Iuppiter Stator, Aedes (Palatium)

Temple to Iuppiter Stator (‘Stayer’) said to be vowed by Romulus during a battle with the Sabines (Livy 1.12.3-7: templum Statori Iovi; Florus 1.1.13; Plut., Rom. 18.7) near the *Porta Mugonia (Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. 2.50.3; Ov., Trist. 3.1.31). According to Livy, the Romulean temple was never built, and the site remained a fanum (consecrated location) until 294 B.C. when the consul M. Atilius Regulus vowed a temple to Iuppiter Stator in the heat of battle (Livy 10.36.11, 10.37.15). The Roman Senate, having twice been obligated to erect a temple, now ordered the aedes built (Livy 10.37.15: aedem Iovis Statoris). In the late-Republican period Cicero convened the Senate there (63 B.C.: Plut., Cic. 16.3-4; Cic., Catil. 1.11, 1.33), and Ovid records its dedication day as June 27 (Fast. 6.793-94). The location of this temple has been subject to heated debate. Literary sources frequently connect it with the Porta Mugonia (see above), a Palatine gate which can be placed with some confidence along the *“Clivus Palatinus” S of the *Sacra Via. The temple was also near the *Nova Via and the house of Tarquinius Priscus (Livy 1.41.4). Ovid places it ‘in front of the Palatine’ (Fast. 6.794: ante Palatini), and Plutarch at ‘the beginning of the Sacra Via as you ascend the Palatine hill’ (Cic. 16.3-4). Combined, these sources suggest the area around the Arch of Titus, and traditionally the temple has been associated with a concrete podium found just E of that arch (e.g., Richardson, Ziolkowski); however, a recent study of the remains has demonstrated that the podium belonged to a Severan structure, and questions its relationship to the Republican temple (Arce). Coarelli, based on his radical revisioning of the Sacra Via, has proposed the so-called Temple of Romulus as that of Jupiter Stator (LTUR; id. 1983), yet his hypothesis has been convincingly rebutted (Castagnoli, Ziolkowski). Thus, the current state of evidence permits only an index number to mark an approximate location of this sanctuary in the vicinity of the Porta Mugonia.