ID AND LOCATION
CONDITION
| Located
| true |
| Incised
| true |
| Surviving
| true |
| Subfragments
| 1 |
| Plaster Parts
| 0 |
| Back Surface
| rough |
| Slab Edges
| 0 |
| Clamp Holes
| 0 |
| Tassello
| yes |
TECHNICAL INFO
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| ANALYSIS
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| Description This fragment depicts two parallel rows of columns ending at a wall that is fronted by a row of columns. At the top and along the right edge of the fragment are walls with rooms opening beyond. Traces of minium survive in the incisions. Note the guide lines along the two lines of columns and along the top of the inscription. N.B. The marble vein direction on PM 1960, pl. 35, is represented correctly for fragments 70a and 70b, but incorrectly for fragment 70c; this was fixed in AG 1980, pl. 36.
Identification: Aedes Faustinae This fragment, together with frs. 70b, 70c and 103, has recently been identified as part of the Temple of the Deified Faustina on the Palatine, rededicated in 221 CE to Elagabalus (Cecamore 1999; on the Temple of Elagabalus, see LTUR III, pp. 10-11). The identification is supported by the inscription on 70a and 70c, comparison with the second century CE structures excavated in the Vigna Barberini on the Palatine, close study of the original location on the wall of the dowel hole (tassello) on the back of 70a and 70c, and the similarity between these fragments and known parts of slab VII-11 of the Plan, to which this location corresponds. The temple stood within a large porticus that had a double colonnade on three sides (Cecamore 1999, p. 320, fig. 5). This fragment depicts the junction of the E end of the colonnade with the rear wall at the S corner of the complex. The rooms at top and right lie outside the complex and are perhaps tabernae.
Significance With frs. 70b, c, and 103, this fragment is key to identifying the excavated remains on the Palatine as the Temple of Faustina. |
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| 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. Renaissance engravers reproduced the fragment in 16th-c. drawings that are now kept in the Vatican (Cod. Vat. Lat. 3439), and Giovanni Pietro Bellori included it in his 1673 publication of the Plan. In 1742, it was moved to the Capitoline Museums and exhibited with some of the other known fragments in wooden frames along the main staircase. In 1903, museum curators included the piece in a reconstruction of the FUR mounted on a wall behind the Palazzo dei Conservatori (1903-1924). Since then, the fragment has been stored with the other known FUR fragments in various places: the storerooms of 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 fragment's history corresponds to Iter A as summarized in PM 1960, p. 56.)
Text by Tina Najbjerg and Jennifer Trimble |
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| KEYWORDS
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| temple, Palatine, columns, tabernae, porticus, colonnade |
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