The Temple of Augustus and Rome is an augusteum located in the Altındağ district of Ankara. It is thought to have been built around 25–20 AD. Besides being one of the most important Roman-period ruins in the city, it is also known for the Monumentum Ancyranum. This is an inscription about the works of Augustus, who was considered the first Roman emperor. It is the most complete copy of Res Gestae Divi Augusti that has survived to the present day, even as the original in Rome had disappeared.[1]
History
An earlier, 2nd century BCE Phrygian temple on the site was destroyed.[1]
The Augusteum was built between 25–20 BC after the conquest of central Anatolia by the Roman Empire and the formation of the Galatia province, with Ancyra as its administrative capital.
It was reintroduced to the western world by Antun Vrančić, ambassador of Ferdinand of Austria, to the Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (1555–1562) at Amasia in Asia Minor. Vrančić first read the inscription and identified its origin from his reading of Suetonius.
Only the side walls and the ornamented door frame remain; the positions of six columns can still be recognized.[1]
After the death of Augustus in AD 14, a copy of the text of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti was inscribed on both walls inside the pronaos in Latin, with a Greek translation on an exterior wall of the cella.
The inscriptions are the primary surviving source of the text, since the original inscription on bronze pillars in front of the Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome has long been lost, and two other surviving inscriptions of the text are incomplete.[2] Squeezes of the Monumentum Ancyrum were obtained by the Cornell Expedition in 1907–1908, and have been the basis for epigraphic study including by the epigrapher Mariana McCaulley.[3][4][5]
^ abcAhmet Gökdemir, Can Demirel, Yavuz Yeğin, Zeynel Şimşek, "Ankara Temple (Monumentum Ancyranum/Temple of Augustus and Rome) restoration", Case Studies in Construction Materials2:55-65 (June 2015) doi:10.1016/j.cscm.2015.02.002full text
^Diehl, editor of Res Gestae Divi Augusti in the Loeb Classical Library remarks that at the time the original document was copied on the walls of many of the temples of Augustus throughout the empire, but the inscriptions have not survived.
Botteri, P.; Fangi, G. (2003). "The Ancyra Project: the Temple of Augustus and Rome". Ankara, ISPRS Archives. Vol. XXXIV. pp. 84–88. part 5/W12 Commission V.