Digitally Mapping Juno Regina in Ancient Rome Max Rosenwasser with Prof. Lisa Mignone

Department of Classics, Brown University Introduction Juno, queen of the pantheon, served as a tutelary goddess of Rome. The Temple of Juno Regina on the Aventine ranked as one of the most important religious sanctuaries in the city. The temple’s introduction to Rome’s landscape and controversial location pose several questions as to Juno’s role in the Roman pantheon, and Rome’s role as caput mundi, that is, as the capital of an expanding empire.

This project applies modern mapping techniques and Geographic Information System (GIS) software to questions of Republican Rome’s social and religious topography. Using digital technology, we gain a deeper understanding of how an ancient viewer would have experienced the city. This personal experience directly connects to a larger, often intentional, ideological presentation of the city. Through construction of temples and monuments, the strategic placement of such, and religious iconography, Romans crafted an image that projected their own self-identity to themselves and to the rest of the Mediterranean. Detailed below is one specific case study examining this image with respect to Juno Regina.

The temple was reportedly vowed during the war with Veii, a rival city, in 396 BCE. After ten years of fighting, the general Camillus performed a ritual called evocatio, offering the goddess a sanctuary in Rome if she abandoned her citadel in Veii. Roman victory was divinely ensured. Her increased worship during the Punic Wars with Carthage (264-146 BCE) point to her identity as a imperialistic goddess, extending Rome’s dominion upon foreign enemies. This idea manifests itself in the positioning of the temple atop the Aventine Hill, one of the seven hills of Rome. This project examines this location, an outlier from the majority of temple building activity, in relation to the Via Veientana, the primary approach from Veii.

Methods Elevation Profile Elevation data were acquired by random sampling of a specified geographic area and extracting the elevation value for a pair of coordinates from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission

Methods cont. Analysis cont. A second map was created from the perspective of a traveler approaching along the Via Veientana with a visibility gradient representing the percentage of time they could see various places. This map, focused on the heart of Rome and its hills, shows how the Aventine was a prime location for a temple with the purpose of visual domination.

Acknowledgments

Temple and Road Placement Roman historians recognized the defeat of Veii as a critical moment in Rome’s imperial advance throughout the Italian peninsula. The ancient Romans themselves renamed the part of the Via Veientana closest to Rome the Via Triumphalis that is, the Triumphal Road. The very name of the road that connected conquered Veii to victorious Rome thus became a monument to Roman imperial triumph. The general course of the Via Triumphalis is known from ancient texts referring to bridge crossings and landmarks, from epigraphic attestations, and from geomorphology. Estimated points were plotted and connected. Although the precise location of the Temple of Juno Regina is not known, ancient textual sources attest to its position atop the Aventine. Material evidence beneath the church of Santa Sabina suggests the northwestern ridge as a possibility.

Visibility from the Via Veientana

View from Temple of Juno Regina

With great thanks, I acknowledge the contributions and help of the following people who gave me access to invaluable resources and taught me skills necessary to the completion of this project.

Bruce Boucek, Social Sciences Data Librarian Lynn Carlson, GIS Manager Elli Mylonas, Senior Digital Humanities Librarian

Alluvial deposits from the Tiber River in the floodplains account for the majority of elevation changes. Geological and hydrological maps from Memorie Descrittive Della Carta Geologica d‘Italia, once fully digitized through a process of scanning, georectification, and manual tracing, were used to reconstruct the approximate elevation model of Rome in the 4th Century BCE.

The Temple of Juno Regina loomed as a symbol that Rome had not only conquered the Veientine people, but even won over their goddess. From its seat on the Aventine, the temple of Juno Regina radiated this idea of Roman imperialism onto any northern travelers who had witnessed the ruins of Veii.

New Directions The second map raises exciting new research questions as to why the Quirinal and Viminal, hills with relatively few temples compared to the Capitoline and Palatine, were not more heavily built upon given their key visibility. Future research may weigh the decision not to construct temples on these hills against investigations into environmental history, architectural and natural obstructions, and patterns of human movement across the landscape.

(SRTM) data set. Elevation values for 200,000 points were accumulated and plotted in ArcMap. From this, contour lines and a relief map were drawn.

Alluvial Adjustment Over two millennia have altered the natural landscape of Rome, and therefore adjustments were made to the modern satellite data.

The first map shows the view from the proposed location of the Temple of Juno Regina and, reciprocally, all the places from which this location could be seen. As the Via descends from the northwestern plateau into the floodplains of the Tiber and during its immediate approach into Rome, the Aventine temple would have been clearly visible.

Analysis