The Lapis Niger in the Forum: the Black Stone and Romulus's Tomb

In the Roman Forum, in front of the Curia and near the Arch of Septimius Severus, a patch of black marble paving stands out from the pale stones around it. This is the Lapis Niger, the «black stone», which even the ancients considered a place charged with omens. Beneath it, excavations at the end of the nineteenth century revealed an archaic complex with one of the oldest inscriptions in the Latin language, a precious document for understanding the origins of Rome.

A late nineteenth-century discovery

In January 1899 the Venetian archaeologist Giacomo Boni, who directed the Forum excavations, identified the black paving in the area of the Comitium, the space where the people's assemblies met. Digging beneath it, he found the remains of a much older small sanctuary: an altar, the base of a column and a tufa cippus covered with carved letters. The discovery aroused enormous interest in Italy and abroad.

The black paving probably dates from the late Republic and was laid to mark a sacred place that was to be preserved but no longer left visible. The complex beneath it, by contrast, dates to the sixth century BC, the age of the kings. Today it is protected by a roof and can be viewed along a dedicated route, when open, or from above through the fence.

The inscription on the cippus

The cippus bears a text written in boustrophedon, with lines that change direction like the furrows ploughed by oxen. The language is archaic Latin, hard to interpret because the stone is broken at the top. A few words can be recognised, including a term meaning «to the king», one indicating a herald, and a formula declaring sacred, or accursed, whoever violates the place.

The presence of the word «king» confirmed that a royal figure really existed in archaic Rome, as tradition held. We do not know, however, whether it was a political king or the rex sacrorum, the priest who in Republican times kept the title and certain religious functions. The inscription remains a subject of study and of differing readings among philologists.

The tomb of the founders

Ancient authors associated the black stone with an illustrious burial. The grammarian Festus reports that it marked an ill-omened place, and that according to some it was linked to the death of Romulus. Others connected it with Faustulus, the shepherd who had raised the twins, or with Hostus Hostilius, grandfather of King Tullus Hostilius. The historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus mentions a stone lion placed on the tomb of Faustulus in the Forum.

The excavations found no human remains, and today it is thought that the site was a sanctuary perhaps linked to the cult of Vulcan, whose altar, the Volcanal, stood nearby. The memory of a founder's tomb should therefore be understood as tradition: a way in which the Romans linked the political space of the city to its origin myth.

The Lapis Niger is a discreet monument that many Forum visitors pass without noticing. Yet within a few square metres the Rome of the kings, of the Republic and of modern archaeology overlap. It is a perfect example of how the city always guarded its sacred places, even when it no longer remembered their meaning precisely.