Passage IV

The Walls of Rome

[1]

Rome, founded on the banks of the Tiber River, boasts two ancient walls that, when they were built, surrounded the city. [A] Although both were built as walls intended to defend the city protectively and stood ten meters tall they were erected under different historical circumstances.

[2]

It’s thought that the Servian Wall was constructed in the early fourth century BCE and named after Servius Tullius, who was the sixth king of Rome. The eleven-kilometer wall encircled Rome’s seven hills and stood entirely on the east side of the Tiber River. [B]

[3]

The Aurelian Wall, built in the late third century CE by the Roman Emperor Aurelian, was more sturdier than the older wall. It was nineteen kilometers long greatly expanded and surrounded the city of Rome as well as a small section of the Tiber’s west bank. Erected almost 600 years after the Servian Wall, the Aurelian Wall protected Rome while the army was away, defending the empire’s far-flung frontiers from enemy attacks. [C] The massive wall deterred many enemies who might have been tempted to attack Rome during those intervals the city was sparsely defended.

[4]

[D] The Aurelian Wall featured eighteen large gateways permitting both foot and chariot traffic in and out of the city. In other words, a series of 381 towers and eleven smaller side gates called posterns were evenly spaced along the rest of the wall. Both the posterns and the towers served as defensive positions for protecting Rome. Walkable passages lined the inner side of the wall.

[5]

The Romans used bricks to build the Aurelian Wall. However, only small portions of the Servian Wall remains, some of which can be seen inside a chain restaurant located beneath Rome’s central train station. (57) It could, perhaps, be considered ironic that remnants of a wall that once protected the future capital of one of the ancient world’s most famous empires are now preserved and recognized as historically significant by archaeologists.