THE AREA OF THE TEMPLUM PACIS IN THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

On November 27, 1606, in the fortress of Poli (about 30 km from Rome), the brothers Carlo and Lotario Conti gave their vegetable garden in emphyteusis (perpetual lease) to the architect Carlo Lambardi, with the power to let out individual plots on long-term contracts in order to “fare case et altri edificij per habitare.” The deal, however, did not apply to Poli: the garden, whose surface was larger than a hectar, was located in Rome between the Torre dei Conti and the Basilica of Maxentius, nearly in the middle of our Via dei Fori Imperiali (Fig. 310).

The garden was what survived of a wider property that two centuries earlier already belonged to the Conti family. Indeed, on March 15, 1386, the “magnificus et potens vir Nicolaus natus quondam magnifici viri Stephani Nicolai de Comite de Polo,” gave as a gift to the Benedictines of Santa Maria Nova (nowadays Santa Francesca Romana) the land located next to the Basilica of Maxentius and the Temple of Venus and Rome – Nicola's coats of arms were painted on the temple's walls. During the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the surviving part of the Conti's property, located between the Basilica of Maxentius and the twelfth-century Torre dei Conti, was regularly cultivated; just a little house (“casetta”) and a tiny annex “pro usu et habitatione hortolani” stood there. As early as the fifteenth century, some houses faced the street corresponding to the Forum of Nerva, eventually called the Via della Croce, and the square later called Piazza de’ Conti (Fig. 311, left; cfr. Fig. 310, top). A view from the Basilica of Maxentius, dating from the first years of the seventeenth century, shows very clearly what the area looked like: the fence with a hedge in the foreground was one of the actual boundaries, like the already-mentioned houses overlooked by the Torre dei Conti (Fig. 311, right), which had not yet lost its upper part that collapsed in 1644.

DECORATING THE TEMPLUM PACIS

Pliny the Elder completed his Naturalis Historia in AD 77, and his information on the Templum Pacis refers to the period in which the Vespasianic complex had just been inaugurated (AD 75). He called it opera Pacis (Nat. Hist. 36.27.58). Included among the Roman wonders attesting that “the world had been conquered” (Nat. Hist. 36.101), Pliny spoke of it, of the Basilica Aemilia, and of the Forum of Augustus, as the three most beautiful monuments in the world (Nat. Hist. 36.24.102):

The caryatids and shields that appeared in the attic story of the Forum of Augustus made plain the submission of foreign people to Rome and the emperor. The façade of the Basilica Paulli, restored after AD 14, had an attic story with imagines clipeatae flanked by monumental statues of Parthian dignitaries in colored marbles. Therefore, I argue that the Templum Pacis shared this characteristic with the Forum and the Basilica: the sculptural decoration of the attic story, which had a strong ideological meaning along with an impact on the spatial experience of Vespasian's monument. It appears that Pliny paid attention to sculpture and painting as well as to the building that contained them. He was certainly a man with traditional tastes, but the Templum Pacis, although not particularly original, was regarded also by later visitors – Constantius II in the fourth century and Procopius in the sixth century – among the outstanding monuments of Rome.

The only Temple of Peace in the Roman Empire stood in the city of Rome (Fig. 1). It consisted of a monumental axial hall witha set of minor rooms on either side, opening on a large square surrounded by porticoes. The whole complex was called the Templum Pacis and was decorated with a profusion of spoils, statues, and paintings. As in the nearby Forum of Augustus, the square, too, was a sort of interior because a massive outer wall excluded the outside world from it. The best preserved sector is incorporated into the Monastery and Basilica of SS. Cosma e Damiano; part of the square and a stretch of the southwest portico were brought to light between 1998 and 2000, and the axial hall has been (partially) excavated since 2000. One rectangular exedra became the core of the medieval Torre dei Conti. However, most of its remains are still buried beneath the Via dei Fori Imperiali and the few houses that survived the twentieth- century demolitions. Some pine trees and even a gasoline station with its underground tank occupy its area (see Fig. 161 in Volume 2). The spatial experience of the ancient visitors can just be imagined in a more or less subjective way (see Section 1.2).

The origins of this building are embedded in a tale of dynastic change and competition for con- trol of the city of Rome. The death of Nero in AD 68 was followed by four emperors and eighteen months of civil war, from June AD 68 to December AD 69. On July 1, AD 69, the army proclaimed as emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus (November 17, AD 9 – June 23, AD 79), the general in charge of the Roman army after the Jewish rebellion of AD 66 (though it was his son Titus who actually besieged and destroyed Jerusalem toward the end of summer of AD 70).

THE TEMPLE OF PEACE IN THE AXIAL HALL

Although Ovid's verses refer to the annual sacrifice made on the dies natalis (January 30) of the Ara Pacis Augustae in the Campus Martius, no doubt the statue of Peace in the axial hall of the Templum Pacis inspired similar thoughts in visitors and worshippers. The capitals of its flat pilasters, at least in the Severan phase, were decorated with bucrania and garlands, as on the inner side of the enclosure wall of Augustus’ altar of Peace (and Rome appeared in the hall on the right-hand side, like Peace and Rome in the East reliefs of the Ara Pacis Augustae). The latter was open to the sky; the axial hall had no doorways (the cella had no front wall at all), and the colossal statue of Peace (see Chapter 5.1) could “abide in the whole world.” This architectural layout attests to Vespasian's competitive pursuit of glory and his desire to be first, best, greatest. Apparently, Vespasian (and Domitian, who appears to have restored the Temple of Peace) honored the goddess with a monument more beautiful and expensive than Augustus’ altar. The latter faced the pink granite obelisk of the Horologium, whereas the Flavian altar stood in front of a row of six huge column shafts (of the same marble after the Severan restoration).

THIS TWO-VOLUME BOOK HAS shown that the Templum Pacis, a building paid for ex manubiis (“from the proceeds of war”) but dedicated to Peace, was visually and ideologically connected to a number of Augustan monuments. Its plan was designed having in mind not only the layout of the porticoes of Pompey the Great but also some details from the Porticus of Octavia and the Porticus of Livia (Augustus’ sister and wife, respectively); the elevation borrowed the architectural orders and the attic story from the nearby Forum of Augustus (the corresponding dimensions and measurements can hardly be interpreted other than as deliberate references to the architecture of the Augustan monument); there are also subtle references in the ornamentation, as in the altar and the actual Temple of Peace (the axial hall), both restored by Domitian, which alluded to the Ara Pacis Augustae and, possibly, to the (Domitianic) Pantheon; the Forma Urbis, which must have existed before the Severan version that survives in fragments, echoed Agrippa's Orbs Pictus in the Porticus Vipsania and, in a certain way, the Res Gestae Divi Augusti; the cultural importance of the architectural complex, exemplified by the Library of Peace, is attested to by the conscious decision to build a replica of the Library of Apollo (note that both library halls should be credited to Domitian). Previous studies have failed to notice all these connections, which I have identified and discussed in detail for the first time. The numerous architectural and sculptural quotations and references show how the Flavian emperors com- peted with public spaces and monuments. Both Vespasian and Domitian were influenced by the art and architecture that was created for the official programs of the Forum of Augustus, the Ara Pacis Augustae, and the complex temple-library of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, which were used as models in Rome and in several cities of Italy and the western provinces of the empire. The Templum Pacis, if seen in three dimensions instead of relying on its plan only, shows a close connection with the Forum of Augustus; in particular, the existence of an attic story demands a reconsideration of its entire ideological program. Although the two monuments were inward-looking spaces and each was strictly closed off from the next, they were adjacent to one another and there must have been a dialogue between Mars (alluding to war) and Peace.