Capitolium of Capua
About
Capua's Capitolium gave the colony its own temple to Jupiter, built to the same pattern every Roman colony carried from Rome itself. Emperor Tiberius traveled down from Rome to dedicate it in person in the year 26, folding the ceremony into the same Campanian trip that consecrated a shrine to Augustus at nearby Nola. Magistrates and priests conducted the colony's official rites here for generations afterward. The temple stood at the heart of the colonia Julius Caesar had refounded with 20,000 resettled plebeians in 59 BCE.
What happened here
The building itself is a house for the god, and most people never go inside. Everything public happens on the steps and at the altar in front: an animal led up, examined, killed cleanly, its organs read, the meat divided and eaten. The priest covers his head and a flute player keeps up a noise so no ill-omened word is heard. Worshippers leave what they can afford — a terracotta figure, a coin, a model of the body part they want healed — and the accumulated clutter is periodically cleared and buried on site. On festival days the doors are opened and the cult statue is dressed, garlanded, and sometimes carried out through the streets. The temple also holds money, which is why towns keep their treasury in one.
In ancient writing
- Tacitus, Annals 4.57
Records Tiberius traveling to Campania in 26 CE 'ostensibly to consecrate a temple at Capua to Jupiter, and a shrine at Nola to Augustus.'
Sources
Nearby
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