Vulcanal
Encyclopedia
8th century BC
The 8th century BC started the first day of 800 BC and ended the last day of 701 BC.-Overview:The 8th century BC was a period of great changes in civilizations. In Egypt, the 23rd and 24th dynasties led to rule from Nubia in the 25th Dynasty...
sacred precinct on the future site of the Roman Forum
Roman Forum
The Roman Forum is a rectangular forum surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the Forum Magnum, or simply the Forum...
. Dedicated to Vulcan
Vulcan (mythology)
Vulcan , aka Mulciber, is the god of beneficial and hindering fire, including the fire of volcanoes in ancient Roman religion and Roman Neopaganism. Vulcan is usually depicted with a thunderbolt. He is known as Sethlans in Etruscan mythology...
, the Roman god of fire, it was traditionally considered to commemorate the spot where the legendary figures Romulus
Romulus
- People:* Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome* Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor* Valerius Romulus , deified son of the Roman emperor Maxentius* Romulus , son of the Western Roman emperor Anthemius...
and Tatius concluded the peace treaty between the tribes known as the Latins
Latins
"Latins" refers to different groups of people and the meaning of the word changes for where and when it is used.The original Latins were an Italian tribe inhabiting central and south-central Italy. Through conquest by their most populous city-state, Rome, the original Latins culturally "Romanized"...
— on the Palatine Hill
Palatine Hill
The Palatine Hill is the centermost of the Seven Hills of Rome and is one of the most ancient parts of the city...
— and the Sabines — on the Quirinal
Quirinal Hill
The Quirinal Hill is one of the Seven Hills of Rome, at the north-east of the city center. It is the location of the official residence of the Italian Head of State, who resides in the Quirinal Palace; by metonymy "the Quirinal" has come to stand for the Italian President.- History :It was...
and Esquiline
Esquiline Hill
The Esquiline Hill is one of the celebrated Seven Hills of Rome. Its southern-most cusp is the Oppius .-Etymology:The origin of the name Esquilino is still under much debate. One view is that the Hill was named after the abundance of holm-oaks, exculi, that resided there...
. This famous merger of the hill-villages was said to be the foundation of the Roman state.
Description
The original Vulcanal was an open-air altar on the slopes of the Capitoline HillCapitoline Hill
The Capitoline Hill , between the Forum and the Campus Martius, is one of the seven hills of Rome. It was the citadel of the earliest Romans. By the 16th century, Capitolinus had become Capitolino in Italian, with the alternative Campidoglio stemming from Capitolium. The English word capitol...
in Rome in the area that would later become the Comitium
Comitium
The Comitium in Rome is the location of the original founding of the city. The area is marked by a number of shrines, temples, altars and churches today from throughout its history. The location was lost due to the cities growth and development over a thousand years, but was excavated at the turn...
and Roman Forum
Roman Forum
The Roman Forum is a rectangular forum surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the Forum Magnum, or simply the Forum...
. It was located in the open here, between the hill-villages, in the days before Rome existed, because the fire god was considered to be too destructive to be located anywhere near an occupied house. (He was mainly worshiped in order to avert fires.) It contained a lotus tree
Lotus tree
The lotus tree is a plant that occurs in two stories from Greek mythology:* In Homer's Odyssey, the lotus bore a fruit that caused a pleasant drowsiness and was the only food of an island people called the Lotophagi or Lotus-eaters...
and cypress tree
Cupressus sempervirens
Cupressus sempervirens, the Mediterranean Cypress is a species of cypress native to the eastern Mediterranean region, in northeast Libya, southeast Greece , southern Turkey, Cyprus, Northern Egypt, western Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Malta, Italy, western Jordan, and also a disjunct population in...
long honored as being older than the city of Rome itself. According to literary sources, the site originally featured a sculpture of a four-horse chariot (quadriga
Quadriga
A quadriga is a car or chariot drawn by four horses abreast . It was raced in the Ancient Olympic Games and other contests. It is represented in profile as the chariot of gods and heroes on Greek vases and in bas-relief. The quadriga was adopted in ancient Roman chariot racing...
) celebrating Romulus' victory over the Caeninenses (citizens of Caenina
Caenina (town)
Caenina was a town nearby ancient Rome, in Latium.In Rome's early semi-legendary history, the king of the Romans, Romulus, sought to obtain women as wives for his male citizens. After delegations were sent to nearby regions requesting wives and the delegations were refused, Romulus devised a...
) — and said to have been dedicated by Romulus himself. This was later supplemented with a statue of that king, inscribed with Greek letters and celebrating his deeds. Other monuments erected here from the earliest times included a statue of Horatius Cocles
Horatius Cocles
Publius Horatius Cocles was an officer in the army of the ancient Roman Republic who famously defended the Pons Sublicius from the invading army of Lars Porsena, king of Clusium in the late 6th century BC, during the war between Rome and Clusium.-Background:...
and another standing on a column and representing an actor who had been struck by lightning during the games in the Circus Maximus
Circus Maximus
The Circus Maximus is an ancient Roman chariot racing stadium and mass entertainment venue located in Rome, Italy. Situated in the valley between the Aventine and Palatine hills, it was the first and largest stadium in ancient Rome and its later Empire...
. Behind the excavated foundation of the altar of Vulcan are traces of a flight of steps, cut into the tufa of the Capitoline Hill, which lead up to the vestibule of the Temple of Concord
Temple of Concord
The Temple of Concord in the ancient city of Rome was a temple dedicated to the Roman goddess Concordia at the western end of the Roman Forum. The temple was built in the 4th century BC as a promise towards peace after a long period of civil strife within the city...
, just to the northwest .
History
In addition to its function as a place of worship, the Vulcanal became the Assembly place during the Roman monarchy in the days before the Comitium and Old Rostra (Rostra Vetera) existed. According to longstanding Roman tradition, the Vulcanal served as the speaker's platform at this time, a function much later assumed by the immediately adjacent Rostra. The archaic site had long been reverently preserved when, in 9 AD, the Emperor AugustusAugustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
refurbished it with a new marble altar (discovered in 1548 and now in the Naples Museum). The Emperor Domitian
Domitian
Domitian was Roman Emperor from 81 to 96. Domitian was the third and last emperor of the Flavian dynasty.Domitian's youth and early career were largely spent in the shadow of his brother Titus, who gained military renown during the First Jewish-Roman War...
(r. 81-96 AD) did likewise, presenting a new marble-faced altar and sacrificing a red calf and boar. Later in the Imperial period, the Vulcanal area suffered by being very much narrowed and partly done away with altogether by building operations associated with the enlargement of the Temple of Concord, the construction of the adjacent Arch of Severus, and other public works.
Location
The precise location of the Vulcanal within what is now the west end of the Roman Forum is not completely settled. Two sites have been seriously proposed.Giacomo Boni
Giacomo Boni (archaeologist)
Giacomo Boni was an Italian archaeologist specializing in Roman architecture.Born in Venice, Boni studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in his native city and later dedicated himself to extensive and important excavations in the Forum Romanum in Rome...
, who excavated extensively in this area in 1899-1905, established a site about 40 meters to the southwest of the Lapis Niger
Lapis Niger
The Lapis Niger is an ancient shrine in the Roman Forum. Together with the associated Vulcanal it constitutes the only surviving remnants of the old Comitium, an early assembly area that preceded the Forum and is thought to derive from an archaic cult site of the 7th or 8th century BC.The black...
as the Vulcanal. This is just behind the Umbilicus Urbi
Umbilicus Urbi
The Umbilicus Urbis Romae — "Navel of the City of Rome" — was the symbolic centre of the city from which, and to which, all distances in Ancient Rome were measured. It was situated in the Roman Forum where its remnants can still be seen. These remains are located beside the Arch of Septimius...
and the (future) New Rostra
Rostra
The Rōstra was a large platform built in the city of Rome that stood during the republican and imperial periods. Speakers would stand on the rostra and face the north side of the comitium towards the senate house and deliver orations to those assembled in between...
(Rostra Augusti). Boni uncovered a small shrine here that had been cut directly out of the natural tufa
Tufa
Tufa is a variety of limestone, formed by the precipitation of carbonate minerals from ambient temperature water bodies. Geothermally heated hot-springs sometimes produce similar carbonate deposits known as travertine...
and had tufa blocks defining a precinct area (identified from literary sources as the Area Volcani). This excavated site is about 13 by 9 feet, but the original Vulcanal is thought to have been somewhat larger. Boni's identification of this spot as the Vulcanal stood virtually unchallenged for over 80 years.
In 1983, however, Filippo Coarelli
Filippo Coarelli
Filippo Coarelli is an Italian archaeologist, Professor of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Perugia.Born in Rome, he is one of the foremost experts on Roman antiquities, a connoisseur of the history of early Rome, and a leading expert on the topography of ancient Rome...
associated the Vulcanal with the site (also uncovered by Boni decades before) that by Imperial times had become known as the Lapis Niger. This archaic (8th century BC) sacred site may have been more or less contemporary with the Vulcanal. An altar (known as "Altar G-H" to archeologists) had also been found here and Coarelli suggested that the Vulcanal may not only have been associated with it, but may have been identical with this shrine. (According to him, the altar identified by Boni as the Vulcanal was actually the Ara Saturni, or Altar of Saturn). Coarelli's hypothesis has received a mixed reception. While a number of authorities believe he is correct, other experts continue to insist that Boni's site is the correct one. For example, Richardson's authoritative A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, published almost 10 years after Coarelli's work, has this to say:
The Vulcanal was distinctly higher than the forum...and Comitium...[T]he kings and magistrates transacted public business there...public assemblies were regularly held there.... [It] was also big enough to include a bronze aediculaAediculaIn religion in ancient Rome, an aedicula is a small shrine. The word aedicula is the diminutive of the Latin aedes, a temple building or house....
.... All this taken together indicates that originally the Vulcanal covered the lower slope of the Capitoline along the stair that extended the line of the Sacra Via up the hill, an area later covered by the Temple of Concordia.