anciently the Pons Æmilius. This bridge, intended to unite the nearer
bank of the river with Trastevere, but rendered impassable by the fall
of several arches in 1598, whence its name of the Ponte Rotto, was
commenced in the censorship of M. Æmilius Lepidus and M. Fulvius
Nobilior, in the year of the city 573, and was completed by P. Scipio
Africanus and L. Mummius. From the first of these it took its name.
"Marcus Fulvius made contracts for piers for a bridge over the Tiber;
on which piers Publius Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius, censors
many years afterwards, caused the arches to be raised" (Livy, xl. 51).
It is the same from which the body of Elagabalus was thrown with a
stone attached to it, after having been dragged through the Circus.
In January 1886, to the eternal disgrace of the acting mayor, Duke
Torlonia, and the municipal authorities of Rome, the remaining half of
the oldest bridge over the Tiber was wantonly and unnecessarily
destroyed in the works going on for the embankment of the river, the
city fathers leaving one arch in the centre of the river as a monument
of their folly. From this arch a suspension bridge is to be thrown to
the Trastevere side. The Cloaca Maxima has been diverted into the
Tiber below S. Paul's, in order to prevent the back-wash into the
city. _A little lower down was_