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20.1 Introduction to Greek and Roman Athens
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Roman Architecture
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Roman Wine in Greek Bottles: The Rebirth of Athens
The rebirth of Athens under Rome’s foremost philhellenic emperors, Augustus and Hadrian. High quality Greek marble and expert Greek stone carvers produced notable edifices in Roman Greece dependent on a mutual exchange of architectural ideas and motifs between Rome and Athens. These include the Monument of Philopappos, the Library and Arch of Hadrian, and architectural additions or transformations made to the Acropolis and the Greek and Roman Agoras.
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Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
Good morning everybody.
We have talked in the course of this semester many times about the
Hellenization of Roman architecture, about the impact
that Greek architecture had on Roman architecture.
And we've talked in particular about the
two Philhellenic emperors, Augustus and also Hadrian.
And the kinds of monuments they commissioned during their reign
that were so clearly based on those in ancient Athens.
Athens especially of the Classical period, cradle of civilization and where
one, where, where scholars often speak of as the birth of democracy.
I want to turn full circle, go full circle here and return
to the whole question of Athens by looking at Athens itself.
Because Athens
also became a Roman colony.
And you won't be surprised to hear that
it was built up under primarily two Roman emperors.
Namely, Augustus and Hadrian.
Just as one would expect the two major philhellenic Roman emperors.
I show you a spectacular view of Athens as it looks today.
And you can see
here that the city of Athens and
its, some of its antiquities extremely well preserved.
Is a city that is located, it's actually
a city that's located in plains surrounded by mountains.
And it also has three major hills, as
I think you can see from this extraordinary image.
One of those hills, of course, is the famous Acropolis,
and I think, by the way, if one were to make,
I don't know how many of you have been to Athens.
But if one were to make a list of the ten
places that one really must see at some point during their
lives and experience, Athens is certainly one of them mainly for
the Acropolis which you see in the center of this image here.
That's one of the major hills.
The other two are Mount Lycabettus which you see in
the uppermost part.
That's actually the highest hill of Athens.
And then there's another one called the Mouseion Hill which we are
actually going to talk about today because there's an important monument there.
The Museaon Hill or the hill of the muses
that's located off this image right where I'm standing here.
And those three hills as you can see rise up in the city of Athens.
And it's not surprising, and the rest of it surrounded essenetially by
a city that was constructed primarily after World War II.
Mainly residential.
Houses of six, five, six stories, residences that are that are
mostly white in color, as I think you can see here.
But the Acropolis rising up in the center, in an amazing way.
The city of Athens we know was, was founded
in the Neolithic period. It was found in the Neolithic period.
So it goes way back in the same way that Rome does.
And it's not surprising to see them founding
the city of Athens on one of those hills.
And which hill did they pick?
They pick the hill that's the flattest which makes it easiest to build on.
And that is the rock of the Acropolis itself.
So they put their religious structures on the Acropolis, and
then over time the city begins to grow up around the rock of the Acropolis.
Now, this is very interesting, because if you
think back to Rome and its beginnings, you'll
recall that Rome, too, was founded on a
hill, because hills can be most readily fortified.
So Rome was founded, you'll recall, on, on, essentially on, on two hills.
On the Palatine Hill.
By Romulus where he established residences, but also on
the Capitoline hill, where they built
the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitalinus.
So that being the religious center of the city.
We see the same sort of thing happening here.
The city growing up on the Acropolis and then we'll see
that the meeting and marketplace is down below the, in a valley
below the acropolis in the same way that the Roman forum, or
what became the Roman forum was in the valley beneath the Paletine
hill and also the Capitaline hill in Rome.
So very similar beginning for Greece as also for Rome.
As you all know Athens thrived particularly.
Greece in general thrived particularly in the fifth century BC
under Pericles, and continued to thrive into the Hellenistic period.
But it was in 86 BC that Sulla,
the Roman general Sulla sacked Athens. Sacked Athens, made Athens
a Roman colony, and in fact, destroyed the walls of the city of Athens.
So that a very obviously a very major point in the history of Athens.
When, when scholars talk about architecture that was
put up by the Romans in Athens during
Roman times, they talk about it
as being primarily uninspired and rather derivative.
And you'll find this in your textbooks
where Perkins talks about how derivative Roman
architecture in Greece is of its earlier
counterparts that is from classical and Hellenistic Athens.
And I think he has a point and it's something that we
should all think about as a group whether we think that the
buildings that we look at today are for the
most part derivative from the classical and Hellenistic past.
But I think to say only that is to miss
the point in part because what we are also going to
see as we look at these building today is that
the extraordinary marbles that come from this part of the world.
Greek marbles and we'll talk about a number of them today.
The quality of those is so high
that it's hard to imagine any building made out
of these not spectacular just for the materials alone.
And also because the artists and the architects and the artisans who
are responsible for carving this marble had been carving it for centuries.
And consequently they were particularly skilled, at carving marble.
And so what they produced has great beauty as I think you'll see today.
So those two, the, again a very important point
I believe about the quality of these works of art.
And we're also going to see works of architecture.
We're also going to see, that at least two of them, in
my opinion, are really distinctive structures
different than anything we've seen before.
And I think that you'll find they're quite innovative in their own way.
And we will look at, as I said, both of those today.
The city of Athens began to be excavated by archeologists in the 1930s.
And those excavations, which were
scientific, very careful scientific excavations.
Those excavations, combined with information that we have
from a writer of the Greco Roman past.
A man by the name of Pausanias. P-A-U-S-A-N-I-A-S.
Pausanias.
Who was a Greek of the second century
AD, who traveled around Greece and described everything that
he saw and he created in essence a
guide book to the creat Greek and Roman antiquities.
The combination of his descriptions from
the second century first-hand descriptions, of
the monuments that stood in the second century, along with the scientific
excavations of the 1930's and since allow us to get an excellent sense of what.
Not only what as we look at the remains today, not only
of what was there, is there now and was there once upon
a time, but what these buildings actually were their identities and what
their function was in Athens, either in Greek or in Roman times.
And we will
use the information provided by both of those today to
allow us to reconstruct the city, the Roman City in particular.
Now, the building as you could see from
the view of the Acropolis there are a number
of Greek structures on the top of the
Acropolis and I will show them to you later.
These include the great Greek entry way of
the fifth century BC, the so called Propilea.
The famous
Parthenon of course, the small temple of Athena Nike.
And also the Erechtheion which is the only building we've
really discussed in any detail in the course of this semester.
A fifth century BC building, you see it
here in an extraordinary view, now on the screen.
The Erechtheion, which we believe was built
some time between about 421 and 406 BC.
And the reason that it's important is not only because it's
an incredible example of fifth century Greek architecture, but
also because of the buildings up on the Acropolis.
It is the one that seems to have captured the imagination of, of Augustus
and also Hadrian when both of them when they visited the city of Athens.
But also of the Romans as a whole and you'll remember the reason for
that is essentially the' Porch of the Maidens which you can see so well in
this view.
The Porch of the Maidens that exerted
a very strong impact on Augustus and Hadrian.
Before I talk a little bit more about the
Porch of the Maidens though, just something about the rest
of the construction that you can see as you look
at the columns that they are of the ionic order.
A particularly attractive and elegant version of the ionic
order with the ionic capitals with their very attractive volutes.
You can also see the materials that are used here.
What you can't see is what's used for the foundations.
That material is called poros. Poros.
P-O-R-O-S.
Used for the foundations of the Erechtheion, and also
many other of the buildings that we'll look at today.
And then most most importantly, the, most of the building.
The walls and the columns are made out of pentelic marble.
P-E-N-T-E-L-I-C.
Pentelic marble, which is from Mount Pentilicon in Greece.
And is the marble that is used most often for for buildings in Athens
both in Greek times and also in Roman times as we shall see today.
And it's characterized by being gleaming white.
Really blindingly white as one looks at it in the very bright Greek
sun against the blue sky.
With regard to the Caryatid porch, the Porch of the Maidens, a very famous Porch
of the Maidens, you'll recall that both Augustus and Hadrian visited Athens.
They both saw this monument.
The Erechtheion had fallen into disrepair by the age of Augustus and
Augustus was so admiring of this porch that he made the decision to
have his own architects and artisans come to Athens to repair the porch.
And they not only repaired the maidens themselves but also replaced one.
One was in such bad shape I think it was the one in the back right.
It was in such bad shape that they restored that one entirely.
When they were there looking at those maidens, restoring them.
They were so taken by them
that they made plaster casts of those and they brought them back to Rome.
And you'll recall that they were used in Rome
as the models for maidens that were put up.
Here's, here's a view, of course, of those on the Acropolis from the front.
They made reduced-scale copies for the Forum of Augustus in Rome,
the second story of the Forum of Augustus, as you'll recall.
And then, down here, you'll be reminded of
the Cariotids also based on those of the Erechtheion.
In this case, to scale, same scale, as those in
Athens, used to line the Canopis of Hadrian's villa at Tivoli.
So, both emperors, again, Augustus and Hadrian very admiring of these works
of art and wanted copies of them for in Augustus's case a public structure
in Rome.
In Hadrian's case a private villa at Tivoli.
And we even believe that Herodes Atticus and the tomb that he made for
Annia Regilla in Rome, that brick tomb in second century AD on the Via Appia.
There were two female figures that were found, near, excavated near that tomb
and it has been suggested that they too, may belong to that tomb.
And while they are variations rather than copies, you can see that they
too owe their origins to the Caryatids. This building the cast a
spell on Augustus and Hadrian and was widely imitated in Rome.
What we are going to see today is
that this building continued to have a very strong
impact also on the buildings of the same
emperors Augustus and Hadrian put up in Athens itself.
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