A Study of the Topography and Municipal History of Praeneste Part 2

With the expansion of the town to the plain below, this system gave great opportunity for the development of baths, fountains, and waterworks,[97] for Praeneste wished to vie with Tibur and Rome, where the Anio river and the many aqueducts had made possible great things for public use and munic.i.p.al adornment.

THE TEMPLE OF FORTUNA PRIMIGENIA.

Nusquam se fortunatiorem quam Praeneste vidisse Fortunam.[98] In this way Cicero reports a popular saying which makes clear the fame of the G.o.ddess Fortuna Primigenia and her temple at Praeneste.[99]

The excavations at Praeneste in the eighteenth century brought the city again into prominence, and from that time to the present, Praeneste has offered much material for archaeologists and historians.

But the temple of Fortuna has const.i.tuted the princ.i.p.al interest and engaged the particular attention of everyone who has worked upon the history of the town, because the early enthusiastic view was that the temple occupied the whole slope of the mountain,[100] and that the present city was built on the terraces and in the ruins of the temple.

Every successive study, however, of the city from a topographical point of view has lessened more and more the estimated size of the temple, until now all that can be maintained successfully is that there are two separate temples built at different times, the later and larger one occupying a position two terraces higher than the older and more important temple below.

The lower temple with its precinct, along the north side of which extends a wall and the ruins of a so-called cryptoporticus which connected two caves hollowed out in the rock, is not so very large a sanctuary, but it occupies a very good position above and behind the ancient forum and basilica on a terrace cut back into the solid rock of the mountain. The temple precinct is a courtyard which extends along the terrace and occupies its whole width from the older cave on the west to the newer one at the east. In front of the latter cave is built the temple itself, which faces west along the terrace, but extends its southern facade to the edge of the ancient forum which it overlooks.

This temple is older than the time of Sulla, and occupies the site of an earlier temple.

Two terraces higher, on the Cortina terrace, stretch out the ruins of a huge construction in opus incertum. This building had at least two stories of colonnade facing the south, and at the north side of the terrace a series of arches above which in the center rose a round temple which was approached by a semicircular flight of steps.[101] This building, belonging to the time of Sulla, presented a very imposing appearance from the forum below the town. It has no connection with the lower temple unless perhaps by underground pa.s.sages.

Although this new temple and complex of buildings was much larger and costlier than the temple below, it was so little able to compete with the fame of the ancient shrine, that until mediaeval times there is not a mention of it anywhere by name or by suggestion, unless perhaps in one inscription mentioned below. The splendid publication of Delbrueck[102]

with maps and plans and bibliography of the lower temple and the work which has been done on it, makes unnecessary any remarks except on some few points which have escaped him.

The tradition was that a certain Numerius Suffustius of Praeneste was warned in dreams to cut into the rocks at a certain place, and this he did before his mocking fellow citizens, when to the bewilderment of them all pieces of wood inscribed with letters of the earliest style leaped from the rock. The place where this phenomenon occurred was thus proved divine, the cult of Fortuna Primigenia was established beyond peradventure, and her oracular replies to those who sought her shrine were transmitted by means of these lettered blocks.[103] This story accounts for a cave in which the lots (sortes) were to be consulted.

But there are two caves. The reason why there are two has never been shown, nor does Delbrueck have proof enough to settle which is the older cave.[104]

The cave to the west is made by Delbrueck the shrine of Iuppiter puer, and the temple with its cave at the east, the aedes Fortunae. This he does on the authority of his understanding of the pa.s.sage from Cicero which gives nearly all the written information we have on the subject of the temple.[105] Delbrueck bases his entire argument on this pa.s.sage and two other references to a building called aedes.[106] Now it was Fortuna who was wors.h.i.+pped at Praeneste, and not Jupiter. Although there is an intimate connection between Jupiter and Fortuna at Praeneste, because she was thought of at different times as now the mother and now the daughter of Jupiter, still the weight of evidence will not allow any such importance to be attached to Iuppiter puer as Delbrueck wishes.[107]

The two caves were not made at the same time. This is proved by the fact that the basilica[108] is below and between them. Had there been two caves at the earliest time, with a common precinct as a connection between them, as there was later, there would have been power enough in the priesthood to keep the basilica from occupying the front of the place which would have been the natural spot for a temple or for the imposing facade of a portico. The western cave is the earlier, but it is the earlier not because it was a shrine of Iuppiter puer, but because the ancient road which came through the forum turned up to it, because it is the least symmetrical of the two caves, and because the temple faced it, and did not face the forum.

The various plans of the temple[109] have usually a.s.sumed like buildings in front of each cave, and a building, corresponding to the basilica, between them and forming an integral part of the plan. But the basilica does not quite align with the temple, and the road back of the basilica precludes any such idea, not to mention the fact that no building the size of a temple was in front of the west cave. It is the mania for making the temple cover too large a s.p.a.ce, and the desire to show that all its parts were exactly balanced on either side, and that this triangular shaped sanctuary culminated in a round temple, this it is that has caused so much trouble with the topography of the city. The temple, as it really is, was larger perhaps than any other in Latium, and certainly as imposing.

Delbrueck did not see that there was a real communication between the caves along the so-called cryptoporticus. There is a window-like hole, now walled up, in the east cave at the top, and it opened out upon the second story of the cryptoporticus, as Marucchi saw.[110] So there was an unseen means of getting from one cave to the other. This probably proves that suppliants at one shrine went to the other and were there convinced of the power of the G.o.ddess by seeing the same priest or something which they themselves had offered at the first shrine. It certainly proves that both caves were connected with the rites having to do with the proper obtaining of lots from Fortuna, and that this communication between the caves was unknown to any but the temple servants.

There are some other inscriptions not noticed by Delbrueck which mention the aedes,[111] and bear on the question in hand. One inscription found in the Via delle Monache[112] shows that in connection with the sedes Fortunae were a manceps and three cellarii. This is an inscription of the last of the second or the first of the third century A.D.,[113] when both lower and upper temples were in very great favor. It shows further that only the lower temple is meant, for the number is too small to be applicable to the great upper temple, and it also shows that aedes, means the temple building itself and not the whole precinct. There is also an inscription, now in the floor of the cathedral, that mentions aedes. Its provenience is noteworthy.[114] There were other buildings, however, belonging to the precinct of the lower temple, as is shown by the remains today.[115] That there was more than one sacred building is also shown by inscriptions which mention aedes sacrae,[116] though these may refer of course to the upper temple as well.

There are yet two inscriptions of importance, one of which mentions a porticus, the other an aedes et porticus.[117] The second of these inscriptions belongs to a time not much later than the founding of the colony. It tells that certain work was done by decree of the decuriones, and it can hardly refer to the ancient lower temple, but must mean either the upper one, or still another out on the new forum, for there is where the stone is reported to have been found. The first inscription records a work of some consequence done by a woman in remembrance of her husband.[118] There are no remains to show that the forum below the town had any temple of such consequence, so it seems best to refer both these inscriptions to the upper temple, which, as we know, was rich in marble.[119]

Now after having brought together all the usages of the word aedes in its application to the temple of Praeneste, it seems that Delbrueck has very small foundation for his argument which a.s.sumes as settled the exact meaning and location of the aedes Fortunae.

From the temple itself we turn now to a brief discussion of a s.p.a.ce on the tufa wall which helps to face the cave on the west. This is a smoothed surface which shows a narrow cornice ledge above it, and a narrow base below. In it are a number of irregularly driven holes.

Delbrueck calls it a votive niche,[120] and says that the "viele regellos verstreute Nagelloecher" are due to nails upon which votive offerings were suspended.

This seems quite impossible. The holes are much too irregular to have served such a purpose. The holes show positively that they were made by nails which held up a slab of some kind, perhaps of marble, on which were displayed the replies from the G.o.ddess[121] which were too long to be given by means of the lettered blocks (sortes). Most likely, however, it was a marble slab or bronze tablet which contained the lex templi, and was something like the tabula Veliterna.[122]

On the floor of the two caves were two very beautiful mosaics, one of which is now in the Barberini palace, the other, which is in a sadly mutilated condition, still on the floor of the west cave. The date of these mosaics has been a much discussed question. Marucchi puts it at the end of the second century A.D., while Delbrueck makes it the early part of the first century B.C., and thinks the mosaics were the gift of Sulla. Delbrueck does not make his point at all, and Marucchi is carried too far by a desire to establish a connection at Praeneste between Fortuna and Isis.[123] Not to go into a discussion of the date of the Greek lettering which gives the names of the animals portrayed in the finer mosaic, nor the subject of the mosaic itself,[124] the inscription given above[118] should help to settle the date of the mosaic. Under Claudius, between the years 51 and 54 A.D., a portico was decorated with marble and a coating of marble facing. That this was a very splendid ornamentation is shown by the fact that it is mentioned so particularly in the inscription. And if in 54 A.D. marble and marble facing were things so worthy of note, then certainly one hundred and thirty years earlier there was no marble mosaic floor in Praeneste like the one under discussion, which is considered the finest large piece of Roman mosaic in existence. And it was fifty years later than the date Delbrueck wishes to a.s.sign to this mosaic, before marble began to be used in any great profusion in Rome, and at this time Praeneste was not in advance of Rome. The mosaic, therefore, undoubtedly dates from about the time of Hadrian, and was probably a gift to the city when he built himself a villa below the town.[125]

Finally, a word with regard to the aerarium. This is under the temple of Fortuna, but is not built with any regard to the facade of the temple above. The inscription on the back wall of the chamber is earlier than the time of Sulla,[126] and the position of this little vault[127]

shows that it was a treasury connected with the basilica, indeed its close proximity about makes it part of that building and proves that it was the storehouse for public funds and records. It occupied a very prominent place, for it was at the upper end of the old forum, directly in front of the Sacra Via that came up past the basilica from the Porta Triumphalis. The conclusion of the whole matter is that the earliest city forum grew up on the terrace in front of the place where the mysterious lots had leaped out of the living rock. A basilica was built in a prominent place in the northwest corner of the forum. Later, another wonderful cave was discovered or made, and at such a distance from the first one that a temple in front of it would have a facing on the forum beyond the basilica, and this also gave a s.p.a.ce of ground which was leveled off into a terrace above the basilica and the forum, and made into a sacred precinct. Because the basilica occupied the middle front of the temple property, the temple was made to face west along the terrace, toward the more ancient cave. The sacred precinct in front of the temple and between the caves was enclosed, and had no entrance except at the west end where the Sacra Via ended, which was in front of the west cave. Before the temple, facing the sacred inclosure was the p.r.o.naos mentioned in the inscription above,[128] and along each side of this inclosure ran a row of columns, and probably one also on the west side. Both caves and the temple were consecrated to the service of Fortuna Primigenia, the tutelary G.o.ddess of Praeneste. Both caves and an earlier temple, which occupied part of the site of the present one, belong to the early life of Praeneste.

Sulla built a huge temple on the second terrace higher than the old temple, but its fame and sanct.i.ty were never comparable to its beauty and its pretensions.[129]

THE EPIGRAPHICAL TOPOGRAPHY OF PRAENESTE.

AEDICULA, C.I.L., XIV, 2908.

From the provenience of the inscription this building, not necessarily a sacred one (Dessau), was one of the many structures on the site of the new Forum below the town.

PUBLICA AEDIFICIA, C.I.L., XIV, 2919, 3032.

Barbarus Pompeia.n.u.s about 227 A.D. restored a number of public buildings which had begun to fall to pieces. A mensor aed(ificiorum) (see Dict.

under sarcio) is mentioned in C.I.L., XIV, 3032.

AEDES ET PORTICUS, C.I.L., XIV, 2980.

See discussion of temple, page 42.

AEDES, C.I.L., XIV, 2864, 2867, 3007.

See discussion of temple, page 42.

AEDES SACRAE, C.I.L., XIV, 2922, 4091, 9== Annali dell'Inst., 1855, p.

86.

See discussion of temple, page 42.

AERARIUM, C.I.L., XIV, 2975; Bull. dell'Inst., 1881, p. 207; Marucchi, Bull. dell'Inst., 1881, p. 252; Nibby, a.n.a.lisi, II, p. 504; best and latest, Delbrueck, h.e.l.lenistische Bauten in Latium, I, p. 58.

The points worth noting are: that this aerarium is not built with reference to the temple above, and that it faces out on the public square. These points have been discussed more at length above, and will receive still more attention below under the caption "FORUM."

AMPHITHEATRUM, C.I.L., XIV, 3010, 3014; Juvenal, III, 173; Ovid, A.A., I, 103 ff.

The remains found out along the Valmontone road[130] coincide nearly enough with the provenience of the inscription to settle an amphitheatre here of late imperial date. The tradition of the death of the martyr S.

Agapito in an amphitheatre, and the discovery of a Christian church on the Valmontone road, have helped to make pretty sure the identification of these ruins.[131]

We know also from an inscription that there was a gladiatorial school at Praeneste.[132]

BALNEAE, C.I.L., XIV, 3013, 3014 add.

The so-called nymphaeum, the brick building below the Via degli Arconi, mentioned page 41, seems to have been a bath as well as a fountain, because of the architectural fragments found there[133] when it was turned into a mill by the Bonanni brothers. The reservoir mentioned above on page 41 must have belonged also to a bath, and so do the ruins which are out beyond the villa under which the modern cemetery now is.

From their orientation they seem to belong to the villa. There were also baths on the hill toward Gallicano, as the ruins show.[134]