MARCUS AURELIUS

The equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitoline Hill is the only large bronze group to survive from antiquity – most monuments of the sort were destroyed for their valuable metal. Marcus’ statue avoided that fate only because it was mistaken for an image of Constantine, the first Christian emperor. Until 1537, the statue stood to the north of the Lateran basilica, Rome’s cathedral church. We know that Marcus was raised in the house of his grandfather, Annius Verus, which was located in the Lateran zone (the praedia Lateranorum): as a consequence, it is generally agreed that this was the statue’s original site.

There it remained until Pope Paul III Farnese (r. 1534–1549) engaged Michelangelo to undertake a renovation of the muddy and anarchical Piazza del Campidoglio. The statue – the first element of the renovation – was mounted in 1538 on a base designed by Michelangelo himself. Because of damage from air pollution, it was removed from the piazza in 1980 and is now housed in the Capitoline Museum. The base, which stood bare for more than a decade, is today occupied by a faithful replica of the original.

The base features two contemporary Latin inscriptions – one for the emperor himself and the other for Paul III (Latin Inscriptions of Rome, 1.5.i–ii). The inscription for Marcus Aurelius concludes with the following three lines (abbreviations are completed in parentheses): M(arco) AVRELIO ANTONINO PIO / AVG(usto) GERM(anico) SARM(atico) PONT(ifici) MAX(imo) TRIB(unicia) POT(estate) XXVII / IMP(eratori) VI CO(n)S(uli) III P(atri) P(atriae) S(enatus) P(opulus) Q(ue) R(omanus) (‘the Senate and People of Rome to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius Augustus Germanicus Sarmaticus, Supreme Pontiff, vested with the Tribunician power for the twenty-seventh time, acclaimed imperator for the sixth, consul for the third, Father of his Country’).

The name and titles of the emperor mimic ancient prototypes with impressive fidelity; tell-tale clues that the text is a modern fabrication are subtle. For example, the epithet pius was not used of Marcus Aurelius until after his death; it makes its first appearance in coins issued by Commodus, his son and successor. More interestingly, there are inconsistencies in the titulature. In determining the date of an imperial inscription, key information is furnished by the number associated with the Tribunician power, which was renewed annually. Marcus Aurelius held the Tribunician power for the twenty-seventh time from 10 December 172 through 9 December 173. The honorific titles Sarmaticus and Germanicus, however, were adopted into the imperial titulature only in 175. Either the author was unaware of the date that the latter titles were conferred or, more intriguingly, he wished to bequeath a test of erudition to future readers!

N.B. In Latin Inscriptions of Rome, 1.5.ii (p. 16), the following line is missing after line 7: EX HVMILIORI LOCO IN AREAM CAPITOLINAM. The numbers of the final two notes should accordingly be changed to 9 and 10. The English translation should read: ‘Paul the Third, Supreme Pontiff, that he might foster the memory of the best of emperors and restore to his country its glories and honors, transferred from a lowlier site to Piazza del Campidoglio the bronze equestrian statue erected by the Senate and People of Rome to Marcus Antoninus Pius in his own lifetime, later overthrown in the course of the City’s sundry calamities and set up again at the Lateran Basilica by Sixtus the Fourth, Supreme Pontiff, and dedicated it in the year of Salvation 1538’.