ROMA QUADRATA-1
a later name of the four-cornered Palatine city in
augural theory. Varro ap.
Solin. i. 17:
dictaque primum est Roma
quadrata, quod ad aequilibrium foret posita. ea incipit a silva quae
est in area Apollinis, et ad supercilium scalarum Caci habet terminum,
ubi tugurium fuit Faustuli. In this description the points where the
augural circuit began and ended must be meant: they can only have
been diagonally opposite if we accept Hilsen's theory as to the temple
of Apollo (HJ 65). Cf. Plut. Rom. g;
Dionys. ii. 65 (the temple of Vesta
τῆς τετραγώνου καλουμένης ῾Ρώμης...ἐκτός ἐστιϝ
Appian, frg. i. 4; and
see
POMERIUM.
In the extended sense the term may be of comparatively late origin
(
BPW 1903, 1645), for it could not arise until Palatium and Cermalus
were one; and in the lists of the
ARGEORUM SACRARIA (q.v.), which date
probably from the third century B.C., they are still separate. The comparison of the outline of the Palatine with that of the Terremare is
specious, but is clearer in the plans than on the site, which has been
much transformed by the great imperial buildings, which have given it
a rectangular outline.
See Jord. i. I. 162-178;
Mitt. 1896, 210-212;
1926, 212-228; HJ 35;
AJP 1901, 420-425; Pais, Ancient Legends, 224-234;
AJA 1909, 172-
183;
JRS 1914, 222-225 (according to which the imperial Roma
quadrata was a square plot of ground containing the temple of Apollo,
the atrium beside it (see
DOMUS AUGUSTI) and the area in front of it).
