In Rome even a few marble fragments, or the podium of a temple can reveal to us so much. For example, right near the Theatre of Marcellus and to the side of the impressive columns of the Temple of Apollo Sosiano, in the course of excavations realized during the 30's of last century, it was discovered a podium that is considered as the base of the Temple of Bellona. Who was her? 

The answer is that Bellona was an ancient italic deity, initially similar to the Queen of the Underworld, Bellona was a sort of Goddess of War. Inside and outside of the temple, especially in the archaic period, the senators used to discuss international relations with other peoples and communities. Here was discussed if it was better to inaugurate a war campaign or not, here at that times they received important foreign personalities, here they waved goodbye proconsuls that they would start to take possession of their own Provinces. Here, for example, the same proconsuls and had to go back to report to the Senate on its activities. It is not a case, then, if the temple would have been built even at the end of the III century b.C. by Appio Claudio Cieco (that one of the Appian Way), in a moment of intense military activity to Rome, which was slowly expanding in the Italian peninsula.

Not only, however, because the worship of Bellona was associated with a strange tribal ritual that took place in Rome since the archaic age (and of which we have evidence up to the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius). In front of the temple, in fact, was placed the so-called Columna War: it was a column of wood or stone, surrounded by a sacred enclosure. A member of the board of feziali, whose functions  was also the one to declare war on the enemies in front of the gods, since ancient times, flung a spear inside enemy territory. An hostile and provocative act which signified the beginning of the hostilities. Certainly something like this could go well when Rome was a small city, and when the enemy peoples they met together in their local areas. But what happened when Rome began to fight against Taranto, against the Greek colonies, or down in Sicily? It seemed impossible to be able to complete this sacred ritual, and this is the solution!

According to some historians, this column symbolized, in fact, an enemy territory. And it had to be the column, personifying of what had to be fought and defeated, the recipient of a spear hurled from the feziale. Then, of course, was something far more special...during the war against Pyrrhus of the III century BC a war prisoner was forced to buy a plot of land near the Temple of Bellona. In this way, since he was an enemy, and that his private land was the enemy, was the game easy to launch the spear in that direction! Smart, which is not to say...