9.5 The Forum of Augustus and Its Links to the Greek Past

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Roman Architecture

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Yale University

Roman Architecture

163 classificações

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.

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From Brick to Marble: Augustus Assembles Rome

Transformation of Rome by Augustus. Claiming to have found Rome a city of brick and leaving it a city of marble, Augustus exploited marble quarries at Luna (modern Carrara) to build his Forum, decorating it with replicas of Greek caryatids associating his era with Periclean Athens. The contemporary Ara Pacis served as the Luna marble embodiment of Augustus’ new hegemonic empire.

9.1 From Republic to Empire: Julius Caesar 8:19

9.2 Julius Caesar, Venus Genetrix, and the Forum Iulium 12:01

9.3 The Ascent of Augustus and Access to Italian Marble 12:03

9.4 Augustus Assembles His Marble City 11:44

9.5 The Forum of Augustus and Its Links to the Greek Past 8:47

9.6 The Ara Pacis Augustae 12:46

9.7 Mussolini, The Meier Museum, and a Jewel on Lungotevere 9:32

Conheça os instrutores

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

We're going to see that Augustus not only builds his marble city in

order to make it look like you know, more like Greece, more like Athens.

And to connect his new golden age with the golden age of Pericles

in Athens but we see, we see very specific Greek models being used.

For example, one of these is a freeze from

the Forum of Augustus, the other is a freeze from

one of the three temples on the Acropolis in Athens of the fifth century B, BC.

The so-called Erechteion, or Erechtheum in the Latinized version.

And one of these is from one, and one of these is from the other.

And I just wandered quickly if any of you want to guess which

is the Roman one and which is the Greek one, that it copies.

You can see this alternation of the lotus and palmette leaves here.

Any quick thoughts?

How many of you think this is the Greek one?

How many of you think this is the Greek one?

This is the Roman one.

This is the Roman one at the top. This is the Greek one down here.

The Greek one down here, more deeply

undercut, which is I think what throws people.

The Roman one from the Forum of Augustus up above.

But the important point for us again, that they are looking back at

Greek buildings of the fifth century and they are copying what they see.

We see here a model of the Forum of

Augustus, with the temple of Mars Ultor inside that

forum, with the embracing exedrae or hemicycles on either side.

You can see that the exterior of the structure was quite plain.

Just in a way that a Domus Italicas, outside was plain.

And it was only when you got inside that you

got a real sense of of the of the glory of

the architecture. So, I think you can see well here.

And most interesting for us, I mentioned

that these columns of the temple were Corinthian.

The columns on the first story over here were Corinthian.

But in the second story, on the left and right sides of the

Forum, the columns are replaced by figures of women, by figures of maidens.

And I show you two of them are survivors, two of them are well-preserved.

I show

them to you here.

These figures of maidens that replace the columns,

that support the capitals, on top of their heads.

And they flank this shield in the center with the depiction of a male head.

This is the god Jupiter, a certain, a certain guys of the god Jupiter, Jupiter.

Amon, as you can see him here. And we have, we have information

that tells us that Alexander the Great used to play shields in

the, in, in the Parthenon in Athens and elsewhere after great military victories.

And it is possible that that sort of thing is being referred to here, because we know

Augustus, like Pompeii before him had a, a thing

for Alexander and liked to associate himself with Alexander.

But most important for us is the fact that these maidens have clear

preceedence in the Greek World.

The famous Porch of the Maidens on the Athenian Acropolis, fifth century BC.

The Erechteion, again. Erechteion in the, in the Greek version.

The Erechteion of Athens, fifth century B.C. same set of maidens.

We know that these had fallen into disrepair in the age of Augustus.

Augustus visited

Athens three times.

He did not like seeing these in disrepair and in fact he

had his own architects replace one of them with a Roman copy.

And while they were doing that, they made plaster casts of these maidens, they

brought those plaster casts back to Rome, and then in reduced scale they

duplicated them for the, for the, Forum of Augustus

in Rome. So appropriations from Greece.

Appropriations in part because Augustus liked them.

But also, I don't think there's any question, that he was trying to draw a

relationship between himself, his new golden age,

and the golden age of Pericles in Athens.

We also have evidence for what the

pediment, the sculpture in the pediment looked like.

And I want to turn to that now.

This is a, a relief that dates to a slightly later period,

that purports to represent the pediment of the temple of Mars Ultor.

And I show it to you here.

And we can tell it from this exactly what the

sculptural display was all about in the pediment of this temple.

You see here in the center not surprisingly, Mars Ultor himself.

Mars Ultor depicted with a bare chest.

Next to him, to his left, to his right excuse me, to

our left, we see a figure of a woman, this is Venus.

And Venus as you can see has a something on her left shoulder, it is a cupid.

So Venus with cupid.

Venus the consort of Mars.

And then over here a personification, that we believe depicts Fortuna.

Fortuna, the goddess of Fortune, who brought

fortune to Augustus in his battle.

And then over here, a seated figure of Roma, with her arms and armor.

Keep this figure in your mind, because I'm

going to show you another seated Roma very soon.

And then over here a reclining figure of the Tiber river.

The Tiber on, the river on which Rome was built.

Over here a seated figure we believe is Romulus, the founder

of Rome on the Palatine hill.

And over here a reclining personification of the Palatine.

So most important that the building honored of course Mars

Ultor, and that Mars Ultor was depicted in the pediment.

There was also a cult statue inside the temple of Mars.

And we believe we know what that looked like as well because we believe

we have a copy of it in a relief from Algiers that is still

preserved that depicts Mars in the center.

This Mars Ultor again and this time the warlike Mars Ultor

because you can see he's wearing his breastplate and his helmet.

His consort, Venus, is once again by his side.

Venus is leaning on a pedestal.

She's very seductive.

Her, her drapery is falling off her shoulder,

as you can see, as she looks toward Mars.

And then Cupid down here,

offering her a sword in a sheath, probably Mars' own sword.

And then over here, a figure that's very controversial, a youthful looking figure

with a bare chest, and you can see a full cap of hair.

And we think that he is actually the divinized Julius Caesar, very botoxed

compared to what is rejuvenated, compared to what he looked like in that green

diabase portrait that I showed you before. A very youthful divine Caesar,

which shows you what happens to people in Roman times, when they were divinized.

They were able to shed, a fair number of years

and were depicted in much younger versions in their divinized state.

So, this probably, a reflection, as you can see the figures stand on bases.

And figures that stand on bases in Roman relief

sculpture are usually meant to be statues.

And we believe that this is again, a rendition of what

that triple set of statues would have looked like inside the temple.

To return to the plan quickly, just

to make the point that the sculptural program,

we're concerned here primarily with architecture, but the

sculptural program was very complicated, but very interesting.

And the figures were very carefully aligned with

one another to get the message across.

So as you looked at the temple, you would

have seen Mars Ultor in the center of the pediment.

If you were allowed to walk into the temple, which usually only the priests

could do, you would see the cult statue with Mars Ultor in center there.

There was an equestrian statue that was put up of Augustus in two BC when he

was given the title Pater Patriae, The Father, of his country.

And then all along the colonnades are there would

have been statuary, including an image of, of, Aeneus

on the side, Romulus on this side and the

so called Sumi Weary the great man of Rome.

Both Augustus's colleagues and also his rivals in their portraits on either side.

A kind of giant picture gallery, a giant portrait gallery of,

of, of the, of Rome, of the great men of Rome, of the greatest

men of Rome, namely Augustus himself, and of his ancestry,

both divine and mythological, via Aeneas and also Venus.

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