Rome's Capitoline Hill was the smallest of the Seven Hills of Rome. Yet in the long history of the Roman state it was the empire's holy mountain. The hill was the setting of many of Rome's most beloved stories, involving Aeneas, Romulus, Tarpeia, and Manlius. It also held significant monuments, including the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, a location that marked the spot where Jupiter made the hill his earthly home in the age before humanity. This is the first book that follows the history of the Capitoline Hill into late antiquity and the early middle ages, asking what happened to a holy mountain as the empire that deemed it thus became a Christian republic.
This is not a history of the hill's tonnage of marble and gold bedecked monuments, but rather an investigation into how the hill was used, imagined, and known from the third to the seventh centuries CE. During this time, the imperial triumph and other processions to the top of the hill were no longer enacted. But the hill persisted as a densely populated urban zone and continued to supply a bridge to fragmented memories of an increasingly remote past through its toponyms. This book is also about a series of Christian engagements with the Capitoline Hill's different registers of memory, the transmission and dissection of anecdotes, and the invention of alternate understandings of the hill's role in Roman history. What lingered long after the state's disintegration in the fifth century were the hill's associations with the raw power of Rome's empire.
Author(s): Jason Moralee
Series: Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 304
City: Oxford
Cover
Series
Rome’s Holy Mountain
Copyright
Contents
A Note on Names
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
A Note on Names
Introduction
Knowing Your Place
Making a Holy Mountain
Lost in the “Dark Ages”
Outline of the Book
Part I Lived-In Realities
1 Climbing the Capitoline Hill
Trying to Climb the Capitoline Hill
The Last Imperial Processions to the Capitol
Building a New Topography of Devotion
The Forum on Fire
Toward a Christian Topography
A New Imperial Itinerary
Conclusion
2 Living and Working on the Capitoline Hill
Capitoline Temples and Statues
Rituals, Festivals, and Priests
Decline and Renewal in the Fifth Century
Bureaucracy and Justice
The Physiognomy of Neighborhoods in Late Antique Rome
Living on and Around the Capitoline Hill
Conclusion
3 Christianity, the Capitoline Hill, and the End of Antiquity
Slouching toward Byzantium
The Establishment of the Capitoline Hill’s First Church
Oracles, Octavian’s Room, and the “Tabularium”
Two Capitolia, Two Imperial Capitals
Conclusion
Part II Dreamed-Of Realities
4 Experiencing and Remembering the Capitoline Hill
Envisioning and Experiencing the Capitol
Capitolinas ascendit arces: Jerome and Praetextatus
The Capitol and Polemics Against Constantine
Rewriting Constantine’s Pagan Apostasy
The Capitol and the End of Empire: Olympiodorus and Procopius
Conclusion
5 Learning from the Capitol’s Deliverance
The Capitol and Memories of Persecution
The Caput in the Capitol
A Problem of Mercy: the Siege of the Gauls in 390 bce
“A City in the Habit of Being on Fire”: The Gothic Sack of Rome in 410 ce
“A Remarkable and Sublime Temple”: Augustine’s Capitols
Reading Augustine’s Capitols at the End of Antiquity
Conclusion
6 Learning from the Capitol’s Destruction
Listing Temple Destructions
Chronicling Past Destructions of the Capitol
Chronicling Future Destructions of the Capitol
Evil Spirits and Owls: Portents of Ruination
Conclusion
7 The Capitol and the Legends of the Saints
The Topography of Martyrdom
A Pope, an Emperor, and the Tarpeian Dragon
The Anatomy of a Legend: The Acts of the Greek Martyrs
“Christ Is My Capitol”
The Face of Persecution: Capitoline Pontiffs
The Capitol and the Power of the Saints
Conclusion
Epilogue: The Fall of the Ancient Capitol
Finding the Capitol in the Early Middle Ages
A Wonder in a City of Wonders
Setting the Capitol in Motion
The Modern Fall of the Ancient Capitol
Bibliography
Index
