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  • 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,