Transcript Augustan Rome - University of Oregon

The Augustan City
Res Gestae 20
Consul for the sixth time (28BCE), I
rebuilt eighty-two temples of the gods in
the city by the authority of the senate,
omitting nothing which ought to have
been rebuilt at that time.
Res Gestae 20
Consul for the seventh time (27BCE), I
rebuilt the Flaminian road from the city
to Ariminum and all the bridges except
the Mulvian and Minucian.
Augustus and the Arts
• Fostered a sense of interest in a morally
superior past that had seen sacrifice for
the building of Rome
• Fostered a sense of restoration of that
past, in art, architecture and in literature
The Aeneid
• Vergil wrote the Aeneid during the 20s
BCE.
– after the end of the civil wars.
• It was unfinished at his death in 19BCE.
• He asked that it be burned; Augustus
did not honor that request.
• Iliad: the epic of the individual man
• Odyssey: the epic of the household
• Aeneid: the epic of the city
Arma virumque cano…
1.1-4: I sing of arms and of a man: his
fate had made him fugitive; he was the
first to journey from the coasts of Troy
as far as Italy and the Lavinian
shores.
He faces challenges:
1.5-8 Across the lands and waters he was
battered beneath the violence of High
Ones, for the savage Juno’s
unforgetting anger; and many sufferings
were his in war.
--and many sufferings were his in war--
until he brought a city into being
[dum conderet urbem]
and carried his gods to Latium;
from this have come the Latin race, the
lords of Albus,
and the ramparts [moenia] of high
Rome.
Urbs antiqua fuit…
The most important reason:
1.There was a city they called Carthage
And some old, really obsolete, reasons:
2. The judgement of Paris
3. The honors given ravished Ganymede
1.27-29: Even then the goddess had this
hope and tender plan: for Carthage to
become the capital of nations, if the
Fates would just consent.
Aeneas never founds Rome
He never founds a city in the epic.
He sees the cities of others.
Buthrotum and Carthage
Aeneas at Carthage
They press forward on their path. They
climb a hill that overhangs the city,
looking down upon the facing towers.
Aeneas marvels at the enormous
buildings, once mere huts, and at the
gates and tumult and paved streets.
• The eager men of Tyre work steadily:
some build the city walls or citadel--they
roll up stones by hand; and some select
the place for a new dwelling, marking
out its limits with a furrow…
• Some make laws, establish judges and
a sacred Senate; some excavate a
harbor; others lay the deep foundations
for a theater, hewing tremendous pillars
from the rocks, high decorations for the
stage to come.
What is a City?
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city walls or citadel
dwelling
laws
judges
senate
harbor
theater
• A city is more than just buildings
–laws, judges, senate
–people acting toward a common
goal
And then, a simile…
• Just as the bees in early summer, busy
beneath the sunlight through the
flowered meadows, when some lead on
their full grown young and others press
out the flowing honey, pack the cells
with sweet nectar, or gather in the
burdens of those returning;
• Some, in columns, drive the drones, a
lazy herd, out of the hives; the work is
fervent, and the fragrant honey is sweet
with thyme.
Why Bees?
• Georgics, Book 4
• “They alone of animals hold their
children in common; share the buildings
of their city; live their lives under great
laws; have a fatherland and household
gods.”
Why Bees?
• They are hardworking.
• They live in a community.
– hierarchical and orderly
• drones; workers; a leader
• They reproduce asexually.
– (Georgics, Book 4, again)
• “How fortunate are those whose walls
already rise!” Aeneas cries while gazing
at the rooftops of the city.
This is the city that Aeneas’ descendents
will destroy; that conflict will stem from
his actions in this city.
• What might be the effect of the description of
Carthage on a Roman audience?
• Why a theater?
– An anachronistic picture
– Rome’s first stone theater was built in
55BCE
Augustan Rome
The Campus Martius
The Mausoleum
The Horologium
The Ara Pacis
• 87-89 meters in diameter
• height (without the crowning bronze
statue of Augustus) 44 meters
• bronze tablets with Res Gestae were
affixed to it somewhere
First person buried
• Augustus’ nephew and son-in-law,
Marcellus
• Vergil mourns his death in Aeneid 6 and
mentions the “new-built” tomb near the
Tiber on the plain of Mars.
Recyled as:
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a fortress of the Colonna family
an amphitheatre and bullring
a garden
a concert hall
– dismantled in 1936
• It has been plundered for building
material
The Horologium
• obelisk was the first brought to Rome,
from Heliopolis in 10BCE
• inscriptions of some of the signs of the
zodiac have come to light
The Pantheon
The one we see in Rome today was built
during the reign of Hadrian
Agrippa built one on the same spot in
27BCE (finished in 25BCE).
Agrippa built nearby:
• baths
• the Basilica of Neptune
• the Saepta Julia (a voting enclosure)
Forum Augustum
• Boys assumed the toga virilis in it
• Governors made it their starting point
when they left for their provinces
• Senate was to debate on war and the
award of triumphs
• Triumphators dedicated their crowns
and scepters to Mars