Capitoline Jupiter and the Historiography of Roman World Rule

Abstract

This article examines the origins of the idea of Roman world rule and the foundation myths of the Capitoline temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The temple is associated with world rule by the mid-1st century BC. By the Augustan period its foundation myths are linked with the idea that Rome had been destined, from the time of the Tarquins, to exercise dominion over Italy and the world. The most important of the Capitoline foundation myths describes the prodigy of a human head which was discovered in the ground during the construction of the temple and interpreted as an omen of empire. In its earliest form the story of the caput humanum served as an etymological aetiology to explain why Rome's most important temple was called the Capitolium. This article argues that it was transformed into a myth of empire, with the addition of the prophecy of Rome's imperial destiny, in the mid- to late third century. At first it proclaimed Rome to be 'head of Italy'. The language of empire was inflated after the conquest of the Greek East, and by the late first century it was claimed that Rome had been destined to become 'head of the world'.