Porta Trigemina

Important ‘Triple Gate’ in the Republican defenses along the *Tiber bank, located somewhere between the S *Forum Bovarium (cf. *Round Temple: Tiberis) and the N tip of the *Aventine, at the lower end of the *Clivus Publicius (imo Publicii clivi ad portam Trigeminam: Frontin., Aq. 5.9; for textual sources: Coarelli 1988, 27-28; id., LTUR III). A gate of longstanding significance, the Porta Trigemina is mentioned both in connection with work commissioned for the *Emporium in 174 B.C. (Livy 41.27.8: emporium extra portam Trigeminam; cf. 40.51.6: forum et porticum extra portam Trigeminam, 179 B.C.), and as an area by the late-antique Regionary Catalogues (in Regio XI: Circus Maximus). While this gate apparently functioned as the primary S gate in the section of the Servian Wall along the river (s.v. *Muri: Forum Bovarium-Tiberis), its location remains hypothetical (Coarelli 1988, 105 fig. 20, 241 fig. 50; Wiseman; Richardson 310). The remnants of a wall and an arch blocked with reticulate masonry are likely to have been in its vicinity (Ruggiero; tentatively identified with the porta Minucia: Coarelli 1988, fig. 20). Lyngby’s suggested identification with the remains of a Grotta Oscura pylon further S along the Tiber bank (at the height of the Clivo di Rocca Cavella; cf. *Clivus Publicius) has, for good reasons, not been accepted by subsequent scholarship (Coarelli 1988, 25, 28-29; cf. Wiseman; Richardson). Most agree that the *“Arcus Lentuli et Crispini” is an Augustan renewal of the Porta Trigemina in the form of a monumental arch (suggested by Coarelli 1988, 42-50; Richardson 27; Mari; favorably considered by Brands and Maischberger 111). Erected in A.D. 2 under the consuls P. Lentulus Scipio and T. Quinctius Crispinus Valerianus (CIL VI 1385) on a site between the S Forum Bovarium and the N tip of the Aventine, potentially on the same spot as the Porta Trigemina, it was destroyed in the 15th c. (for textual sources: Coarelli 1988, 43-44). Since the wording of the dedicatory inscription (CIL loc. cit.) coincides exactly with that of the *“Arcus Dolabellae et Silani” on the *Caelian (CIL VI 1384; A.D. 10), and since there is a parallel case of Augustan rebuilding, the “Fornix Augusti”, by the bridgehead of the *Pons Aemilius (though here re-built by Augustus himself, CIL VI 878: REFECIT; sometime after 12 B.C.), Coarelli has plausibly discerned a large-scale Augustan program of converting the old city gates into monumental arches (1988, 54-59: “rifacimento augusteo delle porte urbane”). The Porta Trigemina renewed as the Arch of Lentulus and Crispinus may be depicted in a lost relief recorded in the Codex Coburgensis (Brands and Maischberger; cf. Coarelli, LTUR III, 33). Materially, the Arch of Lentulus and Crispinus seems to have replaced the earlier gate, yet since ‘Porta Trigemina’ is attested as a late-antique toponym, our map offers a single index number to represent both. The number is placed at the hypothetical site of the juncture between the Republican circuit wall and the street artery parallel to the river, which led from the S Forum Bovarium to the Emporium (s.v. *Via Ostiensis).