We are finally there.

We are finally at the Colosseum, the very icon of

Rome.

And because I think of the Colosseum as the very icon of

Rome, I've called today's lecture

"The Creation of an Icon: The Colosseum and Contemporary

Architecture in Rome."

But before we discuss the Colosseum, I want to say a few

words, a few more words, about Nero, the last of the

Julio-Claudian emperors.

And I show you a portrait of Nero here, ensconced in his

Domus Aurea, with the Fourth Style wall of Fabullus behind

him.

And I wanted to just say, and bring your attention to the

fact, that it really is quite amazing

that we have the names of so many of Nero's artists and

architects.

And that can only attest to the fact that he must have gathered

around him truly the greatest artists of the day,

artists whose accomplishments were so superb that their names

had been recorded for posterity at a time when very few artists

and architects names are recorded.

And I just want to remind you of that group.

Think, of course, of the painter of Nero,

the man who was responsible for painting the Third Style walls

of Nero's Domus Aurea, Fabullus himself,

and who also appears to have been the innovator of the Fourth

Style of Roman wall painting.

There was also Zenodorus, who was the most famous bronze

caster of his day, a Greek artist of great renown,

whom Nero hired to make his colossal statue,

the colossal statue 125 feet tall, out of bronze,

that depicted Nero in the guise of the sun god Sol,

and a statue that was referred to as "The Colossus."

And lastly, but not least by any stretch of the imagination,

were the two architects of Nero, Severus and Celer--

Roman architects we believe--Severus and Celer,

who were responsible for the Domus Aurea itself,

for all the architectural innovations and experimentations

at the Domus Aurea.

And it was they who we believe were the creators of the

remarkable octagonal room: as I mentioned last time,

probably the most extraordinary room we've seen thus far this

semester, and one that's going to have

lasting impact on later Roman buildings and complexes.

So the octagonal room, and also I mentioned to you

other things in the villa, including a banqueting hall

with a revolving ceiling.

So these men, also great architectural

innovators.

So when Nero is forced to commit suicide in 68,

we have to ask ourselves, what happened to those artists?

What happened to those innovations after Nero was

discredited?

And I mentioned also last time that when Nero committed

suicide, when he was discredited,

he received an official damnatio memoriae from

the Senate, a damnation of his memory,

which meant that his portraits could be,

and were encouraged to be, destroyed,

and the same with his buildings.

So what is going to happen to the evolution of Roman

architecture when one of its greatest patrons,

someone who encouraged the greatest architects and artists

of the day, when he and his memory are

annihilated and his buildings are destroyed?

What is going to happen to architectural innovation?

That's the main question we need to ask ourselves today,

as we look at the buildings that were commissioned by his

successors, by members of the Flavian

dynasty--Vespasian, Titus and ultimately Domitian.

We'll talk about Vespasian today, a bit on Titus,

and then more on Titus and Domitian on Tuesday.

What happens to these innovations when they begin to

take over and when they begin to commission buildings?

And we're going to see it's mixed.

We're going to see a certain move back toward a conservative

vision, but we're also going to see

that Nero's innovations live on, and that's the most exciting

piece of this particular Flavian puzzle,

as we shall see.

So we see again Nero here.

And when Nero died in 68 A.D., what happened was not only that

he received a damnatio memoriae,

but there were no other Julio-Claudians to succeed him,

and Rome and the Empire were plunged,

once again, into a very serious civil war,

a civil war that was as profoundly troubling as the

civil war that had followed Caesar's death --

Caesars death, as you know,

in 44 B.C.

And what emerged after this civil war,

or during this civil war, was one of the most complicated

and difficult years in Rome's history,

the year 68 to 69, during which Rome had four

emperors, not co-emperors,

as Rome was to have much later in its history,

but competing emperors, in very quick succession,

some of them holding onto power for only a few months.

These men were Galba, G-a-l-b-a, whose portrait you

see on a coin in the upper left; Galba who becomes emperor right

after Nero's death.

And you can see him in a no-nonsense, realistic portrait

on that coin in the upper left.

He is succeeded very soon after by a man by the name of Otho,

O-t-h-o.

You see him on the gold coin on the right.

Otho who saw Nero as a soul mate and had himself rendered

very much with a Neronian hairstyle, as you can see.

And then third, a man by the name of Vitellius,

V-i-t-e-l-l-i-u-s, Vitellius who seems to have had

more chins than any other emperor in the history of Rome,

as you can see in this wonderful portrait now in

Copenhagen.

And then ultimately Vespasian, V-e-s-p-a-s-i-a-n,

Vespasian, who was the only one of these four who was able to

hold onto power long enough to create a new dynasty:

a new dynasty that he called after his family name--

Flavius was his family name--the so-called Flavian

dynasty.

And fortune was on his side, because he had two sons to

succeed him, Titus and Domitian; and because he had two sons to

succeed him, he was able to create a quite successful

dynasty, as we shall see, that had lasting power.

So this is our second main imperial dynasty,

the Flavian dynasty, as opposed to the Augustan and

Julio-Claudian dynasty.

Now Vespasian came to power in a civil war,

and like Augustus before him, he recognized that although

coming to power in a civil war could give you the authority

that you needed to govern, it didn't give you the

legitimacy.

It was very important in the eyes of the Romans to have had

an important foreign victory, to give your dynasty

legitimacy.

Augustus came to power after his civil war with Mark Antony,

but he looked to his victory over the Parthians,

in the eastern part of the Empire, to give his reign

legitimacy.

Vespasian does the same thing.

He comes to power in a civil war.

He beats back other Romans.

So he has to look elsewhere for legitimacy, and he also looks

east.

He looks specifically to Judea, and he sends his son in,

his son Titus in, to do war against Jerusalem,

and Titus was victorious in the early 70s A.D.,

in this very important Jewish War, that I'll have more to say

about later today and also especially on Tuesday.

So Vespasian also is a--with his son Titus--

is a victor in a foreign war, and that becomes the basis of

their right to rule, and we'll see references to

those Jewish Wars, in their art,

even in our conversation today.

I also want to say with regard to Vespasian,

not only was he a great military strategist,

but he also seems to have been an extremely shrewd politician,

someone who recognized that you could use architecture in the

service of ideology-- and that's in fact what we're

going to see him doing today-- and he starts this from the

very beginning of his reign.

I go back here to--and we'll look at it a number of times

today; it really is going to loom

large in today's discussion--the site plan of Nero's Domus Aurea

that we looked at last time.

And you'll remember the location of the Golden House of

Nero, up on the Esquiline Hill,

the only part of it that still survives,

the so-called Esquiline Wing, which you can see there.

And here, the great artificial lake.

The Colossus by Zenodorus, located over there.