There's lots of interesting material on this
Puteal in the
Dictionary of Roman Coins, which I copied out for the
Numiswiki and also put on line with my own example of this coin:
PUTEAL —In the
comitium, or place of popular assembly, at
Rome, there is said to have been a spot, on which a statue of Accius Nævius (of Tarquinius Priscus' time) was placed, because there the celebrated
augur was said to have severed, or caused the above-named
king to sever, the whetstone with a razor. Under this statue there was (according to Dionysius Halicarnassus) a subterranean cavity, called puteus (a well or pit), in which beneath an
altar, the whetstone of Accius was deposited; over the well a cover was placed, whence it derived its name of
Puteal. But when the place fell into decay, Scribonius Libo, by order of the senate, caused it to be
restored, which led to its being called PVTEAL SCRIBONII, as certain
denarii show. —According to Beger's opinion, this covering to the well was called LIBO, because that person (see the
Scribonia family) lived in the vicinity, or because it was erected or repaired at
his expense. Thus Horace would seem to infer (
lib. 1. ep. xix. l. 8 )
Forum Putealque Libonis
It was, however, not the tribunal itself, but only the neighbourhood of the tribunal. —One of the numerous opinions subsiisting, as well among ancient authors as among modern commentators, respecting this place, so often allluded to in Roman
history, is this, that on some occasion or other, lightning
had fallen upon it, and that in consequence a covered well was constructed there, under authority, by the functionary whose name it bears. Be this as it may, it seems agreed on all
hands that the
Puteal of Libo was much frequented, as a sort of exchange, by the commercial and banking classes of
Rome —see
Scribonia.
Spanheim (Pr. ii, p. 189) contends that the
Puteal Libonis or Scribonii ought not to be confounded with the one constructed in the
comitium, to which
Cicero refers.
The object represented on medals of the
Aemilia and
Scribonia families looks more like an
altar adorned with sculptured
flowers than the tribunal or seat of a
praetor. But the whole matter remains involved in obscurity, and is too much associated with fabulous
history, and too little with events of any importance, to repay or deserve the learned researches and conjectures which have been bestowed on it.
(under
Scribonia:) The
Puteal of Libo, a celebrated place in
Rome, was the round parapet of a wall with a cover to it, which Scribonius Libo
had caused to be raised, by order of the senate, over a place where thunder
had fallen, in the
field of the Comitia, and near the
statues of
Marsyas and
Janus. It contained within its enclosure an
altar and a chapel. It seems, moreover, that it was a kind of tribunal or seat of justice, like our Court of Common Pleas.
Bill