There stood the meetinghouse of the “Leapers” (-curia Saliorum-) in which also the sacred shields of Mars were preserved, the sanctuary of the “Wolves” (-Lupercal-), and the dwelling of the priest of Jupiter.  On and near this hill the legend of the founding of the city placed the scenes of its leading incidents, and the straw-covered house of Romulus, the shepherd’s hut of his foster-father Faustulus, the sacred fig-tree towards which the cradle with the twins had floated, the cornelian cherry-tree that sprang from the shaft of the spear which the founder of the city had hurled from the Aventine over the valley of the Circus into this enclosure, and other such sacred relics were pointed out to the believer.  Temples in the proper sense of the term were still at this time unknown, and accordingly the Palatine has nothing of that sort to show belonging to the primitive age.  The public assemblies of the community were early transferred to another locality, so that their original site is unknown; only it may be conjectured that the free space round the -mundus-, afterwards called the -area Apollinis-, was the primitive place of assembly for the burgesses and the senate, and the stage erected over the -mundus- itself the primitive seat of justice of the Roman community.

The Seven Mounts

The “festival of the Seven Mounts” (-septimontium-), again, has preserved the memory of the more extended settlement which gradually formed round the Palatine.  Suburbs grew up one after another, each protected by its own separate though weaker circumvallation and joined to the original ring-wall of the Palatine, as in fen districts the outer dikes are joined on to the main dike.  The “Seven Rings” were, the Palatine itself; the Cermalus, the slope of the Palatine in the direction of the morass that extended between it and the Capitol towards the river (-velabrum-); the Velia, the ridge which connected the Palatine with the Esquiline, but in subsequent times was almost wholly obliterated by the buildings of the empire; the Fagutal, the Oppius, and the Cispius, the three summits of the Esquiline; lastly, the Sucusa, or Subura, a fortress constructed outside of the earthen rampart which protected the new town on the Carinae, in the depression between the Esquiline and the Quirinal beneath S. Pietro in Vincoli.  These additions, manifestly the results of a gradual growth, clearly reveal to a certain extent the earliest history of the Palatine Rome, especially when we compare with them the Servian arrangement of districts which was afterwards formed on the basis of this earliest division.

Oldest Settlements in the Palatine and Suburan Regions