Melpomene e Musa. Vicende antiche e moderne di due statue romane

The paper investigates the history (both in ancient and modern times) of two famous roman statues: the so-called “Melpomene Colonna” and the “Numa Pompilius” of the Roman Forum. The manuscripts of some illustrious antiquarians of the 16th and 17th centuries (Ph. van Winghe, F. de Peiresc, P. Rascas de Bagarris, J. Spon) as well as the unpublished Giornale degli Scavi del Foro Romano (Archivio Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma, ms. 13b) allow the author to reconstruct their archaeological contexts: the “Melpomene” came on light in the garden of card. Federico Cesi on the Aventine hill in 1591, the “Numa” was found in the excavations of the “Atrium Vestae” between the “Regia” and the Palatine in 1883. Both statues are probably connected with a strange occurence which Q. Aurelius Symmachus hints at in his Epist. I, 36. In 384 d.C. the Vestalis Maxima Coelia Concordia craved to dedicate in the House of the Vestals a statue in honour of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, a close friend of Macrobius and Symmachus, who died on january of that year. Many members of the pagan circle in Rome were against it, because such a honour was never given to any man before. But the dedication must have been done, if Aconia Paulina, widow of Praetextatus, dedicated as thanksgiving a statue of Coelia Concordia (probably) in the garden of her villa on the Aventine. On the ground of textual and epigraphical evidences, therefore, the paper proposes to recognize in the alleged “Numa” the statue of Praetextatus and in the “Melpomene” the statue of Coelia Concordia.