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ANTE OCULOS PONERE: VISION AND IMAGINATION IN FLAVIO BIONDO'S ROMA TRIUMPHANS*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2011

Frances Muecke
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Abstract

This article examines two ekphrastic digressions from book 2 of Flavio Biondo's Roma Triumphans (1459), both occurring in the section on the festivals of ancient Rome. The first is an eye-witness account of a celebration mounted in Piazza Navona in Rome to mark the defeat of the Turks at Belgrade in 1456; the second is an imaginative recreation of the horse race at the Equirria, as Biondo envisions it taking place in the streetscape of ancient Rome. Both digressions serve one of Biondo's most important purposes, the linking of ancient and modern Rome. The aim of the discussion is to demonstrate the importance of visualization in Biondo's framing of Roma Triumphans as a whole. In this aspect he was a powerful model for later antiquarian writing.

Con l'articolo si esamina due digressioni ‘ekphrastic’ dal libro 2 delle Roma Triumphans di Flavio Biondo (1459), entrambi posti nella sezione dedicata alle feste dell'antica Roma. Il primo è un resoconto fedele di una celebrazione occorsa a Piazza Navona a Roma per ricordare la sconfitta dei Turchi a Belgrado nel 1456; il secondo è una ricreazione immaginifera della corsa dei cavalli a Equirria, come Biondo si immagina che abbia avuto luogo nelle vie di Roma antica. Entrambe le digressioni servono a uno degli scopi più importanti di Biondo, il legame tra la Roma antica e moderna. Lo scopo della discussione è dimostrare l'importanza globale della visualizzazione di Biondo nella cornice della Roma Triumphans. Da questo punto di vista egli rappresentò un modello forte per la più tarda scrittura antiquaria.

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Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 79 , November 2011 , pp. 275 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 2011

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Footnotes

*

This article grew from papers presented at the conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies in 2008 and at the Australasian Society for Classical Studies conference 30. For their helpful comments on earlier versions I thank Prof. Julia Gaisser, Dr Maurizio Campanelli and Dr Elizabeth McCahill. The article also has benefited from the suggestions of one of the Papers of the British School at Rome's anonymous referees.

References

1 Schor, S., ‘Reclaiming digression’, in Smith, L.Z. (ed.), Audits of Meaning (Portsmouth, 1988), 238–47, at p. 239Google Scholar.

2 F. Biondo, Roma Triumphans, p. 2. The text cited throughout is that of Basle 1531 slightly modernized. Roma Instaurata is also cited from this text, by book and section number as well as page.

3 Cf. Mazzocco, A., ‘Some philological aspects of Biondo Flavio's Roma Triumphans’, Humanistica Lovaniensia 28 (1979), 1–26, at pp. 9–10Google Scholar; Stinger, C.L., ‘Roma Triumphans: triumphs in the thought and ceremonies of Renaissance Rome’, Medievalia et Humanistica n.s. 10 (1981), 189–201, at p. 194Google Scholar.

4 Stinger, C.L., The Renaissance in Rome (Bloomington, 1985)Google Scholar, 70 and p. 350 n. 202 translates the last phrase as ‘that flourishing city of Rome … which Blessed Augustine desired to see triumphant’, but later passages suggest that Biondo had the victory procession in mind: Roma Triumphans, pp. 205, 212 (see below). A passage in Augustine's works to which these comments might refer has not been found. Laureys, M., ‘‘The grandeur that was Rome’: scholarly analysis and pious awe in Lipsius' Admiranda', in Enenkel, K.A.E., de Jong, J.L. and De Landtsheer, J. (eds), Recreating Ancient History: Episodes from the Greek and Roman Past in the Arts and Literature of the Early Modern Period (Leiden, 2002), 123–46, at p. 130Google Scholar and n. 27, suggests that it may come from a medieval commentary on De Civitate Dei. On broader issues, see Fubini, R., ‘Biondo Flavio’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 10 (Rome, 1968), 536–58, at p. 553Google Scholar; Tomassini, M., ‘Per una lettura della Roma Triumphans di Biondo Flavio’, in Tomassini, M. and Bonavigo, C. (eds), Tra Romagna ed Emilia nell'umanesimo: Biondo e Cornazzano (Bologna, 1985), 9–80Google Scholar, at pp. 71–2; and Nuovo, I., ‘De Civitate Dei — Roma Triumphans teologia della storia e storiografia umanistica’, in Fabris, M. (ed.), L'umanesimo di Sant'Agostino (Atti del congresso internazionale Bari 28–30 ottobre 1986) (Bari, 1988), 573–87Google Scholar.

5 Hampton, T., Writing from History: the Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca, 1990), 21Google Scholar. For the classical precedents, see Fantham, E., Comparative Studies in Republican Latin Imagery (Toronto, 1972), 68–9, 81Google Scholar. See also O'Malley, J.W., Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome. Rhetoric, Doctrine and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521 (Durham (NC), 1979), 211Google Scholar n. 10, on terms such as ‘norma’, ‘speculum’ and ‘exemplar’ applied to Rome in documents of the papal court. Bernardo Rucellai, De Urbe Roma (c. 1500), discussing the difficulty of grasping from the ancient sources ‘qualem Rempublicam prisci habuerint’ (‘the nature of the ancients’ commonwealth'), uses the image of the blueprint ‘… ut in aedificando formula, exemplar Romanae civitatis’ (‘a model of the Roman state, like the plan in building’), cited by Tomassini, ‘Per una lettura della Roma Triumphans’ (above, n. 4), 21–2 n. 5.

6 Imago combines the notions of ‘reflection in a mirror’, ‘a mental picture’, ‘a description’, ‘a manifestation’, ‘a model’, cf. Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1968–82) s.v.

7 Roma Triumphans, p. 106 (book 5): ‘The two earlier books indicate rather than show a large part of Roman administration’; cf. p. 40 (book 2) (on gladiatorial shows): ‘sed quod Spartianus dicit veteres consuevisse, Livius XXVIII sic ostendit’ (‘but what was, according to Spartianus, the custom of the ancients, Livy in book 28 shows as follows’); p. 77 (book 3): (on the elections) ‘quaecunque hactenus a nobis de comitiis, candidatis, et petitione dicta sunt, generalia fuerunt; ad ipsam rem nunc ante oculos ponendam particulariter descendamus’ (‘all that we have said so far about elections, candidates, and standing for election has been generalities; now let us proceed to set the matter itself before our eyes in detail’).

8 O'Malley, Praise and Blame (above, n. 5), 62–3, picked out as ‘epideictic vocabulary’ intueri, videre, aspicere, ante oculos ponere, contemplari. On ancient epideixis and panegyric of cities by Bruni and Pier Candido Decembrio, see pp. 77–9.

9 Roma Triumphans, p. 3: ‘to praise, as I profess to do, the virtues of a people of a distinguished reputation’.

10 Roma Triumphans, p. 212. Biondo already has explained that Augustine could not have seen a triumph because the Emperor Probus was the last to hold one, about 200 years before Augustine's time (p. 205). In two places (pp. 21, 23), Biondo cites extracts from De Civitate Dei (2.4, 2.26), Augustine's own eyewitness accounts of pagan religious ceremonies. He also recounts (heavily elaborated) scenes from Cassiodorus's descriptions of the games (Variae 5.42), because he was the last of the Church fathers ‘who had seen them’ (p. 51). See Momigliano, A., The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Sather Classical Lectures 54) (Berkeley, 1990), 57–9Google Scholar, on the antiquarians' interest in empirical observation. Mazzocco, A., ‘Biondo Flavio and the antiquarian tradition’, in Schoeck, R.J. (ed.), Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Bononiensis: Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies (Binghampton (NY), 1985), 128–9Google Scholar, referred briefly to Biondo's ‘pictorial intent’.

11 Tomassini, ‘Per una lettura della Roma Triumphans’ (above, n. 4), 68–9; Martindale, A., The Triumphs of Caesar by Andrea Mantegna in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Hampton Court (London, 1979), esp. ch. 2Google Scholar; Stinger, ‘Roma Triumphans’ (above, n. 3), 189–201; J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore (Vienna/London, n.d.), 215–18; Visceglia, M.A., La città rituale: Roma e le sue cerimonie in età moderna (Rome, 2002), ch. 2, esp. pp. 95–6Google Scholar; McGowan, M.M., ‘The Renaissance triumph and its classical inheritance’, in Mulryne, J.R. and Goldring, E. (eds), Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance (Aldershot/Burlington (VT), 2002), 26–47Google Scholar. Specifically, Miglio, M., ‘Il ritorno a Roma. Varianti di una costante nella tradizione dell'antico: le scelte pontificie’, in Scritture, scrittori e storia II — città e corte a Roma nel Quattrocento (Rome, 1993), 139–48, at pp. 144–6Google Scholar, connected Biondo's call for Christian triumphs with Pius II's staging of the procession for Corpus Domini at Viterbo in 1462. Albertini, Francesco, Opusculum de Mirabilibus Novae et Veteris Urbis Romae (Rome, 1510)Google Scholar, in Liber II ‘De nonnullis triumphantibus’, moved from descriptions of ancient triumphs to those of Julius II (1507) that had surpassed them (sig. Tiiiv), cf. B. Mitchell, Italian Civic Pageantry in the High Renaissance: a Descriptive Bibliography for Triumphal Entries and Selected Other Festivals for State Occasions (Florence, 1979), 114–16.

12 Roma Triumphans, p. 216.

13 Roma Triumphans, p. 215. Lucio Fauno's translation of the last clause is more dramatic: ‘tal che ogni volta che mi si reca hora a memoria tutto questo strepito, queste pazzie, e salti; mi pare a punto d'esservi; onde vò cercando di poter fuggirle’ (Roma trionfanti (Venice, 1544), sig. 380a). See Tomassini, ‘Per una lettura della Roma Triumphans’ (above, n. 4), 42.

14 Pincelli, M.A., ‘La Roma Triumphans e la nascita dell'antiquaria: Biondo Flavio e Andrea Mantegna’, Studiolo. Revue d'Histoire de l'Art de l'Académie de France à Rome 5 (2007), 19–28Google Scholar.

15 Martindale, The Triumphs of Caesar by Andrea Mantegna (above, n. 11), 50.

16 For a list, see Mazzocco, A., ‘Rome and the humanists: the case of Biondo Flavio’, in Ramsey, P.A. (ed.), Rome in the Renaissance: the City and the Myth (Binghamton (NY), 1982), 185–95, at p. 191Google Scholar. D.A. Lupher, Romans in a New World. Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America (Ann Arbor, 2003), 280, has commented that, apart from the case of the triumph, ‘Biondo's parallels between Roman antiquity and modern European life seem to have been intended to make ancient practices more vivid and familiar to a modern reader, rather than to affirm a genetic relationship’.

17 Raffarin-Dupuis, A. (ed. and trans.), Flavio Biondo Rome restaurée: tome 1, livre 1 (Paris, 2005), xiiGoogle Scholar; Tomassini, ‘Per una lettura della Roma Triumphans’ (above, n. 4), passim. Cf. D.M. Robathan, ‘Flavio Biondo's Roma Instaurata’, Medievalia et Humanistica n.s. 1 (1970), 203–16, at p. 204: ‘It is perhaps more interesting to follow Biondo's mental processes where he used his literary sources conscientiously, but came up with the wrong answer!’.

18 Mazzocco, ‘Some philological aspects’ (above, n. 3), 9.

19 Questions concerning the visualization, description and illustration of ancient Rome in the antiquarian works of Justus Lipsius have been explored in Papy, J., ‘An antiquarian scholar between text and image? Justus Lipsius, humanist education, and the visualization of ancient Rome’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 35 (1) (2004), 97–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lipsius says programmatically in the introductory letter of Saturnalia (1582), his dialogue on the gladiatorial games, ‘proposui [ludi and spectacula] non auribus solum, sed oculis; neque ut legi, sed paene dicam spectari possint’ (‘I have set them before not only the ears, but also the eyes, and not so that they can be read of, but, I might almost say, watched’) (129 n. 111).

20 It begins on p. 46. The text with Fauno's translation may be found in Cruciani, F., Teatro nel Rinascimento, Roma 1450–1550 (Rome, 1983), 100–2Google Scholar.

21 Nogara, B. (ed.), Scritti inediti e rari di Biondo Flavio (Rome, 1927Google Scholar; reprinted Vatican City, 1973), CXLIX–CL and n. 182; Mazzocco, ‘Some philological aspects’ (above, n. 3), 4 n. 9; Tomassini, ‘Per una lettura della Roma Triumphans’ (above, n. 4), 21 n. 2; Pincelli, ‘Biondo Flavio e Andrea Mantegna’ (above, n. 14), 20 n. 9.

22 On the role of contemporary references, see Miglio, ‘Il ritorno a Roma’ (above, n. 11), 145: ‘Lavoro di filologia antiquaria ma reso attuale da una serie di riferimenti costanti al presente, che chiariscono … il significato dell'intero lavoro’ (‘A philological work that is antiquarian but made relevant by a series of constant references to the present, which clarify … the meaning of the whole work’).

23 Biondo, Roma Triumphans, book 2, pp. 47–8; cf. Tomassini, ‘Per una lettura della Roma Triumphans’ (above, n. 4), 56.

24 The phrases in italics, most of them crucial for setting the passage in its historical context, were omitted in the translation by Fauno (above, n. 13), sig. 81b–82a.

25 Biondo connects the neologism torniamen (cf. Tomassini, ‘Per una lettura della Roma Triumphans’ (above, n. 4), p. 27) with the Virgilian phrase ‘Troianum dicitur agmen’ (Virgil, Aeneid 5.602, cited in the context): ‘pro Troiano agmine torniamen’.

26 See Falcioni, A. and Cotta, R. (eds), I Malatesti (Rimini, 2002), 121Google Scholar.

27 Roma Triumphans, p. 46. Whether this was in fact a revival all'antica is not apparent (cf. Falcioni and Cotta, I Malatesti (above, n. 26), 121). A brief account of the transition of the medieval tournament to a secular court festival may be found in Strong, R., Art and Power. Renaissance Festivals 1450–1650 (Woodbridge, 1984), 11–19Google Scholar.

28 Nogara, Scritti inediti e rari (above, n. 21), XXIII–IV n. 13, argued that the possibility that Biondo did remember the event should not be discounted.

29 Roma Triumphans, p. 46. See Falcioni and Cotta, I Malatesti (above, n. 26), 107–8. For the context see especially chapter 3 of D.E. Bornstein, The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy (Ithaca/London, 1993).

30 The connections drawn by Biondo are false but fairly plausible in the state of his knowledge, except for the matter of the date. The ludi Apollinares were held in early to mid-July (information available at Livy 27.23.5–7, 37.4.4, but not taken into account by Biondo), and in the Circus Maximus (according to Livy 25.12). Similarly, Biondo (Roma Triumphans, p. 36) disregards the date of the tubilustria in Ovid's Fasti (5.725, 23 May) in order to link this festival with contemporary practices on Saint George's birthday (23 April).

31 In Roma Triumphans the whole account of the ludi Apollinares is slanted to introduce the victory celebration, and would have had to have been rewritten if the latter were added later, as Mazzocco, ‘Some philological aspects’ (above, n. 3), 4 n. 9, argued.

32 The extremely well-documented treatment of Sommerlechner, A., ‘Die ludi agonis et testatie — das Fest der Kommune Rom im Mittelalter’, Römische Historische Mitteilungen 41 (1999), 339–70Google Scholar, does not mention our passage. See further Cruciani's analysis of the Libro delle spese per i giochi del notaio Antonio de Muscianis for the year 1456 (Cruciani, Teatro nel Rinascimento (above, n. 20), 78–89).

33 Andrea Fulvio, Antiquitates Vrbis (Rome, 1527), fol. 66v: ‘Est autem circus sive campus Agonis hodie omnium pulcherrimus et expeditissimus etiam nunc ad equorum cursus, lateribusque stratus, magnificisque circumquaque aedificiis conspicuus, ubi etiam mea memoria extabant undique sedilium signa quae nunc privatis aedibus occupata vel destructa non apparent. Ubi postremo Iovis carnisprivii die veterum triumphorum simulacra tota ferme spectante urbe celebrantur’ (‘The Circus or Campus Agonis today is the most beautiful of all and even now is very suitable for horse races. It is paved with brick and remarkable for the magnificent buildings all around. There, even in my memory, there were traces of seats on all sides, now no longer visible as they have been covered by private buildings or destroyed. Here on the last Thursday of Carnival representations of ancient triumphs are put on with almost the whole city watching’).

34 Valentini, R. and Zucchetti, G., Codice topografico della città di Roma, 4 vols (Fonti per la storia d'Italia 81, 88, 91–2) (Rome, 1940–53), IV, 239Google Scholar.

35 Perosa, A. (ed.), Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone (Studies of the Warburg Institute 24) (London, 1960), I, 77Google Scholar. Adam Usk provides a description from the beginning of the fifteenth century: ‘Romani, circa Dominicam in Quinquagesima, cum capitibus regionum, ad agonem, tanquam fallerata fallanx, conveniunt … pro bravio fortiter certant. Tres magnos anulos argenteos, ad unam altam cordam ligatos, ponunt, et in equis, ut lanceas in eos mittant, currunt, inde huiusmodi anulos habituri’ (‘Around Quinquagesima Sunday the Romans assemble for their games [or ‘at Piazza Navona’?], drawn up in armed bodies under the heads of the districts, all eagerly competing to win the prize … Three large silver rings are fastened to a rope high off the ground, and they charge their horses at them trying to run their lances through the rings and thus win them'). Text and translation are from Given-Wilson, C., The Chronicle of Adam Usk 1377–1421 (Oxford Medieval Texts) (Oxford, 1997), 194–5Google Scholar.

36 See Sommerlechner's distinction between ‘periodische Feste (Karneval, Assunta)’ and ‘Aktuelle Feste (Entrées, Trionfi)’, in ‘Die ludi agonis et testatie’ (above, n. 32), 355. I would suggest that the victory celebration was a topical event inserted into a regular occasion. Most comparable is the mock-battle by which the Fall of Granada was celebrated in Piazza Navona during Carnival in 1492. This celebration was organized by Bernardino Carvajal and Giovanni Medina, ambassadors of the Catholic kings in Rome: Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome (above, n. 4), 51–2; Cruciani, Teatro nel Rinascimento (above, n. 20), 228–39.

37 See Babinger, F., Mehmed the Conqueror and his Time (trans. Manheim, R.) (Princeton (NJ), 1978)Google Scholar, 144, on the immediate celebration of the victory: ‘Pope Calixtus described the liberation of Belgrade as ‘the happiest event of his life’'.

38 Canedo, L. Gomez, Un español al servicio de la Santa Sede. Don Juan de Carvajal, cardinal de Sant'Angelo, legado en Alemania y Hungria (?1399–1469) (Madrid, 1947), 153–85Google Scholar; Davies, M., ‘Juan de Carvajal and early printing: the 42-line Bible and the Sweynheym and Pannartz Aquinas’, The Library, 6th series, 18 (1996), 193–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Angiolini, H., ‘Giovanni da Capestrano’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 55 (Rome, 2000), 744–59Google Scholar.

40 Circa 1400–56, Governor of Hungary from 1446 and leader of Hungary's wars against the Turks, achieving some brilliant victories.

41 Tomassini, ‘Per una lettura della Roma Triumphans’ (above, n. 4), 56, noted that in book 7 (p. 151) Biondo does mention the death of Hunyadi: ‘sed tantum virum optimis quibusque imperatoribus gloria parem importuna mors sustulit’ (‘but an unseasonable death removed this great man who equalled all the best generals in his glory’). On the battle, see: Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and his Time (above, n. 37), 138–44; Canedo, Un español al servicio de la Santa Sede (above, n. 38), 165–74; Setton, K., The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), 4 vols (Philadelphia, 1978), II, 161–95Google Scholar.

42 Bisaha, N., Creating East and West. Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Pennsylvania, 2006), 70 n. 181Google Scholar. For other examples, see pp. 69–71. So too implicitly Piccolomini, E.S., Dialogo su un sogno (Dialogus de Somnio Quodam): saggio introduttivo, translation and notes by Scafi, A. (Turin, 2004), 294–5Google Scholar.

43 For example, by: Miller, A., Roman Triumphs and Early Modern English Culture (Basingstoke/New York, 2001), 44–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mazzocco, ‘Rome and the humanists’ (above, n. 16), 195 n. 37; Tomassini, ‘Per una lettura della Roma Triumphans’ (above, n. 4), 50.

44 Bisaha, Creating East and West (above, n. 42), ch. 2, ‘The new barbarian: redefining the Turks in classical terms’, esp. p. 62: ‘1453 affected the way the humanists wrote, precipitating a crystallization of rhetoric into a recognizable discourse on the Turks’.

45 Nogara, Scritti inediti e rari (above, n. 21), CXXXIII–CXL, 31–58. Biondo's text is dated 1 August 1453, coinciding with the pontifical legation to Naples led by Cardinal Domenico Capranica (Nogara, CXXXV n. 170). See Bisaha, Creating East and West (above, n. 42), 81–3 on Giannozzo Manetti's oration to Calixtus III in 1455 (like Biondo's Ad Alphonsem Aragonensem this drawing on Cicero's speech Pro Lege Manilia). See also Biondo's Ad Petrum de Campo Fregoso (Nogara, 61–71), also supporting a diplomatic mission of Capranica's (Fubini, ‘Biondo Flavio’ (above, n. 4), 549).

46 Hankins, J., ‘Renaissance crusaders: humanist crusade literature in the age of Mehmed II’, in Humanism and Platonism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols (Rome, 2003–4), I, 293–426, at p. 294 n. 3Google Scholar, has given information on the huge number of sources and see esp. pp. 329–45 on the ‘politics of ethnography’; M. Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought (Boston (MA), 2008), esp. ch. 3; Meserve, M., ‘Medieval sources for Renaissance theories on the origins of the Ottoman Turks’, in Guthmüller, B. and Kühlmann, W. (eds), Europa und die Türken in der Renaissance (Tübingen, 2000), 409–36Google Scholar (with further bibliography at p. 409 n. 1).

47 Piccolomini's Dialogus de Somnio Quodam, written at the end of 1453 in reaction to the Fall of Constantinople, and dedicated to Juan de Carvajal, bears witness to their long friendship and common concerns, as well as Piccolomini's close acquaintance with Biondo and his writings; Scafi, A., ‘Enea Silvio Piccolomini e Juan de Carvajal: un sogno tra diplomazia e letteratura’, in Tarugi, L. Rotondi Secchi (ed.), Rapporti e scambi tra umanesimo italiano ed umanesimo europeo (Milan, 2001), 665–77Google Scholar.

48 Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and his Time (above, n. 37), 167; see also pp. 239–40 on Pius II's address delivered on 12 October 1458; cf. Meserve, Empires of Islam (above, n. 46), 93–6. For further discussion and bibliography, see Piccolomini, Dialogo su un sogno (above, n. 42), 30–4, esp. p. 31 n. 67. Meserve, M. and Simonetta, M. (eds), Pius II Commentaries (Cambridge (MA)/London, 2003), I, 208–11Google Scholar, 2.1.2 and 4 (trans. M. Meserve): ‘Among all the concerns that occupied his heart, none was greater than his desire to call the peoples of Christendom to a crusade against the Turks. This race of men had long ago emerged from eastern Scythia to attack and conquer Cappadocia, Pontus, Bithynia, and almost every part of the land we call Asia Minor. Shortly thereafter, they crossed the Hellespont, occupied most of Greece and carried their standards as far as the celebrated waters of the Sava and the Danube. … [Mehmed] was determined to stamp out and destroy the holy gospel and sacred law of Christ’.

49 Biondo, Roma Triumphans, p. 1; cf. Hankins, ‘Renaissance crusaders’ (above, n. 46), 310–11; Enenkel, K.A.E., ‘Reciprocal authorisation: the function of dedications and dedicatory prefaces in the 15th- and 16th-century ‘Artes antiquitatis’’, in Bossuyt, I., Gabriëls, N., Sacré, D. and Verbeke, D. (eds), ‘Cui Dono Lepidum Novum Libellum?’. Dedicating Latin Works and Motets in the Sixteenth Century (Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 23) (Leuven, 2008), 35–47, at pp. 46–7Google Scholar.

50 Roma Triumphans, p. 2 (see above). Cf. Biondo's characterization (also in an excursus) of the members of the Curia who observed the fragment of the ship raised at Nemi in 1446: ‘spectaculo fuit omnibus Romanae curiae nobilioris ingenii viris’ (‘it was a remarkable sight for all the finer minds of the Roman Curia’); White, J.A., Biondo Flavio, Italy Illuminated (Cambridge(MA)/London, 2005), I, 190–1Google Scholar (book 2, section 48).

51 Bisaha, Creating East and West (above, n. 42), 79–80, has drawn conclusions about a shift in attitude towards the Turks from the absence of a reference to ‘barbarians’ in Biondo's dedication to Pius II.

52 Above, n. 46.

53 Meserve, Empires of Islam (above, n. 46), 100 n. 150.

54 Meserve, Empires of Islam (above, n. 46), 113 nn. 201 and 202, discusses two poems attributed to Pius but, in her view, written ‘to celebrate his dedication to the crusading cause’. Both refer to the Turks' Scythian origins: ‘non hoc Dardanidum est genus nec sanguine Teucro / ducit avos: Scythica est tetraque barbaries’ (‘this race is not Dardanian nor does it trace its ancestors to Trojan blood: they are a Scythian and abominable barbarian race’) (In Mahumetem Perfidum Turchorum Regem 11–12); ‘Scythicas profectus in oras / Caucaseas rupes penetravit, Amazonis arva / Rypheasque domos gelidas Aquilonis ad arces’ (‘[worship of Mahomet] setting out to the Scythian regions penetrated the crags of the Caucasus, the Amazonian plains, the Riphaean homes to the cold forts of the North wind’) (Pro Ingenii Exercitatione 39–41).

55 Roma Instaurata 3.33–5, p. 265.

56 Roma Instaurata 1.41, p. 229; 2.74, p. 250.

57 Ovid, Fasti 2.857–60.

58 Ovid, Fasti 2.858.

59 Roma Instaurata 2.69–72, p. 250.

60 Roma Instaurata 2.76, p. 251.

61 Ovid, Fasti 5.569–70.

62 Ovid, Fasti 5.555: ‘digna Giganteis haec sunt delubra tropaeis’ (‘the shrine was fit for Giants’ trophies'). For the variant ‘triumphis’ see, for example, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 3263, fol. 96v (autograph MS of Pomponio Leto, after 1484).

63 Pliny, Historia Naturalis 7.103: ‘ante Apollinem eboreum qui est in foro Augusti’.

64 Ovid, Fasti 5.559–68.

65 Biondo, Roma Triumphans, book 2, p. 36.

66 Or ‘lodging’?

67 Cf. Tortelli's, Giovanniexcursus on ‘Rhoma’ in Capoduro, L. (ed.), Giovanni Tortelli, Roma antica (Rome, 1998), 56Google Scholar: ‘et locus ludorum et dies’ (‘both the place and the time of the games’).

68 Varro, De Lingua Latina 6.13: ‘Ecurria ab equorum cursu: eo die enim ludis currunt in Martio Campo’ (‘The Equirria are named from the horse racing, for on that day they race during the games in the Campus Martius’) and Paulus ex Festo p. 81 Mueller: ‘equiria ludi, quos Romulus Marti instituit per equorum cursum, qui in campo Martio exercebantur’ (‘The Equirria are games, which Romulus set up for Mars, as a horse race, and they were carried out in the Campus Martius’). Mars as ‘driver’ comes from Ovid's lines on the Equirria, which took place at the end of February (Ovid, Fasti 2.857–60): ‘Iamque duae restant noctes de mense secundo, / Marsque citos iunctis curribus urget equos; / ex vero positum permansit Equirria nomen, / quae deus in campo prospicit ipse suo’ (‘And now two nights of the second month are left, and Mars urges on the swift steeds yoked to his chariot. The day has kept the appropriate name of Equirria (‘horse races’) derived from the races which the god himself beholds in his own plain') (translation from J.G. Frazer, Ovid's Fasti (London/Cambridge (MA), 1951), 119).

69 Strabo 5.3.8: ‘Indeed, the size of the Campus is remarkable, since it affords space at the same time and without interference, not only for the chariot-races and every other equestrian exercise, but also for all that multitude of people who exercise themselves by ball-playing, hoop-trundling, and wrestling’ (translation from H.L. Jones, Strabo Geography, II, Books 3–5 (London/Cambridge (MA), 407)).

70 Lelio Della Valle (c. 1400–76) had humanist as well as legal interests. Many years later, in the preface to his printed edition of Varro's De Lingua Latina (c. 1471), Pomponio Leto acknowledges the suggestion of Della Valle (‘magne et singularis doctrine’ (‘a man of great and exceptional learning’)) that he turn his attention precisely to this work (B. Gatta, ‘Dal casale al libro: i Della Valle’, in M. Miglio with P. Farenga and A. Modigliani (eds), Scrittura, biblioteche e stampa a Roma nel Quattrocento. Aspetti e problemi (Vatican City, 1983), I, 639–52, at p. 639; B. Gatta, ‘Lelio Della Valle’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 37 (Rome, 1989), 757–8). V. Brown, ‘Varro, Marcus Terentius’, in F.E. Cranz and P.O. Kristeller (eds), Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum. Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries. Annotated Lists and Guides (Washington DC, 1980), IV, 452–500, esp. pp. 467–74; M. Accame, Pomponio Leto. Vita e insegnamento (Tivoli, 2008), 124–37, esp. pp. 124–5 with n. 66.

71 See Perosa, Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone (above, n. 35), 77: ‘Et in detto luogho si fa la domenica innanzi al carnesciale una certa festa di tori et porci con carra, … Et in sur uno prato a piè del detto monte di Testaccio in tale dì fanno correre tre pali, due con cavagli et uno con cavalle, et vannovi e’ caporioni con molte genti armate et a piè et a cavallo …' (‘And in the place I have mentioned on the Sunday before Carnival there takes place a certain festival of bulls and boars with carts … And on a field at the foot of the aforesaid hill of Testaccio on that day they put on three races, two with stallions and one with mares, and thither go the heads of the districts with many armed people both on foot and on horse’). Adam Usk gives a vivid account from c. 1402 (Given-Wilson, The Chronicle of Adam Usk (above, n. 35), 194–7).

72 Cf. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome (above, n. 4), 57; Fulvio, Antiquitates Vrbis (above, n. 33), fol. 80r.

73 Cf. Servius on Virgil, Aeneid 2.140, Paulus ex Festo p. 350 Mueller. The date is not known.

74 His continuation to Piazza Navona (‘ab ipsa autem ecclesia … recta brevis et usu expeditissima nunc est via’ (‘from the Church itself … today there is a straight, short and very convenient road’)) was along the via Retta, which was straight because it followed the ancient road. See Burroughs, C., From Signs to Design. Environmental Process and Reform in Early Renaissance Rome (Cambridge (MA)/London, 1990), 79Google Scholar; Westfall, C.W., In This Most Perfect Paradise. Alberti, Nicholas V, and the Invention of Conscious Urban Planning in Rome, 1447–55 (University Park/London, 1974)Google Scholar, map A on pp. 64–5; Palmer, R.E.A., Studies of the Northern Campus Maximus in Ancient Rome (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 80.2) (Philadelphia, 1990), p. 59Google Scholar: ‘Beneath the Piazza Colonna on the Corso (= Via Flaminia), the Via delle Copelle, Via di S. Agostino, and Via dei Coronari lies a straight way …’; Westfall, In This Most Perfect Paradise (above), 70: ‘The Via dei Coronari was the main processional route from the Vatican to the Via Lata and from there to the Porta del Popolo’. Westfall pointed out here that the building of the Collegio Capranica blocked this route c. 1460.

75 Campus Martius, Roma Instaurata 2.69, 70, pp. 249–50.

76 It was not identified as the Hadrianeum until the twentieth century (Cipollone, M., ‘Hadrianeum’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae III (H–O) (Rome, 1996), 7–8Google Scholar) but from the early sixteenth century Antoninus Pius was recognized as its builder: Albertini, Opusculum de Mirabilibus (above, n. 11), in liber I, ‘De Campo Martio’: ‘Erat templum Ant. Pii non longe a columna eius coclide: ut cubitales litterae in marmore effosso anno salutis MCCCCC demonstrarunt: ubi nunc visuntur ingentes columnae marmoreae: in quo loco noster Alexander Nero Florentinus habitat. Corrupte dicitur lo Trullo’ (‘The temple of Antoninus Pius was not far from his spiral column, as is shown by an inscription on a block of marble dug up in 1500, where the huge marble columns are seen today. My friend Alexander Nero from Florence lives here. It is called the Trullo through a corruption’) (sig. Hiir) (Valentini and Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma (above, n. 34), IV, 476); cf. Fulvio, Antiquitates Vrbis (above, n. 33), Porticus Antonini Pii stadiata (fol. 69r).

77 Claridge, A., Rome. An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford, 1998), 199–201Google Scholar; Hülsen, C., Le chiese di Roma nel medio evo. Cataloghi ed appunti (Florence, 1927; reprinted Hildesheim, 1975), 485–6Google Scholar; Lanciani, R., Storia degli scavi di Roma e notizie intorno le collezioni romane di antichità, 7 vols (Rome, 1902–12; reprinted Rome, 1989–2002), I, 173–4Google Scholar, fig. 100; R. Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome (London, 1895), 99–101. Lefevre, R., ‘S. Stefano del Trullo, hora S. Giuliano’, Strenna dei Romanisti 25 (1964), 319–24, at p. 322Google Scholar mentioned a ‘radical restoration’ in 1453, but did not provide any evidence for this. See also the detail from Tempesta's map (1593), p. 321.

78 Roma Instaurata 2.73, p. 250: ‘Habuit vero Campus Martius multa quorum minimas nunc ac prope nullas extare reliquias miraculum est’ (‘The Campus Martius included much; it is amazing that very little, and almost no remains of them survive today’); cf. Tortelli in Capoduro, Roma antica (above, n. 67), 55: ‘Habuit olim Campus Martius aedifitia plura et admiranda, quorum parvulae ruinae adhuc restantes ad miraculum aspiciuntur’ (‘Once the Campus Martius included many wonderful buildings; amazingly there are seen very little ruins of them still standing’).

79 For example, Fulvio, Antiquitates Vrbis (above, n. 33), fol. 88r refers to columns still standing in a garden near the church and fol. 69r to many columns from around the Piazza di Pietra turned into lime ‘his proximis annis’ (‘in recent years’).

80 Cf. Roma Instaurata 3.48–51, p. 267. San Basilio, the church constructed out of the remains of the temple, is put in the Forum of Trajan. Cf. Poggio, De Varietate Fortunae, in Valentini and Zuchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma (above, n. 34), IV, 242.

81 For the text see Capoduro, Roma antica (above, n. 67), 44–6, and, on the use of Biondo, pp. 14–18 and notes. See also G. Donati, L'Orthographia di Giovanni Tortelli (Percorsi dei classici 11) (Messina, 2006), 204–5 with n. 1, 297–8.

82 ‘Si quis enim urbis Romae aetatis nostrae partes singulas vel mente, vel oculis lustrando pervagabitur, ea quae populo nunc et domibus frequentata sunt, a nobis paene intacta intelliget, quod quidem nulla a nobis negligentia aut inadvertentia magis factum est, quam ne ignota imprudenter asserere, aut impossibilia vane et leviter conari compelleremur’ (‘If one roams through particular parts of the city of Rome of our own day, doing a mental or visual survey, one will realize that I have barely touched the areas now crowded with people and houses. I did not do this so much through carelessness or oversight, but so that I should not be constrained to make rash statements on the basis of ignorance or idly and frivolously attempt the impossible’).

83 Capoduro, Roma antica (above, n. 67), 72, cf. p. 106 n. 398, Biondo, Roma Instaurata 3.80.

84 At Roma Instaurata 3.37 (p. 265), shortly after mentioning his climb of Montecitorio, Biondo remarks that he is living at that time in the Via Flaminia ‘sub Citatorum monte’ (‘beneath Montecitorio’) (cf. Robathan ‘Flavio Biondo's Roma Instaurata’ (above, n. 17), 205 n. 10). His friendship with the powerful prelate Domenico Capranica (Fubini, ‘Biondo Flavio’ (above, n. 4), 543, 549, 551, 553) would have given him occasion to view the site of the Palazzo Capranica (1430(s)–1451 (?)) while it was under construction.

85 Burroughs, From Signs to Design (above, n. 74), 156–7.

86 See Orlandi, G. and Portoghesi, P. (eds), Leone Battista Alberti. L'Architettura [De Re Aedificatoria], 2 vols (Milan, 1966), II, 707Google Scholar: ‘viae quaedam multo digniores … uti sunt quae in templum basilicam spectaculumve ducunt’ (‘certain streets are much more important … such as those that lead to a temple, a basilica, or a place for shows’); 711: ‘atqui viam quidem intra urbem … bellissime ornabunt porticus lineamentis pariles … sed viae ipsius partes, quibus egregie ornamentur debeantur, sunt haec: pons trivium forus spectaculum; … spectaculum vero haud aliud quippiam est quam forus gradibus circumseptus’ (‘The parts of the street that especially require ornamentation are these; the bridge, the cross-roads, the forum, the place for shows; … the place for shows is nothing other than a forum surrounded by steps’).

87 Grafton, A., Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance (Harmondsworth, 2000), 300–1Google Scholar. For an introduction to the controversy about Alberti's role in Nicholas's Rome see ch. 8. Biondo certainly knew of De Re Aedificatoria (White, Biondo Flavio, Italy Illuminated (above, n. 50), I, 191 (2.47)); cf. S. Borsi, Leon Battista Alberti e l'antichità romana (Biblioteca della nuova antologia 14) (Florence, 2004), 40–4.

88 For example, the slightly later antiquarian Andrea Fulvio, in his Antiquaria Vrbis (Rome, 1513) (sig. Piiirv) first follows Biondo, but a handwritten correction pasted into the copy held by the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome (cat. no. 5. 4; cf. Weiss, R., ‘Andrea Fulvio antiquario romano (c. 1470–1527)’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 28 (1959), 1–44, at p. 20 n. 4)Google Scholar expresses doubt about the connection of the Equirria with Santa Maria in Aquiro: ‘ut quidem scribunt nec signa videntur ibidem / ast ego dicerim [?] tales in agone peractos / haud procul hinc ludos Ecuria nomine dictos’ (‘as some write, but traces are not seen there. But I would say that not far from here such games, called Equirria, were performed in the Campus Agonis’). Naturally the discussion is much longer in his prose Antiquitates Vrbis (above, n. 33). Under ‘De Circo quem nunc Agonem nominant’ (fol. 66rv) he disagrees with Biondo's etymology of Santa Maria in Aquiro (‘vulgaris opinio, … nomine tantum similitudine deceptus’ (‘the common opinion misled by the similarity of the name alone’) (cf. Hülsen, Le chiese di Roma nel medio evo (above, n. 77), 310–11; Capoduro, Roma antica (above, n. 67), 101 n. 278), while suggesting another equally implausible (ab aquis)), and argues that there are no visible signs in this area of a circus where the Equirria could have taken place, concluding that the truth of the matter cannot be known.

89 Roma antica di Famiano Nardini, ed. A. Nibby (fourth Roman edition, Rome, 1818; reprinted Rome, 1998), book VI, ch. V, pp. 71–4 (on the grounds of the misinterpretation, based on textual corruption, of Cassiodorus, Variae 3.51); cf. Robathan, ‘Flavio Biondo's Roma Instaurata’ (above, n. 17), 206–7; Raffarin-Dupuis, Flavio Biondo Rome restaurée (above, n. 17), lxii.

90 For example, Paolo Marsi in his commentary on Ovid's Fasti (Venice, 1482) ad 5.552 (sig. xiiv) takes it to be the same as the ‘fora Caesaris’ of Ovid, Tristia 3.1.27 (with thanks to Peter Fane-Saunders for this information); Albertini, Opusculum de Mirabilibus (above, n. 11), in Liber I, ‘De Foris et curiis’: ‘Forum Augustum erat apud ecclesiam sanctorum Cosmae et Dam. versus Turrim Comitum’ (‘The Forum of Augustus was near the Church of Santi Cosma e Damiano towards the Torre dei Conti’) (sig. Giiiv); Johannes Michael Nagonius in his epic dedicated to Julius II c. 1503–5: ‘Parte alia Martem quem struxit victor in orbe / Caesar et Ultoris iussit delubra vocari, / Iuncta foro triplici …’ (‘In another direction the Temple of Mars which Caesar built as world conqueror; he commanded the shrine, adjoined to the three fora to be called the Avenger's’) (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 1682, fol. 68rv); Fulvio, Antiquitates Vrbis (above, n. 33): ‘Foro Caesaris et foro Romano iunctum erat forum Augusti, quod fuisse creditur, ubi nunc est templum sancti Hadriani in tribus foris …’ (‘The Forum of Augustus which they thought was where the church of Sant'Adriano in the three fora is now, was connected to the Forum of Caesar and the Roman Forum’) (fol. 54v). The Regionaries' list of the fora in Regio VIII gives ‘Forum Caesaris Augusti Nervi Traiani’. Pomponio Leto's interpolated version adds to the Forum of Augustus ‘cum aede Martis Ultoris’ (cf. Suetonius, Divus Augustus 29.1); Valentini and Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma (above, n. 34), I, 224.

91 Cf. Mirabilia Vrbis Romae 25 (simply the temple and the statue), Poggio, De Varietate Fortunae, in Valentini and Zuchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma (above, n. 34), IV, 241: ‘in foro Martis statuam quae hodie Martis fori nomen tenet’ (‘in the Forum of Mars is the statue that today bears the name ‘Mars fori’').

92 Marliani, B., L'antichità di Roma, trans. Barbarasa, H. ([Rome], 1548)Google Scholar, sig. Fiiir (first published in Latin in 1534).

93 This view was commemorated in the epigram on the doors of the church (‘Martvrii gestans virgo Martina coronam / eiecto hinc Martis numine templa tenet’ (‘the virgin Martina wearing a martyr's crown has the church now Mars has been expelled from here’)), cited from Lanciani, R., New Tales of Old Rome (London, 1901), 144Google Scholar. See fig. 150, the detail from Leonardo Bufalini's map (1551), in Lanciani, Storia degli scavi di Roma (above, n. 77), I, 244. It shows a ‘Templum Martis’ on the site of Santi Luca e Martina. Biondo says (Roma Instaurata 3.55 (p. 267)): ‘sed quod templum ibi [S. Martinella] Mars habuerit ignoramus’ (‘but we do not know what temple Mars had there’).

94 Hart, V. and Hicks, P., Palladio's Rome: a Translation of Andrea Palladio's Two Guidebooks to Rome (New Haven, 2006), 37 (fol. 10r)Google Scholar.

95 Palladio, A., Quattro libri dell'architettura. The Four Books on Architecture, trans. Tavernor, R. and Schofield, R. (Cambridge (MA), 1997), 225Google Scholar. Palladio was given the credit in Jordan, H., Topographie der Stadt Rom im Alterthum (Berlin, 1871), I.2, 447 n. 15Google Scholar. See Gunther, H., Das Studium der Antiken Architektur in den Zeichnungen der Hochrenaissance (Tübingen, 1988), 243–328, esp. p. 279 n. 150Google Scholar.

96 Palladio, Quattro libri dell'architettura (above, n. 95), 226, fig. 16.

97 Reprinted Farnborough, 1969, 138–45.

98 See also Roma antica di Famiano Nardini (above, n. 89), book V, ch. IX, pp. 239–40: ‘Del Foro di Augusto non si ha dubbio. Era dietro alla chiesa di S. Martina poco meno, che a lato di S. Adriano’ (‘There is no doubt about the Forum of Augustus. It was behind the church of S. Martina a little less than beside S. Adriano’).

99 Canina, L., Indicazione topografica di Roma antica distribuita nelle XIV regioni (Rome, 1831), 135Google Scholar, referring to Piale, S., Del tempio di Marte Ultore e de' tre fori antichi di Cesare di Augusto e di Nerva (Rome, 1821)Google Scholar.

100 See Cassanelli, R., David, M. and Albentis, E.D., Fragments de la Rome antique dans les dessins des architectes français vainqueurs du Prix de Rome, 1786–1924, trans. Ménégaux, O. (Paris, 1999), 102–9Google Scholar, with figs 49–57. CIL VI 2158 (which mentions ‘mansiones Saliorum Palatinorum’ (‘lodgings of the Salii Palatini’)) was found in the remains near San Basilio in 1477, and again in the temple in 1842. It might have given a clue, when combined with Suetonius, Divus Claudius 33 (‘… in Augusti foro ictusque nidore prandii, quod in proxima Martis aede Saliis apparabatur’ (‘… in the Forum of Augustus and stirred by the savour of the luncheon that was being prepared for the Salii in the nearby Temple of Mars’)).