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MOLINAE

public mills for grinding corn, situated on the Janiculum just inside the porta Aurelia (Not. Cur. Reg. XIV; CIL vi. 1711).1 They were driven by the water of the aqua Traiana and were in regular use until this aqueduct was cut by the Goths during their siege of Rome in 537 when floating mills (III. 35) were invented by Belisarius (Procop. BG i. 19). They are also mentioned in the seventh and eighth centuries (LP lxxii. 5 (an interpolated note in the MS.) ; xcvii. 59; HJ 648; see also Mem. Am. Acad. i. 59-61; Eins. 7. 2.; id. Syll. ep. 47 (ad CIL vi. 1711）in Ianiculo ante ecclesiam SS. Iohannis et Pauli (HCh 277; LPD i. 327, n. 20; Mon. L. i. 481). Cf. Mem. A.P. ii. 74-76.

1 This important inscription is a decree of the praefectus urbi, Claudius Iulius Ecclesius Dynamius, ' de fraudibus molendinariorum '; the mills are enumerated in conjunction with the baths of Ampelis, Priscus, and Diana, and the Janiculum in Reg. Our illustration does not show the steps of masonry descending to the floating mills on the Tiber (for which see Cod. Esc. 27'', 561), which are probably the ' gradellae ' from which S. Gregorio and S. Maria de Gradellis took their name (HCh 258, 336, 590, 597; BC 1925, 57-69 (see MATER MATUTA, TEMPLUM).

A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Samuel Ball Platner. Thomas Ashby. London: Humphrey Milford. Oxford University Press. 1929.

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