The following paper is based on notes and studies made in the session 1914–15 during my tenure of the Gilchrist Studentship at the British School at Rome. It is a first, though necessarily incomplete, attempt to reconstruct out of the fragments preserved at the Museo di Villa Giulia the picture of one at least of the temples that were once the glory of Falerii.

I have to thank Dr. Ashby, Director of the British School in Rome, for his guidance in questions of the topography of Falerii, and Mrs. Arthur Strong, Assistant Director, for drawing my attention in the first instance to the subject of terra-cottas, and for the help and encouragement she has all along given to this paper.

In the present volume of the Papers of the British School at Rome I continue my description of certain groups of copies of ancient paintings preserved in English Collections (see Papers, vol. vii. pp. 1–62).

The two volumes of drawings at Holkham Hall, the property of the Earl of Leicester, were described generally in vol. vii. pp. 1–5. The coloured drawings and the pencil sketches with colour-notes are alike the work of Francesco Bartoli (ca. 1675–ca. 1730), the son of the better-known Pietro Sante Bartoli. As to the character of his work, I may refer the reader to vol. vii. l.c. The numbers in brackets after the serial numbers are those which are found on the drawings themselves.

Mr. Baddeley's volume of drawings executed by Pietro Sante Bartoli for Cardinal Camillo Massimi was described by me in the Papers, vol. vi. p. 489.

The drawings at Chatsworth I have attributed (vol. vii. p. 3) to Gaetano Piccini. My attention was called to them by Mrs. S. A. Strong.

The Palazzo Odescalchi, a portion of which has served as the residence of the British School for a period of some fourteen years, is among the more remarkable of the palaces of Rome, both for its architectural qualities and its historical associations. Situated as it is in the centre of the city, close to the Piazza Venezia, on the west side of the spacious Piazza dei SS. Apostoli, and opposite the famous basilica which gives its name to the square, it is yet a little removed from any of the main lines of traffic, which pass close by it without actually touching it, and has thus preserved much of that quiet and stately beauty which must inevitably be in some measure sacrificed in the rush and bustle of modern life.

It has seemed to me that it would be a pity that the School should sever its connection with this splendid building without some attempt being made to give a short historical account of it, and I have therefore put together the material that I have been able to collect. My sincere acknowledgments are due to Prince Odescalchi, to Don Fabrizio Colonna, Prince of Paliano, and to Prince Chigi for their kind permission to examine the archives of their respective families, in which, however, there are unfortunately a number of lacunae.

This second series of the neglected wall-paintings of ancient Rome follows on that published in the last number of these Papers (vol. vii. 1914, p. 121 ff.). As before, the coloured plates are from water-colour drawings by Mr. F. G. Newton executed in the summer of 1913. The paintings, now reproduced on Plates III.–IX., adorn certain rooms in a private house in the Via de' Cerchi, the back of which is built against the southern slope of the Palatine, while the front abuts almost on the structures of the north-east end of the Circus Maximus; its vestibule, indeed, must have touched the northern line of the road that ran between the outer walls of the Circus and the hill, coinciding practically with the modern street.

Long before the Romans had established the foundations of their power in Southern Italy, there must necessarily have existed numerous natural routes of communication between the principal centres of population, which were later utilised by the conquerors as they developed and civilised what they had won with their swords. As the Romans advanced from point to point, planting in the best strategical positions military colonies, which not only secured freshly conquered territory, but also served as bases from which advances against tribes, still unsubjugated, could be directed, it was essential that each new outpost, particularly if it had been established in an area in which there still remained an openly menacing foe, should be connected with a base of strength and security by an easy means of communication.