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Re: NeoClassical Chili
2005.07.09 15:34

Krautheimer published an essay, "Mensa-Coemeterium-Martyrium" 1960, where he earnestly speculates about the very real possibility that the early "Constantinian" basilicas (aside from St. John Lateran and St. Peter's Vatican) acted as covered graveyards where funeral banquets were held. He also noted how the shape of these basilicas was circus-like. When I read this essay (early 2005), I immediately though of the connection to the 'munus' ritual as related by Tertullian. And, after finding out more about the Mausoleum of Romulus/Circus of Maxentius complex (also early 2005), the "pieces" quickly fell together, particularly the connection of Eutropia to all this.

The Circus of Maxentius has been an unanswered question in my mind for a few years now, and now I think I know why Piranesi 'secretly' printed two different version of the Ichnographia Campi Martii--the Circus of Maxentius is the 'key' to the inversion of the pagan Roman Circus into the Early Christian 'basilica'. Piranesi, in La Anticità Romane II (which predates the Campo Marzio publication by four years or so), delineated a "reconstruction" of the Basilica of St. Agnes--compare this with a present aerial view.

What led me to Krautheimer's essay above was a footnote in R. Ross Holloway, Constantine and Rome, 2004.

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