Atrium Libertatis

The Atrium Libertatis (Latin for "House of Freedom") was a monument of ancient Rome, the seat of the censors' archive, located on the saddle that connected the Capitolium to the Quirinal Hill,[1] a short distance from the Roman Forum.

Atrium Libertatis
LocationRome, Italy
History
Founded3rd century BC
CulturesRoman

Livy reports that the edifice already existed in 212 BC, when some hostages were kept there[2], and that it was built again by the censors of 194 BC.[3]

A second complete reconstruction was promoted by Gaius Asinius Pollio starting from 39 BC, with the spoils gained from his victory over the Illyrians[4], perhaps continuing the project, already conceived by Caesar, to complete the Forum dedicated to himself and inaugurated in the space between the saddle where the Atrium Libertatis and the Roman Forum stood just a few years earlier. The monument was to be completed by 28 BC[5].

It was a large complex, which included the censors' archive, with the lists of citizens and the bronze tables with the maps of the ager publicus[6], two libraries[7] and maybe a basilica (Basilica Asinia)[8].

The sources recall the presence, inside the complex, of numerous works of art by famous sculptors, some of Neo-Attic taste, others in the more "baroque" style of the Anatolian schools: among them, the sculptural group with the "Supplice of Dirce" by the sculptors Apollonius and Tauriscus[9]. Also mentioned are the Appiadi, the work of the sculptor Stephanos, to which Ovid[10] refers in relation to the neighbor Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Caesar.

The building disappeared at the beginning of the 2nd century, since the mountain saddle on which it stood was flattened for the construction of the Trajan's Forum. Its functions were inherited by the building complex consisting of the Basilica Ulpia and the two libraries next to the Trajan's Column. In particular, the ceremony of slaves manumission probably took place in one of the apses of the Basilica Ulpia[11].

In late Roman Empire, the name of Atrium Libertatis was also attributed to the Curia or to an area adjacent to it[12].

Notes
  1. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, 4.17.7. An alternative hypothesis, which however had little response, identifies the Atrium Libertatis known from the sources with the structure that rises on the Capitolium on the side towards the Roman Forum, under the Palazzo Senatorio, commonly identified with the Tabularium erected by Quintus Lutatius Catulus in 78 BC: Nicholas Purcell, Atrium Libertatis, in Papers of the British School at Rome, 61, 1993, pages 125-155.
  2. Livy (Ab Urbe condita 25.7.12).
  3. Livy, Ab Urbe condita, 34.44.5.
  4. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, De vita Caesarum, Aug., 29.
  5. 28 BC is the year of the death of Marcus Terentius Varro, commissioned by Caesar to set up the first public library in Rome, however never built: the sources (Gaius Plinius Secundus, Naturalis historia, 7.115) report that as an extraordinary honor a statue was dedicated to him in the Atrium while he was still alive.
  6. Livy, Ab Urbe condita, 43.16.13. The names of the freedmen (Latin: liberti) at the act of their freeing (Latin: manumissio) were entered in the citizens' lists. The name "Libertatis" given to the complex refers precisely to the ceremony that took place on these occasions
  7. Gaius Plinius Secundus, Naturalis historia, 7.115 e 35.10; Publius Ovidius Naso, Tristia, 3.1.69.
  8. The name of the basilica is attested in an inscription, now lost, whose interpretation, however, has been debated by scholars: see Filippo Coarelli, s.v. Basilica Asinia, in Eva Margareta Steinby (edited by), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, I, Rome 1993, page 170.
  9. The sculptural group was the original, from which the famous "Farnese Bull" of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples was copied.
  10. Ovid, Ars amatoria, 1.82
  11. The fragment of the Forma Urbis Romae, where the western apse of the Basilica is depicted, bears the inscription LIBERTATIS
  12. An identification of the Atrium Libertatis connected to the Curia with the reconstruction of the portico on the south-eastern side of the Forum of Caesar under Diocletian has recently been proposed: Augusto Fraschetti, La conversione. Da Roma pagana a Roma cristiana, Rome 1999, page 218 et seq.; Gian Luca Gregori, Alcune iscrizioni imperiali senatorie ed equestri nell'Antiquarium Comunale del Celio, in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 116, 1997, page 169, note 37; Massimo Vitti, Il Foro di Cesare dopo i grandi scavi del Giubileo del 2000, in J. Ruiz de Arbulo (edited by), Simulacra Romae, Tarragona 2004, pp. 15-17 (text in .pdf downloadable from this page on website SimulacraRomae).

Bibliography
  • Filippo Coarelli, Guida archeologica di Roma, Verona, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1984.
  • Filippo Coarelli, s.v. Atrium Libertatis, in Eva Margareta Steinby (edited by), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, I, Rome 1993, pp. 133–135.
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