OBELISCUS HORTORUM SALLUSTIANORUM
now standing in the Piazza
della Trinita dei Monti. This obelisk was brought to Rome some time
after the period of Augustus (Amm.
Marcell. xvii. 4. 16) and erected in
the gardens of Sallust, where it was still standing in the eighth century
(Eins. 2. 7;
Jord. ii. 344, 649). It is 13 metres high, and on its surface
is a copy made in Rome, probably about 200 A.D., of the hieroglyphics
of the obelisk of Rameses II that Augustus set up in the circus Maximus
(
BC 1897, 216-223=Ob. Eg. 140-147). In the fifteenth century it was
lying on the ground, broken into two pieces, near its base (Anon. Magl. 17,
ap. Urlichs 159;
LS i. 234) and remained there until the eighteenth
century (LD 171, who reproduces a drawing by Carlo Fontana (Windsor
9314) dated 21st March, 1706, and lettered 'scoprimento della Guglia,
etc.')
1 In 1733 Clement XII had it conveyed to the Lateran, but did not
set it up. In 1789 Pius VI erected it on its present site. The base was
covered over after 1733, but found again in 1843 in the northern part of
the horti, between the Vie Sicilia, Sardegna, Toscana and Abruzzi (HJ
434-435;
BC 1914, 373-374; cf.
HORTI SALLUSTIANI). It is a large
block of red granite (2.50x2.55 m.), and has been placed on the
Capitol as the base of a monument to the fallen Fascists (Capitolium, ii.
424).
