A New Sixth Century BC Temple?

Good morning, readers:

Today's post will be a rather short one—I'm currently finishing up an article on a subject rather far away from ancient Roman archaeology and preservations.

This past week a joint excavation on the archaeological site beside (and under) the church of Sant'Omobono, conducted by a team from the Universities of Calabria and Michigan, brought to light a sixth century BC temple, the podium of which was made out of square blocks of stone (opus quadratum). The announcement made by Roma.Repubblica.it made it sound as if this were a sensational new find, but in fact, we've known about this temple for quite a while. Soundings made of the area in the 40s discovered its existence, and subsequent excavations in the 50s and 60s reached the podium level—but those trenches were backfilled. The modern archaeological team that reached the temple again had to conquer a rather difficult challenge: the archaic temple now lies just beneath the water table!

The temples of Sant'Omobono (number 6)
at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. Picture by author
from his own copy of Roma Urbs Imperatorum Aetate

One of the controversies surrounding the temple is its date. Scholarly consensus, based on stratigraphy, pottery, and architectural decoration, places it in the mid to late 6th c. BC, about the same time as the construction of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus ("Jupiter Best and Greatest") on the Capitoline Hill, the biggest archaic temple of its type in Rome. If this dating is correct, we have further evidence of stone temple building (the columns, however, would have been wooden at this time) in the period ascribed to the last two kings of Rome (traditionally 578–509 BC). This period seems to have been an era of flourishing both in Rome and elsewhere, which was followed by a sharp decline in the fifth century. But there seems to have been an even earlier phase of the archaic temple that may well be early 6th c. BC.

The Temples of Mater Matuta
and Fortuna (A & B), with the archaic
temple (C). From Wikipedia Commons

Ancient sources inform us that the temples to Mater Matuta and Fortuna were built in the reign of Servius Tullius, but the temple remains that are visible from the street (A and B to the right) are from a later phase, the late third century BC after a fire destroyed the area in 213 BC. These later temples, however, probably follow the footprint of those built in the time of Camillus (4th c. BC). Note that the U-shaped altars face east, as traditional, even though the temples face south. The archaic temple also was richly adorned with terracotta decoration and statuary, which can be seen in the Capitoline Museum—see in particular the statue of Hercules and Minerva, which will remind Etruscophiles of the Apollo of Veii.

Apollo of Veii (Portonaccio Temple)

Statue of Hercules and Minerva from the Archaic temple at Sant'Omobono

 The site is incredibly complicated, not least because the earliest excavations were done in a rather scattershot fashion. For a full history of work on the site see the excellent work of N. Terrenato et al. here.

Daily Tidbit: 

Here is a good article on a classical temple excavated in Maryport, "the most north western temple in the Roman world."