The Temple of Jupiter Stator

The first Catilinarian oration was delivered to the Senate in the Temple of Jupiter Stator, which was at the time surrounded by a large number of citizens, including a contingent of armed equites .^[2] The building was located at the southeast end of the Forum valley on the elevated ground of the Velia at the base of the Palatine Hill.^[3] In Roman, as in many an-

[2] Cic. Cat. 2.12; Plut. Cic. 16.3; ps.-Cic. Orat. pr. quam in exsil. iret 24, in Orelli, Baiter, and Halm, Opera, 2:2.

[3] While most scholars have until recently believed that the platform of peperino and travertine blocks uncovered just southeast of the Arch of Titus under the ruins of the medieval Turris Chartularia were the Flavian era remains of the Temple of Jupiter Stator, Coarelli (Il Foro Romano, 1:26–33) has cast doubt on that contention by arguing that the temple stood on the Sacra Via in the place now occupied by the so-called Temple of Romulus. Ongoing excavations in the Forum may soon resolve both the site of the temple and that of the Porta Mugonia. It is my belief that Coarelli's thesis cannot be sustained for the following reasons. (1) The two lists that make up the Itinerarium, a catalogue of the city from the fourth century A.D. that includes the Curiosum and the Notitia, both suggest that the Temple of Jupiter Stator stood at the beginning of the Sacra Via next to the Temple of Venus and Roma (see Jordan and Hülsen, Topographie, 2:539–74). Coarelli discounts the idea that the lists reflect a topographical sequence by noting that in one the Basilica Nova and the Basilica Aemili Pauli are named together, although they did not stand next to each other (Curiosum: Basilicam Novam et Pauli ). This combination, however, is the only departure from a clear topographical sequence, and it is obviously done for the sake of convenience of notation. Furthermore, Coarelli's contention that since the authors of the catalogues located the monument in the region of the Temple of Peace, it must have stood north of the Sacra Via is not persuasive, since the authors did not hesitate to violate strict regional divisions in a number of other cases. For instance, they have included the Basilica Aemilia in Region IV, in spite of the fact that it stood in the Forum Romanum. (2) Coarelli's argument that the silence of the lists concerning the "Temple of Romulus" requires us to identify it with the Temple of Jupiter Stator is not compelling, since the lists also neglect to mention a much more important monument and one that dominated the entire area, the Arch of Titus. (3) A comparison of Livy 1.12.1–8, Dion. Hal. 2.43.1–5, and Ov. Tr. 3.1.31–32 suggests that the location of Romulus's vow and, therefore, of the temple was within the Palatine pomerium rather than outside it, but Coarelli's new siting of the temple would put it outside the line of the ancient pomerium . (4) The identification of the Temple of Jupiter Stator with the "Temple of Romulus" contradicts two ancient sources: Plutarch (Rom. 18.7) states that the Romans drove the Sabines from the place of Romulus's vow back to the Regia and the Temple of Vesta; this can hardly refer to the extremely limited distance between the "Temple of Romulus" and the termination of the Sacra Via at the Regia. Ovid's statement in Tr. 3.1.31–32 that the Temple of Jupiter Stator is to the right as one proceeds up the Sacra Via is equally at odds with Coarelli's hypothesis.

cient religions, crossroads were sacred places, and the Temple of Jupiter Stator stood guard over a crossroads of great antiquity, sanctity, and strategic importance, formed by the meeting of the Sacra Via and the Clivus Palatinus. East of this point, the extension of the Sacred Way led out of the city through the Porta Capena and along the Via Appia; to the north the Velia descended towards the populous residential areas of the Subura; to the south the Clivus Palatinus led up the Palatine Hill, the ancient nucleus of Romulean Rome; and to the west the Sacra Via descended from this place, its beginning and highest point, past the monuments associated with the earliest days of the city—the house of the Vestal Virgins, the Temple of Vesta, and the Regia—down into the Forum proper.^[4] Although its precise location remains a matter of debate, a review of the historical associations of the temple itself, as well as a general understanding of the topography and monuments ofthe

[4] This is what Varro (LL 5.47) and Festus (372 L.) define as the "popular" definition of the Sacra Via.

area, allows us to reconstruct the kinds of emotional and intellectual meanings this place would have held for Cicero's audience.^[5]

The stories that were connected with the foundation of the Temple of Jupiter Stator in Cicero's time are preserved in the histories of Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.^[6] Both Augustan historians trace the vowing of the temple to a battle in the war with the Sabines that followed the forcible abduction of the Sabine women by the Romans. And in both accounts of this battle the reader can discern the joining of two important aetiological narratives, one explaining the location and name of the Temple of Jupiter Stator on the elevated ground at the southeast end of the Forum valley, and the other accounting for the Lacus Curtius at the opposite end of the Forum.

In the opening of his account of the battle, Livy describes how the Sabines rushed down into the Forum from the Capitoline citadel, which they had seized through the treachery of Tarpeia. In the Forum they met the Romans, led by Romulus, who had poured forth from their walled settlement on the Palatine. During the battle the Roman champion Hostilius falls, and the tide of the struggle suddenly turns. Romulus is swept by his retreating troops back to the "old gate of the Palatine" (i.e., the Porta Mugonia), where he addresses a prayer to Jupiter, reminding him that it was with his divine assent that he had first founded the city "here on the Palatine" (1.12.4). He goes on to ask the god to "drive the enemy back at least from this spot" (1.12.5) and to stay the flight of the Romans, promising that he will dedicate a temple to Jupiter Stator to serve as a reminder that the city had been saved by divine intervention. He then announces to his men that Jupiter Optimus Maximus commanded them to renew the battle, and he rushes to the forefront of his troops.

This event, which the reader expects to be followed immediately by a description of the success of the Romans in driving the enemy back across the Forum, is instead succeeded by an account of the fortunes of the Sabine champion, Mettius Curtius. At a point when the reader assumes that Romulus and his men, inspired by Jupiter Stator, have already forced the enemy back from the Porta, Curtius is depicted "not

[5] For a survey of ancient sources on the temple, see Platner and Ashby, Topographical Dictionary, 303–4; for more recent bibliography, see Nash, Pictorial Dictionary, 1:534; Coarelli, Il Foro Romano, 1:26–33.

[6] The variants in the two accounts indicate the historians drew on different annalistic sources. On sources, see Ogilvie, Livy, 75–78. The later narrative of Plutarch (Rom. 18.2–7) agrees closely with that of Dionysius.

Fig. 2.
The Center of Republican Rome, showing the Capitoline Hill, the Velia, and the
Forum valley. The plan illustrates the positions of key monuments as they
might have existed in 63 B.C.

far from the gate of the Palatine" (1.12.8), taunting the Romans as cowardly and already defeated. Spurred by Curtius's challenges, Romulus leads a charge against the enemy, whereupon the Sabines retreat. Curtius is plunged by his horse into the marsh at the opposite end of the Forum but soon emerges to renew the battle. By his wedding of these two narratives Livy encourages the reader to see the same series of events from two different points of view: in the first part of the narrative the Roman flight to the Porta is attributed to the fall of their champion

Hostilius, and the Roman recovery depends on Romulus's leadership and his prayer to Jupiter Stator; in the succeeding episode, however, the Romans appear to have been driven back to the Porta by the onslaught of Curtius and are moved to counterattack by Romulus, who has been aroused by Curtius's taunts.

Dionysius's account of the battle (2.42.1–43.5) also appears to be a conjunction of the same episodes, although the order of the two has been reversed.^[7] In the first, Mettius Curtius, commanding the Sabine center, drives the Romans back to the gates of the city but is himself forced back when Romulus abandons command of the right wing to aid his retreating troops in the center (2.42.3). This account ends with Curtius's escape from the swamp. In the episode that follows, Romulus is wounded on the head by a stone and carried inside the walls. The Romans are forced to retreat, pursued "even up to the city" (2.43.2: achri tes poleos ), until Romulus, recovered from his wound, again leads his men out and turns the tide of battle. It is now the Sabines who are forced to retreat, a maneuver in which they are hampered by the pursuit of the Romans, who attack from the high ground (2.43.4). While Dionysius makes no mention of Romulus's vow in this description of the battle, in a later passage he reports that because the god had heard his prayers and caused his routed troops to stand and fight, Romulus inaugurated a temple to Jupiter Stator near the Porta Mugonia (2.50.3).

The Temple of Jupiter Stator, then, was associated with Rome's first great military crisis. The flight that carried Romulus and his men to the Porta Mugonia was the turning point in a battle in which the very survival of Romulus's new city was to be decided. At the outset of the battle the Romans had been forced to abandon the rest of Rome to their enemies, and they controlled only the ancient core of the city within the Palatine walls. It was back to these walls, within the pomerium, or sacred boundary, of the Palatine city, that the Sabines had driven the Romans at the critical moment of Romulus's appeal to Jupiter. From this point no further retreat was possible, for if the Sabines had succeeded in breaching the Porta, the city would have been lost. The moment is dramatically akin to the night attack on the Capitoline by the Gauls when the Arx alone was held by a remnant of defenders against the enemy. And just as the sight of the Arx evoked the memory of Manlius, who

[7] In addition, Dionysius describes two separate Sabine battles, whereas Livy compresses the action into a single dramatic narrative.

had prevented the final victory of the Gauls, the Temple of Jupiter Stator served as a testament to the leadership and heroism of Romulus, who had saved the newly founded city at a moment of profound danger.

The accounts of Livy and Dionysius also show that the continuance of Rome was not only the work of human resolve; central to the meaning of the story that the Romans associated with the temple was the belief that the salvation of the city at this time was owed to the direct intervention of Jupiter on Rome's behalf. This divine intervention is to be seen in two ways. In Livy's narrative, Romulus appeals to Jupiter in his capacity as Stator or "Stayer" to halt both the attack of the Sabine enemy (1.12.5: hinc saltem arce hostes ) and the flight of the Romans (1.12.5: deme terrorem Romanis fugamque foedam siste ). This latter interpretation of the meaning of the cult title of the god is the more common of the two and reappears in a second story in Livy connected with the temple (10.36.4–12). Here the historian states that in 296 B.C. , when M. Atilius Regulus was hard-pressed in a battle against the Samnites at Luceria, he vowed a temple to Jupiter Stator if the god would stay the flight of the Roman troops. Immediately thereafter the Romans halted their retreat, turned, and routed the enemy. Explaining why the same temple at the foot of the Palatine was twice vowed, Livy adds that Romulus had inaugurated only a fanum, or consecrated area, while the building itself was erected by the state subsequent to Atilius's vow (10.37.14–16). From these accounts it is clear that Cicero's audience would have seen Jupiter Stator as a god of battle who acted on behalf of Rome in moments of grave military crisis. He was both a divine protector who repulsed the attacks of Rome's enemies and a heavenly ally who brought victory by inspiring Roman troops to overcome their panic and fear.^[9]

The senators who assembled to hear Cicero's speech would have felt Romulus's presence in this place in yet another way. Not only did the site evoke the memory of Romulus in his role as military leader, but it also recalled his actions as founder, for this area was closely associated with the Palatine Hill and the city that had been founded there by Ro-

[8] Cf. Dion. Hal. 2.50.3; Plut. Rom. 18.7; August. De civ. d. 3.13; Flor. 1.1.13.

[9] See Fears, "Cult of Jupiter," 48–52; Goar, State Religion, 36–45. Cf. CIL VI.434, 435 for Roman inscriptions to Jupiter Stator. For dedications to Stator outside of Rome see CIL III.895 (Dacia), 1089 (Apulum); VIII.17674 (Numidia); IX.3923, 3949 (Alba Fucens), 4534 (Nursia); X.5904 (Anagnia).

mulus. First of all, the site constituted the chief topographical link between the Forum valley and the Palatine, since the saddle of the Velia formed a natural ramp leading up the hill. Here was the easiest access to the Palatine, the point at which the earliest herdsmen would have driven their cattle up into the archaic settlement. In fact, Varro (LL 5.164) states that the name of the Porta Mugonia, the gate that stood immediately by the Temple of Jupiter Stator, came from mugire and referred to the lowing of the cattle that had once been herded along this path.^[10]

In addition to being the easiest point of access to the Palatine, the site of the Temple of Jupiter Stator was also the most ancient and solemn area of approach to the hill. The Romans believed that the colonial founding rites practiced in their own times had been initiated by Romulus when he founded the city of Rome.^[11] According to these rites the founder used a bronze plow to mark out the pomerium, the sacred boundary, of the new city. The walls of the city followed the circuit thus created, while the gates were indicated by lifting the plow in certain places along the line of this circuit. The Porta Mugonia, which appears in all the ancient references as the monument most closely associated both topographically and notionally with the Temple of Jupiter Stator, was one of the three gates believed to have been created by Romulus when, by this rite, he founded the Palatine city.^[12] Further, it was in this place, according to Ovid, that Romulus had initiated these rites by burying the burnt offerings made on behalf of the new city and by beginning the sacred furrow.^[13] It is for this reason that Livy depicts Romulus,

[10] For the Porta Mugonia, see Platner and Ashby, Topographical Dictionary, 410; Ogilvie, Livy, 77–78 (ad 1.12.3); Luck, Tristia, 2:165–66 (ad Tr. 3.1.31); Tac. Ann. 12.24; Ziegler, "Palatium," 25, calls this the Haupttor of the Palatine and the only one accessible in Ovid's time.

[11] For founding rites, see Salmon, Roman Colonization, 24, 168 n. 27; Rykwert, Idea of a Town, 27–71. For ancient sources on the founding of Rome, see Lugli, Fontes, 1:7–36.

[12] Tacitus (Ann. 12.24) states that Romulus established the pomerium of the early city by plowing a furrow around the base of the hill, and mentions three points in the circuit: the Hercules altar in the Forum Boarium, the altar of Consus in the Circus Maximus, and the Temple of the Lares in this area of the Velia.

[13] Cf. Ov. Tr. 3.1.31–32 ("Porta est" ait "ista Palati,/ hic Stator, hoc primum condita Roma loco est" ) and Ov. Fast. 4.821–26 (description of the founding ritual). Although Ovid does not use the name, his description of the pit in which the offerings were placed and the altar then erected on the spot corresponds with that of the shrine of "Roma Quadrata" in Festus (310, 312 L.). Festus, however, locates this shrine ante templum Apollinis . This shrine has sometimes been identified as a mundus Palatii corresponding to a mundus in the area of the Comitium. The sources, however, are contradictory and confused. See Plut. Rom. 11.1–2; Fest. 124–26, 144–47 L.; Varro ap. Macr. 1.16.18; Serv. ad Aen. 3.134. For discussion, see Magdelain, "Le pomerium archaïque"; Weinstock, "Mundus patet"; Fowler, "Mundus patet"; Verzar, "L'umbilicus urbis"; Catalano, "Aspetti spaziali," 452–66; Rykwert, Idea of a Town, 117–26, 129; Platner and Ashby, Topographical Dictionary, 346–48; Coarelli, Il Foro Romano, 1:207–26.

when he vows the temple to Jupiter Stator, reminding Jupiter that "here on the Palatine, commanded by your birds, I laid the first foundations of the city" (1.12.3–7: Iuppiter, tuis, inquit, iussus avibus hic in Palatio prima urbi fundamenta ieci ).

The immediate area of the temple would have contained a number of other visible monuments (in addition to the Porta) connected with this act of foundation. The line of the archaic pomerium of the Palatine, followed by the celebrants of the Lupercalia, would probably have been marked by stone cippi .^[14] Ovid (Fast. 4.821–25) refers to an altar set up here by Romulus during the ritual founding of the city to mark the place where the first fruits had been buried. Unless this altar was one of those that had fallen to ruin and been restored by Augustus, it would no doubt have been visible in Cicero's day. Finally, in this area stood a temple to the Lares, the indwelling spirits of the city of Rome, as well as one to the Di Penates, the household gods carried by Aeneas from Troy. Both of these monuments were associated with divine sanction for and protection of the city from its earliest existence.^[15]

[14] Scullard, Festivals, 76–78.

[15] According to Ovid (Fast. 6.791–94), the feast of the Lares temple and that of Jupiter Stator were on the same day, June 27, a chronological association that seems to reflect their topographical association. Solinus (1.21–24) speaks of a Lares temple in summa sacra via . It is possible that this is the same monument Tacitus speaks of as one of the points on the Romulean pomerium (Ann. 12.24). See also Obseq. 41; Cic. Nat.d. 3.63; Pliny HN 2.16; CIL VI.456; Platner and Ashby, Topographical Dictionary, 314–15; Coarelli, Il Foro Romano, 1:34–38. For the Temple of the Penates, see Castagnoli, "Il tempio dei Penati"; Lugli, Monumenti minori, 165–92; Varro LL 5.54; Livy 45.16.5; Obseq. 13; Solin. 1.22. Both temples, restored by Augustus, received specific mention in the Res gestae (19). See also Ov. Fast. 5.129: praestitibus Laribus; Cic. Sull. 86: di patrii ac penates, qui huic urbi atque huic rei publicae praesidetis . On the Lares and Penates in Roman religion, see Latte, Römische Religionsgeschichte , 89ndash;94, 108; for belief in the Trojan origin of the Penates, see Bömer, Rom und Troja; Alföldi, Die trojanischen Urahnen der Römer.

If one were to think of Romulus's foundation on the Palatine in terms of a house, the site of the Temple of Jupiter Stator was the janua, the sacred entrance, to that house. Or, to draw a different analogy, the associated monuments of the temple and the Porta Mugonia formed the "Propylaeum" of the Palatine. It was on this strategic site that the Palatine "began" in a topographical, religious, and ceremonial sense. And in this place Cicero could assume that images of the foundation of Rome by Romulus and of the great battle later fought against the Sabines to protect the city were particularly vivid in the minds of his audience.