Samuel Ball Platner, Thomas Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, UMBILICUS ROMAE , UMBILICUS ROMAE , UMBILICUS ROMAE

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UMBILICUS ROMAE

a monument erected not -earlier than the time of Severus (AJA 1909, 186) on the north end of the hemicycle of the ROSTRA (q.v.), and mentioned only in later literature (Not. Reg. VIII; Eins. I. 5; 7. 7; 8. 8; DAP 2. ix. 389). It is now a cylindrical brick-faced core, rising in three stages, with a diameter of 4.60 metres at the bottom and 3 at the top, but originally it was covered with marble. It represented the central point of city and empire, probably in imitation of the ὀμφαλός in Delphi and other Greek cities, and may have corresponded architecturally to the MILLIARIUM AUREUM (q.v.) at the south end of the hemicycle (Jord. i. 2. 245; HC 80; Thedenat 134, 233).

A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Samuel Ball Platner. Thomas Ashby. London: Humphrey Milford. Oxford University Press. 1929.

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Samuel Ball Platner, Thomas Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome

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UMBILICUS ROMAE