ROMA QUADRATA-1
a later name of the four-cornered Palatine city in augural theory. Varro ap. Solin. i. 17: dictaque primum est Roma quadrata, quod ad aequilibrium foret posita. ea incipit a silva quae est in area Apollinis, et ad supercilium scalarum Caci habet terminum, ubi tugurium fuit Faustuli. In this description the points where the augural circuit began and ended must be meant: they can only have been diagonally opposite if we accept Hilsen's theory as to the temple of Apollo (HJ 65). Cf. Plut. Rom. g; Dionys. ii. 65 (the temple of Vesta τῆς τετραγώνου καλουμένης ῾Ρώμης...ἐκτός ἐστιϝ Appian, frg. i. 4; and see POMERIUM.In the extended sense the term may be of comparatively late origin (BPW 1903, 1645), for it could not arise until Palatium and Cermalus were one; and in the lists of the ARGEORUM SACRARIA (q.v.), which date probably from the third century B.C., they are still separate. The comparison of the outline of the Palatine with that of the Terremare is specious, but is clearer in the plans than on the site, which has been much transformed by the great imperial buildings, which have given it a rectangular outline.
See Jord. i. I. 162-178; Mitt. 1896, 210-212; 1926, 212-228; HJ 35; AJP 1901, 420-425; Pais, Ancient Legends, 224-234; AJA 1909, 172- 183; JRS 1914, 222-225 (according to which the imperial Roma quadrata was a square plot of ground containing the temple of Apollo, the atrium beside it (see DOMUS AUGUSTI) and the area in front of it).