ID AND LOCATION
| Stanford #
| 200b |
| AG1980 #
| 200b |
| PM1960 #
| 200 b |
| Slab #
| unknown |
| Adjoins
| 200a |
CONDITION
| Located
| true |
| Incised
| true |
| Surviving
| true |
| Subfragments
| 1 |
| Plaster Parts
| 0 |
| Back Surface
| smooth |
| Slab Edges
| 2 |
| Clamp Holes
| 2 |
| Tassello
| no |
TECHNICAL INFO
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ANALYSIS
|
| Description The fragment was part of a slab corner. Two clamp holes are visible. On the left are two elongated enclosures, both bordered at top by a horizontal line which leaves a small opening in the upper right corner of the right enclosure. Another horizontal line appears above the other. The upper right corner of another structure can be seen in the bottom left area. The letter S and what seems to be a period appear in the right side of the fragment. A faint guide line above the inscription is parallel to the elongated enclosures on the left.
Identification: Tiber River E. Rodríguez-Almeida has suggested that the open space on the right in this fragment represent the Tiber, labeled by the inscription which he reconstructs as [TIBERI]S. The elongated structures on the left seem to be of a utilitarian nature; they are perhaps warehouses (horrea) while the enclosure on the right might represent a loading dock, similar to the one visible in fr. 25a (Rodríguez-Almeida 1992, pp. 59-60). The restrictions placed on the fragment's position by the direction of the inscription, the course of the Tiber itself, and the fact that the piece was part of a slab corner, enabled Rodríguez-Almeida to position the fragment in the upper right corner of slab VIII-9 (Rodríguez-Almeida 1992, fig. 7). As elsewhere on the Plan, the edges of the river are indicated only by whatever construction is built along its banks.
Identification: Area Martis An alternative identification is offered by L. Ferrea. She suggests that the [---]S in this fragment combines with the AREA M[---] in fr. 674b to read AREA M[ARTI]S, a label she proposes refers to the campus Martialis on the Caelian Hill, known to have served as a place for military exercises when the Campus Martius was flooded (Ferrea 2002, p. 65). The similar style and ductus of the letters in the two fragments, as well as a visible guide line in both, suggest they belong to a single inscription. Imprecise rendering of fr. 674ac by the Renaissance engravers probably accounts for the slight misalignment of the lines in the fragments. Ferrea locates frs. 200b and a along the top edge of slab XI-6 and frs. 674b and ac in the upper right corner of slab X-5 (fig. 66). They thus occupy the area just south of the Temple of Claudius on the Caelian Hill. The period engraved after the final S in this fragment, rare on the Marble Plan, must signify that the inscription continued below, since the open space to its right coincided with the top of the Plan.
Significance Both proposals place this fragment along the edge of the Marble Plan. It therefore provides important information about the design of the edges of this great monument. |
|
| HISTORY OF FRAGMENT |
| Like the majority of FUR fragments, this piece was discovered in 1562 in a garden behind the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian. From here, it was transferred to the Palazzo Farnese and stored there. It was not among the fragments that were reproduced in the Renaissance drawings that are now kept in the Vatican, but Giovanni Pietro Bellori included it in his 1673 publication. In 1742, the fragment was moved to the Capitoline Museums and exhibited with some of the other known fragments in wooden frames along the main staircase. Since then, it has been stored with the other FUR fragments in various places: the storerooms of the Capitoline Museums (1903-1924), the Antiquarium Comunale (1924-1939), the Capitoline Museums again (1939-1955), the Palazzo Braschi (1955-1998), and since 1998 in the Museo della Civiltà Romana in EUR under the auspices of the Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali del Comune di Roma. (This fragments history corresponds to Iter E as summarized in PM 1960, p. 56.)
Text by Tina Najbjerg
|
|
| KEYWORDS
|
| river, field |
|
Prev
