Gold Mine

At war's end, Rome had a subway tunnel that stretched, Romans said, "from nowhere to nowhere." It began under the Colosseum and meandered five miles southwest to the site of a projected Fascist fairground outside the city. Last year the city fathers decided to complete the project by extending it 1 1/4 miles, from the Colosseum to the central railway station.

Archeologists fought the idea. Using ancient and often inaccurate maps, they protested that the new tunnel would smash through the unexplored remains of the palace of Marcus Aurelius' wife Faustina. It might even barge into the buried red-light district of the 2nd and 3rd Centuries, A.D. Cried scholarly Dr. Roberto Lanzara: "Builders will strike something of great archeological and historical interest every 100 yards." But the engineers won.

At first, the digging went well enough. Then the archeologists were proved right. An excavation a city block square near the railway station opened up an antiquarian's gold mine. It included a palace (probably Faustina's), public baths (with fixtures for hot & cold water), and the antique remains of bordellos.

As the digging went on, outraged archeologists loudly protested. The government relented, told the aroused historians that they could study findings on the spot, remove what they could. They descended like locusts, got in the workmen's way, spent hours and days photographing, sketching, and removing treasures of the past. Said a cigar-chewing truck driver: "I don't understand why these people make such a fuss ... It keeps my truck waiting hours."

Last week Subway Contractor Mario Luccio decided to get tough. National Fine Arts Director Guglielmo de Angelis d'Ossat begged in vain for more time. Luccio shook his head. While archeologists disconsolately stared, the work went on again full blast.

Experts believed that the world's loss would not be too great. The finds mostly corroborated evidence unearthed at other sites. Most significant discovery: remnants of the Servian wall, built in 387 B.C., which gave new clues to the urban layout of early Rome. Most interesting discovery: extensive graffiti (scurrilous wall scribblings) in the brothels--some in parody of Virgil and Horace, some in Greek. Said one delighted archeologist: the "richest collection" of classic wall pornography ever. The archeologists buried most of the collection again, under lock & key.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.