¹ See Maetzke, Guglielmo, Florentia (Rome: Istituto di studi romani, 1941)Google Scholar, in Italia Romana: municipi e colonie, series 1, vol. 5, pp. 100 with maps, plans and 15 plates; Pegna, Mario Lopes, Firenze dalle origini al medievo (Florence: Del Re, 1962), pp. 432Google Scholar; both works with extensive bibliographies. For scepticism, see Fiumi, Enrico, ‘Fioritura e decadenza dell' economia fiorentina’ I, Archivio storico italiano 115 (1957), 385–439Google Scholar; II, ib. 116 (1958), 443–510; III, ib. 117 (1959), 427–502: cp. esp. 11, 445, ‘dal punto di vista generale è del tutto ozioso discutere sulle origini primitive di Florentia’; but at p. 446, n. 9, he confidently asserts that Florence existed before the colony was planted and the centuriation laid out.

² Plesner, Johan, ‘Una rivoluzione stradale del Dugento,’ Acta Jutlandica 10 (1938), 3–103Google Scholar, 2 maps. I am indebted to the University of Aarhus for permission to reproduce one of Plesner's maps (fig. 5) and to his widow, Mrs. Kathleen Plesner, for copies of some of his unpublished writings (with maps) on Florence.

³ Maetzke, Guglielmo, ‘Ricerche sulla Topografia fiorentina nel periodo delle guerre goto-bizantine,’ Rendiconti dell' Accademia dei Lincei VIII, 8 (1948), 97–112.Google Scholar Maetzke's discovery has been accepted by Braunfels, Wolfgang, Mittelalterliche Stadtbaukunst in der Toskana (Berlin: Mann, 1953).Google Scholar But Enrico Fiumi, o.c. (n. 1), 11, 453, n. 36, is sceptical, since in A.D. 996 the Badia is described as ‘posita intra hanc civitatem Florentinam’.

It should be noted that Maetzke, himself in Enciclopedia dell' arte antica (classica e orientale) III (Rome: Treccani, 1960), 696 f.Google Scholar, s.v. ‘Firenze,’ has modified the outlines of his Dark-Age city and its relation to the Roman wall. His new plan is much more natural in regard to the grid of Roman streets, but it is not clear how far he has abandoned the archaeological evidence on which his first outline was based.

My plan of the Roman city of Florence (fig. 7), reproduces his original outline, but makes the south wall coincide with the Roman south wall, as in Maetzke's modified plan.

⁴ Neither Maetzke nor Lopes Pegna (ll.cc, n. 1) refers to Plesner's article. Sterpos, Daniele, Firenze-Roma (in Communicazioni stradali attraverso i tempi, Rome: Autostrade, 1964)Google Scholar, quotes Plesner's article (p. 295, n. 14), but his earlier assertion (p. 17, with n. 28) that the centuriation of the Florentine plain was based on the line of the first Via Cassia from Fiesole to Prato, shows that he has missed the implications of Plesner's argument.

Only Fiumi (l.c., n. 1) has taken full account of Plesner's work, including his earlier L'Émigration à la ville libre de Florence au XIIIe siècle (Copenhagen, 1934), of which he modifies the conclusions. Of Plesner's Rivoluzione he praises section XVII (pp. 92–100) on ‘le bonifiche medievali’(cp. II, 471, n. 128: ‘niente è da eccepire’), but he is highly critical of Plesner's theory of the Parish Church as the basis of the organization for the upkeep of roads: ‘la teoria, troppo semplice per risolvere un problema così vasto e complesso quale è la formazione delle pievi, presta il fianco ad una serie di critiche che, in altro momento mi prometto di svolgere’ (11, 446, n. 10). If this criticism has been published, I have been unable to discover where.

^4a Villani, Giovanni, Cron. I, 57Google Scholar, in narrating the martyrdom of S. Miniato in A.D. 270 (250 is correct) in the persecution of Decius, says that there was then no bridge over the Arno at Florence, but only between Girone and Candeli above Florence where the Arno enters the plain: ‘… la città di Firenze non si stendea nè era abitata di là dall' Arno, ma era tutta di qua, salvo che uno solo ponte v'avea sopra l'Arno, non però dove sono oggi, ma si dice per molti ch'era l'antico ponte de' Fiesolani, il quale era da Girone a Candeggi: e quella era l'antica e diritta strada e cammino da Roma a Fiesole, e per andare in Lombardia e di là da' monti.’

The bridge between Girone and Candeli is that postulated by Plesner at Rovezzano between Quinto on the north bank and Quarto on the South. Quinto and Quarto are two miles apart.

The parish of Ripoli included Rovezzano, Varlungo and even Settignano on the north bank. Plesner, l.c., pp. 49–54.

⁵ cp. Lopes Pegna (o.c, n. 1), 225.

⁶ CIL XI, 6668, from Montepulciano.

⁷ Martinori, Eduardo, Via Cassia, in the series Le Vie Consolari romane (1930), 123 ff.Google Scholar, 154 ff.

⁸ o.c., n. 1 above, 11, 458.

⁹ e.g. Sesto Valdottavo and Diecimo on the road up the Serchio from Lucca are not exactly at these distances.

¹⁰ Plesner quotes Guido Carocci, Dintorni di Firenze ² (1907–8), and E. Ripetti, Dizionario geografico fisico storico della Toscana (1833–43), for La Pietra as ‘primus ab urbe lapis’. It is marked on modern maps, cp. Ist. geogr. milit. 1: 25,000, Foglio 106, 11 (Firenze, Nordovest).

¹¹ Plesner refers to Hirschfeld, Otto, Kleine Schriften (1913), 703 and 724Google Scholar, where the only abnormalities seem to be measurements in Gallic Leugae, leagues, equal to 1½ Roman miles. This is a very different matter. See also Grenier, Albert, Manuel d'Archéologie Gallo-Romaine Part 2, Les Routes (Paris, 1934).Google Scholar

¹² cf. the Diecimo which is 13 Roman miles from Lucca, Touring Club Italiano Guide, ‘Toscana’ (1935), 247. The name is perhaps an abbreviation of Diecimo Terzo.

¹³ The general principle of such routes is expressed by Strabo V, 217, though about a road to which it cannot apply, namely that built by M. Aemilius Lepidus, cos. 187 B.C., from Bologna to Aquileia.

¹⁴ cp. Perkins, J. B. Ward, ‘Notes on Southern Etruria and the ager Veientanus,’ PBSR 23 (1955), 57 ff.Google Scholar; id. ‘Etruscan and Roman roads in Southern Etruria’, JRS XLVII (1957), 139 ff.; id., ‘Excavation of a Roman Building near “Tomba di Nerone” on the Via Cassia,’ PBSR 27 (1959), 131 ff.; Frederiksen, M. W. and Perkins, J. B. Ward, ‘The Ancient Road Systems of the Central and Northern Ager Faliscus,’ PBSR 25 (1957), 67 ff.Google Scholar In the same tradition W. V. Harris will publish his study of the Cassia between Volsinii and Clusium in PBSR 33 (1965).

I do not feel that the work of M. Lopes Pegna on roads near Florence (‘Itinera Etruriae’, Studi Etruschi 21 (1951), 407–42; ‘Visioni Casentinesi’, L'Universo 35 (1955), 67–76; Firenze dalle origini, etc. (1962), 219–42) has an adequate basis of archaeological observation.

¹⁵ Maetzke, o.c., n. 1, 13–16; ib. 23 for foundations of houses and Republican coins of second century B.C. But from fifth century onwards the plain of Florence is half abandoned and waterlogged, ib. 18.

¹⁶ Livy's account is derived from the fuller account of Polybius III, 78–82, who explains Hannibal's reasons, 78, 6:

.

Polybius does not mention that the flood was unusual. Livy was perhaps thinking of the plain as he himself had seen it after its drainage and centuriation. Polybius III, 82 shows that Hannibal emerged from the ordeal of mud in the neighbourhood of Fiesole. Walbank, F. W., A Historical Commentary on Polybius I (1957), 413Google Scholar, quotes Kromayer and De Sanctis for the view that Hannibal probably crossed the Appennines by the Porretta (or Collina) pass between the upper Reno and Pistoia, and concludes that the marshes were those between Pistoia and Fiesole, against Beloch who accepts Strabo's (217) view that they were in the Po valley.

¹⁷ The Ravenna geographer in describing the road from Pisa up the Arno to Florence via in Portu and Arnum inserts Fiesole before Florence, which Konrad Miller, Itineraria Romana (1916), col. 293, dismisses as ‘am unrichtigen Orte’, since it should come after Florence. But the original road from Pisa to Fiesole before the foundation of Florence would have had to make a détour from the Golfolina round the northern side of the plain via Sesto and thus arrive under Fiesole before it reached Florence.

Maetzke, o.c., n. 1, fig. 12, shows the Roman roads radiating from Florence in straight lines, due north up the Mugnone to Bologna, and on the north-west not direct to Sesto but to Quarto and thence in further straight lines to Quinto and Sesto. Where the lines of Roman roads are not known, there is a perhaps natural tendency to draw them with a ruler like the Via Appia and the Via Aemilia.

¹⁸ The view of Davidsohn, Robert (Forschungen zur älteren Geschichte von Florenz (1896) 1, 2 ff.Google Scholar; Geschichte von Florenz (1896) 1, 3–4), that Florence had an Etruscan predecessor to the east of the actual site, was long ago disproved by Milani, L. A., Museo Topografico dell' Etruria, Florence (1896), 163Google Scholar; see Maetzke, Florentia and Lopes Pegna, Firenze 24. But it maintained its hold as late as 1936 in Schevill, Ferdinand, History of Florence (Harcourt Brace Inc., 1936).Google Scholar It has the merit of providing something for Sulla to destroy (see below).

When the Arno entered the plain at Rovezzano, it may have split into three channels, as various writers have said, but this does not seem to follow from Strabo, whom they quote. When Strabo (222) speaks of the Arno as divided into three, it is in connection with the site of Pisa just above the junction of the Serchio (Auserculus, diminutive of Auser) and the Arno. He presumably refers to the division of the Arno where it enters the coastal plain after passing the south end of the Monti Pisani. cp. Davidsohn, , Geschichte 1, 4–5Google Scholar; Modona, Aldo Neppi, ‘Firenze nelle sue origini etc.,’ Historia II (1928), 561–95, esp. 564.Google Scholar

¹⁹ 39, 2: ‘C. Flaminius consul, cum Friniatibus Liguribus in agro eorum pluribus proeliis secundis factis, in deditionem gentem accepit … translatum deinde ad Apuanos Ligures bellum, qui in agrum Pisanum Bononiensemque ita incursaverunt, ut coli non posset, his quoque perdomitis consul pacem dedit finitimis. et quia a bello quieta ut esset provincia effecerat, ne in otio militem haberet, viam a Bononia perduxit Arretium. M. Aemilius alter consul … viam ab Placentja, ut Flaminiae committeret, Ariminum perduxit.’

²⁰ Martinori, Via Cassia (1930), settles the problem of the origin of Florence out of hand in a note, p. 154, n. 1: ‘alla confluenza del Mugnone coll’ Arno dovette esistere una vetusta borgata cui si sorrappose più tardi una colonia fiesolana etrusca. Questa, al tempo di Silla, divenne municipio romano, ricordato coll' appellative di splendidissimum. Abbandonata dai veterani decadde, per risorgere quale colonia triumvirale per la legge agraria di Cesare, che può, a giusto titolo, dirsi il fondatore della Florentia romana.' He supposes that the circuit of Roman walls was irregular, including the site of the castle of Altafronte on the Arno as its south-east angle.

We may note here Plesner's curious view (pp. 4 and 30), which Fiumi rightly rejects, that Fiesole was constructed to link Volterra on the west and Arezzo on the east and to provide a point of departure for these roads to Bologna. Fiesole served to link the Etruscan settlements north of the Apennines with the main bulk of Etruria between Tiber and Arno. But a road between Volterra and Fiesole is unproved until much later, when the Romans developed Siena and Florence and began to tame the whole area between Volterra and Arezzo, till then probably dense and impenetrable forest and avoided, much as the Ciminian forest had been earlier.

²¹ Pegna, Lopes, ‘Visioni Casentinesi,’ L'Universo 35 (1955), 73Google Scholar, and the other works cited in n. 14, above.

²² Plesner, o.c. (above, n. 2), 53, n. 1.

²³ Frederiksen, M. and Perkins, J. B. Ward, PBSR 25 (1957), 192Google Scholar, quoting, for instance, CIL IX, 5833 = ILS 1059.

²⁴ I understand that this will be argued by Harris, W. V. in PBSR 32 (1965).Google Scholar

²⁵ l.c. (n. 4, above), 16 f. and 294, n. 28. Marinelli, Olinto, ‘La carta topografica e lo sviluppo di Firenze,’ Rivista Geografica Italiana 28 (1921), 18–38Google Scholar, briefly discusses the centuriation, noting that it is continued south of the Arno on the same grid and that its orientation is different from that of the city. He argues that the siting of Florence was not due to the bridge nor dependent on the consular road which, being in the foot-hills, would not naturally pass where Florence is: rather the road if readjusted to the city was dependent on it and on the centuriation.

Castagnoli pointed out that the centuriation was not based on the consular road, although he believed that it ran across the plain and did not wind along the foot-hills.

Lopes Pegna returns to this error, Firenze 54: ‘On the axis of the Via Cassia which thus served as the basic decumanus.’ On p. 56, n. 5, he refers to Castagnoli and adds: ‘my measurements have ascertained that the centre of the first quadrant was chosen at an exact distance from the Cassia, the basic decumanus.’ Again, on p. 58, n. 13, he cites points at which the northernmost decumanus coincides with the ‘original line’ of the Via Cassia, viz. Borgo di Sesto, Fabbruzza south of Settimello, Le Querce di Pizzidimonte, Piazza del Comune di Prato. But from Florence to Sesto the present line bears no relation to the centuriation. If a new line for the Via Cassia in the plain instead of the original line up in the hills was made under the Empire, it would naturally so far as possible respect the centuriation, though it could not do so near the city.

²⁶ See Bormann, , CIL XI, 1 (1926), 306.Google ScholarBeloch, G., Römische Geschichte (1926), 511.Google Scholar P. Weiss in P-W VI, 2, col. 2752 (1909), s.v. Florentia, mentions it as a possibility, and Ashby, Thomas in Encycl. Britt. 11th edition (1910)Google Scholar as a probability: Flaminius' road later became a part of the Cassia, and Florence was where the Cassia crossed the Arno. cp. Solari, A., Topografia Storica dell' Etruria (1915) III, 132.Google Scholar

²⁷ Cicero, Cat. II, 9, 20; III, 6, 14.

²⁸ Ed. M. Flemisch, Teubner (1904), XXXVI (p. 34, 1. 8), 78 B.C., ‘Faesulani irruperunt in castella veteranorum Sullanorum et compluribus occisis agros suos receperunt.’ cf. Mommsen, , ‘Die italienischen Bürgerkolonien von Sulla bis Vespasian,’ Hermes 18 (1883), 176, 180Google Scholar = Ges. Schr. V, xii, 203–53; Beloch, J., Röm. Geschichte (1926), 511.Google Scholar

²⁹ The Sullan theatre at Fiesole was presumably intended to make the place more attractive to its new inhabitants.

³⁰ Davidsohn, , Geschichte I, 15.Google Scholar Lopes Pegna, Firenze 38.

³¹ Die Schriften der römischen Feldmesser, ed. Blume-Lachmann-Rudorff, , 2 vols. (1848–1852), 213Google Scholar: ‘hoc opus omne arbitratu C. Iuli Caesaris et Marci Antoni et Marci Lepidi triumvirorum r.p.c. … Colonia Florentina deducta a triumviris adsignata lege Iulia, centuriae Caesarianae in iugera CC, per kardines et decimanos termini rotundi pedales et distant a se in ped. II CCCC’ (with further details of the centuriation). Florence is also mentioned three times in the same terms in connection with Todi, Luni and Ancona: 214, 3, ‘colonia fida Tuder ea lege qua et ager Florentinus in centuriis sing. iug. CC.’; 223, 14, ‘Ager Lunensis (Lucensis: Pais) ea lege qua et ager Florentinus’; 225, 4, ‘Ager Anconitanus ea lege qua et ager Florentinus est assignatus limitibus Augusteis sive kardines et decumanos vel maritimos aut montanos limites.’

These references back to Florence avoid the repetition of the details given under Florence, which seem to be regarded as typical, cf. also 349, 15, ‘ex libris Magonis et Vegoiae auctorum: idem partes Tusciae Florentiae quam maxime palos iliceos picatos pro terminibus sub terra defiximus.’

³² o.c. (n. 1, above), 44–6.

³³ Lopes Pegna does not identify the triumvirs, but he seems to adopt tacitly the suggestion of Maetzke.

³⁴ Suetonius, , Divus Julius 44, 3Google Scholar, ‘siccare Pomptinas paludes; emittere Fucinum lacum; viam munire a mari supero per Appennini dorsum ad Tiberim usque; perfodere Isthmum.’

³⁵ Cicero, in paragraph 2, refers to the Lex Iulia of 59 B.C.

³⁶ Pais, Ettore, ‘Serie cronologica della colonie romane e latine. Parte seconda, dall' età dei Gracchi a quella di Augusto,’ Mem. Acc. Linc. s. VI, v. I, fasc. V (1925), 311–412Google Scholar; see also his Storia della colonizzazione di Roma Antica (1923). Lucca benefited from Caesar's Lex Municipalis in 46 B.C., cf. Cicero, ad fam. XIII, 13. The problems of drainage there were similar to those of Florence.

³⁷ NH III, 5 (52); cp. e.g. Weiss in PW VI (1909), coll. 2752 ff., s.v. Florentia. But Florence is mentioned in a list along with Veii and Capena, and even distinguished by the addition of ‘praefluenti Arno adpositi’.

³⁸ o.c. (n. 1, above), 40 ff., quoting the early chroniclers, to be found in Hartwig, Otto, Quellen und Forschungen zur ä;ltesten Geschichte der Stadt Florenz, Marburg, 2 vols. (1875, 1880)Google Scholar. For discussion of the origin of Florence at the time of the Renaissance, see Rubinstein, Nicolai in Il Poliziano e il suo tempo, Florence (1954), 101–10Google Scholar: ‘Il Poliziano e la questione delle origini di Firenze.’ The historical traditions about the origins and early history of Florence, of which Giovanni Villani and Dante are the most famous representatives, seem to have been formed at the time of the last struggle with Fiesole, which ended in A.D. 1125. This was the period when legends luxuriated all over Europe, about King Arthur, Charlemagne, Virgil, El Cid, the Nibelungs, etc. The Florentine stories show violent animus against Fiesole, and project it back to the Roman period, heavily stressing the Roman character of Florence in contrast with Etruscan Fiesole. An independent Fiesole provided a stronghold for the feudal enemies of the rising industrial and commercial commune. cf. Rubinstein, N., ‘The beginnings of political thought in Florence,’ J. Warburg and Courtauld Institutes v (1942), 198 ff.Google Scholar; Monte, A. Del, ‘La storiografia fiorentina dei secoli XII e XIII’, Bull. Ist. Stor. Ital. 62 (1950), 175 ff.Google Scholar

³⁹ Röm. Gesch. (1926), 511–2.

⁴⁰ Towards the end of the second century A.D. the same man, Q. Petronius Melior, was successively pontifex of Faesulae and Florentia, Not. Scavi (1930), 202. When the Fiesolans restored their Capitolium, the ordo splendidissimus Florentinorum offered a statue to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, cp. Lopes Pegna, Firenze 248.

⁴¹ Castagnoli, F., L'Universo (Rivista Istit. Geogr. Militare) 28 (1948), 361–8Google Scholar, with map, contemporary with his study of Lucca, , Studi Etruschi 20 (1948), 285–90.Google Scholar His preparatory studies are ‘Le Formae delle colonie romane e le miniature dei codici dei gromatici’, Atti Real. Acc. Ital. 4 (1943), 83–118, and ‘Note al Liber Coloniarum’, Bulletino Commissione Archeologica di Roma 72 (1946–48). cf. also his article ‘Le ricerche sui resti della centuriazione romana’ in Note e discussioni erudite 7 (1958), where he notes the tendency to orientate the centuriation by the consular road (at Terracina by the Via Appia, by the Via Emilia at Faenza and Imola, for instance, but not at Bologna, founded two years before the Via Emilia was laid out). John Bradford, Ancient Land-scapes (1957), mentions the case of Florence, but gives it no detailed discussion. Recent advance in the study of centuriation is due to the use of air photographs.

⁴² Florentia 49–57.

⁴³ o.c. (n. 1, above), 446, n. 9: ‘La preesistenza della città alla deduzione della colonia è dimostrata dalla posteriorità della centuriazione, non coincidendo l'incrocio del cardine con il decumano massimi di questa con il centro della città.’

⁴⁴ Firenze 56: ‘ed infatti il rituale umbilicus coloniae è stato giustamente riconosciuto nel Canto dei Tornaquinci (incrocio dell' attuali vie Strozzi, Tornabuoni, della Vigna Nuova, e della Spada), di fronte al luogo ove fu in seguito aperta la Porta Occidentalis della città romana.’ On p. 64 he quotes Maetzke (rightly) and on p. 363 Castagnoli (wrongly, I think) as believing in the pre-existence of the city and quotes Hyginus, Constitutio ed. Thulin, p. 143, ‘limites primos nisi a foris accipere non possunt,’ which he paraphrases as ‘laddove le città preesistono, i due assi fondamentali del cardine e del decumano devono incontrarsi nel Foro centrale.’ But the passage as a whole does not make sense unless a foris means ‘from outside’ (Italian da fuori = de ab foris), cf. Pliny, , NH 17, 227.Google Scholar The Latin for ‘from the forum’ even of cities in the plural would be ‘a foro’, since they would have one forum each. Again cp. ibid. p. 65: ‘Appunto perchè la vicinanza del fiume esercitò una potente attrattiva fisico-economica, i gromatici condussero parallelo ad esso il lato maggiore della città coloniale.’ This occurs under a map of Roman Florence in which the south side of the city makes an angle, with the north bank of the Arno, of some 30 degrees. He seems to have in mind the wall marked on his supposed Carolingian city (fig. 131, p. 330) on the north side of Borgo SS. Apostoli. This is the line of the wall of A.D. 1078.

⁴⁵ For the curious division of the contado between the two bishoprics, see Studi e Testi 58: Guidi, P., Tuscia, la decima degli anni 1274–1280 (Città del Vaticano, 1932)Google Scholar, carta topografica; and Studi e Testi 98: Guistie, M. e Guidi, P., Rationes decimarum Italiae nei sec. XIII e XIV. Tuscia II. Le decime degli anni 1295–1304 (Città del Vaticano, 1942)Google Scholar, nuova carta topografica delle diocesi.

⁴⁶ cp. Marinelli, O., Riv. Geogr. Ital. 28 (1921), 22.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ F. Castagnoli, Ippodamo da Mileto e l'urbanistica a pianta octogonale (1956); Maetzke, Florentia pp. 25. 32.

⁴⁸ Maffii, Maffio ‘Firenze Romana’ in Firenze (a cura di Iolanda de Blasi, Florence, Sansoni, 1944), 29–43.Google Scholar But by Hadrian's time the city had probably extended on all sides beyond the original walls, and to defend one part would be unreasonable. And why should any walls be built in Hadrian's time, when the Roman Peace was seemingly established?

⁴⁹ Haverfield, F., Ancient Town-Planning (Oxford, 1913), 91–5Google Scholar, with plan.

⁵⁰ Ricerche, l.c. (n. 3, above), 97 ff., with plan I.

⁵¹ Firenze p. 65, fig. 17; p. 330, fig. 131; p. 333, fig. 132. But he gratuitously departs from Maetzke, without explanation, in his plan of the ‘Byzantine’ city, p. 322, fig. 126, and invents a ‘Carolingian’ city wholly unrelated to the Byzantine.

⁵² This by itself does not prove the point, since amphitheatres had also to provide for people coming in from the countryside.

⁵³ Paulini, Vita Ambrosii c. 29 (PL 14, col. 37): ‘in eadem etiam civitate (sc. Florentinorum, c. 28) basilicam constituit, in qua deposuit reliquias martyrum Vitalis et Agricolae.’

⁵⁴ Orosius VII, 37, 13: ‘Radagaisum in Faesulanos montes cogit.’ cf. Augustine, CD V, 23.

⁵⁵ Bellum Gothicum III, 5: Totila was forced to retire apparently the first occurrence of the name Mugello.

⁵⁶ Agathias, Hist. I, II:

⁵⁷ Historia Antica (Florence: Giunti, 1568), cc. 26–7, 39, 66; cp. Istoria Fiorentina ed. V. Follini, Florence, 1816); also in O. Hartwig, l.c. (n. 38, above). Malispini was a Guelph, exiled in 1260, returned 1266, wrote his history 1270–90; at c. 226 he mentions the new walls of 1284. But the authenticity and date of his history is much disputed, see Davis, C. T., Dante and the Idea of Rome (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar, Appendix I, pp. 244–62. Alberto Del Monte (l.c., n. 38) seems to me to make a very strong case for the authenticity of Malispini and his use by Dante.

⁵⁸ But see Fiumi, o.c. (above, n. 1).

⁵⁹ Codex Justin. VIII, 12, 7; 1, 27, 2, 144.

⁶⁰ Firenze 68.

⁶¹ Corinti, , ‘Degli avanzi del Teatro di Firenze romana,’ in Atti della Società Colombaria Fiorentina (1926).Google Scholar

^61a In 1950–52 excavations were made in the area of Via Por S. Maria, on both sides of the street, where Via Vacchereccia joins it. A preliminary report by Maetzke is to be found in Notizie degli Scavi 1950, 60 ff. I am indebted to him for the further information that later work revealed traces of the Roman walls, the gate and a tower flanking it. These discoveries have not been published except in a local newspaper, but form the basis of Maetzke's reconstruction of the south wall in the Enciclopedia dell' Arte classica (loc. cit., n. 3). This line of the south wall as far as the tower near the Biancone may, therefore, now be accepted as certain. Maetzke also tells me that behind the remains of Roman baths he found a large tower, probably Byzantine, and traces of a small church, probably Santa Maria sopra Porta, which the chronicles mention. The position of the south gate is thus also assured.

⁶² Despite his ‘rimaneggiata in epoca barbarica’, Lopes Pegna draws no such conclusion. His plan of the Byzantine city, p. 322, fig. 126, in fact withdraws its SE. corner further than Maetzke's from the Biancone northwards across the Piazza. Moreover, on p. 106, he says: ‘nel VI secolo i Bizantini trasformarono l'emiciclo del teatro in un caposaldo della città fortificata.’ I can make nothing of this.

⁶³ Maetzke's plan to illustrate the Byzantine city shows a theatre of enormous size orientated NS. It need not be taken seriously except for the inner semicircle which corresponds to his plan in Florentia fig 1, and p. 60, fig. 6 (cf. Lopes Pegna, Firenze p. 107, fig. 34).

For the theatre see Minto, A., ‘I teatri di Firenze e di Fiesole,’ Dioniso 6 (1937), 1–7Google Scholar; Modona, A. Neppi, Gli Edifici Teatrali greci e romani (1961), 114.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Modona, Aldo Neppi, ‘Firenze nelle sue origini e nel suo primo sviluppo,’ Historia 2 (1928), 580Google Scholar; the seventeenth-century excavations under the Church of S. Firenze on the side towards Borgo dei Greci revealed a temple of Isis, of early third-century date, ‘costruito in parte fuori delle mura’ (my italics).

⁶⁵ This has been suggested by Maffio Maffii, l.c. (above, n. 48), 37: ‘La scena forse orientata parallelamente a via dei Leoni.’ In any case the walls of 1078 must surely in this extension beyond the Roman circuit be put on the alignment of Via dei Leoni.

⁶⁶ Castagnoli, F., Ippodamo da Mileto e l'urbanistica a pianta octogonale (1956), 95.Google ScholarPerkins, J. B. Ward, Town Planning Review 26 (1955), 148Google Scholar, ‘the NE. angle is “rectified”, because of the proximity of the Dora Riparia.’ Either the corner would have been threatened by floods or the ground fell away to the river too steeply to be built on. It is to be noted that the north gate of Florence resembles those of Turin. Augusta Taurinorum was refounded in 29 B.C. The theatre there is inside the walls, just to the west of the rectification.

⁶⁷ Castagnoli (o.c. n. 66, above), 92.

⁶⁸ Richmond, I. A. and Holford, W. G., ‘Roman Verona. The archaeology of the town,’ PBSR 13 (1935), 69–76Google Scholar; cp. esp. 73, fig. 2.

⁶⁹ At the back of Palazzo della Signoria there is a flight of twenty-seven steps down to Via dei Leoni. Each step is about 20 cm. high, giving a total of some 5.5m. But the level of Via dei Leoni has also been raised.

The name of the church of S. Pier Scheraggio may be significant. Villani 3, 2, says of it, ‘che così si chiamava per un fossato ovvero fogna, che raccoglieva quasi tutta l'acqua piovana della città ch' andava in Arno, che si chiamava lo scheraggio.’ ‘Scheraggio’ is explained by Pianigiani, Ottorino, Vocabolario etimologico della lingua italiana (Rome, 1907)Google Scholar, as from ‘^*ex-claraticum, fosso o fogna ove si schiariscono le acque’. No one seems to have asked where this ditch may have been, except Corinti, who in one of his postcards (four series of twenty-four each, 1925 and 1926), reconstructing Roman and medieval Florence, shows it running down Via del Proconsolo and Via dei Leoni, then turning westward under the later Uffizi to Via Lambertesca (halfway down the Uffizi, on the west). This does not bring the ditch at any point very near the church, and nearest to its eastern apsidal end. If the ditch was in front of the church to the west of it, it seems more likely to have given its name to the church. The remains of this church, which is first mentioned in 1066 and was consecrated in 1068, ten years before the new line of walls in this area, after rebuilding and enlargement on the site of an earlier one (Carolingian, early ninth century?: see , W. and Paatz, E., die Kirchen von Florenz IV (Frankfurt am Main, 1952), 662–78)Google Scholar, may be seen in the north end of the Uffizi in Via della Ninna, which was widened in 1410 at the expense of the north aisle of the church. Now if the ditch, which is earlier than the circuit of 1078, followed the Roman wall along Via del Proconsolo and south-westward across to the Biancone in Piazza della Signoria, and then, leaving the walls, headed for the Arno, on the line of the centuriation which seems to govern everything outside the city itself, it would pass just in front of the church.

Alternatively, if the ditch is of dark-age date, it would have been the moat of the east ‘gotho-byzantine’ wall and would have left the SE. corner likewise at the Biancone and headed for the Arno, where the court of the Uffizi now lies (on a slightly diverging axis).

For evidence of the low-lying marshy character of the land south and east of the Roman city, see the names of Via dell' Anguillara (from Piazza S. Firenze across the Amphitheatre to Piazza S. Croce) and Santo Stefano al Canneto (near Ponte Vecchio).

⁷⁰ Villani 1, 38, mentioning ‘vaults’. On my plan (fig. 7) I have put it at the south end, because this would help to explain why this part of the site was included in the walls of 1078. The line Via Vacchereccia-Via della Ninna may recall an earlier route from the south gate to the antecedent of Porta dei Buoi, i.e. to a cattle-market beside the river to the east, by then presumably being drained, cf. von Hofmann, Albert, Das Land Italien und seine Geschichte. Eine historisch-topographische Darstellung (1921), 220 ff.Google Scholar

⁷¹ The other being the NW. corner, where Via Rondinelli running NE.–SW. may represent either the original line of the Roman wall, designed not to jut out in the way of the Mugnone, or the rebuilding of 1078, when the Mugnone had washed the Roman corner away. The much more powerful Adige at Verona sliced off both the west and east corners of the town. cf. n. 68.

⁷² I would like to thank Dr. Nicolai Rubinstein, Dr. Guglielmo Maetzke, Mr. Martin Frederiksen and Mr. W. V. Harris for their help with several points in this paper.