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

by Robert Burn

Mausoleum of Augustus.

The northern part of the Campus Martius, between the Via del Ripetta and the Pincian Hill, contained only one great building of which we have any knowledge. This was the Mausoleum of Augustus, the ruins of which are now buried under the Teatro Correa, and are approached by a narrow entry leading out of the Via dei Pontefici. All that can now be seen of the shapeless mass which this once stately building presents, is a small part of the cylindrical brickwork basement on the left of the entrance to the Teatro Correa, and another fragment of the same at the back of the Church of S. Rocco. The proofs that these are the remains of the Mausoleum of Augustus are quite indisputable. Suetonius places it between the Tiber and the Flaminian Road, and Strabo speaks of it as standing near the bank of the river, descriptions which, though they are not very definite, agree with the site of the Teatro Correa sufficiently. Complete certainty is, however, afforded by the inscriptions which have been found on the site of the Ustrina Cæsarum, where the bodies were burnt before burial. These were found near the Corso, between the Via degli Otto Cantoni and the Via dei Pontefici, a spot answering to Strabo’s notice of the site of the Ustrina as standing in the middle of the Campus, which is here narrowed by the approach of the Pincian Hill towards the river.

Augustus had built this magnificent tomb in his sixth consulship (B.C. 28). At that time the course of the Flaminian Road through the Campus was lined with the tombs of many eminent Roman statesmen and public characters, which have all, with the exception of the insignificant Tomb of Bibulus, totally disappeared. The modern city has entirely effaced all traces of these, but we may in all probability suppose that the Flaminian road presented no less striking a spectacle in the days of Augustus than the Appian, which we are accustomed to regard as the great burying-place of Rome.

The name mausoleum was apparently given to this tomb if not immediately, yet soon after its completion, not from any resemblance in the plan of the building of the famous monument of the Halicarnassian queen, which differed entirely in shape and design, but because the expression mausoleum had already become a name used to designate any tomb of colossal proportions. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus was a rectangular building surrounded with a colonnade, while the Tomb of Augustus was cylindrical and ornamented with deep niches. Strabo gives the following description of the latter monument: “The most remarkable of all the tombs in the Campus is that called the Mausoleum, which consists of a huge mound of earth raised upon a lofty base of white marble near the river bank, and planted to the summit with evergreen trees. Upon the top is a bronze statue of Cæsar Augustus, and under the mound are the burial-places of Augustus and his family and friends, while behind it is a spacious wood containing admirably designed walks. In the middle of the Campus is the enclosure he made for burning the corpses, also of white marble, surrounded by an iron railing, and planted with poplar-trees.”[100]

The mound of earth here described by Strabo was probably of a conical shape, and the trees were planted on terraced ledges. The mass of the building was cylindrical, like the central portions of Hadrian’s Mausoleum, and of the tombs of Plautius and Cæcilia Metella, and was supported upon a square basement which is now entirely buried beneath the level of the ground. The exterior of the cylindrical part was relieved by large niches which doubtless contained statues, and broke the otherwise heavy uniformity of the surface. At the entrance were the bronze pillars which Augustus had ordered to be erected after his death, on which was engraved a catalogue of the acts of his reign. We now possess a fragment of a copy of this interesting document in the famous Monumentum Ancyranum, found at Ancyra in the vestibule of a Temple of Augustus. Besides these pillars two obelisks stood in front of the entrance door, one of which is now placed in the Piazza of S. Maria Maggiore, while the other stands between the statues of the Dioscuri on the Quirinal. These obelisks were not, however, placed there at the time when the tomb was first built, but at a later period of the empire. The entrance fronted towards the city, i.e., to the south, near the apse of the Church of S. Rocco, and appears to have had a portico with columns, the traces of which are still left.

The interior was formed by massive concentric walls, the spaces between which were vaulted and divided into cells for the deposit of the urns containing the ashes of the illustrious dead. A great alabaster vase found near the Mausoleum in 1777, and placed in the Vatican Museum, was probably one of these. We know from various passages of Roman authors that the first burial which took place here was that of the young Marcellus, the favourite nephew of Augustus, who died at Baiæ[101] in B.C. 23, and the last, that of the Emperor Nerva in A.D. 98. Trajan was buried under his column. The Mausoleum of Hadrian became the Imperial tomb in A.D. 138.[102] During the 160 years which intervened, the ashes of Agrippa, Octavia, the mother of Marcellus, Drusus, Caius and Lucius, Augustus himself and Livia, Germanicus, Drusus, son of Tiberius, the elder Agrippina, Tiberius, Antonia (wife of L. Domitius), Claudius and Britannicus were deposited here. Besides these there must have been a great number of other friends and relations of the Imperial family buried here. Only one of all the inscriptions recording these burials is now extant. It is engraved on a pedestal, which bore the urn where the ashes of the elder Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus and mother of Caligula, lay. In the inscription on this pedestal Caligula is called Augustus, showing that the burial took place after his accession, in accordance with the account of Agrippina’s banishment by Tiberius. The pedestal was hollowed out and used in the Middle Ages as a measure for corn, and is still inscribed with the words RUGITELLA DI GRANO. It may now be seen in the courtyard of the Conservator’s Palace on the Capitol. At the same time, and at a spot between the Mausoleum and the Corso were found six cippi of travertine, recording the burning of the bodies of four of the children of Germanicus, Tiberius Cæsar, Caius Cæsar, Livilla, and one whose name is erased. The remaining two cippi record the burning of the bodies of a son of Drusus, and of one of the Flavian family. It is evident that these belonged to the Ustrina Cæsarum, a place described by Strabo, as quoted above, where the corpses of the dead were burnt and the formal ceremony of collecting the bones took place. The cippi may still be seen in the Vatican Museum.

The Mausoleum remained closed after Nerva’s burial until the capture of Rome by Alaric in A.D. 409, when the Goths broke it open in their search for treasure, and scattered the ashes of the Cæsars to the winds. It was then probably that the alabaster vase mentioned above was removed from the Mausoleum and carried to the Ustrina where it was found.

In the 12th century the Mausoleum suffered the fate of all the other great buildings of Rome. It became a castle of the Colonna family, and bore the name Augusta. The mound of earth was then probably removed, and a stone or brick tower built in its place. Previously to this, the statue of Augustus, with the bronze decorations of the Pantheon and Forum of Trajan, had probably been carried to Syracuse by Constans, and thence to Alexandria by the Saracens.

The building might, however, still, like the tomb of Hadrian, have long defied the attacks of time, had not the Romans themselves, in the commotions of 1167, demolished the Colonna Castle, and with it the greater part of the walls upon which it was built. Two hundred years later, the body of the last of the Tribunes, Cola di Rienzi, was burned by the Jews before the Mausoleum.[103] At that time the spot was called Campo d’Austa from the ancient site of the Ustrina. The interior chambers seem to have been entirely demolished in the 15th century, and only the exterior wall left. Poggio, the Florentine, describes the building as used in his time (1440) for a vineyard, and before that date its shape was completely changed by the falling in of the vaulting of the interior, so that it presented the appearance of an amphitheatre instead of a lofty conical building. In Donatis’ book (1638), it is represented as a funnel-shaped ruin with a garden on the sloping sides of the interior. Much information might doubtless be gained by well-directed excavations, which have apparently never been undertaken on account of the present occupation of the ruin as a circus in winter and a theatre (the Teatro Correa) in summer.

Muro Torto.