Rome's pre-Imperial circuit walls pose a particular problem of reconstruction: collectively, their 11 km course represents the largest single monument of the early city, but our understanding of this structure is based on an assemblage of several dozen disparate archaeological sites. After tracing the interpretation of these fragments from antiquity to the present, this article examines the literary, topographical and archaeological evidence for the wall's character and date. Ultimately, the non-archaeological data are inconclusive, and the material evidence seems to affirm an early phase (sixth century bc) focused on individual hilltops, rather than encompassing all hills within a full course. Following this logic, I continue to question the presence of a unified circuit wall at Rome prior to the mid-Republic (fourth century bc). A concluding section reviews the historical circumstances in support of this view.

Beta-adrenergic-mediated cyclic AMP accumulation was reduced in lymphocytes obtained from depressed patients from that observed in an age- and sex-matched group of control subjects. Among the depressed patients, those not responding to treatment showed significantly lower pretreatment responses to isoproterenol compared with patients who exhibited significant clinical improvement during antidepressant treatment. Late-night (terminal) insomnia was significantly associated with the blunted response to beta-adrenergic stimulation. In depressed patients with the lowest isoproterenol response, the effect of forskolin (which acts distal to the receptor and directly stimulates the catalytic subunit) on cyclic AMP accumulation was also significantly decreased. This suggests that post-receptor modulations of signal amplification also play a role in the reduced response to beta-adrenergic stimulation in depression.