6Augustus: Buildings as Propaganda

In 1922, after the success of the Fascist march on Rome, Benito Mussolini felt acutely the need for an aura of respectability to surround his upstart régime. Another swashbucklingcondottiere, 1965 years earlier, Caesar’s heir Octavian, had felt the same need. Both resorted to the same method: an ambitious building program, and a vigorous propaganda campaign designed to substitute for dubious antecedents a set of more or less spurious links with the heroes of the glorious past. About Fascist architecture the less said the better; the other point will be the subject of this chapter. In fourteen years (1924–38) Italian archaeologists changed the face of central Rome, and in the process of glorifyingIl Duce, added more to our knowledge of Augustan Rome than the previous fourteen centuries had provided.

Octavian’s building activity, both before and after he took the title Augustus, was prodigious. In his autobiography he boasts of restoring no less than eighty-two temples. He built many new ones besides, and embellished Rome, and his own glory, with his new Forum, a portico, his arch, his grandiose mausoleum, an Altar of Peace, and, in addition, arks and gardens, baths, theaters, a great library,markets, granaries, docks, and warehouses. Meanwhile he himself lived in ostentatious simplicity in a modest house on the Palatine, and encouraged the cult of antique austerity by restoring the hut of Romulus. At his death Rome was at last an Imperial metropolis: the city of brick had become a city of marble. Rome had gained grandeur and lost freedom in the process. Toward the assessment of the gains and losses, the excavators’ discoveries in Augustus’ Forum, at his arch, in his mausoleum, and particularly in the difficult and ingenious recovery and reconstruction of his Altar of Peace have made the most important contributions.

*****

Ever since 1911, Corrado Ricci had dreamed of excavating the site of Augustus’ Forum (seeFig. 5.13), known to lie to the northeast of and at right angles to Caesar’s, overlaid by modern construction. In 1924 Mussolini gave him his chance, and by 1932, when the Via dell’ Impero was opened with Fascist pomp (seeFig. 5.12), the Fora of Caesar, Augustus, Nerva, and Trajan had all yielded up secrets to the archaeologist’s spade.

Of Augustus’ Forum, when Ricci began to dig, the most conspicuous part was the firewall at the back, separating it from the fire-trap slums of the Subura, ancient Rome’s redlight district. The firewall is over 100 feet high, the exposed parts in travertine, the rest inpeperinoandsperone, the traditional Italic building stones, of the period. This use of local materials, combined, as Ricci was to discover, with marble, is the symbol of the compromise, the amalgam of Italic and Greek materials, methods, and forms, which is the hallmark of the Augustan Age.

Fig. 6.1Rome, Forum of Augustus, model by I. Gismondi. (Mostra Augustea della Romanità,Catalogo, Pl. 35)

When the buildings cluttering the site had been cleared away, the plan (Fig. 6.1) was found to be based upon that of Caesar’s Forum: a rectangular portico with a temple at the back. But the rectangle was enriched at the sides with curves, as at Palestrina earlier and in Bernini’s portico in front of St. Peter’s later. Each of the hemicycles had, let intothe walls on two levels, niches two feet deep, big enough to hold statues of half life size. Excavations in the area of the south hemicycle as early as 1889 had turned up fragments of drapery in Carrara marble, and bits of inscriptions which, in combination with literary evidence, gave to the great Italian epigraphist Attilio Degrassi the clue to the subjects of the statues. The inscriptions, calledelogia, recorded thecursus honorum, or public career, of a set of heroes, triumphing generals, or others who had deserved well of the Republic. Three examples are Aulus Postumius, who, with the help of the Great Twin Brethren Castor and Pollux (the household gods of the Julian clan), beat the Latins at the battle of Lake Regillus in 496, and built his divine helpers a temple in the Forum; Appius Claudius the Blind, who built the Appian Way (312B.C.) and an aqueduct; and Sulla—nabobs and builders all. But there was space in the two levels of hemicycle niches, and in others hypothetically restored in the portico’s rectilinear wall, for over fifty statues withelogia. So Degrassi made a search for other stones similarly inscribed, some of which turned up in the most unlikely places.

One had been used as a marble roof-tile of Hadrian’s Pantheon; it was in the Vatican collection. Another was found in a vineyard near Rome’s north gate, the Porta del Popolo. The former immortalized one Lucius Albinius, who took the Vestal Virgins in his wagon to Caere for safety when the Gauls were threatening Rome in 390B.C.The latter was of Sulla’s great rival Marius, the friend of the people. The dimensions, letter-heights, and letter-styles of both made their origin in Augustus’ Forum extremely likely. A set of seven more had been known since the seventeenth century or earlier as coming from the site of the Forum of Arezzo, ancient Arretium, in Tuscany. The texts of some of these turned out to be copies ofelogiafrom the Forum of Augustus. This justified the inference that in this matter of a Hall of Fame, provincial cities imitated the metropolis.Thus thoseelogiafrom Arezzo for which no Roman prototype had been found might yet give a clue to what the Roman collection had once contained. This inference enriches the list by the names of Manius Valerius Maximus, conciliator of class struggles, and Rome’s first dictator (494B.C.); Lucius Aemilius Paullus, one of the greatesttriumphatoresof them all, who beat the Macedonians at Pydna in 168B.C., and symbolized the union of Roman traditions with Hellenism, as Augustus aspired to do; Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, father of the reforming Gracchi; and Sulla’s lieutenant Lucius Licinius Lucullus, whose brother was responsible for the terraces and hemicycles at Palestrina.

The south hemicycle and portico, then, ingeniously connected Augustus’ name with a set of nabobs, builders, successful generals, philhellenes, and men remarkable for piety to the gods or popularity with the masses. What of the north hemicycle? Here Ricci discovered theelogiumof Rome’s and Augustus’ legendary ancestor,pius Aeneashimself, who also appears on the Altar of Peace; a set of the Kings of Alba Longa; Romulus, also probably on the Altar of Peace; Caesar’s father; Marcus Claudius Marcellus, Augustus’ much beloved heir, whose untimely death Vergil movingly mourns in theAeneid, and whose ashes lay in Augustus’ mausoleum; and Nero Claudius Drusus, Augustus’ stepson, who also is figured, like Aeneas and Romulus, on the Altar of Peace. It looks very much as though the Hall of Fame on this side of the portico was intended to connect the legendary Kings of Alba and Home with the Julio-Claudian dynasty. And the climax of it all was yet to come. At the end of the north portico Ricci excavated a square room with a pedestal at the back. On the pedestal he found a cutting for a colossal foot, seven times life size. Forty feet up the back wall were the put-holes for the struts of a huge statue. Whose? The Forum’s temple was dedicated to Mars, but the place for the god is in his temple. The most likely candidate is theDuxhimself, Augustus, fatherof his country, in whom Roman history came, in more senses than one, to a full stop.

Medieval limekilns tell, as usual, how the rich marbles which decorated both portico and temple were broken up and melted down into whitewash, but three marble Corinthian columns sixty feet high give some idea of the temple’s grandeur. Its podium, lofty in the Italic fashion, was not solid marble, simply tufa revetted or veneered with thin marble slabs, an economical, and, some might say, dishonest way of making a city of marble of the desired Hellenic appearance. The statue-base at the back of the temple (which was apsidal to match the hemicycles in the porticoes) is too wide for a single figure. The cult statues must have been of Mars and Venus, another delicate reference to the ancestry of Augustus’ adoptive clan. The temple itself was vowed, the literary sources tell us, at the battle of Philippi (42B.C.) to Mars Ultor, avenger of the murder of Julius Caesar, and Caesar’s sword was piously preserved as a relic in it. The Forum did not neglect the arts. Like Caesar’s, and like Pompey’s portico, it was a museum. It did service also for literature: we are told that lectures were delivered in the hemicycles. Begun in 37B.C., the Forum took thirty-five years to finish. By 2B.C.other propaganda devices—especially the arch, the Altar of Peace, Vergil’s epic, Livy’s history, and Horace’s lyric—had, as we shall see, given the desired respectability to Augustus, the Prince of Peace.

*****

It was the victory of Actium (31B.C.), over the combined fleets of Antony and Cleopatra, that enabled Octavian to pass as the Prince of Peace. In 1888–89, in the old Forum, between the Temples of the deified Julius and of Castor, were excavated the footings of an arch, originally with a single passageway, later enlarged to three. This arch was identified from literary sources as the one erected by Augustus to commemorate that victory, enlarged later when anotheroccasion for propaganda arose. The arch itself is a routine affair, with plenty of precedent, though one might ponder the propriety of thus gloating over Antony, a former colleague and a Roman citizen. (Gamberini, the excavator, even found, in the bottom of square stone receptacles beside the arch, laurel seeds which suggest that the tree of victory was prominent in the landscaping of the arch.) But, given the Roman propensity in general, and Augustus’ in particular, for propagandizing in stone, the question naturally arose what opportunity for self-advertisement the arch offered. The answer was not given until Degrassi published another book in 1947.

For many years archaeologists had believed that on the walls of the nearby Regia had been engraved theFasti Consulares(lists of Roman consuls from the founding of the Republic and probably of the kings as well), and theFasti Triumphales(lists of triumphing generals from Romulus to 19B.C.I have remarked in another bookDhow much one can learn of a people by what they make lists of: Greeks, of Olympic victors; Americans, of baseball averages; Romans, of statesmen and military heroes). But in 1935 a careful study of the Regia by the American F. E. Brown proved that the part of its wall where theFastimust have begun was masked in the rebuilding of 36B.C.by another structure, and that the space available, carefully measured for the first time by Brown, did not fit the survivingFasti, which were discovered in 1546 and are still preserved in the Conservatori Museum. Clearly the Regia was not the place where theFastiwere inscribed. Since two-thirds of the extant fragments were found between the Temple of the Deified Julius and the Temple of Castor, and since their dimensions suited those of the footings of the Arch of Augustus, the inference was clear. It was on the arch (Fig. 6.2) that the consularFastiwere carved, and this is now the universally accepted opinion.They were displayed on either side of the lateral passageway, where pedestrians could read them, the consular lists framed by pilasters with a pediment above (reconstructed in the museum by Michelangelo), the list oftriumphatoreson the corner pilasters of the enlarged arch. The result of this display was again, as in Augustus’ Forum, to connect the upstart Octavian with a more respectable or heroic past. His name appears twice among thetriumphatores(the slab that referred to Actium is unfortunately missing) in a list that began with Romulus and contained the names of the greatest heroes of Roman history; in the consular lists his name figured twenty-four times. This collocation and repetition could do him no harm.

DThe Roman Mind at Work(Van Nostrand, Princeton, 1958).

In the consular lists the names of Mark Antony and his family have suffereddamnatio memoriae; that is, they have been first inscribed and then chiselled out. In the list oftriumphatores, on the contrary, Antony’s name is allowed to stand. What is the legitimate inference from this? Clearly it is that the two lists were inscribed at different times, and that on the first occasion ourcondottierefelt a certain insecurity, which by the time of the second had disappeared. Literary sources date the second occasion in or shortly after 19B.C., after the Roman standards disgracefully lost by Crassus at Carrhae had been recovered from the Parthians. In these eleven years or so thecondottiereOctavian had become Augustus, the Revered One, Expander of Empire, Father of his Country, Prince of Peace. Within those years Vergil’sGeorgicshad cast an aura of beauty over Octavian’s resettlement of veterans on the land; theAeneidhad connected this modern Aeneas, the pious one, the bearer of burdens, with his legendary ancestors; Horace’s Roman Odes had praised Augustus’ religious and moral reforms; and Livy’s history had put into Augustan prose the lays of ancient Rome. Augustus could afford to be magnanimous to his enemies: he had seen to it that most of them were dead.

ARCO DI AUGUSTO NEL FORO ROMANOFig. 6.2Rome, Forum. Arch of Augustus, reconstruction. (Fototeca)

ARCO DI AUGUSTO NEL FORO ROMANO

Fig. 6.2Rome, Forum. Arch of Augustus, reconstruction. (Fototeca)

But it was not enough that the past be controlled and rewritten, and connected with the present on splendid monuments. Augustus must control the future, too; even after his death men must admire and worship him and his dynasty. To this end he began (literary sources tell us it was in 28B.C.) in the Campus Martius a massive mausoleum (Fig. 6.3), which should be reminiscent in shape of the great Etruscantumuliof centuries before, and in mass of such wonders of the world as the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus or the pyramids of Egypt. This monument, which through the centuries has been successively fortress, circus, park for fireworks displays, bull-ring, and concert-hall, was stripped to its gaunt core in 1935, as another part of the Fascists’ Augustan plan to attach themselves to the memory of Augustus. The excavators, Giglioli and Colini, found within the circular ring of the mausoleum’s vertical outer wall a series of concentric vaulted corridors (Fig. 6.4) in concrete, rising four stories or 143 feet, surrounding a central hollow cylinder where Augustus’ ashes were to lie. A statue of the great deceased would have surmounted the cylinder, and the whole massive structure would have been heaped with earth and planted with cypresses. Before the door stood the bronze tablets bearing Augustus’ autobiography—a calmly audacious fabrication of history, it has been justly called. In the corridor around the central cylinder were placed the marble containers for the urns of members of the dynasty. Some of the containers were foundin situ, though their ashes—and, ironically, Augustus’ as well—had long ago disappeared.

Fig. 6.3Rome, Mausoleum of Augustus. (Fototeca)

Fig. 6.4Rome, Mausoleum of Augustus, plan and elevation.(G. Lugli,Mon. Ant., 3, p. 197)

Fig. 6.4Rome, Mausoleum of Augustus, plan and elevation.

(G. Lugli,Mon. Ant., 3, p. 197)

It was Augustus’ fate to outlive his lieutenants, his relatives (see the family tree,Fig. 6.5), and all his favorite candidates for the succession. There lay, for example, the ashes of his stepson Drusus, his nephew, the young Marcellus, and his grandchildren, Lucius and Gaius; his lieutenant Agrippa; his sister Octavia, once given in a dynastic marriage to Mark Antony; his stepson Tiberius’ one-timewife Agrippina, divorced to give place to Augustus’ daughter. Agrippina survived Augustus; who knows what palace intrigue brought her ashes here? Her one-time husband’s ashes rested here, too, and those of Germanicus, Tiberius’ adopted son, also those of the mad Emperor Caligula, of Claudius, Vespasian, Nerva, and Septimius Severus’ consort Julia Domna (for the Severan dynasty, too, had need of respectability).

In stripping the mausoleum to its core, and building a deplorable neo-Fascistpiazzaon one side of it, an equally deplorable concrete shed for the reconstructed Altar of Peace on the other, the archaeologists of the ’30s stripped Augustus, too, of his pretensions. Yet the decayed grandeur, the disappointed hopes, the inevitable passing of régimes, strike their own note of pathos and mortality:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”

However unfortunate the building that protects it may be, the reconstructed Altar of Peace in the Field of Mars must be recognized as one of the great triumphs of Italian archaeology. Sculptured reliefs from this structure were first discovered, though not recognized as such, as long ago as 1568, in the underpinnings of what is now the Palazzo Fiano, on the Corso, Rome’scardo, which overlies the ancient Great North Road, the Via Flaminia. Other soundings were made in 1859 and 1903, and the reliefs were first recognized as belonging to the altar in 1879. But it was not until 1937–38 that G. Moretti carried through the incredibly ingenious and patient work which led to the almost complete recovery and reconstruction of the altar and the historic sculptured frieze surrounding it.

Fig. 6.5Genealogical Table of the Julio-Claudian CaesarsNoticethat Julius Caesar left no descendants, but adopted his great-nephew Augustus. Connections with Augustus were later traced by descent from his daughter Julia, his stepsons Tiberius and Drusus, or his sister Octavia. The names of emperors are in capitals. Numerals in parentheses show the order of marriages. Single lines indicate blood relationship; double lines, marriage; the dotted line, that the Cn. Domitius is the same person.C. Julius Caesar (d. 85B.C.)|+-----------------------------------+----------------+| |Julia I === M. Atius Balbus C. Julius Caesar, the dictator| (murdered 44B.C.See SuetoniusAtia =========== C. OctaviusThe Deified Julius)|+-----------------------------------------------------+| |Scribonia === (2) AUGUSTUS (3) === (2) Livia (1) === Ti. Claudius Nero || (d.A.D.14) (d.A.D.29) | M. Antonius === (2) Octavia I (1) === C. Marcellus| | (d. 30B.C.) | | (d. 40B.C.)| | | || | | +--+-----------+| | | | |Julia II === (3) M. Agrippa (1) === Pomponia | | M. Marcellus Marcella === M. Messalla I(d. in exile | (d. 12B.C.) | | +---------+ (d. 22B.C.See |A.D.14) | | +--------------+ | Virgil,Aeneid|| | | | | VI, 854 ff.) +-----------+| | | | | || | | | +--------------+ || | | | | | || Vipsania === TIBERIUS Drusus I === Antonia II Antonia I === L. Domitius || | (d.A.D.37) (d. 9B.C.) | | || | | +--+------+ || | | | | || | | ¦ Cn. Domitius Domitia === M. Messalla II| | | ¦ || | +-----------+-----------------------+ || | | | ¦ | || Drusus II === Julia IV ║ Germanicus ¦ CLAUDIUS (3) === Messallina| (murdered | (executed ║ (d.A.D.19) ¦ (murdered | (d.A.D.49)C. Caesar (d.A.D.4)A.D.23) |A.D.31) ║ ¦A.D.54) |L. Caesar (d.A.D.2) (Note 1) ║ ¦ (Note 3) |Agrippa II (MurderedA.D.14) ║ ¦ |Agrippina I (d. in exileA.D.33)===================================+ ¦ |Julia III (Note 2) | ¦ || ¦ || ¦ |Agrippina II (murderedA.D.59)(1) ============================= Cn. Domitius |Nero Caesar (executedA.D.31) | +----------+----+Drusus Caesar (d. in prisonA.D.33) | | |CAIUS (Caligula) (murderedA.D.41) NERO ======= Octavia II BritannicusJulia V (d. in exile,A.D.42) (suicide (murdered (murderedA.D.68)A.D.62)A.D.55)Note 1.A daughter of Drusus II and Julia IV married Rubellius Blandus; their son, Rubellius Plautus, was executed by Nero.Note 2.Julia III had a daughter who married Junius Silanus; several of their descendants were executed by Nero.Note 3.After the death of Messallina Claudius married his niece Agrippina II; there were no children.Fig. 6.5Family tree of the Julio-Claudians.(P. MacKendrick and H. Howe,Classics in Translation, 2, p. 370)

Fig. 6.5Genealogical Table of the Julio-Claudian Caesars

Noticethat Julius Caesar left no descendants, but adopted his great-nephew Augustus. Connections with Augustus were later traced by descent from his daughter Julia, his stepsons Tiberius and Drusus, or his sister Octavia. The names of emperors are in capitals. Numerals in parentheses show the order of marriages. Single lines indicate blood relationship; double lines, marriage; the dotted line, that the Cn. Domitius is the same person.C. Julius Caesar (d. 85B.C.)|+-----------------------------------+----------------+| |Julia I === M. Atius Balbus C. Julius Caesar, the dictator| (murdered 44B.C.See SuetoniusAtia =========== C. OctaviusThe Deified Julius)|+-----------------------------------------------------+| |Scribonia === (2) AUGUSTUS (3) === (2) Livia (1) === Ti. Claudius Nero || (d.A.D.14) (d.A.D.29) | M. Antonius === (2) Octavia I (1) === C. Marcellus| | (d. 30B.C.) | | (d. 40B.C.)| | | || | | +--+-----------+| | | | |Julia II === (3) M. Agrippa (1) === Pomponia | | M. Marcellus Marcella === M. Messalla I(d. in exile | (d. 12B.C.) | | +---------+ (d. 22B.C.See |A.D.14) | | +--------------+ | Virgil,Aeneid|| | | | | VI, 854 ff.) +-----------+| | | | | || | | | +--------------+ || | | | | | || Vipsania === TIBERIUS Drusus I === Antonia II Antonia I === L. Domitius || | (d.A.D.37) (d. 9B.C.) | | || | | +--+------+ || | | | | || | | ¦ Cn. Domitius Domitia === M. Messalla II| | | ¦ || | +-----------+-----------------------+ || | | | ¦ | || Drusus II === Julia IV ║ Germanicus ¦ CLAUDIUS (3) === Messallina| (murdered | (executed ║ (d.A.D.19) ¦ (murdered | (d.A.D.49)C. Caesar (d.A.D.4)A.D.23) |A.D.31) ║ ¦A.D.54) |L. Caesar (d.A.D.2) (Note 1) ║ ¦ (Note 3) |Agrippa II (MurderedA.D.14) ║ ¦ |Agrippina I (d. in exileA.D.33)===================================+ ¦ |Julia III (Note 2) | ¦ || ¦ || ¦ |Agrippina II (murderedA.D.59)(1) ============================= Cn. Domitius |Nero Caesar (executedA.D.31) | +----------+----+Drusus Caesar (d. in prisonA.D.33) | | |CAIUS (Caligula) (murderedA.D.41) NERO ======= Octavia II BritannicusJulia V (d. in exile,A.D.42) (suicide (murdered (murderedA.D.68)A.D.62)A.D.55)Note 1.A daughter of Drusus II and Julia IV married Rubellius Blandus; their son, Rubellius Plautus, was executed by Nero.Note 2.Julia III had a daughter who married Junius Silanus; several of their descendants were executed by Nero.Note 3.After the death of Messallina Claudius married his niece Agrippina II; there were no children.

C. Julius Caesar (d. 85B.C.)|+-----------------------------------+----------------+| |Julia I === M. Atius Balbus C. Julius Caesar, the dictator| (murdered 44B.C.See SuetoniusAtia =========== C. OctaviusThe Deified Julius)|+-----------------------------------------------------+| |Scribonia === (2) AUGUSTUS (3) === (2) Livia (1) === Ti. Claudius Nero || (d.A.D.14) (d.A.D.29) | M. Antonius === (2) Octavia I (1) === C. Marcellus| | (d. 30B.C.) | | (d. 40B.C.)| | | || | | +--+-----------+| | | | |Julia II === (3) M. Agrippa (1) === Pomponia | | M. Marcellus Marcella === M. Messalla I(d. in exile | (d. 12B.C.) | | +---------+ (d. 22B.C.See |A.D.14) | | +--------------+ | Virgil,Aeneid|| | | | | VI, 854 ff.) +-----------+| | | | | || | | | +--------------+ || | | | | | || Vipsania === TIBERIUS Drusus I === Antonia II Antonia I === L. Domitius || | (d.A.D.37) (d. 9B.C.) | | || | | +--+------+ || | | | | || | | ¦ Cn. Domitius Domitia === M. Messalla II| | | ¦ || | +-----------+-----------------------+ || | | | ¦ | || Drusus II === Julia IV ║ Germanicus ¦ CLAUDIUS (3) === Messallina| (murdered | (executed ║ (d.A.D.19) ¦ (murdered | (d.A.D.49)C. Caesar (d.A.D.4)A.D.23) |A.D.31) ║ ¦A.D.54) |L. Caesar (d.A.D.2) (Note 1) ║ ¦ (Note 3) |Agrippa II (MurderedA.D.14) ║ ¦ |Agrippina I (d. in exileA.D.33)===================================+ ¦ |Julia III (Note 2) | ¦ || ¦ || ¦ |Agrippina II (murderedA.D.59)(1) ============================= Cn. Domitius |Nero Caesar (executedA.D.31) | +----------+----+Drusus Caesar (d. in prisonA.D.33) | | |CAIUS (Caligula) (murderedA.D.41) NERO ======= Octavia II BritannicusJulia V (d. in exile,A.D.42) (suicide (murdered (murderedA.D.68)A.D.62)A.D.55)

Note 1.A daughter of Drusus II and Julia IV married Rubellius Blandus; their son, Rubellius Plautus, was executed by Nero.Note 2.Julia III had a daughter who married Junius Silanus; several of their descendants were executed by Nero.Note 3.After the death of Messallina Claudius married his niece Agrippina II; there were no children.

Fig. 6.5Family tree of the Julio-Claudians.(P. MacKendrick and H. Howe,Classics in Translation, 2, p. 370)

Fig. 6.5Family tree of the Julio-Claudians.

(P. MacKendrick and H. Howe,Classics in Translation, 2, p. 370)

A colossal engineering problem arose because the Palazzo Fiano rested upon wooden piles driven into the water which in this part of Rome underlies most of the buildings. These piles, and reinforcements to them, pinned down some of the marble blocks of the altar itself. To get the blocks out by ordinary methods, even if the water level had made it possible, would have caused the collapse of the building. Previous excavators had resorted to driving narrow, damp, dark tunnels, with incomplete results. Moretti resolved on more heroic measures; the solution is a credit to modern Italian engineering. The weightiest and worst-supported part of the palace lay directly over the altar; there were deep splits in the palace walls; only the extraordinary tenacity of thepozzolanamortar held them together. With infinite capacity for taking pains, the damaged parts of the walls were taken down and, by injection of liquid concrete, restored segment by segment, brick by brick. (The Italians call this processcuci e scuci, sew and unsew.) The subsoil was so uneven in profile and so soaking wet that a new masonry substructure was impossible. Moretti, in consultation with his engineers, determined to shift the weight of the palace wall onto a sort of enormous sawhorse orcavaletto(Fig. 6.6) of reinforced concrete. Holes were drilled sixty-five feet to a firm footing and filled with concrete; on this were built concrete piers to support the legs of the sawhorse. Between each pier and the corresponding leg was inserted a hydraulic jack (martinetto) adjustable to suit the various stresses exerted by the bearing walls. A grid of steel girders ran from pier to pier for reinforcement.

Fig. 6.6Rome, Altar of Peace. Plan showing how corner of Palazzo Fiano was supported and a dike frozen around the remains of the altar. (G. Moretti,Ara Pacis Augustae, Pl. 36)

Once the corner of the building was supported by the concrete sawhorse, the problem was only half-solved, for water covered the altar up to the top of the outside steps. Pumping was labor in vain; it would only have weakened the substructure of the palace and adjoining buildings. What were needed were dikes, to keep the water out while the area inside them was emptied. But a cement dike was impossible, because of the maze of water, gas, and sewer mains, heat, power, and light conduits which, at all levelsand in all directions, crisscrossed the subsoil of this busy part of modern Rome. A trench about five feet wide was dug, with a 230-foot perimeter. From a horizontal pipe laid in it, fifty-five three-inch pipes ran down vertically at equal intervals to a depth of twenty-four feet. Into these pipes was pumped carbon dioxide under a pressure of eighty atmospheres. Radiation from the refrigerant in the vertical pipes froze the surrounding muddy earth, and the impenetrable dike was a reality. The water inside covering the altar was then pumped out, and all the architectural blocks and fragments could be removed. Thus succeeded one of the most difficult and delicate excavations ever made. All was finished to meet a deadline, the bimillennary of Augustus’ birth, September 23, 1938.

What Moretti now had to work with in his reconstruction was not only the slabs and fragments he had just extracted, but also the finds from previous excavations going back to 1568 (Fig. 6.7). Over the intervening years these had been scattered. Most of the 1568 finds had been sawn into three lengthwise (for the slabs were over two feet thick, too heavy for easy transport) and shipped to Florence to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who then owned the Palazzo Fiano site in Rome. One slab was in the Vatican Museum, another in the Villa Medici (seat of the French Academy in Rome), still another in the Louvre. The finds from the 1859 dig had also been kept unrestored in the palace, and then transferred to Rome’s Terme Museum. One slab was found in re-use face down as a cover for a tomb in Rome’s Church of the Gesù.

Fig. 6.7Rome, Altar of Peace. Plan showing fragments discovered up to 1935. (G. Lugli,Mon. Ant., p. 185)

Fig. 6.8Rome, Altar of Peace. Plan showing results of Moretti’s excavation, stillin situunder the Palazzo Fiano. (Moretti,op. cit., Pl. 5)

These were all decorative elements. Under the Palazzo Fiano still remain the tufa footings and some of the travertine pavement (Fig. 6.8). These, though they were not removed, made it possible to visualize and reconstruct the plan. The altar itself, in the center of its enclosed platform, proved to be U-shaped, with the open end of the U facing west, toward the Campus Martius, and approached by aflight of steps. The whole was fenced off by a marble wall about thirty feet square and sixteen feet high, with wide doorways on east and west. Since the pavement sloped, and there was provision for drainage, the inference was warranted that the altar was originally open to the sky. Each face of the enclosure wall bore two wide horizontal decorative bands separated by narrower bands, on the outer face of meanders, on the inner, of palmettes. On the outer face the wide upper band bore a frieze with over 100 figures; the lower one motifs from nature: acanthus scrolls, bunches of grapes, the swans of Augustus’ patron Apollo, and a lively population of small animals. The inner face carried, above, a motif of swags of fruit festooned between ox-skulls (bucrania); below, a series of long, narrow, recessed, vertical panels, giving the effect, in marble, of a wooden fence. Many of the Slabs were found where they fell and were easily fitted into their proper place in the reconstruction (Fig. 6.9). Of the slabs in museums casts were taken. Thanks to careful observation of joins, repeats of floral motifs, the identity of historic figures, veins in the marble, and treatment of unexposed surfaces, these slabs, too, found their proper places. The job was done in the workrooms of the Terme Museum, with twenty-four large cases of fragments to work with, plus the full slabs and casts. The altar was finally rebuilt on the banks of the Tiber next to Augustus’ mausoleum.

The result was worth the effort, for the Altar of Peace is universally acknowledged to be the greatest artistic masterpiece of the Augustan Age, blending Roman spirit with Greek forms, occupying in Roman art the same exalted position as the Parthenon frieze in Greek, and destined to inspire, as we shall see, many monuments with historic subjects in the following decades and centuries.

Fig. 6.9Rome, Altar of Peace, G. Gatti’s reconstruction. (MPI)

Fig. 6.10Rome, Altar of Peace, frieze with portrait of Augustus. (MPI)

The figured upper panels on the enclosure’s outer face are the most interesting part of the monument. On the north and south faces a procession moves westward. It is imaginedas turning the corner of the enclosure and entering the west doorway to sacrifice at the altar. The heads on the north side were heavily restored in the Renaissance, but the fasces, the laurel crowns, the senatorial shoes and rings, the cult objects carried make it clear that the procession is of magistrates and priests. The south side, which faced the city, must have been considered the most important half, and here, indeed, many historical figures of Augustus’ family and court have been identified. It is noteworthy how the division of the friezes into dynastic and non-dynastic halves parallels the arrangement of the Hall of Fame in Augustus’ Forum.

The face in the upper right corner of the fragmentary left panel inFig. 6.10, though cracked badly across the eye (for the whole weight of the Palazzo Fiano rested upon it for centuries), is recognizable from other portraits, from what remains of the profile, and from the treatment of the hair, as Augustus himself. The figures in the spiked caps to the far right areflamines, priests of Jupiter and Mars. The figure second to the left of the firstflamen, all by himself in the background, is a spectator, the very type of the old Republican Roman. Lictors with the fasces precede the figure to the spectator’s left of Augustus. This figure, then, must be the consul of the year, with the other consul on the other side of the Emperor.

But of which year? The consuls of the year 13B.C., when the building of the altar was officially decreed, were Varus (who fell in the Teutoberg forest twenty-two years later) and Tiberius. Those of the year 9B.C., when the altar was consecrated, were Drusus and Quinctius Crispinus. Now the slab pictured inFig. 6.11contains on its left edge, on either side of the veiled background figure with her finger on her lips (who is Augustus’ sister Octavia) a family group. This has been almost certainly identified as Drusus (in uniform, with short tunic), and his wife, Antonia Minor, holding their son Germanicus by the hand. Drusus can hardly be in twoplaces at once. Therefore the consuls on the earlier slab are those of 13B.C., and the whole procession is imagined as that of the altar’sconstitutio, when the marble version was not yet finished, not yet, perhaps, even begun. This hypothesis explains the treatment of the enclosure’s inner face, where the recessed panels represent a temporary wooden fence. The swags in marble relief, of barley, grapes, olives, figs, apples, pears, plums, cherries, pine cones, nuts, oak leaves, ivy, laurel, and poppy—all the riches of a fertile Italy at peace—were originally painted, like Della Robbia terracottas, against a blue background. They must have been intended to render the natural festoons swinging in the open air against the blue sky. Thepaterae, or sacrificial bowls, in two alternating patterns of gilded marble, which hang above the swags, must be imagined as suspended from an upper crossbar.

The persons inFig. 6.12are of the greatest historical interest. The tall man with a fold of his toga over his head, whose careworn face and pronounced Roman nose make a recognizable portrait, can be identified from other likenesses as Augustus’ lieutenant Agrippa, acting as Pontifex Maximus. The child clinging to his toga is then one of his sons, Gaius or Lucius. Gaius, the elder, born in 20B.C., would have been, in 13, of the age represented here; a modern symbol of Aeneas’ son Ascanius, or Romulus, the son of Mars. The woman in the background with her hand on his head would then be Gaius’ mother Julia, Augustus’ daughter, whom he was later to banish for her immoral conduct. The older woman in the foreground, the most carefully wrought female figure in either frieze, would then be Julia’s stepmother, the redoubtable Empress Livia.

Fig. 6.11Rome, Altar of Peace, frieze with family group of Julio-Claudians. (MPI)

Fig. 6.12Rome, Altar of Peace, frieze probably portraying Agrippa, Julia, and Livia. (MPI)

The family group to the right of Drusus inFig. 6.11is also pregnant with history. The shapely woman with her hand on the small boy’s shoulder is identified as Antonia Major, Mark Antony’s daughter by Octavia. The small boy grasping a fold of his uncle Drusus’ cloak grew up tofather the Emperor Nero. The girl to the spectator’s right of the small boy is his sister Domitia; her father, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, later commander of the Roman army in Germany, has his hand raised over her head. The elderly background figure with the kindly, lined face is perhaps Maecenas, Augustus’ secretary of state for propaganda, the patron of Vergil and Horace.

The whole atmosphere of the procession is very Italian, quite intimate and informal, without central focus. Its members face in all directions, and are so incorrigibly chatty that Octavia must command silence, finger to lips. Here, in these realistic groups, are the living likenesses of some of the men and women whose ashes later lay in Augustus’ mausoleum, of some of the men and women who made a Golden Age. Here are the pages of history made flesh, and here are all the basic ideas of the Augustan program: the pretense of the revived Republic, in the consuls and lictors; the emphasis on religion, in theflaminesand the veiled Pontifex; the dynastic hopes, in little Gaius; the subvention of literature, in Maecenas.

The east and west ends of the enclosure each contain, on either side of the doorways, a figured panel, four in all, of which two are well preserved. The one to the right of the main (west) entrance portrays a grave, bearded figure (Fig. 6.13) offering sacrifices, with the aid of two acolytes, upon a rustic altar before a small temple containing tiny figures of the Penates as Castor and Pollux, whose connection with thegens Iuliawe have already noted. The sow in the lower left corner is the famous one with the thirty piglets, whose discovery was to tell Aeneas where to found his city. (What purported to be the original sow and all the piglets, pickled in brine, was on display in a Latin town in Augustus’ age.) From the sow the inference is that the bearded figure is Aeneas; he symbolized the past of Rome, and the ancestry of Augustus.

The panel to the left of the east entrance (Fig. 6.14) has as its central figure a full-breasted woman, whose face closely resembles the Livia of the south frieze. She has fruits in her lap, chubby naked babies in her arms, a miniature cow and a sheep at her feet, grain and poppies behind her. She is flanked by obviously allegorical figures of Air (riding a swan), and Water (riding a sea monster). Fresh water gushes from an amphora in the lower left corner; a saltwater harbor (indicated by waves, and perhaps the arch in the background) is at the lower right. Surely this isSaturnia Tellus, the fruitful earth of an Italy at peace, that Vergil sang of in theGeorgics, rich in crops, flocks, and herds, but fruitful most of all inmen. Of the two fragmentary panels, the west one is restored as a scene of Mars, the Shepherd, the wolf, and the twins Romulus and Remus. (The Mars was acquired from a private owner in Vienna, whose Roman art dealer had told him it came from the Palazzo Fiano.) The east one, the least well preserved of all, probably represented the goddess Roma seated upon a trophy of arms, like Britannia on an English penny. Thus one pair of end panels is symbolical, while the other is mythological; the processional frieze deals with contemporary history. The whole makes a tripartite arrangement which is artistically very satisfying. At the same time, victorious Rome, fruitful Italy, the remote founder, and the first king, are all symbolically related here, as in other Augustan monuments, to the contemporary scene and the fortunes of the dynasty.

Back to Index Next