#capitoline

~ Head of Aphrodite of the Capitoline type.

Culture/Period: Roman, Imperial Period

Date: ca. A.D. 2nd century (after a Hellenistic Greek type)

Place of origin: Italy, Lazio

Capitoline Brutus 4th-3rd C. BCE. The head is from the 4th-3rd C. BCE, the bust was made during the Renaissance. A bronze portrait head (modern bust) widely known as Brutus but with no evidence it is that figure. It is now considered to be of Etruscan manufacture c. 300 BCE. Height: 69 cm (27.1 in). (Capitoline Museums, Rome).

"Marcus Brutus was descended from that Junius Brutus to whom the ancient Romans erected a statue of brass in the capitol among the images of their kings with a drawn sword in his hand, in remembrance of his courage and resolution in expelling the Tarquins and destroying the monarchy. But that ancient Brutus was of a severe and inflexible nature, like steel of too hard a temper, and having never had his character softened by study and thought, he let himself be so far transported with his rage and hatred against tyrants, that, for conspiring with them, he proceeded to the execution even of his own sons." —Plutarch's Life of Brutus 1:1-2

Capitoline Temple (Temple of Jupiter)

Volubilis, Morocco 

2nd century CE

The heart of the city of Volubilis consists of a forum with adjoining temples, a basilica, a capitol complex dedicated to Jupiter, and several baths (thermes). This was already the civic and political center of the Amazigh city prior to Roman rule but it was given a monumental make-over in the first and second centuries CE. 

Jupiter was the imperial god of the Romans. They instituted his worship in all the lands they conquered. They usually did this by associating Jupiter to the principal god of the various provinces and cities they ruled: hence we find Jupiter-Zeus in Greece and Jupiter-Amon-Ra in Egypt. In Volubilis, the precinct of the Temple of Jupiter also housed temples to a number of Amazigh gods in chapels under the lateral porticoes. The identities of most these local deities have not been ascertained.

The Temple of Jupiter is elevated on a plinth above the forum and the basilica. It thus reproduces the geography of Rome itself, where the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline overlooked the Forum and its basilicas.

The building incorporates a Romanesque Corinthian Tetrastyle architectural design, and was dedicated to the Roman Emperor Macrinus. The temple is earmarked for the trinity of Roman gods, Juno, Jupiter and Minerva. According to Rogerson, a council would meet below the Capitoline Temple in order to make a declaration of war, and then later return to this location with the booty of the resultant war.

The reconstruction wrongfully presents an Ionic order instead of a Corinthian one.

Empress Sabina, wife of Hadrian