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  • Prof: Good morning everyone.

  • We are on the cusp of Valentine's Day.

  • So I thought it was appropriate for us all to tell Rome how much

  • we love--Rome or Roma--how much we love her.

  • And so I've done that here.

  • I've loved Rome for as long as--for a long time,

  • certainly from the age that you are now.

  • And I know that there are many of you in this class who feel

  • the same way, and I hope that those of you

  • who entered this class, without having those strong

  • feelings for Rome, have come to love the city and

  • its civilization as much as I do.

  • So this is a kind of Valentine lecture, for Rome.

  • And I think that the particular topic that it is,

  • is appropriate, in the sense that we are going

  • to be looking at a number of quite eclectic monuments today,

  • very different monuments, one from the next,

  • and they're full of surprises.

  • And Rome is always full of surprises;

  • Rome a city, of course, that you see layers

  • upon layer of civilization, that one peels back to get us

  • back to antiquity, but along the way experiences

  • some amazing things.

  • So I think that this particular lecture,

  • which will talk about the varied nature of Roman

  • architecture, especially architecture

  • commissioned by individual patrons to preserve their memory

  • for posterity, again is particularly

  • appropriate.

  • I've called today's lecture "Accessing Afterlife:

  • Tombs of Roman Aristocrats, Freedmen, and Slaves."

  • We spoke on Tuesday about public architecture commissioned

  • by the emperor Augustus, public architecture that we

  • noted was made primarily out of marble,

  • out of Luna or Carrara marble, that was quarried on the

  • northwest coast of Italy itself, and the objective of it being

  • to try to conjure up the relationship between the new

  • Golden Age of Augustus and the Golden Age,

  • fifth century B.C., of Periclean Athens.

  • Just as Julius Caesar had tried to create a kind of Alexandria

  • on the Tiber, we see Augustus trying to

  • recreate an Athens on the Tiber.

  • And Augustus was, of course, very much--

  • in his objectives was very much in keeping with other objectives

  • that we've been studying for some time: this Hellenization of

  • Roman architecture that we have addressed on a number of

  • occasions.

  • We spoke last time about the Forum of Augustus in Rome,

  • featuring the Temple of Mars Ultor,

  • that temple that Augustus vowed he would build if he could be

  • victorious over the assassins of Julius Caesar,

  • that is, Cassius and Brutus.

  • He was so, at the Battle of Philippi, and he built this

  • forum and he built this temple again as its centerpiece.

  • And you'll recall again that it was made, for the most part,

  • out of Carrara marble.

  • We see the columns of Carrara here, a wall,

  • the seventeen Carrara marble steps, and so on.

  • We also talked about the Ara Pacis Augustae,

  • the Altar of Augustan Peace, put up to the diplomatic

  • agreements or treaties that Augustus made with those in

  • Spain and Gaul: a monument that was put up near

  • his earlier mausoleum, a monument that was also made

  • out of Carrara marble, and in fact solid Carrara

  • marble.

  • And this monument too had precedents in the Greek period.

  • It looked back to a number of sources,

  • but one of those, as we noted on Tuesday,

  • was the Altar of the Twelve Gods, or the Altar of Pity,

  • a fifth-century B.C.

  • monument that was located in the marketplace of ancient

  • Greece.

  • So again, both of these buildings, looking back to Greek

  • prototypes in their general format,

  • and also, of course, in the material out of which

  • they were made, namely marble.

  • When we talked about the Ara Pacis,

  • we talked about the fact that it eventually ended up being

  • part of a kind of architectural complex,

  • that while this architectural complex may have not been

  • planned from the start, it grew up over time into

  • something where all of the buildings related to one another

  • in interesting ways, both in terms of their content

  • and also in terms of their architectural design.

  • The complex included the Mausoleum of Augustus,

  • the tomb of the emperor Augustus, which was the first

  • monument built on this site, and eventually the Ara Pacis,

  • which you'll recall was actually not located originally

  • where it is now.

  • It was located in an area a bit here to the upper right

  • originally, on the Via Flaminia that

  • Augustus took when he returned to Rome from Spain and Gaul,

  • but that it was moved, or the remains of it were moved

  • over to this location, next to the Tiber,

  • by Mussolini, because as we noted last time,

  • in the meantime a palace had been built on top of the

  • original location of the Ara Pacis,

  • and that area was no longer available for use.

  • But again, the Mausoleum of Augustus, the first building of

  • this complex.

  • You see in this aerial view from Google Earth that the

  • mausoleum ended up becoming the centerpiece of the Piazza

  • Augusto Imperatore, that piazza that Mussolini's

  • architects designed to commemorate Augustus and also to

  • commemorate Mussolini, because that inscription I

  • showed you last time is inserted into the building over here.

  • If we look at this aerial view of the Mausoleum of Augustus,

  • which you'll see from your Monument List was begun in 28

  • B.C.-- and in fact that should ring

  • some bells for you and we should say something about its genesis

  • in 28 B.C.

  • Because you'll recall that important date of 31;

  • 31 the Battle of Actium when Augustus was victorious over

  • Antony and Cleopatra and became sole emperor,

  • or began his march to becoming sole emperor of the Roman world.

  • It's interesting to see him building this massive mausoleum

  • only three years after the Battle of Actium;

  • that's really quite striking.

  • Why did he do that?

  • Well the reason that he seems to have done that is despite the

  • fact that he lived until 76-years-old,

  • which was very old in ancient Roman times,

  • as I mentioned last time--despite the fact that he

  • lived to that ripe old age, he was not in terribly good

  • health, even as a young man,

  • and he was very concerned about his own longevity.

  • How long was he going to live?

  • He knew he had accomplished a lot already by this victory over

  • Antony and Cleopatra, and by some of his other

  • military victories, but he wasn't actually sure how

  • long he was going to last, and so he begins to build this

  • gigantic tomb eventually to hold his own remains.

  • And he completes that tomb in five years.

  • It's built between 28 B.C.

  • and 23 B.C.

  • And you'll recall the date of the Ara Pacis is considerably

  • later; 13 to 9 B.C.

  • So the Ara Pacis was only added to this complex later,

  • and at that point the whole thing was orchestrated with the

  • addition of the obelisk, and we talked about how the

  • obelisk cast a shadow on the Ara Pacis on Augustus' birthday,

  • and so on and so forth.

  • With regard to the tomb itself, we're going to see something

  • quite striking today, and that is that the tomb is

  • architecturally very different from the Ara Pacis Augustae,

  • and indeed from the Forum of Augustus.

  • And it's a good example of the eccentricity,

  • as we'll characterize today, of Roman tomb architecture in

  • general.

  • Keep in mind that Roman tomb architecture is the most

  • personal of any form of Roman architecture,

  • which makes it particularly interesting to study,

  • because the only practical requirement for a tomb was that

  • it be able to hold the remains of the deceased.

  • That's all it needed to do, whereas other buildings had to

  • do all kinds of other things: have running water through

  • them, and so on and so forth.

  • But that was not the case here.

  • So that the patron and the architect could come together to

  • create buildings that were unique to that individual and

  • again were eccentric to a certain degree,

  • and that is indeed what we will see,

  • and that is the case also in the Mausoleum of Augustus.

  • As we look down on the Mausoleum of Augustus,

  • in this aerial view, we see the general plan of it.

  • We see that there was a central burial chamber;

  • that there was a hollow drum, and around that hollow drum--

  • and all of this is made of concrete construction--

  • around that hollow drum a series of concentric rings,

  • a series of concentric rings, as you can see them here,

  • again made out of concrete.

  • And then the outer wall--which you can also see in this

  • view--the outer wall was faced with travertine,

  • which is also interesting; not Luna marble,

  • travertine blocks.

  • And let me show you another somewhat closer view,

  • also from Google Earth, to show you the structure.

  • So again the central burial chamber;

  • the hollow drum; the concentric rings around

  • that; the travertine wall around that.

  • But, of course, you're looking essentially at

  • the core.

  • This is not what the original entire monument looked like.

  • And what it was, was in fact there was an

  • earthen tumulus, or an earthen mound,

  • that was placed on top of these concentric rings,

  • and then at the very apex of that earthen mound was a

  • gleaming bronze statue of the emperor Augustus himself.

  • I think I can make this clearer by showing you a plan of the

  • Mausoleum of Augustus.

  • And we see all the features I've already described:

  • the central burial chamber, the hollow drum,

  • again all made out of concrete construction,

  • and the concentric rings around that.

  • And then the cross-section at the top is particularly helpful

  • I think because you can see the way in which the concrete has

  • been built up by means obviously of annular vaults,

  • the annular vaults that ultimately support the gleaming

  • bronze statue of Augustus, at the apex.

  • And you can also see in this cross-section the earthen mound,

  • the way in which the earthen mound is piled up on top of that

  • substructure, that concrete substructure,

  • to create the dome-like shape of the mausoleum on its own.

  • Now scholars who believe--and we all believe in fact--that

  • again Augustus was a philhellene, that he had a

  • particular penchant for things Greek.

  • So you look at something like this and you ask yourselves,

  • "Well, what's Greek about this?

  • Why didn't he, when he came to make the

  • decision about his last resting place, why did he not want to be

  • laid to rest in the manner of the Greeks?

  • Why doesn't this--why wasn't this tomb made in the form,

  • for example, of a Greek temple,

  • or something like that?

  • Why did he choose this particular form?"

  • So scholars have debated for quite some time whether there

  • are any tombs like this in Greece,

  • or in Asia Minor--what kind of tomb was Alexander the Great

  • buried in, for example?

  • Well we don't know exactly for sure, but that's one

  • possibility, that it might have something to do with Alexander's

  • tomb.

  • Others--because Aeneas came from burning Troy--

  • others have suggested perhaps--and that's in Asia

  • Minor-- perhaps the way the Trojans

  • were buried might have something to do with this selection.

  • But I think the model is much closer at hand.

  • I think the model--myself, I believe that the model comes

  • from Italy, and that it's a very

  • interesting choice on the part of Augustus,

  • because I think what it tells us is that Augustus may have

  • wanted to build public buildings in Rome that conjured up ancient

  • Athens, but when it came to deciding

  • about how he wanted to be buried,

  • he wanted to be buried in the manner of his Italian ancestors.

  • Let me show you what I think is a really important comparison.

  • We're looking on the left-hand side of the screen once again at

  • the Mausoleum of Augustus, as it looks today.

  • Here you see the central entranceway.

  • You see what remains of the concentric, concrete rings.

  • You see some of the travertine facing for the outer ring of the

  • structure.

  • And you see, of course, that the uppermost

  • part, namely the earthen mound, is no longer there.

  • But if I compare the Mausoleum of Augustus,

  • to what you see here on the right-hand side of the screen,

  • which is an Etruscan tomb, an Etruscan tomb from the

  • so-called-- and I put this on the Monument

  • List for you-- the Banditaccia Cemetery,

  • which is at a site called Cerveteri,

  • Cerveteri, a very important Etruscan site.

  • And this tomb we believe dates to the sixth century B.C.

  • Cerveteri is an extraordinary place to visit now because there

  • is one tomb after another of this type.

  • You go into the site and you feel like you're on another

  • planet or some such, as you wander among these

  • extremely well-preserved tombs at Cerveteri.

  • And Cerveteri, by the way, is right off the

  • highway, between Rome and Florence.

  • So it's a very easy site to get to and very well worthwhile;

  • there's nothing quite like it anywhere in Italy,

  • anywhere indeed in the world.

  • And you see these series--and I've just chosen one here to

  • show you-- you see these series of tombs,

  • and I think if you look at it you'll see the similarity of

  • this to the Mausoleum of Augustus.

  • These round Etruscan tombs have central burial chambers.

  • They have stone facing around the outermost part of the

  • structure.

  • And you can see that piled on top of that is an earthen mound,

  • and if you expand the size -- the Cerveteri tomb is much

  • smaller.

  • Actually the individual Cerveteri tombs are smaller than

  • the Mausoleum of Augustus.

  • The Mausoleum of Augustus is 290 feet in diameter;

  • it's a very large building.

  • But if you expand the size of one of these,

  • what we call tumulus, t-u-m-u-l-u-s,

  • tumulus tombs, at Cerveteri,

  • if you expand the size, if you plant this with trees--

  • because we know that the Mausoleum of Augustus was

  • planted with trees on the earthen mound;

  • there's been quite a bit of controversy about what kind of

  • trees.

  • For a long time people said cypress trees.

  • Now people seem to favor juniper trees.

  • But whatever, trees of some sort,

  • decorating that earthen mound.

  • So if you enlarge this, if you put some junipers on top

  • of it, and if you stick a gleaming

  • bronze statue of Augustus at the apex,

  • you will have essentially the Mausoleum of Augustus.

  • So I'd like to suggest to you today that the Mausoleum of

  • Augustus indicates to us that when it came to his tomb,

  • Augustus wanted to be buried like his Italian ancestors,

  • like the Etruscans, and that is why he chose this

  • particular type of tomb in Rome.

  • The Mausoleum of Augustus, like so many other monuments

  • that we've been looking at this semester,

  • survives in large part because it was re-used over the

  • centuries in a wide variety of ways.

  • You can see in this engraving that it was used at one point as

  • a garden, a very nicely manicured garden,

  • as you can see inside the remains,

  • inside those concentric circles, a very nice garden.

  • It was also used as a fortress at one point by the well-known

  • Colonna family of Italy.

  • It was used, believe it or not,

  • as a bull ring-- a little touch of Spain in the

  • midst of Rome, as a bull ring--and it was used

  • most recently as a music hall.

  • It was a music hall before it was turned back into the

  • Mausoleum of Augustus.

  • So again, this very--a very similar saga to this building

  • and to its post-antique history, as to so many others that we've

  • talked about.

  • Another important point to make about the Mausoleum of Augustus

  • is that, although Augustus intended it

  • as his own last resting place, he didn't intend for him to be

  • the only person who was laid to rest there.

  • He wanted this to serve as a family tomb,

  • for him, his wife, his--well it turned out his

  • daughter didn't end up there, but that may have been the

  • intention originally, that she would.

  • She was discredited because of all the adulterous affairs she

  • had and Augustus eventually banished her in 2 B.C.

  • from Rome, razed her house to the ground, and did not allow

  • her to be buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus.

  • But for his wife, for his nephew and son-in-law,

  • Marcellus, and others, he wanted to create this family

  • tomb where he, his family, and presumably,

  • since his objective was to create a dynasty,

  • presumably where his successors of the dynasty that he founded

  • would also be laid to rest.

  • And there are inscription plaques that have come to light,

  • from the Mausoleum of Augustus, and I can show you a couple of

  • them here, that do indicate that was

  • exactly the case.

  • We see this plaque over here, which actually has the name

  • Marcellus inscribed there.

  • This is the Marcellus of the Theater of Marcellus,

  • the nephew and son-in-law of Augustus, who was laid to rest

  • in this Mausoleum.

  • His sister, "soror," Octavia, also laid to rest;

  • that is, Augustus' sister, Octavia, also laid to rest

  • here.

  • And it continued to be used as a burial place again after

  • Augustus' death and through the so-called Julio-Claudian

  • emperors, who we'll look at next week:

  • Tiberius and Caligula and Claudius.

  • And we see, in fact, an inscription plaque over here

  • that honors Agrippina the Elder: Agrippina the Elder,

  • the mother of Caligula, the third emperor of Rome,

  • and it was Caligula who laid his mother to rest in this tomb.

  • So very much a family tomb created by the emperor Augustus.

  • And I should also mention, with regard to burial practice

  • at this time, that everybody was--imperial

  • individuals, and those lower on the social

  • pyramid as well-- were all cremated at this

  • particular time.

  • So you have to imagine that there were urns for each of

  • these inside the tomb somewhere as well.

  • Now it may not surprise you to hear that once the emperor chose

  • the form of his tomb, that he set in motion a fashion

  • that just about every aristocrat wanted to follow.

  • So all of a sudden, after the construction of the

  • Mausoleum of Augustus, again between 28 and 23,

  • there is this efflorescence of round tombs in Rome and

  • elsewhere in Italy.

  • And I want to show you just one example of that.

  • This is the so-called Tomb of Caecilia Metella.

  • It dates to 20 B.C.

  • So it began to be put up not too long after Augustus'

  • mausoleum was built.

  • It is located on the famous Via Appia in Rome,

  • the Appian Way.

  • The Appian Way, which you see--this is a Google

  • Earth image once again where you can see a stretch of the Appian

  • Way, or the Via Appia,

  • that is modern asphalt, although there are remains--and

  • I'll show you later an example of this--

  • there are remains of the polygonal masonry pavement that

  • would have been there initially, looking very much like the

  • pavement that we saw in Pompeii, for example.

  • And you can see the Tomb of Caecilia Metella right over

  • here.

  • Like the Mausoleum of Augustus, it was re-used in ancient

  • times, and there was a fortress and a palace that was added to

  • it.

  • And you can see also there, in a reddish earth color,

  • the remains of that fortress and palace that abutted the

  • mausoleum or the Tomb of Caecilia Metella.

  • And while this is on the screen, you can also see that

  • while the tomb was essentially a cylindrical drum,

  • resembling the cylindrical drum of the Mausoleum of Augustus,

  • it was placed--it was given some height by being placed on a

  • podium-- the kind of podium that we saw

  • at the sanctuaries, or the podium that we saw at

  • the Villa of the Mysteries-- to raise it up.

  • It's not as big as those, but it's sizable,

  • and it raises this round tomb up a little bit,

  • so that it can be more readily seen as people make their way

  • along the Via Appia.

  • The Mausoleum of Augustus does not have a similar podium.

  • So that's a unique, a different feature that is

  • added to this particular structure.

  • You can also see there's an inscription on the front,

  • and we'll talk about that in a moment, and then there are

  • crenellations at the top.

  • There's some dispute about when those crenellations were added,

  • whether they belonged to the original tomb or not.

  • I think it's highly unlikely that they belonged to the

  • original tomb, and they may have been added at

  • the time that this was made into a fortress,

  • as I've already mentioned.

  • This is a view of the Tomb of Caecilia Metella,

  • as it looks today, this tomb of this woman of 20

  • B.C., and you can see that it's

  • actually quite well preserved, and we can get a very good

  • sense of its original appearance.

  • You can see the concrete podium down here, without its original

  • facing; it was surely faced.

  • You can see the great cylindrical drum,

  • of the Tomb of Caecilia Metella, and you can see the

  • facing.

  • And, once again, the facing for this tomb,

  • just as in the Mausoleum of Augustus, is not Luna or Carrara

  • marble.

  • It is travertine, but very, very nicely cut

  • travertine blocks, as you can see here.

  • Very well done.

  • She was undoubtedly a well-to-do patron who was able

  • to hire the best architects, the best artisans,

  • and they have done an outstanding job of cutting that

  • travertine.

  • You can see also that there is a frieze that encircles the

  • monument at the uppermost part, right here, and that frieze

  • depicts garlands and skulls of bulls,

  • bucrania; the same sort of thing that we

  • saw in the inner precinct wall of the Ara Pacis.

  • Although this pre-dates the Ara Pacis, so we can't say it was

  • the influence of the Ara Pacis.

  • This is again 20, whereas the Ara Pacis wasn't

  • begun until 13.

  • And it shows us that this motif was very much in the air,

  • during the Augustan period, this motif of garlands hanging

  • from bucrania, which of course makes reference

  • to sacrifice, and it could be a sacrifice in

  • honor of a funerary event, as well as anything else,

  • and we again see that very well here.

  • One very interesting fact is that the frieze is not made out

  • of travertine but out of pentelic marble,

  • p-e-n-t-e-l-i-c.

  • Pentelic marble is marble from Mount Pentelikon in Greece.

  • So it tells us that marble was imported from Greece,

  • or marble that was imported from Greece was purchased and

  • used for the frieze of this particular structure,

  • and we'll see that it was used also for the inscription plaque.

  • So it tells us something.

  • It tells us that there was--that some patrons made the

  • decision to spend a little more for the material for what they

  • considered the most important part of the monument.

  • So in this case the most important part of the monument

  • was the frieze, and also the inscription plaque

  • that preserved this woman's name for posterity.

  • So they paid a little bit more in order to get that more

  • expensive material for those critical details of the

  • monument.

  • Here's the inscription.

  • We're very fortunate that it's still preserved today.

  • We see it still inserted into the monument.

  • Again, it's done in pentelic marble, and I think you can see,

  • even in this view, the difference between pentelic

  • marble and travertine.

  • Travertine has more texture to it than the plainer marble,

  • as you can see.

  • And her name is given here, Caecilia Metella:

  • Caecilia Metella down here.

  • And it tells us that she was the daughter F(filia),

  • f-i-l-i-a, the daughter of Quintus Q.

  • Creticus--Creticus, C-r-e-t-i-c-u-s--who may have

  • come from Crete; it's possible.

  • And it also makes reference to the fact that she was married to

  • someone by the name of Crassus.

  • This may be Crassus the Elder; we're not absolutely sure.

  • But what it does indicate to us is this is an aristocratic

  • woman.

  • This is an aristocratic woman whose family has a great deal of

  • money, who are honoring her with this tomb, in the mode of the

  • day; which of course was the tomb

  • type that was chosen by Augustus himself.

  • You may have noticed up here, in this same detail,

  • not only the frieze that we've already described,

  • with the garlands and bucrania,

  • but that there is a relief here that represents a Roman trophy.

  • What is a Roman trophy?

  • What the Romans did at the end of battle,

  • if they were victorious, is they went over to the

  • nearest tree trunk on the battlefield and they took arms

  • and armor from their defeated enemy and they tacked that arms

  • and armor up on that tree trunk, to create a military trophy

  • commemorating their victory, right on the battlefield.

  • And that's exactly what you see here, a tree trunk with a

  • breastplate and a helmet and shields and so on,

  • all tacked up to that trophy.

  • So we have to ask ourselves, what is that trophy doing on

  • this particular monument?

  • It's highly unlikely that it refers to--there are some

  • instances; we do hear about woman trying

  • to raise money for troops and so on and so forth.

  • But we don't--and even thinking that they might go into battle

  • -- but for the most part Roman women did not participate in

  • battle.

  • So it is highly unlikely that this refers to a military

  • encounter that she had.

  • More likely it either refers to a military encounter of her

  • father or her husband, or it may be a more generic

  • reference to victory.

  • We've talked about the fact that in the minds of the Romans,

  • the victory in battle, victory in the hunt,

  • often were conflated with victory over death.

  • So it could be a more generic reference,

  • but I would guess it may have something to do more

  • specifically with the conquest of her husband or her father.

  • The structure today is just right there, out on the Via

  • Appia; easy to see.

  • There is a small museum that isn't all that often open,

  • but sometimes it is, that is in the remains of the

  • fortress, and the palace next door.

  • You can see that the outside of the monument,

  • they've inserted a lot of finds just from--

  • it doesn't mean they came from the Tomb of Caecilia Metella --

  • but from this area on the Via Appia.

  • There were tons of Roman tombs out here,

  • and all of this paraphernalia that you see,

  • statuary and fragments of friezes and cornices and so on,

  • all come in part possibly from this monument,

  • but more likely from the other tombs in the area.

  • Those have been inserted into the wall in a kind of

  • interesting way.

  • And then here's the museum itself.

  • The museum doesn't have--the stuff that's in there is pretty

  • much the same sort of thing that you see here.

  • But going into the museum is interesting because you can see

  • into the central chamber of the Tomb of Caecilia Metella and see

  • the concrete construction and so on.

  • I mentioned already that Roman tombs could be very eccentric

  • indeed, and I want to show you one of

  • the two most eccentric tombs, in my opinion,

  • from ancient Rome that one can see in the city of Rome today.

  • And the first of these is the so-called Tomb of Cestius,

  • because we believe--in fact, we're absolutely sure--

  • that it honors a man by the name of Gaius,

  • G-a-i-u-s Cestius, C-e-s-t-i-u-s;

  • Gaius Cestius.

  • It was put up in 15 B.C.

  • That is in the age of the emperor Augustus.

  • In this Google Earth aerial view, we see what that structure

  • looks like today.

  • It is a Roman tomb in the form of an Egyptian pyramid.

  • It's the only Roman tomb in the form of an Egyptian pyramid that

  • we can see in Rome today, but we know there were others

  • in antiquity.

  • We have reports that tell us that certain others that existed

  • at a certain time were torn down, at one point.

  • There was one, for example,

  • not far from the Vatican, that was torn down at one

  • point, because it got in the way of the street.

  • So this is not unique in the sense of the only one,

  • although it is the only one still surviving today.

  • We have no idea how many of these there were.

  • There were certainly some.

  • Whether there were a lot, we can't be absolutely certain.

  • But here it is, a Roman tomb,

  • in the form of a pyramid.

  • Now when it was first put up, it was put up outside the

  • Servian Walls of the city, because all--as we've talked

  • about the fact that by Roman law the necropolis or city of the

  • dead needed to be located outside the walls of the city.

  • But as the city grew, and as there was a need for a

  • new wall-- and this happened in the third

  • century A.D., and we'll talk about it way at

  • the end of this semester-- the Romans ended up building a

  • new wall, the famous Aurelian Walls.

  • And the circuit happened to be planned for this particular--to

  • pass this particular point where the Tomb of Cestius was.

  • And fortunately they recognized the aesthetic and historical

  • value of this tomb, and decided not to tear it

  • down, but rather to incorporate it into the Aurelian Walls.

  • So what you see in this aerial view are two of the walls--

  • two parts of the Aurelian Walls abutting,

  • and in fact incorporating, the Pyramid of Cestius,

  • but in antiquity--when it was first built,

  • excuse me, it stood alone.

  • And what you see over here is a gateway that also belongs to the

  • later Aurelian Walls.

  • So again, fortunately this particular tomb was preserved.

  • These two engravings are helpful in showing us that the

  • inner core of the Tomb of Cestius was concrete,

  • and the outer pyramidal shape was faced once again with

  • travertine.

  • So travertine clearly the material of choice by

  • aristocrats-- because we're going to see that

  • Cestius was also an aristocrat-- for their tombs in the age of

  • Augustus: concrete core, travertine facing.

  • And then if you look at this cutaway view over here,

  • you will see that the burial chamber inside was very,

  • very, very small; very, very, very small.

  • So small enough that there was not a lot of space for these

  • burials; but we'll see that we still

  • believe that this too was a family tomb.

  • The burial chamber has had, and still has,

  • remnants of painted walls.

  • And I show you an engraving here of those walls that was

  • made when they were in somewhat better shape than they are

  • today.

  • And I wondered if any of you--you're such experts now on

  • First to Fourth Style Roman wall painting--

  • if any of you could tell me--I'm sure all of you could

  • tell me-- what style painting is being

  • used in the burial chamber of the Tomb of Cestius?

  • Student: Third Style.

  • Prof: Third style.

  • Why Third Style?

  • Student: There's floating mythological features

  • and very thin columns.

  • Prof: Very thin candelabra here,

  • and mythological figures.

  • How are those used that make--that show that this is a

  • typical Third Style wall?

  • Student: They have a blackout laying around them and

  • they're just floating around in space.

  • Prof: That's the word, floating.

  • They are floating in this random space,

  • right in the center of the panels, as we know was

  • characteristic of Third Style Roman wall painting.

  • So 15 B.C., Third Style Roman wall painting.

  • And if you think back to some of the palaces or villas that we

  • looked at and their dates--think of Boscotrecase for example,

  • 11 B.C.

  • You see this is roughly contemporary to what's happening

  • in Campania at this particular time.

  • And here are two details of the remains of those paintings,

  • and you can see one of these floating mythological figures

  • that looks like a victory figure: female,

  • winged, carrying a wreath over here,

  • flying in the center of the panel.

  • This also shows you, in this case,

  • the panels were white, very similar to the walls,

  • for example, of the Third Style in the Domus

  • Aurea in Rome.

  • And then here, this candelabrum,

  • very attenuated, very delicate,

  • that is used in place of columns;

  • both of these motifs decorating the flat wall that was so

  • characteristic of Third Style Roman wall painting.

  • Here's another view of the pyramid as it looks today.

  • You can see it is exceedingly well preserved,

  • one of the best preserved of all Roman tombs.

  • You can see again the way in which the later wall was built

  • into it, and you can also see the

  • travertine blocks and how carefully carved they were by

  • the designers, by the artisans.

  • And here, this is very helpful, because it shows you that the--

  • at least one, but I can tell you that two

  • sides of the tomb, the eastern and western sides

  • of the tomb, had in the center of the

  • pyramid the name of Cestius.

  • That's how we know it was his tomb.

  • You see it here, Gaius Cestius.

  • And it also includes all of his titles.

  • So he was very happy to advertise his titles on this

  • monument, the purpose of which,

  • of course, was for those who mourned him to feel proud of him

  • and his achievements.

  • But even more important than that, from his point of view I

  • am sure, and from the point of view of

  • the Romans in general, was that his name and his deeds

  • be preserved for posterity so that someday--

  • in 2009, we're sitting in this classroom looking at this--

  • we think back on Cestius, his title,

  • what he did, what he achieved,

  • and the way in which he was memorialized.

  • So this whole idea of preserving memory,

  • not only in your own time, but into the far flung future.

  • This tomb, as I said, despite the fact that the

  • burial chamber is small, we do believe it was a family

  • tomb.

  • We have evidence for that, because two bases were found

  • that seemed to belong to this tomb;

  • in fact, it's Cestius' name, or members of his family,

  • Cestius, you can see there, are named in these

  • inscriptions.

  • These have markings on the top that suggest to us that statues

  • stood on them, at one point.

  • So these were statue bases, probably placed right in front

  • of the entrance to the pyramidal tomb.

  • And if you cast your eyes over this inscription you will not

  • only see the name Cestius a few times,

  • but you will see another very important name,

  • and that is M.***Agrippa.

  • That's Marcus Agrippa, that's the Marcus Agrippa,

  • the longtime--the boyhood friend and longtime close

  • confidant and onetime heir and son-in-law of Augustus;

  • all of those things.

  • He's mentioned here.

  • So he is a member also of this family.

  • So it demonstrates to us again we are dealing with an

  • aristocratic family.

  • So all of those tombs I've shown you thus far--

  • the Mausoleum of Augustus, the Tomb of Caecilia Metella,

  • and the Tomb of Gaius Cestius--are all examples of

  • aristocratic tomb architecture in the age of Augustus.

  • Why did he choose a pyramid for his tomb is a very interesting

  • question to ask, and I would suggest here--and

  • it's not rocket science to figure this out at all--

  • I would suggest here though that the reason has to do with

  • Augustus' very important victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra

  • at the Battle of Actium in 31.

  • It was at that time, and even before,

  • that an interest in things Egyptian came into Rome.

  • We saw that Augustus himself made reference to his victory

  • over that pair, over Cleopatra and Mark Antony,

  • in the complex with the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of

  • Augustus, by inserting that obelisk in

  • the center; an obelisk that I have

  • mentioned to you was actually brought from Egypt itself.

  • So these references to Egypt, initially under Augustus

  • himself, had political import.

  • It was there to show that Augustus had been--

  • that obelisk was there to show that Augustus had prevailed over

  • Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and because he had prevailed,

  • he could steal obelisks from Egypt and bring them back to

  • decorate Rome, as trophies essentially.

  • So that was a political statement on his part.

  • But as time went on, Egyptomania became a kind of

  • fashion statement.

  • I think that it caught on; it caught on after Egypt was

  • made a Roman province in 30 B.C.,

  • right after Actium, and we begin to see this wave

  • of things Egyptian spreading through Rome,

  • and it's likely that Cestius--perhaps a combination

  • of both, since he's from Agrippa's

  • family, this combination of political reference,

  • but also just this was an interesting--

  • this was the style at this particular point,

  • to do things in the Egyptian manner.

  • You might remember some of those Egyptianizing motifs that

  • we saw, for example,

  • from the Black Room at Boscotrecase,

  • which was also a villa that was closely connected with the

  • imperial family.

  • You remember Agrippa Postumus who was the son of Agrippa

  • himself, born by his wife Julia, after Agrippa's death;

  • hence his name.

  • Another view of the back of the Pyramid of Cestius,

  • the Mausoleum of Cestius, which again shows us how well

  • preserved it is.

  • You can see the Aurelian Walls, you can see the gate that we

  • looked at before, and you can also see that the

  • back is actually in a modern cemetery.

  • This is the so-called Protestant Cemetery,

  • and if you are in Rome and have time, this is one of the most

  • interesting places to visit.

  • It's again a bit off the beaten track.

  • Not that many tourists go there, but those that do are

  • rewarded, because it's a cemetery where

  • many expatriates were buried -- people who flocked to Rome

  • because they loved it.

  • Authors, scholars, poets, painters came to Rome,

  • ended up spending the rest of their lives there--

  • coming from all different countries around the world--

  • spending the rest of their lives there,

  • dying there, and eventually being buried in

  • the so-called Protestant Cemetery.

  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, for example,

  • is buried there, as is John Keats.

  • And the Keats tomb, Keats marker,

  • is my favorite by far in this cemetery.

  • You can see his tombstone here, which doesn't even give his

  • name, it just identifies him; and you'll remember he died

  • very, very young, in his early twenties I think

  • it was.

  • You see him here referred to only as "the young English

  • poet."

  • And down below it says, "Here lies one whose name

  • was writ in water."

  • It's an amazing stone.

  • It does show the lyre, which makes reference,

  • of course, to the fluency and so on of his mellifluous poetry.

  • And over here, a companion of his,

  • Joseph Severn, who doesn't hesitate to mention

  • his relationship to John Keats.

  • So you see Keats' name in Severn's tombstone but not in

  • Keats' own tombstone.

  • But I show this to you just because it's one of those more

  • fascinating places in Rome.

  • And many of the tombs, by the way--there are many

  • tombstones here that clearly are based on ancient Roman

  • prototypes.

  • So it's a fascinating place to wander.

  • And by the way, you can do that in our own

  • Grove Street Cemetery, where there are a number of

  • tombs that are done very much in the Roman style.

  • If you think the Tomb of Cestius is unusual,

  • the weirdest tomb by far in Rome, from ancient Rome,

  • is the one that I turn to now, and this is the Tomb of the

  • baker Eurysaces, the Tomb of the baker Eurysaces

  • that was put up in Rome in the late first century B.C.

  • And that again is another tomb from the age of Augustus.

  • But in this case we believe, although the inscription

  • doesn't tell us this for sure, but we believe it is highly

  • likely that Eurysaces is from a different level of Roman

  • society, not an aristocrat,

  • but a working man who probably--

  • either he himself or his family were slaves originally,

  • eventually freed.

  • He takes up the profession of bread making and he ends up

  • building this extraordinary tomb that I'm going to show you in

  • some detail, in Rome.

  • As we look at this particular view, we see the Tomb of

  • Eurysaces, as it looks today; it's right over here.

  • We see it has behind it a great travertine gate,

  • which is actually later in date.

  • It dates to the time of the emperor Claudius.

  • We'll talk about it next week.

  • So you have to think that away for the moment.

  • That was not standing when the Tomb of Eurysaces was put up.

  • You can also see, however, that this gate was

  • placed in an aqueduct system.

  • That aqueduct was begun during the time of Augustus.

  • So you can imagine that at least some of that aqueduct

  • system stood at the time that this tomb was built.

  • The tomb, as you can see here, was a three-storied structure,

  • very eccentric in its appearance.

  • The ground line today is much lower than the modern ground

  • line.

  • So you have to go right up to the monument.

  • You can look down at the first story.

  • So you're only seeing a part of the first story here.

  • You can see that it is made of tufa blocks.

  • You can also see the interior is concrete,

  • the core of the structure is concrete,

  • and then on the second and third stories,

  • the tomb is faced with travertine.

  • So travertine again used for tomb facing in the age in

  • Augustus.

  • And we see this very unusual design where there are these

  • great--not piers--cylinders, great cylinders;

  • great cylinders that are placed here vertically,

  • and then cylinders placed in the next tier horizontally.

  • Vertically placed cylinders.

  • They're not columns.

  • You don't see any capitals.

  • They're very fat.

  • So they are cylinders, vertically, and then

  • horizontally.

  • And some scholars have suggested, and I think quite

  • convincingly, that these may actually make

  • reference to what were grain measures.

  • Grain measures were these cylindrical structures in silos,

  • in a sense, in which they stored grain in ancient Roman

  • times.

  • So that is very possible, since we know that this man was

  • a baker, that this may make reference to

  • these grain storage cylinders that were used in the process of

  • baking.

  • With regard to the siting of the tomb--

  • this is particularly interesting--I show you this

  • plan over here, which indicates to us--here you

  • can actually see the plan of the Tomb of Eurysaces,

  • and you can see that it is very unusual in shape.

  • It is trapezoidal in shape.

  • Why is it trapezoidal in shape?

  • It probably is trapezoidal in shape because the tomb was

  • located on a piece of property that was between two major roads

  • of Rome that exited and entered the city at this particular

  • point: the so-called Via Labicana and the Via

  • Praenestina.

  • So two major Roman roads that come into the city at this

  • point.

  • And remember, the Tomb of Eurysaces,

  • like all Roman tombs during this period,

  • was outside the Servian Walls, so built outside the walls,

  • but between these two streets.

  • Now this model over here, which by the way comes from a

  • museum in Rome that again is off the beaten track,

  • but I can highly recommend the Museo Civilità

  • Romana, which is in a building built by

  • Mussolini in the 1930s for a World's Fair,

  • and the buildings--and it and other buildings like it out

  • there, in a place--part of Rome that

  • we call EUR from Esposizione Universale di Roma,

  • E-U-R, EUR.

  • That whole area built up by Mussolini for the World's Fair.

  • But the buildings were so substantial that they decided to

  • keep them, and they still stand, and this museum was placed in

  • one of them.

  • It is a museum of casts, where you can go and see works

  • of Roman art and architecture from not only Rome but from

  • around the world, all in one place.

  • Now they're not originals, they're casts,

  • but it'd be a great place to study for the exam for this

  • course, for example,

  • because you can walk around and see so many of the buildings

  • that we've talked about.

  • And there are these wonderful models of many of them.

  • And we see here a model of this aqueduct, the later gate here,

  • and the Tomb of Eurysaces.

  • And this shows you very well the way in which these two

  • streets, the Labicana and the

  • Praenestina, came into Rome at this point,

  • converged exactly on the façade of this tomb.

  • And this--it is clear that Eurysaces--

  • and I'll tell you how he did this in a moment--

  • had enough money that he was able to buy what was certainly

  • one of the most choice pieces of real estate,

  • outside the walls of Rome, one in which everyone who came

  • into Rome from either of those two thoroughfares would see the

  • façade of this tomb.

  • This is a man who wanted to be remembered for posterity.

  • It's another example of how tombs were used for the purposes

  • of retaining memory over time.

  • This is also interesting because it shows what happened.

  • What you see with the dotted lines here is one of these later

  • gates that was made for the Aurelian Walls.

  • And in this case, the Tomb of Eurysaces was right

  • smack dab in the middle of where they wanted to build an

  • outcropping of this wall.

  • In this case they decided that they were not going to build the

  • wall into it, but that they were going to

  • build the wall on top of it.

  • But fortunately, again, they did not destroy it

  • completely.

  • They did shear off the front of the tomb,

  • which actually took away the façade,

  • but they allowed the debris to fall into the tower,

  • and then they covered it up.

  • So when this tower was eventually torn down to free the

  • Tomb of Eurysaces, they found the fourth wall and

  • the debris from that wall, including a portrait statue and

  • an inscription inside the debris,

  • which was extremely fortunate, and which allows us to

  • reconstruct the monument.

  • Here you see the model in this EUR Museum that shows you what

  • the tomb looked like in antiquity.

  • You see the three levels, the three tiers.

  • You see the entrance to the burial chamber here.

  • And this is the façade that we're looking at;

  • this is the part that no longer survives.

  • This is the fourth wall or the façade,

  • now gone, but we can again reconstruct it from those

  • remains.

  • And you see them here, and you see it was relatively

  • plain on three tiers, except for a portrait statue of

  • Eurysaces and his wife, an inscription down below.

  • And you need to think away the frieze up there,

  • because the frieze was probably not on this side of the

  • monument, although there was a frieze

  • around the other three sides.

  • You can see one of those sides here, and I'll show that frieze

  • to you momentarily.

  • This is a view of the tomb again, where we can see so well

  • those cylinders on two stories.

  • And you can also see here that in the area between the vertical

  • and the horizontal cylinders, on three sides of the monument,

  • there is an inscription, and it repeats over and over

  • again, and it tells us that this

  • monument was put up by Eurysaces,

  • Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces, who was pistor and

  • redemptor-- p-i-s-t-o-r,

  • r-e-d-e-m-p-t-o- r--pistor and

  • redemptor.

  • That means master baker and contractor--the contractor is

  • the most important part--master baker and contractor.

  • We know this is a man who made bread and sold it to the Roman

  • armies.

  • This was a pretty lucrative thing to do in the age of

  • Augustus when there was so much military conquest.

  • He made a fortune selling bread to the Roman armies,

  • and it is with that fortune that he was able to buy this

  • choice piece of real estate and to put up this extraordinary

  • monument in the late first century B.C.

  • The portrait relief still survives.

  • It's in the Capitoline Museums today.

  • You see it here.

  • It had fallen in again to the debris,

  • from the fourth side, but here it is with Eurysaces

  • standing next to his wife, Atistia--we know her name and

  • I'll tell you how in a moment-- Atistia, in that portrait

  • relief.

  • And we're not going to go into this in any detail,

  • but if you compare it to the figures of Augustus and his

  • family, from the Ara Pacis,

  • I think you'll agree with me that the Ara Pacis is serving as

  • a model, and that this portrait group is

  • clearly based on aristocratic-- even though this is probably a

  • middle-class pair, formerly from a slave family,

  • freed people.

  • They are shown here very much as if they are members of the

  • court, wearing similar costumes, depicted in a similar way,

  • with similar hairstyles.

  • And I point to just one detail.

  • If you look at this view of Livia, on the Ara Pacis,

  • Augustus' wife, and you see the wonderful way

  • in which the artist has depicted her hand,

  • the shape of her hand showing underneath her garment here;

  • the same is done here for Atistia, you can see--and that's

  • A-t-i-s-t-i-a--for Atistia.

  • You can see her hand.

  • In fact, it's even better done here because you can see the

  • shape of the knuckles and so on, underneath the garment,

  • the very diaphanous garment that she wears.

  • So clearly a very special portrait artist,

  • probably hired to do these portraits;

  • a portrait artist who may have been hired at great expense.

  • And also very significant, and in keeping with what we saw

  • for the Tomb of Caecilia Metella,

  • is the fact that although the tomb is faced in travertine and

  • the relief around the monument is in travertine,

  • this is done in marble, in, if I remember correctly,

  • Greek marble, as well.

  • So imported marble that is brought from elsewhere and at

  • greater expense is used for the most important portrait relief.

  • The scenes around the--the scenes,

  • the frieze scenes, are particularly interesting

  • because they depict in the greatest of detail the

  • profession of the making of bread.

  • They depict Eurysaces' daily achievement of making bread that

  • he sold to the Roman armies.

  • I'm going to just show you the scenes very quickly,

  • and you can see the style is very different.

  • It's a much more journalistic style,

  • with figures that don't have the elegant proportions that we

  • saw in the portrait relief, and it is carved on travertine,

  • not on marble.

  • We see here the grain being ground between two stones,

  • and we see the way in which these men in tunics worked that.

  • We also see that the upper stone is rotated by a mule that

  • is attached to a wooden handle that comes off the uppermost

  • stone there.

  • We have millstones just like this, from Pompeii,

  • and I show you the actual millstones.

  • So these depictions on the Tomb of Eurysaces:

  • very accurate in terms or what millstones looked like in

  • antiquity.

  • Another scene here in which we see two men at a table with big

  • gobs of dough, that you can see here,

  • dough, for the bread.

  • Another scene--this is one of the more important scenes--where

  • we see four men standing behind a table, that are forming that

  • dough into loaves.

  • And over here a magistrate, who has a short-sleeved but

  • long garment, is supervising them.

  • And the four men are very interestingly rendered because

  • they're rendered almost exactly the same.

  • If you look, if you compare this to the Ara

  • Pacis where figures are represented in different

  • postures, a lot of variety,

  • clearly based on Greek prototypes.

  • Here we see something very different.

  • The major objective of the artist is to get the story

  • across, to show these men making these loaves.

  • But look at them.

  • Each one--they're bare chested, and we'll see why they're bare

  • chested.

  • It's hot in this part of the bakery.

  • So they've taken off their shirts.

  • There's some attempt to depict their musculature.

  • But they're essentially shown in exactly the same way,

  • the same curly hair, almost as if they were cut from

  • a cookie cutter, because again it's not the form

  • that's of interest to the artist here,

  • but getting that narrative across.

  • And if you try to figure out whose legs belong to whom,

  • believe me, you'll have a difficult time of it.

  • So the artist is not--is much less concerned with formal

  • things than he is with getting the story across.

  • With regard to why they've taken off their shirts,

  • they're right near the oven.

  • And I show you the scene that depicts the dome-shaped oven in

  • which the loaves are being baked,

  • and you can see that this oven looks very much like a modern

  • pizza oven, and in fact the pole that they

  • use, the wooden pole with the flat

  • end, is just the sort of thing you see at BAR or any other

  • major pizza place, either in New Haven or

  • elsewhere in the world.

  • And, in fact, these dome-shaped ovens are

  • still used in rural areas.

  • And I took this view in Greece, in a small rural town,

  • and you see these in Italy in some very small towns as well,

  • still being done in exactly the same way.

  • There are a number--because of the cylinders on the Tomb of

  • Eurysaces, there are some scholars who've

  • suggested that the Tomb of Eurysaces is in the form of a

  • bakery .

  • While I do believe that there is reference to those grain--

  • to those storage bins, silos that were used for the

  • storage of grain, I do not think that the Tomb of

  • Eurysaces is in the form of an oven.

  • It makes reference to baking, but I don't think it's in the

  • form of an oven, because this is what Roman

  • ovens looked like.

  • They were dome-shaped.

  • This has a very different appearance, as you can see.

  • Perhaps the most important scene in the frieze is this one,

  • where we see two--we see the loaves have been baked,

  • they're ready to go to market, and they're put in these large

  • baskets-- you can see them here--and then

  • they are weighed in this scale, in this ancient scale.

  • And I think this is a form of private propaganda on the part

  • of the baker Eurysaces.

  • What he is telling the public who gaze up on this tomb,

  • not only in his own day but for posterity,

  • is: "My bread was always, not only of high quality,

  • but of the appropriate weight.

  • I never cheated the public.

  • I treated you fairly.

  • I was an honest baker and contractor."

  • I think that's what the message is here.

  • And, in fact, you may think this is a

  • stretch, but I think that one could

  • easily compare this report that Eurysaces provides of his

  • profession on the frieze of this tomb as a kind of baker's

  • version of Augustus' Res Gestae.

  • The list of things accomplished during his life is laid out in

  • narrative form, for not only his contemporaries

  • but for posterity to see.

  • The portrait group again--and I mentioned that there was an

  • inscription found with that portrait group;

  • a very interesting inscription which tells us that Eurysaces

  • put up this monument to his wife Atistia,

  • and Atistia's bodily remains, he says,

  • are buried in hoc panario--in hoc

  • panario, in this panarium.

  • What is a panarium?

  • A breadbasket; which is again why scholars

  • have said, "Well the whole tomb is in the form of an

  • oven."

  • But I think the breadbasket being referred to here is not

  • the tomb, but rather the urn in which Atistia's remains were

  • placed.

  • In the excavation in the nineteenth century,

  • when that later gateway was removed,

  • they found one urn, one urn, not two urns,

  • one urn, presumably the urn of Atistia,

  • and that urn was in the form--it was drawn at that time.

  • And we can see this view of it here, a cross-section,

  • the lid, and the main body of the urn.

  • And you can see it looks like a breadbasket.

  • And I show you--we have lots of examples of urns in the form of

  • breadbaskets from Roman times.

  • There's one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

  • and any of you who are going down there anytime soon to look

  • at Roman antiquities and other things,

  • you can see one there.

  • This one is in the National Museum in Rome.

  • And women's remains were often placed in breadbaskets to

  • accentuate or to speak to their domestic virtues,

  • if they were good at taking care of the house and baking

  • bread and so on.

  • But in this particular case I think it is much more likely

  • that the reference here is not to her,

  • to Atistia's cleverness as a housekeeper,

  • but rather to her husband's profession,

  • which is very, very interesting in terms of

  • what it tells us about the gender wars of antiquity,

  • that here's a tomb that has been put up by this baker,

  • with his money that he's made from his profession,

  • in honor of his wife.

  • But what he depicts -- what he is preserving for posterity is

  • not the outline of his wife's life,

  • but the outline of his life, what he has accomplished.

  • His name is plastered on three sides of the monument.

  • He's got three sides of the monument with the successive

  • phases of the baking of bread in all of its aspects.

  • Yes, he has a very nice portrait relief of his wife,

  • but of course he's standing by her side.

  • And he does mention her name down below.

  • So he gives her some due.

  • But this monument, as far as posterity is

  • concerned, is about Eurysaces and not

  • about his wife, and I think it tells us again

  • very-- a great deal about the motives

  • of this particular individual.

  • I want to say just a very few words about two other tombs out

  • on the Via Appia in Rome, the Appian Way again.

  • And I show you a view of the Via Appia, as it looks today.

  • You can see that although much of the road is modern,

  • you do find bits and pieces of ancient ground out there.

  • You can see some polygonal blocks here and some rut marks

  • from the ancient road, and you have to be very careful

  • when you drive out there in your Cinquecento,

  • or whatever--or you bike ride out there,

  • as this fellow is doing, or you take your motorbike or

  • whatever-- because if you're going too

  • quickly and you don't expect it, all of a sudden you hit some

  • ancient road, and that makes a huge

  • difference in terms of your ability to move forward.

  • I want to show you one tomb, very fleetingly,

  • out there, which is the one that you see over here on the

  • left-hand side of the screen.

  • There are remains of many tombs on the Via Appia.

  • Most of them are just piles of concrete, but a few of them are

  • better preserved, and this is one of them.

  • It's a tomb of freedmen and freedwomen from 13 B.C.

  • to A.D. 5.

  • We call it the Rabirius Tomb because of an inscription that

  • tells us members of the Rabirius family were buried here.

  • The reason that I show it to you is that the eccentric tombs

  • that I've shown you today are absolutely marvelous and tell us

  • a lot about the Romans as patrons and their desires

  • vis-à-vis memory.

  • But it is not--those are not the conventional tomb types.

  • We see many more of this sort of thing, which we call a house

  • tomb, a tomb that resembles a house essentially.

  • It has a sloping ceiling and a main façade,

  • and in that façade there is usually a portrait relief,

  • either vertical or horizontal, but these horizontal ones

  • represent members of the family.

  • Some may be deceased, some may not be deceased.

  • The message is that even if someone has died before another,

  • that they will eventually be re-united together in

  • perpetuity.

  • But if you look at this carefully,

  • you will see that what it looks like is as if these individuals

  • are still alive and looking out of the window of their tomb,

  • as if out of the window of a house;

  • this very close association in the minds of the Romans between

  • houses of the living and houses of the dead.

  • And that is absolutely the case here.

  • And you'll remember, we can trace this all the way

  • back to the eighth century B.C.

  • You remember the Villanovan hut urn that I showed you,

  • and I told you that women's remains were placed in--

  • women's cremated remains--were placed in these huts that

  • resembled Romulus' huts.

  • And so this whole idea of a house serving as a tomb goes way

  • back, and continues to be a leitmotif

  • of Roman tomb architecture throughout the entire history of

  • Roman architecture, and it's something that I hope

  • you'll keep in mind.

  • Also just in passing, I want to mention--

  • we've looked--the tombs that we've looked at thus far today

  • have been-- they've been of all different

  • social classes, from emperor to freed slave,

  • but at the same time they have all been tombs,

  • including the Rabirius Tomb, of the well-to-do.

  • If these were freed slaves, they were ones that made a

  • fortune, like Eurysaces did selling

  • bread to the Roman army, and with that fortune were able

  • to build monumental tombs, at great expense.

  • But there were lots and lots of people obviously,

  • who lived in Rome and Pompeii and in other cities who could

  • not afford those kinds of tombs, and you might be asking

  • yourselves, "Where are all of those

  • people buried?"

  • Well they tended to be buried underground,

  • in what we call columbaria --

  • c-o-l-u-m-b-a-r-i-a, columbaria--underground

  • burial chambers, that were either burial clubs

  • that you could join for a small amount of money;

  • you could join one of these clubs, buy into your last

  • resting place that way.

  • Or they were burial chambers that were created by the very

  • well to do, for example, the emperor and empress,

  • Augustus and Livia.

  • We know they had thousands of slaves, literally thousands of

  • slaves.

  • We have a record of some of Livia's slaves.

  • She had slaves, not only to tend the garden and

  • that kind of thing, but she had a masseuse,

  • she had several hairstylists, and she even had a slave,

  • we know, who set her pearls, that was her whole job was to

  • set her pearls, day in and day out.

  • So they had tons and tons of slaves,

  • and some of those very well to do also established these burial

  • areas where their slaves could find a last resting place.

  • And, in fact, the one that I show you here,

  • the Vigna Codini, is one such,

  • that belonged to the Augustan-Julio-Claudian family

  • and was used for the remains of some of their slaves.

  • And you can see that each individual had a little niche;

  • again, people were cremated.

  • The cremated remains were placed usually in an urn,

  • that was placed inside one of these niches,

  • and then there would be a small inscription,

  • referring to the deceased.

  • So this gives you a sense again of those who could not afford

  • individual tombs and how they were buried.

  • In the five or seven minutes that remain,

  • I'd like to switch gears entirely and look at something

  • very different, as a prelude to what we'll be

  • talking about next time, because next time,

  • next Tuesday, we are going to return once

  • again to innovative Roman architecture;

  • architecture made of concrete and with a variety of

  • interesting innovations.

  • We'll do that next week, as I said.

  • And I want to give you an introduction to that by turning

  • to this one example from the Augustan period that is

  • noteworthy enough for us to say something about it.

  • What you're looking at here is the plan of what was a spa

  • essentially, in ancient Roman times.

  • It's located in Campania, at a place called Baia,

  • so in the vicinity of Pompeii and Herculaneum and Oplontis and

  • Boscotrecase and so on.

  • We've already talked about the fact that that was an area that

  • was a mecca for the well-to-do, the glitteratti from Rome who

  • went down there for their vacations.

  • It was a resort area.

  • Many of them had villas along what is now the Amalfi Coast.

  • Others had villas on the Island of Capri.

  • I can't remember if I told you but Augustus and Tiberius,

  • his successor, owned twelve villas on the

  • Island of Capri, one of which we'll look at next

  • time.

  • And this was an area also where there were sulfur springs and

  • mineral baths, and so the natural thing to do,

  • for those who were coming here, as a resort,

  • was to create for them a place that they could go to relax and

  • enjoy the thermal springs and the sulfur baths and so on and

  • so fort, and that was this place,

  • this spa, at Baia, which consisted of a bunch of

  • thermal structures that were terraced out over a hillside.

  • You have to think of the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia

  • at Palestrina, turned into a spa.

  • Because they treated it--architecturally it was done

  • in exactly the same way.

  • They took a hillside, they terraced that hillside,

  • they poured concrete on that hillside,

  • creating a whole host of interesting structures in which

  • one could relax and get away from it all.

  • You see a plan of that spa here and the way in which it was

  • terraced, via concrete construction,

  • over this hillside.

  • I am only going to show you one thermal bath from it,

  • and it's this one that we see over here.

  • It is the so-called "Temple of Mercury"

  • -- that's what the locals have long called it.

  • It is not a Temple of Mercury, it is a thermal bath,

  • but nonetheless we call it that because it's been called that

  • for such a long time.

  • As you look at the plan of the Temple of Mercury,

  • you're going to say to me--every one of you will say

  • the same thing, "What's the origin of

  • this?"

  • Clearly the design is based on the frigidaria of

  • Pompeii, the frigidarium or the

  • cold room of Pompeii, this round structure with the

  • radiating alcoves that we saw as part of bath architecture very

  • early on, second century B.C.,

  • and so on, in Pompeii.

  • Same scheme used here.

  • Not surprising.

  • This is in Campania, it's not far away.

  • I can show you the Temple of Mercury is extremely well

  • preserved.

  • We can see the dome of the Temple of Mercury,

  • made out of concrete construction,

  • from above.

  • You can see the oculus of the--

  • just as those frigidaria had oculi,

  • this one does as well, and you can see that extremely

  • well here.

  • So a concrete building, with a concrete dome,

  • used as part of this spa.

  • We've traced this desire to make round structures way back

  • to the 600s B.C., the time of Quinto Fiorentino.

  • I showed you this Etruscan attempt at making a round

  • structure, with a dome,

  • that was done, in this case,

  • in stone, and although it was a valiant attempt,

  • not all that successful.

  • And we talked about the way in which that eventually

  • transformed into the Roman ability to make the

  • frigidaria at Pompeii.

  • And here are two views of the Temple of Mercury at Baia,

  • as it looks today.

  • Because of the oculus, there is often rain water.

  • The drain no longer functions.

  • So there's often a lot of very unappealing green water that

  • accumulates in the base of the Temple of Mercury.

  • So the times that I've been there, every time I think I've

  • been there, there's been enough water in

  • there that I haven't been able to actually get pictures of the

  • alcoves, which are covered by these

  • inches and inches of water that are usually collected inside the

  • Temple of Mercury.

  • But you get a good sense, I think,

  • of it here nonetheless, that we're talking about a

  • round domed structure, with an oculus,

  • with some windows, with arcuated windows,

  • windows with arcuations at the top,

  • in the uppermost part, or toward the uppermost part of

  • the dome, to add additional light into

  • the system.

  • And you need to think of these, by the way, as much more ornate

  • in antiquity than they are today.

  • They would have been stuccoed over, which you can see,

  • and then probably decorated with mosaic.

  • So the wonderful effects of the light coming in,

  • hitting the mosaic, and then there would've been a

  • pool in the center, just as there was in the

  • frigidarium, around which people could sit.

  • It would've been a quite spectacular space.

  • And just a few more views, to end with today.

  • This one up here, which of course is the

  • frigidarium at Pompeii, to show you where all of this

  • begins.

  • These two views are of the Temple of Mercury at Baia.

  • And this one, of course, of the Pantheon,

  • which is where we're headed.

  • But I think these in particular of the Temple of Mercury at Baia

  • again give you a sense of the way in which light not only

  • flows into this system-- again, imagine it on mosaic

  • ceiling and mosaic walls; spectacular effects,

  • the way it would have glittered in the light.

  • But look especially at the way the shapes that are formed on

  • the water that would have been in the pool down below.

  • It's exactly the same sort of sense that you get when you walk

  • into the Pantheon today, which also makes circles on the

  • floor of the pavement.

  • So we're going to again return to these kinds of issues next

  • week.

  • I just wanted you to be aware of this intermediate step

  • between the frigidaria of Pompeii and some of the

  • buildings that we're going to be looking at in the next couple of

  • weeks.

  • Take care.

  • Thank you, and Happy Valentine's Day.

Prof: Good morning everyone.

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