The Lapis Niger (

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

, "Black Stone") is an ancient shrine in the

Roman Forum A forum (Latin: ''forum'', "public place outdoors", : ''fora''; English : either ''fora'' or ''forums'') was a public square in a municipium, or any civitas, of Ancient Rome reserved primarily for the vending of goods; i.e., a marketplace, alon ...

. Together with the associated Vulcanal (a sanctuary to Vulcan) it constitutes the only surviving remnants of the old

Comitium The Comitium () was the original open-air public meeting space of Ancient Rome, and had major religious and prophetic significance. The name comes from the Latin word for "assembly". The Comitium location at the northwest corner of the Roman Foru ...

, an early assembly area that preceded the Forum and is thought to derive from an archaic cult site of the 7th or 8th century BC. The black marble paving (1st century BC) and modern concrete enclosure (early 20th century) of the Lapis Niger overlie an ancient altar and a stone block with one of the earliest known

Old Latin Old Latin, also known as Early, Archaic or Priscan Latin (Classical ), was the Latin language in the period roughly before 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin. A member of the Italic languages, it descends from a common Proto-Italic ...

inscriptions (c. 570–550 BC). The superstructure monument and shrine may have been built by

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...

during his reorganization of the Forum and Comitium space. Alternatively, this may have been done a generation earlier by

Sulla Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix (, ; 138–78 BC), commonly known as Sulla, was a Roman people, Roman general and statesman of the late Roman Republic. A great commander and ruthless politician, Sulla used violence to advance his career and his co ...

during one of his construction projects around the Curia Hostilia. The site was rediscovered and excavated from 1899 to 1905 by Italian

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

Giacomo Boni. Mentioned in many ancient descriptions of the Forum dating back to the

Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( ) was the era of Ancient Rome, classical Roman civilisation beginning with Overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establis ...

and the early days of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

, the significance of the Lapis Niger shrine was obscure and mysterious to later Romans, but it was always discussed as a place of great sacredness and significance. It is constructed on top of a sacred spot consisting of much older artifacts found about below the present ground level. The name "black stone" may have originally referred to the black stone block (one of the earliest known Latin inscriptions) or it may refer to the later black marble paving at the surface. Located in the Comitium in front of the Curia Julia, this structure survived for centuries due to a combination of reverential treatment and overbuilding during the era of the early Roman Empire.

History

The site is believed to date back to the Roman regal period. The inscription includes the word ''rex'', probably referring to either a king (''rex''), or to the ''rex sacrorum'', a high religious official. At some point, the Romans forgot the original significance of the shrine. This led to several conflicting stories of its origin. Romans believed the Lapis Niger marked either the grave of the first king of Rome,

Romulus Romulus (, ) was the legendary founder and first king of Rome. Various traditions attribute the establishment of many of Rome's oldest legal, political, religious, and social institutions to Romulus and his contemporaries. Although many of th ...

, or the spot where he was murdered by the Senate; the grave of Hostus Hostilius, grandfather of King Tullus Hostilius; or the location where Faustulus, foster father of Romulus, fell in battle. The earliest writings referring to this spot regard it as a ''suggestum'' where the early kings of Rome would speak to the crowds at the forum and to the Senate. The two altars are common at shrines throughout the early Roman or late Etruscan period. The Lapis Niger is mentioned in an uncertain and ambiguous way by several writers of the early Imperial period:

Dionysius of Halicarnassus Dionysius of Halicarnassus (, ; – after 7 BC) was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Emperor Augustus. His literary style was ''atticistic'' – imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime. ...

Plutarch Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...

, and Festus. They do not seem to know which old stories about the shrine should be believed. In November 2008 heavy rain damaged the concrete covering that has been protecting the Vulcanal and its monuments since the 1950s. This includes the inscribed stone block accorded the name of "The Black Stone" or Lapis Niger (the marble and cement covering is a mix of the original black marble said to have been used to cover the site by Sulla, and modern cement used to create the covering and keep the marble in place). An awning now protects the ancient relics until the covering is repaired, allowing the public to view the original ''suggestum'' for the first time in 50 years. The nature of the coverings and ongoing repairs makes it impossible to see the Lapis Niger which is several meters underground.

Description

The shrine

The Lapis Niger went through several incarnations. The initial versions were destroyed by fire or the sacking of the city and buried under the slabs of black marble. It is believed this was done by Sulla; however, it has also been argued that Julius Caesar may have buried the site during his re-alignment of the Comitium. The original version of the site, first excavated in 1899, included a truncated cone of tuff (possibly a monument) and the lower portion of a square pillar ('' cippus'') which was inscribed with an

inscription, perhaps the oldest in existence if not the

Duenos inscription The Duenos inscription is one of the earliest known Old Latin texts, variously dated from the 7th to the 5th century BC. It is inscribed on the sides of a ''kernos'', in this case a trio of small globular vases adjoined by three clay struts. It w ...

or the

Praeneste fibula The Praeneste fibula (the "brooch of Palestrina") is a golden ''fibula'' or brooch, today housed in the Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome. The fibula bears an inscription in Old Latin, claiming craftsmanship by ...

. A U-shaped altar, of which only the base still survives, was added some time later. In front of the altar are two bases, which may also have been added separately from the main altar. The antiquarian Verrius Flaccus (whose work is preserved only in the epitome of Pompeius Festus), a contemporary of

Augustus Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian (), was the founder of the Roman Empire, who reigned as the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in A ...

, described a statue of a resting lion placed on each base, "just as they may be seen today guarding graves". This is sometimes referred to as the Vulcanal. Also added at another period was an honorary column, possibly with a statue topping it. Archaeological excavations (1899–1905) revealed various dedicatory items from vase fragments, statues and pieces of animal sacrifices around at the site in a layer of deliberately placed gravel. All these artifacts date from very ancient Rome, between the 5th and 7th centuries BC. The second version, placed when the first version was demolished in the 1st century BC to make way for further development in the forum, is a far simpler shrine. A pavement of black marble was laid over the original site and was surrounded by a low white wall or parapet. The new shrine lay just beside the

Rostra The Rostra () was a large platform built in the city of Rome that stood during the republican and imperial periods. Speakers would stand on the rostra and face the north side of the Comitium towards the senate house and deliver orations to t ...

, the senatorial speaking platform.

The inscription

The inscription on the stone block has various interesting features. The lettering is closer to Greek letters than any known Latin lettering, since it is chronologically closer to the original borrowing of the Greek alphabet by peoples of Italy from Italian Greek colonies, such as

Cumae Cumae ( or or ; ) was the first ancient Greek colony of Magna Graecia on the mainland of Italy and was founded by settlers from Euboea in the 8th century BCE. It became a rich Roman city, the remains of which lie near the modern village of ...

. The inscription is written

boustrophedon Boustrophedon () is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the l ...

. Many of the oldest Latin inscriptions are written in this style. The meaning of the inscription is difficult to discern as the beginning and end are missing and only one third to one half of each line survives. It appears, however, to dedicate the shrine to a ''rex'' or king and to level grave curses at anyone who dares disturb it. Attempts have been made at interpreting the meaning of the surviving fragment by Johannes Stroux, Georges Dumézil and Robert E. A. Palmer. Here is the reading of the inscription as given by Dumézil (on the right the reading by Arthur E. Gordon): Textlapis

(Roman numbers represent the four faces of the ''cippus'' (pedestal) plus the edge. Fragments on each face are marked with letters (a, b, c). Arabic numbers denote lines. A sign (/) marks the end of a line). (The letters whose reading is uncertain or disputed are given in italics. The extension of the lacuna is uncertain: it may vary from to or even more. In Gordon's reading the ''v'' of ''duo'' in line 11 is read inscribed inside the ''o''.) Dumézil declined to interpret the first seven lines on the grounds that the inscription was too damaged, while acknowledging it was a prohibition under threat. Dumézil's attempt is based on the assumption of a parallelism of some points of the fragmentary text inscribed on the monument and a passage of

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...

's (II 36. 77). In that passage, Cicero, discussing the precautions taken by

augur An augur was a priest and official in the ancient Rome, classical Roman world. His main role was the practice of augury, the interpretation of the will of the List of Roman deities, gods by studying events he observed within a predetermined s ...

s to avoid embarrassing auspices, states: "to this is similar what we augurs prescribe, in order to avoid the occurrence of the , that they order to free from the yoke the animals (which are yoked)". 'They' here denotes the , public slaves whom the augurs and other (priests) had at their service, and who, in the quoted passage, are to execute orders aimed at preventing profane people from spoiling and, by their inadvertent action thereby rendering void, the sacred operation. Even though impossible to connect meaningfully to the rest of the text, the mention of the in this context would be significant as at the time of the Roman monarchy, augury was considered as pertaining to the king: Cicero in the same treatise states: "Divination, as well as wisdom, was considered ''regal''". The are defined thus by

Paul the Deacon Paul the Deacon ( 720s 13 April in 796, 797, 798, or 799 AD), also known as ''Paulus Diaconus'', ''Warnefridus'', ''Barnefridus'', or ''Winfridus'', and sometimes suffixed ''Cassinensis'' (''i.e.'' "of Monte Cassino"), was a Benedictine monk, sc ...

: "The occur when an animal under the yoke makes its excrements".

Varro Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BCE) was a Roman polymath and a prolific author. He is regarded as ancient Rome's greatest scholar, and was described by Petrarch as "the third great light of Rome" (after Virgil and Cicero). He is sometimes call ...

in explaining the meaning of the name of the , states that the augurs, advancing along this street after leaving the arx used to inaugurate. While advancing along the they should avoid meeting a . As the begins on the Capitol and stretches along the whole Forum, in the descent from the hill to the Forum the first crossing they met, i.e. the first place where the incident in question could happen, was named : Dumézil thinks its name should be understood according to the prescription on issue. In fact the

, where the was found, is very close to the left side of this crossing. This fact would make it natural that the were placed exactly there, as a warning to passers by of the possible occurrence of the order of the . In support of such an interpretation of the inscription, Dumézil emphasises the occurrence of the word (

dative case In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this examp ...

of ). Lines 8-9 could be read as: (the augur or the rex) , lines 10–11 could be (or or , i.e.: "that he take the yoked animals from under the yoke" (with a separation prefix or before the ablative as in Odyssea IX 416: = ). Line 12 could be accordingly interpreted as: . The remaining lines could also be interpreted similarly, in Dumézil's view: and are technical terms used as qualifying auspices, meaning regular, correctly taken and favourable. Moreover, the original form of classic Latin , 'abdomen', and also stools, as still attested in Cato Maior was *''aulos'', that Max Niedermann on the grounds of Lithuanian reconstructs as * ''au(e)los''. The ''h'' in could denote a hiatus as in ''ahēn(e)us'', (i.e. bisyllable ). Dumézil then proposes the following interpretation for lines 12–16: (religious operation under course in the passive infinitive) . The hiatus marked by ''h'' in line 13 would require to read the antecedent word as , dative of : is the ancient dative of the accentuated relative pronoun, but one could suppose that in the enclitic indefinite pronoun the dative could have early been reduced to . The ''e'' in can be an irrational vowel as in from *''nom-zo'': cf. Etruscan . As for , it may be an archaic form of a type of which one can cite other instances, as and , and , and . Michael Grant, in his book ''Roman Forum'' writes: "The inscription found beneath the black marble ... clearly represents a piece of ritual law ... the opening words are translatable as a warning that a man who damages, defiles or violates the spot will be cursed. One reconstruction of the text interprets it as referring to the misfortune which could be caused if two yoked draught cattle should happen while passing by to drop excrement simultaneously. The coincidence would be a perilous omen". That the inscription may contain some laws of a very early period is also acknowledged by Allen C. Johnson.Allen Chester Johnson, Paul Robinson Coleman-Norton, Frank Card Bourne ''Ancient Roman Statutes''

University of Texas Press The University of Texas Press (or UT Press) is the university press of the University of Texas at Austin. Established in 1950, the Press publishes scholarly and trade books in several areas, including Latin American studies, Caribbean, Caribbea ...

1961 p. 5. Palmer instead, on the basis of a detailed analysis of every recognisable word, gave the following interpretation of this inscription, which he too considers to be a law:

References

External links

Forum Romanum: Rostra, Curia, Decennalia Base and Lapis Niger

* ttps://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lsante06/Lapis/lap_cipu.html Lapis niger (Bibliotheca Augustana)
Digital Roman Forum: Lapis Niger
a 3D computer recreation of the second incarnation of the Lapis Niger

{{Authority control Buildings and structures completed in the 6th century BC Buildings and structures completed in the 1st century BC Religious buildings and structures in Rome Ancient Roman religion Latin inscriptions Roman Forum Rome R. X Campitelli