The marble plan of the Via Anicia and the Temple of Castor and Pollux in Circo Flaminio: the state of the question

Abstract

Much has been written in the past three decades about the marble plan found in the Via Anicia, which depicts the late Republican Temple of Castor and Pollux in Circo Flaminio, and its importance for the study of temple architecture and ancient cartography. Far less attention has been paid to the identification of the temple in the topography of the southern Campus Martius. In 1996 an excavation carried out in Piazza delle Cinque Scole brought to light the remains of a ‘monumental building’ that has been identified resolutely by the excavators as the Temple of Castor and Pollux. In this article, after a survey of what is known from the marble plan and previous excavations, I explain why my alternative location of the temple better fits the evidence from the Via Anicia plan and the 1996 excavation. I also shed new light on the area of the circus from the late Republican period to late antiquity and on transverse cella temples.