Temple of Bellona, Rome


The temple of Bellona was an ancient Roman temple dedicated to the goddess Bellona and sited next to the Temple of Apollo Sosianus and the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome.

History

It was first vowed in 296 BC by Appius Claudius Caecus during the third Samnite War, in the area of the later circus Flaminius, outside the pomerium but close to the Servian Wall, allowing it to accommodate extraordinary meetings of the Senate which involved foreign embassies from non-allies or returning or departing generals, neither of which were allowed within the pomerium - for example, the farewell to the proconsul on his departure for his allotted province. Appius's descendant Appius Claudius Pulcher rehoused the imagines clipeatae of his ancestors there, to advertise his descent from its founder.
The temple is mentioned in the Forma Urbis Romae of the 3rd century. If still in use by the 4th-century, it would have been closed during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire.

Archeology

The temple – long considered lost – was identified with the remains of a podium recovered in the 1930s building works to enable the nearby Theatre to be seen in isolation. These remains belong to a reconstruction in the Augustan period which is not mentioned by the literary sources but is probably related to the transformation of the area during the construction of the Theatre at that time. Augustus may have funded the rebuilding, or the dedicator may have been yet another Appius Claudius Pulcher.
These podium remains are made up of the cement infill between the load-bearing structures. The structure of the church of Santa Rita da Cascia in Campitelli by Carlo Maderno was moved onto this podium from the slopes of the Capitol at the time of the 1930s excavation and work on the Capitol.
The surviving remains and plan of the temple on the Forma Urbis Romae show that it had columns along all sides of the cella and had a frontal staircase up onto the podium. The temple's facade, like that of the neighbouring temple of Apollo, was part Carrara marble, part plastered travertine.

The Columna Bellica

In front of the temple was a column used in the archaic Roman ceremony for declaring war involved hurling a spear from Roman territory towards enemy territory. However, when for the first time Rome had to declare war on a state whose territory did not border her own, it was hard to see how this rite could be carried out. A prisoner of war was therefore forced to hold a small piece of land in the area of the circus Flaminius, where a column was raised as a symbolical representation of the hostile territory and a spear then hurled against the column. This new procedure was then used on all subsequent occasions.
A circular area with the paving restored in front of this temple was interpreted in the excavations as the place where this column was sited, on the basis of literary references. This is now interpreted as where the perirrhanterion was sited before the temple of Apollo was built.