Fasti Capitolini

The Sala della Lupa in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, with the Capitoline Wolf in the foreground, and behind her an entablature of the Fasti Capitolini, one of several in the hall.

The Fasti Capitolini, or Capitoline Fasti, are a list of the chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, extending from the early fifth century BC down to the reign of Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Together with similar lists found at Rome and elsewhere, they form part of a chronology referred to as the Fasti Annales, Fasti Consulares, or Consular Fasti, or occasionally just the fasti.[1][2]

The Capitoline Fasti were originally engraved on marble tablets erected in the Roman forum. The main portions were discovered in a fragmentary condition, and removed from the forum in 1546, as ancient structures were dismantled to produce material for the construction of St. Peter's Basilica. They were brought to the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the adjacent Capitoline Hill, where they remain as part of the collection of the Capitoline Museums, together with other Roman antiquities.[3][4] Together with the histories of writers such as Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Capitoline Fasti form one of the primary sources for Roman chronology.[5]

  1. ^ Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, pp. 218, 399.
  2. ^ Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, p. 523 ("Fasti Annales").
  3. ^ Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, p. 662 ("Fasti").
  4. ^ Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, p. 399.
  5. ^ Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. I, p. viii.