Porticus Aemilia (Emporium)

The vast, monumental warehouse in *Emporium that lay parallel to the Tiber and SW of the *Aventine hill is traditionally identified as the “Porticus Aemilia” following Gatti (135 f.; see fig. 12 above). The multi-piered structure was built on four levels descending toward the Tiber and roofed by a series of 50 barrel vaults. It was entirely built of concrete, faced with small, irregular blocks of tufa in opus incertum, and measures some 487 x 60 m. Its 50 naves, each perpendicular to its main NE-SW axis, covered a usable area of c. 500 m2 apiece, c. 25,000 m2 in all (Étienne 236). The traditional identification of the building was based on evidence from ancient literary sources and fragments of the Severan Marble Plan. A series of passages in Livy concern building in the Emporium area during the early 2nd c. B.C. (Livy 35.10.13-14, 35.51.13-14, 40.51.6). In one crucial passage Livy mentions, among the several accomplishments of the censors Q. Fulvius Flaccus and A. Postumius Albinus in 174 B.C., the paving, fencing, and rebuilding in stone of ‘emporium’ outside the *Porta Trigemina, the provision of embankments with stairs to the *Tiber, and finally the repairing of the Porticus Aemilia (et extra portam Trigeminam emporium lapide straverunt stipitibusque saepserunt et porticum Aemiliam reficiendam curarunt gradibusque ascensum ab Tiberi in emporium fecerunt: 41.27.8). Further, Gatti relocated two important Marble Plan fragments (Rodríguez Almeida, Forma pl. 16, frags. 23, 24) to bring them into concordance with the extant remains and archaeological evidence illustrated by Lanciani after the extensive excavations of 1886 in the area (Lanciani, FUR pl. 40). On fragment 23, Gatti restored the remaining three letters ‘lia’ as ‘Porticus Aemilia’, which was then associated with the much earlier work of the aediles Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Lucius Aemilius Paulus in 193 B.C. (Gatti 138; Rodríguez Almeida, Forma 102; Livy 35.10.13). Richardson (1976) criticized this identification on the basis of a number of important issues. First of all, the architectural planning of the building does not correspond to the broad definition of porticus as an architectural type in early Roman building practice, but should rather be associated with warehouses of the time period (Richardson 1976, 58-59; Nünnerich-Asmus). Second, restoring the letters of the full name across the plan of the structure on the Severan Marble Plan is very problematic (Richardson 1976, 58). Third, the building technique, i.e., skillful and structural use of opus caementicium of good quality, faced with opus incertum, is likely to be dated to the 1st c. B.C., most probably to the time of Sulla (Blake I, 9; Boëthius; contra Coarelli 1977, 9; id. 1999; Adam). Carter (38) pointed out the absence of any extant structure with “the same degree of size and technical mastery from the next fifty years”. The approximate Sullan date for the construction technique of the warehouse is further supported by Blake (I, 251) who compared it to a cellar on the Via Sacra opposite the Basilica of Maxentius (s.v. *Domus: M. Aemilius Scaurus). Gatti’s identification of the warehouse structure as the “Porticus Aemilia” is highly debated and should be left aside, yet his architectural reconstruction has been well established with the acceptance of the location of fragments 23 and 24 of the Marble Plan. Recently, following Richardson’s argument, Tuck proposed an alternative identification of the building as the horrea Cornelia, the horrea privata of the Sullan family, based on an inscription in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology (KM 1428; Baldwin and Torelli 119). The early 2nd-c. B.C. porticoes mentioned by Livy (loc. cit.), earliest of their type in Rome, were probably constructed in rather impermanent materials (wood, as suggested by Richardson) right outside the *Porta Trigemina on the NW slopes of the Aventine and along the Tiber and roughly on either side of the modern-day Lungotevere Aventino (Richardson 1976, 59; s.v. *Forum Bovarium). Parenthetically we may mention that the Berlin Model locates the large multi-columnar warehouse structure erroneously, and this seems to have confused their reconstruction of the urban topography of the entire Emporium area.