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

by Robert Burn

And on an examination of the pronaos it will be found that the stones in its upper part, which abut on the central building, are not bonded into it, but are only placed against it, showing that the pronaos was an after-thought, and was not erected till the rotunda had been finished. Agrippa must have changed the design of the building after the completion of the dome, and, perhaps because he found it too vast for the purposes of a sudatio, or because he thought it too splendid a building to be employed for such a purpose, have determined to dedicate it to the gods of heathendom. The bronze gilt statuary, the work of Diogenes of Athens, with which the temple was decorated, was much admired by the Roman connoisseurs, and in particular the group upon the pediment and the Caryatides. The statue of Venus was adorned with the two divided halves of the famous pearl of Cleopatra, fellow to the one which Cleopatra is said to have dissolved in vinegar in order to win her wager that she could spend ten million sesterces in one dinner.

In the fire of A.D. 80 the Pantheon suffered with the rest of the buildings in this part of the Campus Martius, but from the solidity of its construction the injury done was not great, and was repaired soon afterwards by Domitian. It was damaged by lightning in the reign of Trajan, but restored by Hadrian, who used it frequently as a court of justice.

A hundred years after this, the restoration by Septimius Severus, recorded in the extant inscription, took place A.D. 195. Honorius closed this temple, with the other temples of Rome, in A.D. 399, but it was not consecrated as a Christian church until two hundred years afterwards, when Boniface IV. dedicated it to All Saints in allusion to the pagan name of Pantheon, giving the name of S. Maria ad Martyres. Two acts of plunder perpetrated upon the building deserve mention. In the middle of the seventh century, A.D. 650, Constans II. took off the gilded bronze tiles of the roof, and was carrying them to Constantinople, with the plunder of the Forum of Trajan, when he was intercepted at Syracuse by the Saracens and killed. His act of plunder was imitated by Urban VIII., who in 1632 took away the bronze girders which supported the roof of the pronaos and had them melted down and used partly for the pillars of the baldachino in S. Peter’s, and partly for the cannon of the castle of S. Angelo.

Aqua Virgo.

Not far from the Pantheon the arches of the Aqua Virgo projected from the side of the Pincian Hill and crossed the Via Lata. Some remains of these arches are still to be seen in the Via del Nazareno (No. 12) at the back of the Fountain of Trevi. They bear an inscription which was copied in the ninth century by the anonymous chronicler of Einsiedlen, recording the restoration of the arches by Claudius after they had been partially destroyed by Caligula, who intended to build an amphitheatre in this neighbourhood. The arches are now entirely covered with rubbish, and the conduit of the aqueduct itself, which formerly was raised upon them, is consequently now upon the level of the ground. The inscription stands on the side of the conduit, and was formerly at the spot where some principal street passed under the aqueduct. Above it is a simple cornice, and below, an architrave, with the upper part of some Doric pilasters, appears above the surface of the water, which is here tapped to afford a washing trough to the laundresses of the neighbourhood. The masonry is of solid travertine blocks, carefully cut and fitted.

Dogana in the Piazza di Pietra.

Some topographers have identified the ruin in the Piazza di Pietra, now the Dogana, with the Posidonium, a portico built by Agrippa in memory of his naval exploits; but unless the ruin in the Piazza di Pietra be a later restoration after the fire of A.D. 80, which is possible enough, the style is not such as to allow us to assign it to the Augustan age. It has eleven fluted Corinthian marble columns supporting a tolerably well-preserved entablature, and plainly belonging to the longer side of a basilica or temple. The architrave, frieze, and cornice, have a heavy and unimpressive appearance, though some of the details of the work are rich and carefully executed. In the courtyard of the building a portion of the wall of the cella, and the spring of the arches of the vaulted roof, can be seen now incorporated into the modern building.

Various conjectures have been made as to the name and history of this building. Some of the older topographers thought that it was the Temple of M. Aurelius, which seems, however, to have been nearer to the column of that emperor than the ruin in question is;[95] nor does the position of this ruin allow us to suppose that it formed any part of a series of buildings placed symmetrically round the column. Palladio gives an elaborate ground-plan, with all the details, and calls it the Temple of Mars; but there does not appear to be any evidence in favour of this appellation; nor is it known how much of Palladio’s design is taken from what remained of the ruin in his time, and how much is merely conjectural restoration. The conjecture of Urlichs that the Temple of Marciana, Trajan’s sister, stood here, rests on no evidence but that of the Notitia, and is rendered very improbable by the great size of the building, and by the fact that the expression in the Notitia is Basilica Marciani, and not Templum Marcianæ. Another hypothesis, which Professor Reber mentions, has more to recommend it. Antoninus Pius is said to have erected a temple in honour of his adopted father, Hadrian. This temple could not have stood in the Forum of Trajan, where there was no room left for such a building, and would most probably be placed near the rest of the Antonine buildings, not far from the Column of M. Aurelius. In the Mirabilia, the Temple of Hadrian is placed near the Church of S. Maria in Aquiro, which corresponded to the modern Chiesa degli Orfanelli; and part of a temple precinct built of travertine has been discovered in the Palazzo Cini, and is, perhaps, a relic of this temple. A medal of the year A.D. 151 contains a representation of the Temple of Hadrian, and corresponds tolerably well with the extant ruins; and in the neighbourhood of the Piazza di Pietra, several statues and fragments of inscriptions bearing the name of Antoninus Pius have been found at different times. When it is added that the style of building and execution of the ornamental work belong to the Antonine era, it will be seen that, although there is nothing more than probable evidence in favour of the above supposition, yet it has more in its favour than any of the other conjectures mentioned.

The present building was erected by Innocent XII. at the end of the seventeenth century in order to prevent the fall of the columns, which had become dangerously disjointed. The entablature has been restored in many parts, and a kind of attica erected over it, which gives the ruin the appearance of being in better preservation than it really is.

Gnomon Obelisk.