The Altar of the Gens Augusta is a Roman altar associated with the Imperial cult of ancient Rome, which was discovered on the slopes of Byrsa hill above the port of the ancient city of Carthage (modern Tunis). It is now kept in the Bardo National Museum in Tunis.
The altar was found in the immediate vicinity of the Temple of the Gens Augusta. Like several other public buildings, the temple belonged to the Roman quarter of Carthage, which was laid out following the establishment of the Roman colony in 29 BC. The name chosen for the colony, Colonia Iulia Concordia Carthago referenced Augustus' adopted family, the Gens Julia on the one hand and, on the other, the Roman goddess of peace, Concordia, patroness of the city.
The altar is made from Carrara marble and is decorated with shallow relief on all four sides. The reliefs were framed by a kind of pilaster, covered with stems and either laurel leaves or flowers. On the first side there are five human figures and a bull which is to be prepared for a taurobolium (ritual sacrifice). The second side shows the flight of Aeneas. In his left arm he holds his father Anchises, while in his right hand he leads his son Ascanius/Iulus. The Gens Julia claimed descent from Iulus. Vergil's Aeneid describes how Aeneas visited the founder of Carthage, Dido, after his flight from Troy. The two remaining sides show Rome personified in the form of an Amazon and Apollo with a cithara, a god closely connected with Augustus.
The altar was discovered in 1916 to the acclaim of scholarly circles. Louis Poinssot published a monograph in 1929 which is the basic reference work for the artwork to this day.
In the middle of the twentieth century, Jean Charbonneaux identified the altar as an exceptional example of Roman popular cult. He emphasised its "clarity and naive simplicity," especially given that "only a few monumental reliefs survive from the time of Augustus." [1]
Further scholars have affirmed the significance of the altar. The Tunisian archaeologist Abdelmajid Ennabli saw it as an "important document for the understanding of Imperial ideology." [2] For Mohamed Yacoub it is a manifesto of Augustan art, since it creates a connection "between Roman realism and Greek idealism." [3] Yann Le Bohec even considered it the "most spectacular display of Roman art in Africa yet known." [4]
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The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas's wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.
The Third Punic War was the third and last of the Punic Wars fought between Carthage and Rome, and lasted from 149 to 146 BC. The war was fought entirely within Carthaginian territory, in modern northern Tunisia. When the Second Punic War ended in 201 BC, one of the terms of the peace treaty prohibited Carthage from waging war without Rome's permission. Rome's ally, King Masinissa of Numidia, exploited this to repeatedly raid and seize Carthaginian territory with impunity. In 149 BC Carthage sent an army, under Hasdrubal, against Masinissa, the treaty notwithstanding. The campaign ended in disaster as the Battle of Oroscopa ended with a Carthaginian defeat and the surrender of the Carthaginian army. Anti-Carthaginian factions in Rome used the illicit military action as a pretext to prepare a punitive expedition.
Ascanius was a legendary king of Alba Longa and is the son of the Trojan hero Aeneas and Creusa, daughter of Priam. He is a character in Roman mythology, and has a divine lineage, being the son of Aeneas, who is the son of the goddess Venus and the hero Anchises, a relative of the king Priam; thus Ascanius has divine ascendents by both parents, being descendants of god Jupiter and Dardanus. He is also an ancestor of Romulus, Remus and the Gens Julia. Together with his father, he is a major character in Virgil's Aeneid, and he is depicted as one of the founders of the Roman race.
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