Columna rostrata Octaviani

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Denarius Octavian depicting the Rostrata Columna and its statue, before 31 BC. Chr.

The columna rostrata Octaviani (also columna rostrata Augusti ) was an honorary column in the Roman Forum in Rome , with the Octavian, the later Augustus , after his in the year 36 BC. Won victory over Sextus Pompeius was honored. The column has not been preserved.

Historical background

When after the death of Caesar in 44 BC When the struggle for power in Rome flared up again, Octavian, Marcus Antonius and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus formed an unofficial alliance that went down in history as the Second Triumvirate . Confirmed by the people's assembly and endowed with dictatorial powers to order the state, the aim of this three-man union was to secure Caesar's political legacy and to avenge his murder.

One of the opponents was Sextus Pompeius, son of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and leader of the so-called Pompeian party. He had succeeded in ruling large parts of the western Mediterranean with a considerable fleet and from 42 BC onwards. To control Sicily in particular . From this base it was possible for him to block the grain supply to Rome, which from the year 40 BC. Led to famine not only in the capital of the Roman Empire , but also in parts of Italy. After several failed negotiations, contracts and naval battles, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa , friend and general Octavians, succeeded Sextus Pompeius in the naval battle of Naulochoi in 36 BC. To beat.

pillar

In his account of the Roman civil wars, Appian reports on the honors that Octavian accepted on the occasion of the victory of Naulochoi. In addition to an Ovatio and an annual victory festival, this included the erection of a gilded statue. The statue, however, was intended to depict him in the clothes he was wearing when he returned to the city, and to be placed on a column in the Roman Forum adorned with the beaks ( Latin rostra ) of the defeated ships. The inscription on the column read: "He restored the long-disturbed peace on land and at sea".

With the columna rostrata , the later Augustus accepted a form of honor that was first used in 260 BC. Chr. Gaius Duilius for his victory over the fleet Carthage in Mylae was granted. This column also stood on the forum and was probably extensively restored under Augustus. However, if this was granted for the victory over external enemies, Octavian's column celebrated the victory over Romans.

Coin minting presumably from the years before 31 BC Chr. Depicted a column and statue on their lapel . The emissions bear the only known representation of a columna rostrata and were used as a model for the reconstruction of the columna Duilia . You can see the rostra attached to the side and the anchors attached in the middle. Above all, they make it clear that Octavian was portrayed in the style of a Hellenistic ruler: instead of a toga , which he would have to wear as a Roman citizen, he was dressed in ideal nakedness in only a little cloak, a kind of chlamys . Since the column and statue are roughly the same height on the embossments, the column shaft with the ship's beaks was probably reproduced in a smaller size.

Columna rostrata and four pillar monument

In his commentary on Georgica Virgils , Maurus Servius Honoratus explains the phrase "And pillars rising from ship ore " (ac navali surgentes aere columnas) on book 3, verse 29 . These were four pillars that Augustus had erected from the melt of captured ship's beaks after his victory over all of Egypt . Under Domitian they were moved to the Capitol , where they could still be seen in the times of Servius, that is, at the end of the 4th century. Servius continues with the description of two columnae rostratae of Duilius. The comment of Servius with his contextualization of the monuments for Augustus and Duilius led to the much discussed question whether these four columns of Augustus were also columnae rostratae . This assumption is emphatically supported by Domenico Palombi, who would like to see an extension of the honor for Naulochoi by three columns in the four-column monument. It combines the installation of these three additional columns with a foundation made of opus caementicium . This 11.70 × 6.20 meter foundation has three rectangular travertine bases with rectangular inlet holes and is located directly south of the location assumed for the colossal equestrian statue of Domitian. This interpretation was partly agreed to, partly contradicted by the fact that the Doliola , which had been handed down several times, but whose function and location were undetermined, were located in the inlet holes . Already Paul Zanker had the columns, which he also considered rostratae , conceives on the eastern Forum square near Basilica Julia localized. Markus Sehlmeyer turns against the interpretation of the four columns named by Servius as columnae rostratae . He points out that Servius himself did not write of columnae rostratae , rather this mention is only part of the Servius auctus . This edition, obtained in 1600 by Pierre Daniel (1531–1604), also contained comments by Aelius Donatus, who was heavily criticized by Servius . In addition, in his description of the Columnae rostratae of Duilius , Servius consciously contrasted them with the columns of Augustus.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Appian, bellum civile 5,130 ( English ).
  2. ↑ Eric Kondratieff: The Column and Coinage of C. Duilius: Innovations in Iconography in Large and Small Media in the Middle Republic. In: Scripta Classica Israelica. Volume 23, 2004, pp. 1-39 ( online ).
  3. ↑ RIC I² 271; Harold Mattingly: Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum. Volume 1: Augustus to Vitellius. British Museum, London 1923, No. 633-636; on the dating problem: Dietrich Mannsperger: The coinage of Augustus. In: Gerhard Binder (Ed.): Saeculum Augustum. Volume 3, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1991, ISBN 3-534-08949-9 , pp. 348–399, here p. 362, note 32.
  4. ^ Markus Sehlmeyer: City Roman honor statues of the republican time. Historicity and context of symbols of class consciousness. Steiner, Stuttgart 1999, p. 260; Paul Zanker : Augustus and the power of images. CH Beck, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-406-32067-8 , p. 50.
  5. ^ Markus Sehlmeyer: City Roman honor statues of the republican time. Historicity and context of symbols of class consciousness. Steiner, Stuttgart 1999, p. 260.
  6. ↑ Maurus Servius Honoratius, commentarius in Vergilii georgica 3.29 ( Latin ).
  7. ↑ See already Samuel Ball Platner , Thomas Ashby : A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Oxford University Press, London 1929, p. 134 ( online ).
  8. ↑ Domenico Palombi: Columnae Rostratae Augusti. In: Archeologia Classica. Volume 45, 1993, pp. 321-332; the same: Columnae Rostratae Augusti. In: Eva Margareta Steinby (Ed.): Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae . Vol. 1. Quasar, Rome 1993, ISBN 88-7097-019-1 , p. 308.
  9. ↑ Domenico Palombi: Columnae Rostratae Augusti. In: Archeologia Classica. Volume 45, 1993, pp. 326-329.
  10. ^ Cairoli Fulvio Giuliani, Patrizia Verduchi: L'Area Centrale del Foro Romano. Olschki, Florenz 1987, pp. 118–122 (on the location of the equestrian statue); Pp. 133–139 (on the location of the cementitious foundation).
  11. ^ Yvonne Schmuhl: Roman victory monuments of the republican time. Investigations into origins, manifestations and monument policy. Kovač, Hamburg 2008, p. 149 f .; Susanne Muth : Historical dimensions of built space - the Roman Forum as a case study. In: Ortwin Dally , Tonio Hölscher , Susanne Muth, Rolf Schneider (eds.): Media of history - ancient Greece and Rome. De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, pp. 285–329, here: p. 308.
  12. ^ Filippo Coarelli : Doliola. In: Eva Margareta Steinby (Ed.): Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae . Volume 2. Quasar, Rome 1995, pp. 20 f .; the same: Roma. 4th edition. Laterza, Bari 2012, p. 81; Klaus S. Freyberger : The Roman Forum. Mirror of the city history of ancient Rome. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2009, p. 12.
  13. ↑ Paul Zanker: Augustus and the power of images. CH Beck, Munich 1987, pp. 85-87 with Fig. 61.
  14. ^ Markus Sehlmeyer: The victory monuments Octavians after Actium. To localize the bronze four-pillar monument (Serv. Georg. 3.29). In: Jörg Spielvogel : Res publica reperta. On the constitution and society of the Roman Republic and the early Principate: Festschrift for Jochen Bleicken on his 75th birthday. Steiner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-515-07934-3 , pp. 216-226.
  15. ↑ Already Martina Jordan-Ruwe: The column monument. On the history of the elevated installation of antique portrait statues. Habelt, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-7749-2721-9 , p. 64 pointed out that Servius did not describe any columnae rostratae in the republican sense for the four columns .
  16. ^ Markus Sehlmeyer: The victory monuments Octavians after Actium. To localize the bronze four-pillar monument (Serv. Georg. 3.29). In: Jörg Spielvogel: Res publica reperta. On the constitution and society of the Roman Republic and the early Principate: Festschrift for Jochen Bleicken on his 75th birthday. Steiner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-515-07934-3 , p. 221.