Victory Monument Research Articles

The Approach to the Temple of Saturn in Rome

The temple of Saturn, though its ruins on the Forum Romanum are impressive, presents many problems in architecture and planning. It fronted on an important square, the Area Volcani, where there were a number of sacred monuments and where four important streets and a stair to the Capitoline converged. But the principal visual relation of the temple was originally to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline hill above it. The problem of the form and location of the old Aerarium cannot be completely resolved without more evidence than is available, but the reconstruction of the approach to the temple as rebuilt by Munatius Plancus offered by Lugli and now widely accepted must be discarded. It depends in large part on a misreading of a lost fragment of the Marble Plan; this is shown to have been erroneously assigned to this part of the Forum and may belong to the temple of Venus Verticordia near the Circus Maximus. The evidence for Lugli's Aerarium has also been misinterpreted by him. Livy records the building of a porticus in 174 B.C. that ran from the temple of Saturn in Capitolium to a senaculum and curia. It is argued here that this could not have run up along the Clivus Capitolinus but must have run across the northwest end of the Forum to the Curia Hostilia and made a dramatic backdrop to the Forum. Our ancient sources agree that, next to Vesta's, Saturn's was the oldest temple in the neighborhood of the Forum Romanum, but there is no agreement as to how its location is properly designated or when it was built. Macrobius (1.8.1) cites Varro as saying the temple was ad forum and the contract for its construction let by L. Tarquinius, the last of the kings. Dionysius (6.1.4) knows the same tradition. Macrobius is aware of another tradition that Tullus Hostilius dedicated a shrine to Saturn as a victory monument following his third triumph, over the Sabines, and then instituted the Saturnalia. But he seems to feel this need not have been the temple we know. For one thing Tullus' dedication was a fanum, not an aedes, and its whereabouts is not clearly stated. For another, Saturn also had an altar ante senaculum that seems to have had no connection with the temple; the worship at the altar was Graeco ritu and believed to date from time immemorial, primum a Pelasgis, post ab Hercule (Macrobius 1.8.2). We may agree that Tullus Hostilius is not apt to have built a public temple of no obvious utilitarian purpose as a victory monument; that is the gesture of a later

Hercules Musarum and the Porticus Philippi in Rome

The temple of Hercules Musarum in the southern part of the Campus Martius has been neglected, in part because no remains of it are visible today, in part because the cult is an anomaly. Yet it was an important building, originally founded as a victory monument by M. Fulvius Nobilior, the conqueror of Aetolia and friend of Ennius, and rebuilt with great splendor by L. Marcius Philippus, Augustus's step-father. It appears on the Severan Forma Urbis Romae with only small and unimportant lacunae, and the main problem must be interpretation of this plan in the light of the testimonia. Examination of the sources suggests Fulvius Nobilior's temple was to the Muses alone and may not have been architecturally significant; all that we really know is that it contained a set of statues of the nine Muses and a small bronze aedicula ascribed to the time of Numa. Philip's rebuilding, on the other hand, made it a major temple of surprising subtlety and complexity, with focus both forward and back. The cult of Hercules Musarum, which Philip probably grafted on to the old cult of the Muses, may have been the invention of Q. Pomponius Musa some forty years earlier.

En dynamisk kulturarv – Dybbøls 12 metamorfoser

Dybbøl is the brow of a hill located about 30 km north-east of the border between Denmark and Germany. This area was once the former Danish Duchy of Schleswig, which was under German rule in the period from 1864 to 1920. Dybbøl was also the site of intense fighting during the Schleswig-Holstein Revolt of 1848–50 and the Danish-German War of 1864. There are remains of both Danish and German fortifications and earthworks, along with large mass graves in which troops from Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein and Germany lie buried. After a plebiscite about the placing of the border was held in 1920, Schleswig was divided up, and the northern part – which included Dybbøl – became part of Denmark. This was followed by a comprehensive ”Danishification” of the cultural landscape, which had previously been dominated by a large Prussian victory monument and numerous German memorial stones. A Danish national park was set up at Dybbøl in 1924, with the backing of the local population and financial sup- port from a national collection appeal, and formally opened by the Danish prime minister. After this, Dybbøl became the epitome of the institutionalised cultural heritage of the state of Denmark, and would almost certainly be included in any ”cultural canon” of the most significant geographical locations that have helped shape the Danish sense of national identity. However, Dybbøl also features another – less comfortable – aspect of the Danish cultural heritage, bearing witness to Danish acts of vandalism perpetrated against the German monuments found here. Any study of the use of the history associated with Dybbøl uncovers layer upon layer of episodes that speak of conflicting interests and countless metamorphoses that led to the site being imbued with new values and a sequence of new identities. And in step with the resurgence of nationalist sentiments in Denmark since the mid-1980s, there has been a corresponding, strengthened re-annexation of the cultural heritage associated with Dybbøl. The need to cling on to and retain establis- hed, familiar positions and a fundamental sense of belonging are well-known aspects of the process of globalisation, and are seen throughout the world. In Dybbøl, this deep-felt need has resulted in the construction of a Danish fortification, and the Danish flag flying atop the many flagpoles has become more frequent sight. This process can also be interpreted as an expression of Danish foreign policy taking on a more active role in the world.

The Victory Monument of Timoleon at Corinth

The Victory Monument of Timoleon at Corinth

The Great Victory Monument of Attalus I

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Great Victory Monument of Attalus IEsther V. HansenEsther V. Hansen Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 41, Number 1January–March 1937 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 1Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/498215 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright © 1937 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.