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 p568  Via Tecta

Article on p568 of

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


Via TECTA (1): a street in the campus Martius, mentioned three times in the literature of the first century (Seneca, Apoc. 13: descendunt per viam Sacram . . . inicit illi manum Talthybius . . . et trahit . . . per campum Martium; et inter Tiberim et viam Tectam descendit ad inferos; Mart. III.5.5; VIII.75.1,2: dum repetit sera conductos nocte penates / Lingonus a tecta Flaminiaque recens), which seems to have connected the region of the via Flaminia and forum with the Tarentum. The pavement of an ancient street leading in this general direction has been found at various points in the Via di Pescheria, del Pianto, de' Giubbonari, de' Capellari, and del Banco di S. Spirito, and on the same line as the fragments of the Porticus Maximae (q.v.). It is possible that this was the via Tecta, so called because it was protected by some kind of a colonnade before the porticus Maximae were built (HJ 485; KH III).​1 The name Via Recta, which some authorities apply to the road going east from the pons Aelius to the via Flaminia (LF 14), is due to a wrong reading of the first passage (HJ 503, n78).

Via TECTA (2): the name of a street outside the porta Capena, found only in Ovid (Fast. VI.191‑192: lux eadem Marti festa est, quem prospicit extra oppositum tectae porta Capena viae), and probably applied to the via Appia between the porta Capena and the temple of Mars (q.v.) because it was bordered by some kind of a colonnade (HJ 213; cf. above).


The Authors' Note:

1 In that case Claudius would have been led by Talthybius past the porticus Octaviae, Philippi and Minucia frumentaria, along the via Tecta, and so to the ara Ditis in the Tarentum.


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