Augustus' Power from the Stars and the Foundation of Augusta Praetoria Salassorum

Abstract

Augustus' propaganda founded the ruler's power on a series of references to the sky: Caesar's comet, which helped establishing the divine nature of kingship, the completion of the calendar's reform celebrated in the Campus Martius' meridian, and Augustus' association with the Capricorn, the zodiacal sign of the winter solstice. A variety of proofs coming from texts, works of art and numismatics show the key role of such a "power from the stars". We present here new archaeological and archaeoastronomical evidences coming from Augusta Praetoria Salassorum (modern Aosta), founded around 25 BC after the victory of Augustus' army on the Salassi. An emergency excavation along the Aosta's Roman walls has indeed brought to light a block in situ on a corner of one of the towers which carries several reliefs -including a plough and a spade -apparently related to the town's foundation ritual. As a consequence, we carried out a complete analysis of the original urban plan of Aosta and of its relationship with the sky and the landscape, taking into account the complex natural horizon of the Alps in which Aosta's valley is nested. The results show that the town was oriented in such a way as to pinpoint Augustus' "cognitive" relationship with the "cosmic" signs of renewal.

«Orientatio ad sidera»: astronomía y paisaje urbano en «Qart Hadašt/Carthago Nova»

“…En las ciudades romanas de latitudes mediterráneas el decumano suele coincidir con el curso del sol, pero la perpendicular -es decir, el cardo-suele estar fuera de dicho arco. Sin embargo, en la urbe cisalpina se ha observado recientemente que, aunque el decumano queda dentro de dicho rango solar, la zona sur del cardo también lo estaría, pues así lo permite © Universidad de Salamanca Zephyrus, LXXV, enero-junio 2015, 141-162 su emplazamiento en los Alpes (Bertarione y Magli, 2015). En concreto, el extremo meridional del cardo apunta a la cima de una montaña cercana, permitiendo que la calle esté orientada a la salida del sol en el solsticio de inverno.…”

Between Land and Sky—A Study of the Orientation of Roman Centuriations in Italy

“…At present, more than 300 towns have been already measured in Western Europe [10,16,17], the Near East [18] and the Maghreb [19], and astronomical patterns were identified in all regions, some of them shared among different provinces together with regional particularities. In Italy specifically, several Roman towns were studied [20,21], including Rome itself [22], together with the masterpiece of Roman engineering that is the Via Appia [23,24], which is a clear example of the integration of astronomical phenomena in Roman land organization. In addition, the implementation of a particular geometrical technique (the varatio) for the orientation of the main axes was explored in Roman towns in the Iberian Peninsula, leading to the conclusion that geometry might have also been used with possibly astronomical purposes [25].…”

Evidence and analogy in Archaeoastronomy

“…This piece of contextual information offers strong backing to the hypothesis that Aosta's urban plan was intentionally designed so as to have one of its main axes oriented to winter solstice for symbolic reasons (cf. Bertarione and Magli 2015).…”