Lucio Fauno: “Alli lettori”, in: Delle antichità della citta di Roma, raccolte e scritte da M. Lucio Fauno con somma brevità, et ordine, con quanto gli Antichi ò Moderni scritto ne hanno, Libri V. (Venezia 1548) (FONTES 13)

At the end of his book, 'Delle antichità della città di Roma' (Venezia 1548), the author, Lucio Fauno, appends a postscript in which he addresses his readers (“Alli Lettori”) concerning a then bitter controversy about the correct location of the Roman Forum. In contrast to a widely-held view that located the Forum between the Capitoline Hill and the Arch of Titus, Pirro Ligorio, and his friends, Gabriele Faerno and Benedetto Egio, advocated a position that relocated the Forum between the Capitoline Hill and the Palatine. This contradicted the prevailing consensus, as it was established in the Topographia Antiquae Romae (1534) of Bartolomeo Marliani. Fauno’s arguments refute the Ligorian postion, in defence of his own description of Roman topography provided in his book of the Antichità di Roma. In the course of time Ligorio’s relocation of the Forum proved to be wrong. In the discussion of ‘Lucio Fauno’, it is shown that this name is a pseudonym for the writer and antiquarian, Giovanni Tarcagnota of Gaeta (d. 1566)

Gli costumi, le leggi, et l'usanze di tutte le genti / raccolte... da molte... scrittori per Giouanni Boemo Aubano... ; è tradotti per il Fauno... ; in questi tre libri si contiene l'Africa, l'Asia, l'Europa

Sign.: *8, A-Z