The _Palace of Augustus_ was begun soon after the battle of Actium, and gradually increased in size, till the whole valley was blocked up by it, and its roofs became level with the hill-sides. Part of the ground which it covered had previously been occupied by the villa of Catiline.[107] Here Suetonius says that Augustus occupied the same bed-room for forty years. Before the entrance of the palace it was ordained by the Senate, B.C. 26, that two bay-trees should be planted, in remembrance of the citizens he had preserved, while an oak wreath was placed above the gate in commemoration of his victories. "Singula dum miror, video fulgentibus armis Conspicuos postes, tectaque digna deo. An Jovis hæc, dixi, domus est? Quod ut esse putarem, Augurium menti querna corona dabat. Cujus ut accepi dominum, non fallimur, inquam: Et magni rerum est hanc Jovis esse domum. Cur tamen apposita velatur janua lauro? Cingit et Augustas arbor opaca fores?" _Ovid, Trist._ i. 33. "State Palatinæ laurus; prætextaque quercu Stet domus; æternos tres habet una deos." _Fast._ iv. 953. It was before the gate of this palace that Augustus upon one day in every year sate as a beggar, receiving alms from the passers-by, in obedience to a vision that he should thus appease Nemesis. Upon the top of this building of Augustus, Vespasian built his palace in A.D. 70, not only using the walls of the older palace as a support for his own, but filling the chambers of the earlier building entirely up with earth, so that they became a solid massive foundation. The ruins which we visit are thus for the most part those of the palace of Vespasian, but from one of its halls we can descend into rooms underneath excavated from the palace of Augustus. The three projecting rostra which we now see in front of the palace are restorations by Signor Rosa. The palace on the Palatine was not the place where the emperors generally lived. They resided at their villas, and came into the town to the Palace of the Cæsars for the transaction of public business. Thus this palace was, as it were, the St. James's of Rome. The fatigue and annoyance of a public arrival every morning, amid the crowd of clients who always waited upon the imperial footsteps, was naturally very great, and to obviate this the emperors made use of a subterranean passage which ran round the whole building, and by which they were enabled to arrive unobserved, and not to present themselves in public till their appearance upon the rostra in front of the building to receive the morning salutations of their people. If we ascend a winding path to the right, to the garden which now covers the greater part of the hill Germale, we shall find a staircase which descends on the left to join this passage, following which, we will ascend, with the emperor, into his palace.