The ninth-century sculptures on the altar at S. Ambrogio prove that the Longobards had towers above their city gates. The author of the _Ant. Longob. Milanesi_ (Dissert. iii. p. 193) says that the ancient gates of Milan, before the enlargement of the walls, were of this construction with towers over them. They were furnished with heavy wooden doors covered with iron, which were suspended on chains, and slid down in grooves in the wall, thus completely closing the entrance--a portcullis, in fact. Livy, in his twenty-seventh book, describes the gates of Rome as being of the same construction; some existing examples at Rome, Tivoli, and Pompeii prove the fact. A famous gate in the time of the Longobards was the one chronicled by Paulus Diaconus, which King Bertharis (671-686) caused the _Magistri_ to erect beside his palace in Pavia. It was named the Porta Palatinense, and was, says Paulus Diaconus, an admirable work (_opera mirifica_). Some antique documents quoted by Passano,[55] prove that this gateway was furnished with bronze gates.[56] Some writers think that the battlemented fortress came from the East, because ancient specimens of it are found there. In reading an Italian translation of Procopius, _Degli edifici di Giustiniano Imperatore_, I was struck by the many slight expressions which seem to prove that Justinian brought his fortress-builders into Byzantium from Italy. Procopius says that Justinian made a new style of fortress with towers all round the walls; with stairs in the towers, and galleries (_baluards_) round them with holes in them to throw down stones, and that it was called _Pirgo castello_, because in the Latin tongue, fortresses are styled _castelli_. Now this description is precisely that of an Italian fortress, such as the Comacines knew how to build, and built for centuries all over Italy. If it came from the East in ancient times, why was it specified by Procopius as a new style there?--and if its origin were Eastern, why had they no name for it, but had to take the Latin one? The Bishop of Salisbury, in a letter in the _Salisbury Diocesan Gazette_ (May 1898), speaks of an inscription of the twelfth century, preserved in the museum at Jaffa, which is in memory of Magister Filipus, who came over with the King of England (Richard), and who had built a portion of the wall "from gate to gate": evidently Magister Filipus from the English Masonic Lodge, fraternized and worked with his brethren of the Roman and Eastern Lodges.