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Eight fragments of the Marble Plan of Rome shedding new light on the Transtiberim

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

Pier Luigi Tucci
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Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 72 , November 2004 , pp. 185 - 202
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Copyright © British School at Rome 2004

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References

1 Cozza, L., ‘L'aula e la parete’, in Carettoni, G., Colini, A.M., Cozza, L. and Gatti, G., La pianta marmorea di Roma antica (Rome, 1960), 175–95 and table LXI a–bGoogle Scholar. Cozza plotted all clamps or clamp-holes that indicate the places where the marble slabs had been attached to the wall. His survey was presented in the form of two double plates, with a list of the plotted clamps (or clamp-holes). See also Almeida, E. Rodriguez, Forma Urbis marmorea. Aggiornamento generale 1980 (Rome, 1981), 35–8Google Scholar.

2 No slab corners are among the 24 new fragments of the Marble Plan that were discovered in the area of the Templum Pacis during the course of recent excavations (1999–2000).

3 Unfortunately the main editions of the Forma Urbis (above, n. 1) do not indicate the direction of the saw marks on the smooth back of the fragments.

4 Almeida, E. Rodriguez, ‘Forma Urbis marmorea: nuovi elementi di analisi e nuove ipotesi di lavoro’, Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome. Antiquité 89 (1977), 219–56, esp. pp. 248–50Google Scholar; Tucci, P.L., ‘Tra il Quirinale e l'Acquedotto Vergine sulla pianta marmorea severiana: i frammenti 538 a-o’, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici 23 (1996), 21–33Google Scholar.

5 Obviously, if a fragment bears an inscription referring to a building whose location is known, then its positioning requires little effort, because one need only control a single slab. This is the case with group 452a–d, which can be positioned only in the slab showing the east slope of the Palatine between the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus. See now Cecamore, C., ‘Le Curiae Veteres sulla Forma Urbis marmorea e il pomerio romuleo secondo Tacito’, Mitteilungen des Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Römische Abteilung 109 (2002), 43–58Google Scholar.

6 Carettoni et al., La pianta marmorea di Roma antica (above, n. 1), 122.

7 Cozza, ‘L'aula e la parete’ (above, n. 1), 175–95, esp. pp. 184–5 (sector C8).

8 It is not indicated in Fig. 2 because its symbol is covered by the adjacent fragment 574a.

9 The brick wall above hole number 1 is not preserved, so one could suppose the existence of another hole, or metal clamp, coupled with it (like numbers 2–3 and 4–6). However, the clamps along the vertical edges of the horizontal slabs were not always coupled: see sectors B3 or C10 in Cozza's drawing (‘L'aula e la parete’ (above, n. 1)).

10 Lanciani, R., Forma Urbis Romae (Rome, 1893–1901), table 34 (see Fig. 7)Google Scholar. Neither could the ancient topography represented on the adjacent slabs be confirmed by remains above ground or excavations (but now cf. below, n. 20). Perhaps with the guidance of the Marble Plan one day it will be possible to undertake a small-scale excavation in the large courtyard of the Ospizio, today used as a car park. On the Ospizio, see Chiumenti, L. and Bilancia, F., La Campagna Romana antica, medioevale e moderna VI (Rome, 1977), 307Google Scholar.

11 The thickness of fragment 27a is only 64 mm, since it was reduced in the eighteenth century: see Carettoni et al., La pianta marmorea di Roma antica (above, n. 1), 85.

12 According to Rodriguez Almeida the simple observation of an unnoticed detail might lead to the identification of group 138a–f (Almeida, E. Rodriguez, ‘Novità minori dalla Forma Urbis marmorea’, Ostraka 1 (1992), 55–80, esp. p. 69)Google Scholar.

13 Perhaps this building was a spacious house with atrium.

14 Carettoni et al., La pianta marmorea di Roma antica (above, n. 1); Rodriguez Almeida, Forma Urbis marmorea (above, n. 1). Sometimes in Rodriguez Almeida's drawings the lines are regularized and there are minuscule errors. I have corrected this detail in my Fig. 2.

15 Again, this detail cannot be appreciated in the drawings of the 1980 edition by Rodriguez Almeida, Forma Urbis marmorea (above, n. 1).

16 Another observation a posteriori. Fragments 138a–f and 574a–b, being adjacent to each other, have an edge in common but also share another edge-line. Since the vertical edges of marble slabs belonging to adjacent rows are always shifted, that edge-line clearly indicates that the two groups belong to slabs placed in the same horizontal row.

17 Pliny, , Naturalis Historia 3.5.54Google Scholar (‘a most tranquil trafficker in the produce of all the earth’).

18 Gatti, G., ‘Saepta Julia e Porticus Aemilia nella Forma severiana’, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 62 (1934), 123–49, esp. p. 141Google Scholar; Gatti, G., ‘L'arginatura del Tevere a Marmorata’, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 64 (1936), 55–82, esp. pp. 77–80Google Scholar; Meneghini, R., ‘Siti archeologici 1–2’, Bollettino di Numismatica 5 (1985), 15–46Google Scholar; Meneghini, R., ‘Attività e installazioni portuali lungo il Tevere. La riva dell'Emporium’, in Misurare la terra: centuriazione e coloni nel mondo romano. Città, agricoltura, commercio: materiali da Roma e dal suburbio (Modena, 1985), 162–71Google Scholar. It is worth recalling the existence of codicarii navicularii infra pontem Sublicium (CIL VI 1639)Google Scholar.

19 Rome, Archivio Doria Pamphilj, sc. 95, b. 56, int. 2, with a report and a drawing by the architect Andrea Busiri Vici; his drawing shows another broken corbel. Cf. Borromeo, O., ‘Santa Maria in Cappella’, L'Urbe 18 (1955), 1–21Google Scholar, esp. p. 13; Docci, M., S. Maria in Cappella a Ripagrande (Rome, 1979), 60–4Google Scholar, table XI. A photograph by J.H. Parker (number 160 of his catalogue) of the ‘corbels carved into Lions' heads’ is published in Castagnoli, F., ‘Installazioni portuali a Roma’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 36 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, fig. 5 (wrongly captioned: the bridge in the background is the ponte Rotto); Brizzi, B., Il Tevere. Un secolo di immagini (Rome, 1989), 205Google Scholar, fig. 187; Gall, J. Le, Le Tibre fleuve de Rome dans l'antiquité (Paris, 1953)Google Scholar, table X. These rings were fixed to the modern wall of the Lungotevere and were still intact in 1947, when Le Gall took a photograph of two of them: the lions' heads were later cut off. The two wharves below the pons Aemilius drawn in Lanciani, Forma Urbis Romae (above, n. 10), tables 28 and 34 (see Fig. 7), are probably a duplication of the structures that came to light in the garden of Prince Doria.

20 Parker, J.H., Excavations in Rome in the Season of 1870–71. A Lecture Delivered on July 7, 1871 (London, 1871), 16–17, 26, 31Google Scholar. See also Parker, J.H.Google Scholar, A Catalogue of Three Thousand Three Hundred Photographs of Antiquities in Rome and Italy (London, 1879), 4Google Scholar; Castagnoli, F., ‘Documenti di scavi eseguiti in Roma negli anni 1860–70’, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 73 (1949–1950), 123–87, esp. p. 175Google Scholar.

21 G. Fiorelli, Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (1886), 362–3; G. Gatti, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma (1887), 16–17; Le Gall, Le Tibre (above, n. 19), table XXXI, 2; R. Friggeri, ‘Ara con iscrizione e rilievo sul lato’, in Misurare la terra (above, n. 18), 237–8. See also C. Hülsen, ‘Di un'iscrizione relativa al collegio dei palombai del Tevere’, Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (1888), 279–81; G. Gatti, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma (1888), 387–9; a similar inscription was seen in a ruined church near Porta Portuense (CIL VI 29700).

22 Carettoni et al., La pianta marmorea di Roma antica (above, n. 1), 122. See also Rickman, G., Roman Granaries and Store Buildings (Cambridge, 1971), 108–21Google Scholar; Palmer, R.E.A., ‘The topography and social history of Rome's Trastevere (southern sector)’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 125 (1981), 368–97Google Scholar; Almeida, E. Rodriguez, Il Monte Testaccio. Ambiente storia materiali (Rome, 1984), 81–9Google Scholar; Coarelli, F., ‘Aedes Fortis Fortunae, Naumachia Augusti, Castra Ravennatium. La via Campana Portuensis e alcuni edifici adiacenti nella pianta marmorea severiana’, Ostraka 1 (1992), 39–54Google Scholar; Taylor, R., ‘Torrent or trickle? The Aqua Alsietina, the Naumachia Augusti, and the Transtiberim’, American Journal of Archaeology 101 (1997), 465–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Almeida, E. Rodriguez, Topografia e vita romana: da Augusto a Costantino (Rome, 2001), 52–7Google Scholar.

23 Carettoni et al., La pianta marmorea di Roma antica (above, n. 1), 86 and table LXII b. See also Rodriguez Almeida, ‘Forma Urbis marmorea’ (above, n. 4), fig. 14; Almeida, E. Rodriguez, Formae Urbis Antiquae. Le mappe marmoree di Roma tra la Repubblica e Settimio Severo (Collection de l'École Française de Rome 305) (Rome, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, table XII.

24 The fragments already placed in slab 27 could shift horizontally because the exact length of that slab is unknown: its left-hand side corresponds to a part of the wall that is not preserved, lacking the holes of the metal clamps. One might suppose that it was more or less 2 m long, by considering also the length of the adjacent slab on the left and dividing the total measure by two. The hypothetical reconstruction of the main road accords with a slab more or less 2 m long.

25 Ashby, T., The Roman Campagna in Classical Times (London, 1927), 30–1Google Scholar, 219. Lanciani, R., The Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome (London, 1897), 530–1Google Scholar, drew attention to an inscription of the age of Septimius Severus regarding the corporation of the saccarii salarii, who brought salt from the campus salinarum Romanorum to Portus and to Rome. The salinae were on the left bank of the Tiber, just above the pons Sublicius. See also Lanciani, R., ‘Il‘campus salinarum romanarum’’, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma (1888), 83–91Google Scholar; Coarelli, F., Il Foro Boario dalle origini alla fine della Repubblica (Rome, 1988), 109–13Google Scholar. On the Via Campana, see Scheid, J., ‘Note sur la Via Campana’, Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome. Antiquité 88 (1976), 639–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Patterson, J.R., ‘Via Campana’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae V (Rome, 1999), 135Google Scholar.

26 D'Onofrio, C., Il Tevere (Rome, 1980), 131–40Google Scholar. Further investigations are described (but with no plans) by Carpano, C. Mocchegiani (‘Tevere. Premesse per una archeologia fluviale’, Bollettino d'Arte, Supplemento 4 (1980), 151–65Google Scholar; ‘Indagini archeologiche nel Tevere’, Quaderni del Centro di Studio per l'Archeologia Etrusco-Italica 5 (1981), 142–55Google Scholar; ‘Premessa’, Bollettino di Numismatica 5 (1985), 9–12Google Scholar; ‘Ponte Sublicio’, in Tevere. Un'antica via per il mediterraneo (Rome, 1986), 270)Google Scholar.

27 D'Onofrio, Il Tevere (above, n. 26), 131–40; Coarelli, F., ‘Pons Sublicius’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae IV (Rome, 1999), 112–13Google Scholar. See also Raventòs, X. Dupré, ‘Pons Probi’, in Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae IV (above), 111–12Google Scholar; Buzzetti, C., ‘Roma. Noterelle di topografia antica’, Bollettino della Unione Storia ed Arte 4 (2000), 39–46Google Scholar. Fragment 348 of the Forma Urbis has been located hypothetically on the left bank of the Tiber, just above the remains of this bridge: Rodriguez Almeida, Formae Urbis Antiquae (above, n. 23), table XII. The left part of slab 27 shows about 250 m of the right bank of the Tiber below the pons Aemilius, where the pons Sublicius is supposed to be, but this bridge does not appear on the Marble Plan (Fig. 5). See also Taylor, R., ‘A Citeriore Ripa Aquae: aqueduct crossings in the ancient city of Rome’, Papers of the British School at Rome 63 (1995), 75–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, R., Public Needs and Private Pleasures (Rome, 2000), 215–32Google Scholar.

28 Chiumenti and Bilancia, La Campagna Romana (above, n. 10), 303–24; Venditti, E., La Via Portuense e il suo territorio tra leggenda storia e archeologia (Rome, 1992)Google Scholar; Patterson, J.R., ‘Via Portuensis’, in Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae VGoogle Scholar (above, n. 25), 144. The road is referred to as the Via Campana-Portuensis in modern scholarship, but this name never occurs in the ancient sources.

29 See Nibby, A., Della Via Portuense e dell'antica città di Porto (Rome, 1827), 8–9, 11Google Scholar.

30 It is worth recalling that the pons Aemilius generally has been considered the starting-point for the Via Campana and the locations of many monuments at various milestones of that road depend on this starting-point.

31 D'Onofrio, Il Tevere (above, n. 26), 131–65.

32 Classical sources are given in Coarelli, ‘Pons Sublicius’ (above, n. 27), 112, in connection with Ancus Marcius, the Sack of Rome by the Gauls and the death of G. Gracchus. See also Fabretti, R., De Aquis et Aquaeductibus Veteris Romae Dissertationes Tres (Rome, 1680), 53Google Scholar; Lanciani, The Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome (above, n. 25), 20.

33 Cozza, L., ‘Mura Aureliane, 2. Trastevere, il braccio meridionale: dal Tevere a Porta Aurelia — S. Pancrazio’, Bullettino delta Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 92 (1987–1988), 137–74Google Scholar.

34 The courtyard with dots inside on fragment 138b has been identified as a workshop by Reynolds, D.W., Forma Urbis Romae: the Severan Marble Plan and the Urban Form of Ancient Rome (University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Ph.D. thesis, 1996), 386Google Scholar. One of the blocks on fragment 138a is described in Staccioli, R.A., ‘Le ‘tabernae’ a Roma attraverso la ‘Forma Urbis’’, Rendiconti dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche) 14 (1959), 56–66, esp. p. 63Google Scholar.

35 Lanciani, The Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome (above, n. 25), 512.

36 CIL VI 1152 and Lanciani, ‘I1 ‘campus salinarum romanarum’’ (above, n. 25), 83–91. The Marble Plan shows that the ancient topography influenced this side of the Ospizio Apostolico, which is not aligned with the pre-existing part of the same building. Contemporary sources already imagined that ancient Roman structures were reused in that part of the Ospizio: see Tirincanti, G., ‘Il San Michele: passato e avvenire. La fabbrica e il Porto di Ripa Grande’, Capitolium 44 (6–7) (1969), 9–57, esp. p. 40Google Scholar.

37 G. Mancini, Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (1913), 117. For a previous excavation (c. 1874) that revealed a considerable layer of dolia fragments in the same area, see Dressel, E., ‘Ricerche sul Monte Testaccio’, Annali dell'Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica 50 (1878), 118–92, esp. pp. 185–7, n. 2Google Scholar.

38 Gatti, G., Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 62 (1934), 177–8Google Scholar; L'Année Epigraphique (1937), 23, n. 61. See Palmer, R.E.A., ‘Customs on market goods imported into the city of Rome’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 36 (1980), 217–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Purcell, N., ‘Wine and wealth in ancient Italy’, The Journal of Roman Studies 75 (1985), 1–19, esp. p. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chioffi, L., ‘Cella Civiciana’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae I (Rome, 1993), 256Google Scholar.

39 Spagnolis, M. Conticello De', Il tempio dei Dioscuri nel circo Flaminio (Rome, 1984), 9–16Google Scholar; Manzano, P. Di, ‘Via Anicia’, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 93 (1989–1990), 112–14Google Scholar. The plan of the ancient remains is still unpublished. The via Anicia plan came to light during this excavation. Other ancient walls and objects were found during the construction of the Scuola Elementare Regina Margherita, near the Caserma Lamarmora: Gatti, G., Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 15 (1887), 17–18Google Scholar. It is also worth recording the discovery of a Republican house under the church of Santa Cecilia: Parmegiani, N., ‘Trastevere. Chiesa di Santa Cecilia. Scavi 1987–1989’, Bollettino di Archeologia 3 (1990), 104–9Google Scholar.

40 See Mattone, A., ‘Sotto l'asfalto il Porto di Roma’, La Repubblica, 20 February 2000, Cronaca di RomaGoogle Scholar, p. V; J. Hooper, ‘Carpark to be laid over Roman mosaics’, The Guardian, 26 November 2003, 19.