#iuppiter anxurus

[dererumgestarum]

THE SANCTUARY OF JUPITER ANXUR AT TERRACINA

The great ex-urban sanctuaries of antiquity serviced the serious side of ancient religion. Out in the empty countryside, often in some setting of considerable natural beauty and away from the distractions of daily life in the city, the sanctuary was the domain of the deity. One made the pilgrimage to this distant location as a demonstration of one's reverence for the God. Once there, important requests were made and the appropriate, propitiatory gifts and sacrifices offered. The most famous santuaries--that of Apollo at Delphi (which had the added attraction of the Oracle), Artemis at Ephesus, Zeus at Olympia, were like small cities, offering amenities to visitors, usually in spectacular architectural settings.

The sanctuaries of the Republican period fully exemplify the Roman genius for innovative construction and landscape engineering. The sanctuary of Jupiter Anxur, or the youthful Jupiter, the patron deity of the colony at Terracina, dates to the early 1st c. BC. when Sulla restored and reorganized the strategically-important trading city, following its Roman colonization.

Although the sanctuary is not far from Terracina, its dramatic placement high above the city, on a rugged, yet picturesque, bluff overlooking the sea, sets it apart from the world. The surviving cryptoporticus and podium are situated not on the highpoint of the bluff, but on its southeastern edge, which is closest to the town below. The massive substructure raises the groundline of that corner of the bluff to just below the highpoint. Conceived of as an augmentation and restructuring of the irregular topography, the cryptoporticus provided the temple architects with a true tabula rasa—an idea building site, free of obstacles.

The cryptoporticus has a western orientation. As the podium shows, the temple itself was placed daringly off-axis and off-center, to allow for a full southern exposure, which would optimize the interior and exterior lighting of the builidng. The temple was therefore sited without respect to the cryptoporticus qua building—instead it negates its existence by treating it simply as the ground on which it is built.

The effortless effacing of the cryptoporticus is an amazing bit of slight of hand, given its gargantuan scale and outstanding construction. The structure is an example of the expert handling and creative use of concrete construction in the Republican period. The concrete core is faced with opus incertum, the placing of which is anything but uncertain. Arches are reinforced by masonry voussoirs The open arcades of the western side function as a porticus. These are intersected by transverse openings which are surmounted by groin vaults. These elements are sized and aligned with extraordinary precision and regularity.

The Doric temple of Jupiter was dismantled for its ashlar masonry long ago. The concrete cryptoporticus, however, which survives nearly completely intact, is apparently unassailable and indestructible.