on the west leaving a terrace for a road, and the arches were left to uphold the road on the east.  Although the arches were not exactly in line, the road could well have been so, for the terrace here was wider and ran back to the upper wall.[52] The evidence is also positive enough that there was an ascent to the terrace on the west, the one below the Barberini gardens, which corresponds to the ascent on the arches.  This terrace now is level, and at its west end is some twenty feet above the garden below.  But the wall shows very plainly that it had sloped off toward the west, and the slope is most clearly to be seen, where a very obtuse angle of newer and different tufa has been laid to build up the wall to a level.[53] It is to be noticed too that this terrace is the same height as the top of the ascent above the arches.  We have then actual proofs for roads leading up from east and west toward the center of the wall on the south side of the city, and every reason that an entrance here was practicable, credible, and necessary.

But there is one thing more necessary to make probabilities tally wholly with the facts.  If there was a grand entrance to the city, below the basilica, the temple, and the main open square, which faced out over the great forum below, there must have been a monumental gate in the wall.  As a matter of fact there was such a gate, and I believe it was called the porta Triumphalis.  An inscription of the age of the Antonines mentions “seminaria a Porta Triumphale,” and this passing reference to a gate with a name which in itself implies a gate of consequence, so well known that a building placed near it at once had its location fixed, gives the rest of the proof necessary to establish a central entrance to the city in front, through a porta Triumphalis.[54]

Before the time of Sulla there had been a gate in the south wall of the city, approached by one road, which ascended from the east on the arches facing the present Via degli Arconi.  After entering the city one went straight up a grade not very steep to the basilica, and to the open square or ancient forum which was the space now occupied by the two modern piazzas, the Garibaldi and the Savoia, and on still farther to the temple.  When Sulla rebuilt the city, and laid out a forum on the level space directly south of and below the town, he made another road from the west to correspond to the old ascent from the east, and brought them together at the old central gate, which he enlarged to the porta Triumphalis.  In the open square in front of the basilica had stood the statue of some famous man[55] on a platform of squared stone 16 x 17-1/2 feet in measurement.  Around this base the Sullan improvements put a restraining wall of opus quadratum.[56] The open square was in front of the basilica and to its left below the temple.  There was but one way to the terrace above the temple from the ancient forum.  This was a steep road to the right, up the present Via delle Scalette.  Another road ran to the left back of the basilica, but ended either in front of the western cave connected with the temple, or at the entrance into the precinct of the temple.