This is a book that, in part, assembles what is known about the Capitoline Hill between the high empire and the early Middle Ages but that in larger part presents and explains how people talked about, argued about, and imagined Rome's "Holy Mountain." Because the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus was constructed on the hill in, probably, the sixth century BCE, the Capitoline assumed a significance unrivalled by Rome's other hills. But that significance was susceptible to multiple understandings and re-understandings. That is where Moralee's fine book comes into play.

The Capitoline was the centre of Roman history in antiquity; its temples and buildings were fundamental to the stories Romans told about their past and the rituals and administration that promoted the empire and its rulers. Political and social changes in late antiquity meant that the hill no longer performed the roles it once had, and yet the Capitoline remained numinous. Moralee’s book expertly and surprisingly charts the history of the hill through transformations of imperial ceremony, state religion, and strategies of social memory between the fourth and seventh centuries to show how the history of a place and the memories of its ancient functions carried forward into the early middle ages. This is an excellent, stimulating read about the history of ideas and how ideas attach to places.