Venus Erycina, Aedes (''Extra Porta Collinam'')

Extra-urban Temple to Venus Erycina near the *Porta Collina, vowed in 184 B.C. by L. Porcius Licinius and dedicated in 181 B.C. by his son of the same name (Livy 40.34.4.; App., B Civ. 1.93). Yet Livy (30.38.10) records that the *Circus Flaminius flooded in 202 B.C., forcing the ludi Apollinares to be scheduled extra portam Collinam ad aedem Erycinae Veneris, ‘outside the Colline Gate by the Temple of Venus Erycina’, that is, over 20 years before the temple was allegedly dedicated; while more complicated explanations of the dating error have been offered, Livy may simply have utilized an anachronistic location (Coarelli 115). Strabo (6.2.6) informs us that the temple copied the form of the Venus shrine on Mt. Eryx in Sicily including its enclosing portico. The extramural location would have facilitated the celebration of erotic cult practices, including the presence of cult prostitutes (CIL I2 p.316; Castelli 53; Wiseman 22; cf. Vitr., De arch. 1.7.1). Though no architectural remains survive, a denarius minted by C. Considius Nonianus (RRC 424) at Rome in 57 B.C., which depicts the Sicilian shrine with a tetrastyle façade and triangular pediment, is suggestive. Coarelli attempts to link this temple with the Severan-era remains of a brick platform and epistyle fragments recovered in 1873 outside and S of the Porta Collina, though these ruins significantly post-date the last secure reference to the cult (see below; Coarelli 115-16); thus the exact locale of the Venus Erycina temple continues to be elusive. The temple was the site of the Vinalia festival held on April 23 (Ovid, Fast. 4.865-76). The fasti list both April 23 and October 24 as the dies natalis (Degrassi, Inscr. Ital. 13.2, 9, 38, 135, 446). This led Degrassi to speculate that the temple was rededicated on October 24 after a restoration by Augustus, but no supporting evidence substantiates this theory (Degrassi, Inscr. Ital. 13.2, 525; cf. Coarelli 114, who proposes a Sullan rededication). After the Augustan period, CIL VI 2274 is the only reference to the temple, which has led many scholars to posit an assimilation between this cult and that of the nearby Venus Hortorum Sallustianorum (*Horti Sallustiani). However, the small-scale, circular plan of the latter temple seems better suited for a private shrine than for a public temple of the sort evidenced by the literary sources for Venus Erycina (Castelli 59).