Pagan and Christian Rome. Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani
On my return to Rome, in the spring of 1887, every trace of the monument had disappeared under the embankment of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. I questioned foremen and workmen, I consulted the notebooks of the contractors, every day I visited the excavations which were still in progress, on each side of the Corso, for building the Cavalletti and Bassi palaces, and lastly, I examined the "column with foliage carved upon its surface," which in the mean time had been removed to the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitol. This marble fragment, the only one saved from the excavations, gave me the clue to the mystery. It was not a column, it was a pulvinus, or volute, of a colossal marble altar, worthy of being compared, in size and perfection of work, with the Altar of Peace discovered under the Palazzo Fiano, with that of the Antonines discovered under the Monte Citorio, and with other such monumental structures. There was then no hesitation in determining the nature of the discoveries made in the Corso Vittorio Emanuele; an altar had been found there, and this altar must have been the one sacred to Dis and Proserpina, as no other is mentioned in history in the northwest section of the Campus Martius.
The drawings which illustrate my account of the discovery45 prove that the altar rose from a platform twelve feet square, approached on all sides by three or four marble steps, that platform and altar were enclosed by three lines of wall at an interval of thirty-six feet from one another, and that on the east side of the square ran a euripus, or channel, eleven feet wide, and four feet deep, lined with stone blocks, the incline of which towards the Tiber is about 1:100. This last detail proves that when the rough altar of Volesus Sabinus was succeeded by the later noble structure, the pool was drained, and its feeding springs were led into the euripus, so that the patients seeking a cure for their ailments could bathe in or drink the miracle-working waters with greater ease. No attention whatever was paid to the discovery at the time it took place. Instead of reaching the ancient level, the excavation for the main sewer of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele was stopped at the wrong place, within three feet of the pavement; consequently whatever fragments of the altar, of inscriptions, or of works of art, were lying on the marble floor will lie there forever, as the building of the palaces on either side of the Corso, and the construction of the Corso itself, with its costly sewers, sidewalks, etc., have made further research impossible, at least with our present means.
Concerning the celebration which took place around this altar in the year 17 b. c., we already possessed ample information from such materials as the oracle of the Sibyl, referred to by Zosimus, the Carmen Sæculare of Horace, and the legends and designs on the medals struck for the occasion; but the official report, discovered September 20, 1890, produces an altogether different impression; it enables us actually to take part in the pageant, to follow with rapture Horace as he leads a chorus of fifty-four young men and girls of patrician birth, singing the hymn which he composed for the occasion.46
There is such a tone of simplicity and common-sense, such a display of method and mutual respect between Augustus, the Senate, and the Quindecemviri, in the official transactions which preceded, attended and followed the celebration, in the resolutions passed by the several bodies, in the proclamations addressed to the people, and in the arrangements for the festivities, which a mass of a million or more spectators was expected to attend, that a lesson in civic dignity could be learned from this report by modern governments and corporations.
The official report begins, or rather began (the first lines are missing), with the request presented by the Quindecemviri to the Senate to take their proposal into consideration, and grant the necessary funds, followed by a decree of the Senate accepting the proposal and inviting Augustus to take the direction of the festivities. The request was addressed to the Senate on February 17, by Marcus Agrippa, president of the Quindecemviri, standing before the seat of the consuls. What a scene to witness! We can picture to ourselves the two consuls, Gaius Furnius and Junius Silanus, clad in their official robes, listening to the speech of the great statesman, who is supported by twenty colleagues, all ex-consuls, and chosen among the noblest, richest, and most gallant patricians of the age. The Senate agrees that the preparations for the festival, the building of the temporary stages, hippodromes, tribunes, and scaffoldings shall be executed by the contractors (redemptores), and that the treasury officials shall provide the funds.
Lines 1-23 contain a letter from Augustus to the Quindecemviri detailing the programme of the ceremonies, the number and quality of persons who shall take part in it, the dates and hours, and the number and character of the victims. Two clauses of the imperial manifesto are especially noteworthy. First, that during the three days, June 1-3, the courthouses shall be closed, and justice shall not be administered. Second, that ladies who are wearing mourning shall lay aside that sign of grief for this occasion. The date of the manifesto is March 24.
Upon the receipt of this document the Quindecemviri meet and pass several resolutions: that the rules regarding the ceremonies shall be made known to the public by advertisement (albo propositæ); that the mornings of May 26, 27, and 28, shall be set apart for the distributio suffimentorum, in which the Quindecemviri were wont to distribute among the citizens torches, sulphur and bitumen, for purification; and the mornings of May 29, 30, and 31, for the frugum acceptio, or distribution of wheat, barley, and beans. To avoid overcrowding, four centres of distribution are named, and each of them is placed under the supervision of four members of the college, making a total of sixteen delegates. The places indicated in the programme are the platform of the Capitolium, the area in front of the Temple of Jupiter Tonans, the Portico of the Danaids on the Palatine, and the Temple of Diana on the Aventine.
On May 23 the Senate meets in the Septa Julia—the ruins of which still exist, under the Palazzo Doria and the church of S. Maria in Via Lata—and passes two resolutions. Horace's hymn, vv. 17-20, alludes to the first: "O Goddess, whether you choose the title of Lucina or of Genitalis, multiply our offspring, and prosper the decree of the Senate in relation to the giving of women in wedlock, and the matrimonial laws." Among the penalties imposed on men and women who remained single between the ages of twenty and fifty years, was the prohibition against attending public festivities and ceremonies of state. The Senate, considering the extraordinary case of the Ludi Sæculares, which none among the living had seen or would ever see again, removes this prohibition. The second resolution provides for the erection of two commemorative pillars, one of bronze, the other of marble, upon which the official report of the celebration shall be engraved. The bronze pillar is probably lost forever, but the marble one is that recovered on the banks of the Tiber, September 20, 1890, the inscription on which I am endeavoring to explain.
The celebration in the strict sense of the word began at the second hour of the night of May 31. Sacrifices were offered to the Fates, on altars erected between the Tarentum and the banks of the Tiber, where S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini now stands; and the other ceremonies were performed on a wooden stage which was illuminated by lights and fires. This temporary theatre was not provided with seats, and the report calls it "a stage without a theatre." In the performances of the next day and in those of June 2 and 3, which took place on the Capitol and the Palatine, the following order was observed in the ceremonial pageant; first came Augustus as Emperor and Pontifex Maximus, next the Consuls, the Senate, the Quindecemviri and other colleges of priests, then followed the Vestal Virgins, and a group of one hundred and ten matrons (as many as there were years in the sæculum) selected from among the most exemplary matres familiæ above twenty-five years of age.
Twenty-seven boys and twenty-seven girls of patrician descent whose parents were both living (patrimi et matrimi) were enlisted on June 3, to sing the hymn composed expressly by Horace. "Carmen composuit Q. Horatius Flaccus," so the report says (line 149). The first stanzas of the beautiful canticle were sung when the procession was marching from the Temple of Apollo to that of Jupiter Capitolinus, the middle portion on the Capitol, and the last on the way back to the Palatine. The accompaniments were played by the orchestra and the trumpeters of the official choir (tibicines et fidicines qui sacris publicis præsto sunt). The wealth of magnificence and beauty which the Romans beheld on the morning of June 3, 17 b. c., we can see as in a dream, but it baffles description. Imagine the group of fifty-four young patricians clad in snow-white tunics, crowned with flowers, and waving branches of laurel, led by Horace down the Vicus Apollinis (the street which led from the Summa Sacra
See Lanciani:
This inscription is of such exceptional interest that it is given, as edited by Mommsen, at the close of this volume.