Antiquity

When the emperor Vespasian died in 79 CE, his son, Titus, succeeded him. In the next year, the Senate canonized the deceased emperor, and shortly thereafter Titus began the temple for his father. After Titus’ premature death in 81, Domitian, his brother and successor, continued the project and finished it before 87. Despite its prominent location and rich decoration (Figs. 0.4, 1.3, 10.6–10; see pp. 192−195), during the reign of Domitian, only the poet Statius mentioned it briefly in a flowery composition that celebrates the emperor’s now long-lost equestrian statue in the Forum. Thereafter, we hear nothing of the temple until its restoration by Septimius Severus, an event commemorated by a grand dedication in gilt bronze letters on the front of the entablature (infra, pp. 192−193). References to the temple in late antiquity suggest that it still stood, although it may have been quite damaged by the fire in the reign of Carinus (283) or by the sacks of Alaric (410) and the Vandals (455 CE).

After Antiquity

Since the excavators of 1829 found layers of carbonized wood and fused metal on the podium, a fire (before 1000 CE?) must have burned the interior and the roof, but the cella’s marble pavement and fittings may have already disappeared. Some of its materials were probably used in later buildings like the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus built in the seventh century. The church is adjacent to the modern entrance to the Forum from the Via dei Fori Imperiali, but the apse of an outbuilding, its deaconate, stood close to the northeast corner of the temple. More of the temple may have disappeared when Pope Hadrian I (CE 772–795) rebuilt the church.