Thursday, April 16, 2020

TEMPLE OF HONOR AND VIRTUE

TEMPIO DI HONOS E VIRTUS
Piazza di Porta Capena

Built in the year 234 BC
The location just outside Porta Capena is known, but no trace of it remains

Augustus (27 BC/AD 14) fixed to May 29, the date of the feast of Honos and Virtus

TEMPLE OF HONOS
Built by Quintus Fabius Maximus the Procrastinator (275/203 BC)
Honos was the deified personification of Honor, maybe specifically Military Honor, revered in Rome from the third century BC on

TEMPLE OF VIRTUS
Added in 208 BC by Claudius Marcellus, the conqueror of Syracuse
Virtus was the deified personification of Military Virtue and almost always appears with Honos in literary and epigraphic sources
“All the figurative monuments present Honos as male personification, almost always as a kind of a young man covered with pallium on one shoulder and on the lower part of the body, with naked chest, and bearing in one or both hands attributes, including frequently a cornucopia and an olive branch. We cannot exclude that these iconographic characters would be the main differentiation in worship between Honos and Virtus, the latter being constantly represented with military attributes (helmet) as a warrior god” (Giovanni Scichilone - Enciclopedia dell’Arte Antica Treccani)

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