Temple of Mars in Clivo

Location and history

The Temple of Mars in Clivo once stood just beyond the Porta Appia, outside the Aurelian Walls, about two kilometers from the Porta Capena. It looked out over a valley where the Almo stream ran and was situated next to a grove. The name came from a slope in the road leading up to it, which the Romans called a clivus. The temple was vowed to the god Mars after the Roman loss to the Senones at the Battle of the Allia in 390 BCE, according to Livy.

It was dedicated on June 1, 387 BCE, by Titus Quinctius, a member of the Duumviri sacrorum. In 189 BCE, the Via Appia was paved from the Porta Capena up to this spot, along with the connecting road to the temple, the Clivus Martis. That road was then called the Via Tecta because a portico was built along it. Inside the temple stood a statue of Mars and figures of wolves, animals considered sacred to him.

The Mars statue was likely the one set up by former consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus in 211 BCE, fulfilling a vow made during the capture of Syracuse in 212 BCE. The writer Julius Obsequens recorded in his Prodigiorum liber that people had seen this statue sweating. The temple also housed one of the two Lapis manalis stones. This stone was used in an Etruscan rain-making ceremony called the aquaelicium.

During a drought, the pontifices would remove the stone from the temple, carry it in a procession to the Capitoline Hill, and offer a sacrifice to Jupiter, asking him to send rain. The area around the temple, stretching as far as the Almo, was known as ad Martis. Soldiers of the Republic would gather there before setting off to war, and they would return there to set down their weapons before entering the city. On July 15, the Transvectio equitum procession began from this spot, honoring the victory at the Battle of Lake Regillus.

The temple no longer stands, and no one knows when it was torn down. It was still mentioned as standing in the 8th century in the Einsiedeln Itinerary. The only surviving image of the temple appears on a frieze of the Arch of Constantine.