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

by Robert Burn

The Septa.

Near the Piazza Venezia and S. Marco, to the east of the site of the ancient Circus Flaminius, stood the Septa, an ancient building erected for the purpose of holding the Roman comitia or elections. Some ruins of a very peculiar kind are situated under the Palazzo Doria and the church of S. Maria in Via Lata. They consist of ancient piers of travertine stone, about thirty-nine inches square, standing in rows at distances of five or six yards, and evidently belonging to the remains of a portico. There are three rows of these, each containing eight piers under the Palazzo Doria, and five rows under the church of S. Maria in Via Lata, containing each five piers. It is plain that these were originally faced with marble, as the exterior surface of the travertine is rough hewn. The situation of these pillars agrees well with the locality in which the Septa are placed by classical writers, and a further proof that they certainly formed a part of that building is given by the Capitoline map, upon which we find a large tract occupied by a building resting upon piers arranged in regular rows exactly corresponding to the piers under the church of S. Maria and the Palazzo Doria. Upon these fragments the letters SÆPT and LIA are legible, which appear to belong to the words SÆPTA JULIA.

The shape of the building is very peculiar. It must have reached along the side of the Via Lata from the Piazza di S. Marco to the church of S. Maria in Via Lata, and consisted of a long cloister supported by parallel rows of eight marble piers. This cannot have been the arrangement of the place in the Republican or early Imperial times, for a design less adapted for the orderly meeting of a large body of people can hardly be conceived. It is much more probable that in the present ruins we have the remains of Hadrian’s Septa, built when the original purpose of the building, the reception and division of the centuries when they voted, had become an affair of the past.

The design of these spacious covered cloisters seems to have been to afford a sheltered place for various classes of the Roman populace. Even in Domitian’s time the Septa had become the common resort of slave vendors, dealers in fancy goods, flâneurs and loungers, and the new arcades were intended possibly for the express accommodation of such persons. The wide court in which the great assemblies of the centuries had previously been held was partly filled up by these new buildings, and partly occupied by private houses, as the Capitoline plan shows. When that plan was prepared, in the time of Septimius Severus, the old Septa had entirely lost their form and original use, and the name only remained attached to the spacious colonnades of Hadrian.

In the early times of the Republic the Septa were simply an enclosed place on the Campus Martins partitioned off into a number of different plots by means of ropes or slight railings, in each of which one division of voters or century assembled, and whence the presidents passed one by one over the pontes to deliver the vote of their respective century. Hence arose the nickname of ovilia, which was given to the septa on account of their similarity to a sheepfold. Julius Cæsar first entertained the idea of setting up marble enclosures for the comitia centuriata, and surrounding them with a magnificent portico. The whole formed a spacious cloistered court, decorated with works of art, and closely connected with the Villa Publica. Cæsar’s design was completed after his death by Agrippa in B.C. 27, and he gave the building the name Septa Julia. A rostrum was erected in it, and such was the extent of the space enclosed that gladiatorial shows, and sometimes naumachiæ were held there. This was afterwards altered by Hadrian as above described.

Temples of Isis and Serapis.

Westwards from the septa and nearly upon the site now occupied by the church of S. Stefano del Cacco, the little Via di pie di Marmo and a part of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, stood the temples of Isis, Serapis, and Minerva Chalcidica.[91] The names of the three temples are given in the catalogue of the Curiosum in the ninth region, and the sites of the two first, the Iseum and Serapeum, have been sufficiently traced by the numerous Egyptian antiquities which have been found near the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva. Of these the most remarkable are the two obelisks, one of which now stands in the Piazza della Rotunda in front of the Pantheon, and the others on the Piazza della Minerva. The latter of these was found between the church of S. Ignazio and that of S. Maria in the time of Alexander VII. in 1665, and the former had stood, previously to its erection on the present pedestal, in a little piazza near this place, whence it was removed by Clement XI. The antiquarian Fea, in his Miscellanea, gives an account of various other Egyptian relics found on the south-east side of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, which undoubtedly belonged to the Iseum and Serapeum.[92]

Among these was a statue of Isis now in the hall of the dying gladiator in the Capitol, the two Egyptian lions now at the foot of the steps of the Capitol; the famous group of the Nile now in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, and two fragments of an altar with Egyptian reliefs, and the inscription ISIDI SACRUM. Further traces of the same Egyptian worship were found by Canina in the year 1852, of which he has given an account in the Annali dell’ Instituto of that year. The emperors Commodus and Caracalla were particularly given to the worship of Egyptian deities, and the emperor Alexander Severus is said to have bestowed additional decorations upon those temples. The third temple, that of Minerva Chalcidica, which was restored by Domitian, together with the Iseum and Serapeum after the fire in A.D. 80, stood nearer to the Pantheon, and probably occupied the site of the present church called S. Maria sopra Minerva. The statue of Minerva, formerly in the Giustiniani Palace and now placed in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, was found here. Some few remains of pilasters which are built into the foundations of the houses between the Via della Minerva and the Via di pie di Marmo may have belonged to this temple.

Pantheon.