The Late Republican-era room preserved on the grounds of the "horti", termed the "auditorium of Maecenas" in modernity, was most likely a triclinium, functioning as a private banqueting hall attached to residential quarters. The structure was built directly into the Servian Wall, as the city had long outgrown the defensive fortifications, and on top of the "agger". Verse of Horace attests to the domestic architectural takeover of the Servian Wall in Esquiline garden estates, as when he writes of a "stroll on the sunny rampart."