You see now, portraits of Mark Antony, on the right hand side of the screen. A black basalt portrait of Anthony, now in England. And a portrait of Rome's first emperor, Octavian Augustus on the left hand side of the screen. A fantastic bronze image of him that was part of an equestrian statue found in the North Sea near Greece. With regard to Antony and Octavian, after Caesar's assassination in 44 B.C., it was Mark Antony who rose to power. Octavian was only 19 at the time. So your age, and he was the grand-nephew of Caesar. So he had a familial relationship, although a fairly distant one, to, Caesar, the grandnephew of Caesar. And this 19-year old upstart tried to overthrow Mark Antony and he was not successful. In the wise, if you can't beat them join them, way of thinking about life and the world, Octavian joined with Antony, with Mark Antony, an a man by the name of Lepidus, to form what we know of as the Second Triumvirate. And that happened in the year 43 BC. Once they had formed the the Second Triumvirate together, Octavian an Antony took all of their military forces, and each of them had a considerable amount, and they combined them with the objective of going after Cassius and Brutus. Cassius and Brutus who you'll remember had murdered Caesar. And they were successful at so doing. They they beat and murdered, Cassius and Brutus at the battle of Philippi in the year 42 B.C.. A very important battle, the battle of Philippi in 42 B.C.. A Mark Antony who not only rose to power after Caesar's assassination but rose in the life and times of Cleopatra. They had entered into, well there's some rumors that this happened, or began much earlier in time. But at any rate Mark Antony takes up with Cleopatra and he joins her in Egypt and he spends a good deal of his time in the eastern part of the empire with his paramour. Octavian very smartly realized Antony is distracted. This is a perfect time for me to try once again to gain the supreme power that I want. I don't want to be part of a threesome. I want to rule Rome completely myself. And he defeats Antony and Cleopatra at one of the most famous battles of all time. The battle of Actium. A naval battle which took place off the North Western coast of, of Greece, in 31 BC. After that very famous battle, Antony and Cleopatra commit suicide, and Octavian becomes the sole emperor of this newly emerging super power. And he is appointed as Augustus, which meant that he had a special kind of majesty, in the year 27 B.C.. We have additional information about Augustus from Suetonius' biography of him. He wrote one of him, obviously, as well. And from Augustus's own account of his life and of his accomplishments. I mentioned that Octavian, and that's called the Res Gestae Divi Augusti. I mentioned that Octavian took the title of Augustus in 27 B.C.. And he was emperor of Rome for a very long time from the, from that year 27 until his death at A.D. 14 at the age of 76. Which was a very ripe old age to live to at a time when most people, where women were dying in childbirth, at ten to 20 and men were dying, for the most part, in their thirties. So 76 was a very old age indeed in ancient times. And it meant that Augustus was Emperor of Rome for a very long period as you can see. Now at his death Augustus deposited three documents besides his will with the Vestal Virgins in Rome. And these included instructions for his funeral, a kind of state of the union address, what was the situation in Rome and in the Empire at the time of his death or right before his death. And then most importantly for us, a resume of his acts. A resume of all of his accomplishments during his lifetime. Which were meant to be carved on two bronze plaques that were to be set up in front of his tomb in Rome. These are the famous Res Gestae Divi Augusti, and that means the list of things accomplished of the divine Augustus. Because Augustus, like Caesar before him was made a god, was transformed into a god at his death. And this lists all of his accomplishments at home and abroad. The battles that he won, the cities that he formed. But most important for us, it lists dozens and dozens of building projects. For example, it lists 82 temples that he either restored or built in Rome, and Rome itself. So it gives you some sense of the magnitude of this man's building objectives. and, and, and is very important to us as a compendium of what he does, some of these buildings still survive, some of them don't, but this is a very informative list indeed. And it shows us that to Augustus, as to Caesar before him, the building of buildings was extremely important. The making of buildings not only to remake Rome in the you know, as a great city of the ancient world but also to leave something for posterity and of course both of them were successful in both of those objectives. Very important for us today is also the words of Suetonius. Suetonius tells us that Augustus bragged that he and I quote found Rome a city of brick and left Rome a city of marble. A city of brick meaning that brick tile that we saw in Pompeii. He found a Rome that he was built out of that same kind of brick tile that we saw Pompeii, but he wanted to transform. He left the city of Rome a city of marble. And that's exactly the major thrust of today's lecture. Augustus builds Rome, Augustus builds Rome as a marble city in the model of ancient Greece, in the model of Athens in the Greek part of the world. It's a rhetorical exaggeration, but we're going to see from the two Augustan buildings that I show you today that it wasn't far off the mark. That he really did create a city of marble on the Tiber. And he left, for posterity, that Greek marble temple, a Hellenized, Greek marble city, a Hellenized city that builds on the Hellenization of Roman architecture that we've already talked about. What made Augustus' boast possible, was the fact for the first time in its history, a high quality marble was available to Rome in, in close proximity. That is, marble from Italy itself as opposed to imported marbles. We've seen up to this point that the Romans wanted to build marble buildings. That they, that they created a faux marble walls, the first style at Pompeii for example, and also in Rome. That they created temples out with, with columns that, and super structures that were made out of tufa or, or travertine. And then they stuccoed those over white to make them look like marble, even though they were not marble. But that they just didn't have access to marble readily enough to transform, to actually make these buildings out of marble, itself. There are, there were some, some flirtation with it. They did import a certain amount of Greek marble to use for some buildings. But it wasn't available at a low enough cost to allow the kind of full scale marble building that they wanted to do. What happens in the end of the ray, of the reign of Caesar and in toward that dictatorship of Caesar and into the emperorship of Augustus is that all of a sudden, a high quality, relatively inexpensive marble becomes available. Because what happens is the Romans begins to exploit, in the late Cesarean period and into the age of August, the marble quarries at Luna on the north west coast of Italy. This is the same town as modern Carrara, the same quarries that were used centuries later by none other than Michelangelo himself. Carrara marble, you all know Carrara marble called Luna, the, the site called Luna in ancient Roman times. So Luna or Carrara marble. I show you a view here of the, marble quarries. One of the marble quarries at Luna/Carrara. What it looks like today. This is a reenactment of bringing the marble blocks down from the mountain, for use in construction. They basically do it the same way today as they probably did it in ancient Roman times. And it was fairly easy to get this. Since it was on the coast, it was fairly easy to load this marble into boats, bring it down to Ostia and then up the Tiber to Rome. And that began to be done with in, in, with great success especially in the age of Augustus. Going to Carrara today is a pleasure. It's an interesting place to visit. Especially if you go there at the time of the of the marble exhibition that they have in the competition that they have. Where people make whatever out of, out of Carrara marble and compete for prizes. And I show you a view taken during one of these one of these contests here now on the screen. And there are some amazing, amazing works of, of art, we might call them, that come out of these competitions. Here's one of my favorites. You see over here the, a, the, the luna marble version of a, an Italian Cinquecento. These Cinquecentos, which were minuscule are not are the, not many of them exist today. Although you do see some antique versions here and there. But I had one of these once, and you can see a picture of me in fact here, in front of American Express not far from the Spanish Steps, The Piazza di Spagna, with my Cinquecento. It was a long time ago. But you can see how small it is. I'm actually standing on the front front passenger side. And popping up through the sunroof. But, using my size there, and I'm about five seven, compared to the care, gives you some sense of how small these cars were today. So the Italians have been very good about, about this sort of thing for some time, and continue, as you well know, to drive, for the most part, small cars through the city. And another one of my favorite entries into the competition are these luna marble decapitated heads of Juan and Evita Peron that were put forward in one of these competitions some years ago.
