The second marble building that I want to show you today is the famous Altar of Augustan Peace. The Ara Pacis Augustae which is one of, if not my most favorite building and monument in Rome. And one that I've had a personal obsession with my entire scholarly life. Written a lot on this monument and have a lot of thoughts with have changed significantly over the years about this is very important structure. We know about it. Augustus that tells us about the altar of the Augustin piece himself in his Res Gestae. He tells us on his return, and I'm quoting Augustus here from the RG, on his return to Rome from Spain and Gaul, he had gone to Spain and Gaul which were the western part of the empire in order to make some diplomatic treaties. On my return to Rome from Spain and Gaul, after successfully restoring law and order to the provinces. The Senate decided, and this happened in 13 BC, to consecrate the Ara Pacis Augustae on the Campus Martius, the so called Field of Mars, an area of Rome, in honor of my return At which, officials, priests, and vestal virgins should offer an annual sacrifice. We believe that monument being referred to here is the one that you see now before you. The Ara Pacis Augustae made entirely of Luna or Carrara marble, solid Luna or Carrara marble. And even more of a marble building in a sense than the temple and forum that we've looked at thus far. It is a marble building that we believe, that we know it's date quite specifically. We know that it was consecrated on the 4th of July, an easy day to remember for all of us. The 4th of July in 13 BC was when it was consecrated, and it was completed and dedicated on the 30th of January in 9 BC. The 30th of January just happened to be the birthday of Augustus's wife Livia, no coincidence there, she was obviously lobbying for that. So on her birthday, 30th of January in 9 BC this structure is dedicated. We know that there's a lot of controversy as to exactly what event is refered to on this monument, because we'll see that there is a procession that refers to some historical event. We will also see that the monument is covered with all kinds of sculptural decoration including flowering a campus plants, including mythological and legendary scenes, including historical scenes. And trying to decipher the web of all these and the relationship to one another is fairly complex. What's important to us as we look at this is, and I want to show you here from Word Perkins, a plan and an axonometric view, which will give us a very good sense of what this altar was all about. We can see that the altar proper was located in the center of the structure, it's a kind of U-shaped altar. Which goes back to Greek precedence, the most famous U-shaped alter of the Hellenistic period, some of you may know it, the Altar of Zeus, at Pergamon, the great Altar of Zeus in Pergamon which you see in the uppermost part now in Berlin. But these U-shaped altars were used in Greece, and you can see that same U-shaped form here used for the altar. The altar proper, where the sacrifice was actually made, is located inside this precinct, which is open to the sky, and most importantly has double doors. A doorway on the eastern side of the monument and a doorway on the western side of the monument. Even though there are two doors, you note that there is only a single staircase on the western side. So the Romans, despite the fact that they've given it a dual focus by putting two doors, they still give it a single focus by a single staircase. So the facadism of Roman architecture reigns supreme as you can see here. The fact that there wer double doorways, very significant. And we've tried to sort out why that might be. There are two possible precedents, there are two possible references that are being made here. One, two. A Greek altar, a Greek fifth century BC altar which shouldn't surprise us since we've seen that Augustus is looking back at the 5th Century BC and mining it for architectural ideas and associations. You can see here what is the restored view of the altar of the twelve Gods or the altar of piety that was located in the Greek marketplace, in Athens, the Athenian Agora, the marketplace in Athens, fifth century BC. You can see that it consisted of an altar in the center with a precinct wall with double doorways, one on other side here, and with relief sculpture. So it looks like that might well be an important model. Again, and not surprisingly since it dates to the fifth century. But also important, and I show you an image of it on a Roman coin here, is the so-called shrine of Janus, the two-headed God, J-A-N-U-S, the shrine of Janus which we know is located in the Roman forum. And tradition had it that when the doors, because it had double doors, one had two sides because he was a two-headed God, so two sides, both with doors, both with double doors, and when those double doors were closed, it signaled that peace reigned throughout the empire. And we know in the Res Gestae Augustus tells us that he closed At the doors of the shrine of Janus he brags 3 times during his reign. So it is very likely that the double doors on the shrine of Janus are referred to not surprisingly in an altar that was put up to peace, to the peace that Augustus brought to Rome through his various military victories and also through his diplomatic conquests his diplomatic treaties like the one that he signed in Spain and Gaul. I want to take you quickly through the monument, and keep in mind always that it's made out of Luna or Carrera marble to show you some of the, this is not a course in sculpture. So I'm not going to go into the sculpture in any detail, but I want you to be aware of it because some of the motifs are important in our understanding also of architecture. We see here two views of the altar. You see these winged lion griffins that are very popular motifs in the Augustine period as well as the spiral and acanthus plant that was also popular in Augustine times. A figural frieze that represents the vestal virgins that were referred to As those who are to which all brings, the sacrifice is taking place in part in honor of them. But we see here a sacrifice itself where the animal victims are being brought in for slaughter. [COUGH] We also see if we look at we're now inside the monument. We've looked at the altar proper. If we look at the precinct wall, the inside of the precinct wall we see that it's very well preserved. And we see it is essentially two zones with slats all done in Carrara marble, slats down below. That look like either a wooden wall or perhaps a fence of some sort. Then above, also depicted in Carrara marble, these great garlanded swags that you see hanging from pilasters but also from the skulls of bulls. I'll show you a detail in a moment where you'll see those skulls better. The skulls of the bulls that have been sacrificed on this altar and then above the swags you an see these libation dishes. And what has been speculated and I think it's ingenious on the part of the scholars who first came up with this that what they think is being represented here is actually a copy or a rendition of the wooden, the temporary wooden altar that would have stood on this site. Because remember they're consecrating it already in 13 BC but the structure itself isn't built until 9 and they have to keep offering this annual sacrifice. So they have to offer it somewhere. So the suggestion is they made a makeshift wooden altar that looked like this with actual wooden slats, wooden poles, real garments and so on and what they've done on the alter is to create a rendition of that in an interior precinct wall of the Ara Pacis. A detail of these garlands, here you can see the bull skulls or bull crania extremely well. And I thought you'd be interested to see and perhaps not surprised that we can see very close renditions also in painting of the time. This painting on the left comes from the house of Livia in Rome. We didn't look at it, we looked at the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta and we looked at August's house. But when we did that, I told you Livia had her own house across the street from August's. And this painting is from that it's clearly a second style wall, residual first style, done in paint, projecting columns, garlands hanging from those columns, garlands. Interlaced with ribbons just as you see here. And when this was painted, which it was in antiquity, it would have looked very similar to what you see on the other side of the screen. So interesting inter-relationships between decoration and sculpture and architecture and decoration and paint. The axonometric view, again, shows you here's that inner precinct that we've just described that the outside had a series of square panels, four of them on the front sides where the doors are flanking the doors. And then on the other sides, the north and south, a frieze. And I show you a detail of that frieze. A frieze the subject matter of which is somewhat controversial, I'm not going to go into that here today. Suffice it say though, Augustus, senators, magistrates, members of the priesthood, members of the imperial family all take part in these processions that are located on the north and south. Those processions rest on these ocampus plants down below, which when you think of it, it has nothing to do with reality, because how could a procession of human figures be supported by canvas plants below? Impossible, and yet it is, some of that fantasy thinking that we saw in third style Roman painting, and I show you I remind you of a detail of garden room que over here where we saw some of that fanciful third style painting seems to come into play here. In fact the it could be delicate ocampus leaves absolutely beautifully rendered in the Ara Parci. You see this same sort of thing in the black background of the garden room que. So again, interesting correspondences between painting and architectural decoration. The freeze on the south side has a portrait of Augustus himself. You can see him here veiled, taking part in this procession as well as members of the imperial family including children. Here's a little boy in a toga. And here's a little boy who's very controversial in some kind of a foreign costume. And I mentioned that I've written a lot on this. And in my most recent article on this subject I talk in particular about these children in foreign dress. As possibly children who were the, were what we call pledges of empire or hostage guests. That belong, that were children of very important rulers of other parts of the world who were brought to Rome to live with the Emperor in his house to be trained. With the objective of eventually sending them back to their native lands to serve as rulers. It was Augustus' way of creating a kind of hegemonic empire that he controlled by getting all of these people on his side, and then placing those friends of Rome into important positions around the world and I think that's refered to in these scenes. Again, I'm not going to go into any detail into the mythological scenes, but they are scenes like Roma seated on a pile of arms and armors, just as we saw her on the pediment of the Temple of Marzortal and here a scene that seems to have shown Mars. Overseeing Romulus and Remus being suckled by the she-wolf, so references to Rome's historic and also legendary and mythological past clearly in this monument.
