into the imperial residence after he became sole emperor. In the Antonine age the Domus Tiberiana was the favourite residence of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius1, and it was possibly during their reigns that the library, which we find mentioned in the Augustan history, was established there".

III. The remaining part of the north-western end of the Palatine, which overlooks the Circus Maximus, was not, as has been made clear by the late excavations, occupied by any portion of the imperial palace. The temples and other buildings which stood there were so highly venerated, as the incunabula of the Roman nation, that even a Nero or a Domitian in their wholesale evictions did not venture to displace them. Two considerable ruins among others have been here discovered. The first stands close to the Nymphæum before described, and consists of several massive platforms of tufa blocks (opus quadratum), indicating a date not later than the fifth century of the city, and probably much earlier. The front of the building, as can be seen from the steps leading up to it, was turned towards the south, and overlooked the Circus Maximus and the Aventine. The plan is evidently that of a temple raised upon a basement with high flights of steps alternating with terraces. These terraces probably extended to some depth down the side of the hill towards the Circus Maximus, just as we find in the case of the ancient Latin temples of Hercules Victor at Tivoli and of Castor and Pollux at Tusculum that the approach was formed by high flights of steps alternating with terraces and gradually ascending the side of the hill on which the temple stood. Cav. Rosa has conjectured that this ruin is the remains of the temple of Juppiter Victor, vowed by Q. Fabius Rullianus in the first Samnite war, B.C. 295, and mentioned by Ovid as having been first dedicated on the Ides of April. That the temple of Juppiter Victor was upon the Palatine is certain, from the catalogue of places in the tenth Region as given in the Notitia",

1 Jul. Cap. Ant. Pius 10. Ant. Phil. 6. Verus 2.

2 Flav. Vopisc. Probus 2. Gellius XIII. 20.

3 Annali dell' Inst. 1865, p. 363. 4 Liv. x. 29. Ov. Fast. IV. 621.

5 See Preller, Regionen, p. 186.

The same authority names it in conjunction with the Area Palatina, which, as we have seen, was probably close to the ruin in question. A temple of such antiquity would most probably be preserved intact in its original form, which later restorers would not venture to alter, and its venerated precincts would be carefully respected by Augustus and the Flavian emperors in accordance with their policy of reviving the old national patriotic spirit of Rome. We find therefore that the line of the palace walls is made to conform to the basement of the temple, and not suffered to encroach upon the consecrated limits. The reverence with which it was regarded even in later times may be inferred from the special mention made of all omens and portents which occurred there1.

The other remarkable ruin in this part of the hill, which has been carefully investigated by Cavaliere Rosa, consists of a high rectangular terrace, approached by a broad flight of steps. At the back of this terrace is a still higher terrace, from which a projection in the form of an ambo or pulpit stands out. The building is situated upon the western corner of the hill looking towards the Aventine, and commanding a wide prospect over the Tiber valley. It faces nearly due south. Close to it must have stood the Tugurium Faustuli and the Scala Caci, and others of the most venerated sites of ancient Rome. From the neighbourhood of this peculiar ruin to these ancient sites, and also from its peculiar shape and orientation, it has been conjectured that this is the building called Auguratorium in the Catalogues of the Notitia and Curiosum Urbis. The story of the vultures seen by Romulus would naturally attach itself to some spot in this part of the hill with which the other legends of early Rome were associated. Liv. I. 6: Quoniam gemini essent, nec ætatis verecundia discrimen facere posset: ut Di, quorum tutelæ ea loca essent, auguriis legerent, qui nomen novæ urbi daret, qui conditam imperio regeret, Palatium Romulus, Remus Aventinum ad inaugurandum templa capiunt.

parts

Uncertain as some of the above names assigned to various of the palace which have been disclosed by the excavations 1 Dion Cassius, XLVII. 40, LX. 35. 2 Selin. 1. 18, p. 9, ed. Mommsen.

must be considered, yet there can be no doubt that the general conclusions rest on tolerably good evidence, and that we can now form a fair notion of the ground-plan of the north-western part of the Cæsarean palace, as it stood after the time of Domitian, and also of the position of some of the most venerable sites of the Palatine hill.

There may be few students who take a sufficiently vivid interest in the history of the middle Roman Empire, to consider the topographical details relating to the Ædes Publice worth much attention. But the determination of the sites of the Domus Caligula and of the Domus Tiberiana will not be without interest to the readers of Tacitus and Suetonius; the poems of Statius aud Martial will receive considerable illustration from the discovery of the Flavian suite of reception rooms, and if any one now reads the Augustan history, he will be assisted in realising the localities described in many of the profligate and bloody scenes there narrated.

R. BURN.

ON A PASSAGE IN PLATO, REPUBLIC, B. VI.

THE well-known passage at the end of the sixth book of Plato's Republic, where the universe is compared to a quadripartite line, has much occupied the attention of commentators. Still its precise meaning remains in some respects obscure: and therefore I have ventured to offer the following remarks, with a view less to solve the difficulties of the passage, than to define them more clearly than has yet been done.

For convenience' sake, I prefix a translation of the sentences which I mean to discuss, italicizing a few words to which I wish to call special attention.

"You know that the students of geometry, arithmetic, "and the like, suppose the odd, and the even, and figures, and "those kinds of angles, and other things of the kind, according “to the study: then, as though they knew about these, having "taken them as suppositions, they do not think proper to give to themselves or to others any further account of them, as "being obvious to everybody: but starting with these they go "through the remaining steps, and come at last with general assent to whatever they may have proposed to investigate. "Certainly, he said, of this I am aware.

"Then you know too that they call to their aid visible “forms and talk about them, though it is not of them they “think but of their originals, as what they say is said with a "view to the absolute square, diagonal, &c. not to that they draw: for while they use as images the actual things which 'they mould and draw (which again have their shadows and "images in water) they are trying to see those absolute things " which one cannot see otherwise than by the intellect.

"True, said he.

"It was this class of things then that I called intelligible, 'adding however that the soul was forced to employ supposi

"tions in investigating it, without getting to a first principle, as it is unable to mount above its suppositions: while it uses as copies the things which are themselves copied by the things "below them [in the scale], as even they, in comparison with

"I understand, he said: you mean the subject-matter of 'geometry and kindred arts.

"Well then, understand that by the other division of the "intelligible I mean that which Thought itself apprehends "through the power of Discourse, taking its suppositions not as first principles, but as really suppositions, a sort of steps "and starting-points, that it may get out of the region of suppositions, and reach the first principle of the whole: and having grasped it, may then, laying hold of what depends on it, "descend again to a conclusion, aiding itself with no sensible "object at all, but using only ideas in its processes and results, "and concluding with ideas."

NOTES.

1. ὑπόθεσις, τὸ ἀνυπόθετον.

In considering the general meaning of the passage I shall have to define more precisely the signification of these terms: but it may be as well here to notice a rendering which has been lately introduced by writers of some authority. Zeller and Mansel (Philosophy of the Conditioned) both translate TÒ ávvтóleтоv "the unconditioned," and the latter actually goes so far as to claim Plato's authority for the modern philosophic term. Neither of these writers however translate vπoléσis in a corresponding way: which Müller does, rendering it "Bedingungs-Satz."

Now the meaning of vπóleσus, in every passage of Plato in which it occurs (except three or four, where, with a cognate meaning it denotes a practical principle) is, as the compiler of the Όροι gives it, ἀρχὴ ἀναπόδεικτος, [at the same time needing Journal of Philology. VOL. II.

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