Fortuna Huiusce Diei, Aedes

The round, columned temple vowed by Q. Lutatius Catulus to ‘this day’s Fortune’, τὴν Tύχην τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης, on 30 June 101 B.C., during a battle at Vercellae against the Cimbri (Plut., Mar. 26.2); it was dedicated on the anniversary of the conflict sometime before 87 B.C. (Degrassi, Inscr. Ital. 13.2, 488). The fasti Allifani locate the temple in Campo (FORTVNAE HVIVSCE [D]IEI IN CAMPO; Degrassi, Inscr. Ital. 13.2, 179, 488). Corroboration comes from Varro, who describes the ‘Catulan temple’, aedes Catuli, as a ‘columned tholos’, tholos columnatus (Rust. 3.5.12-13). This temple must have stood near the *Villa Publica, since Varro’s description is part of a ‘conversation’ held in the latter building, itself located ‘on the edge of the Campus [Martius]’ (Rust. 3.1.2, 3.2.1-4). This description accords well with the tholos temple located in the *“Area Sacra” in Largo Argentina, commonly known as Temple B, which was built in the first quarter of the 1st c. B.C. (Coarelli; Ziolkowski; Gros, reflecting the communis opinio).One of the four known temples in the sacral area near Largo Argentina, Temple B is the latest dedication and the only one with a firm identification. The original temple had a circular cella surrounded by a ring of 18 stuccoed tufa columns with travertine bases and capitals (diam. 9.3 m). The façade was marked by a shallow porch, flanked by two long bases (podia) for the display of statues (6.66 x 2.10 m). Traces of a 3rd-c. B.C. cappellaccio wall, probably the temenos wall marking the boundary between Temples A and C, were found underneath Temple B and suggest that Catulus took near-equal amounts of consecrated space from Temples A and C to build his new monument; this encroachment was masked when he installed an expansive tufa pavement, which unified the sacral area (s.v. “Area Sacra”: Largo Argentina).In the mid-1st c. B.C. the temple was extensively renovated: the podium was enlarged (by a layer of rubble fill faced with thin peperino slabs), the old cella wall was removed, and new tufa walls were built between the columns to create a pseudo-monopteros (diam. 15.5 m). Inside the new cella, a base for a colossal statue was set up. The head of an immense acrolithic statue (H. 8 m) depicting Fortuna was unearthed between Temples B and C in 1929 (now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori; Nash I, 150). This sculptural find offers further support for the identification of Temple B as that of Fortuna Huiusce Diei (Gros 269). The podia flanking the façade stairway were well suited for the display of statuary, and Pliny records 13 statues ‘ad aedem Fortunae Huiusce Diei’ (NH 34.54, 34.60); many of these were dedicated by Catulus, though some were donated by an Aemilius Paulus (NH 34.54; probably a member of the Lepidus branch of the Aemilii, living c. 100-50 B.C., see Richardson 156).The temple was not modified again until after the fire of A.D. 80, when the fire-damaged tufa walls and column shafts of the cella were covered by a layer of brick; this renovation did not alter the temple’s plan, thus the Severan Marble Plan preserves a fairly accurate image of the original temple (Rodríguez Almeida, Forma pl. 28, frag. 37a).