Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Prof: Good morning. Today's lecture is entitled "The Prince and the Palace: Human Made Divine on the Palatine Hill." And I want to begin essentially where we left off, and that is with the emperor Vespasian, the founder of the Flavian dynasty, and the political shrewdness that Vespasian demonstrated, when he made the decisions that he did -- when he made the decision especially to use architecture to further his political agenda. And you'll recall that the way in which he did that was that he-- and I'm going to show you the site plan once again on the Esquiline and Palatine Hills; the site plan that shows us how he did this. How he did this was he recognized that he didn't want to associate himself with Nero, but it was to his advantage to associate himself instead with the emperor Claudius. And he did that by finishing the platform, and indeed the temple itself that we looked at last time, and that is the Temple of the Divine Claudius, the Claudianum, that had been begun by Agrippina the Younger. He completed that as a nod to Claudius; and again, a very smart political move on his part. He also, as you'll recall, razed the Domus Aurea of Nero to the ground, covered up what was left of it otherwise, and then he filled in the artificial lake, and he used the property that the artificial lake was on, to build the Colosseum, which itself was a shrewd gift to the Roman people, to gain their favor, and he did succeed in that regard. Equally important, perhaps even more important, is the decision that Vespasian made in the year 79 A.D., and that decision--and we see a portrait once again of Vespasian, on the right-hand side of the screen, now in Copenhagen--the decision he made in 79 was to appoint his elder son, Titus, as co-regent. And we see a portrait of Titus on the left-hand side of the screen, in military costume. It's a portrait that was found in Herculaneum, so that we know it needs to date prior to 79: so very likely sometime in the seventies, that particular statue was put up. Now the reason it was smart politically to appoint Titus as his co-regent was that Titus was extremely capable. He was also extremely popular in Rome, with the people, with the Senate, and what it did was to ensure the succession: to ensure the succession. And so when Vespasian died of natural causes in 79 A.D., Titus was prepared to take over, and indeed he did, and he took over without any contest whatsoever, which was a great accomplishment. Titus, however--oh, and Titus, by the way, was young when he became emperor; he was in his early thirties, about thirty-two, full of energy, and he needed it for what lay ahead, because he was unlucky. And his reign was affected by three major events, the first of which you know intimately already, and that is the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Titus' reign was 79 to 81. So in 79 A.D., Vesuvius erupts and Titus has to deal with the consequences of that, covered over, as you well know, almost all of Campania. In the year 80 he suffered, or Rome suffered, a very serious plague, which Titus also had to deal with. He had to marshal all of his energy and all his ingenuity to deal with a very serious plague in Rome, and that plague was followed by a fire, also an exceedingly serious fire. So Titus had his hands full, and perhaps it's not surprising, given all the stress of those years that he too died of natural causes in 81, at a very young age. But despite what he went through during 79 to 81, Titus' claim to fame was something that happened much earlier, and I've mentioned it before, and that is something that happened already in the year A.D. 70. And it was in the year A.D. 70 that Vespasian sent his elder son to Jerusalem, to Judea, to get involved in a major military war. And it was Titus, as you'll recall, who was victorious in the Jewish Wars, and that took place in 70 A.D. And it was extremely important, not only in itself, from Rome's standpoint, but also because it provided legitimacy to the Flavian dynasty. I mentioned that when a Roman dynasty came to power in a civil war-- which was the case, both for Augustus, after the civil war that Rome was plunged into after Caesar's death, and was the case again for Vespasian after the chaos of the year 68/69-- they needed a foreign victory to gain legitimacy. So for the Flavian dynasty, the war over Jerusalem gave them that legitimacy, and was therefore extremely important in terms of the art and ideology of the Flavian dynasty. I want to turn to an arch that was put up in honor of that very victory over Jerusalem, sometime after A.D. 81. It was the so-called Arch of Titus, one of the most famous Roman monuments of all, and it was put up, although it bears Titus' name, it was put up not by him, but by his brother Domitian, his younger brother Domitian, who succeeded him after Titus' death, which is why we date it to sometime after A.D. 81. I want to show you first its location, because that itself is significant. We are looking at the Google Earth view of the Roman Forum. You see the Roman Forum here. You see the Colosseum up at the top center. You see the Capitoline Hill or Campidoglio here; the Victor Emmanuel Monument here--I've pointed these out many times before--the Via dei Fori Imperiali of Mussolini; the Imperial Fora to the left; again the Roman Forum here; and the Palatine Hill, which we're going to be concentrating on today. But you'll remember that Nero's hope was to link the Palatine Hill with the Esquiline Hill, which is right up to the left of the Colosseum, and to do that via a spur hill--a spur hill that's located just right here, a bit above my finger--a spur hill called the Velia, V-e-l-i-a, that was to link the two. And you'll remember Nero's plans for his Domus Transitoria, this palace that was to serve as a point of transit between those two hills, and you'll recall also the remains of some of the rooms from the Domus Transitoria. So this was again land that had been built up by Nero. So it's not surprising to see the Flavians-- once again Titus following suit, and then his younger brother Domitian following suit-- to use land that had earlier been used by Nero for new Flavian monuments, in this case an arch put up to the victory that Titus celebrated over Jerusalem. And if you look very carefully, again just a bit, a few inches above where my finger is, you will see the Arch of Titus standing on that spur hill, on the Velia, between the Palatine and the Esquiline Hills. The Arch of Titus, again which dates to after A.D. 81, was placed right next to the Sacred Way, or the Via Sacra. It doesn't span the street, but it's placed right next to it, adjacent to it, and I think you can see that very well in these two views here, which also show that quite a bit of ancient road actually survives, or a piece of ancient road actually survives, in the Roman Forum. It's on the slope that you see here, and you can see the way in which it goes right by the Arch of Titus that you see to its right. This is a view up the hill, up the Sacred Way, toward the Velia, and here down, from the Arch of Titus, down into the rest of the Forum. And again you can see the polygonal masonry of the ancient road still preserved. The ancient way, the Via Sacra, was the road that the triumphant general took when he returned to Rome, after a great military victory; so this is exactly the road that Titus himself would've taken when he came back from Judea and walked in triumph,