The third Latin place is PRAENESTE, now Palestrina. This metathesis is common in Italian; even when they write correctly, they speak badly from affectation, especially the higher classes: instead of _una capra_, the Roman people usually say _una carpa_. The _l_ and _r_ also are interchanged: at the time of the French revolution, when a republic was forced upon the Romans, they were unable to pronounce the name, and said _la Repubrica_. I have found traces of a form _Penestra_ belonging to the time when the western empire still existed; in the middle ages _civitas_ was always added, and the simple names were thereby completely suppressed; people, therefore, did not say _Lanuvium_, but _civitas Lanuvina_, and so also _civitas Penestrina_. Praeneste was an immense place both in regard to its extent and to its fortifications, and was situated on a hill. Fortuna was its tutelary divinity, whose temple with its _temenos_ occupied the acra, and the whole of the present little town of Palestrina is situated within the ruins of that temple. We still possess descriptions of it belonging to the end of the thirteenth century; many parts of it must then have been preserved; in the fourteenth the town was taken by pope Bonifacius VIII., and everything was then destroyed with barbarous fury; at present we can only admire the immense substructions on the side of the hill, for the town, like many others, was built up the hill in the form of terraces; and when it was intended to enlarge the town, a new terrace was built. In Roman history Praeneste does not appear as an important town till after the Gallic time. As to the impatience with which it, more than any other Latin town, bore the Roman yoke during the fifth century, from the Samnite wars until the war of Pyrrhus, we have distinct indications, although history is silent about it. The Praenestines made repeated attempts to shake it off; but although they were unsuccessful in this, still they gained the respect of the Romans, and obtained from them an honourable relation, with which they were satisfied. After this, they were the most faithful allies of the Romans, and during the Hannibalian war they were as attached to them as they had previously been intrepid in their struggles for their own independence. During the Social War they obtained the franchise, and were passionate champions of the Marian party. Marius the younger there sustained the terrible siege, after which Sulla took the town, and shewed the first symptoms of his raving cruelty: he butchered the whole population, and established a colony of veterans in the place. The town became quite desolate. Most of the Latin towns had perished at an early period.