Concordia

"Unity." A Roman divinity, the personification of concord. She had several temples at Rome, and one was built as early as the time of M. Furius Camillus, who vowed and built it in commemoration of the reconciliation between the patricians and plebeians.1 This temple, in which frequent meetings of the senate were held, but which appears to have fallen into decay, was restored by Livia, the wife of Augustus, and was consecrated by her son, Tiberius, 9 CE, after his victory over the Pannonians.2 In the reign of Constantine and Maxentius, the temple was burnt down, but was again restored. A second temple of Concordia was built by Cn. Flavius on the area of the temple of Vulcan,3 and a third was vowed by L. Manlius during a seditious commotion among his troops in Gaul, and was afterwards erected on the Capitoline hill.4

❧

Iconography

Concordia is represented on several coins as a matron, sometimes standing and sometimes sitting, and holding in her left hand a cornucopia, and in her right either an olive branch or a patera.

References

Notes

  1. Plutarch. Camillus, 42; Ovid. Fasti i, 639.
  2. Suetonius. Tiberius, 20; Divus Claudius lv, 17.
  3. Livy. The History of Rome ix, 46; xl, 19; Pliny the Elder. Naturalis Historia xxxiii, 6.
  4. Livy. The History of Rome xxii, 33.

Sources

  • Cicero. On the Nature of the Gods ii, 23.
  • Comp. Ovid. Fasti vi, 91.
  • Hirt, A. (1805). Bilderbuch für Mythologie ii, p. 108.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.
  • Varro. On the Latin Language v, 73, ed. Miller.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.