Month: August 2017

A few descriptions of Constantinople in the 15th century, none accessible to us

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks drew a line under the history of the eastern Roman empire.  The buildings and monuments of the city, already badly damaged by time and the Latin occupation of 1204, now suffered the fate of being irrelevant and inconvenient to the city rulers, and much was lost.

The most conspicuous example of this is the demolition of the church of the Holy Apostles, and the mausoleum of Constantine and the emperors who followed him.  But this was perhaps mainly an example of “marking your turf”, familiar to teenager gangs everywhere.  However much else that still survived vanished around the same time.

It would be very interesting to have a list of primary sources describing the city in the 15th century.  The dying empire still attracted visitors at the start of the century; and in the early years of Ottoman rule, there are descriptions of events that reflect the state of the city.

Sadly I do not know of such a list, nor any easy way to obtain one.  But today I came across a preview of a volume online which mentions a number of such items.

The work in question is Cigdem Kafescioglu’s Constantinopolis / Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital, Pennsylvania State University, 2009.

On page 136 we find the following fascinating statement (sadly Google blanked out the diagrams):

What remained of the ceremonial arteries of Byzantine Constantinople at the time the Ottomans captured the city is not known precisely (fig. 104). What is known suggests that fragments and traces of a former monumental layout remained, rather than an intact complex of streets and fora. In his “Comparison of Old and New Rome,” which he wrote in Rome in 1411, Manuel Chrysoloras, referring to the Golden Gate and the southern branch of the Mese, mentions the “former city gate which is on the same road.” His emphasis, however, is on what remained of the city’s monumental columns, statues and pedestals “wallowing in mud and mire, having fallen into ruin,” rather than the urban spaces that bore these.233 Early Ottoman land surveys suggest that colonnaded porticoes were partly standing on the eastern portion of the Mese. The “shops called kemer (arch)” near Hagia Sophia, recorded in 1489, were possibly the last remnants of the porticoed city streets aligned with shops. These were either shop/stoa combinations, as described by Marlia Mundell-Mango, or former porticoes transformed into shops by the Ottomans.234 Ceremonial use of the arteries had similarly declined. In a study of imperial and ecclesiastical processions in Byzantium, Albrecht Berger has noted that urban ceremonial in the last centuries of Byzantium used only fragments of the city’s former ceremonial map. Rather than traverse the whole expanse of the Mese, later Byzantine emperors, in their increasingly infrequent visits to the city center, more often used a sea route from the Blachernae to the Seraglio Point and only there disembarked for a land-bound procession to theHagia Sophia or the Hippodrome.235 Accounts such as Gilles’s description of the Hippodrome as overgrown with trees at the time of the conquest and Ottoman concerns with security in these spaces point in the same direction.

Sparse yet significant information on the Hippodrome through the early years of Ottoman rule in Constantinople survives. In the image by Vavassore published around 1530, based on an original dating to the late fifteenth century, the sphendone and the entrance complex, the latter to be spoliated in the construction of the Suleymaniye mosque and complex in the 1550s, are still intact. A hagiography completed in 1484, the Velayetname-i Otman Baba, indicates that the open space of the Hippodrome—or, in its translated name, the Atmeydani—was already a central spot in the city by the end of Mehmed’s rule. In this account, the heretic dervish Otman Baba and his followers rather narrowly escape being brought here to meet their end at the stakes and hooks awaiting them.236 An opposition between the city’s center and edge, a metaphor also for proximity and distance vis-a-vis the state, is articulated here through narration of the steps taken to convey the dervishes to a convent near the Silivrikapi/Pege Gate along the land walls, and not to the Hippodrome. The Velayetname, by an author at the margins of the emerging Ottoman order, does not grant a more precise view into the events regarding the dervish’s trial. It does nevertheless provide a glimpse of the Hippodrome as one of the sites where the conflict between the heretic leader and the palace was acted out within the capital city, foreshadowing its centuries-long use as the stage where palace and city would meet for the administration of justice…

233.  Chrysoloras, “Comparison of Old and New Rome”, 211, 214.
234.  BBA (Basbakanlik Arsivi = Archives of the Prime Ministry) MM19 (Ayasofya vakfitahrir defteri, A.H. 895), fols 24a-25a. On emboloi in the Byzantine city, see Mundell-Mango, “The Commercial Map of Constantinople,” 194-97, 203-4 (JSTOR).  Information on the Mese in the Palaeologan era suggests that commercial activity was focused on particular locations rather than stretching alongside it.
235. Berger, “Imperial and Ecclesiastical Processions in Constantinople,” 83-85; 86-87, for a map of processions in the Byzantine city.
236. Kucuk Abdal, Velayetname-i Sultan Otman, 94v-97r, 117v-118v.

It is sad to see that the Turkish sources are only listed in manuscript; that is, remain unpublished.

The work by Manuel Chrysoloras, the Byzantine diplomat who taught the world how to read Greek, during three short years in Florence at the end of the 14th century, ought to be accessible.  It may be found in PG156, cols.24-53.  But Kafescioglu indicates (p.267) that an obscure English translation does indeed exist:

Chrysoloras, Manuel. “Comparison of Old and New Rome.” Translated and edited by Christine Smith. In: Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Eloquence, 1400-1470,171-215. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

That it is obscure may readily be discovered by anyone searching Google for a translation.  Sadly the paper is inaccessible to me too!  But at least it is good to know that it exists.

Why doesn’t someone create a website dedicated to 15th century Constantinople?  It would be so very useful!

Share

Did Alfred the Great invent the story of Caesar invading Britain?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Apparently so, according to this Danish site (Aug 16, 2017, written by Ben Hamilton):

Caesar conquering Britain a 9th century invention by Alfred the Great: Saxon king fabricated 54 BC invasion to replace Viking-friendly heir and protect England from the Danes

He came … He saw … but He tampered

As you do.

This story is by a certain “Rebecca Huston, a former National Geographic Channel producer and American screenwriter who after ten years of original research and analysis” concludes that “by doctoring a Latin version of one of the ancient world’s most famous writings, and altering several Old English manuscripts, he was able to convince his council of nobles that his son Edward was the rightful heir to his throne, not his nephew Æthelwold, a Saxon susceptible to alliances with the Danes. And the astonishing upshot of this discovery is that Julius Caesar neither invaded nor conquered Britain in 54 BC.”

It continues:

Along with the collected letters of Cicero, the memoirs written by Caesar while he was conquering France and other areas of central Europe in the fifth decade of the first century BC is believed by many to be one of the few manuscripts to have survived the period.  But there is a very good chance that Caesar’s ‘Commentaries’ did not survive, and that ‘Bellum Gallicum’ (BG), the title it is known as today, was the work of other writers. Historians are wrong to treat it as gospel and to suppose this was the true voice of Caesar. But many do, and therefore they duly accept that he invaded Britain.

The basis for this?  That the earliest manuscript of the BG is 9th century, “coinciding with Alfred’s life”; that Caesar “lapses” into first person in the BG; “120 examples of Alfred’s idiosyncratic writing style”; 40 references to Alfred himself (which a forger would naturally introduce into his work); and so on.

But curiously I can’t find any other source for this story.  Nor can I find any sign of a Rebecca Huston, associated with National Geographic.  Which is more than odd, all by itself.

A glance at Texts and Transmissions reveals that the Bellum Gallicum is transmitted by two families of manuscripts, both with a 9th century exemplar.  The first was written at Fleury in the second half of the century, the other at Corbie in the 3rd quarter of the century.  The first family contains mainly the BG; the other contains all the commentaries.  Neither manuscript is British or associated with Britain, as far as I can see.

As for the other evidence, I must defer to specialists.  But I have long since grown wary of such claims.  Sifting fernseed seems to be bad for the eyes, in altogether too many cases.

Fascinating to see a claim like this, where there seems no discernible motive.  Or is it simply a silly-season invention by a journalist?

UPDATE (28/8/17): After writing this, I dropped an email to Ben Hamilton at the Copenhagen Post, who replied very promptly and helpfully, and made clear that the story is genuine.  He gave this link at IMDB for Rebecca Huston.  I have since also received some emails from Rebecca Huston.  It will be interesting to look further into this one.

Share

“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit” – an ancient Greek proverb?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This week I came across a saying online:

A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.

This, we are told, is a Greek proverb.

The sentiment is unexceptionable, but readers of this site do not believe attributions without evidence.  Is this truly ancient?  If so, how do we know?

A search on Google Books produces many references to this saying, varying somewhat in wording:

But if we use the custom date range, we quickly discover that the results vanish before the mid-1980s.  In the 1990s we get various results, mainly from the Congressional Record of the US Congress:

The “old Greek proverb” is hardly heard of before 1993, although I saw a quote in The Nation in 1991.

Eventually I happened to find a quote which atrributed it, not to ancient Greece, but to a certain Dennis Waitley: a 1989 article in the Scholastic Coach, vol. 59, p.289:

We use Dennis Waitley’s definition of a winner: “A winner is a person who plants a shade tree knowing he or she will never sit under it.”

This has the right sort of sound about it.  Waitley turns out to be a 1980s motivational speaker.  I was unable to locate in which of his books he said this.  But in fact I have just found another source, from 1972, in the Lutheran Standard, vol. 12, p.16:

A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of life when he plants shade trees under which he knows he will never sit.

This is only visible in snippet view.  But this version of the saying takes us further back yet.  It is associated with a David Elton Trueblood (or D. Elton Trueblood), a Quaker, in 1955.

Yet even so I can find a reference from 1954, in a mysterious Annual Report of a Ministry of Agriculture, page 13:

A man only begins to grasp the true meaning of life when he plants a tree under whose shade he knows he will never sit.

A 1968 magazine gives the following interesting quote:

At her departure, we are reminded of the passage from Elton Trueblood’s The Life We Prize, which she so often quotes: “One has to come to the full meaning of life when he is willing to plant shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit….

The Trueblood book was printed in 1951, earlier than any reference I can find.  And on p.58 we read our quote:

A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.

That, I suspect, is the real origin of the proverb – a volume of moral writing by a quaker in 1951.  The aphorism then trickles through popular magazines, changing as it goes.  Ronald Reagan uses it in 1983.  But it seems to become a “Greek proverb” only in the hands of US congressmen in 1993.

Share

English translation of Fortunatianus of Aquileia’s Commentary on the Gospels is online at De Gruyter!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Back in 2014, I learned that the lost 4th century Latin commentary on the Gospels by Fortunatianus of Aquileia had been rediscovered by Lukas J. Dorfbauer!  This was very wonderful news, and I wrote about it here.  The exegesis follows the allegorical model common in Alexandria, rather than the more literalist format of Antioch.

A couple of weeks ago, I heard the good news that an English translation had been made by Hugh Houghton, and was being published by De Gruyter.  This was good news, as the first translation of any ancient text is.  However I assumed that this would only be accessible to researchers, and looking at the website did nothing to make me think otherwise.

But today I happened to see a tweet from the De Gruyter twitter account that the translation was available “open access”.  Back I went to the site.  And, after a mighty struggle, I found … that it is indeed available for download!

The trick, guys, is to look for the link on the left to “Content”, and click that.  It then gives you a list of the sections of the book, each with a PDF.

Download it!  Now!!

This is really excellent news, and we must all be grateful to Dr H., and also to De Gruyter for making this accessible to ordinary mortals.

The publisher’s PR men have been pushing the book to major newspapers, and accounts have appeared online from them.  I think that it is right for me to say something about these.

It would be very easy to look down on some of the press coverage.  The old saying is that there is no such thing as bad publicity (although in the age of Trump this theory is being tested severely, as is the trust of the public in the mainstream media).  If people get the wrong idea, at least they get some idea.  Does it matter if people who will never read a book get a mistaken idea?  Probably not.

Some of the press reports have adopted a very stale “sensationalist” line: “This new discovery by [insert name here] rocks the foundations, yes, the foundations of Christianity!!!  Just like the last one we reported singularly failed to do!!!  But this time it’s real!!!”.   I must confess that this type of reporting – always false – simply irritates the heck out me.  It positively smells of the 1890s.

In this case the line is “This discovery proves the early Christians did not understand the bible literally, unlike those Christian scum of today”.  The first such report that I saw was in the Daily Telegraph, by a certain Olivia Rudgard, online here.  The heading screamed “‘Don’t take the Bible literally’ says scholar who brought to light earliest Latin analysis of the Gospels”; but the rather confused article does not substantiate this claim, and the journalist plainly knew little about early Christian exegesis.  One feels sorry for Dr Houghton, who doubtless did his best.  By “taking the bible literally”, the newspaper means “believe any of it”; which has nothing to do with the subject, but is how the ordinary reader will understand it.  Other reports of the same sort appear in other newspapers.

A certain amount of spite must be involved in all this.  The Telegraph would hardly report any early Islamic discovery in these terms, after all.  But in the main it’s just a tired journalistic trope, for which Dr. H. is in no way responsible.  A sensible response by Peter D. Williams appears here.

How should we respond to misrepresentations of this kind?  I think there are a number of pitfalls to avoid.

What all of us want to see is the new discovery enter the mainstream, and get read.  The most likely non-scholarly readers for a commentary on the gospels are the Christians.  This is why the attempt to position the discovery, in the minds of the general public, as anti-Christian, is really rather poisonous.  It poisons the well.  It puts off readers.  Almost nobody reads anti-Christian literature.  No Christian wastes time on the “stunning discoveries” of liberal theologians.

So I think it is important to say that this discovery is not anti-Christian, and does NOT prove that the early Christians did not take the bible literally (i.e., believe it).  The early Christians believed that the bible was the inspired word of God, just as modern Christians do.  They understood it in various ways, just as we do today.  They took it just as literally as we do, and for the same reasons.  But they also sought “inner meanings”.  We do not lack people seeking to do the same today, as anyone who has listened to attempts to explain the prophecies in the book of Daniel will know.

In the early church there was the idea that the bible could be understood as a story with an allegorical meaning.  This idea is associated with the great name of Origen especially, and continued to be influential throughout antiquity.  Whether correct or not, it could give some interesting insights into biblical passages.

For those who feel doubtful, we should remember that Origen’s own sermons on Ezekiel could be preached today, with minor modifications.  There is not really such a great gap between these early Christians and ourselves.

So do read Fortunatianus.  His interpretation is a commentary.  It may be right or wrong; but it is not maliciously wrong.

And … thanks to De Gruyter for making it available online.  And especial thanks to Hugh Houghton for undertaking the not inconsiderable task of making the first translation of an ancient text.  Well done, both of you!

UPDATE: I misspelled the guy’s name!  FortunAtianus, not FortunANtianus.  Apologies!

Share

A marvellous photograph of the remains of the Quirinal temple staircase in 1930

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The massive temple on the Quirinal hill in Rome is now gone, but substantial remains still exist of the twin brick staircases, and the stair-well, down the hill.  Unfortunately they stand in the gardens of the Colonna palace, which is not very accessible; and on the other side is the Gregorian University.

However the Gregorian University was only constructed in the early 1930s.  A marvellous photograph exists, showing the site under construction.  Behind it, clearly visible, is the huge square carcass of the stairwell, and the twin staircases on either side!

The picture was printed by Rabun Taylor in his marvellous article arguing (convincingly) that the temple was built by Hadrian, and the stairwell by Severus.[1]  Here it is:

For convenience, here’s an extract highlighting the staircases on either side.  The house built into the Roman arches in between is later.

It’s worth repeating one of the renaissance drawings of the same area (by Giovanolli).  It is incredible to think this mostly still exists!

Share
  1. [1]R. Taylor, “Hadrian’s Serapeum in Rome”, American Journal of Archaeology 108 (2004), 223-66; p.228 fig.6. Online here.↩

A renaissance engraver: some notes on G. da Sangallo and the Quirinal temple

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A kind correspondent (R. Fassaert) has sent me an image of one of the plates in the new Atlas of Ancient Rome, featuring the huge temple on the Quirinal Hill in Rome, about which I have written a series of posts.  The temple was thought to be Aurelian’s Temple of the Sun; then a Hadrianic Temple of Serapis; and the authors of that Atlas propose that it was a temple of Hercules and Dionysius.

“Tab.192” includes a plan and section by a certain “G. da Sangallo”.  The image I have is low-resolution, but looks intriguing:

Of course it may be to some extent a reconstruction.  But where is it from?

In common with many other sources, the Atlas leaves the reader at a loss.  Engravings apparently magically appear.  But I wondered if anything might be online.

The author turns out to be Giuliano da Sangallo (or San Gallo), who died in 1516.  Italian Wikipedia has an article on him, from which I learn that he was a true renaissance man, who started with wood-carving and went into architecture and much else.

The notes tell me that manuscript of sketches is preserved in the Vatican in Ms. Barberini lat. 4424.  My friend J.-B.Piggin provides a link to the manuscript online, which is here.  It’s also now possible to save individual pages to file, which is most useful, as we shall see.

On first sight it did not contain what we were looking for.  But a further search for da Sangallo and the Quirinal[1] led me[2] to a really useful article at Academia.edu by Dr Cammy Brothers, precisely about Da Sangallo and the temple on the Quirinal hill.[3]  This tells us that there are 7 drawings, all in the Barberini codex: on fol. 10r, 60r, 60v, 68v.  The plan and section are folios 65r and 65v.

But looking at the manuscript, the reader is puzzled.  Folios 65r and 65v are blank.  Fol. 10r contains nothing relating to the Quirinal temple.  68v is blank.  The page numbers are corrupt.

Like all these online interfaces, it is hard to use as first.  But it got easier as I worked with it.  I found, by scanning through the thumbnails, that the images of the section and plan are in fact folios 57r and 57v.  The top of 57r is a bunch of figures from the arch of Severus in Rome.  So here’s the bottom of that page:

G. da Sangallo, Codex Barberini lat. 4424, fol. 57r, bottom: a section of the Quirinal Hill temple

I cannot make out the writing, however, even at maximum resolution, however.

Here’s the plan of the temple, on the next page, slightly edited.

G. da Sangallo, Codex Barberini latin. 4424, fol. 7v. Plan of the Quirinal temple.

Can any reader make out the writing?

Folio 60v does indeed show the pediment of the temple, before its demolition, on the left.

(One must deplore the vandalism of the circular Vatican logo across the picture, and I hope that the curators recognise how obnoxious this is, and remove it.)

It is perhaps likely that Dr Brothers did not consult the manuscript, but rather the reproduction by C. Hülsen (1910).[4]  Maybe this had different folio numbers.

I cannot recommend too highly the article by Cammy Brothers. It is a treasure trove.  It contains reproductions of other drawings, and also calculations of the size of the monument as it then was.  It also contains computer-generated reconstructions.  In short it is a very useful article indeed, which I only encountered by accident.

The Barberini codex is not the only online item by G. da Sangallo.  Wikipedia also told me of a “Sienese sketchbook” (Taccuino senese), held at the Biblioteca degli intronati in Siena.  Rather to my surprise, this also proves to be online, although in a 1902 anastatic copy, at Google Books here.  But it had no material on the temple.

It all goes to show that, with a little effort, it really is possible for a non-specialist to locate these drawings.  How fortunate we are to live in the age of the internet!

Let’s finish with a striking image, not of the Quirinal temple, by Da Sangallo which I found on Wikimedia Commons.  Apparently it depicts the ruins of the Basilica Aemilia in 1480!

The Basilica Aemilia in 1480, by G. da Sangallo.

But once again this is actually from the Barberini Codex, fol.28r.[5]

It is nice to make use of a Vatican manuscript from a hotel room.  This would hardly have been dreamt of, even a few years ago.

Share
  1. [1]“giuliano da sangallo quirinale”↩
  2. [2]Via the German Wikipedia article on the temple of Serapis.↩
  3. [3]Cammy Brothers, “Reconstruction as design: Giuliano da Sangallo and the ‘palazzo di mecenate’ on the Quirinal Hill”, Annali di architettura: Rivista del Centro internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio di Vicenza 14, 2002, 55-72. Online here.↩
  4. [4]C. Hülsen, Il libro di Giuliano da Sangallo: codice Vaticano Barberiniano Latino 4424, I-II, Lepizig, 1910.↩
  5. [5]Little as I like Wikipedia, I think I will add a note to the Wikimedia Commons page, if I can.↩

A fake item on eBay

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are many antiquities for sale on eBay.  But it is very much “buyer beware”.  One item caught my eye a couple of weeks ago:

“ROMAN Ancient Artifact BRONZE PLATE with INSCRIPTION Circa 200-400 AD -4234″… “Circa 200-400 AD. WEIGHT:23.3 g. A Certificate of Authenticity will be issued on request but it will cost extra. CONDITION: FINE.” … “Business seller information: GsalesR.  Contact details: Georgi Kolev, 98 Clacton Road, Walthamstow, London, London E17 8AR, United Kingdom”.  It was sold for a mighty £150, around $220.

The inscription reminded me of something, and, after a while, I found it.  The inscription is identical with that on a slave-collar, in the museum in Rome in the Baths of Diocletian:

FUGI. TENE ME. CUM REVOCAVERIS ME D. M. ZONINO, ACCIPIS SOLIDUM

I have run away. Catch me. If you return me to my master Zoninus, you will receive a solidus.

So did Zoninus really have this on more than one slave?  Or, more likely, did some enterprising modern chap stamp out an “ancient” artefact, and stick a copy of the inscription on it?  Just how did “Georgi Kolev” of Walthamstow come to have this, and many other Roman items, all dated 200-400 AD?

I think a reasonable man will assume that this is a fake.  Indeed probably all of this seller’s items are fakes.

I am reminded of the wise words of Amelia Edwards about Egyptian antiquities dealers in A Thousand Miles Up The Nile:

Forgers, diggers, and dealers play, meanwhile, into one another’s hands, and drive a roaring trade. Your dahabeeyah, as I have just shown, is beset from the moment you moor till the moment you pole off again from shore. The boy who drives your donkey, the guide who pilots you among the tombs, the half-naked Fellâh who flings down his hoe as you pass, and runs beside you for a mile across the plain, have one and all an “anteekah” to dispose of. The turbaned official who comes, attended by his secretary and pipe-bearer, to pay you a visit of ceremony, warns you against imposition, and hints at genuine treasures to which he alone possesses the key. The gentlemanly native who sits next to you at dinner has a wonderful scarab in his pocket. In short, every man, woman, and child about the place is bent on selling a bargain ; and the bargain, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is valuable in so far as it represents the industry of Luxor – but no farther. A good thing, of course, is to be had occasionally ; but the good thing never comes to the surface as long as a market can be found for the bad one. It is only when the dealer finds he has to do with an experienced customer, that he produces the best he has.

Genuine items do appear on eBay.  But caveat emptor.

Share

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There’s no news on any of my projects.  I’m still busy earning a living, and I have had no time or energy to do anything else.

A copy of Sevcenko’s edition and translation of The Life of St Nicholas of Sion has reached me.  It made interesting reading, as clearly the cult of Nicholas of Myra was in full swing at that period.  It was also interesting how readable the Greek text was, on facing pages!  My eye kept drifting across there – far from a normal event with parallel texts – and finding stuff that I recognised.  Larger text and better spacing draws you into it.

Today I booked the flights for a short trip to Rome in late October.  I had to choose between the Crowne Plaza hotel, which looked fine but was not very close to the city centre; and another right in the centre but 50% more.  In the end I chose the latter.

It was interesting to see that lastminute.com really offered some excellent deals.  Even more interesting, however, was to compare a bundled flights+hotel with booking separately.  The bundled format was only $50 cheaper, once you worked it out for exactly the same flights, and prevented you from booking upgrades with the airline.

I am looking forward to Rome.  It’s been a long year.  Wish me luck with the weather!

Share

A rather useful plan of the Quirinal temple

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent, Rene Fassaert, has directed my attention to a 1910 two-volume item Monuments Antiques, which contains some architectural materials for ancient Greece and Rome.[1]  It’s online in very high resolution at the University of Texas here.

On p.172 of the second volume (p.77 of the PDF), there is a splendid plan of the massive temple on the Quirinal Hill in Rome.  This very clearly relates the great stairwell down the hill to the existing layout of the Colonna gardens.

The plate also contains a reconstruction of the whole plan of the temple.  For some reason the original had this upside down, so I have corrected it.

Here it is.  As ever, click on it for a larger image.

Much of the area of gardens to the left of the plan is now part of the Gregorian University.  But the plan is still useful as a guide to what might be where.

UPDATE: I have had to reduce the size of the image, as the downloads were too much for my site bandwidth.  You can of course follow the link to get the full size original.

Share
  1. [1]Monuments antiques : relevés et restaurés par les architectes pensionnaires de l’Académie de France à Rome; / notices archéologiques par Georges Seure, 2 vols, 1910.↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m busy earning a living at the moment, so I can’t really pursue any of my projects.  Instead I’ve been using Google in odd moments to locate nice pictures of Rome and the Quirinal.  I hope to go out there in October.  Eutychius and my other interests will just have to wait until I have more time!

Share