Rome's Most Elusive Gate​

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According to Josephus’ account of Titus and Vespasian’s triumph, after Vespasian made a short speech to the senators and his soldiers before the Portico of Octavia, then “did he retire to that gate which was called the Gate of the Pomp, because pompous shows (thriambous) do always go through that gate” (Trans. William Whiston). Since this is an older translation, it is worth mentioning that Josephus’ word thriambos is the typical Greek rendering of the Latin triumphus.
 

This, as well as four other known ancient citations (Cicero, Pis. 55; Tacitus Ann. I, 8; Suetonius Aug. 100, 2; Dio Cassius 56, 42, I), is all the evidence we have of the Porta Triumphalis. We can gather from Josephus and Cicero that this special gate was only opened for triumphal processions – and from our other sources that exception to this rule was made for Augustus’ funeral – but otherwise these authors provide little indication as to where this gate might be. Scholars are equally unsure whether these sources are referring to a gate in the city walls or a freestanding portal of some kind.
 

The debate over the location of the Porta Triumphalis has been ongoing, it seems, since the Renaissance, when a commentary on Suetonius suggested that it was between the Porta Flumentana and the Porta Catularia, two gates in the Servian wall. Although the Porta Catularia’s location remains unknown, Platner and Ashby confidently identified the Porta Flumentana as being near the Tiber, along the southmost end of the Campus Martius. Despite uncertainties surrounding this Renaissance-era source, many scholars, and most notably Coarelli, have cited it to support placing the Triumphal Gate just east of the Porta Flumentana near the Capitoline, in the supposed location of the Porta Carmentalis, another archaeologically untraceable structure.
 

Ancient sources suggest that the Porta Carmentalis was made up of two portals. This identification goes back to the story of the Fabian clan marching out of Rome in 479 BCE, recounted by both Livy and Ovid. By conventional translation, Livy says that the Fabii left by the 'wrong side' of the Porta Carmentalis, which is under the right-hand arch. Ovid even says that this portal is cursed. This, in conjunction with a short poem by Martial mentioning the reconstruction of an old Temple of Fortuna near the Porta Carmentalis, which goes on to describe a free-standing arch ("a porta worthy of the emperor's triumphs"; see Martial 8,65), leads to Coarelli's conclusion that the Porta Triumphalis, initially part of the Servian wall, became a monumental free-standing arch in that same region.

          

This identification, however, does not really fit with Josephus’ narrative. After Vespasian makes a short speech to the crowd of senators and equestrians at the Portico of Octavia, Josephus writes that he ‘goes back’ – in Greek, anaxorei - to the Triumphal Gate (for the passage in question, see Josephus’ Jewish War, VII,v,4). This would seem an odd word choice if Vespasian were not somehow backtracking to his previous location near the Temple of Isis. As a consequence, Ena Makin places the Porta Triumphalis as a freestanding arch near the Villa Publica, his proposed spot for where Vespasian and Titus spent the night before their joint triumph. Both his, and Coarelli’s, proposed locations for the Porta Triumphalis are indicated on the map.
 

Suggested Further Reading:
 

Beard, Mary. The Roman Triumph. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007.
Coarelli, F. “La Porta Trionfale e la Via dei Trionfi. DdA 2 (1968): 55-103.
Coarelli, F. Il Foro Boario: dale origini alla fine della repubblica. 2nd ed. Rome: 1992.
Makin, E. “The triumphal route, with particular reference to the Flavian triumph.” JRS II (1921): 25-36.
Richardson Jr., L. A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992.