Templum Gentis Septimiae

About

Raised on a high podium behind rows of massive Corinthian columns, this temple in the Severan Forum was dedicated in 229 CE by Emperor Alexander Severus to the Gens Septimia, his own ruling dynasty. Dedicating a temple to a living imperial family, rather than to a traditional god, was an unusually direct piece of political theater even by the standards of Roman provincial religion. It closed out Cuicul's greatest wave of monumental construction, capping a southern forum built to display loyalty to Rome's ruling house. Its dedication falls more than a century after the city's founding under Nerva.

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.

Sources

• https://www.worldhistory.org/image/16991/severan-forum-and-temple-of-the-gens-septimia-cuic/
• https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/djemila-algerias-trajan-era-mountain-city

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