An aerial view of the temple walls unearthed north of Rome



In a small town north of Rome, researchers have unearthed a 1,600-year-old temple dedicated to a Roman emperor’s ancestors. Built during the reign of Constantine in the fourth century C.E., the structure sheds light on the empire’s transition from pagan worship to Christianity.

As Saint Louis University historian Douglas Boin recently announced at the Archaeological Institute of America’s annual meeting, he and his team discovered three walls of the “monumental structure” in Spello, Italy, during excavations last summer.

“It will significantly aid in the understanding of the ancient town, the ancient townscape and city society in the later Roman Empire,” says Boin in a statement. “It shows the continuities between the classical pagan world and early Christian Roman world that often get blurred out or written out of the sweeping historical narratives.”

Boin first came to Spello because of a letter Constantine wrote to the townspeople during his reign. The rescript—an authoritative message from an emperor—was rediscovered in the 1700s and is now on display in Spello’s town hall, reports Newsweek’s Aristos Georgiou. In it, Constantine granted Spello’s people permission to celebrate a religious festival in their own town, rather than making the long journey to another, under one condition: They must build a temple dedicated to worshipping Constantine’s imperial ancestors.

At the time, the Roman Empire was in the midst of a dramatic cultural shift. After worshiping pagan gods like Jupiter, Juno and Minerva for centuries, its people were increasingly accepting Christianity. Constantine helped lead this transition, issuing a decree permitting Christian worship in 313 C.E.

The fourth-century rescript indicates, though, that the emperor entertained different religious values simultaneously: In addition to Christianity, he appears to have supported “imperial cult” traditions, which were based on the old Roman belief that emperors were divine figures.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...ity-180983559/