Palus Caprae
The Palus Caprae (or Capreae;[1] meaning "Goat Marsh" or "the Goat's pool"[2]) was a site within the Campus Martius in Ancient Rome. In Roman mythology, the Palus Caprae was the place where Romulus underwent ascension into godhood.
Description
The marsh was fed by a stream called Petronia Amnis,[3][4] but by the Augustan period it had disappeared or been drained.[5] The Palus Caprae was in the small basin where the Pantheon was later built,[6] west of the Altar of Mars supposed to have been established by Numa Pompilius, Romulus's successor.[7] Ludwig Preller thought it might be the same site as the Aedicula Capraria in Regio VI (Via Lata), as listed by the Regiones,[8] and Filippo Coarelli conjectured that the mythic significance of the Palus Caprae was the reason for siting the Pantheon there.[9]
In myth
On the
The occasion was commemorated ritually by the Nonae Caprotinae.
References
- ^ Ovid, Fasti 2.491.
- ^ Pierre Grimal, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology (Blackwell, 1986, 1996, originally published 1951 in French), pp. 366 and 408.
- ^ Nicholas Purcell, "Rome and the Management of Water: Environment, Culture, and Power," in Human Landscapes in Classical Antiquity: Environment and Culture (Routledge, 1996), p. 184.
- ISBN 978-1-107-01443-5.
- ^ Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, p. 70.
- ^ Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 66.
- ^ Paul Rehak and John G. Younger, Imperium and Cosmos: Augustus and the Northern Campus Martius (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p. 11.
- ^ L. Preller, Die regionen der stadt Rom (Jena, 1846), p. 137 online.
- ^ Filippo Coarelli, Il Campo Marzio: dalle origini alla fine della Repubblica (1997).
- ^ Plutarch, Life of Camillus 33.7 LacusCurtius edition, and Life of Romulus 27.6, here as summarized by Grimal, Dictionary of Classical Mythology, p. 408.