goddess Fortuna Primigenia and her temple at Praeneste.[99]

The excavations at Praeneste in the eighteenth century brought the city
again into prominence, and from that time to the present, Praeneste has
offered much material for archaeologists and historians.

But the temple of Fortuna has constituted the principal interest and
engaged the particular attention of everyone who has worked upon the
history of the town, because the early enthusiastic view was that the
temple occupied the whole slope of the mountain,[100] and that the
present city was built on the terraces and in the ruins of the temple.
Every successive study, however, of the city from a topographical point
of view has lessened more and more the estimated size of the temple,
until now all that can be maintained successfully is that there are two
separate temples built at different times, the later and larger one
occupying a position two terraces higher than the older and more
important temple below.

The lower temple with its precinct, along the north side of which
extends a wall and the ruins of a so-called cryptoporticus which
connected two caves hollowed out in the rock, is not so very large a
sanctuary, but it occupies a very good position above and behind the
ancient forum and basilica on a terrace cut back into the solid rock of
the mountain. The temple precinct is a courtyard which extends along the
terrace and occupies its whole width from the older cave on the west to
the newer one at the east. In front of the latter cave is built the
temple itself, which faces west along the terrace, but extends its
southern facade to the edge of the ancient forum which it overlooks.
This temple is older than the time of Sulla, and occupies the site of an
earlier temple.