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IX.—The Niger Lapis in the Comitium at Rome
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 November 2011
Extract
On January 11th last (1899), while workmen under the directions of Commendatore Boni were removing the rough post-Imperial “selce,” or paving-stones, in front of the church of S. Adriano and some fifteen yards immediately east of the Arch of Severus, there came to light a pavement of black marble, rhomboidal-trapezoid in shape, and framed on three of its sides with blocks of travertine. These blocks were found to be grooved on the southern and eastern sides, and from the groove or “incassatura,” on the former of these sides, projected to the height of two feet, three contiguous slabs of white marble. They had been noticed two or three days before. It now became evident that they had been appropriated from some late imperial building and utilised in order to act as substitute for some older fence which had isolated and protected this remarkable black pavement.
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- Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1900
References
page 175 note a It is well, perhaps, to recall that the great fire in the reign of Carinus (A.D. 282) swept over all this portion of the Forum, and once more destroyed the Curia and the monuments above ground in the Comitium.
page 176 note a There is a quarry of bianco-nero marble on the banks of the Lez in France, near S. Girons, and another at S. Lizier. The river has hollowed out for itself a bed over the marble, but it is easy to perceive the white veinings beneath the clear water. It should be noted, however, that after comparisons have been made between the marble from S. Girons, from Varenna on the Lake of Como, and from Carso in the Gulf of Trieste, none of them are found to attain the velvet-like glossiness of the Niger Lapis. But after all may not this be an African, not a European, marble ? In Book xxxvi. c. 29, Pliny quotes a passage from a lost work of Varro in which that learned antiquary distinctly says that the African black marbles are more compact than those of Italy: “Nigros ex Africa firmiores esse tradit quam in Italia.”
page 179 note a Several small bread-cakes.
page 180 note a Several small pieces of Pentelic marble worked smooth also came from the sacrificial layer. Besides these were a dog's head wearing a collar, in terra-cotta, and three fragments of bone strigils.
page 181 note a Cf. Festus, De S. Verborum. p. 242.
page 183 note a T. Livii Patavini Historiarum ab Urbe condita, lib. vi. cap. 1.
page 183 note b Ibid. lib. v. cap. 50.
page 183 note c I.e. written alternately from right to left, and left to right, like the course of oxen drawing a plough in successive furrows.
page 184 note a “The first idea which presents itself on seeing this inscription, not written on a wall or on tablet of metal, but on a ‘stela,’ isolated in such a place as the Comitium, is that it ought to relate to the very spot, to its sanctity and inviolability, and, in fact, it is practically beyond doubt that this and no other is the subject of the writing.” Dom° Comparetti, in Sulla Iscrizione Arcaica del Comizio Romano. 1899. Notizie e Studi.