CAELIUS MONS
1
the most south-easterly of the hills of
Rome, stretching
west from the eastern plateau, from its junction with the
Esquiline
near the Porta Maggiore, in an irregular tongue about 2
kilometres long
and 400 to 500 metres wide. This tongue ends in two
points, like pro-
montories, an eastern, probably called
CAELIOLUS (q.v.),
where the
church of the SS. Quattro Coronati now stands, and a
western, the site of
SS. Giovanni e Paolo. South of the Caelian is the valley
traversed by
the brook now called the Marrana, part of which was the
VALLIS CAMENARUM (q.v.), and on the north it was separated from
the Esquiline
by the low ground that runs east from the Colosseum.
Part of the
northern side of the Caelian seems to have been called
SUCUSA (q.v.),
and this was probably just east of the Caeliolus. The height
of the
Caelian varies considerably, being 45 metres in the Villa
Mattei and 54
in the Villa Wolkonsky.
The hill is said to have been called at first
MONS
QUERQUETULANUS
(q.v.), from the oak groves that covered it (Tac.
Ann. iv.
65), but this
was perhaps an invention of the antiquarians to explain the
PORTA
QUERQUETULANA (q.v.) of the Servian wall. In the
reign of Tiberius
the senate voted to call the hill Augustus mons (Tac.
Ann.
iv. 64; Suet.
Tib. 48), but this name never came into general use. In the
Regionary
Catalogues the
second region of the city is called
CAELIMONTIUM (q.v.).
Caelius itself was explained by the antiquarians as the
name given to this
hill in consequence of the settlement upon it of Caeles
Vibenna and his
Etruscan companions who came to the assistance of one
of the Roman
kings (Varro,
LL v. 46; Fest. 44, 355;
Dionys. ii. 36;
CIL
xiii. 1668,
1. 21). It seems difficult to explain the existence of Caelius
mons and
Caelius, the name of a well-known plebeian gens, unless
there be some
connection between the two (
Jord. i. 1. 186-188; see
SEPTIMONTIUM).
Tradition varies in ascribing the addition of the Caelius
to the city
to Romulus (Varro,
LL v. 46), Tullus Hostilius (
Liv. i. 30.
33; de vir. ill. 4;
Dionys. iii. I), Ancus Marcius (Cic. de rep. ii. 18;
Strabo
v. 234), Tar-
quinius Priscus (Tac.
Ann. iv. 65), and Servius Tullius
(or. Claudii,
CIL xiii.
1668), and is of course without value.
Both Caelius and Sucusa were included in the
Septimontium (cf. Fest.
341, 348). The later 'Servian' wall, following undoubtedly
the original
line, crossed the Caelius about 250 metres west of the
present church of
S. Giovanni in Laterano, and thus included the western
half of the hill
within the area of the city, a condition that probably went
back to the
regal period. Whether this hill ever had its own
fortifications is still
undecided (Ann. d.
Inst. 1871, 47; cf. Varro, loc. cit.;
Jord. i. I. 206;
HJ 224).
In Augustus' division of the city, the Caelian fell into
three regions-
the western and southern slopes into
Region I, the main
portion into
II,
and the extreme eastern part into
V. The hill was thickly
populated
during the republic, and we are told of an apartment
house, belonging
to Ti. Claudius Centumalus (Cic. de off. iii. 66), which the
owner was
ordered to demolish because it was so high as to cut off
the view of the
augurs. In 27 A.D. the hill suffered severely from a fire
(Tac.
Ann. iv. 64),
and afterwards became a favourite place for the
residences of the rich,
which, with their gardens, seem to have occupied a
considerable part of
the whole (for the topography and monuments of the
Caelian see HJ
220-255; Pl. 428-443;
RE iii. 1273-1275).
