Capitoline Hill- Roman LocationLocation · Landmark"Sacred Hill of Jupiter"

The Asylum of Romulus

Between the Capitoline's two summits lay a hollow that Romulus declared open ground. Any fugitive, exile, or criminal who reached it could claim sanctuary. Livy says Romulus set no conditions on who might come. Free or slave, guilty or innocent. They came. The population Rome needed to become a city rather than a fortified village arrived through that hollow.

Jupiter's Temple and the Skull

Before Jupiter, the hill belonged to Saturn. Varro records its oldest name as Mons Saturnius, after the exiled god who once ruled there in an age when no man owned land and no field needed a fence. That name gave way when the elder Tarquin began building Jupiter's great temple on the southern summit.

The construction required clearing older shrines from the hilltop. Every god yielded to Jupiter's claim. Every god except two. Terminus, the god of boundaries, and Juventas, the goddess of youth, refused to move. The augurs took this as a sign that Rome's borders and its youth would never diminish. Terminus kept his place within the new temple walls, and a hole was left in the roof above his shrine so the boundary god who could not be contained by walls would still see the open sky.

When workers dug the foundations, they uncovered a human skull, fresh as if newly buried. The augurs read the omen: this hill would be the caput, the head, of all Italy. The Capitoline took its name from that skull in the earth.

The finished temple housed three gods: Jupiter in the center, flanked by Juno and Minerva. Jupiter's cult statue had its face painted with red lead by the aediles, the same pigment that would one day color the faces of triumphing generals ascending the hill.

Tarpeia and the Rock

During the Sabine war that followed the seizure of the Sabine women, a Roman maiden named Tarpeia opened the citadel gates to the enemy. Her price was what the Sabines wore on their left arms, meaning their golden bracelets. The Sabines entered and crushed her beneath their shields, which they also wore on their left arms.

The cliff on the Capitoline's southern face took her name. For centuries afterward, traitors condemned by the state were hurled from the Tarpeian Rock.

The Geese and the Gauls

When the Gauls under Brennus sacked Rome in 390 BCE, the surviving Romans retreated to the Capitoline as their last refuge. The siege lasted months. One night, Gallic warriors found an unguarded path up the cliff and began climbing in silence.

The sacred geese in the Temple of Juno detected them first. Their honking woke Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, who rushed to the wall and threw the first Gauls back down the cliff. He held the position until other defenders arrived. The geese had saved the Capitol when the dogs and the sentries had failed.

Livy records that the siege ended in ransom: a thousand pounds of gold. When the Romans protested that the Gauls were using dishonest weights, Brennus threw his sword onto the scales. "Vae victis," he said. Woe to the conquered. In Livy's account, Camillus arrived with an army before the gold changed hands and drove the Gauls from the city.

Afterward, the geese were carried on litters in annual procession. The dogs were crucified along the route, punishment for their ancestors' silence.

The Triumph

Every triumphal procession ended at the Capitoline. The victorious general, his face painted red like Jupiter's cult statue, wearing a purple toga and holding an eagle-topped scepter, rode a four-horse chariot up the slope. Behind him a slave held a golden crown over his head and whispered: "Remember you are mortal."

The white oxen at the head of the procession were sacrificed on Jupiter's altar. The general laid his victory laurels in the god's lap. For that one day, a mortal man wore a god's face and climbed a god's hill. The slave kept whispering.