Carinae: Streets

Several neighborhoods and streets are known to have been in the *Carinae, which encompassed the W *Oppian. The quarter of the *Vicus Compiti Acili perhaps had an eponymous street, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus writes of a ‘short street to the Carinae’ (Ant. Rom. 1.68.1: κατὰ τὴν ἐπὶ Καρίνας φέρουσαν ἐπίτομον ὁδὸν; cf. 8.79.3). Literary sources preserve three other names: the vicus Cyprius, the vicus Sceleratus, and the clivus Orbius (Livy 1.48.6-7; Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. 3.22.8, 4.39.3-5; Varro, Ling. 5.159). As streets, these figure prominently in a detailed itinerary of Tullia’s 6th-c. B.C. journey from the *Forum to her family home on the *Esquiline (Livy 1.48.6-7; Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. 4.39.3-5), and this assures us that the term ‘vicus’ could, in fact, be equated with a ‘street’ and, further, that these roads retained a presence through the Augustan period. Archaeological evidence allows for several roads to be mapped on the hill. One runs primarily E–W from the Sacra Via (opposite the *Domus Publica) to the *Fagutal (on the axis of modern Via Frangipane); a second follows a roughly N–S axis from the *Argiletum to the Colosseum valley (*Vallis: Colosseum; along the axis of the present-day Via del Colosseo—Via del Cardello). A third street parallels the N–S road and connects the *Clivus Pullius with the E–W street; it is attested only by a brief segment of pavers (c. 7.4 m long: Buzzetti). Only small portions of these streets are securely Augustan in date; excavations near the intersection of the E–W street and the Sacra Via reveal Augustan-era paving (Piranomonte and Capodiferro, yet the significant late-Imperial reworkings of this area have obscured much of the early-Imperial street), and the intersection of the Sacra Via with the N–S street is marked by a compital shrine of 5 B.C., the *Compitum Acili (and defined by a Republican building as well: *Velia: Building [2]). The extended courses of these streets across the heights of the Carinae have been plotted from Lanciani (FUR pl. 22, 29), and may include later-Imperial remains.Reconciling the archaeological and literary evidence is difficult, as the route taken by Tullia across the Carinae, as recounted by Livy and Dionysius, corresponds poorly with the possible paths across the extant streets. This gap — between text and material remains — has allowed for several competing reconstructions of the Carinae street system to be advanced (Ziolkowski; Palombi; Richardson; Coarelli; notably Lanciani abstains from labelling specific streets). The only generally agreed-upon street label is that of the ‘short street to the Carinae’ (Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. 1.68.1), which is associated with the portion of the N–S street nearest the Sacra Via. This street has been christened the “Vicus ad Carinas” (Capodiferro); however, given the steep slope of the road, it may be better considered a clivus. Recognizing, in the face of insufficient evidence, that the question of the Carinae street system must remain open, our map refrains from labelling the individual roads.