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The Domus Valeriorum

A family home for the Gens Valerii at AncientWorlds. Members of the family are encouraged to use this domus as a family discussion board and to host and entertain family and the citizens of AncientWorlds during times of site festivals and other functions family members may wish to become involved with.

Salvette Omnes!, welcome to the Domus Valeriorium. As you wander through the house you will become aware that the gens Valerii have occupied this domus since the foundation of the republic in 509 bc.

The Origin of the Gens Valerii

The Valerii were Sabine in origin. Their ancestor Volesus or Volusus is said to have settled in Rome with Titus Tatius.One of the descendants Volesus,P.Valerius ,afterwards surnamed Publicola played a distinguished role in the expulsion of the kings from Rome and was elected consul in the founding year of the republic.[509 b.c.] From this time forward to the late period of the empire ,for a period of a thousand years the name occurs frequently in the Fasti and it was borne by the emperors Maximus, Maximianus, Maxentius,Diocletian, Constantius, Constantine the Great and others.

The Palace of the Valerii.. "Their house at the bottom of the Velia was the only one in Rome of which the doors were allowed to open back into the street". [Dionys.v39;Pint.Publ.20.]

The Domus Valeriorum. — There was on the Caelian, between S. Stefano Kotondo and the Lateran, a palace belonging to the descendants of the Valerii Poplicolae, namely, to Valerius Severus, prefect of Rome in a. d. 380, and to his son Pinianus, husband of Melania the younger. The palace was so beautiful, and contained so much wealth, that when Pinianus and Melania, grieved by the loss of all their children, put it up for sale in 404, they found none willing to purchase it : *' ad tam magnum et mirabile opus acce- dere nemo ausus fecit." Seven or eight years after the capture of Rome by Alaric, August, 410, the same palace was given away for little or nothing, " domus pro nihilo venumdata est," having been '* dissipata et quasi incensa " by the barbarians. There must be some inaccuracy in this account, which Commendatore de Rossi has found in a manuscript. of the library of Chartres. In the first place, a considerable part of the property was transformed into a hos- pice and a hospital under the title of " Xenodochium Valeriorum " or *' a Valeriis," which flourished until the ninth century and the transformation must have been the work of Pinianus himself and not of an outsider. In the second place, the house was discovered in 1554, 1561, and 1711 in such a wonderful state of preservation that we must exculpate the Goths from the charge of having pil- laged and gutted it in 410. The account of the find sounds like a fairytale. When the workmen entered the atrium of the palace in the first excavations of 1554 and 1561, the deeds and records of the family, engraved on bronze tablets, still hung to the columns of the peristyle. The tablets contained mostly decrees in honour of the Valerii, or treaties of friendship with their house passed by the corporations of Zama, Iladrumetura, Thenae, and other cities of Africa. Four pedestals of statues dedicated to Valerius Aradius by the corporations of the grocers, bakers, etc., were discovered under the portico. The excavations were stopped perhaps for fear of undermining the church and the monastery of S. Erasmus, or whatever was left standing of this celebrated abbey, the medi- eval representative of the old Xenodochium a Valeriis. Under the pontificate of Innocent X. (1644-55), when no traces were left of S. Erasmo, the atrium of the palace was entered again, and seven *^ bellissime statue " were brought to light, among them two fauns dancing to the sound of the Kp6Taa ; they were purchased by Monsignor Mazarino. The experiment was tried again under Clement X. (1670-76) with equal success. Bartoli mentions statues and busts, among them two of Lucius Verus bought by Cardinal de Bouillon ; the group of Cupid and Psyche, now in the Galleria degli Uflizi ; the finest specimens of fresco paintings ever seen in Rome; columns of rare breccias; and the bronze lamp representing a ship with the figure of our Lord at the helm, also in the Uffizi at Florence

Literary Sources. — Corpus Inscr,, vol. vi. n. 1684-94. — Pietro Sante Bartoli, Mem. 53, 54 (in Fea's Miscellanea, vol. i. p. ccxxx.). — Pietro Bellori, Lucerne antichef p. 11. — Gio. Batt. de Rossi, II monastero di 8. Enumo t la eata dei Valerii »ul Celio (in Studi e docum. dl Storia e Diritto, vol. vii. 1886; and Bull, com.y 1890, p. 288). — Giacomo Lumbroso, Notieie di Catsiano dalPoBO. Torino, 1875, p. 50.

All sources cited are out of copyright and have become public domain

Patron Gods of the gens Valerii

Juno and Mars

The Lupercalia

The Valerii were historically associated with the Lupercalia having upsurped the cult to abolish human sacrifice and renaming the godess Luperca, Valeria Luperca. In time the name would become associated with Juno and Mars.From the time of the early origins of the cult the hammer used to sacrifice humans to the godess became the house emblem.

Source-The Lupercalia By Alberta Mildred Franklin 2008

My Avatar "The Scibe" by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836 – 1912)