anciently the Pons Æmilius. This bridge, intended to unite the nearer bank of the river with Trastevere, but rendered impassable by the fall of several arches in 1598, whence its name of the Ponte Rotto, was commenced in the censorship of M. Æmilius Lepidus and M. Fulvius Nobilior, in the year of the city 573, and was completed by P. Scipio Africanus and L. Mummius. From the first of these it took its name. "Marcus Fulvius made contracts for piers for a bridge over the Tiber; on which piers Publius Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius, censors many years afterwards, caused the arches to be raised" (Livy, xl. 51). It is the same from which the body of Elagabalus was thrown with a stone attached to it, after having been dragged through the Circus. In January 1886, to the eternal disgrace of the acting mayor, Duke Torlonia, and the municipal authorities of Rome, the remaining half of the oldest bridge over the Tiber was wantonly and unnecessarily destroyed in the works going on for the embankment of the river, the city fathers leaving one arch in the centre of the river as a monument of their folly. From this arch a suspension bridge is to be thrown to the Trastevere side. The Cloaca Maxima has been diverted into the Tiber below S. Paul's, in order to prevent the back-wash into the city. _A little lower down was_ THE SUBLICIAN BRIDGE, in front of which Horatius displayed his valour. It was first erected, A.U.C. 114, by Ancus Martius. By appointment of the oracle it was built only of timber fastened with wooden pins; "for the Romans considered it as an execrable impiety to demolish the wooden bridge, which, we are told, was built without iron, and put together with pins of wood only, by the direction of some oracle. The stone bridge was built many ages after, when Æmilius was quæstor. Some, however, inform us that the wooden bridge was not constructed in the time of Numa, having the last hand put to it by Ancus Martius" (Plutarch, in "Numa"). "Rome was in great danger of being taken, when Horatius Cocles, and with him two others of the first rank--Herminius and Spurius Lartius--stopped them at the bridge.... This man [Horatius], standing at the head of the bridge, defended it against the enemy till the Romans broke it down behind him. Then he plunged into the Tiber, armed as he was, and swam to the other side, but was wounded in the hip with a Tuscan spear" (Plutarch, in "Publicola"). Livy (ii. 10) gives his prayer before plunging in: "Holy father Tiber, I beseech thee to receive these arms, and this thy soldier, into thy propitious stream." And "Still is the story told How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old." Near this spot Clœlia swam across the Tiber on horseback, when escaping from Lars Porsena. "While Cocles kept the bridge and stemmed the flood, The captive maids there tempt the raging tide, 'Scaped from their chains, with Clœlia for their guide."--VIRGIL.