ARCO DI PORTOGALLO

Arco di Portogallo was a ruinous archway on Via del Corso demolished in 1662 to facilitate the running of horse races during Carnival. Partly because it is known exclusively through drawings and descriptions, the monument presents problems with respect to its date and identity. To judge by surviving representations, it was a barrel-vaulted arch with a single opening and was constructed in the late imperial period. Its association with Portugal dated from the end of the fifteenth century: the Portuguese prelate Jorge da Costa, titular cardinal of the nearby San Lorenzo in Lucina from 1489 to 1508, resided in the palace that it abutted.

Like many late-antique structures, Arco di Portogallo incorporated elements taken from earlier monuments. Its north side was decorated with two large relief panels whose principal figures are identified on stylistic grounds as either Hadrian (AD 117–138) and his wife, Sabina, or as Antoninus Pius (AD 138–161) and his wife, the elder Faustina. When the arch was demolished, the panels were preserved and mounted in Palazzo dei Conservatori with an impressive dedicatory inscription that erroneously identifies the figures as Marcus Aurelius (AD 161–180) and the younger Faustina (Latin Inscriptions of Rome, 1.6H).

Like most of the dedications on the Capitol, this one bears the names of the magistrates in office at the time. One of the officials sports a rather elaborate title: CAROLVS ANTONIVS A PVTEO EQVEST MILIT D STEPHANI PP ET MART EQVES COMEND. As often in Neo-Latin inscriptions, the name is Latinized. Fortunately, Vincenzo Forcella’s Iscrizioni delle Chiese e d’altri edificii di Roma includes an index nominum: the Latin Carolus Antonius a Puteo represents Italian Carlo Antonio Pozzi. The name, however, is the least of the difficulties.

The phrase EQVEST(rium) MILIT(um) – ‘military knights’ – reveals that Pozzi belonged to a military order. The phrase D(ivi) STEPHANI P(a)P(ae) ET MART(yris) – ‘of St. Stephen, Pope and Martyr’ – indicates that it was the Order of the Knights of St. Stephen. The St. Stephen in question is neither the protomartyr of the Christian church nor the first Christian king of Hungary: he is Pope St. Stephen (r. 254–257), whose feast-day recurs on August 2. On that day in 1554, the forces of Grand Duke Cosimo I of Tuscany defeated a Sienese army at the Battle of Marciano, in the wake of which the Republic of Siena was incorporated into the Grand Duchy. To commemorate the victory, Cosimo formed a new knightly order of St. Stephen, Pope and Martyr, in 1561.

In point of fact, Pope St. Stephen almost certainly wasn’t martyred; nevertheless, having pontificated during the Age of Persecutions, he acquired that status honoris causa. As for his title, he appears in the inscription not as sanctus Stephanus but as divus Stephanus. The designation divus is borrowed from pagan antiquity: it was the title of a deceased emperor whose apotheosis had been officially recognized by the Roman senate. Incongruous as it may seem, it was widely used as an equivalent for ‘saint’ in ecclesiastical Latin of the Renaissance and later, when medieval terms such as sanctus were replaced wherever possible by classicizing equivalents.

Finally, there is EQVES COMEND. The first word is ‘knight’; the second abbreviates COM(m)END(atarius), which derives from the verb commendare (‘commit’, ‘entrust’). In church history, the epithet commendatarius designates the tenant of an ecclesiastical benefice in commendam – that is, a tenant technically acting in the capacity of a provisional caretaker. In the case of a military order, it designates the tenant of a ‘commandery’ – an income-producing estate analogous to a church property supplying a benefice. An EQVES COMMENDATARIVS (‘Knight Commander’) was a member of the order who had been granted (or who had inherited) the tenancy of such an estate.

With all the suspensions filled out, the lines read: CAROLVS ANTONIVS A PVTEO EQVEST(rium) MILIT(um) D(ivi) STEPHANI P(a)P(ae) ET MART(yris) EQVES COM(m)END(atarius) – that is, ‘Carlo Antonio Pozzi, Knight Commander of the Military Knights of St. Stephen, Pope and Martyr’. A history lesson in a dozen words!

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’.