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18.5 The Severan Temple and Basilica, the Arch of Septimius Severus, and the Unique Hunting Baths
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Do curso por Yale University
Roman Architecture
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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 temple.
The temple in this the temple here is the one that you see here.
It is a restored view. It is from Ward-Perkins.
It is a temple that was put up by Caracalla.
It's this, the temple at the back wall that we looked at in plan just before.
It was put up by Caracalla to honor his
parents as a divi Septimius Severus and Julia Domna.
It's interesting in
a variety of ways.
It's interesting because it is surrounded
by an arcade, columns supporting arcuations.
We've seen an interest in this sort of thing
starting to come to the fore at, at this time.
We saw it in late domestic architecture.
In Ostia, think of the House of Cupid
and Psyche, for example, of the early fourth century.
So placing these arcades on columns with
Medusa heads in between them is something that
comes to the fore at this time.
We see that the temple is placed on a very, very tall podium, 19 feet tall.
Why?
To raise it up over the walls so that you could see it from a distance.
It's like they, when they raised the Capitolium in Ostia, also up high
so that it could compete with the
apartment houses, the same general idea here.
Local limestone for the walls, imported marble for
the columns. The the the staircase is interesting.
It's a single staircase but you can see it is pyramidal in shape.
I don't want to push the Egyptian thing too far, but
it's conceivable that it might have been designed under Egyptian influence.
And if you look at the column bases, we know that they were
depicted with images of the battle between gods and giants a a very
important theme in Greek art.
So we see once again what's so interesting about some of these
provincial cities, this coming together of influences from all over the world.
From Greece, from Carthage, from Egypt and also of course from Rome.
Here's a view of the, arcades, the Medusa's heads, very deeply
carved, as you can see here,
characteristic, also, of the decorative work
of the Severan period. The plan once again that shows us the, the
Basilica, central nave, side aisles, apses on either side, looking very
much like the Basilica Ulpia of Trajan in Rome probably influenced by that.
Look also you, there's a wall here, you can walk into the wall at several
points and there are columns decorating that
wall, columns that just project into our space.
They have no structural purpose whatsoever.
The in and out undulation of the
wall through the traditional vocabulary of architecture
another sign that we're moving toward what
I've called a Baroque phase in Roman Antiquity.
This is an amazing view from the air of
the remains of the forum and also of the Basilica.
The Basilica is better preserved than the forum the Basilica.
And you can see how beautifully this is sited,
right near the sea, again, we're dealing with a port here, port city here.
You can see the apses.
You can see the preserved columns, you can
see the wedge shaped section of shops here.
and, you can see, again, that the basilica has many
of its columns better preserved than those in the forum.
We see them here.
We can get a much better sense of what the basilica looked like in antiquity.
In fact, this is
much better preserved than the Basilica Ulpia in Rome.
We see the, and we see the difference in the materials.
The pink granite from Egypt, used here as well.
The Corinthian, in this case Corinthian capitals,
rather than the pop, the lotus leaf capitals.
Sandstone for the walls, so, this combination of
local stone, and especially imported marbles for this structure.
Here's a restored
view of the interior where we can see it
was two storied originally, just like Basilica Ulpia in Rome.
Like the Basilica Ulpia in Rome, a flat ceiling
with a coffered ceiling, as you can see above.
And we can also see the niches have coffering in them, very interesting
decoration, use of columns on two
tiers, no structural purpose whatsoever, decorative only,
projecting into our space, creating that in-and-out undulating movement.
And then a very unusual motif, architectural motif in the center.
I show you here the south apse, where
we can see the pink granite once again preserved.
Ionic capitals in this particular case for that niche.
And then these very heavily decorated pilasters on either side.
And in the center of the niche these very
tall columns.
This is very interesting because it seems to have that
no purpose whatsoever than just to stand there and look good.
Two colossal columns on tall bases with Corinthian capitals and then a
lintel on top of those and then Griffins and then another lintel on the top.
What was the purpose of this?
Did it have some kind of religious purpose?
Well, this is a civic structure, so unlikely.
It's just
a decoration among other decorations, but using architectural elements in toto.
The piers are very, very interesting.
They're eaten away, dematerialized by their sculpture as
you can see here, light and dark accentuated.
And if you look at the details of them, you will see that one of
them or a couple of them have scenes of the of the 12 labors of Hercules.
Remember, this was a building that was completed
by Caracalla.
Is it a stretch to say that Caracalla might have wanted to
have Herculean imagery here as he did in the baths of Caracalla?
Or the benefactor who helped you know, build this might
have had that in mind as well, to make that connection?
It might be far fetched, but certainly something worth thinking about.
And two more details of that decoration here.
I want to mention just in passing the Arch
of Septemius Severus.
It's more a work of sculpture than it is of architecture, and
it has a lot of figural scenes that are interesting for their iconography.
But I just want to make passing reference to
it because It is the one building that I
mentioned that we do believe was put up in
203 and ready for Septimius' visit to the city.
It also is interesting because it is, it is it was made at the same time as
the arch in Rome, the Parthian Arch in Rome, 203
AD, and also celebrates Septimius Severus' victories over the Parthians.
That's exactly what it celebrates, and those
scenes are alluded to in the figural sculpture.
But it is very different from the arch in Rome because it is a tetrapylon.
I mentioned the tetrapylon when we went over the paper topics.
The four-sided arch, the purpose of which
is to span two streets that cross that at that, that intersect at
that particular point so the traffic can go through the arch going both ways.
It's really quite ingenious.
And we see the tetrapylon does not does not take off in
Rome, but is very popular in the provinces, and we see it here.
We also see as we look at this structure, and it has
been by the way, it had fallen down completely but has been
re, re-erected although the sculpture on it is,
is cast, and the original sculpture in the museum.
But we do here something very interesting, and that
is that they have used the broken triangular pediment here.
You can see the way the pediment is broken apart and used used only in
part here, which is something we do not see in Roman arch design.
Here is a view of it from the side, where you can get
a sense of the drama of those broken triangular pediments, as well
as the way in which this structure was completely covered with sculpture.
And you can see some of that sculpture also dematerializing the arch in
a way very similar to the piers that we saw also in the basilica.
And I just show you two, quickly, two details of
the figural sculpture that we see there honoring Septimius Severus and
his two sons in a triumphal chariot at the top, and then down here below Septimius
shaking hands with his elder son Caracalla as if giving him power.
Geta stands in the center.
Geta is still alive, and not erased on this monument here.
And but Geta is standing here and then this wonderful image of
Julia Domna with her fabulous wig standing next to them and looking on.
But look at this figure here. Who is this?
Hercules with his club standing right behind the shoulder of Caracalla.
So once again this very close association between Caracalla and his alter ego.
I want to end today with my favorite building in Leptis Magna, in fact
one of my favorite buildings from the entire semester because it is so unique.
This is the so-called hunting
baths at Leptis Magna. They date to the late second to
early third century A.D. I show you an axonometric view from Ward-Perkins.
They're very well preserved, and I'll show you, show them to you in a moment.
This bath is interesting in all kinds of ways, but it's
interesting primarily because it's a private bath, not a public bath.
We've looked at so many public baths this semester.
What do I mean by a private bath?
Not one individual.
I suppose one could call Hadrian's baths in his
villa private and that they were for his private villa.
but, but, here a private bath within a city a
private bath not for single individual but a group of individuals.
A, a guild of men whose job, who, whose profession we believe it was,
to collect animals, wild animals, in the wilds of Africa, and
send them to Italy. That was their business.
Send them to feed, in a sense, the
amphitheaters of Rome and the rest of Italy.
That was their job.
They probably made quite a fortune doing that.
And they got together and built for themselves
this wonderful bath which you're going to see right
near the sea where they could kick back and relax and hang out with each other.
And what a place it was. And what's interesting about
it is, although we have seen that concrete was not
used extensively in Leptis Magna, it is used for this building.
And this building is much more innovative for
that reason than most of the other structures we've
seen, even those that honor Septimius Severus, like
the arch, like the forum, and like the basilica.
What do I mean by innovative?
You can see the way in which concrete has been used here to its utmost.
You enter into the structure.
The forecourt
is an octagon. The entrance vestibule is an octagon.
From the entrance vestibule you go into the tepidarium, which you can see has
a segmented dome, a kind of pumpkin
dome influenced by those earlier ones of Hadrian.
Into the caldarium over here, which is large and barrel vaulted.
The frigidarium, also barrel vaulted here, as you can see.
But what makes these, these rooms particularly exciting
architecturally and different than anything we've seen, in fact
unique is that not only can we see the shapes
of these vaults on the, these concrete vaults on the
inside when we stand here, but also from the outside.
The shapes are visible from the outside as well.
You can see from the outside that this was a barrel vaulted room.
You can see from the outside that this was a barrel vaulted room.
And you can see from the outside that this one had
a segmented dome.
We haven't seen that in other architecture.
Yes, you can get a little glimmer of it when you
look at the frigidaria of the great imperial baths in Rome.
You can get a sense of the groin vaults from the
outside, sort of but not in the way that you can here.
This is very revolutionary, very different
and very special to this particular building.
And I'll show you two last images where
you can see that, also from the outside.
This one in black and white, and you can see the massing of these
geometric forms from the outside, which make
very clear what lies inside, very clear.
The, remember the Pantheon with its surprise, you're standing
outside, it looks like a typical Greek Greek temple.
You walk inside, wow, it's a, it's a Roman interior.
Here it's in, inside and outside are brought together in a way that we
haven't seen before.
When you stand at the outside of this building and look at it, you can tell
what those shapes are like on the inside in a way that we have not seen before.
A truly revolutionary building.
And I show you one last image.
It's faded but it's the best I've got and
it's a really, it's a really, I think, very
effective image in terms of showing you what these
baths looked like silhouetted against the sand and the sea.
The barrel vaults, the segmented vaults, all of those are
clearly revealed on the outside as they were on the inside.
A very innovative structure put up not by the emperor, not
by the reigning emperor, not by benefactors who wanted to honor the
emperor and not part of that great Severan renovation, but part
of the individual hearts and minds of this particular group of men.
And what can I say to end this lecture
except for those men in the late second, early third century A.D. life was good.
Thank you, all.
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