Campus Martius

The vast flood plain of the *Tiber, dedicated to Mars, directly N of the old fortified city was central to the civic-political life of Rome. Serving since the 50s B.C. as the platform for Rome’s most extensive monumentalization ever, the Campus Martius stood in the center of Augustus’ plans to renew and aggrandize the city; along with other extramural territories it was formally incorporated into the urban administration with the introduction of the 14 Augustan *Regiones in 7 B.C. By then, the Campus had become the city’s grand showplace, with a multitude of exceptional sacred and public buildings, sites, and parks. For the contemporary Greek observer Strabo (5.3.7-8) it represented the visual sum of Rome’s achievement. The Field of Mars extended ‘between the City and the Tiber’ (inter urbem ac Tiberim ... consecratus Marti Martius deinde campus fuit: Livy 2.5.2, cf. 21.30.11; μεταξὺ τῆς τε πόλεως καὶ τοῦ ποταμοῦ: Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. 5.13.2; cf. Varro, Ling. 5.28); in this unspecified wide sense the Campus comprised the natural topographical unit reaching from the NW flank of the *Servian Wall to the W bend of the *Tiber and extending N to the natural throat between the river and the *Collis Hortulorum (Richardson 65-67; De Caprariis 168; Coarelli 1997, 4-6; arguing, without a following, for the central area only, Wiseman, LTUR 220-21). Once with the Goat’s Marsh (Caprae palus) at its center, the Campus was prone to flooding throughout its history. Of the three Tiber plains in Rome’s proximity (s.v. *Emporium; *Trans Tiberim) this was both the largest and, more importantly, the one most closely connected to the city’s heart and history, such that it could simply be called ‘the Campus’ (e.g., Livy 40.52.4). Among the particular districts that gradually developed there, including the *Aemiliana (2), the *Villa Publica, and the *Campus Agrippae, the *Campus Flaminius in the S seems to have shown the most independent character, especially after the 2nd c. B.C. when it became a built-up zone of remarkable grandeur. Consequently, the meaning of ‘Campus Martius’ in a more specific sense was restricted to the area N of the Campus Flaminius (De Caprariis 168; Wiseman, LTUR 222; Coarelli 1997, 4-6); the dual meanings, both narrower and wider, result in occasionally ambiguous ancient usage of the toponym, yet it invariably retained its connotation of spaciousness (Strabo 5.3.8, see below). Unlike any other area of Rome except the *Forum Romanum, the Campus Martius was imbued with deep-rooted notions about Roman commonality. Traditionally, the Campus was land that had belonged to Tarquinius Superbus before it was granted to the Roman people as ager publicus (occasionally called the ager Tarquiniorum: e.g., Livy 2.5.2; Coarelli 1997, 136-43; for the restriction of this term to the W Campus, Aronen). The Tarquinian expulsion, the constituting feat of the Republic, and the mysterious end of Rome’s first leader during a public assembly at the Goat’s Marsh, were notions vividly attached to these ‘commons’, as was their longstanding use for voting and census purposes and for military and athletic exercises (Livy 1.16.1-4.; 1.44.1-2; 2.5.1-2; Ov., Fast. 2.491-512; Dion. Hal., Ant.Rom. 4.22.1-2; 5.13.2-3), not all of which were a reality any more by the Augustan period (s.v. *Saepta). With the agglomeration of temples erected by triumphant Republican generals at the *“Area Sacra” in Largo Argentina, the Campus’ rôle as common ground was pushed toward imperial state-representation, while also serving, ever more pointedly, as a public burial ground for outstanding personalities of the state, from Sulla to Caesar, Agrippa, and Augustus (*Sepulcrum: L. Cornelius Sulla; *Sepulcrum: Iulia; *Mausoleum: Augustus). Inseparably connected with Rome’s civic life from early on, these public grounds long remained outside the city’s religious boundary lines, extra pomerium (cf. Varro, Ling. 5.143). Claudius was the first, as is now agreed, to include irregular parts of the Campus in an extended pomerium (Frézouls 378-80; Richardson 294-95; Andreussi 101-3). The special relationship between the Campus and the city was tellingly expressed in the Campus’ consecration, of old, to Mars (e.g., Livy 2.5.2; Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. 5.13.2) – a god central to the community’s military success yet better worshipped ‘outside the walls’ to prevent ‘armed dissent among the citizens’ (Vitr., De arch. 1.7.1). In fact, the Ara *Martis in the Campus Martius, probably not far from the Villa Publica N of the *Capitoline, was the oldest cult center of Mars in Rome, and apparently no major structure for his worship existed within the walls until Augustus built the *Forum Augusti with the Temple of Mars Ultor (a move of very bold, unifying dimensions, so far unrecognized in this context; for the complex debate on cult places of Mars, see LTUR III, 223-31; cf. *Mars, Aedes [Campus Flaminius], [Campus Martius], [Via Appia]). A key place of Roman self-representation outside the limits of the city proper, the late-Republican Campus Martius became the stage for a dramatic change in the urban image of Rome that went hand-in-hand with the metamorphosis of the entire Roman state. Tying into the 2nd-c. B.C. development at the S end of the Campus, the process of transforming the character of the entire Campus was initiated before the mid-1st c. B.C. by Pompey and Caesar, and essentially accomplished by Augustus through both building measures, by himself and Agrippa, and administrative steps. The result was a pivotal urban aggrandizement of Rome, with the Campus Martius becoming, unofficially yet quite visibly, the central metropolitan area and the spectacular new face of the city. Five major aspects emerge in this development of the Campus. (1) The luxurious temple-cum-portico complexes in the Circus Flaminius area — an “urban agglomeration worthy of the Hellenistic capitals” (Coarelli 1975, 241) — were already in existence by the mid-2nd c. B.C.; their orientation seems to have followed the natural NE-SW direction of the road leading to the Tarentum (*Via Tecta [1]) and beyond to the *Vaticanus Ager. By the end of the 2nd c., the N–S axis generated by the series of E-facing temples erected in the adjacent “Area Sacra” in Largo Argentina had been translated into a stricter set of coordinates by the *Porticus Minucia; this monumental rectangle must have introduced cardinally-oriented axes to the Campus. Additional urban fabric existed in the Aemiliana district N of the Capitoline, where since 220 B.C. the striking, perfectly straight causeway of the *Via Flaminia issued. (2) Novel size and grandeur were introduced to the Campus, and to Rome, by Pompey’s theater-cum-portico complex of 61-55 B.C. (*Dona Pompei), which was closely connected to the Largo Argentina temples and powerfully extrapolated the Minucian axes. A monumental E–W line now defined the Campus’ S center, just S of the palus Caprae (Coarelli 1997, 16 with map). Rising from the empty, wet surface of that swamp (soon to become the *Stagnum Agrippae), Pompey’s theater complex must indeed have given the impression of a huge ship, with Pompey’s own house floating nearby as the ‘dinghy’ (for the metaphor, Plut., Pomp. 40.5). And just like a ship, this urban complex, with its temples, theater, gardens, and senate-house (*Curia Pompei) and the Largo Argentina temples, was an entity unto itself; a whole city outside the city had gained full visual stature. (3) Following Pompey’s lead (Dio Cass. 43.49.2-3), Julius Caesar’s plans of the mid-40s de urbe augenda, to ‘aggrandize the city’ (Cic., Att. 13.20.1, 13.33a.1, 13.35-36.1: 45 B.C.; cf. Suet., Iul. 44.1; Yavetz 159-60; Coarelli 1988b, 69-70), opened a new round of urban ambition. The Campus was now rumored to be ‘built up’ (coaedificari) on a tremendous scale (Cic., Att. 13.33a.1). While Caesar’s vision of a redirected Tiber (s.v. Vaticanus Ager) never materialized, he created a N–S axis of staggering dimensions when he replaced the old ‘Sheepfold’ (ovile) used for the assembly of the comitia with the Saepta Iulia — an enterprise so spectacular already in its planning stage that even Cicero was impressed by the ‘mile-long’ porticoes (Att. 4.16.8; completed under Augustus, with more than half a mile’s length altogether). Caesar’s new *Forum Iulium in the heart of the old city, which was begun at about the same time, covered an area equal to just one-fourth of the Saepta’s terrain. (4) Octavian-Augustus, in less megalomaniac but hardly less effective ways, finally took strategic possession of the entire Campus in the early decades of his reign (cf. Hesberg 103-8; Coarelli 1988b, 73-75). On the eve of his sole rulership (shortly before Actium, 31 B.C., according to Kraft’s widely-accepted hypothesis), Augustus staked out the full terrain of the Campus by breaking ground at its N end for his giant mausoleum and thus creating a powerful sign of his permanent presence in Rome; the large public parks surrounding it were opened in 29 B.C. (Strabo 5.3.8; Suet., Aug. 100.4). Next, in 27 B.C., he rebuilt the Via Flaminia (RG 20) and capped its arrow-straight course through the Campus (and by his tomb) some 4 km N at the pons Mulvius with an arch topped, like the Mausoleum, by a statue of himself (Dio Cass. 53.22.2). These were just the opening measures in Augustus’ program of ‘adorning the city’, urbem adornare, which, allegedly on the advice of Maecenas, seems to have been formulated in its specific form as early as 29 B.C. (Dio Cass. 52.30.1; Suet., Aug. 28.3, 29.4: with a monument list; cf. Vitr., De arch. 1.pr.2; in general, Kienast 339-43). Though encompassing the entire city and entailing, in 28 B.C., both the restoration of 82 temples (RG 20) and the completion of the *Palatine project (Dio Cass. 53.1.3; cf. Suet., Aug. 29.3; *Apollo, Templum; *Area Apollinis, *Bibliotheca Latina Grecaque; *Domus: Augustus, cf. Suet., Aug. 29.3), Augustus’ program clearly focused on the Campus Martius. Immediately after the city’s first stone amphitheater was raised in the Campus by Statilius Taurus (*Amphitheatrum: Statilius Taurus, 29 B.C.), a wooden *“Stadium” was inaugurated in 28 B.C. (Dio Cass. 53.1.5; perhaps on the site of an earlier wooden stadium of Caesar and later used for Domitian’s stadium). In addition, Balbus was permitted to build a theater complex in the SW Campus (*Theatrum; Balbus), and Augustus constructed a new theater ad aedem Apollinis (RG 21; *Theatrum Marcelli); both were dedicated in 13 B.C. Further, Augustus rebuilt important existing monuments, such as the *Porticus Octaviae, or restored them ‘with great expense’, such as the *Theatrum Pompeium (RG 20), while consistently retaining the names of their original builders (Suet., Aug. 29.4). (5) Most importantly, Augustus assured and directed the help of his lifelong friend and colleague Marcus Agrippa; modestly as an aedile in 33 B.C., Agrippa launched a pragmatic urban renewal program encompassing the streets, aqueducts, and sewers of Rome, as well as providing for the free use of baths (Dio Cass. 49.43.1-3). In concert with the princeps, Agrippa also ‘adorned the city’ at his own expense, (τὸ ἄστυ...ἐπεκόσμησε: Dio Cass. 53.27.1; κοσμήσας τὴν πόλιν: Strabo 5.3.8) and raised a multitude of exceptional new edifices on the Campus — soon to be called the monumenta Agrippae (Tac., Ann. 15.39) — including the dynastic Julian-Augustan *Pantheum (Dio Cass. 53.27.2-4) with its unusual shape combining a round precinct with a monumental propylon-rectangle oriented toward the Mausoleum; the extravagant *Thermae of Agrippa, fed from 19 B.C. by the Agrippan *Aqua Virgo and introducing grand-style bathing culture to Rome; and the lavish water basin of the *Stagnum Agrippae with the adjacent *Nemus of Agrippa, both of which turned the marshy palus Caprae into a jewel of urban luxury and recreation. Connected with the Stagnum was yet another monumental Augustan-era waterwork, the *Euripus, an artificial watercourse traversing the W Campus to drain into the Tiber. In 26 B.C., Agrippa dedicated Caesar’s Saepta, now more an outstanding art museum than a polling place, and ‘he named the Julian Saepta in honor of Augustus’ (Dio Cass. 53.23.2-3). At its S end, Agrippa added the *Diribitorium (finished by Augustus in 7 B.C.) with its wondrously engineered roof, ‘the largest building under a single roof ever constructed’ (Dio Cass. 55.8.3-4). Thus, by Agrippa’s death in 12 B.C., the Pompeian city-complex had been expanded, splendidly, into an entire urban landscape organized along an orthogonal plan to fill the S central Campus. In his will, Agrippa bequeathed his estate in the W Campus to the public (Dio Cass. 54.29.4; *Horti: Agrippa, cf. *Horti Pompei), and in 7 B.C. Augustus turned Agrippa’s extensive landholdings E of the Via Flaminia into a public park, soon to be named *Campus Agrippae (Dio Cass. 55.8.3-4); within it stood the famous *Porticus Vipsania, erected by his sister Vipsania Polla, completed by Augustus and home to Agrippa’s grand, annotated map of the world (Pliny, NH 3.17). Our map shows, despite the lingering lacunas, 6 distinct topographic areas in the late-Augustan plain of the Campus Martius. The S Campus, a built-up area established for more than a century just outside the city walls, featured the prominent zone around the Circus Flaminius which had Rome’s first regular street system. The S central Campus was newly aggrandized by Pompey’s theater-complex, the monumenta Agrippae, and Rome’s largest-ever rectangular street system; joining this cityscape on the E was the area surrounding the Villa Publica. The N central Campus spanned the zone N of the Stagnum, Pantheon, Saepta, and Aqua Virgo, and S of the Mausoleum, with the *“Horologium Augusti” and the *Ara Pacis Augusti standing in its center; note that the *Via Tecta [1] often ascribed to this region is without rationale before the post-Augustan period. The N Campus was defined by the landmark Mausoleum of Augustus (burial place of Marcellus in 23 B.C. and Agrippa in 12 B.C.; Dio Cass. 53.30.5, 54.28.5) and its public park. The E Campus was situated E of the Via Flaminia and largely contained the public park of the Campus Agrippae, with the Porticus Vipsania at its S end. The W Campus was structured by the parallel courses of the Euripus and a major street axis (*Via Tecta [1]), which led to the chthonic *Tarentum at its far W tip; nearby was the huge racecourse of the *Trigarium and, further to the SE, the Horti of Agrippa. Located by the Euripus are the massive, yet unidentified, walls of the *“Cenotaph” of Agrippa, and the notable public tombs of A. Hirtius and C. Vibius Pansa. The zone of the N Central Campus needs to be considered more closely. Rather nondescript on our map and apparently lacking major buildings, its open space extended from the hills in the E to the Tiber in the W. Here, the old character of the Campus as a spacious public ‘field’ must have been well preserved, yet was now programmatically combined, both in the N and S, with huge novel buildings of public importance and, more specifically, a strong Julian-Augustan meaning (such as the Mausoleum, Pantheon, and Saepta). In addition, the open area itself was, and continued to be, charged with this public-dynastic meaning. The Sepulcrum of Iulia, subsequently known as the tumulus Iuliorum, is now convincingly located at the site of the later Imperial ustrina, between the Saepta and Horologium (Coarelli 1997, 552 map; 593-98). Caesar’s ashes were deposited here, and the site of his funerary pyre was close by (iuxta: Suet., Iul. 84.1). The much-disputed site of Augustus’ ustrinum probably was within this area (*“Ustrinum Domus Augustae”; Jolivet; Coarelli 1997, 599-601); Strabo describes its monumental white marble walls, surrounded by black poplars and an iron fence, as ‘in the middle of the Campus’, ἐν μέσῳ δὲ τῷ πεδίῳ (5.3.8). Perhaps the tumulus of L. Cornelius Sulla, also ‘in the middle of the Campus’, medio campo (Lucan 2.222), set the starting point for that “imperial” tradition (Coarelli 1997, 592-93, 599). Centered between Saepta and Mausoleum in the newly-defined open space of the N Central Campus was a powerful combination of Augustan monuments — Horologium and Ara Pacis. While the Ara, decreed by the senate in 13 B.C. (RG12), celebrated the new age of peace and prosperity in reliefs depicting the bearers of that golden era, the Horologium and its towering obelisk which proclaimed — ‘Egypt brought back to the power of the Roman people’ (CIL VI 702) — the new time in abstract, truly universal terms, as a sundial of unprecedented dimensions. Together with the Ara, it formed an Augustan “birthday ensemble” (Buchner 36; cf. La Rocca 156-57) celebrating the new state of the world under Augustus’ auspices, united and at peace. Rome was its center, and the tangible centerpiece of this new Augustan reality was placed in the midst of the Campus Martius where indeed a novel type of city (Strabo 5.3.8), quite literally a New Rome, had risen (Nicolet 17; Haselberger 98-99). By re-organizing, then, ‘the space of the city’ in 7 B.C. (spatium urbis in regiones vicosque divisit: Suet., Aug. 29; πᾶσαν τὴν πόλιν...νεμηθεῖσαν: Dio Cass. 55.8.7), Augustus turned Rome’s new urban state into an administrative reality too. Not touching on the numinous pomerium (‘the daimonion not permitting’, Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. 4.13.3), this reform boldly revised the old four-region order in sufficiently pragmatic terms (tied into neighborhood organization and the system of fire brigades) that it lasted for the rest of antiquity. The Regiones Quattuordecim — with the expanse of the Campus Martius (Reg. IX and VII) marking, by far, the largest territorial gain — annulled the difference between intra- and extramural space, between city and its *Continentia. Such historic restrictions had no place in the new Augustan concept of the Urbs (“une définition territoriale nouvelle”, Frézouls 380; Coarelli 1988a, 75-80; Nicolet 195-98). With the city’s new structure, Augustus secured and crowned the essentials of his urban project. The Campus clearly played the key rôle in this momentous transformation. What the Augustan Campus Martius presented to the beholder and user was a novel combination of unfortified cityscape and nature, of ‘sacro-idyllic’ landscapes intertwined with grandiose structures for public spectacles and amenities. Residential housing did not rank prominently here (despite *Domus: Gn. Pompeius Magnus [2]); nor did extensive commercial activities have a prominent place. To characterize the Campus as a “huge recreational area”, a sort of extended, artful “villa for the common people” (Zanker 141; cf. Hesberg 110) stresses an important aspect, yet leaves aside the area’s fundamentally sacred character (Purcell 26-27), which was expressed in an ever-growing number of cult monuments and public tomb-architecture. A conceptual summary of what the Campus was to Augustan Rome exists in the well-known eyewitness account of Strabo (5.3.8; not an unbalanced description, as Coarelli 1988b, 89-91; nor the mere rhetoric of a tour-guide, as Engels 301-2). For him, the new character of Rome — enacted by Pompey, Caesar, and Augustus together with his sons and friends, wife and sister — unfolds on the Campus Martius. It is here first and foremost, he exults, where the Greek sense of beauty and adornment could be found together with the traditional Roman virtue of practicality — a unity spawning a novel type of city. In it, buildings and nature melt into an unprecedented new entity of vast sporting facilities, evergreen vegetation, artworks, and spectacular vistas of the river and embracing hills. As though this were not enough, ‘another campus’ right next to it presents a great many colonnades, precincts, temples, three theaters and an amphitheater (identified with the Campus Flaminius and the theaters of Pompey, Balbus, Marcellus, and perhaps the Amphitheater of Statilius Taurus; Wiseman 1979, 130-31; cf. Coarelli 1997, 12-13). All this appears breathtakingly impressive to Strabo’s eyes, as if to declare ‘the rest of the city’ a mere ‘by-work’ (πάρεργον). And — Strabo continues, with the essential unity of the two campi in mind — ‘believing this place to be a most sanctified one’ (ἱεροπρεπέστατον νομίσαντες τοῦτον τὸν τόπον), the Romans have erected here tomb monuments of their most illustrious men and women (heroa: not temples of gods, as Wiseman, LTUR 222); the most remarkable of these being the ‘so-called Mausoleum’ of Augustus (described at some length) with its wonderful promenades behind it, whereas Augustus’ ustrinum (also described) was situated ‘in the middle of the Campus’ (probably in the N central Campus). The ‘rest of the city’, with its fora and basilicas, the Capitoline and its artworks, and those on the Palatine and the *Porticus Livia — all this is supposed to be grandiose, too, but it is deemed worthy of only one added sentence before Strabo perorates, ‘Such is Rome’. While both the Ara Pacis and Horologium remain puzzlingly unmentioned, the monumental development of Augustan Rome, with the Campus Martius in the very limelight, seems to confirm and justify Strabo’s sharp-sighted evaluation.