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Where was the nova via?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

T.P. Wiseman
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Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 72 , November 2004 , pp. 167 - 183
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Copyright © British School at Rome 2004

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References

1 Henry Hurst and Dora Cirone (with a contribution by Angela Clara Infarinato), ‘Excavation of the pre-Neronian nova via, Rome’, Papers of the British School at Rome 71 (2003), 17–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Hurst and Cirone, ‘Excavations of the pre-Neronian nova via’ (above, n. 1), 79.

3 Hirst and Cirone, ‘Excavations of the pre-Neronian nova via’ (above, n. 1), 55, 77–8, citing Livy 5.32.6, Festus 318L and Varro, , De lingua Latina 5.164Google Scholar (items 1.2, 2.5 and 2.3 below). This drawing of far-reaching inferences from isolated pieces of data, without reference to the total context in which they are found, is in marked contrast with their reading of the archaeological evidence.

4 Hurst and Cirone, ‘Excavations of the pre-Neronian nova via’ (above, n. 1), 25, 26, referring in particular to ‘the Romulean wall, the Palatine fortifications and Roma Quadrata’. However, the point is made explicitly (p. 25) that the noua uia is ‘linked in the ancient literary sources’ with these features (in fact, it is not linked with ‘Roma Quadrata’).

5 Cecamore, C., Palatium: topografia storica del Palatino tra III sec. a.C. el sec. d. C. (Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma Supplementi 9) (Rome, 2002): see pp. 41–6Google Scholar on the ‘Romulean’ gates, pp. 57–64 on the noua uia, pp. 93–6 on the porta Mugonia and adjacent features, pp. 129–45 on the Temple of Iuppiter Stator.

6 See especially Coarelli, F., ‘Iuppiter Stator, aedes, fanum, templum’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae [hereafter LTUR] III (Rome, 1996), 155–7Google Scholar; F. Coarelli, ‘Murus Romuli: Porta Mugonia, Mucionis, Mugionia’ and ‘Murus Romuli: Porta Romana, Romanula’, in Steinby (ed.), LTUR III (above), 318–19; R. Santangeli Valenzani and R. Volpe, ‘Nova Via’, in Steinby (ed.), LTUR III (above), 346–9; Guidobaldi, F. and Angelelli, C., ‘Velabrum’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), LTUR V (Rome, 1999), 102–8Google Scholar.

7 Cicero, , De diuinatione 2.69Google Scholar: Aio Loquenti aram in noua uia consecratam.

8 Justin 43.1.7 (after a reference to the hill that Evander named Palatium): in huius radicibus templum Lycaeo, quern Graeci Pana, Romani Lupercum appellant, constituit. Cf. [Aurelius Victor] Origo gentis Romanae 20.3 on the exposure of Romulus and Remus circa radices montis Palatii in Tiberim.

9 Servius on Aeneid 8.363: quis enim ignorat regiam … in radicibus Palatii finibusque Romani fori esse? [Cicero] Pridie quam in exilium iret 24 (item 3.6 below).

10 Livy 5.50.5: iussumque templum in noua uia Aio Locutio fieri. The same story appears in Plutarch, , Camillus 14.2Google Scholar (Caedicius καθ' ὁδὸν βαδίζων ἣν καινὴν ὀνομάζουσιν) and Moralia 319a (shrine set up παρὰ τὴν καινὴν ὁδόν).

11 For this topographical sense of supra, see Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. 3(a): for example, Pliny, , Natural History 2.183Google Scholar (in Syene oppido, quod est supra Alexandriam), 2.217 (octogenis cubitis supra Britanniam intumescere aestus Pytheas Massiliensis auctor est).

12 Cf. Ovid, , Fasti 2.584Google Scholar on the story of Lara: disce, per antiquos quae mihi nota senes.

13 Ovid, , Fasti 6.411–2Google Scholar: hic quoque lucus erat iuncis et harundine densus / et pede uelato non adeunda palus.

14 Fabellae aniles: Cicero, , De natura deorum 3.12Google Scholar (cf. 3.92 aniliter), HoraceGoogle Scholar, Satires 2.6.77–8Google Scholar, Quintilian 1.8.19; cf. Cicero, , Tusculan Disputations 1.93Google Scholar (ineptiae aniles).

15 Cf. Plautus, Pseudolus 163: quom ego aforo reuortar …

16 For example, Cicero, , Ad Atticum 1.18.1Google Scholar, Philippics 2.15, 8.6, Q. Cicero, Commentariolum petitionis 36, Catullus 112.1; cf. Cicero, Pro Roscio Amerino 133 (de Palatio et aedibus suis), De oratore 2.267 (in forum). By sacra uia: for example, Cicero, , Ad Atticum 4.3.3Google Scholar, Seneca, , Apocolocyntosis 12.1Google Scholar.

17 Dio Cassius 55.8.5–6; cf. 55.26.4 for another major fire in AD 6 (site not specified).

18 For example, Cecamore, Palatium (above, n. 5), 60 n. 27 (‘questa scala’).

19 Associated with the Ovid passage by Coarelli, Filippo, Ilforo romano: periodo arcaico (Rome, 1983), 236–7Google Scholar; dated to the early second century BC by Steinby, Margareta, ‘Scalae Graecae’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), LTUR IV (Rome, 1999), 241–2, at p. 241Google Scholar.

20 As assumed without argument by Santangeli Valenzani and Volpe, ‘Nova Via’ (above, n. 6), 347, and by Cecamore, Palatium (above, n. 5), 60.

21 Varro, Antiquitates diuinae fr. 107 Cardauns.

22 Important discussion of ancient authors' methods of quotation is contained in Brunt, P. A., ‘On historical fragments and epitomes’, Classical Quarterly 30 (1980), 477–94, at pp. 478–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. What Brunt says about Plutarch (‘his use of the word ϕησι or the like, followed by oratio recta, is no guarantee of verbal exactitude’) may be equally true of Gellius.

23 The other two corruptions, fima for infima and labrum for Velabrum, were corrected by (respectively) Adrianus Turnebus in 1566 and Karl Ottfried Mueller in 1833.

24 Varro, , De lingua Latina 5.44Google Scholar: Velabrum a uehendo. Similarly at 5.156: palus fuit in minore Velabro, a quo, quod ibi uehebantur lintribus, Velabrum, ut illud de quo supra scriptum est.

25 For example, A. Ammerman, ‘Velabrum (environmental setting)’, in Steinby (ed.), LTUR V (above, n. 6), 101–2, at p. 101: ‘In the context of the study of early Rome, the term is commonly used for the low ground between the Capitoline and Palatine hills and between the Forum basin and the Tiber’.

26 Tibullus 2.5.33–4: at qua Velabri regio patet, ire solebant / exiguus pulsa per uada linter aqua.

27 Macrobius, , Saturnalia 1.10.15Google Scholar: in Velabro loco celeberrimo urbis.

28 Plautus, Curculio 483 (bakers, butchers), Captiui 489 (olive oil); Martial 11.52.10, 13.32.1–2 (smoked cheese); CIL VI 9671, 9993 (wine); in general Horace, , Satires 2.3.229Google Scholar (cum Velabro omne macellum).

29 Plautus, Curculio 483 (haruspex), CIL VI 9184 (argentarius).

30 Porphyrio on Horace, Satires 2.3.228: Tuscus dicitur uicus, qua itur ad Velabrum. For the Forum — uicus Tuscus — Velabrum — Circus Maximus route, see Cicero, Verrines 2.1.154 with pseudo-Asconius ad. loc. (p. 255 Stangl), Dionysius of Halicarnassus 5.36.4, Livy 27.37.15, Suetonius, Nero 25.2, Plutarch, Romulus 5.5.

31 CIL VI 1035 5–6: negotiantes boari huius loci qui inuehent. This was pointed out more than twenty years ago: Wiseman, T.P., ‘The Temple of Victory on the Palatine’, Antiquaries Journal 61 (1981), 35–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 41 = Wiseman, T.P., Roman Studies (Liverpool, 1987), 193Google Scholar.

32 Tacitus, , Histories 1.27.2Google Scholar: per Tiberianam domum in Velabrum, inde ad miliarium aureum sub aedem Saturni pergit. Cf. Suetonius, , Otho 6.4Google Scholar (per postica parte Palatii), Plutarch, , Galba 24.4Google Scholar (διὰ τηζ Τιβερίου καλουμένης οἰκίας καταβὰς).

33 Cecamore, Palatium (above, n. 5), 159–207, esp. pp. 195–8 and fig. 68. Cecamore's identification of the Divus Augustus temple offers an explanation for the mysterious gradus Palatii that were so important in the later first century AD (Suetonius, Nero 8, Vitellius 15.2, Tacitus, , Histories 1.29.2Google Scholar, 3.74.5): they must have been the steps leading up to the temple platform from the area Palatina. It will also be of the greatest interest to see what the excavation of Henry Hurst and Dora Cirone at the ‘Scalae Graecae ’ reveals about the direct route from Augustus's triumphal arch to Augustus's temple.

34 Cf. Festus 194L (de essedo escen dere), Festus (Paulus) 70L (escendere egredi), Livy 22.20.4 (escensio ab nauibus in terram); Thesaurus linguae Latinae 5.858.20–5.

35 As do Santangeli Valenzani and Volpe, ‘Nova Via’ (above, n. 6), 347, and Cecamore, Palatium (above, n. 5), 60.

36 For Acca Larentia as a prostitute, see Livy 1.4.7, Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.84.4, Plutarch, Moralia 272e–273a. (Roman Questions 35) and Romulus 4.3, Gellius, , Noctes Atticae 7.7.5Google Scholar, Lactantius, , Institutiones 1.20.2Google Scholar, Servius, on Aeneid 1.273Google Scholar.

37 See above, nn. 26–9.

38 Varro, , De lingua Latina 5.165Google Scholar; full references in Tortorici, E., ‘Ianus Geminus, aedes’, in Steinby, (ed.), LTUR III (above, n. 6), 92–3Google Scholar.

39 Ovid, , Fasti 1.257–76Google Scholar (porta, 265), Metamorphoses 14.772–804 (portae, 780 and 783), Macrobius, , Saturnalia 1.9.17Google Scholar.

40 So Coarelli, Il foro romano (above, n. 19), 232–3, suggesting it was the popular name for the Porta Capena (arcus stillans).

41 Pensabene, P., ‘Victoria, aedes’, in Steinby, (ed.), LTUR V (above, n. 6), 149–50Google Scholar; cf. Cecamore, Palatium (above, n. 5), 115–28, who differs from Pensabene (wrongly, I think), in preferring the smaller of the two temples between Magna Mater and the ‘house of Augustus’.

42 Papi, E., ‘Tabernae veteres’, Steinby, (ed.), LTUR V (above, n. 6), 15Google Scholar: on the site of the Basilica Sempronia, and then the Basilica Iulia. See n. 30 above for the uicus Tuscus, with pseudo-Asconius p. 255 Stangl (signum Vortumni in ultimo uico Turario est sub basilicae angulo flectentibus se ad rostra uersus dextram partem); the scholiast's uicus Turarius must be the uicus Tuscus.

43 See n. 30 above, with Livy 33.26.9 on the wolf that ran from the Forum Tusco uico atque inde Cermalo. The Cermalus (or Germalus) was where Romulus and Remus were found (Varro, , De lingua Latina 5.54Google Scholar, Plutarch, , Romulus 3.5Google Scholar), at the Lupercal, a site also described as the radices Palatii (n. 8 above); Servius, on Aeneid 8.90Google Scholar describes the Lupercal as in Circo.

44 See n. 41 above on the Temple of Victoria, and Wiseman, T.P., ‘Clivus Victoriae (Palatium)’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae I (Rome, 1993), 288Google Scholar — though I no longer accept Coarelli' s placing of the shrine of Volupia (text 2.3 above).

45 Thus Coarelli, Il foro romano (above, n. 19), 233, suggesting that text 2.5 was ‘una glossa introdotta direttamente da Festo (e quindi non esistente in Verrio Flacco)’.

46 I no longer have any confidence in the solution suggested in T.P. Wiseman, Historiography and Imagination (Exeter, 1994), 115, which depends on Coarelli's placing of the porta Romanula at the northwestern corner of the Palatine.

47 So spelt in Ovid, , Fasti 6.578Google Scholar and Plutarch, Moralia 322e. For other gates with alternative names, see Festus 450–1L, Festus (Paulus) 9L, Solinus 1.13.

48 The Valeria alternative is also mentioned by Plutarch, (Publicola 19.5Google Scholar and Moralia 250f).

49 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 5.35.2: ἐπὶ τῆς ἱερᾶς ὁδοῦ τῆς εἱς τὴν ἀγορὰν ϕερούσης. Cf. 1.7.2 for Dionysius's writing career (30–7 BC).

50 Livy 2.13.11 (in summa sacra uia fuit posita uirgo insidens equo); Seneca, , Consolatio ad Marciam 16.2Google Scholar (equestri insidens statuae in sacra uia, celeberrimo loco); Plutarch, , Publicola 19.5Google Scholar (ἀνάκειται δὲ τὴν ἱερὰν ὁδὸν πορευομένοις εἰς Παλάτιον), Moralia 250f (ἀνέκειτο γοῦν ἔφιππος εἰκὼν γυναικὸς ἐπι τῆς ὁδοῦ τῆς ἱερᾶς λεγομένης); Servius, , on Aeneid 8.646Google Scholar (cui data est statua equestris quam in sacra uia hodieque conspicimus).

51 Cf. Tacitus, , Annals 15.14.1Google Scholar for the destruction of the Iuppiter Stator temple in AD 64.

52 Livy 1.12.3 and 6 (Iuppiter Stator ad ueterem portam Palatii); Ovid, , Fasti 6.793–4Google Scholar (Stator, Iuppiterante Palatini ora iugi), Tristia 3.1.31–2Google Scholar (porta est … ista Palati, hic Stator …).

53 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2.50.3: παρὰ ταῖς καλουμέναις Μουγωνίσι πύλαις, αἳ φέρουσι εἰς τὸ Παλάτιον ἐκ τῆς ἱερᾶς ὁδοῦ. Cf. Plutarch, , Romulus 18.7Google Scholar, on Romulus driving the Sabines back from the gate down to the Regia and the Temple of Vesta.

54 Varro's in Palatio for Ancus's house (text 3.4) need not mean that he thought of it as inside the gate. For the aedes Larum in summa sacra uia (and also the aedes deum Penatium in Velia), see Augustus, , Res gestae 19.2Google Scholar.

55 Plutarch, , Cicero 16.3Google Scholar: ἐν ἀρχῇ τῆς ἱερᾶς ὁδοῦ, πρὸς τὸ Παλάτιον ἀνιόντων.

56 Rouse, R.H. and Reeve, M.D., ‘Cicero: speeches’, in Reynolds, L.D. (ed.), Texts and Transmission: a Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983), 54–98, at pp. 57–8Google Scholar; as they observe (n. 11), ‘it has aroused remarkably little curiosity’.

57 For example, Livy 38.56.5 (speeches of Ti. Gracchus and Scipio Africanus), Asconius 94C (speeches of Catiline and C. Antonius), Suetonius, , Diuus Augustus 55.4Google Scholar (speech of Caesar). For Sallustian inuectiuae, see L.D. Reynolds, ‘Appendix Sallustiana’, in Reynolds (ed.), Texts and Transmission (above, n. 56), 349–52; Syme, R., Sallust (Berkeley, 1964), 314–18Google Scholar, arguing for an Augustan origin.

58 Pace Cecamore, Palatium (above, n. 5), 141, there is not the slightest reason to suppose that the author owed anything to Plutarch's Romulus. Since the text is undatable, this item should be considered outside the chronological sequence of 3.1–5.

59 Livy 2.7.11: delata confestim materia omnis infra Veliam et, ubi nunc Vicae Potae aedes est, domus in infimo cliuo aedificata. Plutarch, , Publicola 10.4Google Scholar: ὅπου νῦν ἱερόν ἐστι Οὐίκας Πότας ὀνομαζόμενον. Plutarch's ‘now’ may be evidence only for the time of his source (no doubt the same as Livy's, if not Livy himself).

60 Cicero, , De legibus 2.28Google Scholar: quodsi fingenda nomina, Vicae Potae potius uicendi atque potiundi … Cicero' s potius no doubt disallows the other possible derivation, from eating and drinking (Arnobius 3.25).

61 Asconius 13C: P. Valerio Volesi filio Publicolae aedium pub<lice lo>cum sub Veliis, ubi nunc aedis Victoriae est, populum ex lege quam ipse tulerat concessisse.

62 Cicero, , Ad Atticum 2.1.3Google Scholar (qua Catilinam emisi); cf. In Catilinam 1.7, and n. 55 above.

63 Cicero, , De republica 2.53Google Scholar (in excelsiore loco Veliae … ubi rex Tullus habitauerat); cf. Livy 2.7.6, Dionysius of Halicarnassus 5.19.1. The site evidently overlooked the macellum, where Varro (quoted in Donatus on Terence, Eunuchus 256) refers to scalae deum Penatium; see Wiseman, T.P., Roman Drama and Roman History (Exeter, 1998), 106–8Google Scholar.

64 Livy 2.7.11 (n. 59 above).

65 Similarly, as you came out through the porta Romanula to the Velabrum — from left to right, the street (or ferry) to the Circus Maximus and the Aventine, the uicus Tuscus to the Forum, and the noua uia back up to the other Palatine gate. As Hurst and Cirone rightly say (‘Excavation of the pre-Neronian nova via’ (above, n. 1), 25), ‘modern scholarship has laboured over what it wants to conceptualize as well as over where to locate it’.

66 Cf. Hurst and Cirone, ‘Excavation of the pre-Neronian nova via’ (above, n. 1), text to n. 4 above.

67 Hurst and Cirone, ‘Excavation of the pre-Neronian nova via’ (above, n. 1), 22–5 (with fig. 4), 54–5, 78–9.

68 For instance, I think he is mistaken about the porta Romanula and infima noua uia (Coarelli, Il foro romano (above, n. 19), 228–34); and though the argument from the orientation of the shrine of Juturna (Coarelli, Il foro romano (above, n. 19), 236, 248) is an excellent one, I should prefer to imagine the noua uia passing behind the original sacellum (no doubt at a slightly higher level), rather than in front of it.

69 Astolfi, F., ‘Horrea Agrippiana’, in Steinby, (ed.), LTUR III (above, n. 6), 3–8Google Scholar. Cf. n. 17 above for the fire of 7 BC.

70 Hurst, H., ‘Domus Gai’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), LTUR II (Rome, 1995), 106–8Google Scholar.

71 Scott, R.T., ‘Atrium Vestae’, in Steinby, (ed.), LTUR I (above, n. 44), 138–42, esp. p. 140Google Scholar.

72 Tacitus, , Annals 15.41.1Google Scholar.

73 See nn. 60–2, above.