There has been so much controversy over the antique bridges at Rome that the steadiest head becomes giddy while reading Palladio, Becker, Bunsen, Piranesi, Sir William Smith, and other experts. Perhaps we may be on safe ground when we step delicately on tiptoe into the historic environment of the Pons Palatinus, a bridge which seems to have been erected in the year B.C. 179.[78] A good part of this bridge was rebuilt in the time of Pope Gregory XIII (1572-85), but in 1598 it was wrecked by a terrible flood, and people began to speak of it as the Ponte Rotto, or broken bridge. From Palladio’s book on architecture, printed at Venice in 1570, we learn that the Pons Palatinus, or Senatorius, was known also as the Ponte Santa-Maria, so Rome must have been horrified when a classic bridge recently dedicated to the Virgin was overthrown by a spate, which spared the Pons Cestius and the Pons Fabricius. The arches of this bridge were rather more than twenty-four metres in span, and their large archivolts were boldly prominent. The piers, about eight metres thick, were protected by angular cutwaters, and above each cutwater was a tall niche flanked by pilasters whose capitals touched the broad cornice that framed the spandrils in a vigorous manner. Each spandril was ornamented with a sea-horse carved in relief; and this decoration was foiled by the plain, deep parapets whose horizontal lines were diversified here and there by a projection. Brangwyn’s drawing of the Ponte Rotto gives all the architectural character, and we see that this bridge was a great Roman citizen, manly and brave and noble. Further, when we speak of any bridge as virile as this one arch, we have a right to use masculine pronouns, “he” and “his” and “him.” The trivial word “it” is a feeble neutrality that belongs to a great many bridges, both ancient and modern; but a Cæsarian achievement like the Pons Palatinus, or the Pont du Gard, or the Puente Trajan at Alcántara, takes rank among the rare deeds that do honour to a splendid manhood; and this we should recognise in our pronouns. Palladio says that in his time, from 1518 to 1580, three other bridges over the Tiber, at Rome, were in good preservation. Let us take a glance at them:--