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18.3 The Augustan Theater and the Hadrianic Baths at Leptis Magna
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Hometown Boy: Honoring an Emperor's Roots in Roman North Africa
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.
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Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
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.
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