Summary: Rome's Capitoline Hill was the smallest of the Seven Hills of Rome. Yet in the long history of the Roman state it was the empire's holy mountain. The hill was the setting of many of Rome's most beloved stories, involving Aeneas, Romulus, Tarpeia, and Manlius. It also held significant monuments, including the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, a location that marked the spot where Jupiter made the hill his earthly home in the age before humanity. This is the first book that follows the history of the Capitoline Hill into late antiquity and the early middle ages, asking what happened to a holy mountain as the empire that deemed it thus became a Christian republic. This is not a history of the hill's tonnage of marble and gold bedecked monuments, but rather an investigation into how the hill was used, imagined, and known from the third to the seventh centuries CE. During this time, the imperial triumph and other processions to the top of the hill were no longer enacted. But the hill persisted as a densely populated urban zone and continued to supply a bridge to fragmented memories of an increasingly remote past through its toponyms. This book is also about a series of Christian engagements with the Capitoline Hill's different registers of memory, the transmission and dissection of anecdotes, and the invention of alternate understandings of the hill's role in Roman history. What lingered long after the state's disintegration in the fifth century were the hill's associations with the raw power of Rome's empire.

Contents: Chapter 1: Climbing the Capitoline Hill [pp. 55-99] - Trying to Climb the Capitoline Hill - The Last Imperial Processions to the Capitol - Building a New Topography of Devotion - Toward a Christian Topography - A New Imperial Itinerary

Chapter 2: Living and Working on the Capitoline Hill [pp. 100-134] - Capitoline Temples and Statues - Rituals, Festivals, and Priests - Decline and Renewal in the Fifth Century - Bureaucracy and Justice - The Physiognomy of Neighborhoods in Late Antique Rome - Living On and Around the Capitoline Hill

Chapter 3: Christianity, the Capitoline Hill, and the End of Antiquity [pp. 135-171] - Slouching Towards Byzantium - The Establishment of the Capitoline Hill's First Church - Oracles, Octavian's Room, and the "Tabularium" - Two Capitolia, Two Imperial Capitals

Chapter 4: Experiencing and Remembering the Capitoline Hill [pp. 173-213] - Envisioning and Experiencing the Capitol - Capitolinas ascendit arces: Jerome and Praetextatus - The Capitol and Polemics Against Constantine -Rewriting Constantine's Pagan Apostasy - The Capitol and the End of Empire: Olympiodorus and Procopius

Chapter 5: Learning From the Capitol's Deliverance [pp. 214-259] - The Capitol and Memories of Persecution - The Caput in the Capitol - A Problem of Mercy: The Siege of the Gauls in 390 BCE - "A City in the Habit of Being on Fire": The Gothic Sack of Rome in 410 - "A Remarkable and Sublime Temple": Augustine's Capitols - Reading Augustine's Capitols at the End of Antiquity

Chapter 6: Learning from the Capitol's Destruction [pp. 260-291] - Listing Temple Destructions - Chronicling Past Destructions of the Capitol - Chronicling Future Destructions of the Capitol - Ghosts and Owls: Portents of Ruination

Chapter 7: The Capitol and the Legends of the Saints [pp. 292-332] - The Topography of Martyrdom - A Pope, an Emperor, and the Tarpeian Dragon - The Anatomy of a Legend: The Acts of the Greek Martyrs - "Christ is My Capitol" - The Face of Persecution: Capitoline Pontiffs - The Capitol and the Power of the Saints

Epilogue: The Fall of the Ancient Capitol [pp. 333-364] - Finding the Capitol in the Early Middle Ages - A Wonder in a City of Wonders - The Modern Fall of the Ancient Capitol - Bibliography [pp. 365-427]. (Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity)

We regret to inform you that this title is no longer available.
Please contact us if you need additional assistance.