The article takes as its point of departure recent work [Frischer forthcoming] critiquing the theory of Edmund Buchner about the relationship of the gnomonical instrument known as the Horologium Augusti and the Ara Pacis Augustae. As a result of this critique, the Montecitorio Obelisk could be situated with greater precision on the map of the city. A computer simulation showed that Buchner erred in positing that the shadow of the Montecitorio Obelisk went into the center of the Ara Pacis on Augustus' birthday. In this article, computer simulations are used to develop a post-Buchnerian interpretation of the relationship of the obelisk and altar. Over 230 hitherto unrecognized solar and shadow alignments are reported. The first part of the article defines four zones around the monuments where the solar and shadows observations were made. In the second part of the article, specialists interpret the significance of the annual solar and shadow spectacle from various points of view. The conclusion synthesizes the results, arguing that the monuments were intentionally aligned and situated in order to propagate the same message as the one inscribed on two sides of the Montecitorio Obelisk [CIL 6.702 = ILS 91]: that Augustus was a devoted worshipper of the sun god (Sol), who brings Rome victory in time of war, and prosperity in time of peace through his earthly representative, the emperor. From 13 to 9 BC Augustus initiated projects in the Northern Campus Martius to erect the Ara Pacis, Montecitorio Obelisk, and the gnomonical device generally known as the Horologium Augusti.2 The projects had two motivations closely related to the two ways we can couple the monuments: obelisk-gnomonical device and obelisk-Ara Pacis. The obelisk-gnomonical device pair is functionally bound, serving the purposes of accurate time-keeping. The obelisk supported a sphere on a rod attached to the top of its pyramidion, and the shadow of the sphere hit a crosshatch inscribed on the meridian line at local noon each day of the year. The obelisk-Ara Pacis pair appears to have served the purpose of expressing the symbolism of imperial ideology, since the two monuments are visually bound but have no functional connection. They have a similar orientation, and the obelisk stands athwart an extension westward of the altar's axis of symmetry. In recent years, the attention of scholars has been concentrated more on the first than on the second pair. This paper shifts the focus to the second pair and its motivation. It has two goals: to present a series of recently discovered solar and shadow axial alignments between the sun, the Ara Pacis, and the Montecitorio Obelisk that could be seen in the Campus Martius and Campus Agrippae during the reign of Augustus and beyond (for the location of these monuments, see the map on figure 1), and to interpret these alignments from various, mutually reinforcing points of view. We shall argue that the major motivation in erecting the monuments and siting them as they were was to create a recurrent sun and shadow spect...

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From the Republic on into the early Empire, Roman senatorial nobilitas connoted not only the distinction of a distinguished family pedigree, but also the attainment of a high public office, the consulship. The association of birth with office persisted in the fourth and fifth centuries c.e. when the nobility still represented the most elite, most prestigious segment of the Roman senatorial aristocracy. But this was a group and a virtue that was not without its challengers. Christian leaders claimed nobilitas and its representatives for Christianity. Most often, as a survey of the texts from the western Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries shows, Christian leaders acknowledged the bases for nobilitas —family pedigree combined with public office—but subordinated these to Christian piety. By adopting this hierarchical notion of nobilitas , Christian leaders facilitated the conversion of the nobility even as they enabled them to continue in positions of preeminence within aristocratic Christian society. Even when the rhetoric of nobilitas was tied to the piety of the ascetic or virgin, the conservative rhetoric of Christian leaders, and the ability of the elites to manipulate this form of piety to their advantage, blunted the more radical implications of this notion of Christian nobilitas . As the texts will show, competing claims to nobilitas reflect conflicts within the Christian community, between ascetic and moderate models of piety, as well as conflicts with pagans. However, the Christian claim to and reformulation of nobilitas reveals, too, the influence of powerful elites who changed Christianity even as they changed their religious affiliation.

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