For almost a century, only a large feline colony could walk among the ruins of the sacred area of Largo Argentina in Rome. Tourists and Romans had to content themselves with contemplating this imposing archaeological space leaning out from the heights, among the traffic of the chaotic Via Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome.
The cats of Largo Argentina will have to get used to having company. For the first time, Rome has opened this archaeological site to the public for the first time. It is not just another Roman ruin among the hundreds in the Italian capital, but this scene witnessed one of the most important assassinations in history. It was here, in Pompey's Curia, where Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, the episode that precipitated the end of the long Roman republican stage and the beginning of the empire established by his nephew and heir, Caesar Augustus, after winning the war. civil to Mark Antony in the 1st century B.C.
The bloody assassination of the dictator who crossed the Rubicon has inspired multiple works of art, film, and literature, beginning with Shakespeare's tragedy. Contrary to what the English playwright suggests, it did not take place in the Roman forum, but at this point on the ancient Field of Mars.
“It happened there, in front of that wall in the background, where that pine tree is,” says the Superintendent of Cultural Assets of Rome, Claudio Parisi, walking among the ruins. “That was the wall that closed the classroom of Pompey's Curia where the Roman Senate was to meet that day,” he points out. Caesar had received bad omens, but he decided to go anyway, to his misfortune. Curiously, they have identified the wall thanks to the presence of some latrines indicated by classical sources.
It all happened on the morning of the Ides of March, the 15th of that month according to our calendar. According to classical sources, Caesar was assaulted by traitorous senators, among them who could be his son, Marcus Junius Brutus –the most famous conspirator–, who stabbed him 23 times until he fell dead before the statue of Pompey. “You too, my son?” Caesar asked Brutus, in his famous words recorded by the historian Suetonius.
In addition to Pompey's Curia, the sacred area of Largo Argentina includes four temples built between the early 3rd century B.C. C. and the end of II BC, surely consecrated to Feronia, Sabine goddess attributed to wild nature; Yuturna, a minor deity, nymph of the waters and springs; to the goddess Fortuna in one of her multiple forms and to the Lares Permarini, in charge of protecting the Romans during navigation. The complex of the Portico of Pompey, adjacent to this sacred area with the four temples, is later, from the middle of the 1st century BC, and it was in the Curia – located behind two of the religious buildings – that this brutal murder took place. .
The monuments were buried over the centuries until, in 1926, during demolitions to build new buildings in the square, ancient ruins began to emerge so impressive that they stopped the works and declared it an archaeological zone in 1929, when it was inaugurated. But until now, and during these almost one hundred years, Rome had not made the area suitable for visits. It was only after the luxury firm Bulgari paid for the restoration of the Trinità dei Monti staircase and part of the patronage was left over that they decided to invest in opening it to the public. In total, it has cost around a million euros. How could it not have been done before? Parisi shrugged and recalled that there are some 230 archaeological areas in Rome alone. There is no time, nor money, to address them all.
“It has never been possible to go down to this level. It is one of the best opportunities to walk in ancient Rome”, celebrates the superintendent. Of course, no one has dared to throw out the real residents, the almost 90 cats that live here. "You can't see them because they are in the shade sheltering from the heat, but the feline colony is protected," promises Parisi.
