The accurate depiction of the spatial proximity of the two monuments on ancient coins, the descriptive name meta and the distinctive, conical form, ensured that, through the middle ages, Renaissance and beyond, the identity of the fountain as the Flavian Meta Sudans was never lost. The eighth-century
Einsiedeln Itinerary refers to it by name, as does the twelfth-century Ordo Romanus.28
By the time of the Renaissance, the Meta was the object of a surprising amount of attention, despite the monument’s relatively decrepit state (contemporary vedute show it as a crumbling, misshapen tower of brick). This was due largely to the fountain’s association (by its name) with Roman circuses and to the perceived resemblance of its conical shaft to an obelisk, favoured form of the Renaissance imagination. While this region of Rome was largely depopulated during this period, the two perpendicular roads that intersected at the Meta continued to function as such, albeit now under the names of the via Sacra and the via Papalis. It has recently been argued that the monumental effect created by the Meta Sudans at the crossing of these two straight roads was the model for the plan of Sixtus V to set up obelisks at the intersections of his new boulevards through the city.29
The graceful Du Perac reconstruction drawing also did much to enhance the monument’s reputation. The image served as the model for a number of fountains designed (though not built) for the gardens of noble palazzi, including those of the Pamphilj, Aldobrandini and d’Este families.30 It may likewise have been an inspiration for Bernini’s Four Rivers fountain in Piazza Navona, which reassembled the Du Perac Meta’s components of obelisk, Tritons and water, now in the apt setting of an ancient circus.
Contemporary with Du Perac’s drawing is an unpublished manuscript produced at the papal court of Gregory XIII and recently examined by Philip Jacks, which presents a very different, heavily Christianizing reinvention of the ancient fountain.31 A treatise on an imagined ‘Meta di Salute Eterna’, the text discusses the Meta Sudans in historical terms, associating its construction with the Flavians and its purpose with the refreshment of visitors to the amphitheatre.32 But the ancient monument (or again, probably Du Perac’s reconstruction of it) also serves as a model for a ‘Meta of Eternal Health’. This mysterious, metaphysical structure is represented as a large cone topped by the Holy Dove, from which the four rivers flow down the sides. The niches of the Meta Sudans morph into flames around the base of the structure; the ring of the basin above them is delineated by two of the heavenly streams, while the tall shaft of the cone becomes the lignum Crucis, which springs from the belly of the recumbent figure of Adam. The humble Meta Sudans thus becomes a metaphor for an ideal Christian universe.
A Christianized version of the Meta Sudans reappears a century and a half later in Carlo Fontana’s papally-sponsored design for the installation inside the Colosseum of a church dedicated to the martyrs of the amphitheatre. The round ‘temple’ (modeled on the Pantheon and Bramante’s Tempietto) was to have stood within the west curve, with the entrance to the complex at the other end of the amphitheatre’s long axis, and a baptismal font in between.33 Fontana explicitly described the fountain as an imitation of the Meta Sudans, noting that as the ancient structure had washed ‘the filth from the bodies of the cruel gladiators’, so the waters of the ‘sacred Meta, used for the sacrament of Baptism, will wash the filth from the soul, stained with Original Sin’.34
By the eighteenth century, a more decidedly antiquarian attitude toward the Meta Sudans obtained. The monument was of particular interest to scholars trying to trace the waterworks of ancient Rome; Ficoroni even excavated the Meta’s foundations in 1743 and followed the line of its underground piping for several metres in an attempt to ascertain its water source.35 Under Antonio Nibby’s direction, the whole area of the Flavian piazza was cleared of post-antique detritus in 1828, lowering the ground level to that of the Arch of Constantine, exposing the basin of the fountain and bringing to light the remains of the base of the Neronian Colossus some 200 feet to the north.
These excavations should be understood in the context not only of the scholarly exploration of the Meta Sudans but also of the Colosseum’s soaring Romantic reputation. The amphitheatre, deemed ‘a noble wreck in ruinous perfection’ by the much-quoted Lord Byron, had become the emblem of the grandeur of ancient Rome. The clearing of the terrain around it was a product of a newly emerging urban aesthetic, whereby great monuments were thought to be best appreciated in dramatic isolation from their surround – ings.36 The Meta Sudans did, to a certain extent, continue to bask in the reflected glory of the amphitheatre, rating a mention in popular guidebooks to Rome, for example, as the site where gladiators would wash after their toils in the arena.37 But over the course of the nineteenth century, the former fountain came increasingly to be seen as so much more detritus obstructing the full visual impact of its neighbour. Already in 1816, the architect Valadier had lamented the fact that the passage of time had produced ‘the most wretched ruins [disgraziatissime rovine]’ right in front of the ‘Famous Flavian Amphitheatre’.38 A major restoration campaign undertaken in mid-century can be understood as an attempt to address the problem of the Meta’s ugliness. The precarious, upper reaches of the cone were removed, the concavities of the former niches filled in and its jagged, timeworn surfaces smoothed, producing the stable (if somewhat dumpy) appearance of the Meta seen in numerous photographs and postcards of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Figure 2.5). As the caption in Figure 2.5 makes clear, these postcards were, of course, of the Colosseum; the Meta Sudans was included only by chance, as this was the best angle from which to view the amphitheatre’s triple circuit of arcaded walls.
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2.5 Early twentieth – century postcard of the Colosseum (also showing the Meta Sudans) |
The fame of the Colosseum, the new isolation-aesthetic, and the vigorous aggrandizement of the post-unification ‘Third Rome’ would ultimately prove too much for the meagre remains of the Meta Sudans.39 The official commission of 1871 advocated the undertaking of ‘all those demolitions that will enhance the grandeur [imponenza]’ of the major monuments of Rome, with the aim of creating the ‘most scenic vantage points free from clutter or inconvenience [senza ingombro e senza disagio]’.40 Under these conditions, the Flavian fountain could no longer compete with its erstwhile sibling, although it would take sixty years, and the force of Mussolini’s urban ‘sven – tramenti’ (disembowelings) to finally bring the axe down.41
The vestiges of ancient Rome, carefully selected and manicured, played an important role in Mussolini’s creation of a monumental city-centre worthy of grand, Fascist spectacles.42 While planners had long recognized the need for an artery linking Piazza Venezia with the southern part of the city, the issue for Mussolini was less one of circulation than of symbolism. One should be able to stand at the Piazza Venezia, seat of the new government, and see the Colosseum, emblem of Rome’s glorious past. Like his Risorgimento predecessors, he believed that ‘the millennial monuments of our history must loom gigantic in their necessary solitude’.43 Never mind the fact that the Velian hill, three churches and 5,500 units of housing stood in the way. All were
demolished during the 1932 creation of the ‘via dell’Impero’ (now the via dei Fori Imperiali), a showcase of the Fascist appropriation of the past.44 The mostly buried ancient imperial fora that flanked the route of the new boulevard were excavated, and the road lined with bronze statues of the emperors associated with the fora, along with maps chronicling the expansion of the Roman Empire in antiquity and in the Fascist era.
But Mussolini wasn’t finished yet. His new parade route was not to be limited to the via dell’Impero, but would continue to the south, past the Colosseum, through the ‘Flavian piazza’ and the Arch of Constantine and down the via S. Gregorio to the Circus Maximus. The via S. Gregorio was thus widened, repaved, spruced up with Fascist dedications and rechristened the ‘via dei Trionfi’, to underscore the topographical and ideological parallels between this route and that of the ancient Roman triumphal procession. Most importantly, the Stele of Axum, Mussolini’s trophy from his newly conquered Ethiopian empire, was installed in 1936 at the new terminus by the Circus. The Duce’s gesture in some ways parallels Constantine’s erection of the Arch some 1,600 years earlier. By positioning prominent, heavily ideologically laden monuments at the head of the (ever-wideningly defined) valley, both rulers sought to appropriate the pre-existing imperial buildings directly to the north, echoing, but ultimately overwriting, their ancient connotations, and replacing them with modern meaning.
Mussolini, however, was even more brutally pragmatic than Constantine when it came to the ancient structures he inherited. Rather than adapting each of them to suit his needs, the Duce simply removed the ones that did not meet his standards of majesty and monumentality. The Meta Sudans and the colossal statue base were doubly doomed. Not only were they not very attractive, but they stood directly in the path of the central passageway of Constantine’s Arch, thus preventing parades from marching straight through. A photograph of a ceremony held just after the inauguration of the via dei Trionfi reveals all too plainly the awkwardness and asymmetries that ensued (Figure 2.6), and which prompted the Governatore of Rome, Francesco Boncompagni Ludovisi, to declare the ruins ‘a most serious embarrassment’. This skewed topographical relationship had been acceptable under Constantine, when the triumphal route had turned left just beyond the Arch and continued up the via Sacra through the Forum Romanum to the Capitoline temple. Much of this very route had been self-consciously retraced as recently as 1536, when Charles V made his triumphal entrance into Rome. But the Fascist parade route ignored the via Sacra, continuing instead up the full length of the Colosseum piazza, and only turning left once it reached the via dell’Impero.
2.6
Fascist parade through the Colosseum valley. Both the
spectators and the procession itself are arranged awkwardly around the Meta Sudans, which has already been partially demolished in preparation for its final removal
To make the piazza serve the function of ceremonial thoroughfare, the Meta Sudans, as well as the statue base, had to go. Both were razed in 1936, the year of the dedication of the Stele of Axum. On Mussolini’s orders, however, the memory of the decrepit structures was not to be entirely erased. The archaeologist A. M. Colini was given two years to investigate thoroughly the remains of the ancient fountain, and his findings were published along with two careful reconstruction drawings by the Fascist architect Italo Gismondi (Figure 2.7).45 Moreover, like the police chalking around a fallen body, the contours of the monuments’ vanished forms were outlined in a lighter coloured stone on the surface of the newly repaved piazza,