commemorated the power of Rome, the prowess of the general, and the
support of the gods for Roman victory, as well as acting as memorials of
the triumphal celebrations themselves. For they were not only funded
out of the very riches that were paraded in procession through the
streets, but they also provided permanent showcases for some of the
prize spoils that would have been merely glimpsed on the day of the tri-
umphal spectacle.38
Pompey’s name is associated with a Temple of Minerva, which—as
Pliny’s quotation of its dedicatory inscription makes clear—he founded
out of the spoils of his eastern campaigns: “Dedicated to Minerva, in
proper fulfillment of his vow, by Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus, imperator,
at the completion of the thirty years’ war, following the rout, ruin,
slaughter, or surrender of 12,183,000 men, the sinking or capture of 846
vessels, the submission of 1538 towns and fortresses, and the subjec-
tion of lands from the Sea of Azov to the Red Sea.”39 He was also linked
with a Temple of Hercules, which Vitruvius in his manual of archi-
tecture refers to as “Hercules Pompeianus.” To judge from Vitruvius’
description of its decidedly old-fashioned architectural style, Pompey
probably financed a restoration rather than the original foundation, but
a sufficiently lavish restoration for his name to become attached to the
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2 2
building. There is a fair chance that its statue of Hercules—by Myron,
so Pliny has it, the famous fifth-century bce Greek sculptor (best known
now for his Discus Thrower but in antiquity more renowned for his
extremely life-like Cow)—was part of the spoils of victory of one of
Pompey’s campaigns. Certainly, such a connection is implied by another
of the triumphal coins of Faustus Sulla, which features a head of Hercu-
les, in characteristic lion’s skin.40
It is, however, another design in the same series of coins—Venus
crowned with a laurel wreath—that signals Pompey’s most extravagant
attempt to set his triumph in stone.41 For they were minted the year
before the spectacular inauguration of the theater and porticoes that
were built out of the profits of Pompey’s eastern campaigns and destined
to display many of his triumph’s choicest spoils. The term “theater
and porticoes” hardly does justice to this vast building complex, which
stretched from the present day Piazza Campo dei Fiori to the Largo Ar-
gentina, covering an area of some 45,000 square meters (Fig. 5). A dar-
ing—and, for Rome, unprecedented—combination of temple, pleasure
park, theater, and museum, it wrote Pompey’s name permanently into
the Roman cityscape. Even now, though no trace remains visible on the
ground, its buried foundations (and particularly the distinctive curve of
the theater) determine the street plan and housing patterns of the city
above; it remains a ghostly template which accounts for the surprising
twists and turns of today’s back-streets, alleyways, and mansions.42
Add to this the lucky survival of exactly the right part of the third-
century ce inscribed plan of the city of Rome (the so-called “Marble
Plan” or “Forma Urbis”), combined with a series of references in ancient
authors and some modern excavation, and we are able to reconstruct the
main lines of its design and use—even if intense controversy surrounds
the details.43 At one end of the multi-storey complex perched a Temple
of Venus “Victrix.” This was the goddess who as “giver of victory” could
be seen as the divine guide of Pompey’s military success; one ancient
writer made the understandable mistake of calling it simply a Temple of
Victoria.44 But Venus “victorious” (both translations are correct) must
also have evoked the success of the goddess herself in the mythical con-
Pompey’s Finest Hour?
23
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 5:
Pompey’s theater and porticoes. There have been many attempts to recapture the
daring design and lavish scale of the whole complex. This three-dimensional reconstruction, based on nineteenth-century drawings, shows the Temple of Venus Victrix (bottom left) overlooking the auditorium; beyond the porticoes, gardens and a sculpture gallery.
test with Juno and Diana for the apple of Paris, and so too the whole
history of the Trojan War—and Rome’s descent from Venus’ son, the
Trojan Aeneas—which that contest sparked.
On this upper level stood other smaller shrines to a clutch of notably
military virtues (including Virtus itself, the personification of manly
courage, and Felicitas, the kind of divinely inspired good fortune that
was essential to successful generalship). More eye-catching, though, was
the dramatic feat of engineering that adapted and expanded the steps
of the Temple of Venus into the seating of a vast theater, cascading
down to a performance area and extensive gardens beyond. According to
Pliny’s no doubt exaggerated figures, it could hold 40,000 spectators.45
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Whether this scheme was inspired by the so-called “theater-temples” of
Italy (where temple steps doubled with theater seating) or was a piece of
new-fangled Hellenism copied, as Plutarch claimed, from the architec-
ture of the Greek city of Mytilene is hard to say. What is certain is that
this was the first permanent stone theater built in the city of Rome, and
as such it caused some muttering about luxury and immorality among
the old guard.46 No less of an innovation were the gardens, walkways,
and porticoes that stretched for almost two hundred meters (this was ef-
fectively Rome’s first public park) toward a new senate house that stood
at the far end of the complex. This was the spot “even at the base of
Pompey’s statue” where Julius Caesar was murdered in 44 bce.47
The whole development was littered with sculpture and painting, in
part the booty from the east, in part (as Pliny remarks about statues of a
pair of heroines, one of whom was famous for giving birth to an ele-
phant) specially commissioned. There are a number of references to
prize items from this gallery in surviving ancient literature. Pliny notes,
for example, in addition to Alcippe the elephant’s mother, a painting
of Cadmus and Europa by the fourth-century artist Antiphilos and
another by the fifth-century painter Polygnotos, originally hanging in
Pompey’s senate house and showing “a shield bearer” (a talking point,
it seems: was he shown mounting or dismounting from his horse?).48
Traces of this gallery in surviving marble or bronze, still less in paint,
have been much harder to pin down. The survivals include a group of
five outsized Muses, plus a matching Apollo (now split between galleries
in Rome, Naples, and Paris), a similarly colossal seated female figure,
and a number of inscribed statue bases, all discovered in this area of
Rome.49
Beyond this general outline, our detailed understanding of the deco-
rative programme of the building is much more limited than most of
the reconstructive fantasies of modern archaeologists would suggest.
These have often rested on the ingenious but doubtful speculation that
a list of risqué pagan statues denounced for their immorality by Tatian,
a second-century Christian polemicist, in fact represents (though Tatian
himself does not say so) a partial roster of the statues from Pompey’s