113 and 115 A larger, fully readable scan (1.5 MB) is also available.

In a manuscript work by the Spaniard Diego Revillas, entitled De Sabinis urbibus apud Marsos, written about 1735, but not published, and now in the possession of Mr. Thomas Ashby, Jr., of Rome (who purchased it from the library of the late Constantinoº Corvisieri), the author makes the following remarks about Carsioli, which agree in the main with the statements of Holstenius:

R. Colt Hoare​17 narrates a visit on May 8, 1791, to the site of Carsioli, as follows:

Not one of these men, however, has left a full account of what he saw. This is unfortunate, for meanwhile the walls of Carsioli and its edifices, both sacred and profane, have been so completely destroyed by cultivation and the search for building-materials that scarcely anything of importance remained, at least on the surface, when we visited the site for the first time in January, 1901, with Professor Rodolfo Lanciani. No objects of very great interest are known to have been found there, mainly perhaps because there have been no systematic excavations; but fragments of statues, cornices, and ornaments in marble and bronze, as well as lead pipes, coins, cut gems, plain pottery, and terra-cotta ex‑votos, have been in the past​20 and are still sometimes unearthed by the country-people in their work. We determined, therefore, to map and describe what we could — little though it was — in order to preserve a more complete record of the place.

The history of Carsioli and its political status have already been briefly outlined by the late Professor Mommsen in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. IX (1883), p382. Reference may also be made to E. H. Bunbury's article in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (Ed. W. Smith, London, 1887, vol. I, pp526, 527),º though this writer says erroneously that a "great part of the walls . . . as well as portions of towers" . . . yet remain, having apparently relied without personal observation on Holstenius and on Gori, who wrote in 1666 and 1855. There is a short note by Professor Chr. Hülsen in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopaedie d. Klass. Alterthumswissenschaft, vol. III (1899), cols. 1615, 1616.

In our examination of the literary sources we have come upon no important new facts about Carsioli; but since we have thus become acquainted with a few not mentioned in the accounts referred to, and since we may be justly expected in a treatise  p115 like the present to include historical notes on our subject, we have added such in Appendix I, based upon some of the works, more or less trustworthy, enumerated in the bibliography, Appendix II.

It is certain that Carsioli lay on the Via Valeria, but that it lay to the left of it, as Holstenius states, was disputed by C. de Chaupy, who says​21 on this point:

He remarks further:

Chaupy appears to have mistaken house-walls in opus incertum for city-walls, and the paved road (now Via Civita), probably a diverticulum which led into the town, for the Via Valeria which seems to have passed at a short distance southeast of it.

Westphal, however, who had seen the ruins,​22 Hoare, and Revillas (at least in his map) placed the town where Holstenius did. Our own observation agrees with theirs.

Revillas indicates on his map​23 some pavement of the Via Valeria, but we found nothing of the latter except what appears to be a part of its bed cut in the earth and indicated thus on the Staff-map (Plate XIII) as a path. This runs for several hundred feet along the northwest side of the railway to the north of the first guard-house, Casello 70, beyond the station. The Roman paving-stones, worn on one side, which may be seen here and there in the low walls flanking the railway-embankment, probably came from this cutting. Moreover, its general direction points toward the fallen milestone​24 of the Via Valeria, that lies at some distance to the northeast (cf. Plan, Plate XV), but considerably east of the spur which was the site of the ancient town. On comparing finally the Via Valeria, as shown on Revillas' map near Carsioli (Fig. 5), and the earth-road beside the railway on the Staff-map (Plate XIII) between Il Cavaliere and the river Turano, they will be seen to agree surprisingly in their place and direction, and even in the bend. We could find no evidence of any direct connection between the Via Civita and the milestone.

The site is best approached from the station of Pereto-Il Cavaliere by crossing the railway-line, walking along it northward for a few hundred feet, and near Casello 70 turning off to the left to reach the path, now called Via Civita, that runs due north among houses over the R[egione] Vigna di Civita (see Staff-map, Plate XIII).

 p117  Finding the representation of the locality on the Staff-map inadequate for our work, we have prepared a Sketch-plan of our own, Plate XV. On this the main points of the topography, to wit: buildings, — forks, bends, and ends of roads and paths, — and ancient remains have been located by a plane-table survey and tape measurements; not always, as we are aware, with mathematical exactitude, yet with sufficient accuracy for our purpose. The scantiness, nature, and present condition of the visible remains did not justify greater expenditure of labor and time. The contour-curves are inserted by sight and a few rough measurements, merely to give the reader some idea of the extraordinary shape of the ancient site, the interval between them between about 5 m to 8 m. The numbers denoting objects and places on the site throughout the following remarks refer to that plan. The measures are given in the metric system, and the scale-rod to be seen in some illustrations is divided into decimetres.

The Via Civita, by which we shall now take the reader to Carsioli from the south, is a stony field-road about 2 m wide, and, though it undoubtedly represents an ancient road, it seems to have been only a diverticulum branching off northward from the Via Valeria, which here had a northeasterly direction. Fragments of the pavement, which consisted originally of irregular limestone blocks flanked by a crepido or raised border of rectangular blocks of the same material on each side, may still be seen between the first road-fork and the second at the points numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and beyond the second fork at 17 and 18 on the west branch (third fork) and at 38 on the east branch. A view of this rough path looking north from 5 is shown in Fig. 6. It is unlikely, as stated above (p115), that this road, or either of its branches, represents the Via Valeria.

The best-preserved pieces of the pavement are at points 3, 4, and 17.

3 lies partly under the house-wall.

4 seems to be a piece of the eastern crepido lying along the middle of the path, composed of fifteen contiguous, rectangular blocks and four scattered ones. Some of the blocks are 1.4 m long. The visible face of one measures 65 × 75 cm, of another at one end of the line 74 × 82 cm. A cross-section of the pavement at this point may be seen under the western hedge. Its original width could not be ascertained.

17 lies in the open space before the house at the third fork (see Fig. 7). The photograph shows some of the pale-gray limestone pavement and a piece of the eastern  p118 crepido. The surface of one stone measured 60 × 110 cm. In a bit of pavement lying at 18 beyond the left corner of the house, one stone measured 60 × 140 cm. At the left of the view below the man is the edge of the modern path that turns off here to the west; the edge of the other path that branches off eastward is seen on the right.

Although the fields to the east and west of points 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are already thinly strewn with insignificant fragments of ancient bricks, tiles, and pottery, the fortified part of the town does not seem to have extended south of point 15 at the second fork, where the contours indicate a narrow neck, just as they indicate another farther north at point 38.

At 15 the land drops rather abruptly on the west side. Here, about a third of the way down the hill, at points 7, 8, 9, are low pieces of what was apparently a city-wall much-weathered polygonal and rectangular tufa blocks, one of which measures 53 × 60 × 45 cm. In Fig. 8 the polygonal blocks at 7 may be seen at the bottom of the stretch of wall in the centre of the view, with the second fork being above at the left by the house.​25 At 9 (where the blocks are rectangular and at a higher level) this wall reaches its southern limit and turns eastward; but only 1.5 m of the latter stretch is visible as a single course above ground. At 6, on the other (east) side of the neck, are two or three huge, well-joined rectangular blocks of it, apparently in situ, supporting the southeast edge of the fork. Their face-dimensions are about 130 × 62 cm. The tops of several more are visible at 15 in the second fork itself, in front of the south wall of the house. This place must obviously have been the site of a gate, and the remains of one here are, indeed, mentioned by Holstenius and Revillas (loc. cit.).

Besides these remnants of a tufa wall there are near by, at 10 and 11, also fragments of an apparently later, at least better-built, limestone wall which, at these points, stood about 5 m west of the present road at the very edge of the plateau. Its rectangular blocks, which are very well laid on their long sides, measure on the exposed faces generally about 38 × 90 cm or 38 × 95 cm, sometimes 38 × 100 cm. It is to be regretted that the good high piece, 10, still seen by us on our first visit, has since totally disappeared,  p119 having been broken up — so an old peasant told us — to repair the road. Only a mass of concrete, 13, which stood between it and the road, remains​26 at present.

Of both the tufa wall and the limestone wall we found fragments at other points. A walk up the west side from 15 to the northern extremity and down again on the east side revealed low pieces, more or less considerable, of the tufa wall at 20, 21, 26, 27, 31, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47 (top of a fine arch), and at 52; but scattered loose blocks of tufa, probably likewise from it, occur at intermediate points, especially on the slopes at 28, 29, 37a, west of 39, at 47, 50, between 52 and 54, and, finally, built into the road-supporting wall at 59. At the last-mentioned place one stone measures on its exposed face 33 × 150 cm. Other stones are from 65 to 100 cm long.

The best piece, recently brought to view by quarrying, lies at 52 (Fig. 9). Here may be observed outermost (at the right in the view) a line of headers; lying behind them a line of stretchers, and above these, farther back in the hillside, again headers and stretchers. A well-preserved typical block measured 41 × 54 × 95 cm.

The fact should be noted that the tufa wall seen at this point is of opus quadratum (resembling that of similar structures on the Palatine Hill in Rome and elsewhere), while at point 7 it is built in the polygonal style, a style rarely seen in early tufa walls. Excavation would probably decide whether this difference in construction is due to a difference in age, or whether the polygonal work merely served for an embanking-wall and foundation to the other masonry. It is like that described and figured in Ann. dell' Inst., 1831, p411, pl. F, 4.

The remnants of the tufa wall are only lower courses of it, and are situated more or less below the present edge of the plateau on the slopes. When the wall was complete and its top much higher, the earth within probably abutted against it at plateau-level, the recession of the edge of the plateau being due to erosion since its removal.

Of the limestone wall, too, there are other fragments besides those mentioned above, p118. Built, as stated, of blocks well square and laid, its remains lie always within those of the tufa wall, and, where they are sufficiently high, have kept the edge of the plateau unchanged from erosion, as at 22 (Fig. 10), 30, and possibly at 48. Loose blocks, similar to those composing it, lie at 49 and one east of 38 in the field.

 p120  These remains of the walls are certainly not a "great part" of them.​27 As to their age, a discussion of it would — in the absence of excavations — have little value. Of towers we saw nothing at all, but possibly the parallel tufa walls at 31 (cf. p122) belonged to one. On the other hand, they may have belonged to a gate.

Besides the paved road and the two walls described we saw at Carsioli also a few fragments of walls and floors of buildings and cisterns, and a very few scattered miscellaneous fragments and smaller objects, such as column-drums, altars, pedestals, cornices, terra-cottas, pottery, and tiles, but only poor, defective specimens of all. Many of these being available for burning lime will no doubt disappear in the large kiln at 32, which we have seen smoking, and the smaller one, near 40. A list of these objects follows, beginning at the second fork.

Most of them have little interest in the present state of the site, but we record them all for the benefit of future excavators. Their numbers refer likewise to the Plan on Plate XV.

12. A fragment of an opus incertum wall under the west side of the house in the second fork; Fig. 11, a view from the south.

 p121  13. A fragment of a concrete wall or of a foundation to the west of 12, close to the outer edge of the road. In Fig. 8 it lies under the bushes to the right of the house and trees near the left margin.

14. One end of a concrete cistern lined with opus signinum and the commencements of two side-walls with a quarter-round cement filling in the angles. The inner width is 2.4 m, and the adjoining side-walls are respectively 1.1 m and 1.25 m thick. In Fig. 8 this is the mass of stone seen farthest to the right.

16. A part of a building in opus incertum of the local pale-gray limestone with buttress-like fragments of cross-walls. Some ancient colored wall-plaster still adheres near the angles. In Fig. 12 (from the west) it is the upper wall to the left of and including the two buttresses in the centre. The other walls in this view are modern, but contain some ancient blocks.

18. At the left-hand corner of the house, Fig. 7, the drum of a travertine column about 30 cm in diameter with shallow flutings. Near by we saw a broken limestone mortar shaped like a truncated cone and open at the wider end (dimensions: 30 cm high, 5 cm thick at the rim, 12.5 cm deep, 26 cm largest external diameter). To the east of the house by the path lay a fluted marble drum, 39 cm in diameter, and a fragment of a plain round column, 40 cm in diameter.

19. A fragment of an altar (?) of gray limestone in front of the house, without ornament or inscription. Diagrams with dimensions in centimetres in Fig. 13.

 p122  23. Two four-sided capitals of limestone alike in shape and size, Fig. 14. The square top of each has a round hole. Diagrams with dimensions in centimetres in Fig. 15.

24. A low curved wall of concrete about 60 cm high, 40 cm thick, and 2 m long, of a building called by the natives San Pietro;​28 it may be a remnant of a mediaeval Christian church. It is probable that an earlier Roman sanctuary stood here or near by, as fragments of terra-cotta ex‑votos (hands, feet, faces, and the like) of the usual Roman type and numerous small fragments of ancient black and red pottery occur in the field below.

25. Just above 24, short pieces of two parallel opus incertum walls, 3.2 m apart and each about 30 cm thick, perhaps belonging to the same building as 24.

31. (Cf. also p120.) Probably the site of a gate, perhaps also of a tower. There is a reëntrant angle in the edge of the plateau, through which a path at present descends into the valley. This path is crossed here by two parallel tufa walls visible under foot in the ground, 2.43 m apart and each 1 m thick. Beside the path on the east side are two fluted drums of marble.

32. A large kiln, like a deep round pit, into whose earth sides ancient tufa walls run radially, one from the east, another from the north, a third from the south. The latter two pieces appear to be parts of the same wall, 40 cm thick, that lies at a right angle to the other wall, 82 cm thick, running east and west.

 p123  33. The place where stood, until recently, under the edge of the plateau, a fine and very typical piece of an opus incertum wall of pale-gray native limestone, shown in Fig. 16. It has been destroyed for the making of lime. Close to its south end a narrow rectangular drain, 25 cm wide and covered by tufa slabs, issued from the declivity.

34. A small piece of a concrete wall, standing just north of 33, against the edge of the plateau.

35. A thick mass of concrete, producing a sharp corner in the plateau-edge just above the modern fountain in the valley. This fountain, fed by a spring, seems to be at present the only source of clear cold water on the site of Carsioli. If the spring was used in ancient times, it was probably reached by a path from point 31 or 38, or both.

36. A heap of ancient rubbish (bricks, mortared stones, pieces of colored marble) within the area of the city.

37. A rectangular concrete floor, about 3.5 × 5 m, with a low limestone border along its northern margin.

39. A mass of concrete in the path northwest of the fourth fork, close to the east end of the house; and another, larger one, protruding a little out of the path a few metres off to the east.

40. The highest point of Carsioli;​29 a mound of Roman rubbish, bearing a large tree, and probably concealing the remains of a considerable building. Three metres to the southwest of the tree are the four walls, in opus incertum, of a rectangular chamber, 4 × 6 m. They rise to about 1 m above the ground within.

41. The circle marked here indicates a modern paved threshing-floor, quite like those used also in Greece at this day. Southwest of it, near a small lime-kiln, lies a single straight course of well-laid rectangular tufa blocks, suggesting the edge of a platform. The stretch, which may be traced for 13 m, is in two pieces, the larger being 5.5 m long. One block of it measured 45 × 87 × 30 cm. The wall does not resemble the pieces of tufa circuit-wall in other places, and, being only a single course thick, might have belonged to a tower. On the hill west of 41, partly indicated on Plate XV, are no traces of ancient occupation  p124 or fortification-walls, so that it apparently lay outside of the city. From the latter it is separated by a distinct wide depression in the ground, which, however, shows no evidence of artificial deepening. It would have been quite natural to exclude this hill, since with it much more land would have had to be taken in and the town thus made less defensible.

By walking from here in a northwesterly direction across the Bosco di Oricola toward Vallinfredda, a little town south of Vivaro Romano, one reaches at a distance of about 2 km the probable remains of the aqueduct that supplied Carsioli with water from the foothills on the west side of the valley traversed by the Fosso Sesara.​30 These remains are indicated both on the Staff-map, Plate XIII, and on the Map of Revillas, Fig. 5.

The structure is called Muro Pertuso (cf. p113, above) and consists of fragments of a broad, more or less ruinous wall of rough but still solid opus incertum with good white mortar, 1.85 m wide over all, 5 m to 6 m high in the best-preserved parts, and strengthened at intervals of 4.55 m by buttresses on each side, 89 cm thick and projecting 45 cm. Near the fosso, or brook, they are larger, but could not be measured. The total length across the valley above ground is 198 m, with a large gap of 30 m at the stream. There are no traces of arches, the wall having apparently been solid throughout, no traces of a specus, and no certain traces of the characteristic stratified deposit of carbonate of lime from the interior of a specus. The absence of such deposit would, however, be easily accounted for if rain-water was collected. Nevertheless, the structure can hardly have been anything else but an aqueduct, and is apparently of Roman date, judging from the excellence of the mortar and from the fact that its dimensions correspond fairly well with the Roman foot-unit (296 mm). Besides, Roman aqueducts without arches are not unknown: small ones were sometimes built in that way. Mr. Charles Roach Smith, in Collectanea Antiqua, vol. VII, 1878‑80, pp32, 33, pl. x, describes and figures one, which served as a feeder to the great Roman aqueduct that supplied the city of Nemausus (now Nîmes in southern France), the same aqueduct to which belongs the celebrated Pont du Gard near Remoulins (Dept. Gard). The tributary aqueduct, which looks like a high broad wall, was built, to judge by the drawing, of small irregular stones (opus incertum). It carried an open channel, was without arches, and collected rain-water.

Figure 3 on Plate XIV is a bird's-eye view of the aqueduct of Carsioli from the west edge of the plateau. At the bottom of this view it disappears into the hillside, and, as there are no traces of its further course to the north or south in the valley, it evidently went under­ground eastward to the town. Figure 2 on Plate XIV is a general view of the best-preserved portion of it from the south; Figure 4 on Plate XIV, a nearer view of an interval between two buttresses.

 p125  Resuming now our excursion over the site of Carsioli, there are next to be noted, in the hollow below points 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 (fragments of the tufa wall), numerous but worthless bits of ancient black and red pottery.

We then reach the northernmost end of Carsioli, and walk around it to the east side. Henceforth many of the objects yet to be mentioned can also be located on the Panorama, Plate XIV, 1.

It has already been pointed out that there was a south gate at the second fork, probably a west gate at 31, and perhaps another at 38.

47. Here was apparently the site of a postern,​31 for we have, just under the edge of the plateau, an interesting well-preserved arch, of which the top is visible beside the path that skirts this long narrow terminal spur. Seven blocks, including the central keystone, are exposed, the rest no doubt buried in the soil. The outer width of the large block at the left of the view (Fig. 17) is 54 cm. The clear span of the arch, assuming it to be nearly semicircular, is about 2 m, but it could not be exactly determined without excavation.

In the path near by are embedded several large tufa blocks, and in the wall supporting it are more of the same kind; a huge one, about 2.5 m to the north, being apparently in situ.

 p126  48. Eight rectangular contiguous, but broken, limestone blocks in a straight line, which represent, if not a piece of a limestone circuit-wall (see p118 above), perhaps the edge of a terrace or pavement. One is 1.10 m long and 35 cm thick.

49. Other limestone blocks, like those at 48, in the wall supporting the path; the face of one measures 120 × 30 cm.

50. A single tufa block 60 × 60 × 30 cm.

51. Terminal wall of a vaulted chamber or cistern in opus incertum (Fig. 18) at the east end of a great heap of Roman rubbish, which forms a mound like that at 40, and probably conceals a building. This might be a part of the church mentioned by Holstenius and by Phoebonius, loc. cit., p112 above.32

53. A block of concrete advancing boldly from the edge of the plateau below some huts. This lies just south of the quarried piece of the tufa wall at 52.

54. Two short pieces of walls in opus incertum respectively east and west of the house. Here was seen the only fragment of ornamental marble-work on the site, a good white cornice, 30 cm long and about 7 or 8 cm wide, with an egg and dart design. We noted also close by a few fractured Roman flange-tiles now serving as covers for beehives. From the house a path descends into the plain, passing at some distance a large tree (see north end of Panorama, Plate XIV, 1), near which, at 55, are two or three rectangular blocks of tufa, 45 cm wide, forming the angle of a wall, possibly part of a tomb.

56. A piece of coarse white Roman floor-mosaic with a simple black border, projecting from the slope above the path that leads hence to the fourth fork.

57. South of 54, in a field, an uninscribed and undecorated pedestal of white marble, 145 cm in height and 35 × 58 cm in cross-section.

Between 57 and 37a stands an insignificant little fragment of an opus incertum wall.

Following the westward path back to the fourth fork, we go southward by the Via Civita past 38 (pavement; also close by to the east a piece, ca. 1 m long, of a large plain limestone cornice) and 37 (concrete floor), and then skirt the east edge of the plateau, until we reach, a little this side of the second fork, a foot-path that runs eastward at a right angle across an intervening hollow to point 58.

 p127  58. This is a solitary stone house (Fig. 19, from the west, Fig. 20, from the east). The owner of it showed us a broken Roman brick, bearing the inscription L · E · GNE. . . . in a rectangle, 27 mm high. The letters are about 16 mm high, the color is brown. We have not found the stamp recorded in the Corpus.

The cottage stands a partly on the site of a rectangular Roman edifice, covering and including about one-half of its remains. Of the ancient building only the podium or platform and some courses of the walls are preserved, both built of big squared blocks of tufa. The long dimension runs roughly from north to south. The walls, consisting of a single thickness of stones, measured on the outside 17.25 × 7.4 m. The podium at its southern end, which alone could be examined, was 8.85 m wide. If we assume that it extends for the same distance beyond the walls on all four sides, it would be about 18.7 m long.

The horizontal width of some of the blocks on the east side (Fig. 20) was 1.05 m, 75 cm, and 90 cm. One block in the southeast corner measured 100 × 69 × 50 cm. In the house-wall on the west side stood three courses of the ancient blocks in situ. No other architectural fragments or objects of any kind lay about. The building seems to have stood outside of the fortifications on the flat, broad spur by itself. Anyway, we saw nowhere along the outline of the latter any traces of a wall.

We cannot say with certainty that the edifice was a temple or shrine, but still that is quite likely, judging from the situation and the style. If so, the podium is unusually, though not unprecedentedly, narrow (8.85 × 18.7 m), as a comparison of it, in the following table, with the podia of a number of other Roman temples reveals.​33 The dimensions of the latter are taken from Richard Delbrück's Das Capitolium von Signia, Rome, 1903 [A]; Die drei Tempel am Forum holitorium, Rome, 1903, Loescher und Co. [B]; Baugeschichtliches aus Mittelitalien, in Mittheilungen, Röm. Abth., 1903 (2), pp141-163 [C]; and from Notizie degli scavi, 1903, p232 [D].

59. A piece of the long wall that supports the east side of the eastern road for some distance beyond the second fork (Fig. 21). The wall is modern but partly built of ancient blocks, and, since the road upon it runs along the eastern edge of the plateau as far as the fourth fork, the wall probably stands more or less on the site of the ancient tufa circuit-wall.

60. A fallen Roman milestone of the Via Valeria, already mentioned on pp111 and 115, and reproduced in Figure 22. It is of pale-gray limestone, 1.9 m high, 74 cm in diameter at the base and, according to Gori, like another now preserved in the Villa Massimo at Arsoli (CIL IX, 5963). It lies east-northeast from 58, and, for reasons already given (p115), probably at or near its original place by the ancient road. It is recorded in the following words merely as existing in CIL IX, 5964, having been seen by Gori:

 p129  Portions of the two uppermost lines containing the numerals and the imperial title we were able to read with the naked eye, and in part they may be seen even on our photograph, Fig. 22. More we could not make out from the stone itself, but in a rubbing obtained with a leather pad and black lead on tissue paper, when held •about six feet off (a good way to read rubbings of defective inscriptions), we could easily decipher the remaining lines. The text is as follows:

It agrees, excepting a detail of arrangement, and, of course, the mile-number, with the inscription on the milestone XXXVIII (CIL IX, 5963), mentioned above. The tribunicial power inscribed, being the first of the Emperor Nerva,​36 confirms our reading of the consul­ship as the third, which puts the erection of the stone into A.D. 97.

 p130  The conclusion of the Corpus that the mile-number was probably XXXXIII is apparently correct, as will appear from the following considerations:

The Antonine Itinerary (cf. CIL IX, p204) gives the distance from Rome to Carsioli by the Via Tiburtina and the Via Valeria as 42 Roman miles; the Tabula Peutingeriana (ibid.) as 43 miles, both assuming the distance from Rome to Tibur to be 20 miles.

The station Lamnae lay 13 miles beyond Tibur at the 33rd mile, where the Osteria della Ferrata now stands (see Maps on Plate XIII, and Fig. 5). Here the Via Valeria divided into two roads.

One, which we will call A, kept more or less straight on and passed west of Mte. S. Elia by way of Riofreddo and the convent of San Giorgio to Carsioli. This is the road described as Via Valeria by Raffaello Fabretti (De Aquis et Aquaeductibus Diss. tres, 1680, p86 and map at p64),​b by Sir R. Colt Hoare (loc. cit.), and by J. H. Westphal (Die römische Kampagne, Berlin, 1829, p115), who wrote of it:

The other road, which we will call B, that branched off to the right at Lamnae, continued up the Anio valley. On it, near the point where the 36th milestone should have stood, an important discovery was recently made (Notizie degli scavi, 1890, p160) of four milestones, within a few yards of one another, but none of them standing up.

Of two of these milestones, which both bear the number XXXVI, one has no other inscription and perhaps belongs to the time of Nero, who constructed the Via Sublacensis; the other bears two inscriptions of much later date, one belonging to A.D. 305‑306 (cf. CIL IX.5967), the other to a few years later.

The third milestone, which is without a number, was erected between A.D. 367‑375.

The fourth milestone cannot be read with certainty.

At this 36th mile from Rome, however, the Anio valley road (B) divided once more, one branch continuing as the Via Sublacensis southeastward. The other turned sharply to the north (this is the ancient branch-road (C) mentioned by Westphal),  p131 crossed the Ponte Scutonico (cf. p108 and Figs. 2 and 3) and gently climbed along the slope to Arsoli, running above and nearly parallel to the modern highway. In the defile north of Arsoli it crossed the Ponte San Giorgio. We could not find any of its pavement, but saw several pieces of a splendid polygonal supporting-wall south of Arsoli (cf. also Annali dell' Instituto, 1829, p44, note (*); 1831, p411, pl. F, 4). On it near Arsoli at a distance of about 5 Roman miles from Lamnae (Ost. della Ferrata, Maps, Plate XIII), or about 2 Roman miles from the above-mentioned milestones bearing the number XXXVI, was found that finely preserved milestone, bearing the number XXXVIII (CIL IX, 5963), now kept in the Villa Massimo at Arsoli. It was known to Stevenson as well as R. Fabretti (op. cit. p88).

By measuring on the Map from Lamnae along the probable route of the ancient roads B and C, as given by those milestones and the Ponte Scutonico to the Ponte di San Giorgio, and thence on by the path (the probable site of the Via Valeria)​37 west of the railway, it is found that the 42nd milestone must have stood near the southern end of Carsioli, which agrees entirely with the distance from Rome (42 miles) given by the Antonine Itinerary (CIL IX, p204). Hence the milestone found again by us at 60 (see Plan, Plate XV) must be, as the Corpus states, the 43rd.

If, inversely, this is the 43rd milestone and near its original site, which there is no reason whatever to doubt, then the 42nd milestone stood roughly about 150 m southwest of the commencement of the Via Civita, the diverticulum from the Via Valeria to the town; and then, if one measures the entire distance from our milestone by the Ponte Scutonico back to Lamnae, that should be 109 Roman miles, which, indeed, it almost exactly is.38

Curiously enough, the Tabula Peutingeriana (CIL IX, p204) gives for the distance Lamnae-Carsioli 10 miles, and, as we have already noted, for the total distance Rome-Carsioli 43 miles! Since the town, being very long and narrow, lay really beyond the 42nd milestone and at the 43rd rather than this side of it, the disagreement of the two Itineraries is readily explained.

 p132  Hence it appears unquestionable that the important Roman highway of this region, known as the Via Valeria, ran (at least at the time when all the above-mentioned stones were in use) from Lamnae up the Anio valley as far as the 36th milestone, branched off northward near the latter, crossed the Ponte Scutonico and the Ponte di San Giorgio, and so reached Carsioli.

From the following remark by Frontinus (ca. A.D. 35‑103, hence a contemporary of Nerva) about the intake of the Aqua Marcia, in De Aquis Urbis Romae, I, 7, it is clear that also for him the Via Valeria up to the 36th mile lay in the Anio valley, and not behind the mountains to the northwest:

On the other hand, there can be no doubt, if the authors quoted above (pp114, 130) may be relied upon, that there existed also an ancient paved road going from Lamnae by way of the present Riofreddo to Carsioli; but of this we have found no pavement, nor are any milestones known. Such a road might have been originally or at some later time projected and even built for the Via Valeria, and then again more or less abandoned, as that route is now. The view that it was always considered and exclusively used as the Via Valeria seems quite untenable.

Before leaving this subject, a remarkable fact concerning the distance from Rome to Carsioli should at least be touched upon here. The Antonine Itinerary and the milestone-numbers agree in giving it as 42 miles. The distance from Tibur to Carsioli being actually 22 miles, 20 miles remain for the distance Tibur-Rome by the Via Tiburtina. The Itineraries give it thus, and so does a well-known epigram by Martial (IV, 57) alluding to Tibur:

It is therefore very strange that direct measurement by the Via Tiburtina, as we know it, does not give more than about 18 Roman miles, so that all stations on the Via Valeria, which began at Tibur, notwithstanding the numbers on its stones, were actually 2 miles nearer Rome than indicated.

Westphal has suggested an explanation of the discrepancy (op. cit. pp120-122), — but the discussion of this problem is reserved by Mr. Ashby for another place.

The inscription on the milestone XXXXIII at 60 and the brickstamp noted on p127 are the only epigraphic contribution we are able to make from Carsioli. The inscriptions already found there and in the neighborhood are recorded in CIL IX, 4051‑4102; in Ephemeris epigraphica, VIII, p48, 196 (also Notizie degli scavi, 1884, p86), and in Notizie degli scavi, 1901, p441. Some of these we saw ourselves.

 p133  61 and 62 are two heaps of ancient brick rubbish lying a little to the southwest of the milestone; they once belonged probably to one or more Roman tombs on the Via Valeria, perhaps to that mentioned by Gori (op. cit. p35, or G. arc. p115).

A fine parting view of the site of Carsioli is obtained from the higher land a little to the west of the milestone: it is the Panorama reproduced in Plate XIV.

The ancient town appears to have given its name, slightly altered, to two modern towns, indeed very likely furnished some building-materials for them, namely, Arsŏli​39 to the southwest and Carsōli​40 to the northeast (cf. Maps, Plate XIII). At Arsoli the castle of Prince Massimo contains some inscriptions and other local antiquities already known. The other town, Carsoli, is picturesquely situated on and about a castle-crowned hill that stands in the centre of a narrow mountain-valley (Fig. 23). To walk to its railway-station from the ancient site requires about 45 minutes. From there an evening train may be conveniently taken back to Rome.

On the way to the station lie a few more objects of interest.

Northeastward from the milestone stands the railway guard-house, Casello 72, on the embankment. It is a suitable place for crossing the track. In the walls bordering  p134 the latter are embedded ancient worn paving-stones, like those seen near Il Cavaliere, which seems to prove that the Via Valeria passed near here, but has disappeared because its pavement has been taken up.

A rough road runs along the eastern wall northward. In it at some places Roman paving-stones still lie in the ground, so that we are here on the line of the Via Valeria itself. At a short distance northward, to the east of the road, are scanty concrete foundations of a wayside tomb. Continuing, we reach the excellent modern highway near the present bridge over the shallow little river Turano, east of which may be observed the ruined ends of an old brick bridge, that seems to have stood on or very near the site of an earlier Roman bridge (Gori, op. cit. p60, or G. arc. p140). A few scattered stones, of apparently Roman workman­ship, that may have belonged to such a structure, lie in the gravelly stream-bed near by, and others are incorporated in the  p135 foundations of the old brick bridge.​41 Always following the earth-road that runs along through the fields and meadows slightly to the south of the highway, we arrive in about 20 minutes at a plain little stone church with a square campanile (now known as S. Maria Annunziata),​42 connected by a short foot-path with the modern highway. Where that path and the field-road by which we have approached from the south meet, there stands in the southern angle the fragment of a round marble column, 50 cm in diameter, which was also a Roman milestone (mentioned by Fabretti, op. cit. p87, and recorded in CIL IX, 5966). At present, however, its inscription is illegible.

Figure 24. — The Door of the Church of S. Maria Annunziata at Carsoli

The Romanesque doorway of the little church (Fig. 24) is adorned with well-preserved sculptured ornaments. On the sides and the round arch are conventional vines and scrolls with foliage, both in low relief upon an incised flat background, the vines starting from the tails of griffins and other quadrupeds. On the lintel are: in the centre, the lamb; on either side of it two figures, symbolic of the evangelists, each holding a book. The work is probably of about the eleventh or twelfth century.43

The church is in part built of Roman remains: in the tower, in the walls, in the floor of the pulpit, behind the church on the ground, we saw cut stones with the inscriptions CIL IX, 4065, 4079, 4084, 4092, 4097 (cf. also Notizie degli scavi, 1901, pp441, 442). Within the building, secured to one wall, are the two sadly weather-worn halves of an old carved wooden door, whose once magnificent panels displayed religious scenes.

Five minutes farther on lies the railway-station of Carsoli, from which the splendid view (Fig. 23) of the town was obtained. The latter seems to contain nothing of scientific interest to the archaeologist; but it has a new inn, the Albergo Umberto Primo, where he may refresh himself with excellent spaghetti and wine, and, if he chooses to spend the night in this bracing mountain-air, sleep in a good clean bed.

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The Author's Notes:

1 See Maps, Plate XIII.

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2 The scale-rod in this and some other illustrations is 2 m long, and divided into decimetres.

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3 See the large Map, Plate XIII (southwest corner), and the small Map under it.

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4 Aug. J. C. Hare (Days near Rome, 1875, II, p186) repeats the statement of P. A. Corsignani (Reggia Marsicana, 1738, vol. I, p223) that Cavaliere was built by a Cavaliere of the Colonna family, who was nearly lost on these desolate hills in the snow. — His few remarks on Carsioli are neither new nor wholly correct.

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5 At the left of the Panorama, Plate XIV, 1.

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6 Not well shown on the large Staff-map, Plate XIII.

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7 The name occurs in two forms, Carseoli and Carsioli. The latter, which we use, is that adopted by the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. IX, p382; cf. no. 4067. — Carsulae was another town in Umbria.

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8 The identification is assured

(1) by the statement of Strabo (V, iii, 11) that Carsioli lay on the Via Valeria.

(2) by the Antonine Itinerary, which gives its distance from Rome as 42 miles, and the Tabula Peutingeriana, which gives it as 43 miles (cf. CIL IX, p204, and pp130‑132 below).

(3) by the presence of the suitable remains of a large city at the forty-second and forty-third milestones from Rome on the Via Valeria.

(4) by an inscription found there in 1720 referring by name to Carsioli (CIL IX, 4067); cf. also P. A. Corsignani, op. cit. vol. I, p201, and F. Gori, op. cit. p36 (G. arc. p116)).

(5) by a milestone found east of the site which is inscribed like others of the Via Valeria, and must have been numbered XXXXIII (cf. pp128‑132 and CIL IX, 5964).

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9 Annotationes in Italiam antiquam Cluverii, Rome, 1666, pp164, 165.

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10 All the compass-directions here quoted from Holstenius are 90° in the sense of the motion of the clock-hands.

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11 Cf. Plan, Plate XV, second fork.

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12 Philippi Cluveri Italia antiqua, f°., Lugd. Bat. off. Elz. 1624, lib. II, pp783, 784.

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13 Apparently the postern (47, Fig. 17) described on p125, below.

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14 Accepted without question by E. H. Bunbury in his article 'Via Valeria,'º Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, 1883, p1306.

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15 The manuscript of Revillas contains a sheet with four rough sketches, which are reproduced in Plate XVI. — No. 3 on it appears to be a cross-section of the new form of base here mentioned.

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16 Cf. p118, below.

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17 Recollections Abroad, 1817, vol. IV, p157 = A Classical Tour through Italy, 1819, p282.

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18 Recorded in CIL IX, 4052.

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19 On one side a sheep instead of a swine (CIL).

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20 (a) P. A. Corsignani, op. cit. vol. I, p207, states:

(b) C. Promis, Le Antichità di Alba Fucense, etc. (Rome, 1836, p57), mentions a lead pipe, 0.60 m wide.

(c) Gori (op. cit. p36; G. arc. p116) records that he saw two fine marble torsi in the vineyards.

(d) Notizie degli scavi (1889), p251, records a statuette possibly taken from the ancient site:

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21 Découverte de la maison de campagne d'Horace. 3 vols. Rome, 1769. III part., pp222‑224.

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22 J. H. Westphal, Die römische Kampagne (Berlin, 1829), p115;

He saw, apparently, the ancient pavement on the Via Civita, and thought it was the Via Valeria.

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23 See the portion of it reproduced in Fig. 5 (below the words Carseolorum Rudera).

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24 Cf. p111, note 1 (5) and p128, No. 60.

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25 As all the stones of this wall are flat-faced and pretty well joined, — apparently without mortar, — even the polygonal parts of it present nowhere as rude an appearance as the walls of Artena, though this is partly due, no doubt, to the difference in material: they resemble rather, for instance, the polygonal limestone walls on the south slope and top of the hill at Praeneste (now Palestrina). The parts built of rectangular stones (cf. especially No. 52, p119, and Fig. 9) probably looked, when standing, very much like the walls of the Roman Varia, which may be seen on the south side of Vicovaro, while passing in the train.

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26 Cyclopic walls of limestone — no others — are mentioned by Westphal (loc. cit. p115, note 2, above); but this seems to be merely a case of inaccurate observation. He meant apparently the polygonal tufa wall and took its material to be limestone.

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27 See Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, p526, and p114, above.

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28 Apparently not the church mentioned by Holstenius; see p112, above.

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29 On or near this elevation must have been situated the church mentioned by Holstenius and Phoebonius (loc. cit.), but of the exact spot we could not be sure.

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30 This marked the former frontier between the States of the Church and the Kingdom of Naples, and is still the boundary here between the provinces of Aquila and Rome.

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31 The same that is mentioned by Phoebonius (loc. cit.), p112, above.

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32 A rough sketch in the manuscript of Revillas (reproduced in Plate XVI, 3) may be intended to represent this structure; but our photograph (Fig. 21) shows that it was of opus incertum, while Revillas indicates a building with walls of rectangular blocks.

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33 In the table the podia are grouped to some extent by their geographic distribution, and their recorded dimensions are reduced to simple terms. This arrangement makes evident in some cases a certain correspondence between dimensions and locality, the same proportions occurring several times in a given locality or region, as one would naturally expect.

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34a b c See also Notizie degli scavi, 1901, pp534 and 541.

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35 Pp115 and 140 in Giornale arcadico, tomo CLXXXII (1864).

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36 Cf. R. Cagnat, Cours d'Épigraphie Latine. 3d ed. Paris, 1898, p187.

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37 Cf. Westphal, loc. cit. (p130, above).

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38 By way of Riofreddo (road A) the distance from Lamnae to Carsioli is about 6½ Roman miles. The latter town would then lie beyond the 39th milestone, and ours would be the 40th. But this agrees, as we have shown, neither with the Itineraries nor the other milestones nearer Rome on roads B and C.

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39 See Historical Notes, Appendix I, p138.

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40 Ibid.

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41 The Roman remains in this neighborhood have been briefly recorded also by A. de Nino (Notizie degli scavi, 1901, pp441, 442). He observed the ancient bridges, traces of the Via Valeria and of tombs, but more of the latter than we did. His observations at that time did not include Carsioli. — About some ancient bridges likewise hereabouts, but probably nearer the modern Carsoli, cf. also Petri Antonii Corsignani De Aniene et Viae Valeriae pontibus synoptica enarratio, 1718, p45.

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42 There is doubt about its identity, though some modern writers connect it with the church of "Sancta Maria quae dicitur in Cellis" (Chron. Casin. lib. II, cap. 23), for which Rainaldus, comes Marsorum, founded a monastery for the Benedictines in 998 A.D. (cf. CIL IX, 4065, 4079, 4084, 4092, 4097, and Notizie degli scavi, 1901, p441). However, according to Corsignani (Reggia Marsicana, I, p214), S. Maria in Cellis was damaged (if not destroyed) by Manfred in 1260 A.D., and he speaks as if it did not exist in his own time (ibid. p197). Phoebonius, on the other hand, mentions it as still extant in 1678 (op. cit. p204), and as not far from the castle.

The milestone in front of the little church (see below) is said by the Corpus to be at La Nunziata, but by Fabretti (op. cit. p79)º "prae foribus Ecclesiae B. Virginis de Carmelo."

Corsignani calls it S. Maria del Carmine (cf. also CIL IX.4087); but Madonna del Carmine was probably the name of another church near Carsoli, which was connected with a Carmelite convent, suppressed in 1652.

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43 Compare G. T. Rivoira, Le Origini dell' Architettura Lombarda, etc., 1901, vol. I, p200, fig. 273, and p248, fig. 318.

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Thayer's Notes:

a The station is still in service, 2 km beyond Riofreddo on the line from Rome to Pescara; its name is now Oricola-Pereto.

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b Unfortunately, the exemplar scanned at Archive.Org is missing that particular map, although it contains other maps (which mind you, were scanned folded so are pretty much useless).

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