Pagan and Christian Rome. Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani
Livy remarks, "it is not worth while to prove or disprove these things." We are content to know that within the citadel of Veii, the "Piazza d' Armi" of the present day, there was a temple of great veneration and antiquity, and that it was dedicated to Juno. Both points have been proved and illustrated by modern discoveries.
The Cliffs under the Citadel of Veii (now called Piazza d' Armi).
The ex-votos of the Latin sanctuaries were, as I have just remarked, buried in the favissæ; but at Veii, because of the danger and the difficulty of excavating them within the citadel, and in solid rock, the ex-votos were carted away and thrown from the edge of the cliff into the valley below. The place selected was the north side of the rocky ridge connecting the citadel with the city, which ridge towers one hundred and ninety-eight feet above the cañon of the Cremera. The mass of objects thrown over here in the course of centuries has produced a slope which reaches nearly to the top of the cliff. The reader will appreciate the importance of the deposit from the fact that the mine has been exploited ever since the time of Alexander VII. (1655-1667); and in the spring of 1889, when the most recent excavations were made, by the late empress Theresa of Brazil, the mass of terra-cottas brought to the surface was such that work had to be given up after a few days, because there was no more space in the farmhouse for the storage of the booty. Pietro Sante Bartoli left an account of the excavations made on the same spot by cardinal Chigi, during the pontificate of Alexander VII. Modern topographers do not seem to be aware of this fact; it is not mentioned by Dennis, or Gell, or Nibby, although it is the only evidence left of the discovery of the famous sanctuary. "Not far from the Isola Farnese a hill [the Piazza d' Armi], rises from the valley of the Cremera, on the plateau of which cardinal Chigi has discovered a beautiful temple with fluted columns of the Ionic order. The frieze is carved with trophies and panoplies of various kinds; the reliefs of the pediment represent the emperor Antoninus[?] sacrificing a ram and a sow, and although the panels lie scattered around the temple, and the figures are broken, apparently no important piece is missing. There is also an altar four feet high, with figures of Etruscan type, which was removed to the Palazzo Chigi [now Odescalchi]. The columns and marbles of the temple were bought by cardinal Falconieri to build and ornament a chapel in the church of S. Giovanni de' Fiorentini.... Not far from the temple a stratum of ex-votos has been found, so rich that the whole of Rome is now overrun with terra-cottas. Every part of the human body is represented,—heads, hands, feet, fingers, eyes, noses, mouths, tongues, entrails, lungs, symbols of fecundity, whole figures of men and women, horses, oxen, sheep, pigs,—in such quantities as to make several hundred cartloads. There were also bronze statuettes, sacred utensils, and mirror-cases, which were all stolen or destroyed. I have known of one workman breaking marvellous objects (cose insigni) into small fragments to melt them into handles for knives."
When the farms of Isola Farnese and Vaccareccia, in which the remains of Veii and of its extensive cemeteries are situated, were sold, a few years ago, by the empress of Brazil to the marchese Ferraioli, the parties concerned agreed that the right of excavating and the objects discovered should belong to her, for a limited number of years, up to 1891, I believe. The first campaign, opened January 2, 1889, and closed in June, must be considered as one of the most valuable contributions to the study of Etruscan civilization which have been supplied of late to students, either by chance or by design. Had the empress been able to carry out her plans for two or three years more, the whole city and necropolis would have been explored, surveyed, and illustrated, in the most strictly scientific manner. Political events and the death of this noble woman brought the enterprise to a close. To come back, however, to the bed of votive objects in terra-cotta and bronze, I was able to make a rough estimate of its dimensions, which are two hundred and fifty feet in length, fifty feet in width, and from three to four in depth; nearly forty-four thousand cubic feet. The objects collected in two weeks number four thousand; the fragments buried again as worthless, double that number. The heads of veiled goddesses alone amount to four hundred and forty-seven, of which three hundred and seventy are full-faced, the rest in profile. The vein contains fifty-two varieties of types; to Bartoli's list, we must add busts, masks, arms, breasts, wombs, spines, bowels, lungs, toes, figures cut open across the breast and showing the anatomy, figures approximately human, or male and female embryos ending like the trunk of a tree with stumps corresponding to the feet, figures of hermaphrodites, human torsos modelled purposely without heads, arms without hands, legs without feet, hands holding apples or jewel-caskets, figurines of mothers nursing twins, beautiful life-sized statues of draped women, with movable hands and feet, rats, wild boars, sucking pigs, cows, rams, apples and other fruits, and "marbles."
The first structures dedicated to the gods in Rome were called aræ, and had the shape of a cube of masonry, in the centre of a square platform. They were modelled, in a measure, on the pattern of the Pelasgic hierones, in which the territory of Tibur and Signia is especially abundant. The aræ best known in Roman history and topography are six in number, namely, the ara maxima Herculis; the Roma quadrata; the ara Aii Locutii; the ara Ditis et Proserpinæ; the ara pacis Augustæ; and the ara incendii Neroniani. The oldest of these were built of rough stones; those of later periods took the characteristic shape of the altar of Verminus, represented on page 52 of my "Ancient Rome," and of the altar raised to Vedjovis by the members of the Julian family, at Bovillæ, their birthplace, where it was found by the Colonnas in 1823. It is now in the villa of that family on the Quirinal.40 In imperial times the conventional shape was preserved, with the addition of two pulvini, or volutes, on the opposite edges of the cornice, as represented in the illustration on page 35 of "Ancient Rome" (a marble altar found at Ostia).
A Pelasgic hieron, or platform of altar, at Segni.
Round Temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium.
The Ara Maxima Herculis. This altar, the oldest in Rome, was raised in memory of the visit of Hercules to our country. Tacitus and Pliny attribute its construction to Evander the Arcadian, forgetting that in prehistoric times the tract of land on which the altar stood, between the Forum Boarium and the Circus Maximus, was submerged by the waters of the Velabrum. It was at all events a very ancient structure, held in great veneration. Its rough shape and appearance were never changed, as shown by a precious—yet unpublished—sketch by Baldassarre Peruzzi which I found among his autographs in Florence. A round temple was built near the altar, in later times, of which we know two particulars: first, that it had a mysterious power of repulsion for dogs and flies;41 second, that it contained, among other works of art, a picture by the poet Pacuvius, next in antiquity and value to the one painted by Fabius Pictor, in the Temple of Health, in 303 b. c.42 The Temple of Hercules, the Ara Maxima, and the bronze statue of the hero-god were discovered, in a good state of preservation, during the pontificate of Sixtus IV., between the apse of S. Maria in Cosmedin (the Temple of Ceres), and the Circus Maximus. We have a description of the discovery by Pomponio Leto, Albertini, and Fra Giocondo da Verona; and excellent drawings by Baldassarre Peruzzi.43
Except the bronze statue, and a few votive inscriptions, which were removed to the Capitoline Museum, everything—temple, altar, and platform—was levelled to the ground by the illustrious Vandals of the Renaissance.
The Roma Quadrata. According to the ancient ritual, the founder of a city, after tracing the sulcus primigenius or furrow which marked its limits, buried the plough, the instruments of sacrifice, and other votive offerings, in a round hole, excavated in the centre of the marked space. The round hole was called mundus, and its location was indicated by a heap of stones, which in course of time took the shape of a square altar. The mundus of ancient Rome was located in the very heart of the Palatine, in front of the Temple of Apollo, and the altar upon it was named the Roma Quadrata. This name has been much discussed, and it has even been applied to the Palatine city itself, although
Concerning this celebrated monument, see Tambroni and Poletti:
Pliny,
A copy of this celebrated picture, dating from the second century b. c., has been found in a tomb on the Esquiline. It was published in facsimile and illustrated by Visconti in the
See the