Aventine Hill
The Aventine Hill sits at the southern edge of Rome's famous seven hills, and for most of the city's early history, it stood just outside the boundaries of Rome itself. That marginal position turned out to matter enormously. Foreigners were settled there. Deities from other cultures were brought in through it. Commoners claimed it as their own in defiance of patrician rule. The hill holds two distinct heights separated by a steep cleft, known since antiquity as Aventinus Major to the northwest and Aventinus Minor to the southeast. Between those two summits ran an ancient road that the emperor Augustus would later use as an administrative boundary between two of Rome's reorganized districts. This documentary follows the Aventine from its contested mythological origins through the republican struggles that made it a symbol of popular power, into the imperial aristocratic mansions that lined its slopes, and finally into the modern neighborhood of palaces and rose gardens it has become.
Servius, the ancient commentator on Virgil, identified two kings named Aventinus, one ancient Italic and one Alban, both said to have been buried on the hill in remote antiquity. He believed the hill took its name from the earlier of the two, the ancient Italic king. The geographer Varro offered a competing explanation: that the Sabine people named the hill after the nearby Avens river, known today as the Velino. Servius rejected this, and he also addressed a third candidate, an Aventinus fathered by Hercules on Rhea Silvia, arguing that this figure was more likely named after the hill than the other way around.
Virgil placed the Aventine at the heart of Rome's foundational violence. In the Aeneid, a cave on the hill's rocky slope beside the river shelters the monstrous Cacus, who stole cattle belonging to the giant Geryon. Hercules tracked the thief there and killed him. That cave, that crime, and that confrontation rooted the Aventine in a story of divine retribution before the city of Rome even existed.
Romulus and Remus carried the Aventine's contested status even deeper into myth. In the standard account of Rome's founding, Remus pitched his augural tent on the Aventine while Romulus chose the Palatine. Both twins watched for auspicious birds, but Remus saw fewer than his brother. Romulus won the right to found and name the city. The scholar Skutsch, writing in 1961, argued that an older variant preserved by the poet Ennius actually placed Romulus on the Aventine and Remus on the lesser southeastern height, tentatively identified as Ennius' Mons Murcus. In that reading, later tradition shifted Romulus to the luckier Palatine once common usage had already expanded the name "Aventine" to cover both summits. Servius noted that the hill had a longstanding reputation as a haunt of inauspicious birds, a detail that would have made Remus's association with it feel fitting to a Roman audience.
Roman tradition held that the Aventine was not part of the city's original foundation and lay outside the pomerium, the sacred boundary that defined Rome's ritual limits. The historian Livy reported that Ancus Marcius, Rome's fourth king, defeated the Latins of Politorium and resettled them on the Aventine, using the hill as a kind of intake zone for conquered peoples. The geographer Strabo credited Ancus with building the city wall that incorporated the Aventine, though others assigned that same wall to Rome's sixth king, Servius Tullius. The remnants called the Servian Wall were cut from stone quarried at Veii, a city Rome did not conquer until around 393 BC, which suggests the Aventine may have been only partially walled for a long time, or remained an extramural suburb well into the Republic.
Around 493 BC, shortly after Rome expelled its last king and established the Republic, the Senate provided a temple on the Aventine for Ceres, Liber, and Libera, a grouping known as the Aventine Triad. These three deities were the patron gods of the plebs, Rome's common citizens, and the temple's dedication followed one of the first in a long series of plebeian secessions or threatened walkouts. It overlooked the Circus Maximus and the Temple of Vesta and faced the Palatine Hill. Over time it became an important repository for plebeian and senatorial records.
In approximately 456 BC, a Lex Icilia granted the plebs formal property rights on the Aventine. By around 391 BC, the city had grown so far beyond its older limits that the Aventine and the Campus Martius were left exposed; around that year, Gauls overran and temporarily held Rome. The walls were extended afterward to properly incorporate the hill, and that timing roughly coincided with the rising influence of the Aventine-based plebeian aediles and tribunes in Roman public life. One ancient source described the Aventine's concentration of foreign cults by noting that no other location in Rome came close to matching it. Servius Tullius built a Temple of Diana there as a focal point for the newly formed Latin League. After the Republic was established, the hill absorbed the cults of Juno Regina, brought by the general Camillus in 392 BC, Summanus around 278 BC, Vortumnus around 264 BC, and Minerva sometime before the end of the third century BC.
The Aventine's character shifted dramatically during the imperial period. The hill that had once housed foreign settlers and plebeian temples became a preferred address for Rome's most powerful families. Both Trajan and Hadrian maintained private houses there before either man became emperor. Lucius Licinius Sura, a close friend of Trajan, built his private Baths of Licinius Sura on the Aventine. The emperor Vitellius lived there, as did Lucius Fabius Cilo, who held the office of Praefectus urbi under Septimius Severus. The Baths of Decius were built on the hill in 252 AD.
While aristocratic mansions accumulated on the Aventine, poorer residents drifted away, moving south toward the plain near the port known as the Emporium, or crossing to the other bank of the Tiber. This concentration of wealth in one place made the hill a conspicuous target. When Alaric I sacked Rome in 410 AD, the Aventine was totally destroyed, a loss the sources attribute directly to its reputation as an aristocratic enclave.
During the Fascist period in Italy, the Aventine gave its name to a political crisis with ancient echoes. After the murder of the Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, opposition members of parliament withdrew to the Aventine Hill. By refusing to take their seats, they enacted what became known as the Aventine Secession, ending their formal participation in parliament and, with it, their effective political activity. The gesture consciously recalled the ancient plebeian secessions of the Republican era, when commoners had threatened to abandon the city altogether to press their demands against the patrician class.
The hill today is described as an elegant residential district, home to palaces, churches, and gardens. Among its surviving monuments are the basilica of Santa Sabina, the church of Santi Bonifacio ed Alessio, and the Rome Rose Garden.
Lindsey Davis set her historical mystery series about Marcus Didius Falco on the Aventine, depicting it as a rough working-class area of ancient Rome. Falco is described as a private informer who occasionally works for the emperor Vespasian and lives in the Aventine district. The same image appears in the television series Rome, where the Aventine is home to the character Lucius Vorenus. In the second season, Vorenus and the soldier Titus Pullo try to keep order among the various collegia competing for power on the hill. The British television comedy Plebs also sets its main characters in the Aventine as the neighborhood where its three central plebeian characters live.
The name reached even further in the Star Trek novel series, where the Vesta-class of starships is named after Rome's seven hills. The most prominent vessel in those novels is the U.S.S. Aventine, commanded by Captain Ezri Dax.
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Common questions
What is the Aventine Hill in Rome?
The Aventine Hill is the southernmost of Rome's seven hills. It has two distinct summits, Aventinus Major to the northwest and Aventinus Minor to the southeast, divided by a steep cleft. It belongs to the modern twelfth rione, or ward, of Rome, known as Ripa.
Why is the Aventine Hill associated with Roman plebeians?
Around 493 BC the Roman Senate built a temple on the Aventine for Ceres, Liber, and Libera, the patron deities of the plebs. A law around 456 BC granted plebeians formal property rights there. The hill was also the base for plebeian aediles and tribunes who rose to prominence in Republican politics.
What role does the Aventine Hill play in the myth of Romulus and Remus?
In the standard founding myth, Remus set up his augural tent on the Aventine while Romulus chose the Palatine. Remus saw fewer auspicious birds than his brother and lost the right to found the city. The scholar Skutsch in 1961 argued that an older variant by the poet Ennius placed Romulus on the Aventine instead, with Romulus later reassigned to the Palatine by tradition.
What happened to the Aventine Hill when Alaric sacked Rome?
When Alaric I sacked Rome in 410 AD, the Aventine Hill was totally destroyed. Ancient sources suggest its near-total ruin was a direct consequence of its having become a concentration of aristocratic residences during the imperial era.
What was the Aventine Secession in Fascist Italy?
After the murder of the Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, opposition members of parliament withdrew to the Aventine Hill and refused to take their seats in a protest called the Aventine Secession. The action ended their formal participation in parliament and their political activity. The term consciously echoed the plebeian secessions of ancient Rome.
How is the Aventine Hill depicted in Lindsey Davis's Falco novels?
In the Falco series by Lindsey Davis, the Aventine is portrayed as a rough working-class district of ancient Rome. The protagonist Marcus Didius Falco is a private informer who lives on the Aventine and occasionally works for the emperor Vespasian.
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