Before we look at Athens I want to take a very short short trip to another city. The city of Eleusis, eleusis, the city of Eleusis in Greece. Because I want to make one more point about the Caryatids and about the important exchange that we believe was going on between Rome and Athens already In the late Caesarian period and into the age of Augustus. Augustus is sending his architects but we think, we think they are going back and forth and that there is an important exchange of building techniques as well as architectural ideas that is happening between Rome and Greece in the age of Augustus. Alucius, and you see what it looks like today, is a, is a hilly town that is located not too far from Athens. And it was particularly popular in the Greek period because, or particularly important in the Greek period because it had a sanctuary of the Goddess Demeter, the Goddess Demeter. And the Goddess Demeter, or surrounding her, was this very important mystery religion, the so-called Eleusinian Mysteries after Eleusis, Eleusinian Mysteries, that took place here and people came from far and wide to partake of those Eleusinian Mysteries. And so, the city was built up in classical and Hellenistic Greek times. It also remained important in the time of Caesar and into the time of Augustus. And it, and actually into the, the first and second centuries AD. And over time, decisions were made to add to the sanctuary of Demeter by the Roman emperors and generals, and also a, at the, and using, of course, the service of their own architects, architects from Rome. But working in concert with those in Greece. And one the, one of the decisions that they made was to provide the Sanctuary of Demeter with two additional gateways. An inner gateway and an outer gateway. The outer gateway, which is the larger of the two, was put up in the second century A.D. by the Antonine emperors. But the earlier one, the inner inner or smaller gateway, was put up already in 50 B.C.. So at the, the late Republican period, put up in 50 B.C.. And there are some remains of it. Enough that we can come up with quite good reconstructions of what it looked like. And I want to show you those fairly quickly in passing. Just because they underscore this important connection that is going on between Rome and Greece in this period we see one, one side. This gateway actually has two sides, and we see one side of it here. With columns and a quite traditional pediment above. The triglyphs and medipes that you see here have representations of sheaves of wheat and what are called cistae, cistae, which are baskets. Both of which have to do with the Eleusinian mysteries and the worship of Demeter. But what's most interesting for us, and it may be a little hard for you make this out in the, in this reconstruction, but what's interesting for us are the capitals, because the capitals are examples of the so-called zoomorphic capitals that we've seen before. Capitols in which the, the upper parts of the bodies of animals take, take the place of the spirals and grow out of the acanthus leaves. And I can show you a one reserve, a one preserved example from Eleusis over here on the left hand side of the screen. Made out pentelic marble. We see it here, and you can see the acanthus leaves and you can see a part of the upper part of a bull that is growing out of a bull proteum that is growing out of the acanthus leaves. That should remind you of something we saw much earlier in the semester. Does anyone remember where this capital comes from? I know you all know. Not the Forum Transitorium, no. The Forum of Augustus, the Forum of Augustus had these capitals. Some of these capitals that included pegasi growing out of the acanthus leaves. So this suggests to us, this whole idea of having animals growing out of acanthus leaves it, it, it roughly, not exactly at the same, but roughly in the same period. Cesarean period into the Augustan period. Suggests that ideas were floating back and forth between Athens and Rome in the time of Cesar and in the time of Augustus. Now if we look at the other side of the gate we see something that would seem to confirm that even more. And that is on the other side caryatids replace the columns with their zoomorphic capitals. These are not, as you can clearly see, you see how they have their hands up. They are not based exactly on those of the Erechtheion porch. They are variations of that. But that are caryatids nonetheless, holding the capitals on top of their heads. So we are seeing here even in, even as Greece becomes, becomes Roman in the Caesarian period and into the age of Augustus, even as Greece becomes Roman. Well, it already does, as I mentioned to you before when [UNKNOWN] in 86 BC. So in 50 it's already a Roman colony. And so we can see the-, these ideas that are going back and forth between Rome and Greece during this important period. And we see the power of the caryatids even in Greece itself, as they are imitated there as well. From this point on for the rest of the lecture I do want to concentrate on Athens. And I want to begin again with the Acropolis. This is actually very interesting Google Earth image of the Acropolis where you can see as it looks today but where you can see superimosed on the current cur-, the cur-, the present remains 3D versions of the ancient buildings. And we can see the ones that I've already mentioned. As you enter over here you see the group Greek Propylaea of the, of the fifth century B.C. the entrance gate. You see the Parthenon, which is the largest building, a Doric building on top of the Acropolis. And then to its left you see the Erechtheion and then the back the remains of a museum. That is, I mean, not the remains, a museum that is in part underground, which is why it looks so flat that houses the original caryatids and a lot of other sculpture. The ones that you see on the porch today, are, are copies of those originals that are in the museum as well as other sculpture that was found on the acropolis. And you can also see here that the Odeon of Herodes Atticus which I had mentioned to you. Where the Yanni concert took place on, on the slope of the Acropolis here. And then you can also see a theater. You see the theater in this corner right here? Which is interesting because we believe it dates to the Neronian period. Which is interesting because you'll remember that Nero competed in the Olympic games and that he came to Greece to compete in the Olympic games. So it's not surprising, even though we don't think of him as one of the great philhellenic emperors. It's not surprising to see that there was some construction in Greece during the Neuronian period. I want to turn to what's interesting, actually, about what the Romans do in the age of Augustus. When Augustus goes up here himself Sends his architects to repair the porch. Is, a decision is made to build a little shrine to Augustus and to Rome. to, a temple to Augustus and Roma. And they decide to put it in the back left corner of the of the Parthenon. And you can barely see it there. But it's a small round building at the upper most part of the Parthenon between that and the museum and I am going to show it to you in detail in a moment. And they build that from scratch. But they also take a pillar that is located right at the beginning right in front of the Propylea. That was put up in Hellenistic times and they transformed that into a Roman monument. And it's those two, to those two that I want to turn first. This is Google Earth again, you can see the Parthenon, and the Erechtheion in these 3D versions. Can you see just that little, you know, that round circle right next to the edge of the, of, of the Parthenon? That is the Temple of Augustus in Roma. And the fact that it is so small, I think, is strikingly interesting. Because it shows that although Augustus was willing to have a building put up to himself and to Roma on the Greek acropolis. And he, so he wanted to make his presence known. He did it a very modest and very respectful way, it seemed to me. He could have built much larger than he did, and opted not to do that, which, which tells us something about Augustus and perhaps his reverence for things, things Greek. We are looking at two views of what survives of this small, round shrine. Actually quite a bit. I mean, it's not standing any longer, but you can see parts of columns and parts of the curved entablature curved architrave and, and some of the other building elements very clearly here, including one of the capitals. Again it was a round structure. It had nine ionic columns. It had, it was made entirely out of stone. And it had a sloping, stone roof. And this restored view shows us exactly what it looked like as well as how small it was in relationship to the Parthenon, which absolutely dwarfs it in scale as you can see in this restored view. Here this, this small temple of Augustus in Rome. It was built sometime after 27 BC. And you see it here. Ionic capitols and then a sloping stone roof. And if I show you the remains again, where you can see one of those ionic capitals still preserved here, and we compare that ionic capital to the ionic capitals of the Erechtheion in Athens. On the acropolis. We see the close resemblance between the two. And the reason for this almost certainly because Augustus' architects were working on the Erechtheion, were restoring it, were repairing it. They were captivated not just by the caryatids, but also by the rest of the, o, of the structure. By the quality of the marble. By the attractiveness of the, of the, ionic columns with their, with their spiral volutes at the top. And they not surprisingly used those as the model for the capitals that they carved for the small shrine of the temple of Augustus and Roma. But I think it also shows there reverence for things Greek and their desire to establish a dialogue between the fifth century B.C structure and the Roman structure built right after Augustus became emperor. I, I wanted to mention one other material that is used in the Erechtheion. We talked about the poros in the foundations, the Pentelic marble in the walls and columns, but if you look here, you'll see the slight blue cast to the marble that is used for the frieze. That is so called eleusinian marble from that part from Eleusis area of Greece. Eleusinian marble with a slightly blue cast and that is used in the Erictheon as well.
