Porta Catularia

Gate in the Servian Wall (s.v. *Muri) on the W tip of the S *Capitol. Its only mention in a canonical ancient source is in Festus: ‘the Porta Catularia at Rome is so called because not far from there red dogs are sacrificed to placate the Dog Star, which is harmful to crops’ (Paulus, in Festus 39). In Ovid’s description of the Robigalia, the festival of Robigo, the deity who averted mildew, there is a similar ritual which has three elements in common with Festus: the Dog Star, its harmful effects on agriculture, and dog sacrifice (Ov., Fast. 4.901-42). This suggests that the Porta Catularia was connected with the Robigalia. Ovid relates how, on his way back to Rome from Nomentum one April 25, he met a priest carrying the sacrificed entrails of a dog (and sheep) and leading a procession away from the city (Ov., Fast. 4.905-8). Given Ovid’s starting point, Richardson places this encounter on the *Via Nomentana, and suggests that the Porta Catularia was a small postern in the Servian Wall somewhere near the *Porta Collina, the starting-point of the Via Nomentana. But the destination of this procession, the Grove of Robigo, stood at the 5th mile of the Via Clodia, a road which branched W from the *Via Flaminia at the Mulvian Bridge. Coarelli notes that the closest point in the Servian Wall to the grove of Robigo was on the W slopes of the Capitol, overlooking the Campus Martius (Coarelli 1988, 369). The Porta Catularia need not, necessarily, have stood at the closest point to the Grove of Robigo, but there is further evidence to confirm this view. A gloss on Suetonius, regarded by Coarelli as reliable, states that ‘the Porta Triumphalis seems to have been mid-way between the Porta Flumentana and the Porta Catularia’ (Coarelli 1968; id. 1988, 41 n.91, 368-69). The *Porta Flumentana stood by the *Forum Bovarium. The precise position of the *Porta Triumphalis is debated, but there is general agreement that, along with the *Porta Carmentalis, it stood in the general area of S. Omobono (for full discussion, s.v. *Porta Triumphalis). On the reasonable assumption that the Porta Catularia was a gate in the Servian Wall (though even this is doubted by Platner–Ashby), the Porta Catularia may be placed in the area of the Capitol. Coarelli places the Porta Catularia on the W tip of the *Area Capitolina. The remains of a marble arch and steps leading up to the summit were observed in 1524 by Marliani behind the now-destroyed Church of S. Andrea in Vincis, c. 100 m NE of the *Theatrum Marcelli (Coarelli 1999; id. 1996; id. 1995; for the church, see Lanciani, FUR pl. 28; the steps are marked on Reusser 34 fig. 4, no. 27). Less persuasively, Säflund argues that the Porta Catularia was a monumental gate in the saddle between the two summits of the Capitol, roughly in the position of Michelangelo’s Cordonnata, built by Q. Lutatius Catulus (cos. 78 B.C.) in connection with his work on the Temple of *Iuppiter Optimus Maximus and the *Tabularium. However, it is unlikely that the Porta Catularia derived its name from Catulus. Festus states that the Porta Catularia, ‘The Gate of the Little Puppies’, was associated with the sacrifice of dogs. Puppies were sacrificed because of their purity (Pliny, NH 29.58). It is a coincidence that the Lutatii Catuli bore the cognomen ‘puppy’ (catulus). Säflund’s Porta Catularia was probably the *Porta Ratumenna. Our map adopts Coarelli’s placement of the Porta Catularia, on the site of the Church of S. Andrea in Vincis.