0:02
We spoke on Tuesday about a public architecture commissioned
by the Emperor Augustus.
Public architecture [COUGH] that we noted was made primarily out of marble, out of
luna or Carrara marble that was quarried on the northwest coast of Italy itself.
And the objective of it being to try to conjure up
the relationship between the new golden age of Augustus and
the golden age, fifth century BC, of Periclean Athens.
Just as Julius Caesar had tried to create a kind of Alexandria on the Tiber,
we see Augustus trying to recreate an Athens on the Tiber.
And Augustus was of course, very much, in his objectives, was very much in keeping
with other objectives that we've been studying for some time, this Hellenization
of Roman architecture that we have addressed on a number of occasions.
We spoke last time about the Forum of Augustus in Rome
1:07
featuring the Temple of Mars Ultor.
That temple that Augustus vowed he would build if he could be victorious
over the assassins of Julius Caesar, that is, Cassius and Brutus.
He was so at the battle of Philippi.
And he built this forum and he built this temple again as its centerpiece.
And you'll recall again that it was made for the most part out of Carrara marble.
We see the columns of Carrara here, a wall,
the 17 Carrara marble steps and so on.
We also talked about the Ara Pacis Augustae,
the Altar of Augustine Peace put up to the diplomatic agreements or
treaties that Augustus made with those in Spain and Gaul.
A monument that was put up near his earlier mausoleum,
a monument that was also made out of Carrara marble,
in fact, solid Carrara marble.
And this monument too, had precedence in the Greek period.
It looked back to a number of sources but one of those as we noted on Tuesday
was the Altar of the 12 Gods, or the Altar of Pity.
A 5th century BC monument that was located in the marketplace of ancient Greece.
So again, both of these buildings looking back to Greek prototypes in their general
format and also, of course in the material out of which they were made namely marble.
When we talked about the Ara Pacis, we talked about the fact that it
eventually ended up being part of a kind of architectural complex.
That while this architectural complex may have not been planned from the start,
it grew up over time into something where all of the buildings related to one
another in interesting ways both in terms of their content and
also in terms of their architectural design.
3:04
The complex included the mausoleum of Augustus,
the tome of the emperor Augustus, which was the first monument built on this site.
And eventually the Ara Pacis,
which you'll recall was actually not located originally where it is now.
It was located in an area a bit here to the upper right, originally.
On the Via Flaminia that Augustus took when he returned to Rome from Spain and
Gaul, but that it was moved or
the remains of it were moved over to this location next to the Tiber by Mussolini.
Because, as we noted last time in the meantime,
a palace had been built on top of the original location of the Ara Pacis and
that area was no longer available for use.
But again, the mausoleum of Augustus, the first building of this complex.
You see in this aerial view from Google Earth, that the mausoleum
ended up becoming the centerpiece of the Piazza Augusto Imperatore,
that piazza that Mussolini's architects designed to
commemorate Augustus and also to commemorate Mussolini.
Because that inscription I showed you last time is inserted into the building
over here.
If we look at this aerial view of the mausoleum of Augustus,
which you'll see from your monument list was begun in 28 BC.
And in fact, that should ring some bells for
you, and we should say something about its genesis in 28 BC.
Because you'll recall that important date of 31.
31 the Battle of Actium, when Augustus was victorious over Antony and Cleopatra and
became sole emperor, or began his march to becoming sole emperor of the Roman world.
It's interesting to see him building this massive mausoleum only three years
after the Battle of Actium.
That's really quite striking.
Why did he do that?
Well, the reason that he seems to have done that is despite the fact
that he lived until 76 years old, which was very old in ancient Roman times.
As I mentioned last time, despite the fact that he lived to that ripe old age,
he was not in terribly good health even as a young man.
And he was very concerned about his own longevity, how long was he going to live?
He knew he had accomplished a lot already by this victory over Antony and
Cleopatra and by some of his other military victories but
he wasn't actually sure how long he was going to last.
And so he begins to build this gigantic tomb eventually to hold his own remains.
And he completes that tomb in five years.
It's built between 28 BC and 23 BC.
And you'll recall the date of the Ara Pacis is considerably later, 13 to 9 BC.
So the Ara Pacis was only added to this complex later, and at that
point the whole thing was orchestrated with the addition of the obelisk.
We talked about how the obelisk cast a shadow on the Ara Pacis,
on Augustus' birthday, and so on, and so forth.
With regard to the tomb itself, we're going to see something quite striking
today, and that is that the tomb is architecturally very different from
the Ara Pacis Augustae and indeed from the Forum of Augustus.
And it's a good example of the eccentricity as we'll
characterize today of Roman tomb architecture in general.
Keep in mind that Roman tomb architecture is the most pro-personal of any form of
Roman architecture, which makes it particularly interesting to study.
Because the only practical requirement for a tomb was that it be able to hold
the remains of the deceased, that's all it needed to do,
whereas other buildings had to do all kinds of other things,
have running water through them, and so on and so forth.
But that was not the case here.
The patron and the architect could come together to create buildings that were
unique to that individual, and again were eccentric to a certain degree.
And that is indeed what we will see, and
that is the case also in the Mausoleum of Augustus.
As we look down on the Mausoleum of Augustus in this aerial view,
we see the general plan of it.
We see that there was a central burial chamber, that there was a hollow drum.
And around that hollow drum, and all of this is made of concrete construction.
Around that hollow drum, a series of concentric rings.
A series of concentric rings, as you can see them here,
again, made out of concrete.
And then the outer wall, which you can also see in this view,
the outer wall was faced with travertine, which is also interesting.
Not luna marble, travertine blocks.
7:51
And let me show you another,
somewhat closer view, also from Google Earth, to show you the structure.
So again, the central burial chamber, the hollow drum,
the concentric rings around that, the travertine wall around that.
But of course, you're looking essentially at the core.
This is not what the original entire monument looked like.
And what it was, was in fact there was an earthen tumulus, or
an earthen mound that was placed on top of these concentric rings.
And then at the very apex of that earthen mound was a gleaming
bronze statue of the emperor Augustus himself.
I think I can make this clearer by showing you a plan
of the Mausoleum of Augustus, and we see all the features I've already described.
The central burial chamber, the hollow drum,
all made out of concrete construction, and the concentric rings around that.
And then the cross section of the top is particularly helpful I think,
because you can see the way in which the concrete has been built up by means
obviously of annular vaults.
The annular vaults that ultimately support
the gleaming bronze statue of Augustus at the apex.
And you can also see in this cross section the earthen mound.
The way in which the earthen mound is piled up on top of that substructure,
that concrete substructure to create the dome-like
shape of the mausoleum on its own.
Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
