Gardens of the Roman Empire

Monumental Tomb Garden Complex

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Location

Sublocation

Via Labicana

Sublocation Description

An ancient Roman road connecting Rome and Labicum.

Garden

Monumental Tomb Garden Complex

Keywords

Garden Description

Two conjoining fragments of a cut marble slab found in the cemetery of Centocelle at the third mile of the Via Labicana, now in the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino, show part of a plan (not drawn to scale) of a large rectangular funerary garden (546 x 524.5 Roman feet, almost exactly 10 iugera, about 5.8 acres, in area) bounded on at least two sides by a private road that branched off near the end of a longer side to intersect a public thoroughfare 1,783 Roman feet (about 1/3rd of a Roman mile) long, beside which several rectangular tomb plots, some marked with border cippi at the (rear?) corners, are marked off in a reed bed. To judge from the stippling on the stone (incompletely marked on the most frequently reproduced drawing of the plan), a second reed bed occupying a triangular plot between the shorter length of private road and a ditch on the opposite side (a subsecivum) extended perpendicularly from the short side of the triangle at the hypotenuse in a narrow band equal in width to that of the reed bed beside the public road and the private road around the perimeter of the enclosure (see the photograph in Luni, fig. 6). De Rossi believed, on no firm evidence, that the property bounded by the public road and reed bed extending off the top of the plan was productive agricultural land attached to the tomb; if so, the territory was perhaps circumscribed by a band of reedbeds and private roads of uniform width bordering the property. But since we know neither the purpose nor the original extent of the plan, the significance of the undifferentiated area outside the enclosed tomb garden remains a matter of speculation: the only features labeled on the plan are the public road, the ditch, and the stippled reedbeds.

The enclosed tomb garden, accessible only by an entranceway at the upper left corner (according to the orientation of the plan) and by a narrow door next to an aedicular structure outside the enclosure in the lower left of the plan, is characterized by a strict formality of design. The garden proper consists of eight rectangular plots marked with stippling, possibly flower beds or lawns, regularly disposed amid perfectly aligned single or triple rows of equidistant circular dots, probably representing trees. A double row of dots separated from the others along the upper perimeter perhaps represents a pergola or elevated walkway. The lower third of the enclosure is dominated by a large tower-tomb monument (perhaps 15 meters square at the base) apparently similar in form to a mausoleum near S. Maria Capua Vetere sketched by Pirro Ligorio and known as "La Conocchia" ("The Distaff"). The tower-tomb sits in the center of a rectangular courtyard bordered by a single row of trees (interrupted by the rear wall of the tomb) that form an ambulatory around the perimeter. The longest side of the courtyard, along the bottom of the plan, gave access to connecting service rooms aligned perpendicularly behind the shorter sides of the courtyard and, in the lower left, a rectangular aedicular building outside the entrance, possibly a funerary shrine or perhaps the custodian's quarters.

The plan has been dated as early as the Augustan age (by Huelsen, who favored De Rossi's fanciful attribution of the tomb complex to "Turia", fragments of whose well known epitaph were found, similarly cut for reuse in covering loculi, in the same cemetery of Centocelle [cf. CIL 6.37053 with 1527, 31670]), but the scale of the complex and the design of the monument seem more compatible with a date later in the first or second century.

The Centocelle plan provides uniquely valuable, if ambiguous, evidence for the arrangement of the planting and the disposition of the monument within a Roman tomb garden (our other surviving plan of a tomb-garden complex [see Claudia Peloris] focuses on the internal articulation of the buildings), but it can hardly be considered typical: not only is the central monument of a form and type not found elsewhere in the region of Rome (the only known parallel is at Capua), but the size of the plot dwarfs all others known in central Italy and is second in area only to the thirty-five iugera (almost twenty acres) of farm land dedicated by a Roman knight at Parma to supporting his funerary celebrations (see C. Praeconius P.f. Ventilius Magnus). If the round dots do indeed represent trees and the stippled areas flower beds, the size of the area laid out primarily, it seems, for amenity (even if the trees bore fruit and the flowers produced garlands and perfume) is far larger than that of other attested funerary gardens in Italy that served primarily a decorative purpose. Productive funerary gardens of comparable and smaller area that we can identify elsewhere in Rome and Italy were normally equipped with work buildings (aedificia) and retail outlets (bars and shops, tabernae) (see vol. 2, XXX). The spaces on the plan flanking the courtyard and identified as storerooms could well have housed farming and gardening tools, but the footprint of the structure in the lower left corner seems ill-suited to the design of a tavern. More probably a collective monument (perhaps of a funerary collegium) than a familial tomb, the complex raises more questions than it resolves about the characteristic form and function of the Roman tomb garden (see no. XXX, funerary collegium of the Cocceii).

Dates

The plan was dated as early as the Augustan age, the scale and design seem more later in the frist or second century.

Bibliography

J. Bodel, Roman Tomb Gardens, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 222-224. link
Ch. Hülsen, Piante iconografiche incise in marmo, BMDAI(R) 5 (1890): 46-63 worldcat
H. von Hesberg, Römische Grundrissplane auf Marmor, in Bauplanung und Bautheorie der Antike (Berlin 1984) 121-24;worldcat
M. Luni, Iscrizioni pubbliche ed iscrizioni relative ad edifici, in 1756-1986. Il Museo Archeologico di Urbino I (Urbino 1986) 167 figs. 6-7. worldcat
R. Volpe,Cento anni a Centocelle: dal volo di Wilbur Wright ai recenti scavi, in Atti del Convegno Nazionale di Archeologia Aerea "100 anni di Archeologia Aerea in Italia" (Roma 15-17 aprile 2009), Archeologia Aerea 4-5, 2010-2011, pp.41-46. Fig. 3 worldcat

Places

Tomb Garden of Aur(elius) Inachus Pleiades: 423338213

Temple Tomb Garden of Q. Haterius Tychicus

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Location

Via Labicana Pleiades: 74935822

Sublocation

Via Labicana

Sublocation Description

An ancient Roman road connecting Rome and Labicum.

Garden

Temple Tomb Garden of Q. Haterius Tychicus

Keywords

Garden Description

One of the well-known reliefs from the tomb monument of the Haterii found in 1848 at a villa site after the fourth mile of the Via Labicana and depicting the temple tomb they adorned seems to represent schematically a garden and ornamental pavilion (diaeta) enclosed by a perimeter wall or fence in front of the tomb (Fig. XXX). The property evidently belonged to a building contractor, probably the redemptor Q. Haterius Tychicus (CIL 6.607, perhaps a freedman of Q. Haterius Antoninus, the consul of 53 CE), who participated in several prominent public building projects during the Flavian era and who erected his monument (to judge from the style of the relief decoration) during the Trajanic period. The tomb itself, built on an inset tufa base c. 3.5 meters square, partly out of peperino blocks, partly in reticulate work, and partly with brickwork, is almost wholly destroyed. In 1970, about ten meters from the tomb, new excavations at the site unearthed a dedication to Silvanus set up by two Q. Haterii (AE 1982, 78), probably at the boundary of the funerary garden represented in the relief by the enclosed pavilion. In the same garden was found the so-called urn of the Haterii, in all likelihood an elaborately sculpted fountain base.

Dates

Unspecified

Bibliography

G.-L. Gregori, Horti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma worldcat

-F. Sinn and K. S. Freyberger, Vatikansiche Museen: Museo Gregorio Profano ex Lateranense: Dir Grabdenkmäler 2: Die Ausstatung des Hateriusgrabes, (Mainz 1996) 45-51, no. 5 (pl. 7, figs. 8-10). worldcat

Places

Tomb Garden of a Funerary Collegium

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Location

Via Labicana Pleiades: 74935822

Sublocation

Via Labicana

Sublocation Description

An ancient Roman road connecting Rome and Labicum.

Garden

Tomb Garden of a Funerary Collegium

Keywords

Garden Description

A marble slab found at the cemetery of Centocelle and now preserved in the National Museum in Stockholm records the establishment in 16 CE of a funerary garden and various appurtenances by two senior officials of a funerary collegium and the clearing of an area beyond a perimeter wall for the construction of new crematories (ustrinae). The long commemorative text, our most detailed verbal record of the appointments of a Roman funerary garden, is worth quoting in full:

T. T. Coccei Gaa and Patiens, quaestors (of the funerary collegium) for the third time, according to the will of the decurions set up the square dining table in the pavilion (or, less probably, dining room), the sideboard and base, the sundial, the fountain basin with supports, the marble well, the stucco-work above the wall of the middle path with the tiled roof, the little travertine column beneath the sundial, the projecting eaves in front of the portico, the scales and weights. And, thanks to the kindness and generosity of their patron Titus, they undertook the clearing of a place behind the further perimeter wall and the transferring of the crematories from the furthest fence to there and the construction of a path there and a doorway. And the same men with public money decorated those places which their patron Titus had granted to the decurions with the seeds of vines and fruits and flowers and all sorts of greenery, in the consulship of Sisenna Taurus and L. Scribonius Libo.

T. T. Coccei Gaa et / Patiens quaest(ores) III ((tertio)) / mensam quadratam in trichil(a), / abacum cum basi, horologium, / labrum cum fulmentis, marmor /5 putiale, crustas supra parietem / itineris medi cum tegulis, columel/lam sub horologio Tiburtina(m?) 7 (sic) / protectum ante porticum, truti/nam et pondera d(e) d(ecurionum) s(ententia) posuerunt; / et locum post maceriam ulteriorem /10 emendum ustrinasque de consaepto / ultimo in eum locum traiciendas et / iter ad eum locum ianuamque bene/ficio et liberalitate T. patroni faci/enda curauerunt; /15 idemque uitium pomorumq(ue) et florum / uiridiumque omnium generum / seminibus ea loca quae T. p(atronus) decuri/onibus suis adtribuerat ex pecu/nia publica adornauerunt, /20 Sisenna Tauro L Scribonio Libone co(n)s(ulibus). /

The inscription concludes with eight hexameters urging readers to recognize in the expense incurred the just observance of piety and, for peace of mind, to follow the example of those who created and tended for the garden during their lifetimes so as to be remembered and cared for by others after their deaths (CLE 371). It is tempting to set the tomb complex of the funerary collegium described in this text in relation to the marble plan of a large tomb garden found also found in the Centocello cemetery and now in Urbino (no. XXX), but the references to ustrinae accessed by a path and gate, "the wall of a middle path with a tiled roof", and projecting eaves in front of a portico are difficult to reconcile with the markings on the marble plan. If the two records do concern the same cemetery complex, the plan does not seem to depict the part of it described in the inscription of the collegium.

Dates

16 CE

Bibliography

B. E. Thomasson and M. Pavese,A Survey of Greek and Latin Inscriptions on Stone in Swedish Collections, (Stockholm 1997) XXX worldcat
G.-L. Gregori, Horti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma worldcat
L. Chioffi, Epigrafia e insediamenti: Il caso del suburbio di Roma, in La forma della città e del territorio (Atlante Tematico di Topografia Antica V Supplemento), edited by S. Quilici Gigli (Rome, 1999) 53 n. 9.worldcat

Places

Tomb Garden of Anonymous

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Location

Via Labicana Pleiades: 74935822

Sublocation

Via Labicana

Sublocation Description

An ancient Roman road connecting Rome and Labicum.

Garden

Tomb Garden of Anonymous

Keywords

Garden Description

A fragmentary marble slab found beside the Via Labicana near the cemetery of Centocelle and recording the end of an epitaph addressed in part to an Aurelius identifies a cepotaphium in the formulaic clause prohibiting misuse or alienation of the tomb property.

Dates

Unspecified

Bibliography

G.-L. Gregori, Horti sepulchrales e cepotaphia nelle iscrizioni urbane, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma worldcat