Campus Martius Research Articles

PIRANESI'S CIRCUSES AND CARCERES: THE NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST STATE OF THE CAMPUS MARTIUS PLAN AND ITS ANTIQUARIAN CONTEXT

This essay takes as its starting point the newly discovered first state print of the large topographical plan of the Campus Martius of ancient Rome made by Giovanni Battista Piranesi in the years around 1760. There are significant differences between the first and the more common second state (which was bound into the Campus Martius volume published in 1762) and they concern the form of the circuses, six of which are included by Piranesi in his plan. This essay will investigate those changes and propose a hypothesis regarding the motivations for them by looking at the antiquarian context with which Piranesi was familiar and taking into consideration his enthusiasm for on-site examination of ancient remains. Particularly relevant are the ruins of the circus of Maxentius on the via Appia just outside the city, a site which preoccupied Piranesi at various times throughout his career in Rome. The antiquarian material examined includes earlier writings on circuses, which had a marked effect on the way that Piranesi drew his circuses in the first state of the plan and on the changes he made, clearly visible in the copper plates from which the prints were made. The circus Maximus and circus of Maxentius as described by Pirro Ligorio, Onofrio Panvinio and Raffaele Fabretti are key to the genesis and development of the Campus plan.

One, Two, Three! Can Everybody Hear Me? Acoustics of Roman Contiones. Case Studies of the Capitoline Hill and the Temple of Bellona in Rome

Abstract Rhetoric was one of the cornerstones of Roman education and public speaking, the essence of being a Roman politician. The speakers attempted to captivate the audience with their style and convince them of their arguments. Studying the audience is therefore just as important as investigating the speakers and their speeches. The aim of this article is to estimate the number of people who could intelligibly hear a speaker delivering a speech from two speaking platforms located in the city of Rome: the podium of the Temple of Bellona in the Campus Martius (in the Late Republican and Late Augustan periods) and the Capitoline Temple. To do this, we built virtual reconstructions of both venues according to the current state of knowledge about them, taking into account the geometry of the space as well as the materials from which they were built. On the models thus prepared, we carried out acoustic simulations for three different levels of background noise (36, 49, and 55 dBA), resulting in Speech Transmission Index maps. The results became the basis upon which we estimated the size of the maximum potential crowds that could hear speech intelligibly, using two methods based on the behaviour of contemporary crowds. We further compared our results with those of previous studies that concern other speaking platforms in Rome.

Visual and Physical Degradation of the Black and White Mosaic of a Roman Domus under Palazzo Valentini in Rome: A Preliminary Study.

Palazzo Valentini, the institutional head office of Città Metropolitana di Roma Capitale, stands in in a crucial position in the Roman archaeological and urban contexts, exactly between the Fora valley, Quirinal Hill slopes, and Campus Martius. It stands on a second-century A.D. complex to which belong, between other archeological remains, two richly decorated aristocratic domus. One of these buildings, the domus A, presents an outward porticoed room with a fourth-century AD central impluvium (open air part of the atrium designed to carry away rainwater) with a black/white tiled mosaic pavement, the preservation status of which is compromised by an incoherent degradation product that has caused gradual detachment of the mosaic tiles. To identify the product and determine the causes of degradation, samples of the product were taken and subjected to SEM-EDS, XRF, NMR, FT-IR and GC-MS analyses. The findings reported in this study can help restorers, archaeologists and conservation scientists in order to improve knowledge about the Roman mosaic, its construction phases, conservation problems and proper solutions.

Visual Ekphrasis and the Articulation of the Past

This essay focuses on examples of graphic representations of architecture as they appear in architectural treatises and published studies of particular buildings or sites. I argue that these images are a form of writing, as they have syntactical and linguistic qualities. In this way, images are a kind of visual ekphrasis of the architecture they describe. These visual ekphrases of architecture make the past a place that is distinct from that which text-based antiquarian studies articulate, opening up questions of how we perceive space and time and the ways in which they can be visually described. I concentrate on a moment in the mid-eighteenth century when the past also extended geographically, as travel in Greece became possible and revealed a new past with different scholarly legacies from the more familiar ancient Roman examples. The resulting Graeco-Roman controversy that dominated architectural discourse shows us how visual descriptions were used as evidence in different aesthetic debates and how they pulled architecture into the present, enabling it to be used part of architectural practice. My discussion focuses on two publications which both appeared in 1762: James Stuart and Nicholas Revett’s The Antiquities of Athens: Measured and Delineated, and Giambattista Piranesi’s Ichnographiam Campi Martii antiquae urbis (Ichnographia of the Campus Martius of the ancient city). This line of enquiry allows us new understandings of how images operated as an inspiration to architects’ imagination, and of the ways in which they influence how histories can be formulated.

Xenodochivm aniciorum


 
 
 
 In late antique Rome there existed a particular type of building, usually connected with the great domus of the Christian aristocracy, known as xenodochium whose aim was to provide hospitality for pilgrims. Some recent studies by R. Santangeli Valenzani on this argument provide a wider range of data (in particular regarding the archaeological evidence) and today allow us to confront the problem of the identification of one of these, the Xenodochium Aniciorum. Some inscriptions, from a small area of the Campus Martius, around Via delle Botteghe Oscure, once the site of the small church, which no longer exists, of S. Lucia in Calcarario (identified by Hülsen with S. Lucia in Xenodochio Aniciorum), suggests that it was located in this area, occupied in antiquity by the two porticus Minuciae (vetus and frumentaria), corresponding respectively to Largo Argentina and to the colonnaded area imme- diately to the east of the latter. The detailed study of the late antique and early medieval remains preserved in the ‘sacred area’ of Largo Argentina, realized for the first time by Santangeli Valenzani, has permitted the reconstruction of the building complex, which the author identifies with a monastery. Nevertheless, given the pres- ence in the immediate surroundings, within the ancient building of the Diribitorium, of a large, late antique aristocratic residence, which can be recognized as one of the domus of the Anicii, it is more probable that the complex of Largo Argentina is to be identified with the Xenodochium Aniciorum itself.
 
 
 

Non-invasive analyses of a multi-stratified archaeological and historical site: the Crypta Balbi case-study

Abstract A number of non-invasive techniques were used to study the state of conservation of an important archaeological site in the centre of Rome, the Crypta Balbi (part of the Museo Nazionale Romano), so-called after proconsul Lucio Cornelio Balbo, who in the year 13 BC built here a theatre in the Campus Martius [1]. Excavations are still ongoing, so new relevant archaeological findings could still be discovered. At the same time, this involves that each new finding must be conserved and preserved. To this aim, extensive monitoring campaigns are essential. The reconstructions in Figure 1 and 2 show the structure of the monument during the II century (imperial age) and after, until the 15th century [1]. Figure 3 shows the studied site as it is today. The theatre and the Crypta (a kind of courtyard) are located within the red dotted circles. Today it is close to a tramway in the city centre, that induces air pollution and vibrations potentially putting at risk this unique archaeological site. In order to study its various layers, a number of non-invasive techniques have been used. Among them: infrared cameras for the thermographic analysis, velocimeters to evaluate impact of vibrations, microclimatic parameters acquisition, kinematic analysis, digital video elaboration by motion magnification method. Substantially, this monitoring campaign was based on non-contact investigations in order to eliminate any danger to damage the elements of the monument, which provided useful insights. Thermal images of the monument were captured using a Flir T440 thermal infrared camera. Microclimatic parameters and data of weather stations were collected for correlation to experimental ambient vibration and NDTs data. In particular, air temperature and humidity were monitored by two MSR145 mini data loggers. Seismographs type SL06 SARA Instruments digital recorders equipped with SS02 triaxial velocimeters were used for the vibration monitoring. Each seismograph is independent and provided with battery for the energy supply and with a GPS antenna for synchronization, so that data from different instruments can be compared in the time domain. The instrumentation is very accurate, in fact the sensitivity is 400 V/m/s and the frequency range from 0.2 to 50 Hz, sampling frequency set at 200 Hz. Data were acquired from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. Motion Magnification (MM) is a recently developed video processing methodology [2, 6, 5]. MM [2 - 6] acts like a microscope in digital videos, magnifying motions hardly visible with the naked eye, but leaving unchanged the topology of the images.

The emperor Augustus and the Theater of Marcellus: the representation of the theater in the Roman urban space (1st century BC)

In the transitional period between Republic and Principate, Roman's urban image was used by Emperor Augustus as a means of legitimizing both his new government and his own image. As an heir of Julius Caesar, the Princeps aim was to modernize the city by building grand public monuments, particularly the southern shore of the Campus Martius, which was promoted to the experimental category and, on account of it, received various constructions. Among these is that of the Theater of Marcellus, one of the largest theaters in the Roman Empire. Despite the logical changes inherent over time and the restorations carried out, the monumental structure of the theater remains to the present day. Thus, by deepening the study of the physical space of the theater, we seek to reflect on the construction of Marcellus' Theater, highlighting the importance of its location within the Urbs' planning. By seeking to convey an image of power, as well as that of a good princeps, Augustus built the Campus Martius almost as a showcase for imperial architecture and the physical manifestation of Roman's prominence.

The Capitoline theatre

This article argues that the Capitoline theatre envisioned by Julius Caesar in 45 BC among a series of ambitious projects for the city of Rome was to be located along the NW slope of the hill, between the Arx and the Capitolium, thus facing the Campus Martius and the theatre of Pompey. The latest geological analysis of the hill may even suggest that the building site was cleared: but, apparently, the construction was interrupted upon the dictator’s death. Eventually, for both practical and political reasons, Augustus chose a different location for a completely new project, the future theatre of Marcellus, which therefore should not be included into Caesar’s schemes for Rome. The proposed location of the Capitoline theatre implies a strong influence from the Hellenistic world: in particular, its relationship with the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus echoes that of the theatre and the Altar of Zeus on the acropolis of Pergamon. Further considerations flesh out Caesar’s project in an effort to establish when the theatre was conceived, why its location was chosen, and what decisions were made, thus shedding new light on the unprecedented building campaign envisioned by the dictator. These considerations constitute the tools to access histories and ideologies which appear unattainable through the literary sources alone, thus allowing for a broader understanding of Roman architecture and urbanism at the end of the Republican era.

Modes of Viewing the Urban Landscapes and Public Gardens of Early Imperial Rome

It has been claimed that with Augustus, the Roman Empire and its capital underwent a transformation that divided them into welldefined and controllable spaces based on a rational use of information. Emperors like Domitian established a sort of symbolic and physical domination over their subjects by creating a medium of surveillance which is observable in architecture and sculpture as well as in literature. Yet the functions of early imperial public gardens and urban landscapes like
 the Campus Martius and the plot on which the Domus Aurea rose have not been fully explored in this respect. This article aims to demonstrate how viewing, gazing and surveilling operated symbolically in these spaces through architecture and sculpture by using Foucaultian concepts such as “heterotopia” and “surveillance” as well as “imperial gaze.” The gaze of the emperor was directed to the heterotopic microcosms created in public gardens and urban landscapes, and also to individuals - elite
 and commoners alike - within them. This is an “imperial gaze,” a subjective, epistemological, juridical mode of viewing that tends to categorize the landscape, its constituents and its activities within from an elevated point.

Rome Inside the Walls. The Campus Martius

Rome Inside the Walls. The Campus Martius

The Cultural History of Augustan Rome: Texts, Monuments, and Topography ed. by Matthew P. Loar et al.

Reviewed by: The Cultural History of Augustan Rome: Texts, Monuments, and Topography ed. by Matthew P. Loar et al. Nandini B. Pandey Matthew P. Loar, Sarah C. Murray and Stefano Rebeggiani (eds.). The Cultural History of Augustan Rome: Texts, Monuments, and Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv, 192. $99.99. ISBN 978-1-108-48060-4. Publishers are invited to submit new books to be reviewed to Professor Michael Arnush, 53 Warren Street, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866; email marnush@skidmore.edu. This edited collection, the product of a 2014 conference at Notre Dame's Rome Global Gateway, asks "what the texts in, on, and about the city of Rome tell us about how the ancients thought about, interacted with, and responded to the city during the transition from Republic to Empire" (1). Given the enormity of the topic, this slender volume makes no claim to comprehensive treatment. What it offers, instead, is a high-quality sampling with suggestions for future research (8-9) that will reward anyone interested in responsions between Augustan writing and building. D. S. Levene, in "Monumental Insignificance: The Rhetoric of Roman Topography from Livy's Rome" (chapter 1), identifies conspicuous absences of topographical and monumental detail where we might most expect them in Livy. Levene suggests that the history is "more concerned with giving an impression of a real environment than evoking the actual city of Rome" (20), supplanting the urban environment as a repository of exempla legible to audiences abroad. In "Cicero, quid in alieno saeculo tibi? The 'Republican' Rostra between Caesar and Augustus" (chapter 2), Thomas Biggs compellingly tracks the process by which the Rostra was reimagined as a "pluperfect" "meta-monument" to the lost Republic, thanks to late-Republican physical and performative interventions including the mise-en-scène of Cicero's corpse on a structure bearing Antony's name and Caesar's memory (36). Peter Heslin, in "The Julian Calendar and the Solar Meridian of Augustus: Making Rome Run on Time" (chapter 3), expertly corrects the belief that the obelisk in the Campus Martius was "preordained" to serve as a gnomon within a unified spatial plan "by an all-seeing Augustus" (71). The meridian is better understood as an "afterthought" among ad hoc continuations of Julius Caesar's calendrical reforms, a pharaonic counterpoint to the senatorial Ara Pacis whose conscription into later emperors' building plans has enhanced confusion about the pavement date. Dan-el Padilla Peralta's "Monument Men: Buildings, Inscriptions, and Lexicographers in the Creation of Augustan Rome" (chapter 4) examines the relationship between Augustus' architectural renovation of Rome and the contemporaneous boom in orthography, lexicography, and epigraphy, with special interest in questions of access, antiquarianism, and "how documenting the monument came to involve monumenting the document" (82) within this text-rich environment. In the archaeological first half of chapter 5, "The Porticus Liviae in Ovid's Fasti (6.637-648)," Maddalena Bassani interprets the Porticus Liviae and its shrine to Concordia as a public reclamation of the lavish domus left to Augustus [End Page 357] by Vedius Pollio.1 On the literary side, Francesca Romana Berno analyzes Ovid's response in Fasti 6 as a failed attempt to square criticism of contemporary luxury with praise of "the magnificence of Livia's monuments as testaments to moral sobriety" (116). The Greek ekphrastic epigrams on Myron's Cow have struck many—notably Michael Squire2—as meditations on mimesis itself, not particularly engaged with the statue's spatial context after its likely relocation to Rome among the armenta Myronis that Propertius 2.31 places on the Palatine. In "Greek Poets on the Palatine: A Wild Cow Chase?" (chapter 6), Carolyn MacDonald reads several epigrams against this Augustan landscape as glimpses into an elusive "Greek discourse on the uses and abuses of Greek art in the Caesars' city of marble" (127). Building from the familiar observation that exile splits Ovid into a body that must remain in Tomis and books that may return to Rome, Stephanie Ann Frampton's "Ovid's Two-Body Problem" (chapter 7) analyzes epigraphical intermediality in the exile poetry as part of Ovid's bid to render himself more permanent in the city, notably via Tristia 4...

"From Such Beginnings, Much May Be Expected"

"From Such Beginnings, Much May Be Expected" Brandon C. Downing (bio) In The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, David McCullough provides his version of how the West was won. He starts with a group of Revolutionary War veterans from New England led by Rufus Putnam, Manasseh Cutler, and Benjamin Tupper who founded the Ohio Company of Associates to secure land purchases in the Northwest Territory. Like all pioneer stories, their story was not an easy one. This was late eighteenth-century America where the advancing line of Euro-American settlement barely crossed the Appalachian Mountains. Compared to the thriving and well-developed eastern seaboard, the backcountry had "no roads. … no bridges, no towns, churches, schools, stores, or way-side taverns. … not one permanent legal settlement" (7). If the travelers survived the journey to the Ohio Country, then an uncountable number of trees of enormous size had to be cleared, houses had to be built, sustenance had to be obtained, and fields had to be sown and crops harvested. On top of the hard labor, settlers had to be vigilant against possible Indian attack; bears, wolves, and panthers lurking in the woods; and the harshness of the climate. Their success in overcoming these numerous obstacles enabled them to establish the first permanent settlement of the Northwest Territory—Marietta, Ohio—in 1788. McCullough is a good storyteller, and he succeeds in presenting the different personalities of the various settlers and the trials they had to endure to travel, build, and live in "their infant city." He illustrates the hardships endured by so many suffering from "Ohio fever" in their efforts to get from Massachusetts to the frontier. One couple, Ephraim and Leah Cutler, lost two children to illness: their one-year-old son, Hezekiah, and just a few days later their seven-year-old daughter, Mary. Even if one did survive the [End Page 173] journey, the realities of frontier life did not provide much certainty. Many residents suffered tremendously during the winter of the "Starving Year" (1789): measles took the lives of several children and smallpox took even more lives later that season. Not all was bad. McCullough also weaves in individual highlights such as the first wedding of the Northwest Territory between Rowena Tupper and Winthrop Sargent; the great escape of John Mathews from an Indian attack (sans trousers); and the building of Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett's opulent mansion by the notable and selftrained architect, Joseph Barker. Even during bleak times, when the settlers were confined to Campus Martius during the Northwest Indian War, they "enliven[ed] the off-hours within the stockade [with] a variety of games and sporting events—foot races, boxing matches" (117). These personal accounts provide a good description of what frontier life was like in the Ohio valley, and McCullough's ability to portray a vivid scene of so many individuals and families in one narrative is a testament to good, regional history. Despite the title, McCullough's book is not about the American West as one might imagine it. Instead, he primarily focuses on the individuals who founded, developed, and progressed the city of Marietta. This, however, is a good place to start because Marietta represented what the federal government envisioned the West to be—organized. Much of this organization was laid out in the Land Ordinance of 1785. In order to avoid lawsuits over property boundaries, collect taxes to pay for the Revolutionary War, and to satisfy land bounties to veterans, the land purchased by the Ohio Company of Associates would be divided into square townships six miles in length with thirty-six square miles in total. These organized township grids were similar to those found in New England. If the Land Ordinance was the form, then the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was the function as it established a territorial government and a method for admitting territories into states. The more recognizable provisions of this ordinance included the outlawing of slavery, reserving land for schools, ensuring trial by jury, and guaranteeing religious freedom. It was these articles that McCullough claims to be the "American ideals" the first pioneers of Ohio brought with them to...

The Republican Ludi Saeculares as a Cult of the Valerian Gens

Republican sacrifices held at the Tarentum in the Campus Martius constitute part of the lineage of the imperial ludi saeculares. Through an investigation of fragmentary and sometimes corrupt historical texts pertaining to the ludi saeculares, especially Verrius Flaccus, Varro, Valerius Antias, Valerius Maximus, Zosimus, and Plutarch, this article demonstrates that the Tarentum sacrifices were originally called ludi Tarentini, and were a cult of the Valerian gens that came under civic supervision in 249 bce. These ludi Tarentini were not associated with the concept of performance once per saeculum until Augustus created the ludi saeculares from Republican models in 17 bce.

Van Obelisk naar Mausoleum

Summary This article describes a tour along noteworthy Augustean sites and monuments on the campus Martius in Rome. It starts at Piazza Monte Citorio where now the obelisk stands which was once part of Augustus’ Horologium. From there the walk goes 200 meters northwards to the original site of the obelisk/Horologium which is marked by an inscription, and then onward to the original site of the Ara Pacis. From there the tour continues to the Piazza Augusto Imperatore with Augustus’ Mausoleum and the museum of the Ara Pacis housing the restored altar. The piazza as it appears nowadays was designed and constructed under Mussolini as part of the fascist ideology of Romanità as well as Mussolini’s association with the successful regime of Augustus. The contemporary architecture with its reliefs and inscriptions encircling the piazza express this fascist ideology in straightforward manner.

THE FATE OF THE COLUMN OF ANTONINUS PIUS

One of the most remarkable stories in the history of Roman archaeology, and totally unknown to modern scholars and works of reference, despite the comprehensive documentation, is the story of the extraction of the column of Antoninus Pius in the Campus Martius (1703–5). The work was placed in the hands of the ‘noble’ architects Carlo and Francesco Fontana, instead of competent engineers, and the result was the destruction of the column.

Le ripae di Roma in età imperiale: qualche evidenza dalla pianta marmorea severiana

Some tracts of the Tiber ripae in imperial period are depicted in many slabs of the Severan marble plan of Rome. The ripae, right and left, South of the great bridges, appear variously but systematically equiped to discharge goods coming from Portus, to store and distribute them. From the Insula Tiberina to the North the ripae, less documented by the marble fragments, are very differently equiped on the left (Campus Martius) than on the right (suburban area, with horti). The ripae delimitation by cippi further northwards and southwars the urban area prove that the delimitation was evidently functional in controlling the flow of the Tiber and the connected activities, not only the town planning.

ANAXIMANDER'S SPARTAN SUNDIAL

As the author of the earliest secular account of the universe's formation, Anaximander of Miletus can lay a strong claim to the title of first Greek cosmologist. Tradition also credited him with invention of the first time-telling instruments: ‘He was the first to constructgnomonsfor the identification of solstices, time spans,horaiand the equinox’ (οὗτος πρῶτος γνώμονας κατεσκεύασε πρὸς διάγνωσιν τροπῶν τε ἡλίου καὶ χρόνων καὶ ὡρῶν καὶ ἰσημερίας, Euseb.Praep. evang. 10.14.11). This paper reconstructs the location, design and function of a γνώμων which he erected at Sparta, and moots some intriguing parallels with the Augustan Horologium on the Campus Martius. Before we turn to the evidence, however, two points of terminology need to be clarified. The Greek term γνώμων can denote either a sundial—a pointer attached to a surface with marks for tracking its shadow—or the pointer itself, in English also called the gnomon; Eusebius’ reference to the identification of times suggests that what Anaximander created was in fact a sundial. Now, depending on its design, a sundial can tell either the hour of the day, the season of the year, or both; from Eusebius’ text it is not clear which function Anaximander's dial possessed, since the noun ὧραι can mean either ‘hours’ or ‘seasons’. But only one usage of the word would be appropriate for the sixth century: no authors refer to hours of the day prior to Herodotus (2.109) and there is no evidence for Greek sundials displaying hours prior toc.350b.c.; by contrast, the use of ὥρα to mean ‘season of the year’ is as old as Homer and Hesiod, and the solstices and equinoxes mentioned by Eusebius demarcate the transitions between the seasons. Anaximander's device was a sundial, then, one which tracked seasons rather than hours. According to Diogenes Laertius, the cosmologist set up one such device at Sparta (2.1).

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity ed. by Karl Galinsky

Reviewed by: Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity ed. by Karl Galinsky Jacob A. Latham Karl Galinsky (ed.). Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xiv, 406. $135.00. ISBN 978-0-19-874476-4. The need for humanists, social scientists, and “real” scientists to work together on memory is a central tenet of Karl Galinsky’s Memoria Romana: Memory in Roman Civilization project that was initiated in 2009 with the conferral of a Max Planck Research Award for International Cooperation. The project’s first collected volume, Karl Galinsky (ed.), Memoria Romana: Memory in Rome and Rome in Memory (Ann Arbor 2014), concluded with remarks by the eminent architect Daniel Libeskind on the connections between architecture and memory; the present volume gives the last word to neuroscience. Indeed, Galinsky’s introduction also privileges neuroscience by comparison with nonscientists (a.k.a. humanists). What struck me, however, was the degree to which the very approachable neuroscientific essay on memory closely resembles what careful humanist research has argued—apart from the material on the brain, of course. Indeed, the present volume offers many examples of good, often very good, humanist treatments of literary, imperial, honorific, and Christian memory in the Roman world from the early empire to late antiquity. After a long (nearly 10 percent of the volume) and nebulous introduction surveying both memory studies and the present volume, part 1 collects three studies of memory in Roman authors. Alain Gowing, whose groundbreaking Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture (Cambridge 2005) helped bring the memory boom to classical studies, examines memory as a cause of action in Tacitus, for whom more recent exemplars mattered more than those of the storied past. Brigitte B. Libby’s inventive essay argues that Vergil’s Dido was more a Circe-like enchantress, and so a threat to Aeneas’ need to remember the collective good (the foundation of Rome), than an innocent and abandoned Ariadne. Jörg Rüpke’s somewhat difficult contribution treats the exempla tradition in Valerius Maximus, whose first two books somehow historicize religious knowledge. Eric Orlin opens part 2 on imperial memory with a lucid and thorough treatment of the massive Augustan reconstruction of memory in the Campus Martius that was both literal (involving actual buildings) and metaphorical, as it were (impacting collective memory). Charles Hedrick then offers a meditation on fantasy, memory, and history—complete with an Aristotelian/Greimassian semiotic square!—using “memories” of Nero or rumors about his return as a case study. Part 3 then turns to a locus classicus of civic memory, honorific statues. Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp traces the “inter-signification” (or interconnectedness) of monument (a statue of Tremulus) and historical memory (the deeds [End Page 579] of Tremulus) in an oratorical performance (by Cicero), which demonstrates the complex and evolving interplay between place, monument, ritual, and text. Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp explores Sulla’s use of statuary to promote his own memory, battling with Marius on the terrain of memory and eventually removing (the statues of) his competitor from the field, rewriting the rules of commemoration in the process. Although these two essays establish statues as bearers of memory, Diana Ng rightly cautions against simply assuming the value of honorific statues in light of their recycling—though reuse may in fact confirm their value as memory currency—suggesting instead that sculptural programs, which (it seems) were not so easily repurposed, were better able to perform memory work. The final section assembles a group of papers that, more or less, deal with Christian memory, though Nicola Denzey Lewis examines “pagan” memory practices in funerary contexts in a Christianizing empire. Denzey Lewis convincingly evokes the imaginative use of traditional imagery by “pagans” who were attempting to preserve classical cultural memory in religiously plural funerary environments. John Kloppenborg then follows with a massive essay reassessing the conditions that impacted, or rather impaired, the oral transmission of sayings of Jesus in early proto-Christian communities. Drawing upon an experiment conducted by April DeConick, a professor of religious studies, which recreated the process of the oral transmission of various kinds of sayings, and also contemporary memory studies (including neuroscience...

Augustus' Power from the Stars and the Foundation of Augusta Praetoria Salassorum

Augustus' propaganda founded the ruler's power on a series of references to the sky: Caesar's comet, which helped to establish the divine nature of kingship, the completion of the calendar's reform celebrated in the Campus Martius' meridian, and Augustus' association with Capricorn, the zodiacal sign of the winter solstice. Various forms of proof derived from texts, works of art and numismatics show the key role of such a ‘power from the stars’. We present here new archaeological and archaeoastronomical evidence coming from Augusta Praetoria Salassorum (modern Aosta), founded around 25 bc after the victory of Augustus' army on the Salassi. An emergency excavation along the Aosta's Roman walls has brought to light, on a corner of one of the towers, an in situ block which carries several reliefs — including a plough and a spade — apparently related to the town's foundation ritual. As a consequence, we carried out a complete analysis of the original urban plan of Aosta and of its relationship with the sky and the landscape, taking into account the complex natural horizon of the Alps in which Aosta's valley is nested. The results show that the town was oriented in such a way as to pinpoint Augustus' ‘cognitive’ relationship with the ‘cosmic’ signs of renewal.

La convocazione dei comizi centuriati: diritto costituzionale e diritto augurale

The summoning of the comitia centuriata involves questions and issues of constitutional and augural law. Mommsen claimed that the magistrate assembled the comitia on the basis of a ‘hybrid’ imperium (formally militiae and substantially domi) and of a single auspicatio performed militiae, in the campus Martius. On the contrary, Magdelain remarked that the sources speak of two different auspicationes, and suggested that the first aimed at bestowing the ‘hybrid’ imperium militiae on the magistrate and the second at obtaining divine approval for the assembly. This article argues that (i) the imperium militiae did not require a specific investiture, being just an expression of the unitary imperium; it was not divided into a ‘civil’ and a ‘military’ power, since the borders of the pomerium and of the primum miliarium mattered at different levels – the first augural, the second constitutional; (ii) the first auspicatio, performed in a stationary templum (auguraculum), was meant to accomplish the inauguratio of the second templum, the location of which varied; (iii) the distinction between the lines of the pomerium and of the primum miliarium had the purpose of guaranteeing to the citizens the provocatio ad populum and the intercessio tribunicia, thus enabling the populus-exercitus to freely express their will when voting on a lex publica.