Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna

by Robert Burn

Palatine Hill. Æmilian Temple of Hercules, and mouth of Cloaca Maxima. Bell tower of S. Maria in Cosmedin.

The name now given to it rests on no other evidence than its circular shape, and as we have no mention of a Temple of Vesta in the Forum Boarium it must be at once condemned as a misnomer. It has also been called the Temple of the Sibyl or the Temple of Cybele without better reason. The most probable conjecture as to its name is that first suggested by Piale, that it is the round Temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium mentioned in the tenth Book of Livy, and alluded to by Festus as the Æmilian Temple of Hercules. The appellation Æmiliana certainly seems to point to the neighbourhood of the Æmilian bridge. The style of its architecture may be attributed to a restoration in the latter half of the first century A.D. Formerly, it was called the Church of Madonna del Sole, from a favourite image of the Virgin in it, and at an earlier period S. Stefano delle Carozze, from the discovery of a marble model of a chariot in its neighbourhood, but in 1810 it was cleared out and restored, and since then it has not been used as a church, but contains a small collection of marble fragments.

Temple of Ceres.

At the entrance of the valley of the Circus Maximus, and on the south side of the Piazza della Bocca della Verità stands the church of S. Maria in Cosmedin which is built upon the ruins of an ancient temple. Ten columns still remain in their original places, seven of which stand in a line parallel to the entrance, and three others in the left-hand side wall of the church. Some of the columns are built into the walls of the Sacristies on the right of the entrance, and reach through the roofs to the upper story. The material of which they are made is white marble, and the order to which they belong the Composite. Parts of the wall of the cella may still be seen in the sacristy, built of tufa which was originally faced with marble. The design of the capitals and chiselling of the ornamental work upon them is of the best period of art, and one of them may conveniently be examined in the room over the sacraria, and in the organ loft. Behind the apse of the church are some large chambers built of massive blocks of travertine, which were probably attached to the Carceres of the Circus as stables or offices of some kind, and the position of these compels us to assume that the front of the temple faced towards the Velabrum, and that the seven columns parallel to the façade of the present church belonged to the side of the temple, while the three in the left-hand wall formed a part of the front. Otherwise the travertine chambers at the back must have formed some part of the temple, and it is difficult to see how this could have been the case, as they are evidently not the walls of the cella, and cannot be brought into any symmetrical position with the rows of columns.

The Temples of Pudicitia Patricia, of Mater Matuta, and of Fortune have been severally identified with these ruins by the writers of Roman topography. But it has been shown already that the first of these was probably a mere chapel, and that the other two must be placed nearer to the Carmental gate, and therefore the conjecture of Canina that the church of S. Maria in Cosmedin was the Temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera appears much more likely to be true. For that temple is included in the eleventh region by the Curiosum and Notitia, and is placed by Vitruvius, Tacitus, and Pliny close to the Circus Maximus, while Dionysius expressly says that it stood just over the barriers of the Circus Maximus. The account of Vitruvius answers to the ruins which still remain. For he says that the temple was of the description called aræostyle, i.e. with wide intercolumnar intervals, and it will be found that the intervals between the columns now standing are nearly four times their diameter. Vitruvius also says that it was of the Tuscan order of architecture, and in this seems to contradict Pliny who, quoting Varro’s authority, speaks of it as the first temple at Rome which had Greek ornamental work. Their statements may be reconciled by observing that Pliny is speaking of the decorations of the temple by Damophilus and Gorgasis, and not of the style of architecture. The aræostyle arrangement of the columns was probably preserved even after the complete restoration by Tiberius, at which time, as Pliny relates, the old Greek frescoes were cut out and framed, and the terra cotta statues removed from the roof. The temple was first vowed by A. Postumius, the dictator in the Latin war of B.C. 497, on account of the great scarcity of provisions which then prevailed. It was dedicated three years afterwards by the Consul Spurius Cassius, a statesman who showed a disposition to imitate the great architectural works of the regal period, contrary to the generally frugal spirit of the early republican fathers. In the year B.C. 31, a destructive fire, which raged between the Circus and the Forum Olitorium, destroyed the Temple, and with it some of the most valuable treasures of Greek art which it contained. Among these, besides the frescoes of Damophilus and Gorgasis above mentioned, was the famous pictures of Dionysius by Aristides, for which Attalus bid sixteen talents, a price which excited the attention of Mummius, and induced him, although unable himself to appreciate the merits of such works of art, to suspect its value, and carry it to Rome in spite of the remonstrances of Attalus.

The restoration was undertaken by Augustus, and finished by Tiberius in A.D. 17. This temple was to the Plebeian Ædiles what the Temple of Saturn was to the quæstors, and it was enacted that the decrees of the Senate should be delivered over to the Ædiles there, an enactment which seems never to have been carried out.[82]

The medieval names of this church, in Cosmedin, and in Schola Græca, seem to point to the possession of the church by Greek monks after the division of the empire, and the piazza in which it stands is called Bocca della Verità from the strange figure of a head under the modern portico of the church, in the mouth of which it is said that persons whose veracity lay under suspicion, were required to place their hands while making oath, in the belief that the mouth would close upon their hands if the oath taken was a false one.

Carceres of the Cirrus Maximus.