The Forum was the center of Roman life. It witnessed a barrage of building,
destruction and reuse from the seventh century BCE onwards. By around 80 BCE,
patrons chose to renovate the Senate House and Comitium with a fresh paving of tufa
blocks. Masons leveled many ruined altars and memorials beneath the flooring. Yet
paving also provided a means of saving some of Rome’s past. They isolated the Lapis
Niger with black blocks, to keep the city’s sinking history in their present. Paving
therefore became a technology of memory for recording past events and people.
Yet how effective was the Lapis Niger as a memorial? Many modern scholars
have romanced the site’s cultural continuity. However, in fifty years and after two Lapis
Nigers, the Comitium had borne a disparity of monuments and functions. Rome’s
historians could not agree on what lay beneath. Verrius Flaccus reports that the Lapis Niger ‘according to others’ might mark the site of Romulus’s apotheosis, his burial, the burial of his foster father Faustulus, or even his soldier, Hostius Hostilius (50.177).
Nevertheless, modern archaeologists have found no tombs.
Instead of trying to comprehend these legends, most scholars use them selectively
to isolate a dictator, deity or date. We must instead understand why so many views of the
Lapis Niger emerged in antiquity. Otherwise, like ancient antiquarians, we will re-
identify sites without end. Recreating how these material and mental landscapes
interacted and spawned new pasts tells us more about the Lapis Niger than any new
attribution. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/ETD-UT-2009-05-29 |
| Date | 03 September 2009 |
| Creators | Bartels, Aaron David |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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