[Illustration: FIG. 3.9 Rome, “Servian” Wall of 378 B.C., surviving stretch beside Termini railway station. (Photo Paul MacKendrick)] Thus Säflund distinguished three building periods for the so-called “Servian” Wall, though none as early as King Servius Tullius. One section of earth work or _agger_, on the Quirinal Hill, faced in part with small blocks of _cappellaccio_, looked older than 378 B.C., and Säflund knew from observations at Ardea, Cerveteri (and, as we now know, Anzio) that the use of the earthwork was standard in the sixth century to reinforce weak places on hilly sites. Some early sixth-century sherds, but none later, were found _under_ the agger. This helps to confirm that the agger was a part of Rome’s sixth-century, genuinely Servian defenses, never a complete ring-wall, but an adjustment and reinforcement of natural defenses, later incorporated into the circuit wall of 378 B.C. A splendid stretch of the facing of this reinforced agger, 100 yards, survives today by the Termini railroad station (Fig. 3.9). But Säflund’s careful observations did more than redate the wall in its several phases. By comparison of the mason’s marks, hacked in Greek letters on the heads of the Grotta Oscura blocks only, with similar marks found on the blocks of the fortifications of the Euryalus above Syracuse, in Sicily (built in the late fifth century B.C. by Dionysius I), Säflund was able to demonstrate that Rome’s wall was built by Sicilian workmen, Rome not having the manpower or the skill at the time. (Dionysius for his wall had employed 6000 men and 500 yoke of oxen.) The wall of 378 B.C. is evidence that Rome had emerged from the doldrums into which the Republic had begun to sink. Before 390 B.C. she had depended on men, not walls. The Gallic sack had proved her not invincible, and had also, as war emergencies will, produced a new sense of solidarity. The wall symbolizes it, and so does the bill passed in 367 B.C. (while the wall was still under construction), opening the highest office in the Republic to plebeians. Thus a reinforced oligarchy was formed, which by 338 B.C. could beat its once powerful enemies, the neighboring settlements linked in the Latin League; proudly (even arrogantly) mount the beaks of enemy ships on the new Rostra; and embark upon a career of Manifest Destiny in Italy. The Republic had reached adulthood. [Illustration: FIG. 3.10 Rome, Largo Argentina, temples. (G. Lugli, _Monumenti Antichi_, 3, fac. p. 32)]