Part 9 (1/2)
CHAPTER V.
THE VELABRUM AND THE CIRCUS FLAMINIUS.
[Sidenote: Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons.]
The church of S. Giorgio in Velabro, which stands between the Palatine Hill and the river near the Piazza Bocca della Verita, retains the ancient name of this district, formerly a swamp called the Velabrum. This is perhaps the best point from which to begin our survey of the ruins of the Velabrum. The most conspicuous ruin near the church is the archway called Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons, from its quadrilateral shape. It is a ma.s.sive square building of white marble, with four piers supporting as many arches which are united in the centre, by a vaulted roof. Each pier has on the exterior twelve niches in two rows, with semicircular sh.e.l.l-shaped crowns. These two rows of niches were formerly separated by a projecting cornice which is now nearly destroyed except in the interior. The niches nearest to the corners on the north and south sides are not hollowed out, but only traced on the exterior surface, in order not to endanger the solidity of the angles. The present height of the building is thirty-eight feet, but it probably had an attica originally upon the top to which the staircase still extant led, and in which were some small rooms for the transaction of business. Upon the key-stones of the arches two figures can be still recognized, one of Rome and the other of the patroness of trade, Minerva.
The exterior surface was doubtless decorated with rows of Corinthian columns between the niches, a large quant.i.ty of remains of such columns having been found in clearing the base, and in the niches themselves statues of various deities probably stood.
The purpose of this arch was probably solely ornamental, and it stood by itself in some part of the Forum Boarium. The rooms in the attica may have been used for the accommodation of some of the officials of the cattle market. The builder and date are alike unknown. From the style of its architecture and sculptures, it has been p.r.o.nounced decidedly later than the age of Domitian, to whom from his fondness for building Jani, it might be attributed. Platner and Becker suggest that it is identical with an archway called the Arcus Constantini--in the catalogue of the eleventh region--but a comparison of the style of the remnants of sculptures upon it with those on the existing arch of Constantine, does not confirm this conjecture.
[Sidenote: Arcus Argentinorum.]
Close to the Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons stands a stone ornamental doorway now partly built into the wall of the church of S. Giorgio in Velabro. It is constructed of brickwork with marble facings, and consists of two square piers decorated with pilasters of the Composite or Roman order at the corners and surmounted by a horizontal entablature of rich carved work.
There is no trace of an attica above. The inscription, still well preserved, shows that it was erected by the money-changers or bankers, and other merchants of the Forum Boarium, in honour of Septimius Severus, his wife Julia, and his son Antoninus (Caracalla). As in the case of the Arch of Septimius in the Forum, so here the words III. PP. PROCOS. FORTISSIMO FELICISSIMOQUE PRINCIPI and PARTHICI MAXIMI BRITANNICI MAXIMI were inserted by Caracalla in place of the name and t.i.tles of his murdered brother Geta.
Not only in the inscriptions of the time of Septimius Severus, but even in the reliefs we everywhere find Geta's figure erased.
On the shafts of the pilasters are representations of military ensigns, which bear upon their circular tablets and above the eagles likenesses in relief of two Caesars, Severus and Caracalla. The third likeness, that of Geta, has been erased in every instance. In each of the s.p.a.ces between the pilasters are four panels with sculptures in relief. The lowest of these represents the merchants of the Forum Boarium bringing cattle as victims to the altar. The compartment above these exhibits various instruments used in sacrifice, similar to those found upon the Temple of Vespasian.
Upon the larger central panel are the figures of the imperial family engaged in sacrificing, and it can easily be seen that from some of these the figure of Geta has been carefully chiselled away.
In one of these large panels is the figure of a barbarian captive with the Phrygian cap so common upon the sculptures of the triumphal arches. The upper compartments contain festooned ornamental work and a few figures of men. The front of the architrave and frieze is almost entirely occupied by the inscriptions, and is not highly ornamented, but the cornice, which is divided into seven ledges, is overladen with various decorative patterns without purity of design or excellence of execution. The date of the erection of this monument is stated in the inscription to be the twelfth year of the tribunitia potestas of Severus and the seventh of Caracalla, which corresponds to the year A.D. 204. Reber thinks it possible that the merchants of the Forum Boarium intended it as a testimonial of grat.i.tude to Severus for having built the neighbouring Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons to ornament their quarter of the city.
[Sidenote: Cloaca Maxima.]
The oldest monument of Roman masonry is the remaining portion of a cloaca in this district, commonly identified with the Cloaca Maxima of Livy, which reaches from a spot near the church of S. Giorgio in Velabro and the Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons to the Tiber bank near the Ponte Rotto. The ancient archway has been broken open here, and can be reached by descending into a hollow near the Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons. Near the Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons, at the above-mentioned spot, seven cloacae unite and pour their waters into the still extant portion of the Cloaca Maxima, so that a large stream is constantly flowing through it. These branch sewers are built with solid brick arches, but the main archway, though fronted with modern brickwork, consists of ma.s.sive blocks of tufa, and at short intervals of every few yards has an arch of travertine introduced, to add to its solidity and strength. The original size of the archway, one-third of which is now choked up with mud, was twelve feet four inches high, and ten feet eight inches wide. Strabo and Pliny say that a cart loaded with hay could pa.s.s through some of the Roman sewers, and certainly in the case of this cloaca, it would not be impossible to do so were it cleared of mud.
M. Agrippa, the Haussmann of Rome, is said, when aedile, to have traversed the main sewer in a boat. The whole length of this remaining portion is at least three hundred and forty yards, and it makes several bends, following probably the direction of the ancient streets. The mouth is still visible, when the Tiber is not high, at a spot called the Pulchrum Litus, near the round temple usually called the Temple of Vesta. The immense size is due to the fact that it was not only a sewer for refuse, but a drain for the lake of the Velabrum, and the many land springs of the Forum, and must be cla.s.sed with the emissarium of the Alban Lake and other gigantic undertakings of the kind, such as the cuniculus at Veii, executed about B.C. 539. For a distance of about forty feet from the mouth the cloaca is constructed of a triple arch of peperino, mixed with some blocks of tufa, but throughout the rest of its course it consists of a single arch of tufa with occasional bands of travertine. The masonry along the embankment of the sh.o.r.e on each side, is partly of peperino and partly of tufa and travertine blocks laid along and across alternately.
Livy gives the early history of this extraordinary work in his first Book.
In the thirty-eighth chapter he ascribes the commencement of the undertaking of draining the Velabrum and Forum to Tarquinius Priscus, and in the fifty-sixth he says that Tarquinius Superbus completed the Cloaca Maxima as a receptacle for the refuse of the whole city. Dionysius agrees in giving the same account of the origin of the system of cloacae, and Pliny enumerates the cloacae among the wonders of the great metropolis, and expressly mentions Tarquinius Priscus as ent.i.tled to the credit of having first originated this great work of public utility. His words are--”Seven streams, after traversing the city, are united and their water so compressed into one channel as to sweep everything along with it like a torrent, and when a great body of rain-water is added to this the very walls are shaken by the agitated waters; and sometimes the Tiber rises and beats back into them, and vast opposing ma.s.ses of water meet and struggle, yet the solidity of their masonry resists and stands firm. Huge weights are carried over them, whole buildings undermined by fire or by some accident fall upon them, earthquakes shake the very ground around them, yet they have lasted for seven hundred years from the time of Tarquinius Priscus almost uninjured, a monument of antiquity which ought to be the more carefully observed since it has been pa.s.sed over in silence by some of our most celebrated historians.”
The Tarquins are said to have compelled the Roman people to work at these huge structures, just as the kings of Egypt and a.s.syria exacted task-work from their subjects; but in palliation of the cruelties alleged against them by the historians it must be noted that in the one case buildings of permanent public service were built, while in the other, only the vanity of a despot was flattered.
[Sidenote: Fortuna Virilis.]
Not far from the Ja.n.u.s Quadrifrons, and close to the Pons aemilius, or Ponte Rotto, stands a small temple, now converted into the church of S.
Maria Egiziaca, which presents an unsolved problem in Roman topography.
The substruction of this temple, which has been laid bare, consists of tufa cased with travertine. The form of the temple is that called tetrastylos by Vitruvius, having four Ionic columns in front and seven at the sides. The four front columns and two on each side, forming the p.r.o.naos, originally stood clear, but are now enclosed within the wall of the church. The remaining five on each side with those at the back were half columns set against the wall of the cella. The shafts of the half columns are of tufa, but the bases and capitals, with the entablature and the columns of the p.r.o.naos, are of travertine. On the frieze and cornice are the remains of ornamental work, which is now rendered almost invisible by the stucco with which the walls have been covered. The Ionic volutes on the corner capitals of this temple are in the later style, while the side capitals are in the usual style.
This building has usually been supposed to be the temple dedicated by Servius Tullius to Fortuna Virilis, and situated on the bank of the Tiber.
The pa.s.sage of Dionysius upon which this supposition rests is as follows: ”Servius Tullius built two temples to Fortune, one in the Forum Boarium, and the other upon the bank of the Tiber.”[81]
It is most probable, as Reber suggests, that we have here the Temple of Servius dedicated to Fortune without any special t.i.tle. Dionysius, as we have seen, places this in the Forum Boarium, and Livy describes it as intra portam Carmentalem, and mentions it in tracing the course of a conflagration between the Salinae near the Porta Trigemina and the Porta Carmentalis. But there was another temple, that of Mater Matuta which stood close to the Temple of Fortune, and there is no evidence showing to which of the two the ruin in question belonged. Both were founded by Servius, and reckoned among the most venerable relics of ancient Rome.
Becker urges the claims of the Temple of Pudicitia Patricia, which Livy places in the Forum Boarium near the round Temple of Hercules, to this site. But this was merely a small shrine, containing a statue and not a templum. So far as an opinion can be formed of the date of the temple from the materials and style of architecture, it seems to belong to the later republic.
[Sidenote: So-called Temple of Vesta.]