Temple of Divus Augustus

Stand still for a moment and feel the ground under your shoes. Here, between the Palatine Hill and the Capitoline, the earth is uneven and packed with old brick dust, grass and fallen stone. Swifts cut across the sky above the Forum. The noise of the city comes to you softly, from far away. Somewhere close to this spot, under your feet or under the slope beside you, one of the great temples of ancient Rome is still waiting to be found.

This is the Temple of Divus Augustus, the temple of the Deified Augustus. Augustus was the first Roman emperor. He died in the year 14, after more than forty years in power. Soon after his death, the Senate declared him a god of the Roman state. A god needed a home. So Rome began to build one, here, in the heart of the old city.

Ancient writers say that his successor Tiberius began the work. Livia, the widow of Augustus, also took part. Think about that for a moment. A wife helped to build a temple to her own husband, and she became one of his priestesses. Building moved slowly. Tiberius died before the temple was finished. According to the Roman historians, his successor Caligula completed it and dedicated it with great celebrations.

Caligula left a strange story behind here. The biographer Suetonius wrote that the young emperor built a bridge over the Temple of Augustus. The bridge linked his palace on the Palatine with the Capitoline Hill, home of Jupiter. Suetonius was not a friendly witness, and he loved scandal. Still, the image stays with you — an emperor walking above a god's roof to visit another god.

And now the first surprise. Nobody knows exactly where this temple stood. Ancient sources place it in this area, behind the long Basilica Julia, near the old street that led from the Forum toward the river. But archaeologists have never excavated its remains with certainty. Large parts of the ground here are still unexcavated. One of the most important temples of imperial Rome is, quite simply, lost.

Look toward the base of the Palatine, near the old church of Santa Maria Antiqua. You will see a tall brick hall rising there. For many years, some scholars believed that this hall was the Temple of Augustus. Today most archaeologists see it differently. They link it to the emperor Domitian and to a grand entrance route up into the imperial palace. So even the most obvious candidate turned out to be something else.

How, then, do we know what the temple looked like? The answer is in Roman pockets. Roman emperors used coins as small pieces of news. In the second century, the emperor Antoninus Pius restored this temple. He issued coins that show it. On them you can see a wide front of eight columns, a triangular roof, and statues inside. Scholars usually read those statues as Augustus and Livia, together again as gods.

The temple had a long and difficult life. Rome burned many times, and this crowded district between the hills suffered more than once. Emperors repaired the building after damage. Domitian is often named as one of the restorers, and Antoninus Pius certainly was. Each repair was also a message. A ruler who rebuilt the temple of Augustus showed Rome that he stood in the line of the first emperor.

Here is a second surprise, and it is a human one. For many years, the Roman army gave bronze certificates to soldiers who had finished their service. These small bronze tablets gave a soldier and his family important legal rights. The original text was posted in public in Rome. Many surviving copies say where — on the wall behind the Temple of the Deified Augustus, near the statue of Minerva. Copies of these tablets have been found far from Rome, in old frontier provinces.

Imagine a veteran in a distant province, holding his bronze tablet. He might never see Rome. Yet his rights were tied to a wall somewhere near the place where you are standing. This temple was not only a place of worship. It was part of the machinery of the empire, a public address that the whole Roman world could point to.

The temple also held art. The writer Pliny the Elder mentions famous Greek paintings that Tiberius placed inside it. Ancient sources also speak of a library connected with the temple. So picture more than an altar and a statue. Picture marble steps, bronze doors, painted panels and scrolls, with priests, officials and visitors moving through the space every day.

After the fourth century, the written record about the temple grows thin. Rome became a Christian city. The old state cults lost their money and their meaning. Buildings like this one were closed, stripped of marble, or left to fall. Over many centuries, soil, rubble and new buildings covered the ground. The god Augustus slowly went quiet under the earth.

This absence teaches us something too. Rome is not a finished picture. It is a field of questions. Every season, archaeologists here add new pieces of evidence. Perhaps one day a trench in this area will expose a massive foundation, or a dedication stone with a name on it. Then this lost temple will have a fixed place on the map again.

Before you move on, look around you once more. Notice the brick walls rising toward the Palatine and the line of the Basilica Julia. Notice the grass growing over ground that nobody has yet opened. As you walk away, listen to your footsteps on the old paving. Somewhere close by, under that ground, the home of Rome's first emperor-god is still there... waiting for its turn to be seen.