1. Urban Life and Imperial Majesty Chapter 8 Rome

2. Origins of Roman Culture: Greek and Etruscan As early as the 8 th century BCE the Greeks had colonized the southern coastal regions of the Italian peninsula The Etruscans occupied the part of the Italian peninsula that today is known as Tuscany Scholars continue to debate whether the Etruscans were indigenous to Italy or whether they migrated from the near East

3. Italy in the Third-Second Centuries BCE, Including Earlier Etruscan Cities and Greek Colonies

4. The Etruscans Most of what we know of the Etruscans comes from their art --no literature survives --scholars unable to translate their epigrammatic texts Richly decorated burial tombs Foundations of mud-brick and wooden temples

5. Etruscan Sarcophagus Terra cotta, 6’7” length ca. 520 BCE

6. Plan and Reconstruction of an Etruscan Temple

7. She-Wolf Bronze, 33” ca. 500-480 BCE Etruscan founding myth— twins Romulus and Remus found on the banks of the Tiber by a she-wolf Decided to build a city on the Palatine Hill and argued over who would name the city. Romulus won by killing Remus, and the city was named after him The date, legend has it, was 753 BCE

8. Hellenized Rome By the second and first centuries BCE, Rome had achieved political control of the entire Mediterranean Even after Rome conquered Greece in 146 BCE, Greece to be said to “rule” Rome at least culturally as Rome was a fully Hellenized culture Romans loved Greek art

9. Laocoön and His Sons Found in the ruins of the emperor Titus’s (r. 79-81 CE ) palace Subject is the punishment of the Trojan priest Laocoön, who warned his countrymen against accepting the “gift” of a wooden horse from the Greeks. Virgil describes the incident in Book II of his Aeneid Drama and expressionism of the sculpture are pure Hellenism

10. Hagesandros, Polydoros, and Athanadoros of Rhodes, Laocoön and His Sons Marble, 8 ½’ ca. 150 BCE

11. Republican Rome 520 BCE —Romans expelled the last of the Etruscan kings and decided to rule themselves without a monarch Unlike Greece, not every free citizen enjoyed equal privileges. In the Etruscan manner, the Roman free males were patricians (land-owning aristocrats) and plebians (the poorer class) The Senate was exclusively patrician

12. Pietas and Portrait Busts Under Rome’s patrician system, the upper classes owed dutiful respect, or pietas, towards others—the gods, country, and family, in that order Propagandistic in nature, the portrait busts that proliferated in the second and first centuries BCE depict the subjects at or near the end of life, celebrating pietas through the wisdom and experience of age Verism (Latin veritas, “truth”)—high level of realism; revealing the subjects’ every wrinkle and wart

13. A Roman Man Marble, life-size ca. 80 BCE

14. Imperial Rome 27 BCE —Octavian, grandnephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar, “reluctantly” accepted the Senate’s appointment of imperium and the title Augustus, “the revered one” in gratitude for his defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BCE and reunification of a Rome divided by civil war Augustus ruled Rome from 27 BCE to 14 CE. His new title gave him semidivine status In art he is always depicted as young and vigorous

15. Augustus of Primaporta Displayed at the home of Augustus’s wife, Livia, at Primaporta, on the outskirts of Rome Idealized and propagandistic Military garb announces his role as commander-in-chief Cupid riding a dolphin at his feet recalls the Julian family’s claim to be descended from Venus and Aeneas Extended arm points toward an unknown, but presumably greater future

16. Augustus of Primaporta Marble, 6’8” ca. 20 BCE

17. Compare Pose and Proportion to Polyclitus’s Doryphorus

18. Ara Pacis Augustae One of Augustus’s first acts was to address the deterioration of morals and family life in Rome and the declining numbers of the aristocrats He criminalized adultery, required men between the ages of 20 and 60 and women between the ages of 20 and 50 to marry, and punished childless couples with high taxes or inheritance deprivation His Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace) celebrates family with its exterior-wall decorations picturing three generations of Augustus’s family

19. Ara Pacis Augustae Marble 13-9 BCE

20. Ara Pacis Augustae Detail of Imperial Procession South Frieze Augustus’s own large family—a model for all Roman citizens Spatial depth created by depicting figures farther away from the viewer in low relief and those closest in high relief

21. “I found a city of brick, and left it a city of marble.” --Augustus

22. Public Works and Monuments Augustus inaugurated what amounted to an ongoing competition among the emperors to outdo their predecessors in the construction of public works and monuments Rome had developed haphazardly, without any central plan, a contrast to the empire’s provincial capitals which were conceived on a strict grid plan Water was scarce, and hygiene was poor, so Augustus had aqueducts built to provide more clean water to the city

23. Pont du Gard, near Nimes, France 180’ late 1 st century BCE, early 1 st century CE

24. The Colosseum Built by the emperor Vespasian (r. 69-79 CE ) between 72-80 CE Named after Colossus, a 120-foot high statue of Nero that stood in front of it 615 feet long, 510 feet wide, and 159 feet high, it could accommodate audiences estimated at 50,000 who could enter and exit its 76 vaulted arcades in a matter of a few minutes

25. Aerial View of the Colosseum

26. Detail of the Colosseum’s Outer Wall Each level employed a different architectural order: Tuscan on the ground floor, Ionic on the second, and Corinthian in the third Columns purely decorative

27. Triumphal Arches and Columns While the arch was known to cultures such as the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks, it was the Romans who perfected it, evidently learning its principles from the Etruscans but developing those principles further Hundreds of triumphal arches were built throughout the Roman Empire Intended to symbolize Rome’s political power and military might

28. Arch of Titus Rome, ca. 81 CE In 70 CE Titus’s army sacked the Second Temple of Jerusalem. In this interior detail from the arch, Titus’s soldiers carry the Ark of the Covenant and a menorah from the temple

29. Trajan’s Column Trajan, one of the Five Good Emperors who ruled Rome after the Flavian dynasty (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius) His column narrates in a spiral of 150 separate scenes his defeat of the Dacians (modern Hungary and Romania) Laid out end to end, the complete narrative would be 625 feet long Suggestive not only of power but also of male virility

30. Trajan’s Column Marble, 125’ (including base) 106-113 CE

31. The Forum Romanum and Imperial Forums Chief public square of Rome, the center of Roman religious, ceremonial, public, and commercial life Symbolic function—imperial power that testified to the prosperity—and peace—that the emperor bestowed upon Rome’s citizenry Julius Caesar the first to build a forum of his own in 46 BCE ; Trajan’s (ca. 117 CE ) was the last

32. Model of the Roman Forum and the Imperial Forums Rome, ca. 46 BCE -117 CE

33. Forum of Trajan Restored View

34. The Pantheon One of the most ambitious building projects undertaken by the Good Emperors A temple to all the gods (Greek pan, “all,’ and theos, “gods”) Cylindrical space topped by a dome, the largest built in Europe before the 20 th century Perfect hemisphere—diameter of the rotunda is 144 feet, as is the height from floor to ceiling. The 30-foot circular opening at the top, the building’s sole light source, is the oculus, or “eye”

35. The Pantheon 118-125 CE

36. Interior of the Pantheon

37. Domestic Architecture In response to overcrowding, the Romans created a new type of living space, the insula, a multistoried apartment block Essentially tenements in which 90 percent of the population of Rome lived Wealthier class in Rome occupied a domus, a townhouse typically with a peristyle courtyard

38. Reconstruction of a Roman Insula ca. 150 CE

39. Domus House of the Silver Wedding, Pompeii 1 st century BCE

40. Peristyle Garden House of the Golden Cupids, Pompeii 62-79 CE