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A Study of the Topography and Municipal History of Praeneste by Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
page 20 of 139 (14%)
city as far as Porta del Sole, neither in the wall nor in the buildings,
nor in the valley below, is there any trace of cyclopean wall
stones;[34] fourth, at the point where the cross wall and the long wall
must have met at the east, the wall makes a change in direction, and
there is an ancient postern gate just above the jog in the wall; and
last, the cyclopean wall from this junction on down to near the Porta
del Sole is later than that of the circuit just described.[35]

The city was extended within a century perhaps, and the new line of the
city wall was continued on the east in cyclopean style as far as the
present Porta del Sole, where it turned to the west and continued until
the hill itself offered enough height so that escarpment of the natural
cliff would serve in place of the wall. Then it turned up the hill
between the present Via San Biagio and Via del Carmine back of Santa
Maria del Carmine. The proof for this expansion is clear. The
continuation of the cyclopean wall can be seen now as far as the Porta
del Sole,[36] and the line of the wall which turns to the west is
positively known from the cippi of the ancient pomerium, which were
found in 1824 along the present Via degli Arconi.[37] The ancient gate,
now closed, in the opus quadratum wall under the Cardinal's garden, is
in direct line with the ancient pavement of the road which comes up to
the city from the south,[38] and the continuation of that road, which
seems to have been everywhere too steep for wagons, is the Via del
Carmine. There had always been another road outside the wall which went
up a less steep grade, and came round the angle of the wall at what is
now the Porta S. Martino, where it entered a gate that opened out of the
present Corso toward the west. When at a later time, probably in the
middle ages, the city was built out to its present boundary on the west,
the wagon road was simply arched over, and this arch is now the gate San
Martino.[39]
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