Cenotaph: M. Agrippa (?)

Tomb M. Vipsanius Agrippa built for himself in the *Campus Martius before his ashes were interred in the *Mausoleum of Augustus (Dio Cass. 54.28.5). Recently the tomb, which must have functioned as a cenotaph (La Rocca, LTUR), has been tentatively associated with the remains of 5 parallel walls of peperino, each pierced by an opening 1.9 m wide, that were found in the 1880s under Via Vittorio Emanuele in the area of the Vallicella (La Rocca 1984). A large fragment (L. 2.8 m) of a monumental altar pulvinus (bolster) was found within the trench (Gatti; fragment now in the Museo dei Conservatori). Published as the *Tarentum, Lanciani reconstructed the building as a series of three precincts, one inside the other, with openings on three of the four façades and an altar placed atop a flight of three steps in the innermost chamber. This interpretation endured, and was adopted by scholars, until 1947 when it was proven that the Tarentum was located elsewhere (Castagnoli 152-57). Recent reexamination of the building materials and techniques suggests a late-Republican or early-Augustan date for the structure, while the sculptural decoration of the pulvinus can be ascribed to a relatively narrow chronological period early in the Augustan principate (La Rocca 1984; contra, Wiseman, who holds that the rarity of the sculpted motif, undulating leaves, in Rome limits its use as a dating criteria). However, the pulvinus was not necessarily found in its original location; as no other altar remains were found, it may have been taken to the site as spolia, since several late-Imperial workshops where marble fragments were re-carved are known in the W *Campus Martius (s.v. *Sepulcrum: A. Hirtius, esp. Nogara on Domitianic relief fragments found there; cf. Colini for a Tiberian compital altar and an unused 4th-c. column capital). Given the uncertainties surrounding the pulvinus, the unusual building remains, and the absence of corroborative testimony to support that of Dio Cassius, it is difficult to sustain an association with Agrippa’s tomb. Thus, the late-Republican structure is shown on our map, and its identification is left open.