I mentioned that the temple of Roma and Augustus was put up it was built from scratch. It was, there was nothing there before, and it was built anew during the Augustan period. but, I also noted that there was another monument that we could call a Roman intervention to the acropolis that was actually already there, but was transformed in Roman times. And I show it to you now. Here we are making our way with all these other tourists up to the Rock of the Acropolis, the top of the Rock of the Acropolis, we've climbed up the stairway, which is not at all, it's not particularly steep. We've made our way up. We're about to enter into the group, Greek Propylaea of the Fifth Century BC. Note the Doric columns, the triglyphs and metopes of Fifth Century Greek architecture. And we see next to it this pillar. It's a very interesting pillar. It's very prominent. It's the first thing you see when you enter the Acropolis, so it's. So whoever built this initially wanted to be noticed, that's for sure. And we know it was a Hellenistic king. A Hellenistic king by the name of Eumenes. E-U-M-E-N-E-S. Eumenes the Second, was king of the Hellenistic Greek kingdom of Pergamon. P-E-R-G-A-M-U-M or O-N, whether you use the Greek or the Latin spelling. Pergamon. And he commissioned this monument in 178 B.C. to honor himself. And you can see that the purpose of the monument was to create this pillar upon which a statue of him would have been placed, and I show you the pillar once again here. And you can see its shape. It has a stepped base and it tapers at the top. And you have to imagine a statue of Eumenes II of Pergamon on the top of this monument in the second century B.C.. And it was altered in the first century BC when Marcus Agrippa, the close childhood friend, confidant, right-hand man of Augustus, son-in-law, in fact decided to replace the statue of Eumenes with one of himself. So he transforms this Greek Hellenistic monument into an Augustan monument. An Augustan monument that honors Agrippa. And Agrippa, it's not surprising to see Agrippa honored in the east. He was involved in eastern military campaigns. And we'll also see that he not only he not only, and I mentioned this earlier in the semester, he not only had a building, he not only re, re, renovated he not only instituted a building program in Rome. He was responsible for The so-called Baths of Agrippa that bear his name, not much is preserved, so I didn't show those to you. And also a pantheon. The first pantheon that I did mention, the pantheon that Agrippa built, that's referred to in the inscription that Hadrian A place on the Pantheon. Marcus Agrippa made this building as you'll recall. And the Pantheon that we know had a Caryatid porch. So, Agrippa in Rome is also carrying the Caryatid imagery into Rome in his building, his building program. But he also instituted a building program in Athens as we shall see. So its very important. It was not surprising to see him honored along with Augustus on the Acropolis, and actually in a way that was much more noticeable. To bit hit by that Statue of Agrippa as you climb the Acropolis and went into the Propylaea must have been very striking indeed. This particular structure is made of a different kind of Greek marble called Hymettian marble. H-Y-M-E-T-T-I-A-N. From Mount Hymettus. Hymettian marble. You can see a little bit of Pentelic here but much of it, is Hymettian marble. So the Romans using the Greeks and Romans using a variety of marbles but a variety of marbles that come from Greece itself. We're not talking about imported marbles from elsewhere in the ancient world. I mentioned already that below the Acropolis was the Greek Agora, or the meeting or market place. I show to you here an image from Google Earth of the Greek Agora as it looks from the air today. You can see it is essentially an open, rectangular space. It has colonnades on some of its sides. One set, one set was re-erected. This is a a structure-covered colonnade that come from the, from the Hellenistic period, that was re-erected by American archaeologists who were responsible for excavating the Agora. They re-erected it in part to use as a place to display works of art and for offices and so on. But there were more, there was more than one in Roman in in Greek times. And this Stoa is the counterpart to a roman portico covered pollenade. But they call them Stoa. So we look at the Stoa here. From the Hellenistic period there's a classical Greek temple, the H ephaisteionover here. But and in the center there is a building called the, a music hall that was built by Marcus Agrippa. The so-called Odion of Agrippa that we know quite a bit about and that we're going to look at today. But again what's particularly interesting, I think, is the fact that we see the Greeks building their religious structures on the Acropolis and then down below the meeting and marketplace. And you can see that the impact this sort of thinking must have had on the Romans when they made their own decisions about building Romans Forums. But there are distinct differences and we've talked about them already this semester between a Greek Agora and a Roman Forum. What Greek Agora's do not have is that central that focus of having a single temple on one end dominating the space in front of it. And they're more square Whereas Roman forums as we discussed are more rectangular in shape, with again the temple of the short end. Any of you who been to Athens know that the Agora is surrounded by an area of Athens called Plaka. P-L-A-K-A. Plaka a great, a fun place to go. It has been very gentrefied in recent years. It now has these wonderful pastel colored restaurants and shops with the ubiquitous white umbrellas just as you see them in other Mediterranean countries like Italy. I lived in, in Athens for two years in the 1970s and Placa did not look like that then. But it was in, an incredible place to go then as it still is now. If you want to really get into the Greek spirit and dance on tables and break plates you can definitely do that in the 70s. A little le, less ubiquitous today but there are still places that one can find to sort of play Zorba the Greek in in Placa. Here is another view, a panoramic view, showing once again the Agora, the Greek Agora, of Athens as it would have looked as it grew up from the Classical through the Hellenistic period. But the building in question for us is the one that is smack in the middle of the Greek temple and of the Hellenistic Stoa over here. And that is this music hall or Odeon of Agrippa which was put up, we believe, in around 15 BC. And it's to that structure that I want to turn now. And this, this building, this Odeon which Agrippa commissioned himself, is very important to us, in large part because it demonstrates that ideas. We're not only flowing from Greece to Rome, as we've already, both, discussed today and in the past, but from Italy to Greece. And this is a prime example of that. Because if we look at this axonometric view of the Odeon of Agrippa, as designed for Agrippa in 15 BC, and this is N Ward-Perkins. If we look at that, we will see that the plan of the Odeon of Agrippa is, is based very closely on an Odeon that we've already seen this semester, the Odeon of Pompeii. You see it here from the air next to the theater of Pompeii. You'll remember that the Odeon of Pompeii dated to 80 to 70 BC. It was quite early, built just after the Romans made Pompeii into a colony. And that is that exact plan that is used here. So clearly, again, an important exchange going on of ideas of architects between Greece and Rome in the Augustan period and in this case, using a, an Italian plan, plan from Italy, as the basis for a structure in Greece. We see that it follows in the main, it follows all the features of the Pompeian structure. The, semi-circular orchestra, the cavea divided into cunae, a stage front here pilasters, on tall pilasters on some of the walls. An open stoa on this wall over here. You can see two sets of columns, an inner row and an outer row. We know that the spectators entered the structure through this porch when they were coming to a musical recital. And over here there was another entrance way that was used by the part, by the musicians and also by visiting dignitaries. This was a smaller entrance way that was made up of a small temple front with a pediment and Doric columns here. And we can also see tall pilasters on the outside of this structure. And of course this building as all Odea, was roofed in antiquity for the acoustics. And the one in Pompeii Was, of course, also roofed. Another view, a cross section of the of the Odeon of Aggripa. You can see it here. Which shows you the same sort of thing. The tall pilasters on the outside of the structure. The entrance-way through this stoa for the for the spectators. The other entrance-way over here. The smaller entrance-way into that part of the structure all very well shown. And maybe, and this may even be better, this model of the Odeon of Agrippa where we can see what it looked like from the outside. We're looking at the northern end, which is the end where we have that smaller entrance-way with the with their simple temple like in, in appearance. We can see a series of columns engaged into the wall down here, then the very tall pilasters with windows between them. A quite conventional building, but one again, clearly based and this is the most important point that one can make about it, clearly based on a an earlier model in Italy. The capitals are interesting. You remember the stoas that I, the two open colonnades that I showed you as one side, one wall, one side of the building. The inner one and the outer one. The I'm going to forget which way. The outer one I believe. No. The outer one, I think, is the, they're two different orders. One of them is Corinthian. As you can see here, I think that's the outer, but I may have that backwards. They, one of them had Corinthian capitols. And you see those here, with the, narrow, the elegant volutes growing out of, the elegant spirals growing out of the acanthus leaves. And the other is of this type. A type that we have seen before, but not frequently. Where we have Lotus leaves growing out of the canvas leaves. And that of course, is the kind of capitol that we mentioned is inspired by capitols in Egypt. And was used also much later, in much later times at the Forum. At Leptis Magna, the Sempron Forum. A type of of capital that is characteristic of Egypt that turns up here. So it's another example of the way in which these architects and patrons are looking at models from all over the world. Not only the Odeon in Pompeii but also structures from Egypt and combining those motifs in a very, in a, in a new way, in a very fertile mix, as you can see. With regard to the later history of the Odeon of Agrippa. Over the years, students sometimes have asked me, I haven't heard, gotten this question this semester yet. But students have asked me or have said to me. Professor Kleiner, you show us, in the course of the semester, all of these great works of Roman engineering and architecture. The Pantheon and the Colosseum and aqueducts and so on and so forth and everything. You do tell us about fires, that fires sometimes destroy these works of art or there were works of architecture, or they're destroyed Because of other natural events like events of nature like earthquakes and so on. But you never tell us about the buildings that failed. Were the Roman architects always successful or did they build buildings sometimes that fell down? And so I always use this as an example, because yes, they sometimes did make mistakes and some of their buildings did collapse. And this is one of them, the Odeon of Agrpipa. After it was viewed and described by Pausanias the roof collapsed. Collapsed entirely. Now, it lasted quite a while, from from the time of Augustus to the time, to the second century of Pausanias. But nonetheless the roof collapsed entirely, and the roof had to be completely rebuilt. And at the same time the architects decided to modernize the northern end of the structure and to add a new portico to the building. They also changed its use by the way from an odeon to a general lecture hall during that period. So in 150 AD we see that the that the northern end is completely redone and its interesting to see what they decided to do. They replaced that very small conservative dark entry-way with something with a lot more pizzazz as you can see. A series of, of male figures, these are male Tritons. T-R-I-T-O-N-S. Tritons, which are essentially male mermaids, male Tritons. Tritons that are essentially male mermaids. On these tall, decorated vases, as you can see here. And they're, they're they're gestures, or mirror images of one another, or reversed images of one another, which creates a certain liveliness to the facade, to the northern facade that this building did not have before. And that happened again in the mid-second century AD. And interestingly enough much of what survives today are those tritons. You can still see them on their bases here. On their tall bases or part of them here. And you can see the relationship of the Odeon of Agrippa in this very good image to the Acropolis in Athens. You can see the Erechtheion peeping up over there. You can see the great pedestal that Agrippa would have had his statue on right here. So I'm very tempted to say, in fact I will say, that I don't think that was lost on the designers. That when they chose this spot for the Odeon of Agrippa, they had very much in mind that it could, would be in one of these interesting architectural dialogues with the, with the pedestal that had the statue of Agrippa on, at, at the entranceway to the Acropolis. I think that was certainly very carefully orchestrated. In the same way, you'll remember, Julius Caesar and his architects orchestrated a relationship between the Temple of Venus Genetrix and the Temple of Jupiter OMC on the on the capitol line hill in Rome. And despite the fact that you see when you visit the Agora, the Greek Agora, today and look at the statues. Despite the fact that they are all that stands. There's a lot, you will see that there are lots of other remains on the ground, and with those remains, and the excavations that were done by the American Archaeologist in the 1930s. They are, the reconstruction that we looked at from Ward-Perkins that we believe is a very accurate reconstruction of what the Odeon of Agrippa looked like.
