Navalia

Naval arsenal, with rows of warship sheds, along the *Tiber bank of the SW *Campus Martius, stretching opposite the transtiberine prata Quinctia (Livy 3.26.8: contra eum ipsum locum ubi nunc navalia sunt; s.v. *Trans Tiberim) and thus upstream from the *Insula Tiberina (Richardson; Coarelli 1997, 348-49), but not too far away from the city walls since the porta Navalis was ‘in the vicinity of the Navalia’ (Festus 187; puzzled about the topographical implications: Richardson). No remnants are known, unless a sizeable portico of the Republican period belonged, in some way, to the facilities (tentatively, Coarelli 1997, 349; *Porticus: Vicus Aesc(u)leti). The Navalia complex was already fully established by the 3rd/2nd c. B.C. (Livy 8.14.12, 40.51.6), with additional work carried out in the later 2nd c. B.C. by the prestigious architect Hermodoros of Salamis (as Cic., De or. 1.62, implies). The naval arsenal was in regular use when Cato the Younger returned from his Cypriot mission in 56 B.C. (Plut., Cato Min. 39.2: εἰς τὸ νεώριον). Its buildings could also be used to keep wild animals until needed in circus games (Pliny, NH 36.40, for the time of Pompey). They were damaged by lightning in 44 B.C. (Obsequens 68). The testimonies of Livy (3.26.8) and Pliny (loc. cit.), both of whom use the navalia as an unqualified point of reference during their lifetimes, contradict the inference of Coarelli (LTUR III, 340) that the arsenal had fallen out of use by the mid-1st c. B.C. Moreover, Procopius’ 6th-c. A.D. eyewitness account of a ‘ship of Aeneas’ faithfully preserved in a shipshed ‘in the middle of the city along the Tiber’ seems to apply to the Navalia (Goth. 4.22.7-8 = De bell. 8.22.7-8; Coarelli 1997, 347-48; Tucci 39-40; with reservations, Richardson). The Marble Plan fragment from Via Anicia (perhaps of Augustan date, Coarelli 1997, 507; Tucci 37; contra, Conticello de’ Spagnolis 59, who favors the first half of the 2nd c. A.D.) shows part of an edifice situated along the Tiber bank near the Temple of *Castor and Pollux in the SW Campus Martius (Rodríguez Almeida, esp. 127 fig. 5); the structure also appears on the Severan Marble Plan (Rodríguez Almeida 121 fig. 1, frag. 32i) and has been connected with the Navalia (Conticello de’ Spagnolis 53; Tucci). Tucci advocates an intriguing identification of Procopius’ “ship museum” with the building depicted on the ancient plans, which he characterizes as a special shipshed arranged parallel, rather than perpendicular, to the river (40-41; id. 38-39 for other explanations, such as Rodríguez Almeida’s statio alvei Tiberis, seat of the Tiber administration). Yet this connection is based on a variety of assumptions; it is not even clear whether the edifice can be attributed to the Augustan building activities in the Circus Flaminius area, as Tucci suggests (40). Our map assigns an index number to the Navalia and places it near the presumed center of the arsenal at a stretch of the Tiber by the *Circus Flaminius where its banks were sheltered from the direct impact of currents (a situation most advantageous for launching and docking the elongated, unstable warships). The area was structured around a NW-SE thoroughfare, plausibly identified as the main road of the *Vicus Asc(u)leti neighborhood; by the time of Via Anicia plan (and documented by it), the surrounding space was clogged with a dense array of shops and commercial buildings. Further downstream, S of the *Theater of Marcellus, was the zone of the *Portus Tiberinus.