Area Apollinis

The sacred area S of the Palatine Temple of *Apollo runs next to the house of Augustus (*Domus: Augustus), the *Bibliotheca Latina Graecaque, and the Portico of the Danaids (*Porticus Apollo; Richardson). The area is located on a terrace which measures c. 70 x 30 m and rises c. 9 m towards the *Circus Maximus on opus quadratum retaining walls (Gros 56); this platform extends to carry portions of Augustus’ house and the Temple of Apollo. Connecting it to the SE section of the house of Augustus were private, vaulted ramps decorated with colorful frescoes (see infra fig. 10, R; Carettoni 388-92, fig. 5). Fragments of the Severan Marble Plan preserve the inscription [A]REA APO[LL]IN[IS] and are securely placed just S of the Temple of Apollo (Rodríguez Almeida, Forma 99, pl. 14, frags. 67e, f, g, h; id., LTUR). These fragments depict a raised, cruciform monument — two arms with flights of stairs and the other two with platforms — in the center of an open area which seems to have been enclosed by a colonnaded portico (Rodríguez Almeida, LTUR). Rodríguez Almeida suggests that this enigmatic structure is either the altar of the Temple of Apollo, which was decorated with oxen carved by Myron, or the base for a monumental image of Apollo Citharoedus (LTUR; Prop. 2.31.5-7); neither proposition can be verified with archaeological evidence. While the terrace certainly was constructed in the Augustan era, and so appears on our map, there is some debate about the relationship of this platform and the toponym ‘Area Apollinis’. The earliest appearance of the toponym is on an inscription from the second half of the 1st c. A.D. (Corbier 897-98; Eck 462-72), but the area may already have been called the Area Apollinis in the Augustan era. Further, there is disagreement as to the area’s extent; Rodríguez Almeida limits it to the region S of the temple, Gros implies that the area occupied the whole terrace, and it is even conceivable that the term applied to the entire complex surrounding the Temple of Apollo.