Aegyptiaca nello spazio romano di età augustea: gli obelischi da Heliopolis e il reditus di Augusto

Author: A. Bravi

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In Augustan Rome, the aegyptiaca played a significant role in the topography of the sacred promoted by the princeps. Two obelisks, from Heliopolis, were placed between 10 and 9 B.C. in the Campus Martius and on the spine of the Circus Maximus. In the vast bibliogra-phy on the function assumed by these Aegyptiaca in Roman spaces, the propagandistic intentions of Augustus and the ideological and political meanings assumed by these monuments in the context of a new configuration of the imperium have been emphasized. Starting from the premises already extensively addressed by previous criticism, which has adequately highlighted the values assumed by obelisks in Rome as functional in expressing the ecumenical dimension of the princeps’ power, the essay aims to demonstrate that, unlike other genres of Aegyptiaca, the monoliths translocated from Heliopolis were bearers of their own sacredness, whose senses were fully activated by virtue of their topographical locations and spatial contiguity with the sites of Augustus’ reditus from East and West: the altar to Fortuna Redux at the Circus Maximus and the Ara Pacis in the Campus Martius.

(Italiano) Un “fiume di fogna”: il Tevere, Giovenale e la piscatrix Aurelia

Author: G. Arena

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Juvenal’s V satire describes the unequal relationship between patronus and cliens, but also offers the attestation of a female profession, that of a fishwife, and of an auroral environmental awareness, connected with the depletion of fish resources caused both by the pollution of the Tiber and indiscriminate fishing in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The data that can be deduced from the text of the satirical poet are confirmed thanks to the fruitful comparison established respectively with the inscription engraved on a marble funerary altar dedicated to a piscatrix and with the testimonies offered by Athenaeus of Naucratis and Galen of Pergamum about the spasmodic search for precious fishes by a wealthy élite resident in Rome.

Un monumento sepolcrale a tumulo lungo la via Campana-Portuense: un’ipotesi interpretativa

Author: G. Gaia

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The paper focuses on an attempt to reconstruct the context in which a monumental tomb was found in 1908 during excavation works for the construction of the new Trastevere railway station. In the same zone, the funerary epigraph of Potitus Valerius Messalla and four reliefs representing hunting scenes were also found. These elements, if associated, could provide a valid hypothesis of contextualisation of the monument under examination, which would otherwise be difficult to place in an area characterised by poorer and probably later sepulchral evidence. The dating of the tomb and the chronology of epigraph and reliefs seem also consistent between them.

La Velia da Massenzio a Mussolini. Ideologia, politica e paesaggio urbano

Authors: C. di Fazio, A. Grazian

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The contribution intends to analyse, investigating the ideological meanings in terms of urban policy, the long-term events that since the age of Maxentius have followed one another in the urban history of the southern slope of the Velia, one of the most representative and historically qualified areas of the centre of Ancient and modern Rome. The hill has been the object of successive transformations that have changed the image and value of this important public space up to the contemporary age. After the late ancient and medieval phases, the functional alterations of the area were followed by the loss of identity of the basilica of Maxentius, recognized as such only in the early 19th century by Antonio Nibby. The views, engravings and drawings from the 17th-19th centuries witness the evolution of the urban image of this part of the city, replaced in the role of symbolic centre by the new focal points of papal Rome. A renewed chapter in the history of the southern slope of the Velia opened up with the French government’s urban policy projects (1809-1814), followed by the 19th-century excavations and then by the idea of the “passeggiata archeologica” which has polarised the archaeological debate and urban planning of the post-unitary period. Finally, the opening of via dell’Impero was the last act of semantization of this sector of the Velia, according to an ideological and propagandist urban policy process that has directly involved the basilica of Maxentius, reinterpreting it in its functions.