MURUS TERREUS
an earthwork known only from one obscure passage in
Varro (
LL v. 48:
eidem regioni adtributa Subura quod sub muro terreo
Carinarum), in whose time it appears to have been still preserved in part.
As the
CARINAE (q.v.) was on the western end of the Oppius, and the
SUBURA (q.v.) was between the Oppius and Viminal, this work probably
ran round the north-west edge of the Oppius and extended as far east
as the present church of S. Pietro in Vincoli. It is also probable that the
work was on the summit of the hill, or just a little way down on the slope,
and that it belonged to the system of fortification of the Oppius at that
early period when such earth walls were still in use and the settlements
on this and the adjacent hills were independent of each other (Pinza,
BC 1898, 93;
1912, 86-87; Mon.
L. xv. 783-785, and pl. xxv.; HJ 263).
It may also have been incorporated in part in the fortification of the
SEPTIMONTIUM (q.v.).
The murus terreus has also been placed between the Oppius and the
Capitolium along the brook Spinon (Schneider,
Mitt. 1895, 167-178),
between the Carinae and the Velia (Pais, Storia di Roma i. I. 631), on the
hill itself dividing the Oppius and Carinae (Richter 38; cf. M61. 1908,
274-276), but none of these theories is satisfactory.
