Samuel Ball Platner, Thomas Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, PORTA RATUMENNA

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PORTA RATUMENNA

a gate said to have been named after an Etruscan charioteer, whose horses, after having won a race at Veii, were frightened, ran to Rome, threw their driver out and killed him at this gate, and finally stopped on the Capitolium in front of a terra cotta statue of Jupiter (Fest. 274, 275; Plin. NH viii. 61 ; Solin. xlv. 15; Plut. Poplic. 13). It has been explained by some as a gate in the Servian wall between the Capitoline and the Quirinal,¹ by others as an entrance into the Capitoline enclosure, but its site is entirely a matter of conjecture (Jord. i. I. 209-210, 271; RhM 1904, 412-413; Richter 44; Gilb. ii. 280), and it was probably not a city gate at all.

1 This view is maintained in BPW 1912, 1734-despite the fact that at that time there was no via Flaminia nor pons Mulvius, and that the road from Veii probably crossed the pons Sublicius-considerations which would not have occurred to those who handed down the story. For the name cf. Rosch. iv. 62.

A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Samuel Ball Platner. Thomas Ashby. London: Humphrey Milford. Oxford University Press. 1929.

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Samuel Ball Platner, Thomas Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome

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PORTA RATUMENNA