The Tarpeian rock still exists; but has little in its appearance to gratify the associations of a classic traveller. Seneca describes it as it existed in his time thus:—“A lofty and precipitous mass rises up, rugged with many rocks, which either bruise the body to death, or hurry one down still more violently. The points projecting from the sides, and the gloomy prospect of its vast height, are truly horrid. This place is chosen in particular, that the criminals may not require to be thrown down more than once.” Poggio Bracciolini gives a melancholy picture of what, in his time, was the state of this celebrated rock. “This Tarpeian rock was a savage and solitary thicket. In the time of the poet it was covered with the golden roofs of a temple; the temple is overthrown, the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of fortune has accomplished her revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and brambles. The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of the Roman empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with the spoils and attributes of so many nations. This spectacle of the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! The path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill.” “Like the modern Tiber, the modern Tarpeian,” says an elegant traveller, “is little able to bear the weight of its ancient reputation.” “The only precipice that remains,” says another traveller (Mathews) “is one about thirty feet from the point of a wall, where you might leap down on the dung, mixed in the fold below, without any fear of breaking your bones.” The Aqueducts were, beyond all question, some of the noblest designs of the Romans. Frontinus, a Roman author, and a person of consular dignity, who compiled a treatise on this subject, affirms them to be the clearest token of the grandeur of the empire. The first invention of them is attributed to Appius Claudius, A. U. C. 441, who brought water into the city by a channel eleven miles in length. But this was very inconsiderable compared to those that were afterwards carried on by the emperors and other persons; several of which were cut through the mountains, and all other impediments, for above forty miles together; and of such height, that a man on horseback, as Procopius informs us, might ride through them without the least difficulty. This, however, is meant only of the constant course of the channel; for the vaults and arches were, in some places, 109 feet high. Procopius makes the Aqueducts only fourteen; but Aurelius Victor has enlarged the number to twenty. The Claudian Aqueduct conveyed 800,000 tons of water each day into the city.