Defining Rome's Pantheum

Abstract

Writing in the early third century CE, Julius Africans claimed to have built a library ‘in the Pantheon’ in Rome, although the exact location remains elusive. In considering the competing possibilities for the site of the library, this study argues that the building we commonly refer to as the Pantheon does not correspond to the ancient understanding what the Pantheum was. The case is made that it was not a single building, but instead comprised a larger complex, of which the still-standing structure was only one part. This interpretation allows for a number of details associated with the Pantheon to be rethought within a wider context and alternative proposals to be made regarding the forecourt, the ‘arch’ in the centre of this space, the location of the now lost caryatids and bronze columns, the little understood Severan restoration, and the meanings of the much-discussed inscriptions on the façade.