Temple of Apollo Palatinus

• 1. Introduction

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  A bolt of lightning struck part of Octavian's property on the Palatine Hill in Rome, and the strike chose the site for the Temple of Apollo Palatinus. Priests called haruspices, who specialised in reading divine portents, judged it a sign that a god wanted a temple there. In their reading, the god wanted a temple to Apollo inside the city itself. Octavian, the man later known as Augustus, declared that corner of his land public and set the building in motion. The temple was also called the Temple of Actian Apollo, and Roman writers placed it beside Augustus's own house. This documentary asks why a victorious general turned to Apollo, and what a building of marble could say that a speech could not. It asks what the temple held, and why so many poets wrote about it. It also asks how it ended, and why scholars still disagree about what it looked like.

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• 2. Why Apollo

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  According to Roman tradition, the Romans promised Apollo his first temple in 433 BCE, hoping he would end a plague. That building stood in the Campus Martius, outside the sacred boundary of the city, known as the pomerium. Apollo's worship came from the Greek world, so Romans treated him as a foreign god unsuited to a place inside the city. The old temple was later called the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, after Gaius Sosius, who restored it around 32 BCE. The classicist Paul Zanker says Romans saw Apollo as a god of discipline, morality, purification and the punishment of excess.

  Octavian grasped how useful such a god could be. After defeating Mark Antony in civil war, he made the rebuilding of Rome a political priority. The biographer Suetonius records his boast that he found Rome built of brick and left it built of marble. In 28 BCE alone, he claimed to have restored eighty-two temples. The archaeologist Susan Walker described Rome under his rule as a "moral museum", where buildings and Greek sculpture carried a message. The Palatine had mostly been a district for wealthy residents. It now became, in the words of the classicist Ulrich Schmitzer, Rome's "new seat of political and religious power".

  Apollo was Augustus's favourite god. Two laurel trees, symbols of both Apollo and victory, stood beside the front door of his house. Suetonius reports, citing the Greek author Asklepiades of Mendes, that Augustus thought of himself as Apollo's son. During the civil war, Octavian set Apollo against Antony's patron god Dionysus. He was even criticised over a rumour that he had appeared at a feast dressed as Apollo. There was a family reason as well. Apollo had protected the hero Aeneas, believed to be the ancestor of the Romans and of Augustus's family, the gens Iulia.

  The temple was among the earliest of Augustus's monuments, and his first major architectural project carried out independently in the city. His vow to build it followed the 3rd of September 36 BCE, when his admiral Marcus Agrippa defeated Sextus Pompeius at the Battle of Naulochus. Octavian probably announced the plan in November, in a speech to the senate and people. That same year he began buying land on the Palatine. The hill was sacred and fashionable, and mostly owned by private citizens, so he could buy as a private buyer. Generals had once routinely dedicated temples after victories, but the habit had largely faded by 100 BCE.

  The temple was dedicated on the 9th of October 28 BCE, a day traditionally linked with deities of victory. By then Octavian had beaten Antony and Queen Cleopatra of Egypt at the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE. His propaganda credited Apollo with that victory. In thanks, he built a new sanctuary of Apollo at his camp at Actium and restored the god's older sanctuary at the entrance to the Ambracian Gulf. The Palatine temple was the second of four he built in Rome. The Temple of Caesar, dedicated in 29 BCE, came first. The Temple of Jupiter Tonans on the Capitoline Hill and the Temple of Mars Ultor, dedicated in 2 BCE in his new forum, followed.

  The temple belonged to Apollo's sister Diana as well, who was closely tied to the victory at Naulochus. Its official name used the epithet Actius, but Romans also called it by Actiacus, Navalis and Palati. All of these pointed back to Actium. A fourth epithet, Rhamnusius, has an obscure meaning. It may refer to the Nemeseion sanctuary at Rhamnous in Attica. Bricks stamped with the name of Cossutius, a brick-maker employed by the politician and literary patron Gaius Asinius Pollio, turned up in the temple and nearby buildings.

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• 3. Marble on the Hill

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  Anyone standing in the Circus Maximus, south of the Palatine, could look up and see the temple on the hillside. Beside it stood the older Temple of Cybele, dedicated in 191 BCE, and an ancient stairway called the Scalae Caci, or Stairs of Cacus. The early-third-century Temple of Victory was close by. Its nearness may have helped tie Apollo to the victories Augustus credited to him.

  Just to the north-west of the temple lay a house built in the late Republic. In the 1950s the excavator Gianfilippo Carettoni named it the domus Augusti, convinced it had been Augustus's own home. He and others believed a ramp joined the house to the temple, but later digs disproved that. Those digs found that the house was far larger than Carettoni thought, and that it was largely demolished while still being built, to make room for the temple. A house that size sits badly with Roman biographers, who remembered the emperor's Palatine home as modest.

  The temple itself was built entirely of marble except for its podium, the first such temple in Rome. Its main material was white Carrara marble from the town of Luna, which Augustus is believed to have begun quarrying on a large scale. Columns are reconstructed at 14 m high and topped with Corinthian capitals. Surviving fragments show painted colour. Parts of the capitals were probably gilded, and other parts were painted yellow ochre, red, blue, brown and green. Underneath, the podium used older Republican methods, with blocks of tufa and travertine surrounding a core of concrete. Giuseppe Lugli's reconstruction gives overall dimensions of 22.4 by 38.8 m.

  The precinct, called the Area Apollonis, stood on a raised platform about 9 m above the terrace below. It is generally thought to have measured roughly 70 by 90 m. Visitors entered through a triumphal arch, the Arcus Octavii, honouring Augustus's father, Gaius Octavius. The arch carried a statue group by the Greek sculptor Lysias showing Apollo and Diana in a chariot.

  Scholars split over what the design meant. The archaeologist John Ward-Perkins called its proportions and sculpture "a lively architectural experiment". The archaeologist Stephan Zink instead sees "an imposing revival of Republican architectural traditions". His evidence is the wide spacing of the columns, which the writer Vitruvius described as diastyle, three column widths apart. Such spacing was unusual in that period but common in older Roman and Etruscan temples. The facing direction is also disputed. Pietro Rosa proposed south in 1865. Giovanni Pinza argued for north in 1913, and the archaeologist Amanda Claridge later backed that view.

  Rivalry may have shaped the design. The Temple of Apollo Sosianus was being rebuilt at about the same time by Gaius Sosius, a former supporter of Antony. Augustus later built the Theatre of Marcellus to block the view of its facade. He also rebuilt the Porticus Octaviae, named for his sister, whom Antony had abandoned for Cleopatra. The columns of the portico beside the Palatine temple were cut from yellow giallo antico marble from Numidia, the earliest known use of that stone in Rome.

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• 4. Gods and Danaids

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  Three cult statues stood inside the temple. The Apollo, shown playing a lyre in the type called Apollo Citharoedus, was the work of Scopas. Latona, mother of Apollo and Diana, came from Kephisdotos the Younger, son of the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles. Diana was first carved by Timotheos of Epidaurus, but her head was remade by Avianus Evander. He was an Athenian artist who had been taken to Rome as a prisoner in the mid-first century BCE.

  Roman coins suggest the base of the Apollo was decorated with anchors and ship prows, a nod to the naval victory at Actium. In its hands were a lyre and a libation bowl. Zanker argues that this peaceful Apollo, pouring an offering as if to atone, was chosen over the image of an avenging archer. It suggested peace after civil war. Two weathered fragments of colossal statuary, a head and a foot, have been proposed as remains of this very statue.

  Other masterpieces crowded the building. Four oxen by the Athenian sculptor Myron stood at the corners of the altar. Pliny the Elder catalogued works by the archaic Chian sculptors Bupalus and Athenis on the pediments. A chariot of the sun rode the ridge of the roof. A chandelier hung in the cella, said to have been taken by Alexander the Great from the Greek city of Thebes. Engraved gemstones dedicated by Augustus's nephew Marcellus were also kept there.

  The doors told stories in ivory. One showed Apollo and Diana killing the children of Niobe. The other showed the defeat of a Celtic attack on the Oracle of Delphi in 281 BCE, with Apollo as its patron god. A marble jamb carried a Delphic tripod flanked by griffins, with an acanthus plant growing from it as a sign of regeneration.

  In the neighbouring Portico of the Danaids, statues of the Danaids stood between the columns. These Egyptian sisters killed their cousin-husbands on their wedding night, an act of impietas, or failure of duty. Nearby stood Danaus with a drawn sword, facing equestrian statues of the sons of Aegyptus, the murdered grooms. Fragments of at least four herm-style figures, about 1.2 m tall, have been found. Three are black bigio morato marble and at least one is red rosso antico. The scene may have been meant to recall Cleopatra, who had married and then had her brother Ptolemy XIV killed.

  Painted terracotta panels found near the temple may once have belonged to the portico. They show Perseus defeating Medusa, caryatids, and Hercules contesting Apollo for the Delphic tripod. The archaeologist Barbara Kellum reads that last myth as an allegory of Augustus against Antony, who claimed descent from Hercules. Another panel shows the goddess Isis trapped between two sphinxes, probably an allusion to the defeat of Cleopatra. Years later, between 161 and 169 CE, the emperor Lucius Verus added a statue of Apollo Comaeus, the Long-Haired Apollo, seized from the Persian city of Seleucia.

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• 5. Books, Games, Senate

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  The Portico of the Danaids held two libraries, one Greek and one Latin, together called the Library of Palatine Apollo. They counted among the largest and most important in Rome. They displayed artworks depicting some of their authors and were noted as a store of legal texts. Sources disagree on when they opened. It may have been the same day as the temple, or any time before 23 BCE. The classical archaeologist Lilian Balensiefen calls the whole complex a "literary sanctuary", where Apollo was honoured as a god of learning.

  In 23 BCE, while Augustus was recovering from illness, the portico hosted meetings of the Roman Senate. He also received official guests and foreign ambassadors there. Another function came around 20 BCE, when the Sibylline Books arrived. These prophetic writings were believed to date to the time of the semi-legendary king Tarquinius Superbus, around 510 BCE. Augustus moved them from the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and they were kept in gold cases in the base of Apollo's statue.

  Citizens also left gifts, especially statues. Augustus's autobiography, the Res Gestae, records that he melted down about 80 silver statues of himself offered there. He sold the metal and used the money to buy gold tripods for Apollo. The temple gathered these roles piece by piece, probably as the need arose and not by any grand plan.

  The temple's biggest day came with the Secular Games, a religious and artistic festival Augustus revived in 17 BCE. On the 3rd of June, the third day of the inaugural games, Augustus and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa sacrificed to Apollo and Diana there. Horace wrote the hymn Carmen Saeculare for the occasion. A choir of 27 boys and 27 girls sang it at the temple that same day.

  Preparations began earlier. In years when the games were held, the priests responsible for the Sibylline Books, the quindecimviri sacris faciundis, met at the temple on the 25th of May. They cast lots to decide who would sit on the tribunals handing out purifying agents to the Roman people. Those agents were torches, sulphur and bitumen. The temple also received offerings of first fruits, called fruges, alongside the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, the Temple of Diana on the Aventine and the Temple of Jupiter Tonans.

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• 6. Poets and Critics

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  The historians Velleius Paterculus and Josephus, writing in the 1st century CE, called the temple the greatest of Augustus's building projects. Suetonius ranked it among his most important works, beside the Forum of Augustus, the Temple of Mars Ultor and the Temple of Jupiter Tonans. In modern times Ward-Perkins has called it "one of the earliest and finest of the Augustan temples".

  The poets were louder still. The scholar Bénédicte Delignon suggests that the opening of Virgil's Georgics, published in 29 BCE, may already hint at the planned temple. Propertius attended the opening and wrote two elegies about it. The first, poem 2.31, was published in 25 or 24 BCE. Horace published an ode, 1.31, in 23 BCE, ostensibly written on the day of the dedication. Around 20 BCE Tibullus wrote elegy 2.5 for Marcus Valerius Messalinus, newly made a priest of Apollo responsible for inspecting the Sibylline Books.

  From 16 BCE, when Propertius published his second elegy, poem 4.6, the temple's tie to Actium became a standard theme. Poets also liked to link the Sibylline Books with their own writings. In the eighth book of Virgil's Aeneid, composed between 29 and 19 BCE, King Evander walks Aeneas around the future site of the temple. Later in that book, the Battle of Actium appears on the Shield of Aeneas as a contest between gods. Augustus's triple triumph of 29 BCE is imagined as taking place at the temple, which was not yet built in Aeneas's day.

  Not every response was reverent. Many readers have seen Augustan poetry as appropriating, subverting or challenging the temple's message. Ovid, in the Ars Amatoria, published around 4 BCE, called it a fine place to find pretty women. In the Tristia, composed between 9 and 18 CE, he placed it on an imagined tour of central Rome.

  Visual echoes survive too. The Sorrento Base, a statue plinth from about 14 CE, shows the cult statue of Apollo. The architectural historian Christian Hülsen identified it as such in 1894. Pierre Gros has suggested that bronze statues called the "dancers" or "Danaids", found in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, were modelled on the Danaids of the portico.

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• 7. Fire and Rumour

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  In 16 CE the emperor Tiberius held a Senate meeting in the temple precinct, and later emperors followed him. At least one meeting under Claudius is recorded. The classicist David L. Thompson judges that it was meant as "a symbolic assertion of the imperial power". Tacitus adds that Claudius's wife Agrippina the Younger had a secret door fitted into the meeting room, leading to a hiding place from which she could listen. Thompson reads that tale less as fact than as a symbol of her influence over the senate. Pierre Gros argues that the sanctuary became a model for later imperial-cult complexes in the western empire.

  The Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE damaged the temple, and the emperor Domitian restored it. The Portico of the Danaids was probably also destroyed that year and may never have been rebuilt. The end came on the night between the 18th and the 19th of March 363, in another fire. The Sibylline Books, housed in the temple, were narrowly rescued. The precinct itself may have burned along with the temple.

  Nobody ever firmly established the cause. The emperor Julian was then trying, without lasting success, to restore Roman polytheism as the empire's leading religion. He blamed Christians for deliberate arson. Modern scholars find that plausible, partly because the Sibylline Books symbolised his anti-Christian policy, but no secure evidence exists. Christian writers saw the hand of God. The fifth-century Church historian Theodoret falsely claimed that lightning had struck the temple. The theologian John Chrysostom wrote that God destroyed it to punish Julian.

  After the fire, the temple may have been systematically dismantled. Some of its marble was possibly reused for a new building of uncertain purpose, raised on the ruined podium in late antiquity. In the twelfth century the philosopher John of Salisbury spread a story that Pope Gregory I had destroyed the Library of Palatine Apollo to make room for Christian scriptures. Modern scholars consider his testimony unreliable. The only library remains that survive come from reconstructions in Domitian's reign, which rebuilt the structures on higher ground.

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• 8. Digging the Ruins

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  Pietro Rosa began working on the Palatine in 1861, employed by Napoleon III, who owned the Farnese Gardens that covered the temple's site. In 1863 he found the Arcus Octavii, north of the temple. In 1865 he uncovered the concrete core of the podium, consolidated the surviving fragments and built a staircase over them. In 1869 he found statue fragments in the Portico of the Danaids, and he finished his excavations in 1870. The site opened to visitors on Thursdays, though they needed a permit from the French government, and Rosa often led tours himself.

  Rosa misidentified the ruin as the third-century BCE Temple of Jupiter Invictus. The architect Henri Deglane accepted that in his 1885-1886 reconstruction of the "Palace of the Caesars". The art historian Franz von Reber was first to name it Apollo Palatinus. Oliffe Legh Richmond advanced that view in 1914, comparing the remains with literary descriptions. In 1910 Giovanni Pinza had studied the concrete and found it early Augustan, similar to that of the Mausoleum of Augustus, finished in 28 BCE. He also showed the temple sat on top of late Republican houses. By 1952 scholars almost universally accepted the identification.

  Alfonso Bartoli dug there in 1937, removing 40,000 cubic metres of earth to bring the domus Augusti complex down to its Roman level. In the 1950s Giuseppe Lugli resurveyed the remains. A 2008 assessment called his survey the most detailed study of the ruins, though it contains contradictions, especially about the width between column centres. Carettoni excavated the area from 1958 to 1984, including the pronaos in 1968 and the fragmentary terracotta plaques from 1968 to 1970. Much of his work was only partly published.

  Only the cement core of the podium survives, measuring 19.2 by 37.0 by 4.7 m, along with scattered fragments such as blocks from the cella. From 2006 Zink surveyed the temple to reconstruct its plan and elevation. In 2008 he searched the facade for traces of original colour, together with the conservator Heinrich Piening. Between 2009 and 2013 he documented an area south-west of the temple. There he revealed an archaic building from the sixth or early fifth century BCE, which he thinks was a small shrine.

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