DECREE OF THE SENATE ON THE MOUNTAIN CANTON
   
2nd-1st century BC  )
 

 
( Johnson, Coleman-Norton & Bourne, Ancient Roman Statutes, Austin, 1961, p. 33, n. 37
 ).

 

 
      The editors of this inscribed pillar, found in a cemetery near the Esquiline Hill in Rome, Italy, in 1875, generally consider that its subject matter is part of a senatorial resolution containing provisions about safeguarding from desecration a burial place in the vicinity. Of the five cantons with fixed boundaries identified in or outside Rome of the republican period the Mountain Canton (Pagus Montanus) was that community outside the Esquiline Gate and adjacent to the Esquiline Hill, now the heights of Santa Maria Maggiore within the urban limits of the modern City.
 

 
ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
 

 
      . . . and these men shall provide and shall guard the place at the direction of the plebeian aediles, whoever they may be. There shall be made in these places and areas neither burning sites nor fireplaces for burning ; and the person who holds these places, bought or rented from the Mountain Canton, shall not make a dungheap or throw earth within these places ; and that, if he makes a dungheap in these places or throws earth onto these places, against . . . shall be . . . with . . . sesterces . . . a laying on of hand and a seizure of pledge . . .