r.

We are told that the bed of this river has been considerably raised by
the rubbish of old Rome, and this is the reason usually given for its
being so apt to overflow its banks. A citizen of Rome told me, that a
friend of his lately digging to lay the foundation of a new house in
the lower part of the city, near the bank of the river, discovered the
pavement of an antient street, at the depth of thirty-nine feet from
the present surface of the earth. 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.

Altera gramineo spectabis equiriacampo
Quem Tiberis curvis in latus urget aquis,
Qui tamen ejecta si forte tenebitur unda,
Coelius accipiet pulverulentus equos.

Another race thy view shall entertain
Where bending Tiber skirts the grassy plain;
Or should his vagrant stream that plai