The Meta Sudans is one of the oddest monuments in the city
of Rome. I’ll bet most have never heard of it. It’s hard to think what purpose
it served. The word /meta/ can mean finishing-point, goalpost, turning point
and similar terms. It’s connected with the Greek word ‘meta’ (μετά) where it has the sense of being
the end-point of something. But the Greek is a bound morpheme, usually used as
prefix, where the Latin is a simple noun. There is some indication that the
Etruscans had metae before the Romans, and, as they had an orientalising
culture, the connotation of the word may have shifted somewhat, from abstract
to concrete.
The Meta Sudans – the sweating cone – stood in Region IV
‘Templum Pacis’, the Temple of Peace. This was a mixture of monumental
architecture and down-at -heel housing. It included the ancient Temple of
Jupiter Stator and the Subura, one of those areas referred to today as
‘bustling and colourful’ when they mean ‘dangerous’. The district also included
the Colossal Statue, but not the Flavian
Amphitheatre (amphitheatrum qui capit loca LXXXVII), which is in Region III ‘Isis et
Serapis’, so the boundary of the two regions of the city must have been between
the two locations. Quite probably the Meta Sudans was used as a boundary stone.
Topper and
Ashby’s Topographical Dictionary of
Ancient Rome (1929) suggests it was the common marker for Regions I, (Porta
Capena) II, (Caelemontium) III, IV and X (Palatium). There are many places in
England where several counties conjoin, and there are ten ‘three shire stones’,
so it may have served a similar function. Indeed, it may have served a number
of functions; we can imagine the senior vicomagister of each city district
affected by a Triumph meeting here to plan the events. There may have been
other metae in Rome, for it to need an adjective to determine it.
We can see
it newly built in a coin of Titus (r. AD79-81), just to the left of the Flavian
Amphitheatre (the Colosseum to you and me).
On the coin, it is spurting water rather than sweating or oozing it. By
AD354, when the Chronographer itemised the things to be seen in Rome, it
certainly had the name (metam sudantem,
in the Accusative case).
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Sestertius of Titus, showing the Meta Sudans, left |
The term
‘meta sudans’ existed before it was built under the Flavians, since as Bill
Thayer points out in his as always first rate Lacus Curtius site, it’s referred
to in a letter from Seneca to his friend Luculius (aut hunc qui ad Metam Sudantem tubulas experitur et tibias, nec cantat
sed exclamat; Seneca Epistulae
Morales 4.56) with regard to one at Baiae. This does not mean that the one
in Rome was created with that name, as it might have inherited it when it
changed to a slighter flow later in antiquity.
There not
being such a monument during the life of Seneca (and thus of Nero), yet it was
already functioning during the brief reign of Titus, suggests that it was
constructed during the decade of Vespasian’s reign. Perhaps it can be related
to the Domus Aurea of Nero, which included an artificial lake, created by the
engineers Celer and Severus to create a delightful rus in urbe; we could not rule out a purely functional purpose, to
regulate hydraulic pressure for Nero’s lake. As that was rapidly dismantled,
perhaps the Meta Sudans as we had it until 1936 was prettified and made to be
part of a monumental assemblage, because it could not be removed without flooding
the area.
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The Cloaca Maxima in 1814, oil painting by CW Eckersberg |
We can see
from nineteenth and early twentieth century photographs than there wasn’t much
left. The coin of Titus suggests a high-pressure flow, which did not exist in
later centuries, and which was heavily reduced in antiquity. One possibility
was that it was used as a safety valve for the water flows from the nearby
hills; with heavy rains and rising groundwater flowing off, it could be opened
to produce the column of water seen on the coin.
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Colourised (perhaps hand-tinted) scene in 1890; maybe a postcard |
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Victorian photograph of a distant Meta Sudans by the Arch of Titus |
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Meta Sudans seen through the 250 years later Arch of Constantine
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Any large
city depends utterly on water flowing, and this was as true for Rome as it was
for Los Angeles in the film Chinatown.
Rulers, to be seen as benefactors, will want to mark their munificence by a
flow of water beyond the level of need. It may have been intended primarily to
impress people, in the manner of the Emperor Fountain at Chatsworth House in
Derbyshire. This was created by constructing a lake in the Peaks seen behind
the house, generating enough water pressure for the fountain to reach nearly
300 feet on demand.
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Emperor Fountain (1844) with the South Face of Chatsworth House, the Derbshire home of the Cavendish family, Dukes of Devonshire |
The valley
in which the Meta Sudans is (or was) located was the original thoroughfare of
Rome, the via sacra. The various
communities which made up early Rome used that road for processions, notably
for funerals; Polybius comments on how important those were. By the time the
Meta Sudans was built, processions along the via sacra would have passed
underneath the Arch of Titus and then turned left past the Colossus (which the
Chronographer notes as ’The colossal statue, 102 feet high. On its head are 7
rays each 22 feet long’. This was a
crowded, low-lying poor area area, which in AD354 had 2,757 insulae and only 88 houses. The water
pressure had to process 75 bath houses, 78 cisterns and the Baths of Daphne;
the latter may be associated with the statue of Apollo (Apollinem sandaliarum)
in that district; Daphne was a water nymph pursued by Apollo, and is one of the
first myths Ovid recites in his Metamorphoses.
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Computer Reconstruction of the Meta Sudans (see the coin of Titus) |
Sadly, the
Meta Sudans was demolished at the orders of Mussolini in 1936; by then, as can
be seen in these illustrations, it had collapsed into a small stump. There is
no sign then of cultural protests like those against ISIS for attacking Palmyra
today.
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