TRANSITORIA, DOMUS
* a palace erected by Nero
qua Palatium et Maecenatis
hortos continuaverat (Tac.
Ann. xv. 39; cf. Suet. Nero 3 :
domum a
Palatio Esquilias usque fecit quam primo transitoriam, mox incendio
absumptam restitutamque auream nominavit). Its object was to
connect with the Palatine, not merely the
HORTI MAECENATIS (q.v.)
but other estates (
HORTI LAMIANI,
LOLLIANI, etc.) which in one way
or another had come into the possession of the imperial house. It
was destroyed by the fire of 64 A.D. and replaced by the domus Aurea.
No remains of it were believed to exist, until the excavations made by
Boni under the southern portion of the state apartments of the domus
Augustana (Flavia) led to the rediscovery of the remains of a sumptuous
and beautifully decorated palace in two stories. By some it is attributed to the
DOMUS Q. LUTATII CATULI (q.v.), but this will not agree
with the date of the construction. Others assign it to Claudius, owing
to the existence of a quarry mark bearing his name on a piece of cornice
found there; but it is a good deal more likely that we have to deal
with the remains of a part of the domus Transitoria (the attribution to
the original house of Augustus (HJ 90) will not hold, as the remains are
obviously of a later date) ; seeMem. Am.
Acad. v. 116, 121, 122.
To the lower floor belongs a sunk garden; one wall of it is occupied
by a magnificent nymphaeum, once decorated with polychrome
marbles, but terribly damaged in the excavations made by the Farnese
in 1721 sqq. (
Mitt. 1894, 22-26; LR 163; PBS vii. p. 48, No. 100,
where the references to Breval's Remarks should read Ser. I
(1726)
ii. 298; Ser. II
(1738) i. 84 sqq.; Kirkhall's coloured engravings-
copies at Eton, Bn. 13, 51-54). In the centre were two pavilions with
small columns, and between them garden beds, with vertical walls
of curved slabs of marble, as in the ' Maison des Jardinieres ' at Timgad
(II. 24). The wall opposite the nymphaeum is decorated with niches.
On the south-west is a room with extremely beautiful paintings-small
scenes from the Homeric cycle, within a framework in which blue
and gold are predominant. What little remains of the polychrome
marble pavement and wall facing shows extreme delicacy and beauty
(YW 1912, io-II ;
1913, 22 ; BA 1914, Cr 73). The irregular curving
concrete foundations which cut through the whole of this part of the
building belong to the domus Aurea, as they are certainly posterior to
the fire of Nero and equally certainly anterior to Domitian.
Two rooms to the north-east, wrongly known as the baths of Livia
(HJ go, n. 117), have been accessible since 1721; and their ceilings
have been frequently drawn (PBS vii. p. 33, n. 24 (cf. Egger, Krit.
Verzeichn. d. Handzeichn. in Wien, n. 114); ib. p. 60, n. 14, is there
wrongly identified with the ceiling of the second room, which is, however, represented by Ronczewski, Gew6lbeschmuck, p. 29, fig. 16, and
by Parker, photo 2227). Fine coloured drawings of both exist in the
breakfast-room of the Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London.
1
Beyond these rooms is a very large latrine, which has been wrongly
thought to be the machinery chamber of a hydraulic lift, which would,
it is supposed, have worked in a shaft over 120 feet deep found not
far off (
JRS 1913, 251). The dining-room with a revolving ceiling,
which Boni supposed to have been worked by the same machinery, was
in the domus Aurea (Suet. Nero, 31).
From each end of the nymphaeum a flight of marble stairs ascended
to the upper floor. Under the later triclinium only the bed of the
pavement is left ; but to the south-west and north-east its white marble
slabs can be seen, some three or four feet below the level of Domitian,
who reconstructed this part of the palace with only one story, abolishing
the lower floor entirely; while under his nymphaeum on the north-west
may be seen a remarkably fine pavement of opus sectile, which when
found showed clear and abundant traces of damage by fire. Close to
it is a room which once contained a series of fountains, the water from
which ran down to the nymphaeum below.
The piscina under the basilica of the Flavian palace is attributed
to Nero by Boni (
JRS 1913, 246), who wrongly refers Suet. cit. to
the Palatine. See
DOMUS AUREA, p. 166, and
DOMUS AUGUSTIANA,
p. 161. Cf. ZA 206-208.
Other remains belonging to the domus Transitoria have been found
near the junction of the Nova via with the clivus Palatinus (
AJA 1923,
402); for remains under the platform of the temple of Venus and
Rome, see LR 197, 198;
Mitt. 1892, 289, 291; Mem. Am.
Acad. v.
121, 122.
