Porta Carmentalis
The Porta Carmentalis was an ancient city gate of the Servian Wall in Rome . It originally came from the 5th century BC. BC, but like the entire city wall was in the 4th century BC. Chr. Renewed.
The porta Carmentalis was located between the forum boarium and the forum holitorium , roughly where the Via della Consolazione and the Via Teatro Marcello intersect today. It was thus in the valley between the Capitoline Hill and the Palatine Hill , a place that is still called Vico Jugario today.
The gate system apparently had two passages, of which the one leading out of the city to the right was called the porta scellerata . Walking through it was considered a bad omen, a superstition based on a legendary incident in the first war against Veii in 476 BC. BC declined. At that time, all three hundred male members of the gens Fabia are said to have come through the right passage of the gate after they had dismounted from the Quirinal and passed the foot of the Capitol. When they then crossed the pons sublicius to face the enemy, they were caught in an ambush near the Cremera River and killed. This story aroused emotions even after centuries and popular belief created the connection between the right passage of the porta Carmentalis and the massacre, even though the events, regardless of their truthfulness, took place a good century before the construction of the city wall and consequently the gate connected to it.
Even in Augustan times, the porta Carmentalis was considered an ancient monument and no longer had any real function, neither as a passage nor as a military bulwark. The name of the gate goes back to one of the oldest myths and sanctuaries of Rome, the Sanctuary of Carmenta , which is said to have been located near the gate.
The function of this gate, which was located in the immediate vicinity of the porta flumentana , and how it provided access to the Capitol from the forum boarium and the pons sublicius is completely unclear .
literature
- Lawrence Richardson Jr .: A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD et al. 1992, ISBN 0-8018-4300-6 , p. 301, Porta Carmentalis .
- Rudolph Groß: Carmentalis porta. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 1, Stuttgart 1964, Col. 1057-1057.
- Samuel Ball Platner , Thomas Ashby : A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome . Oxford University Press, London 1929, pp. 405-406 ( online ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1:32 ; 10, 14; Titus Livius 24:47; 25, 7; 27, 37; Plutarch , Camillus 25.
- ↑ Livy 2:49; Ovid , Fasti 2, 201.