Marcius wished to connect the newly fortified Janiculum Hill on the Etruscan side to the rest of Rome, augmenting the ferry that was there.

The Servian Wall goes along the bank of the river, is pierced by the Porta Trigemina (you can see the three openings) and starts up the Aventine.

One can readily see how unsuitable the river was for sea-going traffic and how necessary the port of Ostia would have been to Rome.

The legend of Publius Horatius Cocles at the bridge appears in many classical authors, most notably in Livy.

After the overthrow of the Roman monarchy in 509 BC, the exile of the royal family and the king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, and the establishment of the Roman Republic, Tarquinius sought military aid to regain the throne from the Etruscan king of Clusium, Lars Porsena.

Gracchus' choice of an escape route was probably intended to make use of the magical powers attributed to the bridge, but it failed.

On the Ides of May, the procession of the Argei went from the temple of Fors Fortuna, built by Servius Tullius, to the Pons Sublicius.

Alternately, Samuel Ball Platner explains that the ritual involved priests travelling to all (27 or 30) of the shrines (sacella) called Argei in the original 4 regions of Rome before arriving at the Pons Sublicius.

The pontiffs and the magistrates were carrying straw effigies of bound men, also called Argei, which the Vestals threw into the Tiber.

as an Etruscan magical military tactic, comparable to another in which a Gallic man and woman were buried alive in the Forum Boarium.

For an update, see Pier Luigi Tucci, ‘The Pons Sublicius: a reinvestigation,’ Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, volume 56-57 (2011–2012), pp.