oday’s visitors to Rome rarely give thought to the Temple of Hercules of the Muses, and who can blame them? Little survives beyond its outline on the Marble Plan and some barely discernible traces amid the modern jumble that was once the Circus Flaminius. The temple looms much larger in discussions of Republican literature: the creation of M. Fulvius Nobilior (cos. 189, cens. 179 BCE), it housed a statuary group taken from Ambracia, an archaic shrine of the Camenae associated with Numa, and a wall of fasti. By the later second century, the so-called Collegium Poetarum, where Accius snubbed Julius Caesar Strabo and Sp. Maecius Tarpa later presided over poetic recitals, was probably meeting there. In the late 30s, though few besides Peter Heslin now trouble to remember, the temple underwent a major renovation sponsored by L. Marcius Philippus, stepbrother (and uncle) of Octavian. The temple was rebuilt and surrounded with a new portico displaying memorable works of art, including a famous painting of Helen by Zeuxis and a cycle illustrating the Trojan War. The result, claims Heslin, was a far more significant monument than its meager remains would suggest. It is the “Museum” of his title, closely aligned with the adjoining Portico of Octavia and to be paired with the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine as “a project of major ideological significance” (p. 325).