Capitoline Triad- Roman GroupCollective
Description
Jupiter Optimus Maximus held the central chamber, Juno Regina the left, Minerva the right. Three gods in one temple on the Capitoline Hill, where every consul swore his first oath and every triumphant general climbed to give thanks.
Mythology & Lore
The Temple
Livy records that Tarquinius Priscus vowed the temple during a war with the Sabines, and that his grandson Tarquinius Superbus built it. Workers leveling the summit of the Capitoline found a human head in the foundations, still fresh, and the augurs declared it a sign: this hill would be the head of the world. The temple was dedicated in 509 BCE, the year Rome expelled its kings and became a republic.
Three cellae stood side by side under one roof. Jupiter Optimus Maximus occupied the center, the largest chamber, with a terracotta statue that was repainted with red lead each year. Juno Regina had the left cella, Minerva the right. Pliny records that the original terracotta work was done by Vulca, an Etruscan sculptor brought from Veii.
New consuls climbed the Capitoline on their first day in office to make vows and sacrifice an ox. When a general returned from war with the Senate's grant of a triumph, his procession wound through the city and ended at the temple steps, where he laid his laurel wreath in Jupiter's lap. The Sibylline Books were kept in the temple's care, consulted only when the Senate ordered it in times of crisis.
The Fires
The temple burned in 83 BCE while Sulla's forces fought for control of Rome. Tacitus says the Romans considered this the most lamentable event since the city's founding. Sulla began rebuilding, and Quintus Lutatius Catulus finished the work, importing marble columns from the temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens.
It burned again in December of 69 CE, during the street fighting between the forces of Vitellius and Vespasian's partisans. Tacitus describes Vitellian soldiers storming the Capitoline while the defenders tore roof tiles loose and threw them down. Fire broke out. The temple went up. Tacitus calls it the most shameful act of the civil war: Roman soldiers had destroyed the seat of Jupiter, which no foreign enemy had ever touched. Vespasian rebuilt it. It burned a third time in 80 CE, and Domitian raised the final version with gilded bronze roof tiles that blazed in the sun.