Temple of Concord

The Temple of Concord was first built by dictator Furius Camillius in 366 BCE to commemorate the reconciliation between the plebeians and the patricians; however, nothing of this temple remains today. It was theorized that the pieces of this temple were broken off in order to build other temples—specifically the Opimian temple, which was the second rebuild of this temple. All of what we know is that it was built with two kinds of Etruscan tufa, yellow Grotta Oscura and scoriated Fidenae stone, and had Victories as acroteria on the pediment and as antefixes on the roof. Overall, this temple was very Etruscan in terms of architecture style, and this could be explained by the fact that the people who actually constructed the temple were Etruscan. Because of this, we can also assume that the structure of the temple was made of wooden beams, had brightly painted stucco walls, painted tiles on the roof, etc—though, this is not entirely for certain given that nothing remains, 

As mentioned earlier, the second rebuild of this temple was called the Opimian temple, and it was built by L. Opimius after the death of Gaius Gracchus in 121 BCE. This temple was used for numerous trials and sentences—famously, it held the trial of the Catilinarian conspirator. We know a little bit more about the architecture, where it has a broad cella, narrow pronaos, and its southwest corner allegedly extended all the way to the Tabularium.  Moreover, its superstructure was made of various stones, like Monte Verde stone, Grotta Oscura stone, peperino for the columns, and travertine for the capitals and other decorative parts. 

Unsurprisingly, this temple was rebuilt once again in 7 BCE by Tiberius, dedicating it to both himself and his brother in 10 AD. Also known as the aedes Concordiae Augustae, it served as a repository for Greek works of art, as well as a meeting place for the Senate. However, studies done on the remains of this historic site found a lack of uniformity in the kinds of material used for parts of the temple where different amounts of material were found to have been used for different parts of the temple: Anio tufa, Monte Verde stone, travertine, Grotta Oscura, etc. 

The capitals you see below were from the cella of the temple, where they adorned a row of Corinthian columns. What is interesting about these capitals is the design, which have pairs of leaping rams in the place that would’ve had corner volutes. 

Sources: 

1. Watkin, David. Roman Forum. Cambridge, Harvard Univ Press, 2012., pp. 10-11.
2. Rebert, Homer F., and Henri Marceau. “The Temple of Concord in the Roman Forum.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. 5, 1925, p. 53, https://doi.org/10.2307/4238525. Accessed 15 Nov. 2021.