The Augustan City

1
The Augustan City
2
Res Gestae 20

• Consul for the sixth time (28BCE), I rebuilt
  eighty-two temples of the gods in the city by the
  authority of the senate, omitting nothing which
  ought to have been rebuilt at that time.

3
Res Gestae 20

• Consul for the seventh time (27BCE), I rebuilt
  the Flaminian road from the city to Ariminum and
  all the bridges except the Mulvian and Minucian.

4
Augustus and the Arts

• Fostered a sense of interest in a morally
  superior past that had seen sacrifice for the
  building of Rome
• Fostered a sense of restoration of that past, in
  art, architecture and in literature

5
The Aeneid
6

• Vergil wrote the Aeneid during the 20s BCE.
• after the end of the civil wars.
• It was unfinished at his death in 19BCE.
• He asked that it be burned Augustus did not
  honor that request.

7

• Iliad the epic of the individual man
• Odyssey the epic of the household
• Aeneid the epic of the city

8
Arma virumque cano

• 1.1-4 I sing of arms and of a man his fate had
  made him fugitive he was the first to journey
  from the coasts of Troy as far as Italy and the
  Lavinian shores.

9
(No Transcript)
10
He faces challenges

• 1.5-8 Across the lands and waters he was battered
  beneath the violence of High Ones, for the savage
  Junos unforgetting anger and many sufferings
  were his in war.

11
--and many sufferings were his in war--

• until he brought a city into being
• dum conderet urbem
• and carried his gods to Latium
• from this have come the Latin race, the lords of
  Albus,
• and the ramparts moenia of high Rome.

12
Urbs antiqua fuit

• The most important reason
• 1.There was a city they called Carthage
• And some old, really obsolete, reasons
• 2. The judgement of Paris
• 3. The honors given ravished Ganymede

13

• 1.27-29 Even then the goddess had this hope and
  tender plan for Carthage to become the capital
  of nations, if the Fates would just consent.

14
(No Transcript)
15
Aeneas never founds Rome

• He never founds a city in the epic.
• He sees the cities of others.
• Buthrotum and Carthage

16
Aeneas at Carthage

• They press forward on their path. They climb a
  hill that overhangs the city, looking down upon
  the facing towers. Aeneas marvels at the enormous
  buildings, once mere huts, and at the gates and
  tumult and paved streets.

17

• The eager men of Tyre work steadily some build
  the city walls or citadel--they roll up stones by
  hand and some select the place for a new
  dwelling, marking out its limits with a furrow

18

• Some make laws, establish judges and a sacred
  Senate some excavate a harbor others lay the
  deep foundations for a theater, hewing tremendous
  pillars from the rocks, high decorations for the
  stage to come.

19
What is a City?

• city walls or citadel
• dwelling
• laws
• judges
• senate
• harbor
• theater

20

• A city is more than just buildings
• laws, judges, senate
• people acting toward a common goal

21
And then, a simile
22

• Just as the bees in early summer, busy beneath
  the sunlight through the flowered meadows, when
  some lead on their full grown young and others
  press out the flowing honey, pack the cells with
  sweet nectar, or gather in the burdens of those
  returning

23

• Some, in columns, drive the drones, a lazy herd,
  out of the hives the work is fervent, and the
  fragrant honey is sweet with thyme.

24
Why Bees?

• Georgics, Book 4
• They alone of animals hold their children in
  common share the buildings of their city live
  their lives under great laws have a fatherland
  and household gods.

25
Why Bees?

• They are hardworking.
• They live in a community.
• hierarchical and orderly
• drones workers a leader
• They reproduce asexually.
• (Georgics, Book 4, again)

26

• How fortunate are those whose walls already
  rise! Aeneas cries while gazing at the rooftops
  of the city.

27

• This is the city that Aeneas descendents will
  destroy that conflict will stem from his actions
  in this city.

28

• What might be the effect of the description of
  Carthage on a Roman audience?
• Why a theater?
• An anachronistic picture
• Romes first stone theater was built in 55BCE

29
Augustan Rome
30
(No Transcript)
31
(No Transcript)
32
(No Transcript)
33
The Campus Martius

• The Mausoleum
• The Horologium
• The Ara Pacis

34
(No Transcript)
35
(No Transcript)
36
(No Transcript)
37
(No Transcript)
38

• 87-89 meters in diameter
• height (without the crowning bronze statue of
  Augustus) 44 meters
• bronze tablets with Res Gestae were affixed to it
  somewhere

39
First person buried

• Augustus nephew and son-in-law, Marcellus
• Vergil mourns his death in Aeneid 6 and mentions
  the new-built tomb near the Tiber on the plain
  of Mars.

40
Recyled as

• a fortress of the Colonna family
• an amphitheatre and bullring
• a garden
• a concert hall
• dismantled in 1936
• It has been plundered for building material

41
(No Transcript)
42
The Horologium

• obelisk was the first brought to Rome, from
  Heliopolis in 10BCE
• inscriptions of some of the signs of the zodiac
  have come to light

43
(No Transcript)
44
(No Transcript)
45
(No Transcript)
46
(No Transcript)
47
(No Transcript)
48
(No Transcript)
49
(No Transcript)
50
(No Transcript)
51
(No Transcript)
52
(No Transcript)
53
(No Transcript)
54
(No Transcript)
55
The Pantheon

• The one we see in Rome today was built during the
  reign of Hadrian
• Agrippa built one on the same spot in 27BCE
  (finished in 25BCE).

56
Agrippa built nearby

• baths
• the Basilica of Neptune
• the Saepta Julia (a voting enclosure)

57
(No Transcript)
58
Forum Augustum
59
(No Transcript)
60
(No Transcript)
61

• Boys assumed the toga virilis in it
• Governors made it their starting point when they
  left for their provinces
• Senate was to debate on war and the award of
  triumphs
• Triumphators dedicated their crowns and scepters
  to Mars