Abstract

The purpose of this note is to redirect attention to some of the literary evidence that concerns the site of Apollo's temple on the Palatine. For this evidence has an irritating habit of refusing to confirm what would otherwise be irrefutable archaeological proof of the temple's site. It is now fashionable to identify the site of the temple with that occupied by the temple-core that was originally assigned to Iuppiter Victor on the south-west angle of the Palatine in the region of the Scalae Caci, the Temple of Magna Mater, the Casa Romuli, and the so-called House of Liuia. This was, in the view of most scholars, Euander's citadel that Virgil calls Pallanteum and this must be the site of the Augustan buildings. Now the House of Liuia has been identified with apparent probability as the House of Augustus, and we know from literary evidence that the temple of Apollo, Augustus' private house, and the house decreed to him by the senate must have been in close proximity to each other. The temple-core on the south-west of the Palatine is of Augustan date and is built over the remains of houses of the late republic1 which appear to have been demolished for the purpose. If Liuia's House was the house of Augustus then Iuppiter Victor's temple must be assigned to Apollo