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 p291  Iuno Sospita

Articles on p291 of

Samuel Ball Platner (as completed and revised by Thomas Ashby):
A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome,
London: Oxford University Press, 1929.

Iuno Sospita, aedes (1) (templum, Cicero): a temple vowed in 197 B.C. by the consul C. Cornelius Cethegus during the Insubrian war (Liv. XXXII.30.10), and dedicated in 104​1 (Liv. XXXIV.53.3) on 1st February (Fast. Ant. ap. NS 1921, 86). It is said (Cic. de Div. I.4, 99; Obseq. 75)​a that L. Julius, consul in 90 B.C., restored a temple of Iuno Sospita, in consequence of a dream of Cornelia, the daughter of Q. Caecilius Metellus Balearicus, and it is probable that it is this temple of Iuno Sospita in Rome that is meant rather than the more famous one at Lanuvium (HJ 509‑510; Gilb. III.82, 430; WR 188; Rosch. II.596). It was in the forum Holitorium, and is generally identified with the smallest of the three temples (through Frank prefers the central one — TF 126‑130) that lie side by side beneath the present church of S. Nicola in Carcere. These temples have the same orientation, and the other two are those of Spes and Ianus (qq.v.). The smallest is of the Doric order, hexastyle, amphiprostyle and peripteral, and built of travertine. Five of its columns with portions of the entablature remain, built into the south wall of the church (HJ 511‑514; Delbrück, Die drei Tempel am Forum Holitorium, Rome 1903;​2 Hülsen, Mitt. 1906, 169‑192).

Iuno Sospita (2): a temple which stood on the Palatine, if the traditional reading of Ovid (Fast. II.55‑59) be preserved:

Nothing further is known of such a temple, and there is some difficulty in explaining why a cult from Lanuvium was admitted within the pomerium at a fairly early date. Ovid may have confused the Magna Mater with the Mater Matuta (q.v.), and may be referring in this passage to Iuno Sospita in the forum Holitorium. If this be so, however, that temple could hardly have been restored in 90 B.C., or be that of which the ruins are beneath S. Nicola in Carcere, if it had vanished so completely in Ovid's time (WR 188; BC 1914, 97; Rosch. II.596; HJ 46; Gilb. I.229; III.430).

The Authors' Notes:

1 Here it is referred to under the name Iuno Matuta: Sigonius reads 'sospitae.' Hülsen says that it was dedicated four years later, i.e. in 193: but the Latin is post quadrennium (AJP 1907, 328; WR cit. agrees).

❦

2 Cf. also Hellenistische Bauten, II.43.

Thayer's Note:

a O the joys of alternate numbering systems, or even the mere threat of them. Platner-Ashby do have at this point "Obseq. 75", with no correction in their addenda and corrigenda section; the intended passage, however, is clearly the one linked: in the edition on this site (V. Verger, Panckoucke, Paris, 1842) numbered CXV — and in Rossbach's edition (Teubner, 1909), numbered 55 according to information kindly supplied by Prof. Kenneth Walters, Chairperson of the Classics, Greek and Latin Department, Wayne State University, who suspects, and very plausibly, an error in Platner-Ashby.

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