Temple of the Deified Trajan

Traianeum

TempleBaetica · Santiponce, Spain

Not standing in 117 CE

About

Hadrian raised this temple at the center of a vast colonnaded square to worship his predecessor as a god, dressing it in polychrome marble hauled in from imperial quarries across the empire. Only the foundations and scattered sculptural fragments survive above ground today, but they trace out an unusually imposing footprint. A temple to a Divus cannot predate its subject's death and deification, so this one only rose after Trajan died on this map's own snapshot date.

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.