Temple of Fortuna Primigenia

• 1. Introduction

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  The Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste received a particular kind of plea. Parents brought their newly born first child to the goddess, seeking to improve that child's chances of surviving infancy. Praeneste, today called Palestrina, lies 35 km east of Rome. The sanctuary crowning its hill was visible from across Latium, from Rome itself, and from the sea. Fortuna's epithet Primigenia means "first born" or "original," tying her to the moment of beginning. A gilded bronze statue of Fortuna stood at the summit, depicting the goddess as a young warrior. Her oracle, consulted by pilgrims for centuries, outlasted the Roman republic and survived long into a world that had formally abandoned the old gods.

• 2. Six Terraces on a Hill

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  Six vast terraces rose one above the other on the Praenestine hillside. Each rested on substructures of gigantic masonry and was connected to the next by grand staircases. This immense edifice was, by most assessments, the largest Roman sanctuary ever built. The Cortina terrace, positioned near the summit, was adorned by porticoes on three sides and led visitors upward toward the theatre's cavea. The cavea itself was crowned with porticoes. The small circular temple at the very top is today incorporated into the Palazzo Colonna Barberini.

  Beneath the Cortina terrace ran a barrel-vaulted passage called the cryptoporticus. It linked the two wings of Corinthian columns that flanked three sides of the terrace. Six supporting arches held it up, and on the outside of those arches were Ionic semicolumns. Two large niches stood at the far ends of the six arches, projecting slightly from the portico front. These niches were not connected to the cryptoporticus behind them. Instead, waterfalls fell from their vaults, and traces of the original piping remain visible in the stone. The floor was a mosaic of irregular tesserae alternating with chips of polychrome stone, a technique called scutulatum. Inscriptions here record a restoration carried out by two local magistrates in Sullan times. In the 15th century, the supporting arches were bricked up and the passage was converted into a cistern. That transformation explains the well visitors find in the theatre area today.

  The two lower terraces, just south of the Via del Borgo, connected the Forum area to the upper sanctuary. On the upper of these two, fountains imitated natural caves. These date from the end of the 3rd century BC through the beginning of the 2nd. They are the oldest cave-fountains of their kind in Italy. The lower terrace was supported by a wall of polygonal masonry. It was decorated by a nymphaeum set inside an artificial cave, perhaps once surrounded by a sacred wood.

  The terrace of the hemicycles, incorporating two columned exhedra, was one of the central cult places of the sanctuary. A well in front of the eastern exhedra survives to this day. Ancient tradition linked it to one of the oracle's defining moments.

• 3. The Goddess and Her Oracle

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  Honey was believed to have oozed from an olive tree at the Praeneste sanctuary. That belief formed the basis of a second cult, housed alongside Fortuna's own. At the end of the 2nd century BC, the sanctuary brought both cults together within a unified architectural scheme. The first cult center occupied the terrace of the hemicycles. The second was further up, centered on the main temple.

  At this sanctuary, Fortuna Primigenia was depicted suckling two infants said to be Jupiter and Juno. The pose echoed what would later become the Christian representation of Charity. She was worshipped especially by matrons, and her cult featured an oracle consulted by the picking of lots.

  Cicero provides the most vivid ancient account of how the oracle worked. Pilgrims came to pick the sortes, wooden tablets used to foretell the future. Cicero also describes how the Praenestine nobleman Numerius Suffucius found the sortes in the first place. Constantine the Great eventually forbade the practice. Theodosius I later reinforced the ban and ordered the temple closed. Fortuna and her sanctuary had been given to Praeneste by patrons with earthly ambitions. Monumental building was their vehicle for social recognition in a society reshaped by conquest.

• 4. Ambition in Stone

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  From about 175 to 50 BC, a series of monumental sanctuaries rose across Latium. Tibur, Nemi, and Terracina each received ambitious new religious complexes in this period. The design principles driving them originated not in republican Rome but in the Hellenistic monarchies of the eastern Mediterranean. Sanctuaries at Delos and Kos offered templates for what integrated, large-scale religious architecture could achieve. The Roman builders took those templates and added a material of their own: opus caementicium. This Roman concrete made buildings of enormous size and structurally daring form possible.

  The monumentalization of the Praeneste sanctuary dates to the late 2nd century BC. It was the work of a generation of architects active in Rome and Italy. They operated between the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the 1st century BC. Their motivation was not primarily religious. Groups grown wealthy from Rome's expansion following the wars in the East used monumental building as a means of social recognition. The sanctuary at Praeneste foreshadowed the grandiose imperial style that would define the following generation of Roman building.

  Around 80 BC, Sulla may have commissioned further enlargement of the sanctuary after creating a colony at Praeneste. His motive was gratitude to Fortuna for his victory over Gaius Marius. Marius had been a Roman general who served as consul seven times. The terrace system at Praeneste that Sulla helped enlarge went on to influence how architects approached steeply sloped sites well beyond Antiquity.

• 5. A Living Template

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  Features of the Praeneste sanctuary shaped Roman garden design on steeply sloped sites throughout Antiquity. When Italian villa garden culture revived in the 15th century, the sanctuary's approach to organizing a steep hillside was adopted once more.

  The Victor Emmanuel II monument in Rome owes much to the Praenestine sanctuary. That debt gives this ancient complex a presence in the modern city.