Temple of Apollo Palatinus

History

The worship of Apollo in Rome began in the fifth century BCE. According to Roman tradition, the first temple to Apollo was promised to the god in 433 BCE in return for his intercession during a plague. This temple was originally known as the Temple of Apollo Medicus and later as the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, after Gaius Sosius, who restored it around 32 BCE. It was situated in the Campus Martius, outside the ceremonial boundary (pomerium) of Rome, since Apollo, whose worship originated in the Greek world, was considered a 'foreign' deity and so unsuitable for a temple within the city. According to the classicist Paul Zanker, Apollo was held in Roman culture to represent discipline, morality, purification and the punishment of excess.

After securing control over the Roman state through victory in his civil war against Mark Antony, Octavian (known as "Augustus" from 27 BCE) made a political and ideological priority of the embellishment and restoration of Rome's built space. According to his biographer Suetonius, he claimed to have found Rome built of brick, and to have left it built of marble. The construction and restoration of temples was a major part of this programme: Augustus claimed to have restored eighty-two of them in 28 BCE alone. The archaeologist Susan Walker has described Rome under Augustus as a "moral museum", by which public architecture and artwork, particularly the display of Greek sculpture, was used as part of Augustus's ideological project. Augustus's developments on the Palatine Hill included the construction and restoration of several of its temples and the intensification of cult activity around it, making the Palatine, previously most significant as an elite residential area, Rome's "new seat of political and religious power", in the words of the classicist Ulrich Schmitzer. …

Description

The temple was the second in Rome dedicated to Apollo; its position on the Palatine Hill made it the first within the Roman pomerium. It was prominently visible from the Circus Maximus to the south of the Palatine. It was adjacent to the older Temple of Cybele, which had been dedicated in 191 BCE, and the ancient stairway known as the Scalae Caci ('Stairs of Cacus'). It was also near the early-third-century Temple of Victory; the proximity of the monuments may have been intended to reinforce the links between Apollo and the military victories for which Augustus credited him.

The Temple of Apollo Palatinus was immediately south-east of a domus ('house') constructed during the late Roman Republic (c. 133–33 BCE). In the 1950s, this house was designated by one of its excavators, Gianfilippo Carettoni, as the domus Augusti ('House of Augustus'), since Carettoni believed that it had been Augustus's personal residence. Following Carettoni's excavations, the temple and the house were believed to have been connected by a ramp, though this theory was disproved by later excavations. The identification of the so-called domus Augusti and its relationship to both Augustus and the Temple of Apollo Palatinus are controversial. Excavations subsequent to Carettoni's indicate that the house was largely destroyed, while still under construction, to facilitate the building of the temple; they also found that the house was considerably larger than Carettoni believed, which meant that its identification as Augustus's personal residence contradicted the testimony of Roman biographers that the emperor's Palatine house had been noted for its modesty.

According to Roman authors, the temple's sanctuary also included the Roma Quadrata ('Square Rome'), a monument to the foundation of the city by Romulus; a four-columned shrine known as the Tetrastylum; and the Auguratorium, a monument to the taking of the auspices by Romulus during the foundation of Rome, which may have been an alternative name for the Roma Quadrata. …

Function

It is unclear whether the Temple of Apollo Palatinus was intended to supplant or complement the existing centre for Apollo's worship at the Temple of Apollo Sosianus. According to the classicist Bénédicte Delignon, the temple served to establish Apollo as the tutelary deity of Rome and as a representation of Augustus's symbolic refoundation of the city. In Augustus's political propaganda, it represented the restoration of Rome's 'golden age', a key aspect of Augustan ideology, marked by the end of civil war and the reaffirmation of Roman pietas. The visual iconography was particularly ideologically charged: though it made no direct references to Augustus, it employed several images and tropes commonly associated with him in contemporary culture. The classicist Gilles Sauron has interpreted many of the temple's artworks, including that of the Danaids and the scenes on the temple's doors, as emblematic of the divine punishment of impietas.

Assessments of the sanctuary's primary significance vary. Walker has described the temple as "Augustus's personal shrine", a view echoed by Zanker, who considers that the adjacent house was that of Augustus, has suggested that the two buildings combined in a manner reminiscent of a Hellenistic palace-complex. Pointing to the prominence of the sanctuary's libraries, the classical archaeologist Lilian Balensiefen has described the temple as a "literary sanctuary" in which Apollo was venerated in his capacity as a god of learning. For Zanker, the temple was part of a cultural programme intended both to emulate and to surpass the artistic achievements of ancient Greece. The temple was also used for meetings of the senate. …

Reception

In modern times, the temple has been described by Ward-Perkins as "one of the earliest and finest of the Augustan temples". It was noted by contemporaries as among Rome's most impressive monuments, and described by the historians Velleius Paterculus and Josephus in the 1st century CE as the greatest of Augustus's building projects. Suetonius similarly described it as among Augustus's most important architectural works, alongside the Forum of Augustus, the Temple of Mars Ultor and the Temple of Jupiter Tonans. Delignon has suggested that the proem of the poet Virgil's Georgics, published in 29 BCE, may have alluded to the proposed or incipient construction of the temple.

The Roman poet Propertius attended the opening of the temple and wrote two elegies to celebrate it. The first of these (conventionally numbered 2.31) was written around the time of the temple's dedication and published in either 25 or 24 BCE. Propertius's contemporary Horace published an ode (1.31) in 23 BCE, ostensibly written on the day of the temple's dedication to celebrate Apollo. Around 20 BCE, the poet Tibullus wrote an elegy (2.5) commemorating the appointment of Marcus Valerius Messalinus as a priest of Apollo with responsibility for inspecting the Sibylline Books stored at the temple. …