Loading...

18.3 The Augustan Theater and the Hadrianic Baths at Leptis Magna

Course video 103 of 136

Timgad, Trajan’s colony for Roman army veterans, was designed as a castrum; Leptis Magna, with Carthaginian roots, was developed first under Augustus. Leptis-born Septimius Severus renovated his hometown featuring a forum, basilica, and arch. Entrepreneurs, providing animals to Rome's amphitheaters, commissioned Hunting Baths with intimate vaulted spaces revealed on the outside and silhouetted against the sea, suggesting that they knew how to innovate and enjoy life.

Roman Architecture is a course for people who love to travel and want to discover the power of architecture to shape politics, society, and culture.

Visualizar o programa do curso

Ministrado por

Diana E.E. Kleiner
Dunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University

Transcrição

The other Augustan building, as I mentioned, was the theater of Leptis

Magna and this theater again, also put up, in the Age of Augustus.

It dates specifically to A.D. 1 to 2.

So a very early Roman theater, and a quite well-preserved, Roman theater.

And we should think of it in connection

to the other Augustan Roman theater, that we saw.

For example,

the Theater of Marcellus, in Rome.

This one, as we'll see, better preserved in some

of its aspects, than the Theater of Marcellus, in Rome.

If we look at the plan we see some interesting features.

We see, first of all, that it is, it corresponds extremely well, to the

theaters that we've seen thus far, this

semester, in that sense, it's a conventional building.

I should mention that, it is not built on the

hillside, in the Greek manner, but is built on a hill of concrete.

We're going to see that, very, very little concrete is used in Leptis Magna.

Is used in in North Africa, in Roman North

Africa, in general, where the work is primarily, of stone.

The buildings are made primarily out of stone, very little concrete.

But they did use it here to create

a hill, a man-made artificial hill out of concrete,

on which they could rest the seats of the theater, or the cavea of the theater.

The seats themselves, are done in local stone, local stone.

And we can also see the other features of the typical Roman theater.

The semi-circular orchestra, the semi-circular cavea, cavea, the division

of the cavea into this cunae or wedge-shaped sections.

We can

also see that the stage building, we know

quite a bit about the stage building because

it's extremely well preserved in a way that

the Theater of Marcellus, of course, is not.

We see that it was made up of these two, three very large niches here, that have

columns screening the inside, following the curvature in fact, of those niches.

And you can also see, there are architectural elements in the center

here, that seem to project into that space.

So, and this is pretty early, this is A.D. 1 to 2, so it does give us some sense.

When we talked about painting, we talked about

the fact that, we see things in Roman painting,

of the second style in particular, 60 B.C.,

50 B.C., that we don't see in built architecture.

And I mentioned at that time, it's conceivable

that they are based on lost theatrical sets that

were made out of wood.

But a building like this, where we do have local

stone used for the colo, for the, for this forest

of columns, that we see inside these niches, and I'll

show it to you, because it's well preserved, in a moment.

We get a, we get a sense, of the kind

of thing that may have existed that may have had

some impact on some of the paintings that we saw,

of the second style, in places like Pompeii and elsewhere.

This is also interesting because if you look, it's hard,

you can't really see it in plan, but if you

look at the very top of the cavea, the top

of the cavea, the center, was the location of a temple.

And that temple was put up to Ceres, the goddess Ceres,Ceres,

the goddess Ceres, Ceres Augusta, so the Augustan version of Ceres.

And that was at the very top. And that makes this temple,

a type of temple that we have not talked about

this semester, and that is what is called, a Theater Temple.

A temple that has, a theater that has a temple, as an integral part of it.

This is not a new idea, to Leptis Magna.

We know for example in Rome, that the

Republican General Pompey, built such a theater in Rome.

A temple theater, a theater that had a temple, at the apex of the cavea.

It is not preserved, although there is enough

evidence and fragments and so on, for us

to get a quite good sense, of what it looked like, and it was one of these.

So again, ideas that seemed to have been developed in Rome

first, are making their way, in this case, to Leptis Magna.

Notice that the theater at the apex, is

aligned with another theater, that's located down here.

A large, possibly a larger one. And this one

this one seems to have been put up to the divine Augustus or to a number of Divi.

And again purposefully aligned with the temple, at the top.

Here is something very interesting.

We see the porticus in the back.

This porticus that we saw, for example, at the theater in Pompeii, the early theater

in Pompeii, 80 to 70 B.C. as, as you'll remember.

We see it here and you can see, that

it is not as regular, as the porticus in Pompeii.

And the reason for that is likely

because of the pre-existing buildings on this site.

And this is where we see a significant difference, with the planning of Timgad.

Timgad again, the Romans could just lay this out any way they

wanted because nothing was there, and they chose this ideal castrum plan and

the theater and so on, very, very regular.

Here, they have to contend with earlier structures.

They have to, build, they have to design their building, keeping those in mind.

They certainly don't want to destroy temples, for example, the

shrines of the locals, that wood not be good politics.

So, they don't, and they have to build their building with that in mind.

And so we see some very unusual shapes here.

It's not what they would have done,

if they could have done differently but they had

to do it, given the reality of the situation.

This is a view of the Theater of Augustus at Leptis Magna, as it looks today.

You can see once again, that the stone of choice is local stone.

Local limestone and sandstone for the columns, as well as for the cavea but

again, the cavea rests on a concrete foundation.

And we can see again, what I described before,

the three great niches as well as these, square

elements with columns, that project into our space that

give a, a very interesting scenic view of Columnar Architecture.

That again, gives us an idea of

perhaps, some of those temporary structures in wood,

that would have had a significant impact on second style Roman wall painting.

This is interesting.

This is an extremely well preserved inscription that comes

from the theater of Leptis Magna, and is still preserved.

And we can see here, as in the market of Augustus,

that it is in Latin, but also translated into Neo-Punic, below.

And I thought you might be interested in hearing

what it says.

And it says and I quote, and I'll do that in

English, when the father of the fatherland, Caesar Augustus, son of

the deified Caesar, namely Julius Caesar, so this is again, one

of the ways we know, that this is an Augustan building.

Was Pontifex Maximus, that is chief priest of Rome, because

state and religion, very closely allied, in the Roman period.

And Augustus

was at one point, both chief priest of Rome, as well as imperator or emperor.

When Augustus was Pontifex Maximus, vested with the tribunition

power, for the 24th time, being consul for the 13th time,

a man by the name of Annobal Rufus, the adorner of his country.

So he must have commissioned not only this, but other buildings as well.

The adorner

of his country and lover of Concort priest Sufit, prefect of the sacred objects.

The son of Him, of Himilco Tapapius, took care,

to build this at his own expense and dedicated it.

So, here we see a good example of the

sort of thing that we see often, in the provinces.

That is, buildings put up in honor of

the emperors, during the period in which they reign

but put up by major local benefactors, who have significant funds at their disposal.

Who want to do the same sort of thing, that anyone who wants to

put their name on a building at Yale, has preserved their name for posterity.

Their generosity, their benefaction, for posterity.

And at the same time, do good by providing the kind

of amenities that cities need, like theaters and baths and the like.

I mentioned already that building continued to

pace during the time of the Emperor, Hadrian.

And the main building that was added to Leptis Magna

during the Hadrianic Period, was a very large bath structure.

The second largest bath structure preserved in Roman, North Africa.

And we see it in plan here, the building block on the right, and then a view of,

a, a fuller view of the entire bath complex, at the left.

It dates to A.D. 126 to A.D. 127.

Just looking quickly, at the at the, at the plan over here, you can see, not

only the bathing block, same we see on

the right, but also the palaestra of the structure.

And the palaestra of this structure should strike you as very different

from any other palestra, that we've seen thus far, this semester.

It's almost shaped like a hippodrome although it doesn't have the hairpin

shape with one curved and one straight end, but two curved ends.

In fact, it might remind you more than a hippodrome of the

Basilica Ulpia, in the Forum of Trajan, with its two curved ends.

One on either side, and columns running around the center.

And then two two radiating apses

up here on the right on the upper most part, excuse me.

So very unusually shaped palaestra, we've never seen a palaestra like this before.

But perhaps, even more interesting than the shape of the structure,

is the way it's off axis with the rest of the building.

Right?

It's off axis, it's not, it's not lined up

axially, and symmetrically, with the rest of the building.

The same, but the reason

for that is, almost certainly the same as we

saw, with the porticus in the theater, the Augustan theater.

And that is something else must have stood

on the site that, that, that forced them to

design this in such a way, that it was off center, with the rest of the structure.

But it actually made it, it makes it more interesting in a sense, architecturally.

With regard to the bathing block, that is very conventional.

You can pick out

all the rooms that we've become so accustomed to naming in

Roman bath architecture. This is an example of the Imperial bath

type, that we've seen developed in Rome from the time of Titus up through Trajan.

The baths of Titus and the baths of, of Trajan, the Imperial bath type.

Where we have the main bathing rooms placed in a row in the

center of the structure, axially related to one another.

We see, what do we see at the top with the, with the the

columns around it or the bases and, bases and then columns above, is the what?

Natatio. The natatio.

The frigidarium. Tepidarium.

Caldarium.

Caldarium here, with its radiating niches, as you can see.

So, natatio, frigidarium, tepidarium, caldarium, all in

succession and then, the other rooms act symmetrically arranged around them.

Duplicated one, mirror images of one another, on either side.

In this plan, it doesn't show the

frigidarium, as if it were triple groin vaulted.

But most who've studied this, believe that it was.

the, and I'll show you a view of that in a moment.

Before I get to that, a view into the remains of the Baths of Hadrian, today.

And we see with the Baths of Hadrian, a very major

change, in terms of building stone, in the city of Leptis Magna.

And that is, while up to this point, they were using entirely local stone.

All of a sudden, in the time of Hadrian and it's not surprising I suppose,

with Hadrian and his, his era being a

time of international travel and the like, internationalism.

We see the the, the beginning to import marbles from

all over the world, for the buildings of Leptis Magna.

This being the prime example. We have building stone in this building.

We have some local stone in this building, but we also

have marble from Greece, marble from Asia Minor, and even marble

from Italy, used in the baths of Hadrian, at Leptis Magna,

making it a very very quite magnificent building to say the least.

So, this a very significant change in the way

they are thinking about the building materials used for the

structures of Leptis.

Here is a re, restored view of what scholars, some scholars,

at least, believe the frigidarium of the baths of Hadrian looked like.

Very similar to what we imagine, that the frigidaria

of baths in Rome looked like, of the imperial type.

Think of the later, the later baths of Caracalla that

we looked at last time, with the same triple groin-vaulted

schemes, supported by engaged columns on

either side, and then, very heavily decorated.

It could be, that those who have thought about this, have been

too influenced by spaces like the frigidaria in, in the baths of Caracalla.

Because to do this, we know that very little concrete was used in

Leptis Magna, to do this kind of building, at this kind of scale.

To, to vault this kind of room at this

kind of scale, you would need to use concrete construction.

So, there are two possibilities here.

Either they did use it in this building and

used it very well, to create a space that

was quite comparable, to what was being put up

in Rome or it may have been vaulted somewhat differently.

But those who've studied this with, with

some, you know, who are not very knowledgeable

about this kind of thing, seem to believe that this was a groin vaulted building.

Now groin vaults can be done out of material, other than concrete.

We saw some some vaulting in Pompeii, not groin

vaults, but regular vaults in Pompeii, that were made out of, out of wood.

But to do it at this scale would be near impossible

and one has to imagine that, concrete would have been used.

So that's, that's controversial and we don't

know for sure, exactly how this building

was vaulted.

Sobre o Coursera

Cursos, especializações e graduações on-line, ministradas pelos melhores instrutores das melhores universidades e instituições de ensino.

Join a community of 40 million learners from around the world

Earn a skill-based course certificate to apply your knowledge

Gain confidence in your skills and further your career

O Coursera proporciona acesso universal à melhor educação do mundo fazendo parcerias com as melhores universidades e organizações para oferecer cursos on-line.

© 2019 Coursera Inc. Todos os direitos reservados.

Baixar na App Store

Baixar no Google Play