CAMPUS MARTIUS
the level ground between the slopes
of the Capitoline,
the Quirinal, and the Pincian hills, and the Tiber. This
term varied
somewhat in its signification; for, while originally and in
its widest
sense it embraced all this district, other names for small
sections seem
to have come into use later. Thus as early as the fifth
century B.C. the
south portion of the plain was probably known as
PRATA
FLAMINIA (q.v.,
Liv. iii. 54, 63), and campus Martius was the ordinary
designation of
what lay beyond. After Augustus had divided the city into
fourteen
regions, the name campus Martius was restricted to that
portion of
Region IX (circus Flaminius) which lay west of the via
Lata, the modern
Corso; and here again there seems to have been a further
distinction,
for a cippus (
CIL vi. 874) found near the Pantheon
indicates that the
campus Martius of the time of Augustus was divided into
two parts-
the district between the cippus and the circus Flaminius,
which had been
more or less built over, and the open meadow to the
north, the campus
proper; cf. ib. 31189;
BC 1883, 11-12.
The campus Martius covered an area of about 250
hectares (600 acres),
extending a little more than two kilometres north and
south from the
Capitoline to the porta Flaminia, and a little less than two
kilometres
east and west in its widest part, between the Quirinal and
the river.
It was low, from 10 to 15 metres above the level of the
sea in antiquity
(13 to 20 now), and from 3 to 8 above that of the Tiber,
and of course
subject to frequent inundations. It contained several
swamps or ponds,
as well as streams, the largest of which, the
PETRONIA
AMNIS (q.v.),
which formed the limit of the city auspices (
AR 1909,
67-70) came
from a spring on the Quirinal, called the Cati fons, and
flowed into the
largest swamp, the palus Caprae or Capreae, where were
afterwards the
pool and baths of Agrippa. In the north-west part of the
campus, near
the great bend in the river, there were hot springs,
probably sulphurous,
and other traces of volcanic action. Some small part at
least was wooded,
for we know of two groves,
AESCULETUM and
LUCUS
PETELINUS (qq.v.).
The campus Martius, frequently called campus alone
(
Liv. xl. 52. 4; Cic.
Cat. ii. I. I;
Iuv. ii. 132; Hor.
Carm. iii. 1. 11; Ov.
Fast. ii.
860;
iii. 519),
derived its name from the cult of Mars, or from the fact
that it was
consecrated to Mars. According to one form of the
tradition it was
private property of the Tarquins, and after their expulsion
became state
land, and was dedicated to Mars (
Liv. ii. 5:
ager
Tarquiniorum qui inter
urbem ac Tiberim fuit consecratus Marti Martius deinde
campus fuit;
Flor. i. 9:
populus Romanus agrum Marti suo consecrat;
Schol.
Iuv.
i. 132:
hic enim ager Tarquini superbi fuit et pro illius fuga
Marti consecratus dictus est Martius campus; Plut. Popl. 8:
τοῦ
δ᾽ Ἀρείου πεδίου τὸ
ἥδιστον ἐκέκτητο Ταρκύνιος καὶ τοῦτο τῷ θεῷ
καθιέρωσαϝ); according to
another (
Dionys. v. 13), it had been consecrated to Mars
at an earlier period
and afterwards appropriated by Tarquin. This view is
supported by the
existence of an
ARA MARTIS (q.v.), situated probably
east of the Pantheon
in the Via del Seminario (
CP 1908, 65-73), which,
according to Festus
(189; cf. Plut. Marcell. 8), was mentioned in a law of
Numa and therefore
dated from the early regal period. The note of Servius
(
Aen. ix. 272:
mos fuerat ut viris fortibus sive regibus pro honore
daretur aliqua publici
agri particula ut habuit Tarquinius Superbus in campo
Martio) may be
reconciled with either form of this tradition, but the first
was probably
the more generally accepted.
Another tradition concerning the public ownership of
part or all of
this district is apparently embodied in certain references
to the gift of
a
CAMPUS TIBERINUS (q.v.) or Martius to the state by
a Vestal virgin,
Gaia Taracia or Fufetia (Plin.
NH xxxiv. 25:
invenitur
statua decreta
et Taraciae Gaiae sive Fufetiae virgini Vestali ut poneretur
ubi vellet...
meritum eius ipsis ponam annalium verbis: quod
campum Tiberinum
gratificata esset ea populo; Plut. Popl. 8; cf. HJ 475;
Gell.
vii. 7. 4).
As Gellius alone identifies campus Tiberinus and campus
Martius, much
uncertainty is attached to the whole matter (
Gilb. ii. 112-
113;
RE vii.
480-483; Mommsen,
RF ii. 7-8; Mitt. 1921-2, 23-28).
At any rate the campus belonged to the state from the
beginning of
the republic, and we are told (
Oros. v. 18. 27) that Sulla,
under the financial
pressure of the impending war with Mithridates, was the
first to sell any
part of this public domain to private owners, although the
name prata
Flaminia (vid. sup.) seems to indicate some private
ownership at a very
early date. It is probable, however, that these prata had
become public
property but retained their original name. There are
further indications
of the encroachment by individuals on the boundaries of
the campus in
the first or possibly the second century B.C., such as the
suburb called
AEMILIANA (q.v.), just outside the porta Carmentalis,
and perhaps a
villa and gardens of the elder Scipio (Cic. de nat. deor. ii.
11;
Phil. ii. 109;
Cass.
Dio lvi. 1:
e)s to\ proa/teion a)pa/nthsas).
Private houses did
not begin to multiply to any extent (cf. Cic. ad
Att. xiii.
33) before the
time of the empire, but they became fairly numerous, for
the Regionary
Catalogue lists 2777 insulae and 140 domus in
Region IX.
From the beginning the campus Martius was used as
pasture for
sheep (Schol.
Iuv. vi. 528) and horses (
Dionys. v. 13);
was cultivated
for grain (cf. the story of Tarquin's grain); and furnished
space for the
athletic and military exercises of the Roman youth
(Dionys. loc. cit.;
Hor.
Carm. iii. 7. 25-27; Veget. de re mil. i. 10). It was
entirely outside
the pomerium during the republic and probably remained
so down
to the reign of Claudius (see
POMERIUM). By the time of
Hadrian
the pomerium had been extended to include the prata
Flaminia, but the
campus Martius in its narrower sense was not included
until the wall
of Aurelian was built. Because it was public property and
outside the
pomerium, the campus was used as the place of assembly
for the citizens
(
Liv. i. 44;
Dionys. iv. 22;
Gell. xv. 27), in their military
capacity as
an army and in their civil capacity as the comitia
centuriata. The
enclosed space in which this comitia voted came to be
known as ovile
or saepta (q.v.; Serv.
Ecl. i. 33 et al.). Audience was
given here to foreign
ambassadors who could not enter the city (
Liv. xxx. 21.
12 ;
xxxiii. 24. 5),
and foreign cults were domiciled in temples erected here.
We know certainly of only three other cult centres
besides that of
Mars in the campus Martius before the Punic wars-the
ara Ditis et
Proserpinae in Tarento, the Apollinare, an altar or grove,
and the temple
of Apollo which was built in 431 B.C., and the temple of
Bellona built in 296 B.C. Between 231 and the battle of Actium at least
fifteen other
temples were erected, and more during the next century.
The construction of the circus Flaminius in 221 B.C. marked an epoch
in the history
of the southern part of the campus, but there was no
public building
of any note in the campus Martius proper before the end
of the republic,
when Pompeius built the first stone theatre in Rome in 55
B.C. Caesar
conceived the idea of changing the course of the Tiber by
digging a
new channel on the west of the Janiculum, and of building
over all the
plain between that hill and those on the east side of the
city (Cic. ad
Att.
xiii. 33). The river bed was not changed; but Augustus
and his
coadjutors began the construction of all kinds of public
buildings, with
the result that, by the time of the Antonines, all of this
district except
the north-west section, which was still kept open, was
covered with many
of the most wonderful structures in Rome, circuses,
theatres, porticoes,
baths, columns, obelisks, mausolea, temples, etc. The
remarkable
appearance of the campus even before the death of
Augustus is described
by Strabo in a well-known passage (v. 3. 8, p. 236),
where, however,
the traditional text requires rearrangement (A. W. Buren,
Ann. Brit.
Sch. at Athens, xxii. 1916-18, 48-50, following P. Meyer,
Straboniana, 20).
There is some doubt as to whether the murder of
Valentinian III in
455 A.D. occurred in the Campus Martius proper, or in the
campus Martius,
or drill ground (the words are frequently used in this sense
nowadays
both in France and in Italy) attached to the imperial villa '
ad
duas
lauros,' beyond the third milestone of the via Labicana
(Johannes Ant.
fr. 85, p. 126; Chron.
Min. i. 162, 303, 490;
ii. 86, 157,
186;
iii. 422).
In the former case, we should have to suppose the
existence in the fifth
century A.D. of another locality in the campus Martius,
bearing the
same name '
ad duas lauros,' and the latter appears to be
preferable
(
BCr 1879, 76; Studi e Documenti xvii.
(1896), 47, 48;
BC 1906, 74-77; T x. 390; Mem.
AP i. 3 (1927) 158; contrast Bury,
History of
the Later Roman Empire, i. 300).
With the decline of the city after the barbarian
invasions, the rapidly
dwindling population gradually abandoned the surrounding
hills and was
concentrated in the campus Martius, which contained the
main part of
Rome until the new developments in the nineteenth
century.
For the history of the campus Martius, its development
and monuments, see HJ 472-506 (historical development), 507-621
(monuments);
Pl. 339-392; LR 442-511; F. Lohr, Das Marsfeld,
Gutersloh, 1909;
AR 1909, 67-82).