He Therefore Concluded That Modern Rome Is Near Forty Feet Higher In This Place, Than The Site Of The Antient City, And That The Bed Of The River Is Raised In Proportion; But This Is Altogether Incredible.

Had the bed of the Tyber been antiently forty feet lower at Rome, than it is at present, there

Must have been a fall or cataract in it immediately above this tract, as it is not pretended that the bed of it is raised in any part above the city; otherwise such an elevation would have obstructed its course, and then it would have overflowed the whole Campania. There is nothing extraordinary in its present overflowings: they frequently happened of old, and did great mischief to the antient city. Appian, Dio, and other historians, describe an inundation of the Tiber immediately after the death of Julius Caesar, which inundation was occasioned by the sudden melting of a great quantity of snow upon the Apennines. This calamity is recorded by Horace in his ode to Augustus.

Vidimus flavum Tiberim retortis Littore Etrusco violenter undis, Ire dejectum monumenta regis, Templaque Vestae: Iliae dum se nimium querenti, Jactat ultorem; vagus et sinistra Labitur ripa, Jove non probante Uxorius Amnis.

Livy expressly says, "Ita abundavit Tiberis, ut Ludi Apollinares, circo inundato, extra portam Collinam ad aedem Erycinae Veneris parati sint," "There was such an inundation of the Tiber that, the Circus being overflowed, the Ludi Appollinares were exhibited without the gate Collina, hard by the temple of Venus Erycina." To this custom of transferring the Ludi Appollinares to another place where the Tyber had overflowed the Circus Maximus, Ovid alludes in his Fasti.

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