I am she that is the naturall mother of all things,
mistresse and governesse of all the Elements,
the initiall progeny of worlds,
chiefe of powers divine, Queene of heaven,
the principall of the Gods celestiall, the light of the goddesses.
(Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI, 5)
Fig. 1: Statue representing a priestess of Isis; the right hand has a sistrum, the left has an oinochoe. Hadrian Age (Musei Capitolini, num inv. MC 744)
Goddess charme is irresistible, and during his life Apuleius will defend himself against the accusation of joining the worship of Isis.
Isis cult arrives in Rome during the Hellenism, through the culture of the Ptolemaic Egypt. At the beginning her name was Isis euploia or pelagia, “protectress of the sailors”. But the syncretic nature of Roman religion gave to the goddess various names and features, and she became one of the most important deities linked to mystery cults. Isis infact was called Panthea, and “goddess with thousand names”, as we can read on the following verses of the Hymn to Isis:
for the Phrygians call me the mother of the Gods:
the Athenians, Minerva:
the Cyprians, Venus: the Candians, Diana:
the Sicilians Proserpina: the Eleusians, Ceres:
some Juno, other Bellona, other Hecate:
and principally the æthiopians which dwell in the Orient,
and the ægyptians which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine,
and by their proper ceremonies accustome to worship mee,
doe call mee Queene Isis.
(Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI, 5)
From the beginning of her cult in the II century BC, Isis was worshipped in the heart of the city of Rome. We have two inscriptions (CIL VI, 2247, 2248) coming from the Capitol Hill, that mention two sacerdotes Isidis Capitolinae i.e. priests of her cult, set in the most important of the seven hills of Rome. In few years the city was full of followers, initiates to her mysteries: the worship of Isis spread so much that the sacred places multiplied, from simple altars to temples, such as the one under the Church of San Silvestro on the Quirinal Hill, and the Iseum Campensis, the greatest shrine dedicated to Isis in the ancient Rome.
But the buildings dedicated to the goddess had her same destiny, characterised by a large number of followers but also by continous attacks of the roman government. From the half of the first century BC the temple of Isis Capitolina was involved in political struggles: the historian Cassius Dion (40.47.1-4) tells us that in the 53 BC the Senate ordered to destroy all the private temples inside the walls of the city that were dedicated to Isis or to Serapis, an Hellenistic representation of the god Osiris, another deity imported from Egypt, who was brother and husband of Isis.
Despite these facts, the construction of the Iseum Campensis started in the 43 BC, ten years after the prohibition of the Senate, if we correctly interpret another testimony of Cassius Dion (47.15.4. The protagonists of the second triumvirate, financed the building and most probably carried on the earlier building plan started by Julius Caesar in the Campus Martius. Few years after its inauguration, yet, the temple of Isis didn’t stop to be at the centre of the fights between the political parties of Rome. During the the Julio-Claudian Age the worship of the goddess was temporarily prohibited first by Agrippa, in the 21 BC, while the emperor Tiberius executed the priests of Isis.
After the reintroduction of the cult of Isis under the emperor Caligula, and the complete rebuilding by Domitian after the fire of the 80 AD the Iseum Campensis and the worship of the goddess lived peacefully until the end of the Roman empire.
We know exactly the location of the Iseum by a passage of Juvenal (6.528), that put it nearby the Saepta Iulia, and especially by three fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae: this was an enormous map incised onto marble slabs, that hung on a wall of a great hall in the Templum Pacis, part of the Imperial Fora; it represents the city of Rome during the Severan Age. These fragments make possible to recontruct the dimensions of the sanctuary (220x70 mt.) (fig. 3).
Fig. 2: Graphic reconstruction of the urban site with the three fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae.
Fig. 3: Plan of the Pigna neighborough in Rome with the original position of the Iseum Campensis.
This complex structure is arranged along a North-South axis, and it is included today at North by piazza S. Macuto (fig. 4a) and via del Seminario (fig. 4b), at East by via di Sant'Ignazio (fig. 4c), at South by via S. Stefano del Cacco (fig. 5) and at West, partially, by via di Santa Caterina da Siena (fig. 4d).
Fig. 4: Places of the ancient temple today.
Today, walking around the alleys of the Rione Pigna, one of the 22 quarters of the historical centre of Rome, visitors are unaware of what they could see two thousand years ago (fig 4: general plan).
Almost nothing of the ancient temple survives today, but we can find many signs of its presence: Egypt comes back in the toponymy, in the historical memory and in the archaeological finds.
Our route starts from via S. Stefano del Cacco; on the facade of the little church that gives the name to the street (fig 5), there was a statue of a greek deity called Thot, represented as a dog-faced baboon, and renamed soon by the people as "Macacco" and then "Cacco". In the same place was also found an inscription with a dedication to Serapis (IG XIV 1031).
Fig. 5: Santo Stefano del Cacco church.
The present location of the church occupies today the place of the temple of Serapis, as identified by one of the fragments in the Forma Urbis. Its exedra with a portico offers the chance to make comparisons with other buildings in Roman architecture; one of the most famous is the Serapeum of the Villa Adriana in Tivoli (fig 6).
Fig. 6: The "Canopo" of Villa Adriana in Tivoli: at the bottom, the Serapeum.
Fig. 7: the big foot of marble, maybe part of the acrolyte statue of Serapis.
Via del Piè di Marmo links together piazza del Collegio Romano and via di Santa Caterina da Siena, and runs accross the direction of the first rectangular, porticoed square, of the Iseum Campensis. This square was the entrance on the short side of the sanctuary, and was also a passage to the near buildings. Two monumental arches gave access to the square on the east and the west side.
We’re now at the end of via S. Stefano del Cacco: exactly at this point we could see the now lost Arch of Camigliano. The archaeologist F. Castagnoli (Bcom 1941, 59) identified that arch with the Arcus ad Isis in the so-called relief of the Haterii (fig 8).
Fig. 8: The arcus ad Isis as depicted in the Haterii bas-relief.
Its plan with three fornices is well known thanks of the Forma Urbis fragments, and some plans of Rome of the XVI century, like that one of Antonio Tempesta (fig 9), and of Du Perac-Lafrery (fig. 10).
9
10 
Fig. 9: Rome plan by Tempesta (1593), in which the Camigliano arch is visible.
Fig. 10: Rome plan by Du Perac Lafrery (1577) with the position of the Camigliano arch.
The arch was spoiled during the centuries, until the total destruction in the last years of the XVI century. But some blocks of travertine of the north pillar were discovered again during the archaeological excavations in 1969 and in 1980 at the number 24 of via del Piè di Marmo. This incredible remain is well documented also by the archive of the Compagnia della SS. Annunziata, that had at the time many buildings in the quarter. In a plan dated 1563, kept in the code number 920, we can read the words “massiccio anticho” (ancient ruin), that is the north pillar, at the inner part of the room B (fig. 11).
Fig. 11: Ruins of the Camigliano arch in a building between the street of sant’Ignazio and of Piè di Marmo. The red boxes underline the ruins and the name of the street.
At that time the arch was still there: via del Piè di Marmo was called “strada che passa sotto l’arco di Camigliano” (street under the arch of Camigliano), while in a rear plan in the same code the street was described as “strada che va alla piazza innanzi al Collegio de Giesuiti” (street in front of piazza dei Gesuiti) (fig. 12).
Fig. 12: The same building with the new name of the street.
The final destruction of the arch is probably related with the need to create a bigger entrance for the new building of the Collegio Romano, whose works ended in 1583.
Our route goes on along via del Piè di Marmo: we are now walking in the centre of the ancient square, in which the Forma Urbis shows a little rectangle and a little circle. In the first place the archaeologists wanted to identify the obelisk, now in piazza Navona; in the second place we can see a fountain, maybe enriched with the bronze pinecone that gave the name to the quarter, now visible in the Vatican Museums. Via di Santa Caterina da Siena lead us to the other side of the first porticoed square of the Iseum, just at the south side of the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger was the first to identify the strict relationship between the arch of Camigliano and the other arch at the entrance of the Iseum Campensis on the north side. The artist made a sketch, in which this second arch was called “u(n) giano achanto la minerua” and is linked to the arch of Camigliano by a straight line (fig. 13).
Fig 13: Sketch of the Giano arch drawn by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger.
So we have a plan of an arch with four facades that continued also the architecture plan of the near Porticus Meleagri. Most probably Antonio da Sangallo drew the monument in a building in contact with the south part of the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The Compagnia della SS. Annunziata had there many other buildings, and its archive helps us also in this case. We can identify the structures of the arch of Giano by the same words “massiccio anticho” on the plan of a building located in front of the ancient “piazza della Minerba” (fig. 14 and 15).
14 
15 
Fig 14: Ruins of the Giano arch in a building on piazza della Minerva in the 1563.
Fig. 15: The same building in the 1636.
Its life goes on until the 1872, when it was destroyed after the important works made in that period in all the area. The archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani, who was present at the demolition, admired the quality of the monument and wrote down its dimensions (width: 26 meters; height: more than 27 meters.), even if he associated it to the ruins of the Baths of Agrippa.
The monumentality of this first square wasn’t only in the porticoes and in the arches: during the XVI century in the same area were discovered the famous statues of the fluvial deities of the Nile and of the Tiber, now in the Vatican Museums in Rome, and in the Louvre Museum in Paris respectively.
Now we must go back until the building of the Collegio Romano, and walk accross via di Sant’Ignazio, to go in the second great square of the Iseum. We are walking in the ancient open area, and in its centre there was the temple of Isis. We can have an idea of the aspect of the temple thanks to a coin of the Emperor Vespasian (BMCEmp II): we know that it was tetrastyle, and that it had on the fronton a bas-relief with the goddess riding the Sirius star. There were also Egyptian statues put on bases at both sides of the main steps. The cult statue was sculptured during a sacrifice, with a vessel on the right hand. We can’t exclude its identification with the statue of the so-called “madama Lucrezia”, one of the “statue parlanti” (talking statues) of Rome, now visible in piazza San Marco. (fig. 16)
Fig. 16: Madama Lucrezia, maybe the statue of Isis.
The temple was the heart of the Iseum Campensis, and for this reason curious recontructions of its original aspect were made. The most imaginative are that one of Pieter Schenck, in which we can see a sort of “little Pantheon” inside other modern buildings (fig. 17), and a drawing of the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who set apart the monument and gave to it the aspect of a real Egyptian temple (fig. 18). The only element near to the real historical reconstruction in the interpretation of the Jesuit was the presence of the Egyptian dromos (corridor) with little obelisks and rams. There are four dots in the Forma Urbis fragments, carved with the same direction of the Porticus Meleagri, whose distance doesn’t pertmit us to identify them as columns.
17
18
Fig. 17: Ideal reconstruction of the Iseum Campensis in an engraving by Pieter Schenck.
Fig. 18: The second porticoed square of the Iseum and the temple of Isis in a picture by Athanasius Kircher.
We can go on in our route walking accross via del Seminario: this street is the north limit of the sanctuary; then we arrive in piazza della Rotonda (fig. 19). On the fountain at the centre of the square there is a little obelisk, discovered in the XIV century in piazza San Macuto.
Fig. 19: Piazza della Rotonda in Rome.
Going back to the position of the arch of Giano, and coming to the starting point of our route, we can see the facade of the church of Santa Maria sopra la Minerva, and in front of it another little obelisk, put on its “pulcino”, a sculpture that mix together the ancient and the new, an ingenious idea of Gianlorenzo Bernini. The obelisk was found in the gardens of the Domenican priests of the church (fig. 20): an archaeological discovery that didn’t go away from its original site.
Fig. 20: The “pulcino” of Bernini, in front of Aanta Maria sopra Minerva church.
Other obelisks, linked to the monument, stand today not only in Rome, but also in Florence, in the Boboli Gardens (fig. 21), and in Urbino (fig. 22): the structures of the Iseum Campensis are now lost, but its monumentality spread in the squares and in the museums of the modern cities, overcoming the passing of time.
21 
22
Fig. 21: The obelisk inside the Boboli Garden in Florence.
Fig. 22: The obelisk now in Urbino.
Paolo Vigliarolo
Bibliography:G. Gatti, ‘Topografia dell’Iseo Campense’, in RendPontAcc 20 (1943-44), pagg. 117-163.
F. Coarelli, ‘Iseum et Serapeum in Campo Martio; Isis Campensis’ in Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, Volume III, pagg 107-113.
C. Rendina, D. Paradisi, ‘Le strade di Roma’, Volume III, Roma 2003.
