Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/814

 794 ROMA. The funeral of Caesar was also that of the Rcpnnlic. After his death and apotheosis, first an Altak and then an Aedf.s Divj Julia were erected to him, on the spot where his body had been burnt (^o^/xdv riva iv T^ rrjs irvpcis -x^oop'iu) i^pvcrdixevoi, Dion Cass. xliv. 5 1 ; Koi. rip^-ov oi iv re rrj ayopa Ka eV tw rdTry fu ^ eKiKavTO TTpoKanSakKovro, Id. xlvii. 18; "Aedeni Divi Juli— feci," Mon. Anajr.) We also find mention of a column of Numidian marble nearly 20 feet hifih, erected to him on the foram by the people, with this inscription: " Parent! Patriae," (Suet. Caes. 88.) This, however, seems to have been the same monument sometimes called ara ; for Suetonius goes on to say that the people continued for a long while to offer sacrifice and make vows at it (" Apud eandem longo tempore sacrificare, vota suscipere, controversias quasdam interposito per Caesaremjurejuraudo distrahere perseveravit"). This ara or columna was afterwards overthrown by Dolabella (Cic. Phil. i. 2, adAtt. sy. 1 5). We have before seen that Caesar's body was burnt on the foram, before the Eegia and the new rostra which be had erected, and we must therefore conclude that this was the spot where the altar was set up by the people, and subsequently the temple by Augustus. But this has been the subject of a warm controversy. Bunsen placed the temple on the Velian ridge, so that its front adjoined the Sacra Via where it crosses the eastern boundary of the forum, whilst Becker {Handb. p. 336) placed it on the forum itself, so that its back adjoined the same road. The authorities are certainly in favour of the latter view, and the difficulties raised by Urlichs {Rom. Toj}. p. 21, seq.), who came to the rescue of Bunsen's theory, arise from the mistake shared alike by all the disputants, tliat this end of the forum was the comitium. Urlichs might have seen that this was not so from a passage he himself quotes (p. 22) from the Fasti A7niternini, XV. Kal. Sept., showing that the temple .stoodon the forum ("DivoJulioadForum"). He seeks, however, to get rid of that passage by an unfortunate appeal to the Schol. Cruq. ad Hor. S. i. 6. 35, in order to show that after the time of Caesar there was no longer any distinction made between the forum and comitium, since the puteal is there named as being on the fomm, instead of on the comitium as Urlichs thinks it should be. But this is only tiying to support one error by another, since we have already shown that the puteal really was on the forum and not on the comitium. We need not therefore meddle with this controversy, which concerns only those who have taken a wrong view of the comitium. We will, however, remark that the passage ad- duced by Becker in his Antwort, p. 41, from the Scholiast on Persius (iv. 49), where the puteal is mentioned as " in porticu Julia ad Fabianum ar- cum," confirms the sites of these places: from which passage we also learn that the temple had a portico. Vitruvius says (iii. 3) that the temple, which must have been a small one, was of the order called peripteros pycnostylos, that is, having columns all round it, at a distance of one diameter and a half of a column from one another. It must have been raised on a lofty base or substruction, with its front towards the Capitol, as we see from the following lines of Ovid {Met. xv. 841): — " ut semper Capitolia nostra fornmquc Divus ab excelsa prospectet Julius aede." The same circumstance, as well as its close prox- imity to the temple of Castor, are indicated in the EOMA." following verses of the same poet {Ex Timt. ii. 285): — " Fratribus assimilis, quos proxima templa tenentes Divus ab excelsa Julius aede videt." This substruction, or KprjTrfs, as it is called by Dion, served, as we have seen, for a third rostra and, after the battle of Actium, was adorned by Augustus with the beaks of the captured Egyptian ships, from which time it was called Rostra Jull. (Dion Cass. h. 19.) Such were the alterations made by Julius Caesar in the forum, and by Augustus in honour of his adoptive father. The latter also made a few other additions. He erected at the head of the forum, un- der the temple of Saturn, the Miliarium AuREUsr, which we have before had occasion to mention. (Dion Cass. liv. 8 ; Suet. Otho, 6; Tac. H. i. 27.) It w.as in shape like a common milestone, but seems to have been of bronze gilt. Its use is not very THE JHHARIUM. clear, as the milestones along the various roads de- noted the distances from the gates. But when we recollect that Augustus included a great extent of new streets in his Regions, it seems not improbable that it was intended as a measure of distances within the city; and indeed we find that it was made the starting point in the survey of the city under Vespasian. (Plin. iii. 9.) Hence it might be regarded, as Plutarch says {Galh. 24), the common centre at which all the roads of Italy ter- minated. The Umbilicus Ro3L4.e which Becker confounds with it (p. 344) appears to have been a different thing, as the Notitia mentions both of them separately under Regio viii. The piece of column excavated near the arch of Severus must have be- longed to this umbilicus, or to some other monu- ment, not to the miliarium, which appears from the Notitia and Curiomm to have retained till a late period its original position near the temple of Saturn at the head of the forum. We also read of a Fornix August: or triumphal arch erected on the forum in honour of Augustus, but its position is nowhere accurately defined ; though from some Scholia on Virgil {Aen. viii. v. 606) edited by Mai, it is supposed to have been near the temple of Julius (Canina, Foro Rom. p. 139 note.)