9Flavian Rome

Twofora, an amphitheater, an arch, a sculptured relief, a palace, a stadium: these may stand as typical of archaeology’s contributions to our knowledge of the Flavian age. As in the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the buildings and the sculpture epitomize the atmosphere of the time, the last three decades of the first centuryA.D.After the excesses of Nero and the bloodbath ofA.D.69—a year of civil war which saw three Emperors in succession, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, raised to the purple and then murdered—the Roman people wanted “normalcy.” Under Vespasian and Titus they got it; under Domitian the pendulum swung again—and so did the headsman’s ax.

Flavian architecture and art sum up, too, the personalities of the Emperors. The bluff, no-nonsense Vespasian, the Emperor of reconstruction, symbolized, in his majestic Forum of Peace, what one of his staff called the “immense majesty” of the peace he had brought to a war-torn world, and Vespasian gave credit, in the frieze of theForum Transitorium, to the artisan class which was his ardent supporter. Again, true to hisbourgeoisorigins, he built for the people, over the pool of Nero’s Golden House, the great amphitheater which posterity was to call the Coliseum. Titussummed up the great moment of his short life when he immortalized his capture of Jerusalem on his arch at the top of the old Forum. Domitian, would-betriumphator, would-be rival of his great predecessors, exalted, in the reliefs recently found under the Cancelleria palace in Rome, the military prowess of the dynasty which in his view culminated in himself. He took over Vespasian’sForum Transitorium, to thrust himself into a class with Augustus and his own father; reared on the Palatine a palace to outdo the Golden House; and, with philhellenism genuine or affected, built in the Campus Martius a stadium for footraces in the Greek fashion.

Fig. 9.1Rome, Forum of Peace, Colini and Gatti reconstruction fromForma Urbis. (G. Lugli,Roma antica, Pl. 6)

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Since very little of Vespasian’s Forum of Peace remains above ground, recourse for information about it must be had in the first instance to literature. Pliny the Elder, who was on Vespasian’s staff, described it as one of the most beautifulsquares in the world, embellished as it was with trophies of war, including the famous seven-branched gold candlestick from the temple in Jerusalem, carved in relief on the Arch of Titus.

A fragment of the previously-mentioned Marble Plan of Rome, theForma Urbis, inscribed with the letters CIS (Fig. 9.1), is easily restored to something like [Forum Pa] CIS, Forum of Peace. It shows a portico, on one side walled, on the other colonnaded, the colonnade approached by steps. An open space is incised with a series of three long indented strips, apparently representing formal garden-plots. The fragment also shows one right angle of a structure which should be an altar.

Faced with the thousand pieces of the Marble Plan, archaeologists play the fascinating game of making joins, as in a jigsaw puzzle. In 1899 Lanciani announced the discovery of a new fragment which joined with the piece of the Marble Plan already mentioned. It filled out the rectangular shape of the altar, added two more rows of garden-plots, and supplied another side to the portico, at right angles to the other. This side had two rows of columns, four of which were represented as of larger dimensions than the others, and as standing on plinths or square bases. These two fragments made possible restoration, on paper, of a considerable part of the Forum’s plan. Given the Roman architectural principle of axial symmetry, Lanciani could be sure that the altar belonged in the middle of one side of the portico-surrounded space, towards the back. He could restore two more column-bases; and, knowing that there must have been three rows of garden-plots on either side of the altar, and that the scale of the Marble Plan was 1:200, he could arrive at the original length of one inner side of the portico—about 325 feet. But there paper hypothesis had to rest, awaiting excavation.

Fig. 9.2Rome.Forum Transitorium, Colonnaccebefore excavation.

Fig. 9.3Rome.Forum Transitorium, Colonnacceafter excavation.(M. Scherer,Marvels of Ancient Rome, Pls. 162 and 165)

Fig. 9.3Rome.Forum Transitorium, Colonnacceafter excavation.

(M. Scherer,Marvels of Ancient Rome, Pls. 162 and 165)

Fig. 9.4Rome, Imperial Fora, model. (F. Castagnoli,Roma antica, Pl. 4)

The opportunity did not arise until 1934, in connection with systematizing and beautifying with lawns the borders of Mussolini’s grandiose new Via dell’ Impero, already mentioned as having been cut through slums from the Coliseum to the Piazza Venezia. The two projecting columns of theForum Transitorium(“Forum of Nerva”), southeast of the Forum of Augustus, were cleared, under the direction of A. M. Colini, of medieval and modern detritus down to their plinths (Figs.9.2and9.3); the podium of the Temple of Minerva, at the end of this Forum, uncovered; and thepeperinowall behind the projecting columns isolated. Close in back of this wall, on the Forum of Peace side, Colini found large columns in African marble, which, he inferred, marked the missing northwest side of that Forum. Its general location had been known since 1818, but only now was there aprecisepoint in modern Rome’s subsoil from which, with the help of the Marble Plan, the true dimensions of Vespasian’s portico could be measured. Also, another fragment of the Marble Plan, not joining the two previously mentioned, showed the very stretch of wall and the columnswhich Colini had been excavating, as well as the plan of Minerva’s temple, whose podium he had uncovered.

Now that the plan of Vespasian’s Forum could be precisely fitted into the plan of modern Rome, it became clear that some fragments of large fluted white marble columns, found in the southeastern part of this area as long ago as 1875, belonged to the part of the portico where the larger columns shown on the Marble Plan would fall. Colini now made another join on the Marble Plan, adding to Lanciani’s fragment another piece, previously known but not connected, which showed the Temple of Peace at the back of the portico. It was an apsidal building, wider than it was deep, with a pedestal for the cult statue indicated in the apse. If it survived today it would come within a few feet of touching the north corner of the Basilica of Maxentius. The south side of the rectangular hall to the right of it coincides with the actual wall of the church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, which was the findspot—in 1562—of the fragments of the Marble Plan itself. This square hall was one of the libraries of Vespasian’s Forum. Since the principle of axial symmetry nearly always operates, justifying the hypothesis that what appears on one side of the axis of a Roman plan will have a twin on the other; and since the Romans usually built their libraries in pairs (one Latin, one Greek), Colini quite reasonably restored on paper another rectangular hall to the left of the apsidal temple. A section of the polychrome marble pavement, excavated by Colini east of the church wall, was less than an inch thick, too thin to be exposed to the weather. Colini inferred that it must have been part of the flooring of the library in which the Marble Plan was displayed.

An ingenious combination—“joins” recognized on the Marble Plan, actual excavation, and inference—had now made the Forum’s general outline clear, but Colini was not yet done. Overlying the Forum’s outer (northeast) perimeter wall, as he had plotted it, rose the medieval Torre deiConti, built by the brother of Pope Innocent III. Re-examining beneath this tower the ancient remains, in squared travertine, ordinary tufa, andpeperino, Colini was able to establish that they formed part of Vespasian’s Forum, a great ornamental rectangular niche on its northeast side, with two columns of African marble in front of it. Symmetry would dictate another matching niche further to the southeast in the same wall, and a pair on the opposite side to correspond. Pink granite columns found in the excavations belonged to the portico; marble gutters proved that it had a pitched roof. Finally, in 1938, the plan was complete enough for a model of the Forum to be made (Fig. 9.4) for Mussolini’s Mostra Augustea della Romanità, a great exhibition of models and photographs of Roman architecture and engineering, casts of inscriptions, and replicas of artifacts.

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But Vespasian’s Forum, famous as it was, and valuable as its restored plan is to illustrate archaeological inference at work, is overshadowed by his mightiest monument, which has survived to become the very symbol of pagan Rome to modern times: the Flavian Amphitheater or Coliseum. More perhaps than any other classical monument, its stones are steeped in blood and memories; in the blood of gladiators and wild beasts, and perhaps of Christian martyrs, in memories of medieval battles, Renaissance plundering of stone (much of the travertine in St. Peter’s came from it), and Victorian moonlight visits. Having resisted earthquakes, fire, and demolition, it is now menaced by the vibrations of modern traffic. Work on strengthening its walls against this new threat has been going on since 1956.

For sheer mass the Coliseum deserves its name. It is a third of a mile around, and the Italian engineer G. Cozzo has calculated that 45,000 cubic meters of travertine went into its outside wall, over twice as much into the wholestructure. But the achievement here is not mere massiveness, but precise engineering, careful calculations of stresses and strains, avoidance of crowding at entrances and exits, perfect visibility, ingenuity in the arrangements for getting the wild beasts into the arena. (Perhaps this is the place to recall that it was upon the Coliseum that Charles Follen McKim based his design for the Harvard Stadium.) The site chosen, the bed of the pool of Nero’s Golden House, was good propaganda and good engineering. Propaganda-wise, it made for good public relations to turn a detested Emperor’s pleasure grounds into a place for public enjoyment. (Neither Vespasian nor the Roman mob would have thought of the slaughter of men and beasts as anything but enjoyable; their attitude at best was that of Hemingway to a bullfight.) From the engineering point of view, it saved much costly excavation to pump out the pool and use it for the substructure of the arena, and in the low, soft ground, footings could go deep: eight feet of concrete under thecavea. Besides, the huge mass of debris from the demolished Golden House could be cannily reused in the new fabric. The first step was to erect a skeleton of travertine piers, a double row, built of squared blocks held together not with mortar but with metal clamps. The holes where these clamps were wrenched out, 300 metric tons of them, in the metal-starved Middle Ages, are visible today throughout the fabric. Differences in construction suggest that the huge project was divided into four quadrants, each assigned to a different contractor. Most of the work is honest, so that, for example, one cannot get the proverbial penknife blade into the joints between the blocks of the piers, but in the northwest quadrant the work is shoddy. This is precisely the section that has given the most trouble under the strain of the traffic vibrations of modern times.

Inside the second concentric ellipse of piers begins a set of radial walls which supported the seats. The slope of the seats was perfectly calculated for perfect visibility. Thevaults of the lower levels were left open until the upper level piers were finished. This made possible the use of derricks to lift heavy blocks to the upper levels. The third-story piers have one course of blocks projecting, to provide a step to support the scaffolding required for building the wall on the fourth level. This wall is built of smaller blocks than those used on the lower levels, to facilitate lifting, and it is full of second-hand materials; column drums, for example, which may have come from the Golden House. The outer face of the fourth-level wall is equipped with 240 consoles, projecting brackets jutting out from the wall to support masts. Corresponding to each in the cornice above is a hole for the mast. The mast, Cozzo argues persuasively, was fitted with rope and pulley. The rope descended obliquely and was fastened to another below which ran elliptically at a convenient height above the podium of the arena. Awnings, fixed to these ropes, could be rolled up or down in strips as the sun’s position dictated. Awnings being made of canvas, this duty was assigned to detachments of sailors—the logical Roman administrative mind at work.

When the skeleton was finished, the space between the piers in the radial walls was filled in, on the ground level with tufa, on the second level with lighter materials, brick and cement. Only then were the vaults completed. The stairs were ingeniously planned to give access from the ground direct to each level separately. This both emphasized distinctions (VIPs in the lowest tier, women at the top; compare the separate second-balcony stairs in modern theaters) and facilitated entrance and exit. Each outside entrance—there were originally eighty—bears a Roman numeral. This corresponded to a number on the admission ticket, and divided the 45,000 or 50,000 spectators into manageable groups.

The arena proper was surrounded by a wall, high enough to protect the spectators from the beasts (VIPs not being regarded as expendable), but not so high as to block theview of the arena from the seats behind. Slots in the top of this wall are the postholes for a dismountable fence which supplied additional protection. Literary sources say it was of gilt metal surmounted by elephants’ tusks. In front of the fence ran a catwalk where archers were stationed to shoot beasts which got out of hand.

The arena was originally floored with wooden planking, removable for the mock naval battles which were staged here in the early years of the amphitheater’s existence. Since this had been the site of Nero’s artificial pool, flooding must have been comparatively easy. But though slaves fought and killed each other in these naval battles, they were less sanguinary, and therefore less popular, than gladiatorial contests or beast fights, and changing back and forth from murder on water to murder on land was a nuisance, so the naval battles were transferred elsewhere. The area below the arena floor was then filled in with complicated substructures, which finally revealed their secret to Cozzo in 1928.

The area under the catwalk in each quadrant contains eight cell-like rooms (A inFig. 9.5), each big enough to hold a man, and approached by a short corridor. Opening out of each corridor, forward and to the left of a man sitting in the cell, are three adjoining shafts, a small square one (a), a large rectangular one (b), and another square one (c) of medium size. How are these to be explained? Cozzo reasoned that a beast was released from his cage near the center of the substructure, into the corridor (1) shown inFig. 9.6, with a portcullis (a) at the end of it. The portcullis was raised, and the beast charged into the transverse corridor (2). This was too narrow for him to turn back; he was therefore forced to go forward into the open elevator-cage (3). The attendant in the cell (A in the previous figure) then released a counterweight, whose rope ran in shaft (a) ofFig. 9.5, while the weight itself rose and fell in shaft (c); the elevator-shaft is (b). Theelevator door then closed; the elevator rose, activated by the counterweight, to position (4) inFig. 9.6. The beast emerged into the narrow upper-level corridor (5–6), raced up the ramp (7), and emerged, slavering for fresh meat, through the trapdoor (8) into the arena.

Fig. 9.5Rome, Coliseum, beast elevator.(G. Cozzo,Ingegneri Romana, Fig. 170)

Fig. 9.5Rome, Coliseum, beast elevator.

(G. Cozzo,Ingegneri Romana, Fig. 170)

Fig. 9.6Rome, Coliseum, beast elevator, elevation.(Cozzo,op. cit., Fig. 175)

Fig. 9.6Rome, Coliseum, beast elevator, elevation.

(Cozzo,op. cit., Fig. 175)

Fig. 9.7Rome, Coliseum, model, showing colossal statue of Nero (left center). Arch of Constantine (bottom left), and gladiators’ barracks (right center). (P. Bigot,Rome Antique, fac. p. 44)

This is not the only ingenious device in the Coliseum. The substructure piers along the arena’s long axis are cut obliquely. Why? Cozzo reasoned that on them rested, at an angle below the horizontal, hinged sections of the area flooring, on which stage sets could be placed, and the whole section of flooring raised by counterweights to the arena level, to provide appropriate backdrops or scenery for the fights. Against such backdrops, scenes from myth or history were acted out, the protagonists tortured to death before delighted spectators. We hear of 11,000 beasts, and 5,000 pairs of gladiators, fighting to the death in one session in the arena. In 1937, demolition of houses east of the Coliseum revealed the ground plan of part of the gladiators’ barracks, with armory, infirmary, baths, and, for training bouts, a miniature amphitheater, with seats for rabid fans (Fig. 9.7). To celebrate the millennium of Rome, inA.D.248, elephants, elk, tigers, lions, leopards, hyenas, hippopotamuses, a rhinoceros, zebras, giraffes, wild asses, and wild horses (captured in Africa; seeFig. 13.5) were slaughtered in the Coliseum. This market of flesh did not cease till the sixth Christian century.

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Vespasian did not live to see the Coliseum completed. It was dedicated, still unfinished, under Titus inA.D.80. The chief surviving monument of Titus’ reign is his arch, commemorating his conquest of the Jews inA.D.70, but, since the inscription upon it refers to him as deified, it is clear that the arch was not finished until after his death. Built of valuable Pentelic marble, it would never have been preserved if it had not been incorporated, in the Middle Ages,into a fortress of the powerful family of the Frangipani. The last vestiges of the Frangipani tower were not removed from the arch until 1821. It was then reinforced and its missing portions restored in travertine. It is chiefly famous for the relief on its inner jamb showing (Fig. 9.8) Titus’ army carrying in triumph the spoils of Jerusalem, including the table of the shewbread, the seven-branched candlestick, and the silver trumpets. In the relief opposite, Titus stands in a four-horse chariot, with the goddess Roma leading the horses, and Victory crowning him with a laurel wreath. The frieze under the cornice, not unrelated to the small inner altar frieze of the Altar of Peace, portrays a procession of priests, sacrificial animals, and troops carrying on their shoulders small platforms bearing representations of cities and places conquered by Roman arms, including a personification of the River Jordan. The motif in the highest part of the inner vault, showing Titus—who was a burly man—carried off to heaven by an eagle, is as conventional as the Ganymede in the vault of the underground basilica at the Porta Maggiore. In the years since Augustus, Roman official art had become conventional without ceasing to be historical.

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Fig. 9.8Rome, Arch of Titus, showing relief with spoils of Temple at Jerusalem. (Fototeca)

To the good Titus succeeded the wicked, psychopathic, tyrannical Domitian, the greatest builder-Emperor since Augustus, and one under whom the Empire took a long stride on the road to absolutism. One evidence of Domitian’s self-aggrandizement turned up unexpectedly in 1937, under the Palazzo della Cancelleria in the Campus Martius, seat of the papal Chancellery, and an enclave of Vatican City. Curiously, the palace already had an intimate connection with the Flavians: many of the stones in its fabric were robbed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century from the Coliseum. In connection with extensive repairs to the building, deep excavations beneath it revealed the tombof the consul Aulus Hirtius, a lieutenant of Julius Caesar’s, who died in office, and in battle against Mark Antony, in 43B.C.Leaning face inwards against this tomb were five slabs which proved to be part of a marble historical relief. A sixth slab was found later nearby, still within papal jurisdiction; a seventh, found under the sidewalk, technically outside the Pope’s control, was first claimed by the Roman civil authorities, but a trade was made for the slab of the Altar of Peace then in Vatican hands, and all the slabs are now reunited in a courtyard of the Vatican Museum.

Fig. 9.9(top and bottom) Vatican City. Cancelleria reliefs. (Musei Vatican)

The seven slabs combine into two sections of some sixteen figures each, almost complete (Fig. 9.9). The more fragmentary of the two contains near its right end an instantly identifiable figure, with the characteristic beaked profile of Vespasian (Fig. 9.10). He is greeting a young man, surely one of his sons. Comparison with known portraits of Titus and Domitian leads to the conclusion that it is the latter who is represented here. The greeting is taking place in the presence of lictors, Vestals (identified from their characteristic headdress),apparitoresor beadles (at either end), a helmeted female figure (the goddess Roma or, accordingto others, the war-goddess Bellona, or the personification of martial courage), and two male figures, one bearded (the Genius of the Senate), and one beardless, with a cornucopia (the Genius of the Roman People). The other section is at once more complete, more difficult to interpret, and more interesting. Several of the conventional figures recur: the lictors, Roma, the twoGenii. There are also six soldiers (in the uniform and with the arms of the praetorian guard); the wing of a Victory; a helmeted female wearing theaegis, the characteristic breastplate of Minerva; the helmeted, bearded male figure beside her must be another divinity, Mars. The remaining figure, the first on the second slab from the left (seeFig. 9.11), is rendered in profile, and is clearly intended as a portrait, but close examination, by Dr. F.Magi, Director of the Vatican Museums, shows that it was reworked in antiquity.

Fig. 9.10Vatican City. Cancelleria reliefs. Detail of head of Vespasian. (Musei Vaticani)

Fig. 9.11Vatican City. Cancelleria reliefs. Detail showing how head of Domitian was transformed into that of Nerva. (Musei Vaticani)

Here archaeological ingenuity again goes to work. The two sections of the total relief obviously (from the similar technique and the recurrence of conventional figures in both) belong together. The presence of Vespasian places both sections in the Flavian age. Of the three Flavians, only Domitian was sufficiently hated to have haddamnatio memoriaepracticed upon him, to alter his portrait into another’s. And the most conspicuous alteration of the head consists in hacking off a fringe of curls on the forehead; such a fringe was Domitian’s characteristic hair-style. It remains to inquire whose the new profile is. In the context, it must be an Emperor. The most likely candidate is Domitian’s successor, Nerva, the first of the “five good Emperors.” The new profile, with its irregular nose, lined forehead, and sunken checks, suits the known iconography of that tired old man. Left with the question why, then, the portrait of Domitian on the other section of the relief was left undamaged, Magi argued that the Senate, on second thought, had considered the alteration into Nerva not enough: the relief was dismantled altogether, and its slabs carefully stacked against Hirtius’ tomb for the future use of one of the stonecutters whose yards are known to have been numerous in the area.

Two questions remain: the occasion for carving the relief in the first place, and the building that housed it. The occasion for greeting Vespasian must be the most memorable one of his reign: his triumphant return from Jerusalem inA.D.70. The occasion for greeting Domitian must be an equally memorable one, almost certainly his setting out on a campaign, or his return from a military victory (because of the prominence of the winged figure and the Mars on the relief). Domitian’s military successes were not many; the likeliest is his campaign ofA.D.83 against a German tribe, the Chatti. If carving the monument would take ayear, as competent sculptors report, the earliest possible date for the finished relief would beA.D.84; on grounds of style one authority, Miss Jocelyn M. Toynbee, would date it eight or nine years later. To celebrate the same victory, Domitian built the Temple of Fortuna Redux (Good Luck and Safe Return), and this temple, Magi thinks, is a reasonable place to suppose the reliefs to have been displayed. In them the whole Roman state is portrayed as asking of the founder of the Flavian dynasty and of his son the peace and prosperity which the Julio-Claudians had failed to give. Like the fresco of the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii, the relief is not great art but a great document, a measure of the distance Roman sculpture had travelled in the scant century since the Altar of Peace. It is a courtier’s exaltation of a monarch; a solemn, highly rhetorical affirmation of Imperial sovereignty and pride in Rome’s dominion. And perhaps there is a moral in it, too: it summarizes the history of the dynasty, from the triumphant reception of the first Flavian to the explosion of hate which damned the memory, by altering the face, of the last. And these slabs, the expression of a despot’s pride, end leaning against the simple tomb of a lieutenant of Julius Caesar who died fighting, he would have said, to save for his fatherland its free institutions.

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InA.D.86 Domitian set about continuing the work begun by Vespasian on the narrow Forum between the Forum of Peace and that of Augustus, which we have had occasion to mention earlier. (The final dedication was not to occur until Nerva’s reign.) In effect this Forum was an ingenious device to monumentalize the street which led from the old Republican Forum to the unsavory Subura district and workers’ quarter to the north. Caesar’s Forum was Venus’ precinct; Augustus’ belonged to Mars. A convention had been established, a canonical way of doing things: henceVespasian dedicated his larger Forum to Peace, theForum Transitoriumto Minerva. Domitian, his devotion to Minerva already established by his having given her prominence on the Cancelleria relief, now remodelled Vespasian’s temple to her, raising it on a high podium. The podium alone remains, with its relieving arch marking where the Cloaca Maxima or great sewer passed below. But the original monumentalizing of the street by Vespasian had involved building a colonnade, of a type common in the frescoes of the Pompeian Third and Fourth Styles. Along its architrave, which was richly decorated on its under side, ran a continuous frieze whose technique resembles that of the Cancelleria relief on a small scale, for the art of the Flavian reigns is recognizably related. The dentils in the cornice show between them the characteristic “spectacles-signature” of the architect Rabirius, who may have worked for Vespasian as well as for Domitian.

The surviving section of the frieze portrays Minerva among the nine Muses, and the punishment of Arachne, who for presuming to rival Minerva’s skill at weaving was turned into a spider. The sculptor took the occasion to carve artisans (the figure of a fuller survives) and household scenes, of spinning, weaving, and dyeing, all under Minerva’s special patronage. One sees the wool basket, the upright loom, the scales for weighing the day’s stint, the proud display of a finished roll of cloth. In the attic above the surviving section of the frieze stands the goddess in relief, wearing the characteristic cloak of a Roman general!

Recent excavation has added little to earlier knowledge of this Forum, but it is of absorbing interest for what it adds to our portrait of the Flavians. Domitian takes over his father’s plan, and pushingly insinuates himself, as it were, between his father and the Empire’s founder, both of whom he envied and tried to emulate. But it was beyond even his effrontery to associate himself with the Minerva who was patroness of artisans; nothing could be more incongruousthan his connecting his elegant dilettantism with the homely arts of the household. The frieze is probably a part of Vespasian’s plan: its theme suits his plain personality, and the references to handicrafts suit its location on a street leading to a worker’s quarter. The support of the workers (and of their wives, whose influence was all the more important to win because it was indirect) was worth having, and meanwhile Minerva’s connection with the Muses (the creative arts and literature) could be turned by Domitian to his purpose: he desired to be known as a patron of the arts.

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The showiest surviving result of Domitian’s patronage of the art of architecture is his palace on the Palatine, planned by the famous Rabirius, and finished perhaps inA.D.92. Here is a return, after the comparative austerity of his father’s and brother’s reigns, to the baroque extravagance of Nero. Since no final publication of this important complex has ever appeared, the best archaeology can do is to comment on the palace as reflecting Domitian’s personality, as indebted to earlier, and seminal of later Roman architecture. Its throne room (21B on the plan,Fig. 9.12), with its colossal niches for statues, was built for an Emperor with delusions of divinity. The dining room (H) had a dais to elevate the god-Emperor above his guests, but the peristyle (D), originally faced with marbles polished like mirrors (to reflect possible assassins), was planned by a terrified mortal who feared stabs in the back. (Blocks from the peristyle cornice show, as in theForum Transitorium, Rabirius’ “spectacles-signature.”) The restless inward and outward curves of the rooms at 21E in the west block (the public part) of the palace, and at 23C and D in the eastern private quarters, were made possible by the flexibility of poured concrete, which, as we saw in Chapter V, makes it possible to enclose space in any shape (see reconstruction,Fig. 9.13).This fluidity appealed to Hadrian, the most gifted amateur architect among the Emperors, and he imitated it, as we shall see, in his Villa near Tivoli.

Fig. 9.12Rome, Palatine, Palace of Domitian, plan. (G. Lugli,Roma antica, Pl. 8)

Fig. 9.13Rome, Palatine, Palace of Domitian, reconstruction. (F. Castagnoli,Roma antica, Pl. 44.1)

Theimpluvium(pool for rain-water) in the peristyle (23B) of the private quarters contained a fountain, and is curiously treated with cut-out segments of circles, with cuttings in its top face for setting statues. This combination of plays of water and works of art is in the taste of the Sperlonga villa of Tiberius: ancient sources find a parallel between that monarch’s suspicious, tyrannical nature and Domitian’s. The small temple in the upper peristyle (24E), connected with the “mainland” by a curious seven-arched bridge, was built, to judge by its materials and technique, two centuries later than Domitian. But his is the “stadium” (26). Its portico makes it unlikely that it was ever a track for running races in the Greek style; he was to build such a stadium full-scale in the Campus Martius inA.D.93. The Palatine stadium, in spite of its apsidal Imperial spectator’s box (the model for Bramante’s Vatican Belvedere), was probably a garden for shady strolling. Perhaps Hadrian had this plan in mind when he built the so-called “Painted Porch” or “Poecile” of his villa, to which we shall return. It is hard to realize that all this splendor lies only 100 yards from the site of “Romulus’” straw hut. The difference measures the distance Roman culture had travelled in 800 years.

Nowadays, one can sit under the umbrella pines of a summer evening and hear symphony concerts played in Domitian’s stadium-garden. On such occasions it may seem less of a pity that the Palatine is incompletely excavated. Here, on this hill of dreams, as Miss Scherer calls it, one can imagine Domitian’s palace rich with many-colored marbles, bright with paintings and gold. One can wander in the dappled light among oleander and orange-trees, golden broom and scarlet poppies, and admire how the mellow brick glows rose-colored in the afternoon sunlight. One can appreciate the mood of the Romantics for whom, a centuryand a half ago, all Rome had this dream-like quality. One can argue that their attitude may not have been scientific, but it produced the classical revival in architecture. Here is the old dilemma, but its horns are properly labelled not art and science, but sentiment and intelligence. If we want truly to understand ancient Rome, the choice is clear. Sentiment is not a Roman quality; intelligence is. The atmosphere of Domitian’s reign was not dream but nightmare. The natural beauty of the Palatine is attractive but adventitious; the essence of the place is of another kind, starker, grander, more disciplined, than a nineteenth-century water color, and behind it looms always the shadow of violence.

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Not violence but intelligence, and the affectation of Hellenism, lies behind Domitian’s stadium (for Greek games) and odeum, or music hall (for literary and musical competitions) in the Campus Martius. The shape of the stadium has been preserved almost intact in the loveliest of Rome’s squares, the Piazza Navona (Fig. 9.14). In 1936 the driving of a great new street, the Corso del Rinascimento, north and south through the Campus Martius, as a part of Mussolini’s ambitious new city plan, gave an opportunity for definitive examination of the stadium’s remains, preserved in the cellars of shops and the crypts of churches. This Colini undertook, and emerged from his mole-like labors with a plan (Fig. 9.15) and a model (Fig. 9.16) of the stadium, a prime example of what archaeology can do with bits and pieces. Nowadays remains of the hemicycle are visible under an insurance building outside the north end of thepiazza, and one travertine pier is to be seen under the arcade of the Corsia Agonale, in the middle of the stadium’s east side. Beneath this area are traces of the footings, of cement poured in caissons, thicker and stronger the farther east they go, to support the increasing weight of the rising tiersof seats above. Brick stamps found here date the building toA.D.93 or a little after, with evidence of major repairs under Hadrian—another Greek lover—and Caracalla—another violent despot.

Fig. 9.14Rome, Piazza Navona, air view. (A. M. Colini,Stadium Domitiani, frontispiece)

Fig. 9.15Rome, Stadium of Domitian. (Colini,op. cit., Suppl. Pl. B)

Fig. 9.16Rome, Stadium of Domitian, Gismondi model. (Colini,op. cit., Pl. 16)

Colini found that Domitian’s architect, to compensate for providing here only oneambulacrumor vaulted corridor for sauntering, where the Coliseum had two, widened his corridor at regular intervals between the stairs to provide halls where spectators—the stadium had seats for 30,000—might congregate between footraces. The stadium was built in a repeated sequence: stair, entrance, hall, entrance, stair,which gives classical orderliness and efficiency to the plan (perhaps Rabirius’). In the center of the west side was the Imperial box: the crypt of the church of Sant’ Agnese marks its substructure. Here, according to legend, the good saint suffered martyrdom, condemned by the Emperor Diocletian to the brothels that flourished in the stadium arcades. The whole building profited by the experience of the builders of the Coliseum, as they in turn had profited from the experience of the builders of the Theater of Marcellus. Thus its exterior was adorned with engaged columns, Doric on the first level, Corinthian on the second. But the total effect was deliberately different, graceful where the Coliseum was massive, dedicated to Greek footraces instead of Roman blood-sports. The only thing of its kind outside the Greek world, the stadium was a deliberate flouting of Roman tradition. This was in Domitian’s manner. The Roman people rejected it, in theirs. To them, Greek footraces represented foreign degeneracy, nudism, and immorality. No sooner was the tyrant murdered (in a courtier’s plot sparked by his wife) than they went back to their simple pleasures of watching the murder of gladiators and wild beasts. Domitian’s odeum, traces of which were found south of the stadium in 1936–37, did not suffer the same fate, for it could be used for pantomime (seeFig. 13.1) and other degraded forms of dramatic art.

Here then, is a part, a small part, of what archaeology can tell us of the prodigious Flavian activity in architecture and in art. It will be noticed that, not for the first or the last time in Roman history, the greatest tyrant is also the greatest builder. (He is also Rome’s last great Emperor who did not come from the provinces.) Absolutism was the price Rome paid for its grandeur. But, in the century after Domitian’s murder, absolutism marked time. Nerva’s successor, the Spaniard Trajan, is the second of the “five good Emperors,” under whom the metropolis and its port prospered, and the provinces lived content.

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