Sacra Via proper

Looking west from the Arch of Titus down the Sacra Via into the Forum Romanum.

Although the part east of the Arch of Titus, and the further extension through the Forum, were clearly often referred to as Sacra Via, it seems that for many the term "Sacra Via" or "sacer clivus" (clivus is a slope, a street going up or down a hill, sometimes steeply) referred to just the descent from the Velia to the eastern entrance to the Forum Romanum.  Varro tells us that the Sacra Via went from the sacellum Streniae in the Colosseum valley to the Arx on the Capitoline, which meant it had to go through the forum, but then he adds that popularly only this stretch, from the Velia down to the eastern entrance to the Forum, is called Sacra Via.

Varro, de Lingua Latina 5.47: hinc (near the Carinae) oritur caput sacrae viae ab Streniae sacello quae pertinet in arcem, qua sacra quotquot mensibus ferunter in arcem et per quam augures ex arce profecti solent inaugurare.  huius sacrae viae pars haec sola volgo nota quae est a foro eunti primore clivo.

Sites along the Sacra Via

• residences (some remains of foundations are east of the house of the Vestals) and, later,
• many shops (jewelry, fruit, flowers, many signs of which survive in inscriptions)

• a pepper warehouse (dates),
• the "heroon Romuli", and
• the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (second century) on the north visible in the above view to the left, and on the south
• the Regia,
• houses and shops (remains showing above to the right foreground),
• the atrium Vestae, and
• a great portico, the Porticus of Gaius and Lucius, possibly the Porticus Margaritaria (pearl merchants).

• The poet Horace seems to have spent a lot of time ambling on the Sacra Via.  In Satire 1.9 he was going on the Sacra Via "as is my habit" when a social-climbing bore accosted him; Horace was unable to shake the man until a summons to court did it for him.  He refers in passing twice to the sacer clivus in terms which fit this Sacra Via proper.  In Odes 4.35, an ode to Iulus Antonius, Horace predicts Augustus' conquests of conquered people who will be dragged in triumphal processions per sacrum clivum, presumably to the entrance of the Forum.  In Epode 7.8 he refers to Caesar (perhaps Augustus) entering the Forum from the east by descending by the Sacra Via.
• Pliny the Elder (first century CE), in a discussion of the use of linen in awnings, mentioned several awnings in this area.  He says that Caesar covered the entire Forum and the via sacra from his own house and the clivus (the slope) up to the Capitoline.  Pliny, Natural History 19.23: mox Caesar dictator totum forum Romanum intexit viamque sacaram ab domo sua et  clivum upque in Capitolium.
• Late in the first century CE the Spanish poet Martial fancifully described the course a new book of his was taking from his home on the Quirinal to Proculus on the Palatine, going eastward from the house of the Vestals (the eastern end of the Forum and thus the western end of the Sacra Via proper coming down from the Velia) by the sacer clivus, that is, by the Sacra Via, to the Palatine, presumably by way of the Clivus Palatinus which branches south, up the Palatine, from the Arch of Titus.  Martial 1.70, addressing the book: vicinum Castora canae/transibis Vestae virgineamque domum.  inde sacro veneranda petes Palatia clivo.

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Sources:
Horace, Odes, Epode, and Satires, including notes by E.C. Wickham in Quinti Horatii Flacci opera omnia, Oxford University Press, 1877.
Platner 1911
Martial
Pliny the Elder, NH
Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed.
S.B. Platner and T. Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, Oxford UP, 1929
Richard Stillwell, Ed., Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, x.v. Roma, Princeton: Princeton U.P, 1976
Ernest Nash, A Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome, New York: Praeger, 1962.