The inscription (1929) can be read in Trajan’s Market (Via Quattro Novembre 94), originally designed by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus (in Roman Syria) and built to complement Trajan’s Forum, inaugurated in 112 AD. The author of the text is Raffaello Santarelli.

The inscription is carved in Roman square capitals, retraced with red colouring (‘rubricated’) on a plaque fixed on the right wall at the beginning of the stairs that lead from the Great Hall to the ancient street known as Via Biberatica.

The text celebrates the restoration works on Trajan’s Market between 1924 and 1929, then surrounded and covered by houses and structures that had been built there over the centuries (insidentibus antea domibus disiectis). The works were directed by Corrado Ricci (1854–1934), who was one of the most important archaeologists and art historians of the period and had very significant assignments under the Fascist regime (senator in 1923, chief of the Superior Council of Antiquities and Fine Arts, member of the committee for the restoration of Palazzo Venezia, and director of the excavations of the Imperial Fora). The works exclusively concerned the upper part of the archaeological complex, and the restoration of the structure continued until 1934. The renovation works were thus conducted under three different Governors of Rome, all mentioned in the inscription: they were begun under Filippo Cremonesi (1922–1926), continued under Ludovico Spada Potenziani Veralli (1926–1928), and concluded under Francesco Boncompagni Ludovisi (1928–1935).

The inscription shows phrasings and stylistic features typical of Santarelli’s texts, including the formula lictorii nominis to indicate the Fascist era (also in the inscription of the Scipiones’ Tomb of the same year); the title vir clarissimus (literally ‘very famous man’, also in the inscriptions of the Mausoleum of Augustus and Academy of Saint Luke) to indicate senators (in the imperial period, the title was only assigned to members of the Roman Senate); the title praefectus Urbis to indicate Rome’s governors Cremonesi (1872–1942), Spada Potenziani (1880–1971), and Boncompagni Ludovisi (1886–1955); finally, the expression optime iuvantibus, which the author also used in the inscription no. 2 of the Colosseum.

Today, Trajan’s Market hosts the Museum of Imperial Fora. 

Bibliography

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870-2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 40–41.

Ricci, Corrado. 1929. ‘Il mercato di Traiano’. Capitolium 5 (11): 541–55.

Antonino Nastasi