Horrea Galbana

Extensive late-Republican warehouses that define the urban topography of the SE *Emporium area (see fig. 12 above). The identification of the monumental complex is well established, and the late 2nd-c. B.C. date for its construction is not debated. The broad district SW of the *Aventine, bordered by the *Via Ostiensis to the NE, the so-called *“Porticus Aemilia” to the NW, and the *Monte Testaccio to the S, was known as the praedia Galbana in the Republican period, and the name may be preserved in the Marble Plan (Rodríguez Almeida, Forma pl. 17, frags. 24 a,b with the restored inscription: [PRAED]IA ET HORREA [G]ALB[ANA]). The land in this area belonged to the Sulpicii Galbae (Étienne 241). The spacious warehouses were organized around three rectangular courtyards immediately SE of the Porticus Aemilia, as shown on the Marble Plan (Rodríguez Almeida, Forma 102-5, pl. 16, frags. 24 a, c; the former is now lost, and known only from 16th-c. drawings). Lanciani’s map illustrates the randomly and scantily excavated portions of the complex (FUR pl. 40). The small-scale (and largely unpublished) excavations in 1955 revealed concrete walls “faced with slightly irregular opus reticulatum” that were dated to mid-1st c. B.C. (Rickman 104). Coarelli has recently suggested a late 2nd-c. B.C. date for the same evidence (Coarelli 42; cf. Richardson). Confirmation of the earlier construction date for the warehouses comes from the nearby *Sepulcrum of Ser. Sulpicius Galba, consul of 144 or 108 B.C., who is often associated with the construction of the horrea (Rickman 166-67; Étienne 239-40). Careful examination of the architecture of the three units shows that they are not identical, while the structures that occupied the E courtyard remain unknown (Coarelli 42; Rickman 102). Rodríguez Almeida (1977, 14-18) convincingly argued for a triple-cohors social organization of the warehouse workers, evident from numerous inscriptions and reflected in the structure of the monument (e.g., the inscription, dated to the time of Galba, from an altar to Bona Dea Galbilla mentioning a dedication by the VILICVS HORREORVM GALBIANORVM COHORTIVM TRIVM: CIL VI 30855; Rodríguez Almeida 1984, 55 fig. 18).