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20.6 The Monument of Philopappos on the Mouseion Hill
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Roman Architecture
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Roman Wine in Greek Bottles: The Rebirth of Athens
The rebirth of Athens under Rome’s foremost philhellenic emperors, Augustus and Hadrian. High quality Greek marble and expert Greek stone carvers produced notable edifices in Roman Greece dependent on a mutual exchange of architectural ideas and motifs between Rome and Athens. These include the Monument of Philopappos, the Library and Arch of Hadrian, and architectural additions or transformations made to the Acropolis and the Greek and Roman Agoras.
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Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
The last monument I want to show you is a
monument that is near and dear to my own heart because
in the two years that I lived in Athens in the
1970s, I was working on a book on this particular monument.
The monument doesn't date to the Augustan period and it doesn't
date to the Hadrianic period which makes it all the more interesting.
It dates to the time of Trajan.
And it has nothing to do with either of those two emperors.
But with a man whose name is a
mouthful and that is Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Pelapapas.
You don't have to remember all of that I like to call him Uncle Phil.
You can call him Uncle Phil that's the easier
way to refer to Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Pelapapas.
Nonetheless he was a very interesting man, and we know a lot about his bio.
We know for example that
he was the son of a king of Commagene.
A, a Hellenistic kingdom in the eastern part of
the empire in ancient Anatolia, what is now Turkey.
He was a son of that king of of Commagene.
C-O-M-M-A-G-E-N-E.
And that the and his relatives had been kings for some time.
But he was unfortunate, although he was slated
to become king himself, he was unfortunate that
Vespasian, the Roman emperor Vespasian, conquered Commagene, made it a Roman
colony, deposed the kings, and and you know, became ruler himself in a sense.
And so Pelapapas, because of the Romans, never became king of Commagene.
He seems to have made the best of it by, by making his way
to Rome, using his influence and his high station as a deposed king to
finagle for himself a position as suffolk council in Rome.
What was his suffolk council?
A suffolk council was kind of a council in waiting.
By that, I mean that if one of the regular councils couldn't
do his job, this suffolk council could be brought in as a substitute.
So Pelapapas could sort of stand and wait, and hope that someone got sick, and he
could come in, or got, you know, was
in war, or Involved in a military campaign and
he would be called in to take his place.
So he hangs around Rome for a while
and then he eventually goes back, goes to Athens.
He moves to Athens, he's honored with all kinds of titles in Athens
and he eventually ends up being, dying in Athens and being buried In Athens.
And a tomb gets put up in his honor between 114 and 116.
And we know the precise date because of an inscription
on the monument, the still surviving monument
that makes reference to some of Trajan's titles.
Titles that Trajan held between 114 and 116.
But does not include titles that he got after that.
So we know that it was put up between 114 and, and 116.
And we're going to see that it features a freeze depicting
Pelapapas at the high point of his life his Protesis Consularis,
his consular procession when he was made a consul in Rome.
I show you a view from the air, where you see once again the Acropolis
and the relationship of the Acropolis to the Museon Hill, the hill of the muses.
Now what's most extraordinary is that there's only one ancient monument
on the Museon Hill, and that is the monument of Uncle Phil.
We are standing on the Acropolis. We are,
I love this picture.
I took this picture myself, I'm very proud of it because it just happens to work.
Especially because these two guys were happen to be
standing there taking pictures of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus.
We're standing here and we're looking back toward the Museon hill.
And you can see Not quite at the apex but almost near the apex.
Apex. The monument.
The sole monument that stands on this hill.
The monument of Uncle Phil.
How did he rate to be able to get [LAUGH]
the sole monument on one of the three major hills.
You can see it.
It was marble. You can see it popping up metallic marble.
You can see it popping up almost near the apex of the hill.
If you look at this site plan you will see that it is sited exactly.
You see it here on top of the hill of the Muses.
Sited exactly in relationship to the Acropolis lined
up with what building? The Erechtheion.
The Erechtheion, this building was so revered by the Romans.
It's lined up exactly with it at midpoint between
the Parpalea and the Parthenon exactly on the Erechtheion.
And this is the view.
Here we are standing right in front of
Uncle Phil's monument looking back at the Acropolis.
Even if you, even if you don't want to go
see Uncle Phil, which I hope you will if you're
in Athens, visit him for me.
I hope that you will stand, in the very least, you want to
stand there with your back to Phil's monument and look at the Acropolis.
You get one of the best views of the Acropolis from the Museon Hill.
You see it here, and your view is lined up exactly with the Erechtheion.
Now, why is uncle Phil buried on this hill?
This is interesting, because if you think back to tomb
architecture that we've looked at over the course of this semester,
we didn't see people buried on hills. Romans don't bury people on hills.
They bury people on flat ground, outside
the walls of the city in their necropolises.
Every tomb we've seen was on flat, essentially on flat land.
Why is uncle Phil built buried in a tomb near the apex of a hill.
Well, as I was writing this book, I looked to his
own ancestors to people in this part of the world to a
group of Dynas in a place called Nemrodag also in Anatolia.
And I show you one of their well-preserved tombs here.
And you can see that the tomb is built not quite, not
at the apex of the hill, but at the slope of the hill.
In this case not, not as close as Uncle Phil's is to the
apex, but moving on that moving up on that slope toward the apex.
And if you look very carefully at this
monument, you will see among the remains some seated
statues of the dynast of Erudag of this part,
of this, this area that Pelapapas also comes from.
This is the Pelapapas monument on the left-hand
side of the screen as it looks today.
Made out of pentellic marble, beautifully carved.
It is a kind of a tower tomb with a plane base,
a curved, second story that has the scene of
Pelapapas ina chariot, in the time of his consular procession.
And then, some statues in niches, seated
statues, looking very much like those of Nemradog.
Up above we think it's Pelapapas himself with a
bare chest, headless in the center a figure in a
toga over here, and certainly another figure flanking him another
male seated figure on the right-hand side of the screen.
Why do I show you the Arch of Titus in connection to this?
Because we know that Pelapapas's father and uncle participated in the Jewish
wars on the side of the Flavian emperors in order to gain favor.
Even though they'd been deposed, they wanted to gain favor with them.
And when Pelapapas went to Rome, this is the monument that he would have seen.
This monument that Domitian put up to those
Jewish wars that his father and his uncle had
participated in on the Villia with that representation of Titus in a chariot.
And I think there's no question, and I present this in the book as a
theory, that the Protesis Consularis of Pelapapas closely
based on the triumphal scene of of Titus.
And perhaps it's no coincidence.
We don't have too many Pantelic marble buildings in Rome.
The Arch
of Titus is made out of Greek Pantelic marble, is that a coincidence?
I don't think so.
Here's a restored view of the Monument of
Pelapapas as it would have looked in antiquity.
The base, the consular procession, the statue of Uncle Phil in the center.
The inscription to the left.
This is a plaster that survives with the inscription, making
reference to Trajan's titles that allow us to date it.
And then probably
a missing attic with an inscription at the uppermost part.
This view and, this view over here shows you
some graffiti that fortunately has since been erased I'll show
you the interior of the or what survives of
the back wall that would have been the burial chamber.
Here's a restored view showing that burial chamber.
The sarcophagus of Pelapapas, where his remains would have been placed.
A statue of him on a console that still survives.
And then columns and a, and a straight
lintel that formed what we called a niaskos.
N-I-A-S-K-O-S.
Which served as a kind of shrine to honor him on the inside of the monument.
And if we look at this cross-section of the
tomb which was, which, which are in my book, we
see the sarcophagus, we see the statue of Phil, and
we see the way in which it is lined up.
With the representations of Pelapapas on
the outside and his chest, kind of midway between the scene of him in his chariot
and the scene of him with the, with the, with the bare chest and heroic nudity.
So during his lifetime in the consular procession after death up
above so honored three times in three statues on this monument.
Here's a view of some of the figures that accompany him.
They're wearing Roman togas, because the scene
is taking place in Rome. That's where the consular procession is.
They're carrying a, a foss case like the bodyguards do for an emperor.
And that too shows the relationship of this to the Arch of Titus.
Here we see the scene of the Arch
of Titus Triumph and the scene of Pelapapas Triumph.
Clearly the one on the right in my mind based on the one on the left.
If you look at details
of the chariot we see a niascos again decorating the chariot.
A niascos that has a figure of none other than Hercules.
We can see him wearing a cl, holding a club.
So once again just like Harekala.
We see in this case earlier Pelapapas is associating himself with Hercules.
If we look at a detail of his head which is fortunately not that well preserved.
We see that he is bearded.
We see he wears a raid crown.
So although he is represented in council of procession.
His kingly what he, he might have been a
king is referred to, but also his triumph over death.
And if we look at sculpture from Nimward dog, we see
once again, this interesting reliefs, and there's more than one of these.
Of Dionasis and Nimward dog shaking hands with
Hercules with his club and wearing a raid crown.
So,
this is another one of these wonderful examples of this fertile mix that one
gets so often in provincial Roman art, where you see a monument
clearly based in part on Roman presidents but also based on
the bio of this particular man and more local presidents.
A scene of Pelapapas in the upper most area showing
him in heroic nudity. And the last image that I want to show you
is just to make the point, that interestingly enough this monument was put
up by Pelapapas's sister. A woman by the name of Balbilla.
B-A-L-B-I-L-L-A.
And Balbilla, I mean, I show, I wanted to make this point because we have seen so
few examples, it's not that they were none, but
they were small in comparison to those Of men
that very, that, that there are many, fewer
women seemed to have put up monuments than men.
But the examples that we have are very interesting indeed.
And in this case we know that the tomb was put up
by Balbilla, a woman who became very friendly with Sabina, wife of Hadrian.
And in fact the three of them travel together to Egypt, to
Thebes, to see the Colossi of Memnon, which I show you up there,
and Balbilla leaves an inscription, when she goes,
that she was there, so she tells us that.
So, just to close today, a very interesting example
of an extraordinary tomb in Athens but one that
was built by a woman and I think that's
a great way to end on this beautiful Thursday.
Thank you all.
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