Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus
The Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus (more properly called the Statuary group base of Domitius Ahenobarbus) is a series of four sculpted marble plaques that probably decorated a base supporting cult statues in the cella of a Temple of Neptune located in Rome on the Field of Mars. The frieze is dated to the end of the second century BC, which makes it the second oldest Roman bas-relief currently known. However, there is also a contemporaneous relief depicting a Roman naval bireme with armed marines, from a temple of Palestrina built c. 120 BC. The sculpted panels are still visible today, with one portion on display at the Louvre (Ma 975) and another at the Glyptothek in Munich (Inv. 239). A copy of this second piece can be seen at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Context The base was found in the Temple of Neptune built near the Circus Flaminius, by the Field of Mars. Remains of this temple may have recently been discovered under the church of Santa Maria in Publicolis, but their identification remains uncertain. History Antiquity The reliefs seem to have been produced during the construction of a Temple of Neptune on the Field of Mars. A general, probably Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, vowed to build a temple for the god of the sea after a naval victory, perhaps the one won off Samos in 129 or 128 BC against Aristonicus who had attempted to oppose the donation of Pergamon to Rome by the will of King Attalos III. The construction of the temple (or restoration of a pre-existing temple) only dates to 122 BC, the year in which Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus attained the consulship. The reliefs, from the base of the cult statue, which originally consisted only of mythological scenes were brought to completion after Domitius Ahenobarbus' censorship in 115 BC with a fourth panel. Other hypotheses however suggest the censorships of L. Valerius Flaccus and Marcus Antonius, who could equally be connected with the motifs of the reliefs. In 41 BC, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus (descendant of the aforementioned), a supporter of the Republican party and of the assassins of Caesar had an aureus minted on the occasion of a victory over a supporter of Octavian, which featured the image of his ancestor on the obverse and a tetrastyle temple on the reverse, with the inscription NEPT CN DOMITIUS L F IMP (Cn. Domitius, son of Lucius, Imperator, to Neptune. Renaissance The reliefs are mentioned in 1629 and 1631 after having been uncovered during the works undertaken by the Roman Santacroce family between 1598 and 1641, which included notably the construction and expansion of a palace near the Tiber by the architect Peparelli. The reliefs had been reused as decoration in the palace courtyard, where they are attested in 1683. Description Despite their common name, the reliefs probably did not originally form part of an altar, but a large rectangular base (5.6 m long, 1.75 m wide, and 0.8 m high), intended to support the cult statues. These