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Title: The Mute Stones Speak - The Story of Archaeology in Italy
Author: MacKendrick, Paul Lachlan
Language: English
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[Illustration: (inside front and back covers)]
[Illustration]
THE
MUTE
STONES
SPEAK
[Illustration]
THE STORY
OF
ARCHAEOLOGY
IN
ITALY
PAUL MacKENDRICK
ST MARTIN’S PRESS · NEW YORK
Copyright © 1960 by Paul MacKendrick
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-8767
Manufactured in the United States of America
By H. Wolff, New York
TO MY WIFE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book owes much to many: to the Trustees of the American Academy in
Rome, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Research
Committee of the University of Wisconsin Graduate School, for giving me
the opportunity to spend three years in Italy; to Laurance and Isabel
Roberts, for hospitality and moral support; to Axel Boëthius, for
friendship and instruction; to Ernest Nash, for photographs and advice;
to Mrs. Inez Longobardi, the best and most helpful of librarians and
friends; to Ferdinando Castagnoli, for sharing with me his incomparable
knowledge of the topography of Rome and Latium; to R. I. W. Westgate
and Alston Chase, who taught me Latin at Harvard and have been my
friends for thirty years; to the staff of the St. Martin’s Press: Diane
Wheeler-Nicholson, and Fred J. Royar, for giving the book so handsome
a dress; especially to my colleague J. P. Heironimus, for meticulous
introduced me to archaeology and is hereby absolved from responsibility
for all untoward results of the introduction. My overarching debt is
acknowledged in the dedication.
CONTENTS
1. Prehistoric Italy 1
Neolithic sites in Puglia--The _terremare_--Sardinian _nuraghi_--
The early Iron Age: Villanovan and Siculan cultures
2. The Etruscans 25
Introduction--Origins--Etruscan cities--Political organization--
Language--Religion--Creative arts--Life and customs
3. Early Rome 62
The Palatine hut--The Forum necropolis--Rome of the Kings--The
“Servian” Wall--The Largo Argentina temples
4. Roman Colonies in Italy 91
Ostia--Alba Fucens--Cosa--Centuriation--Exploiting a frontier
5. Nabobs as Builders:
Sulla, Pompey, Caesar 116
The Sanctuary of Fortune at Praeneste--Pompey’s Theater and
Portico--Caesar’s Forum
6. Augustus: Buildings as Propaganda 145
Augustus’ Forum--The Arch of Augustus--The Mausoleum--The Altar
of Peace
7. Hypocrite, Madman, Fool, and Knave 172
The Cave “of Tiberius” at Sperlonga--The ships of Lake Nemi--The
subterranean basilica at the Porta Maggiore--Nero’s Golden House
8. The Victims of Vesuvius 196
Introduction--Pompeii’s town plan--Public life--Private life in
town and country houses--Trade and tradesmen--Religion--Art
9. Flavian Rome 224
The Forum of Peace--The Coliseum--The Arch of Titus--The
Cancelleria reliefs--The _Forum Transitorium_--Domitian’s
palace and stadium
10. Trajan: Port, Forum, Market, Column 251
Ostia: its town plan--Municipal life and amenities--_Insulae_--
The harbor--Trade--Religion; Rome: Trajan’s Forum, Market, and
Column
11. An Emperor-Architect: Hadrian 273
The Villa near Tivoli--The “Teatro Marittimo”--The Temple of
Venus and Rome--The Pantheon--The Piazza d’Oro--Hadrian’s
Mausoleum--The Canopus--The end of an era
12. Roman Engineering 298
Roads--The Baths of Caracalla and Pennsylvania Station--
Aqueducts--Aurelian’s Wall
13. Caesar and Christ 327
The Imperial Villa at Piazza Armerina: its plan and mosaics--The
Vatican cemetery and the shrine of St. Peter
Bibliography 352
Index of Proper Names 361
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
1.1 4 Prehistoric sites in Italy (map)
1.2 5 Passo di Corvo, a prehistoric site in Puglia:
air photograph
1.3 5 Dimini, a late Neolithic site in Thessaly, plan
1.4 5 Altheim, a late Neolithic site near Munich, plan
1.5 9 Comparative table of early cultures
1.6 9 _Terramara_ at Castellazzo di Fontanellato,
Pigorini’s plan
1.7 12 Su Nuraxi, a Sardinian _nuraghe_
1.8 12 Cremating and inhumating peoples of prehistoric Italy:
map
1.9 21 Villanovan artifacts
1.10 21 A hut-urn
1.11 23 The Certosa _situla_
1.12 23 Picene tomb-furniture from Fabriano
1.13 23 The Warrior of Capestrano
2.1 28 Lemnos, inscription in local dialect, similar to
Etruscan
2.2 28 Vetulonia, Aules Feluskes stele
2.3 30 Early Italy, to illustrate Etruscan and other sites.
Inset: early Rome (map)
2.4 31 Marzabotto, grid plan
2.5 34 Spina, plan
2.6 37 Spina, grid plan, air photograph
2.7 37 Vetulonia, fasces from the Tomb of the Lictor
2.8 39 Etruscan alphabet
2.9 39 Tarquinia, Tomb of Orcus, inscription
2.10 44 Piacenza, bronze model of sheep’s liver
2.11 45 Piacenza liver, schematic representation
2.12 46 Potentiometer profile, revealing tomb-chambers
underground
2.13 49 Tarquinia, Tomb of Hunting and Fishing, fresco
2.14 49 Tarquinia, Tomb of Orcus, portrait of the lady Velcha
2.15 50 Tarquinia, Tomb of Orcus, the demon Charun
2.16 53 Veii, Apollo (terracotta) from Portonaccio temple
2.17 53 Satricum terracotta antefix, satyr and nymph
2.18 55 Tarquinia, Museum: winged horses (terracotta) from Ara
della Regina
2.19 55 Cerveteri, Tomb of the Reliefs, interior
2.20 59 Cerveteri, gold pectoral from Regolini-Galassi Tomb
3.1 68 Rome, Palatine, prehistoric hut, reconstruction
3.2 68 Rome, Forum necropolis, cremation and inhumation
graves
3.3 72 Rome, Forum, strata at Equus Domitiani, photograph
3.4 72 Rome, Forum, strata at Equus Domitiani, schematic
drawing
3.5 76 Rome, Forum, Lapis Niger stele
3.6 76 Rome, Forum, Rostra, third phase
3.7 79 Rome, Forum, Rostra, fifth phase
3.8 81 Rome, Republican Forum, plan
3.9 87 Rome, “Servian” Wall at Termini Station
3.10 89 Rome, Largo Argentina, temples, plan
4.1 92 Roman colonization, map
4.2 93 Ostia, _castrum_, plan
4.3 96 Alba Fucens, plan
4.4 102 Cosa, _arx_, plan
4.5 103 Cosa, plan
4.6 106 Cosa, Capitolium
4.7 108 Cosa, Comitium, plan
4.8 110 Alba Fucens, centuriation
4.9 111 Cosa, centuriation
4.10 113 Paestum, Roman grid of streets: air photograph
5.1 119 Palestrina, Museum: Barberini mosaic
5.2 121 Palestrina, Sanctuary of Fortune, reconstruction
5.3 121 Palestrina, Sanctuary of Fortune, inclined
column capitals
5.4 125 Palestrina, Sanctuary of Fortune, buttresses and
ramp (model)
5.5 128 Palestrina, Sanctuary of Fortune, model
5.6 131 Kos, Sanctuary of Asclepius, reconstruction
5.7 131 Tarracina, view toward Circeii from Temple of
Jupiter Anxur
5.8 133 Tarracina, Temple of Jupiter Anxur, reconstruction
5.9 135 Rome, Tabularium
5.10 136 Tivoli, Temple of Hercules Victor, reconstruction
5.11 139 Rome, Pompey’s theater and portico, from _Forma Urbis_
5.12 141 Rome, Via dei Fori Imperiali, being opened by
Mussolini
5.13 141 Rome, Imperial Fora, plan
5.14 143 Rome, Forum of Caesar
6.1 147 Rome, Forum of Augustus, model
6.2 153 Rome, Forum: Arch of Augustus, reconstruction
6.3 155 Rome, Mausoleum of Augustus
6.4 155 Rome, Mausoleum of Augustus, plan and elevation
6.5 157 Family tree of the Julio-Claudians
6.6 159 Rome, Altar of Peace, plan of freezing apparatus
6.7 161 Rome, Altar of Peace, fragments known up to 1935, plan
6.8 161 Rome, Altar of Peace, results of Moretti’s excavation,
plan
6.9 163 Rome, Altar of Peace, reconstruction
6.10 163 Rome, Altar of Peace: Augustus
6.11 166 Rome, Altar of Peace: family group of Julio-Claudians
6.12 166 Rome, Altar of Peace: Agrippa, Julia, and Livia (?)
6.13 169 Rome, Altar of Peace: Aeneas
6.14 169 Rome, Altar of Peace: Tellus or Italia
7.1 174 Sperlonga, Cave “of Tiberius”
7.2 174 Sperlonga, Cave “of Tiberius,” reconstruction
7.3 177 Sperlonga, Cave “of Tiberius,” archaic head of Athena
7.4 177 Nemi, Braschi finds (1895) from ships
7.5 180 Nemi, second ship exposed
7.6 180 Nemi, ship, elevation
7.7 180 Nemi, ship, imaginative reconstruction
7.8 183 Rome, subterranean basilica at Porta Maggiore
7.9 184 Rome, subterranean basilica, plan
7.10 186 Rome, subterranean basilica, apse
7.11 191 Rome, Golden House, west wing, plan
7.12 191 Rome, Golden House, east wing, plan
7.13 193 Rome, Golden House, reconstruction drawing of whole
area
7.14 193 Rome, the Neronian Sacra Via, plan
8.1 197 Pompeii, victims of Vesuvius, from House of
Cryptoporticus
8.2 199 Pompeii, air view
8.3 199 Pompeii, plan
8.4 203 Pompeii, House of the Moralist, plan
8.5 203 Pompeii, House of the Moralist, reconstruction
8.6 204 Pompeii, House of the Moralist, triclinium
8.7 206 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, plan
8.8 208 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, reconstruction
8.9 208 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, statue of Livia as
found
8.10 210 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries: wine-press,
reconstructed
8.11 214 Pompeii, _thermopolium_ or bar
8.12 214 Pompeii, bronze bust of Caecilius Jucundus
8.13 214 Pompeii, House of D. Octavius Quartio, garden,
reconstruction
8.14 217 Pompeii, House of D. Octavius Quartio, garden,
with trellis
8.15 221 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, fresco: woman
being scourged
9.1 225 Rome, Forum of Peace, reconstruction from _Forma
Urbis_
9.2 227 Rome, _Forum Transitorium, Colonnacce_ before
excavation
9.3 227 Rome, _Forum Transitorium, Colonnacce_ after
excavation
9.4 228 Rome, Imperial Fora, model
9.5 234 Rome, Coliseum, beast elevator, plan
9.6 234 Rome, Coliseum, beast elevator, elevation
9.7 234 Rome, Coliseum and environs, model
9.8 237 Rome, Arch of Titus
9.9 238 Vatican City, Cancelleria reliefs
9.10 239 Vatican City, Cancelleria relief, head of Vespasian
9.11 239 Vatican City, Cancelleria relief, Domitian transformed
into Nerva
9.12 244–5 Rome, Palatine: Palace of Domitian, plan
9.13 245 Rome, Palatine: Palace of Domitian, reconstruction
9.14 248 Rome, Piazza Navona, air view
9.15 249 Rome, Stadium of Domitian, plan
9.16 249 Rome, Stadium of Domitian, model
10.1 254 Ostia, plan
10.2 255 Ostia, air view
10.3 259 Ostia, Casa dei Dipinti, reconstruction
10.4 261 Ostia, harbors, plan
10.5 261 Ostia, harbors, air view
10.6 261 Ostia, harbor of Trajan, model
10.7 264 Ostia, Mithraeum of Felicissimus, plan
10.8 268 Rome, Trajan’s Market
10.9 272 Rome, Trajan’s Column, detail
11.1 275 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Serapeum at Canopus,
“pumpkin” vaults
11.2 276 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, plan
11.3 276 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, model
11.4 278 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Teatro Marittimo, air view
11.5 282 Rome, Temple of Venus and Rome, model
11.6 282 Rome, Temple of Venus and Rome, plan
11.7 284 Rome, Temple of Venus and Rome, apse with scale figure
11.8 284 Antinous
11.9 285 Rome, Pantheon
11.10 287 Rome, Pantheon, plan
11.11 287 Rome, Pantheon, interior, restoration
11.12 290 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Piazza d’Oro, plan
11.13 293 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Piazza d’Oro, reconstruction
11.14 293 Rome, Hadrian’s Mausoleum, reconstruction
11.15 293 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Canopus, plan
12.1 300 Roman road construction
12.2 306 Roman roads of the _ager Faliscus_
12.3 307 Faliscan roads of the _ager Faliscus_
12.4 311 Rome, Baths of Caracalla, air view
12.5 311 Rome, Baths of Caracalla, great hall, reconstruction
12.6 315 New York, Pennsylvania Station, McKim plan
12.7 315 New York, Pennsylvania Station, waiting room, before
“modernization”
12.8 316 Rome and environs, map showing aqueducts
12.9 318 Aqueducts near Capannelle, reconstruction (painting)
12.10 322 Rome, Aurelian’s Wall, from south
12.11 323 Rome, Aurelian’s Wall, plan, with major Imperial
monuments
13.1 328 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, “Bikini girls” mosaic
13.2 330–1 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, reconstruction
13.3 334 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, Circus Maximus,
mosaic
13.4 334 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, small hunting
scene, mosaic
13.5 338 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, large hunting
scene, mosaic
13.6 338 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, Labors of Hercules
mosaic, detail
13.7 343 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s,
west end, plan
13.8 343 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s,
Mausoleum F, stuccoes
13.9 346 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s,
Campo P, plan
13.10 348 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s,
Aedicula, reconstruction
1
Prehistoric Italy
In May of 1945 two young British Army officers, John Bradford and Peter
Williams-Hunt, based with the R.A.F. at Foggia in the province of
Puglia, near the heel of Italy, found that the World War II armistice
left them with time on their hands. Both trained archaeologists, they
readily prevailed upon the R.A.F. to combine routine training flights
with pushing back the frontiers of science. The result of their air
reconnaissance was to change profoundly the archaeological map of Italy.
The value of air-photography for archaeology had long been known; as
early as 1909 pictures taken from a balloon had revealed the plan of
Ostia, the port of ancient Rome. But the English, especially such
pioneers as Major G. W. G. Allen and O. G. S. Crawford, early took
the lead in interpreting, on photographs taken usually for military
purposes, vegetation-marks showing the presence and plan of ancient
sites buried beneath the soil, and invisible to the groundling’s eye.
Where the subsoil has been disturbed in antiquity by the digging of a
ditch, the increased depth of soil will produce more luxuriant crops
or weeds; where soil-depth is decreased by the presence of ancient
foundations, walls, floors, or roads, the crop will be thin, stunted,
lighter in color. Air-photographs taken in raking light, just after
sunrise or just before sunset in a dry season, especially over
grassland, will highlight these buried landscapes. The Tavoliere, the
great prairie where Foggia lies, thirty by fifty-five miles in extent,
suits these conditions admirably; its mean annual rainfall is only 18.6
inches (0.6 in July) or half that of Rome, and Rome is a dry place, at
least in summer. So Bradford and Williams-Hunt had high hopes for their
project.
In a Fairchild high-wing monoplane, in which the position of struts
and nacelles does not interfere with the operation of a hand-held
camera, they took oblique shots at 1,000 feet with an air camera of
8-inch focal length. For vertical shots they used, at 10,000 feet, air
cameras of 20-inch focal length, mounted tandem to produce overlap for
stereoscopic examination, which makes pictures three-dimensional. The
thousands of resulting photographs were at a scale of about 1:6000, or
ten inches to the mile, over four times as large as the best available
ground maps (the 1:25,000 series of the Italian Istituto Geografico
Militare.)
Bradford, realizing the archaeological value of the millions of
air-photographs taken during the war by the British and American
Strategic Air Commands, prevailed upon the authorities to deposit
prints, giving complete coverage for Italy, in Rome (with the British
and Swedish Schools) and the American Academy. The initiative of Prof.
Kirk H. Stone procured a similar set for the University of Wisconsin.
The stereoscopic study of these collections will mean great strides
in Italian archaeology. The accuracy of the data obtained is amazing:
ditches estimated from the photographs with a good micrometer scale to
be four feet wide proved when measured on the ground to be precisely
that.
What the photographs revealed, scattered over the 1650 square miles
of the Tavoliere, were over 2000 settlements, some up to 800 yards
across, surrounded by one to eight ditches. Within the ditched area,
and approached by in-turned, tunnel-shaped entrances, were smaller,
circular patches, which looked like hut-enclosures, or “compounds.”
Three examples of the sites photographed will illustrate typical
settlements. At a site identified on the map (Fig. 1.1) as San Fuoco
d’Angelone, eight miles northeast of Foggia, the photographs showed a
ditch-enclosed oval measuring 500 × 400 feet, and an inner circle 260
feet across, with what proved to be the characteristic funnel-shaped
opening. At Masseria Fongo, four miles south of Foggia, the oval was
estimated at 480 yards long, with a 12-foot entrance and 12-foot
ditches. At Passo di Corvo (Fig. 1.2), eight miles northeast of Foggia,
the enclosure measured 800 × 500 yards, and the details were revealed
by masses of flowers, yellow wild cabbage, mauve wild mint, white
cow-parsley.
So much for results from the study of photographs. The next step for
Bradford was to spend a fruitful season in the study. Archaeology
is a comparative science: to know one site is to know nothing;
to know a thousand is to see some factors unifying all. Thus the
settlement-shapes of the Tavoliere are reminiscent of the fortified
stronghold of Dimini in Thessaly (Fig. 1.3), dated by its excavation
in the late neolithic age, which in Greece means about 2650 B.C. They
also look like the fortified site of Altheim near Munich (Fig. 1.4),
also late neolithic, which in Germany means about 1900 B.C. Culture in
Europe moved from east to west; in general the farther west the site,
the later it reached its successive levels of culture. The Tavoliere
sites, lying geographically between Dimini and Altheim, might well be
intermediate in date also; by their shape, at any rate, they are almost
certainly to be dated sometime in the neolithic period. So much can be
guessed before the indispensable next step is taken. The next step is
excavation.
[Illustration: _Prehistoric Sites in Italy_
Arene Candide 12
Balzi Rossi 14
Bologna 11
Cagliari 27
Caltagirone 31
Campo di Servirola 7
Canale 30
Capestrano 17
Castellazzo di Fontanellato 5
Como 1
Cozzo Pantano 34
Dessueri 37
Este 4
Foggia 22
Golasecca 2
Lipari Is. 29
Masseria Fongo 23
Matera 25
Milocca 35
Molfetta 24
Ostia 19
Padua 3
Pantalica 33
Parma 6
Passo di Corvo 20
Plemmirio 36
Reggio Emilia 8
Rimini 13
Rome 18
San Fuoco d’Angelone 21
San Giovenale 16
Spina 9
Su Nuraxi 26
Thapsos 32
Torre Galli 28
Vibrata Valley 15
Villanova 10
1. Como
2. Golasecca
3. Padua
4. Este
5. Castellazzo di Fontanellato
6. Parma
7. Campo di Servirola
8. Reggio Emilia
9. Spina
10. Villanova
11. Bologna
12. Arene Candide
13. Rimini
14. Balzi Rossi
15. Vibrata Valley
16. San Giovenale
17. Capestrano
18. Rome
19. Ostia
20. Passo di Corvo
21. San Fuoco d’Angelone
22. Foggia
23. Masseria Fongo
24. Molfetta
25. Matera
26. Su Nuraxi
27. Cagliari
28. Torre Galli
29. Lipari Is.
30. Canale
31. Caltagirone
32. Thapsos
33. Pantalica
34. Cozzo Pantano
35. Milocca
36. Plemmirio
37. Dessueri
FIG. 1.1 Prehistoric sites in Italy.]
[Illustration: FIG. 1.2 Passo di Corso, low-oblique air photo (May
1945, by John Bradford) across the Neolithic settlement, 7 miles N.E.
of Foggia. Crop-marks revealed the parallel lines of surrounding
ditches (in foreground and background), with many enclosures inside.]
[Illustration: FIG. 1.3 Dimini, a late Neolithic site in Thessaly.
(H. Bengtson, _Grosser historischer Weltatlas_, 44a)]
[Illustration: FIG. 1.4 Altheim, a late Neolithic site near Munich.
(H. Bengtson, _Grosser historischer Weltatlas_, 44f)]
Modern archaeological excavation is neither haphazard nor a treasure
hunt. It is a scientific business, preceded by careful survey,
conducted with minute attention to levels and strata (the level in
which an object is found determines its relative date; comparison
with similar objects found elsewhere that can be dated determines its
absolute date), and followed by scrupulous recording and publication of
the evidence. A dig is not a treasure hunt. Naturally an archaeologist
is pleased if he turns up gold or precious stones, but he knows in
advance that an old stone age site will produce neither, but rather
something infinitely more valuable, an intimate knowledge of man’s
past, gained from ordinary humble objects of daily household use. To
find these was Bradford’s object when he began to dig. (Williams-Hunt
had meanwhile been posted to the Far East.) And he found them. Passo
di Corvo, for example, yielded typical neolithic artifacts: stone
axes, querns (hand-mills for grinding grain), bone points, stone
sickles, pendants, spindle-whorls, and, best of all, vast quantities
of potsherds, over 4,000 found in fourteen days. The potsherd is the
archaeologist’s best friend. Pots are virtually indestructible, they
turn up everywhere, and comparison with pots of similar shape and
decoration, found elsewhere, yields precious information about dates,
imports, exports, trade-routes, and the aesthetic taste of the pot’s
maker and user.
S. Fuoco d’Angelone, for example, yielded typical neolithic pottery:
rich brown or glossy black burnished ware, undecorated but thin-walled,
symmetrical, and well-made (by hand, not on a potter’s wheel; sooner
or later the use of the wheel produces shoddy commercialism). Together
with it were found sherds of a fine-textured buff ware, painted with
wide bands (_fasce larghe_) of tomato red. There were also very thin
burnished bowls in cream and gray.
After excavation, the archaeologist must return to the study and to
the comparative method; an exacting and exciting pursuit of parallels,
especially for the pottery, in the hope of dating it and tracking down
its origins. The facts are recorded in technical excavation reports,
often buried in obscure or local journals. Oftener, the results of
excavation are unpublished (it is always more fun to dig than to
write.) In that case, the facts are treasured up in the notes or the
memories of the excavator, often a local archaeologist. He belongs to
a splendid breed, burning with enthusiasm, brimful of knowledge, and
eager to share what he knows, in conversation if not in print.
So Bradford read and talked, and found his parallels. The wares he had
excavated were familiar; they had been found elsewhere in the heel of
Italy, especially opposite or in Matera, in Lucania, and Molfetta, in
Puglia, between Barletta and Bari, in contexts dated 2600–2500 B.C. And
this pottery proves to have affinities, too, with that of Thessalian
Sesklo, a neolithic site not far from Dimini. This same type of pottery
can be traced across the Balkans into Illyricum, and thence across
the Adriatic to Bradford’s sites, giving in the process a glimpse
of neolithic man as a more daring seafarer than had previously been
thought.
And so, by patient, detailed work like Bradford’s, the newly-discovered
sites are fitted into and enrich the pattern of the neolithic world.
The total mapping fills a huge gap in the picture of the findspots of
Neolithic sites in Italy. Before 1945, some 170 were known; now the
Tavoliere alone makes up more than that number. And Passo di Corvo
becomes the largest known neolithic site in Europe.
The things the archaeologists did not find are instructive, too. No
weapons were found: the inference is that the Tavoliere folk were
unwarlike. There is no evidence that the sites survived into the
Bronze Age: it looks as though, like unwarlike peoples all too often
elsewhere, they were wiped out in an invasion.
It is clear from the artifacts and the site-plans that neolithic man
on the Tavoliere lived like neolithic man elsewhere in Italy, that the
culture was on the whole uniform. He lived in a wattle-and-daub hut
with a sunken floor, a central hearth, and a smokehole--the remote and
primitive predecessor of the atrium-and-impluvium house of historic
Roman times, whose central apartment had a hole in the roof with a
pool below to catch rain water. Fortunately for us, his wife was a
slovenly housekeeper: from her rubbish we can reconstruct her way of
life. In his enclosures he penned the animals he had domesticated:
other Italian sites have yielded the bones of the sheep, goat, horse,
ox, ass, and pig. The dog has not yet become man’s best friend in
the neolithic Tavoliere. Primitive man in Italy had a rudimentary
religion: the Ligurian cave of Arene Candide has yielded statuettes of
big-breasted, pregnant women, which probably had something to do with
a fertility cult. In another Ligurian cave, Balzi Rossi, over 200,000
stone implements have been found. Not far up the Adriatic coast from
Foggia, in the Vibrata valley, lie the foundations of 336 neolithic
huts. We know something, too, of neolithic man’s burial customs, and
macabre enough they seem: skulls have been found smeared with red
ochre; apparently the flesh was stripped from the corpse--a practice
called in Italian _scarnitura_--and the stain applied to the bared
bone. All this suggests a level of culture far below that which the
Near East was enjoying at the same time: Passo di Corvo’s mud huts are
contemporary with the Great Pyramid of Egypt, with palaces and temples
in Mesopotamia (see Fig. 1.5). But there is no evidence that neolithic
man in Italy was priest-ridden or tyrannized over, as the Egyptians and
Akkadians were; he is rather to be thought of as the ancestor of the
sturdy peasant stock which was to form the backbone of Roman Italy.
* * * * *
[Illustration: FIG. 1.5 Comparative table of early cultures.
(C. F. C. Hawkes, _The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe,_ Table IV)]
[Illustration: FIG. 1.6 _Terramara_ at Castellazzo di Fontanellato,
Pigorini’s plan.
(G. Säflund, _Le terremare_, Pl. 93)]
Bradford’s methods are scientific, but archaeology has not always
been the exact science it is today. Americans may be proud that the
first recorded scientific excavation took place in Indian mounds in
Virginia. The date was 1784, and the excavator was Thomas Jefferson.
But thereafter archaeological progress was sporadic, and relapse
accompanied advance. In the mid-nineteenth century most excavations in
Italy were more like rape than science, their aim being to dredge up
treasures for the nobility and the art-dealers.
Thus when in 1889 the distinguished Italian anthropologist Luigi
Pigorini excavated the site of Castellazzo di Fontanellato, twelve
miles northwest of Parma, in the Po Valley, there was no absolute
guarantee that the dig would be scientific. Yet Pigorini’s announced
results have colored the whole picture of the Bronze Age in Italy,
and it is only recently that they have been doubted. The story of his
announced results, the growing scepticism, the re-examination of the
ground, and the present state of the question is an illuminating if
sobering one.
What Pigorini was after was the evidence for the prehistoric
settlements which have come to be called _terremare_. They owe their
discovery, their name, and their destruction to the fertilizing quality
of the earth of which they are composed. _Terra marna_ is the name in
the dialect of Emilia for the compost heaps formed by the decay of
organic matter in certain mounds of ancient date, mostly south of the
Po. Farmers repeatedly found potsherds and other artifacts, often of
bronze, in these mounds, and Pigorini determined to examine them before
all the evidence should be dispersed. Castellazzo di Fontanellato is
the most famous of his efforts.
He found clear, though meager, evidence in pottery and metal artifacts
(axes, daggers, pins, razors) of a Bronze Age culture, but no report
of the levels in which he found these objects survives, and indeed in
this as in most _terremare_ the farmer’s shovel has completely upset
the levels. Roman terracotta, medieval pottery, and prehistoric bronze
axe-heads jostle one another in confusion. Besides, the prehistoric
site has been continuously inhabited, and, in consequence, the soil
continuously turned over, ever since Roman times.
Pigorini apparently dug isolated, random trenches rather than the
continuous ones which would have enabled him to trace a ground-plan
securely. It is hard to see, without more evidence than he supplies,
how the grandiose grid of his ultimate plan (Fig. 1.6) could be deduced
from the disconnected series of trenches figured on his earliest one.
Though he had to contend with the most vexatious swampy conditions,
working in the midst of constant seepage and ubiquitous mud, in which
a rectangular grid could hardly have survived, he was nevertheless
able to persuade himself, at Castellazzo, of the existence of a ditch
and a rampart, reinforced by wooden piling. (Post-holes and piles he
certainly found, and photographed.)
By 1892 he had convinced himself that his site had a trapezoidal
plan, surrounded by a ramparted ditch thirty yards wide and ten feet
deep. (Some of his dimensions suggest a prehistoric unit of measure
in multiples of five; others a foreshadowing of the Roman foot of
twenty-nine centimeters.) Running water derived from a tributary of the
Po supplied the hypothetical ditch, which was crossed on the south by a
wooden drawbridge thirty yards wide and sixty yards long. South of the
site Pigorini claimed to have found a cemetery (M) perfectly square in
plan, for cremation urn-burials, and westward another, rectangular one.
In 1893 he announced the discovery, within the rampart, halfway
along its east side, of a mound in a reserved area or _templum_ (G),
surrounded by its own ditch; in 1894 this _templum_ became the _arx_,
or citadel of the settlement, having in its midst a sacrificial trench
(_mundus_) containing in its floor, for the deposit of the sacrificial
fruits, five sinkholes each equipped with a wooden cover.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.7 Su Nuraxi, a Sardinian _nuraghe_. (_Illustrated
London News_)]
[Illustration: BURIAL RITES in the EARLY IRON AGE
FIG. 1.8 Cremating and inhumating peoples of prehistoric Italy. (D.
Randall-MacIver, _Italy before the Romans_, p. 45)]
In 1895 and 1896 he published claims to have found within the rampart
a grid of streets (_cardines_ and _decumani_), which he held to be the
ancestor of the grid in Roman camps and Roman colonies. The total plan
was alleged to resemble that of primitive Rome (Roma Quadrata), and
the wooden bridge was compared to Rome’s early wooden one across the
Tiber, the Pons Sublicius. At another site one of Pigorini’s pupils
claimed to have found traces of a ritual furrow like that with which
hundreds of years later the Romans were to mark the line of the future
walls of a colony. For Pigorini and his school regarded the _terremare_
folk as the ancestors of an Iron Age people called Villanovans, and
ultimately of the Romans of historical times.
Since Pigorini’s death in 1920 other archaeologists have been moved to
go over the ground again, revising his findings and his inferences.
Having excogitated his grid plan for Castellazzo di Fontanellato,
Pigorini seems to have generalized from it rather more widely than the
evidence warranted. While rectangular or square plans are not denied
for some _terremare_ (modern investigators enumerate ten), many sites
are oval, not unlike Bradford’s Tavoliere hut-settlements. In fact
the _terremare_ plan varies more than Pigorini was willing to admit.
Furthermore, parallel in date to the _terremare_ are unmoated hut
villages and true lake dwellings. (The _terremare_ are lake dwellings
without the lake, presumably a reminiscence in the minds of immigrants
from beyond the Alps of their primordial homes.)
But while we must grant to his critics that Pigorini had, to say the
least, a strong imagination, we need not go so far as one of his
detractors who argued that the _terremare_ are Bronze Age pigsties.
One site has an area of thirty-five acres, which is a bit large for a
pigsty.
The _terremare_ are important: they preserve the memory of an immigrant
population, distinct in culture from the aborigines. The distinguishing
marks of this new culture are knowledge of metal-working, a pottery
identifiable by its exaggerated half-moon handles, and the practice
of cremation rather than inhumation. On the evidence, we must suppose
that this new culture emerged about 1500 B.C. as a fusion of indigenous
hut-dwellers and immigrant lakedwellers. Bronze bits found in their
settlements show that they had domesticated the horse, and there is
some evidence, outside the _terremare_, for dogs as well, described by
Randall-MacIver as “doubtless good woolly animals of a fair size.”
In fact the Bronze Age in Italy of which the _terremare_ are a part
represents a considerable cultural development beyond the level of the
Neolithic Tavoliere folk. Cave dwellings from Liguria show a people
using wagons and ox-drawn plows. Chemical analysis of their copper
shows that some of it comes from central Germany, though a copper
ingot from Sardinia betrays by its impressed double-ax trade-mark some
connection with Minoan Crete. (The _terremare_ are contemporary with
Mycenae.) Bronze Age women wore jewelry: jadeite arm rings, necklaces
of pierced red coral, bored stones, or clamshells. Curious stamps
called _pintaderas_ were used to impress a pattern in color on the
body. A horned mannikin, with penis erect, from Campo di Servirola, now
in the museum of Reggio Emilia, may be evidence for fertility cult,
like the neolithic female idols from the Ligurian caves.
The Po valley in the Bronze Age was a melting pot in which a variety of
cultures, indigenous and immigrant, mingled. What is to be read from
the excavations is almost a recapitulation in this early period, in
terms of creative imitation of imported and native forms and ideas, of
the whole cultural history of Rome. To our knowledge of this culture,
and to our appreciation of the importance of scrupulous archaeological
recording, the curious story of Pigorini’s _terremare_ contributed not
a little.
* * * * *
The island of Sardinia to the archaeologist is a fascinating curiosity,
isolated, until recently, by its unhealthy climate and its odd
dialect. In prehistoric times, however, while Sardinia’s development
does not parallel that of the mainland, its level of culture appears
from archaeological finds and monuments to have been higher, not
lower, than that of Italy proper. This superior level seems to have
been due to Sardinia’s richness in metals. To protect the wealth, the
prehistoric islanders built enormous watchtowers, called _nuraghi_,
which developed into veritable feudal castles with villages nestling at
their feet.
Recent excavations (1951–56) by Professor Giovanni Lilliu of the
University of Cagliari have cast clearer light on Sardinia’s culture.
He excavated the huge _nuraghe_ of Su Nuraxi, at Barumini, some thirty
miles north of Cagliari. When he began, Su Nuraxi was a small hill
covered with ruins, earth, and scrub. Now six campaigns have revealed
a truncated conical tower (Fig. 1.7), built, without mortar, of huge
many-sided blocks of basalt. Clustered above the tower he found a small
Village; the whole complex--tower plus the village--is surrounded by
other _nuraghi_ on neighboring hills. To the original single tower
four others, with upper courses of dressed stone, were added in a
clover-leaf pattern, linked by a curtain-wall enclosing a court sixty
feet deep, with a reservoir fifteen feet deep for drinking water. The
central tower is three stories high, with a corbelled or false-vaulted
roof built of gradually converging horizontal courses. The upper
stories were reached by a spiral stair in the thickness of the wall.
Lilliu meticulously observed stratigraphy; for dating, he submitted
samples of carbonized matter from the towers to laboratories in Milan,
and was told that the Carbon 14 process dates his remains as 1270 B.C.
± 200 years.
The C^{14} method of dating, an American device discovered and
perfected by Professor W. F. Libby and his associates at the University
of Chicago Institute of Nuclear Studies, is sufficiently new to
deserve a word of explanation here. All living matter has a uniform
radioactivity associated with its carbon content. The supply of the
radioactive isotope C^{14} ceases when living matter, wood, foliage,
etc., dies. Scientists can calculate the time elapsed since death by
counting the residual radioactivity of C^{14} in the organic specimen,
since the rate of decay can be described by specifying how long it
takes for half the number of atoms in a given sample to disintegrate.
For C^{14} this period, called its “half-life,” is 5700 years. If the
present assay of a specimen of organic matter, for instance, is 12.5
C^{14} explosions per minute per gram of carbon, an ancient organic
sample assaying at 6.25 would be 5700 years old (the half-life of
C^{14}). Checking with samples of known date has proved the method
accurate within 200 years either way. For most classical objects found
in association with organic matter this is valueless, since a trained
archaeologist can date a pot, an inscription, or an architectural block
by eye within fifty years or less. But the method is invaluable for
making more precise the great sweeps of time in prehistory. Thus the
lowest C^{14} date for Su Nuraxi, 1070 B.C., would take it almost into
the Iron Age in Italy; at this date culture on the mainland was much
more primitive.
Lilliu calls the period of the four added towers Lower Nuragic I, and
dates it 800–750 B.C. These smaller towers contain each a single cell
with two rows of loopholes. They are guard-posts, and are equipped with
speaking-tubes for the guards use when challenging.
In the next period, Upper Nuragic I, dated by Lilliu 750–500 B.C., the
earth having subsided, the four towers and the walls were reinforced.
The ground-level entrance was blocked, and replaced by a new entrance
twenty-one feet higher, accessible only by ladder. Battlements now
replaced the loopholes. Stone balls found in the excavations were
apparently the projectiles hurled from these battlements. From a
watchtower added to the central _nuraghe_ come conch shells, perhaps
intended to be sounded like trumpets.
The surrounding village, of 200 or 300 huts, separated by narrow
labyrinthine passages, housed the troops; the chief lived in the tower.
The village, hard-hit when the Carthaginians sacked it late in the
sixth century B.C., survived in decadence till the late first century
B.C. The typical oval or rectangular plan of an early Su Nuraxi village
hut resembles that of the Bronze Age in Sicily or Cyprus. One contained
a pit for votive offerings. Sixty round huts, with lower courses in
stone, have been dated in Upper Nuragic I. They would have been roofed,
like shepherd huts in Sardinia to this day, with logs and branches
weighted by stones. One larger circle has seats around its inner
perimeter. It was equipped with shelves, a niche, a stone basin, and
a sacred stone (a model of a _nuraghe_). Lilliu thinks this must have
been the warriors’ council chamber.
Su Nuraxi yielded artifacts in stone, terracotta, bronze, iron, lead,
and amber, the latter showing connections with trade routes to the
Baltic. Lilliu found axes, millstones, pestles, and bronze votive
statuettes. Pottery and _fibulae_ (humble safety-pins, whose shapes,
varying from age to age, are a help in dating) suggest connections
with Phoenicia--via Carthage--and Etruria, whose rich and, in certain
respects, mysterious culture is discussed in the next chapter.
In a later phase, after the Carthaginian invasion, the huts have
fan-shaped rooms, each devoted to a specialized occupation, baking,
oil-pressing, stone-tool making. A pair of stone boot-trees, or
shoe-lasts, presumably from a cobbler’s shop, was one of the more
curious finds. Gewgaws in glass paste, poor, decadent, commercialized,
but traditional in design, testify to the material and aesthetic
poverty of this period. Only the last phase yielded tombs, but a huge
stele with a curved top may have marked the entrance to what the
peasants call a Giant’s Grave, a Stone Age slab-edged tomb, forming a
corridor sometimes as much as twenty yards along, from which two wings
branch off to form a semicircular approach.
This scientific dig provides a fixed foundation for future research
into earlier ages on Sardinia. Lilliu is understandably excited about
the “dynamic spirit” revealed by the creators of this amazingly early
massiveness, but like all massiveness, whether of pyramid, ziggurat, or
Roman Imperial palace, it undoubtedly justifies the unhappy inference
that with all this grandeur went autocracy.
* * * * *
Perhaps the mainland political system in the early Iron Age was
less rigid; at any rate it can boast no architectural remains as
sophisticated as the Sardinian _nuraghi_. But the artifacts, especially
from graves, are more numerous than for the Bronze or Neolithic Ages,
and the graves show that roughly speaking the peninsula was divided
in the early Iron Age between two cultures (Fig. 1.8): the folk west
of a line drawn from Rome to Bimini cremated their dead; those east
of that line inhumed them. In and near Rome the two burial rites are
mingled: the significant inference from this fact will be explained
later. Because the finds are so much more numerous on the mainland,
the resulting inferences involve a much more complex subdivision into
cultures and periods. We may single out three sets of inferences, based
primarily on three major archaeological efforts. The first is Pericle
Ducati’s work at Bologna, which distinguished four cultural phases,
named from Villanova, the village where a major cemetery was found,
and from the Benacci and Arnoaldi estates, whence key finds come. The
second centers at Este, near Padua, famous for its bronze _situle_ or
buckets finely decorated by punching from the back, in the technique
called _repoussé_. The third is Paolo Orsi’s exemplary work in Sicily
and South Italy. The complex chronology is best set out in a tabular
view (see facing page).
THE IRON AGE
-----+--------------------------------------+------------+-------------
| ITALY | SICILY |GREECE &
DATES+------------+------------+------------+ |AEGAEAN
B.C. | _North_ | _Central_ | _South_ | |
-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------
| | | | |Troy VIII
900 |Proto- | |Torre Galli,|Siculan III.|Geometric
| Villanovan| | Canale | | | pottery
-----+------------+------------+-----|------+-----|------+-------------
850 |Benacci I | | | | | |
-----+------------+------------+-----|------+-----|------+-------------
800 | |Early | | | | |
| | Etruscans | v | v |
-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------
|Benacci II | |Pantalica | |
750 | |Alban & | South | |
| | Forum | | |
| | graves | | |
-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------
| | | |Gk. col., |
700 | | | | Syracuse |Orientalizing
| | | | | pottery
-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------
650 |Arnoaldi |Etruscan | | |
| | | tombs | | |
-----+----|-------+------------+------------+------------+-------------
| | | | |Rise of |
600 | | | | | Carth. |
| v | | | Empire. |
-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------
550 | | | | |
-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------
|Marzabotto |Roman | | |Black-figure
500 | |republic. | | | ware
| | Capestrano| | |Troy IX
| | warrior | | |
-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------
| | | | |Red-figure
450 | | | | | ware
-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------
400 |La Tène | | | |
| Culture | | | |
-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------
The cremation cemetery excavated as early as 1853 at Villanova, near
Bologna, produced artifacts (ossuary urns, _fibulae_, razors, hairpins,
distaffs, bracelets, fish hooks, tweezers, _repoussé_ bronze belts
[see Fig. 1.9]) which match objects found later at other sites farther
south, in Latium and Etruria; e.g., the village in the process of
excavation since 1955 at San Giovenale, near Bieda, by H. M. King
Gustav VI of Sweden. Thus the inference is warranted that this whole
area was inhabited in the early Iron Age by a people unified in
culture. Since the Villanovans, unlike the aborigines, cremated their
dead, we infer that they were foreigners, probably invaders; that they
descended from the _terremare_ folk is not proven. That they lived in
wattle-and-daub huts roofed with carved beams is inferred from the
hut-urns (Fig. 1.10) in which the Southern Villanovans (in Rome and
Latium) placed the ashes of their dead. Though these huts show no great
advance over those of the Tavoliere or _terremare folk_, the people who
lived in them were skilled artisans, producing fine bronze work. The
finest example, from the late Arnoaldi period in Bologna (_ca._ 525
B.C.), is the Certosa _situla_ (Fig. 1.11), where the scenes portrayed
are so vivid that even a funeral comes to life. In one band is a
vignette of rustic festival, where a slave drags a pig by the hind leg,
a piper plays, and the lord of the manor ladles his wine while he waits
for a dinner of venison. The deer is being brought on a pole by two
slaves, while a curly-tailed dog marches beneath.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.9 Villanova artifacts.
(D. Randall-MacIver, _Villanova and Early Etruscans_, Pl. 2)]
[Illustration: FIG. 1.10 A hut-urn.
(D. Randall-MacIver, _Italy before the Romans_, fac. p. 66)]
Three other areas of Iron Age digs are worthy of mention. One is Este,
whose culture in general resembles Bologna’s, with fine bronze buckets,
belts, and pendants. A second is Golasecca, near Lago Maggiore, where,
as at Como, the finds reveal a people making a living as transport
agents, forwarding artifacts back and forth between the Transalpine
country, Etruria and the Balkans. The graves yield safety-pins, bronze
buckets, small jewelry of bronze, iron, amber and glass, horse-bits,
chariot-parts, helmets, spears, and swords. A third is the territory
of Picenum, on the central Adriatic coast; here the tombs are filled
(Fig. 1.12) with maces, greaves, breastplates, even chariots, as might
be expected from the ancestors of those thorns in Rome’s flesh, the
warlike Samnites. The unique Warrior of Capestrano (Fig. 1.13), found
in Picenum, shows how remote Picene culture was, about 500 _B.C._, from
the influences affecting the rest of the peninsula.
* * * * *
Finally, a brief word about Sicily in prehistory. Recent excavations of
over 400 graves in the Lipari Islands, and of a Siculan village near
Leontini, whose huts have front porches, and otherwise resemble those
of Latium, has established closer connections with the mainland than
used to be thought possible. But our main knowledge of Siculan culture
results from the earlier excavations of Paolo Orsi, near Syracuse,
and on either side of the toe of Italy, at Torre Galli and Canale.
These provided a model of archaeological method. The following table,
resulting from Orsi’s careful observation of the strata in which pots
of various fabrics were found in his digs near Syracuse, and of the
frequency of their distribution within levels, shows how division into
archaeological periods is arrived at. The Geometric ware (the latest)
is characteristic of the period he called Siculan III, contemporary
with Villanovan of the eighth century B.C.
+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+
| | _Yellow | _Fine | | _Red | | | |
| | surface | grey |_Mycenaean| polished |_Feather- |_Geometric_| _Siculan |
| _Site_ | ware_ | ware_ | ware_ | ware_ | pattern_ | | Period_ |
+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+
| Milocca | + + | | -- | | | | Early II |
+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+
| Plemmirio | | + | | | | | Early II |
+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+
| Cozzo Pantano | + | + | -- | | = | | II |
+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+
| Thapsos | -- | + + | + + | | | | II |
+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+
| Pantalica, N. | | = | | + + | | -- | II |
+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+
| Caltagirone | | = | | + | = | + | Late II |
+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+
| Dessueri | | = | | -- | -- | | Late II |
+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+
| Pantalica, S. | | | | + | + + | + | Early III |
+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+
(= signifies very rare; --, not common; +, not unusual; + +, very common)
Orsi’s sites at Torre Galli and Canale are urn fields, dated by the
Geometric pottery (meander and swastika patterns, the latter perhaps to
insure good luck) in the eighth century. They show a trade with Greece
150 years before the first Greek colony was founded in South Italy.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.11 The Certosa situla.
(D. Randall-MacIver, _The Iron Age in Italy_, frontispiece)]
[Illustration: FIG. 1.12 Picene tomb-furniture from Fabriano.
(F. von Duhn and F. Messerschmidt, _Italische Gräberkunde_, 2, Pl. 31)]
[Illustration: FIG. 1.13 Chieti, Museum. The Warrior of Capestrano.
(Italian Ministry of Public Instruction)]
If the prehistoric folk who lived on the Tavoliere, in the _terremare_,
and around the _nuraghi_, if the later Villanovans and Siculans have
any reality for us, we owe our insights into their culture to the
patience, critical spirit, and intelligence of Bradford, Pigorini’s
critics, Lilliu, Ducati, Orsi, and other archaeologists. Their work has
pushed back the frontiers of Italian history nearly two millennia, and
revealed to us how the energy and capacity for creative borrowing of
provincial Italians contributed to the ultimate strength and coherence
of the Roman state, or how the Italians fought the Romans when they
proved high-handed. To Roman culture of historical times another great
contribution was made by the Etruscans.
2
The Etruscans
Between Tiber and Arno there flourished, while Rome was still a
collection of mud huts above the Tiber ford, a rich, energetic, and
mysterious people, the Etruscans, whose civilization was to influence
Rome profoundly. Their riches have been known to the modern world
ever since the systematic looting of the fabulous wealth of their
underground tombs began, as early as 1489. Visitors to the Vatican and
Villa Giulia Museums in Rome, and, better still, the Archaeological
Museum in Florence, can marvel at the splendid weapons, rich gold-work,
and handsome vases with which more or less scientific grave-robbers
have enriched the collections in the last hundred years. Travellers to
Tarquinia, on the Tuscan seaboard, can wonder at the strange, vivid
paintings and seemingly indecipherable inscriptions on the walls of
mysterious and intricate underground chambers. Etruscan bronze-work
inspired the sculptors of the Renaissance, Etruscan tombs were drawn by
the pen of the great engraver Piranesi, Etruscan cities and cemeteries
were described by perhaps the most interesting author, certainly the
best stylist, who ever wrote on archaeology, the Englishman George
Dennis.
Dennis’ _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, though its last
edition appeared in 1883, is still the best general introduction to
Etruscology. His achievement is the more remarkable in the light of
the conditions under which he worked: execrable roads, worse lodging,
and malaria stalking the whole countryside. In his day Etruscan tombs
were exploited exclusively in the interest of the art dealers, with
methods utterly unscientific. Artifacts without commercial value were
ruthlessly destroyed: it is heart-rending to read Dennis’ account of
the rape of Vulci:
“Our astonishment was only equalled by our indignation when we
saw the labourers dash [coarse pottery of unfigured and ...
unvarnished ware, and a variety of small articles in black clay] to
the ground as they drew them forth, and crush them beneath their
feet as things ‘cheaper than seaweed.’ In vain I pleaded to save
some from destruction; for though of no remarkable worth, they
were often of curious and elegant forms, and valuable as relics of
the olden time, not to be replaced; but no, it was all _roba di
schiocchezza_--‘foolish stuff’--the [foreman] was inexorable; his
orders were to destroy immediately whatever was of no pecuniary
value, and he could not allow me to carry away one of these relics
which he so despised.”
Unfortunately, looting of this kind produced much of the material
in our museums, whose precise findspots (from the German _Fundort_,
the precise place where an archaeologically significant object was
found) are consequently often not known. On the other hand scientific
excavation, when it came, in the mid-nineteenth century found still
some tombs unplundered.
Our knowledge of Etruscan civilization is almost entirely a triumph
of this modern scientific archaeology, since written Etruscan, with
no known affinities, is still largely undeciphered, though scientific
methods have made large strides possible. In the last three
generations archaeologists have attacked and in great measure solved
the problem of the origin of the Etruscans, the nature of their cities,
their political organization, their religious beliefs and practices,
the degree of originality in their creative arts, their life and
customs. The result is a composite picture of the greatest people to
dominate the Italian peninsula before the Romans.
* * * * *
As to origins, the Etruscans might have been indigenous, or come down
over the Alps, or, as most of the ancients believed, have come by sea
from Asia Minor. The difference of their burial customs and, probably,
their language from those of their neighbors makes it unlikely that
their ruling class was native like, for example, the Villanovans; the
archaeological evidence for their links with the North is very late,
and the Northern theory has tended to fall along with the discrediting
of Pigorini’s notions (based, as we saw, on unwarranted reconstruction
of the _terremare_) about a single line of descent for Etruscan and
Italic peoples. There remains the theory of Near Eastern origin, first
stated in the fifth century B.C. by the Greek historian Herodotus,
and recently (in the 1930’s) given some slight support by Italian
excavators’ discovery of an inscription dated about 600 B.C. on the
island of Lemnos, off the coast of Asia Minor opposite Troy. Though the
Lemnian dialect is non-Indo-European, and therefore, like Etruscan,
cannot be read, its archaic letters can be transliterated. Beginning
with the bottom center line (Fig. 2.1), continuing with the line on
the far left, and reading _boustrophedon_ (alternately from right to
left and from left to right, like an ox plowing), it reads _evistho
zeronaith zivai/ sialchveiz aviz/ maraz mav/ vanalasial zeronai
morinail/ aker tavarzio/ holaiez naphoth ziazi_. The resemblance
to the alphabet and the art-forms of the Aules Feluskes stele from
Etruscan Vetulonia (Fig. 2.2) is obvious. The particular letter-form
transcribed as _th_ occurs elsewhere only in Phrygia in Asia Minor.
The very words and word-endings of the Lemnian stele can be found on
Etruscan inscriptions. Thus the inscription shows at the very least
that on an island “geographically intermediate between Asia Minor
and Italy a language very similar to Etruscan was employed by some
persons.” The ancient tradition localizing the original home of the
Etruscans somewhere in or near northwest Asia Minor receives here some
archaeological support.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.1 Lemnos. Inscription in local dialect, similar
to Etruscan.
(M. Pallottino, _Etruscologia_, Pl. 4)]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.2 Vetulonia. Aules Feluskes stele.
(M. Pallottino, _Etruscologia_, Pl. 21)]
But the important thing is not where they came from, but how their
culture was formed. The archaeological evidence justifies the
hypothesis that they were a small but vigorous military aristocracy
from the eastern Mediterranean, established in central Italy, where
they built, by borrowing and merging, upon a structure created by
the Villanovans. A new approach, the analysis of bones from Etruscan
tombs to ascertain the blood types of their ancient occupants, may,
by comparison with the persistent blood types of modern Tuscans,
enable the archaeologist to determine what proportion of the ancient
population was native and what intrusive.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.3 Early Italy, to illustrate Etruscan and other
sites. Inset: early Rome. (V. Scramuzza and P. MacKendrick, _The
Ancient World_, Fig. 32a)
REPUBLICAN ROME
ROMAN NUMERALS INDICATE THE FOUR REGIONS (*CITY TRIBES)
I SUCUSANA
II ERSQUILINA
III COLLINA
IV PALATINE
-- CITY OF THE FOUR REGIONS
---- SERVIAN CITY
KEY
1 TABULARIUM
2 ARX
3 COMITIUM AND CURIA
4 BASILICA ÆMILIA
5 T. OF VESTA
6 REGIA
7 CLOACA MAXIMA
8 T. OF GREAT MOTHER
9 T. OF JUPITER VICTOR
10 FORUM BOARIUM
11 SUBLICIAN BRIDGE
12 ÆMILIAN BRIDGE
13 Pta. FLUMENTANA
14 Pta. CARMENTALIS
15 CAPITOLIUM
16 FORUM HOLITORIUM
17 T. OF TELLONA
18 CIRCUS OF FLAMINIUS
19 POMPEY’S THEATRE
20 T. OF QUIRINUS
21 T. OF FORTUNE
22 FABRICIAN BRIDGE
23 BRIDGE OF CESTIUS
EARLY ROME AND ITALY
]
* * * * *
Archaeology tells us, too, that Etruscan civilization is a culture of
cities. Ancient literary sources speak of a league of twelve Etruscan
places (Fig. 2.3), most of which have yielded important archaeological
material: from Veii, the great terracotta Apollo; at Cerveteri,
Vetulonia, Orvieto, and Perugia, the remarkable rock-cut tombs;
at Tarquinia, Vulci, and Chiusi, strikingly vivid tomb-paintings;
at Bolsena, Roselle, and Volterra, mighty fortification walls; at
Populonia, the slag-heaps from the iron works which made Etruria
prosperous. But the most interesting, and some of the latest, evidence
for Etruscan city-planning and fortifications comes from three sites,
two in the northern Etruscan sphere of influence: Marzabotto on the
River Reno, fifteen miles south of Bologna; Spina, near one of the
seven mouths of the Po; and one in northern Etruria itself, Bolsena,
ancient Volsinii.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.4 Marzabotto: grid plan. (J. B. Ward Perkins,
“Early Roman Towns in Italy,” Fig. 5)]
The first recorded excavations at Marzabotto date from the 1860’s,
but the ruins had been known since 1550. The striking discovery at
Marzabotto was that the site (dated by pottery in its necropolis to
the late sixth or early fifth centuries B.C.) had a regular, oriented,
rectangular grid of streets (Fig. 2.4), enclosing house-blocks
(_insulae_) averaging 165 × 35 yards. The main north-south street,
or _cardo_, and the main east-west street, or _decumanus_, were each
over forty-eight feet wide, the minor streets one third as broad. The
streets were paved, as they were not in Rome until 350 years later.
Drains ran beneath all the streets except the reserved area (the
Romans were to call it the _pomerium_) just inside the circuit-wall.
The house-plans resemble closely the fourth-century ones discovered in
the 1930’s at Olynthus, on the Chalcidice Peninsula in Greece, by an
American expedition. The house-doors had locks and keys. A number of
the buildings were recognizable as shops, with back rooms for living
quarters.
Bearing in mind the sobering experience of Pigorini’s unwarranted
claims about a grid plan for the _terremare_, we might be tempted
to scepticism about Marzabotto, except for two facts: Brizio, the
excavator, himself expressed doubts, as early as 1891, about Pigorini’s
reconstruction; furthermore, a re-examination of the site in 1953
confirmed the authenticity of Brizio’s findings.
The city is dominated, on the high ground to the northwest, by an
_arx_, bearing the footings, some of considerable size with impressive
moldings, of five structures, temples or altars. One of them, facing
south, and divided at the back into three _cellae_, is the prototype of
the Roman Capitolium, decorated by an Etruscan artist, and dedicated
to the triad Jupiter, Juno, Minerva (in Etruscan, Tin, Uni, Menerva).
Until World War II, when they were wantonly destroyed, the finds in
terracotta from the arx were preserved in the local museum. There
were revetments, plaques forming a thin veneer of fired clay, with
nail-holes for affixing them to the wooden frame of a typical Tuscan
temple. They included archaic antefixes: ornamental terracotta caps to
mask the unsightly ends of half-round roof tiles. Terracotta revetments
like these, for wooden construction, continue to be canonical in Roman
temples down to the first century B.C.: marble as a building material
does not come into use until after the middle of the second century
B.C. Under the lee of the arx was a necropolis with contents like those
found in Gallic graves, mute evidence of the occupation of Marzabotto
by the wave of Gauls that brought terror into Italy early in the fourth
century B.C. In sum, Marzabotto is so perfect an example of an Etruscan
town-site that it merits the name of the Etruscan Pompeii.
Marzabotto remained for many years the only known Etruscan site with
a grid plan. Lying as it does outside Etruria proper, it was clearly
the product of Etruscan expansion northward. Since 1922 reclamation
by drainage canals has revealed the necropolis of another northern
outpost, Spina, near one of the mouths of the Po. Working under
the greatest difficulties from mud and seepage, archaeologists had
unearthed the contents of no less than 1213 tombs, often finding golden
earrings and diadems gleaming in the mud against the skulls in the
burials. These precious ornaments, together with necklaces of northern
amber, perfume-bottles in glass paste and alabaster from Egypt, and
Greek black- and red-figured vases, are now the pride of the Ferrara
Museum. Though the vases are Greek, both Etruscans and Greeks lived
in the site together, as is proved by _graffiti_ in both languages
scratched on the pottery. The spot, commanding the Adriatic, would be
the ideal port of entry for foreign luxury goods imported to satisfy
the taste for display of wealthy Etruscans. Wealthy as they were, they
were all equal in the sight of Charun: the skeletons were regularly
found with small change, to pay the infernal ferryman, clutched in
the bony fingers of their right hands. Pathetic graves of children
contained jointed dolls and game counters.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.5 Spina, plan.
(S. Aurigemma, _Il R. Museo di Spina in Ferrara_, Pl. 4)]
This rich and crowded cemetery was all that was known of Etruscan Spina
until further drainage operations in 1953, in the Pega Valley, south
of the original site (Fig. 2.5), brought to light not only 1195 new
tombs, but also further surprises. In October, 1956, an air-photograph
in color revealed beneath the modern irrigation canals the grid plan
(Fig. 2.6), resembling Marzabotto’s, of the port area of the ancient
Etruscan city. This time the _decumanus_ is a canal, sixty-six feet
wide, and the marshy site is revealed as a sort of Etruscan Venice.
Later air-photographs showed evidence of habitation over an area of
741 acres, large enough for a population of half a million. Since the
artifacts of this vast city are a little later in style than those
of Marzabotto, we assume that Spina flourished a little later. Almost
no weapons were found in the graves: Spina apparently felt secure
on her landlocked lagoon, but she reckoned without attacks from the
landward side. Few vases datable later than the late fifth century
are found in the graves: the inference is that Spina fell, about 390
B.C., before the same Gallic invasion that despoiled Marzabotto. The
two sites together reinforce each other in giving evidence for the
use by Etruscan city-planners of the kind of square or rectangular
grid of streets later made famous by Roman colonies and Roman camps;
unfortunately the question is still open whether the Etruscans invented
the grid used in Italy or whether it was a Greek import.
Archaeology tells us something about Etruscan fortifications, too, not
least important being some recent negative evidence: many polygonal
walls in Etruria and Latium, formerly believed Etruscan, are now proved
to be of Roman date. But excavations conducted since 1947 at Bolsena
by the French school in Rome have unearthed walls that are genuinely
Etruscan, surrounding an Etruscan site, and with Etruscan letters
hacked on the blocks. The marks, concentrated on strategic sections of
the wall, were probably apotropaic, intended to work as magic charms
against the enemy. One section of the wall was only one block thick.
It could not have been self-standing; it must have been intended as
the spine of an _agger_ or earthwork. Just such a spine was a part
of Rome’s earliest walls, and a similar technique is to be seen in
early earthworks at Anzio and Ardea. The discovery of these walls has
clinched the identification of Bolsena with Etruscan Volsinii, one of
the twelve cities, and the scene of regular meetings of the Etruscan
League. On the same site were found some temple foundations, but the
district is rich farmland, and it proved impossible to dig over a wide
enough area to discover whether Volsinii, like Marzabotto and Spina,
had a grid plan.
Grid plans suggest a sophisticated, if rigid, political organization
for Etruscan cities. Evidence for the political life of a civilization
normally comes from literature and inscriptions, very little from
artifacts. Yet the Aules Feluskes stele from Vetulonia, already
mentioned, shows a figure carrying a double-headed ax. Later, axes
were carried by the consul’s twelve bodyguards whom the Romans called
lictors. There seems to be a connection between the number twelve and
the twelve cities of the Etruscan confederacy. Vetulonia has yielded
another object of great interest to those who would understand Etruscan
political organization and Rome’s debt to it. In the Tomb of the Lictor
was found, besides a chariot and a metal coffer containing gold objects
wrapped in gold leaf, a double-headed iron ax (Fig. 2.7) hafted onto
a single iron rod surrounded by eight others. This is obviously the
prototype of the Roman _fasces_, and indeed Silius Italicus, a Roman
epic poet of the Silver Age, assigns the origin of the fasces to
Vetulonia. Such artifacts suggest that the ruler of an Etruscan city,
whether king or aristocrat, was surrounded by considerable pomp.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.6 Spina: grid plan, air-photograph. (ENIT,
_Italy’s Life_, p. 91)]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.7 Vetulonia: fasces from the Tomb of the Lictor.
(M. Pallottino, _Etruscologia_, Pl. 22)]
Etruscan political organization, according to Latin literary sources,
at one stage embraced Rome, and an Etruscan inscription on a shiny
black dish of the ware called _bucchero_, in Rome, goes a little way
to confirm this. More impressive confirmation comes from a frescoed
Etruscan tomb in Vulci, discovered by A. François in 1857. The fresco
has a historical subject, a battle scene, portraying two camps,
populated with figures labelled in Etruscan letters. The figures in
one camp are labelled Aule and Caele Vipina (in Latin, Vibenna), and
Macstrna (in Latin, _magister_); in the other, a figure labelled Cneve
Tarchunies Rumach (in Latin, Cn. Tarquinius Romanus), a member of the
dynasty of Roman kings which in the historical tradition is alleged
to have come from Etruria. Aule Vipina’s name recurs in a votive
inscription, from a context dated in the sixth century B.C., found
at Veii on a _bucchero_ sherd. The conclusion is inescapable that
A. and C. Vibenna were actual historical figures, Etruscan leaders
involved in a political struggle for the domination of Rome. Macstrna
is identified in Roman tradition with Servius Tullius, a good king
whose rule falls, according to the literary tradition, between the
tyrannical reigns of the two Tarquins. The fresco may represent an
episode in Servius Tullius’ life unknown to the Roman tradition,
before he became king in Rome; he is represented rescuing C. Vibenna
from the Romans, and killing Tarquin. Thus archaeology here not only
confirms the literary tradition of Rome’s Etruscan kings; it suggests
something about the internal policy of sixth-century Etruscan cities,
the existence in them, perhaps by a constitutional transformation from
an archaic kingship, of a strong military authority, like that of the
_magister populi_ or dictator of the later Roman Republic. Etruscan
tomb inscriptions, with their many personal names, show that official
Etruscan nomenclature included--as did the later Roman--the name of the
clan. Clan organization is in origin aristocratic. As later in Rome
aristocrats with a clan organization overthrew the original monarchy,
so too, we may suppose, the clans operated in Etruria.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.8 Etruscan alphabet.
(M. Pallottino, _The Etruscans_, p. 259)]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.9 Tarquinia: Tomb of Orcus, inscription.
(_Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum_, no. 5360)]
In the example just cited, light is thrown on Etruscan political
organization by the inscriptions on the fresco, and it is in fact
to inscriptions in the Etruscan alphabet (Fig. 2.8) that we owe
most of what we know about Etruscan politics. For, paradoxically,
though Etruscan, as a non-Indo-European language, is technically
indecipherable (in the sense that the longest inscriptions in it cannot
be entirely translated), valid inferences can be made about some of the
short ones. For example, one of the inscriptions on the wall of the
Tomb of Orcus at Tarquinia, discovered in 1868 (Fig. 2.9), reads in
part _zilath : amce : mechl : rasnal_, at first sight a most unlikely
combination of letters. Another Tarquinian inscription, this time
from a sarcophagus in the local museum (splendidly installed in the
fifteenth century Vitelleschi palace) reads in part _zilath rasnas_.
If we extrapolate from the Roman practice of recording on funerary
monuments the official career (_cursus honorum_) of the deceased
(beginning with the highest offices held), it appears likely that the
term _zilath_ refers to a magistracy. It occurs often, and, when it
occurs in a series, it occurs early; this warrants the inference that
it refers to an important magistracy. Certain late Latin inscriptions
from Etruria refer to a _praetor Etruriae_. Might not the _zilath_ be
the Etruscan official corresponding to the Roman praetor? This is the
more likely since the words _rasnal_, _rasnas_ closely resemble the
word _Rasenna_, which a Greek historian tells us is what the Etruscans
called themselves in their own language. There remains the word
_mechl_. A similar word, _methlum_, occurs next to the word _spur_ in a
curious text, the longest we have in Etruscan, written on the cloth of
a mummy wrapping now preserved in the museum of Zagreb, in Jugoslavia.
The context appears to list the institutions for whose benefit certain
religious ceremonies were performed. Several names of offices are
accompanied, and probably modified, by the words _spureni_, _spurana_.
It looks as if the word means “city.” Suppose the other institution,
the _methlum_, mentioned next to the _spur_, were of larger size. Might
it not be the Etruscan for “League”? The Tomb of Orcus inscription,
then, might mean, “He was the chief magistrate of the Etruscan League.”
It is by inferences like these that we force a language technically
indecipherable to tell us something about the political organization of
the mysterious people who spoke and wrote it.
Another example comes from a long inscription on a scroll held in the
hands of a sculptured figure on another sarcophagus in the Tarquinia
museum. It contains the word _lucairce_. In the text of the Zagreb
mummy-wrapping mention is made of ceremonies celebrated _lauchumneti_,
presumably a noun with an ending showing a place relation, and
obviously related in root to _lucairce_. And both seem connected with
the word _lucumo_, used in Latin to refer to Etruscan chiefs or kings.
_Lucairce_ contains the ending _-ce_ which we interpreted on the Tomb
of Orcus inscription as verbal; it might mean “was king (or chief).”
In that case _lauchumneti_, with its locative ending, might mean “in
the (priest)-king’s house” (Latin _Regia_). Thus by reasoning from the
known to the unknown we can find evidence from the Etruscans themselves
that at some stage they were ruled by kings. Since the Tarquinia
sarcophagus with the scroll is on the evidence of artistic techniques
dated late (second century B.C., a date at which the Roman Republic
fully controlled Etruria), we must suppose that by that date the
_lucumo_ had been reduced to a mere priestly function, much as in Rome
itself the priest who in Republican times discharged the sacred duties
once performed by Rome’s kings (_reges_) was still called the _rex
sacrorum_.
A final example. On Etruscan inscriptions occurs a root _purth-_, with
by-forms _purthne_, _purtsvana_, _eprthne_, _eprthni_, _eprthnevc_.
This looks like the root which occurs in the name of the king of
Clusium, transliterated by the Romans Lars Porsenna, he who in the
_Lays of Ancient Rome_ swore by the Nine Gods. The same root probably
occurs in the Greek _prytanis_, which means something like “senator.”
Clearly another official of importance is referred to here.
In sum, archaeologists looking for evidence of Etruscan political
organization have found such outward signs of pomp as fasces, plus
evidence for magistrates resembling the later Roman dictator, praetor,
priest-king, senator, and for cities probably combined into a league.
* * * * *
If inscriptions can be made to yield this kind of evidence, what can
we say about the state of our knowledge about the Etruscan language
in general? The same kind of combinatory method applied to other
inscriptions yields with patience results justifying the statement
that progress, though agonizingly slow, is being made. Many short
inscriptions can be read entire: they are usually funerary, and give
the names, filiation, and age of the deceased. Here is an example, from
yet another sarcophagus in the Tarquinia museum:
_partunus vel velthurus_ _satlnal-c_ _ramthas clan_
“Partuni Vel of Velthur and of Satlnei Ramtha the son,
_avils_ _XXIIX lupu_
of years 28, dead.”
Here for translation one assumes that Etruscan, while not Indo-European
in its roots, is an inflected language, where an _-s_ or _-l_ ending
shows possession, and the enclitic _-c_, like the Latin _-que_, means
“and.” Another example shows similar case-endings, uses vocabulary we
have seen before, and adds a place-name:
_Alethnas Arnth_ _Larisal_ _zilath Tarchnalthi amce_
“Alethna Arnth (son) of Laris praetor at Tarquinia was.”
Altogether some 10,000 Etruscan inscriptions are known. Of these
only three are of any length: the Zagreb mummy-wrapping, a tile from
Capua, and the previously mentioned scroll from Tarquinia. The next
seven taken together total less than 100 words. Given this material,
there is some bitter truth in the statement that if we could unlock
the secret of Etruscan, we would have the key to an empty room. But
whole cities in Etruria remain to be dug; there is no knowing what new
inscriptions excavations now in progress at Vulci, Roselle, or Santa
Severa may turn up, including perhaps a bilingual, where identical
texts in Etruscan and a known language like Latin may solve the puzzle,
as the Greek of the Rosetta Stone made possible the deciphering of
Egyptian hieroglyphics. Etruscan loan-words in Latin tell us something:
_antemna_, “yard-arm”; _histrio_, “actor”; _atrium_, “patio”; _groma_,
“plane-table” suggest Etruscan predominance on the sea and the
stage, in domestic architecture and surveying. But we know more than
loan-words: the known vocabulary in Etruscan amounts now to 122 words,
in seven categories, including time-words (_e.g._, the names of several
months), the limited political vocabulary already discussed, names for
family relationships, some three dozen verbs and nouns, and the same
number of words from the field of religion.
* * * * *
[Illustration: FIG. 2.10 Piacenza, Civic Museum. Bronze model of
sheep’s liver, used in foretelling the future. (ENIT, _Italy’s Life_,
p. 37)]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.11 Piacenza liver, schematic representation. (M.
Pallottino, _The Etruscans_, p. 165)]
It is about Etruscan religion, and especially funerary rites, that we
are best informed. The Etruscans had the reputation of being the most
addicted to religious ceremonial of any people of antiquity, and we
learn much about Etruscans living from Etruscans dead. We know what
sort of documentation to expect on religious matters from an Etruscan
tomb, by extrapolating back from rites which the Romans believed they
had inherited from Etruria, especially in the area of foretelling the
future by examining the livers of animals (hepatoscopy) or observing
the flights of birds (augury). One of the most curious surviving
documents of Etruscan superstition is the bronze model of a sheep’s
liver (Fig. 2.10) found in 1877 near Piacenza, on the upper Po, and now
in the Civic Museum there. The liver is split in two lengthwise. From
the plane surface thus provided three lobes project. The plane surface
itself is subdivided into sixteen compartments (Fig. 2.11); over each
compartment a god presides. The same sixteen subdivisions were used in
the imaginary partition of the sky for augury, and the same principle
governed the layout and orientation of cities like Marzabotto and
probably Spina. The same superstition found in Babylonia directs our
attention once more to the probable Near Eastern origin of the Etruscan
ruling class. The priest would take his position at the cross-point
of the intended _cardo_ and _decumanus_ of the city, facing south (we
recall that the three-celled temple on the _arx_ at Marzabotto faces
south).
The half of the city behind him was called in Latin the _pars postica_
(posterior part), the part in front of him the _pars antica_ (anterior
part); on his left was the _pars familiaris_ (the lucky side; hence
thunder on the left was a good omen) on his right the _pars hostilis_
(unlucky). To the subdivision of the earth below corresponded a
similar subdivision of the sky above; either was called in Latin
(using a concept clearly derived from Etruscan practice) a _templum_,
“part cut off,” a sacred precinct, terrestrial or celestial. From the
Piacenza liver and the orientation of Marzabotto we can deduce both the
orderliness of the Etruscan mind and the ease with which it degenerated
into rigidity and superstition. For this deadly heritage the Etruscans
apparently found in the Romans willing recipients; often, but not
always, for old Cato said, “I cannot see how one liver-diviner can meet
another without laughing in his face.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 2.12 Potentiometer profile. The high points on the graph show
where hollowed tomb-chambers exist under ground. (ENIT, _Italy’s
Life_, p. 106)
]
The vast number of Etruscan tombs and the richness of their decoration
and furnishings tell us much about another aspect of the Etruscans’
religion: their view of the afterlife. About this the fabulous painted
tombs of Tarquinia tell us most, and bid fair to tell us more as new
methods are applied to their discovery and exploration. The ubiquitous
Bradford has been at work in Etruria too; his quick eye has detected
on air-photographs over 800 new tomb-mounds at Tarquinia alone, and
new methods of ground exploration, worked out by the dedicated Italian
engineer C. M. Lerici, have enormously speeded the work of exploration.
Electrical-resistivity surveying with a potentiometer, sensitive to
the difference between solid earth and empty subterranean space, makes
possible the rapid tracing of a profile showing where the hollows of
Etruscan tombs exist underground (Fig. 2.12). A hole is then drilled
large enough to admit a periscope; if the periscope shows painted
walls, or pottery, a camera can be attached to make a 360-degree
photograph. By this method Lerici reports exploring 450 tombs in 120
days. This work, rapid as it is, is being done none too soon; land
redistribution schemes, good for the farmer, bad for the archaeologist,
are changing the face of south Etruria day by day; deep plowing and
the planting of vines and fruit trees are destroying or obscuring the
archaeological picture.
Dennis would hardly lament the passing of the conditions he so
graphically describes: “Among the half-destroyed tumuli of the
Montarozzi [at Tarquinia] is a pit, six or eight feet deep, overgrown
by lentiscus; and at the bottom is a hole, barely large enough for a
man to squeeze himself through, and which no one would care to enter
unless aware of something within to repay him for the trouble, and
the filth unavoidably contracted. Having wormed myself through this
aperture, I found myself in a dark, damp chamber, half-choked with the
_debris_ of the walls and ceiling. Yet the walls have not wholly fallen
in, for when my eyes were somewhat accustomed to the gloom, I perceived
them to be painted, and the taper’s light disclosed on the inner wall a
banquet in the open air.” Modern gadgetry like Lerici’s has destroyed
some of the romance; there is something graphic about descriptions like
Mengarelli’s of opening a tomb at Cerveteri in 1910, in the presence of
the local and neighboring landlords, the Prince and Princess Ruspoli
and the Marchese Guglielmi. As the blocks of the entrance were removed
one by one, and sunlight was reflected into the tomb by mirrors, there
were to be seen against the black earth objects of gleaming gold, and
priceless proto-Corinthian vases resting on shreds of decomposed wood,
which were all that was left of the funeral bed, while other vases were
to be seen fixed to the wall with nails.
The Tomb of Hunting and Fishing at Tarquinia, discovered in 1873,
gives us our most attractive picture (Fig. 2.13) of how Etruscans
in their palmiest days viewed the next world. The tomb is dated by
the black-figured Attic vases it contained in the decade 520–510
B.C., when the Etruscan ruling class was still prosperous. A more
charming invitation to the brainless life could hardly be imagined.
The most vivid scene is on the walls of the tombs inner room, which
are conceived as opening out into a breezy seascape, with a lively
population of bright birds in blue, red, and yellow, frisky dolphins,
and boys, friskier still, at play. Up a steep rock striped in clay-red
and grass-green clambers a sun-burnt boy in a blue tunic, who appears
to have just pushed another boy who is diving, with beautiful form,
into the hazy, wine-dark sea. On a nearby rock stands another boy
firing at the birds with a slingshot. Below him is a boat with an
eye painted on the prow (to ward off the evil eye; fishing boats are
still so painted in Portugal). Of the boat’s four passengers, one is
fishing over the side with a flimsy handline, while beside the boat a
fat dolphin turns a mocking somersault. All is life, action, humor,
vitality, color; such is the notion of blessed immortality entertained
by a people for whom Gods in his heaven, all’s right with the world.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.13 Tarquinia: Tomb of Hunting and Fishing, fresco.
(M. Pallottino, _Etruscan Painting_, p. 51)]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.14 Tarquinia: Tomb of Orcus, portrait of the lady
Velcha. (MPI)]
A quarter of a century or so after the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing
was painted, the Etruscans suffered a major naval defeat at the hands
of Greeks off Cumae. Rome, expanding, eventually took over the iron
mines of Elba and the iron-works of Populonia, and Etruscan prosperity
declined agonizingly to its end. Let us look at a Tarquinian tomb of
the period of the decadence; _e.g._, the Tomb of Orcus again. There,
beside one of the loveliest faces ever painted by an ancient artist
(Fig. 2.14), is portrayed one of the most hair-raising demons a
depressed imagination could conceive (Fig. 2.15). Its flesh is a weird
bluish-green, as though it were putrefying. Its nose is the hooked beak
of a bird of prey. The fiend has asses’ ears; its hair is a tangled
mass of snakes. Beside its monstrous wings rises a huge crested
serpent, horribly mottled. In its left hand the demon holds a hammer
handle. An inscription identifies him as Charun, the ferryman of the
dead; it is to pay this monster that the skeletons of Spina clutch
their bronze small change in their right hands. The contrast between
the gaiety of the scenes in the Tomb of Hunting and the gloomy prospect
of the lovely lady--her name is Velcha--in the clutches of this grisly
demon has been held to epitomize the contrast between the views of an
after life entertained by a prosperous and by an economically depressed
people.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.15 Tarquinia: Tomb of Orcus, the demon Charun.
(MPI)]
Other finds cast further light. The Capua tile prescribes funerary
offerings to the gods of the underworld. An inscribed lead plaque
from near Populonia is a curse tablet, in which a woman urges Charun
or another infernal deity, Tuchulcha, to bring his gruesome horrors
to bear on members of her family whose death she ardently desires.
Bronze statuettes give details of priestly dress (conical cap tied
under the chin, fringed cloak) or show Hermes, Escorter of Souls, going
arm-in-arm with the deceased to the world below. The total picture
is one of a deeply religious, even superstitious people, attaching
particular importance to the formalities of their ritual relations with
their gods, and obsessed with the after life, of which they take a
progressively gloomier view as their material prosperity declines.
* * * * *
What can archaeology tell us about Etruscan cultural life? Of art for
art’s sake there seems to have been very little, of literature none,
except for liturgical texts. The Etruscans excelled in fine large-scale
bronze work, like the famous Chimaera of Arezzo or the Capitoline
Wolf, but their minor masterpieces in bronze deserve mention also,
especially the engraved mirrors, the cylindrical cosmetic boxes called
_ciste_, and the statuettes whose attenuated bodies appeal strongly
to modern taste. Their painting at its best shows in its economy of
line how intelligently they borrowed from the Greeks, in its realism
how sturdily they maintained their own individuality. In architecture,
Etruscan temples, having been made of wood, do not survive above their
foundation courses, but recent discoveries of terracotta temple-models
at Vulci tell us something about their appearance, and masses of
their terracotta revetment survive, brightly-painted geometric,
vegetable, or mythological motifs, designs to cover beams, mask the
ends of half-round roof tiles, or (in pierced patterns called _à jour_
crestings) to follow the slope of a gable roof. Made from molds, the
motifs could be infinitely repeated at small expense, an aspect of
Etruscan practicality which was to appeal strongly to the Romans.
But the Etruscans’ artistic genius shows at the best in their
architectural sculpture in painted terracotta, free-standing or in
high relief. Their best-known masterpiece in this genre is the Apollo
of Veii (Fig. 2.16), designed for the ridgepole of an archaic temple.
Discovered in 1916, it is now in the Villa Giulia museum in Rome. The
stylized treatment of the ringlets, the almond eyes, the fixed smile
are all characteristic of archaic Greek art, and the fine edges of the
profile, lips, and eyebrows suggest an original in bronze. But this is
no mere copy. It is the work of a great original artist, probably the
same Vulca of Veii who was commissioned in the late sixth century B.C.
to do the terracottas for the Capitoline temple in Rome. The sculptor
is telling the story of the struggle between Apollo and Hercules for
the Hind of Ceryneia: the god is shown as he tenses himself to spring
upon his opponent; the anatomical knowledge, the expression of mass in
motion, and the craftsmanship required to cast a life-size terracotta
(a feat which even now presents the greatest technical difficulties)
are all alike remarkable.
A set of antefixes (used, as we have seen, to cover the ends of
half-round roof-tiles), from the archaic temple at Satricum in Latium,
in the same museum, are noteworthy for their humor. They represent a
series of nymphs pursued by satyrs. The satyrs are clearly not quite
sober, and the nymphs are far from reluctant. In a particularly fine
piece (Fig. 2.17) the satyr frightens the nymph with a snake which he
holds in his left hand, while he slips his right hand over her shoulder
to caress her breast. Her gestures are almost certainly not those of a
maiden who would repel a man’s advances.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.16 Rome, Villa Giulia Museum. Apollo of Veii,
terracotta. (MPI)]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.17 Rome, Villa Giulia Museum. Terracotta antefix
of satyr and nymph, from Satricum. (MPI)]
A third Etruscan masterpiece in terracotta, of later date, but still
showing the same striking vitality as the two pieces just described, is
the pair of winged horses in high relief (Fig. 2.18), first published
in 1948, which come probably from the pediment of the temple called the
Ara della Regina, on the site of the Etruscan city (as opposed to the
necropolis) of Tarquinia, and now in the Tarquinia museum. The proud
arching of the horses’ necks, their slim legs, their rippling muscles
are rendered to make them the quintessence of the thoroughbred, so that
we forget that the delicate wings would scarcely lift their sturdy
bodies off the ground. In these three masterpieces art is none the less
vibrant for being put at the service of religion. Here is created a new
Italic expressionistic style, so admirable that many would hold that
Italian art did not reach this level again until the Renaissance.
* * * * *
[Illustration: FIG. 2.18 Tarquinia, Museum. Winged horses, terracotta
relief, from Ara della Regina. (MPI)]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.19 Cerveteri: Tomb of the Reliefs, interior.
(MPI)]
Just as archaeology’s finds can convince us of the vitality of Etruscan
art, so they can bring to life ancient Etruscan life and customs. Most
illuminating in this area are two tombs from Cerveteri, ancient Caere,
one of the great cities of the Etruscan dodecapolis, twenty-five miles
up the coast-road from Rome, and close, too, in cultural relations.
Here again Bradford has been at work, spotting over 600 new tombs, but
the one that tells us most about Etruscan everyday life has been known
since 1850. It is the fourth-century Tomb of the Reliefs (Fig. 2.19),
with places for over forty bodies. The front and back walls of this
tomb, and two pillars in the middle, are covered with representations
in low relief of Etruscan weapons and objects in daily use; here, as
elsewhere in Etruscan tombs, but in far more detail, the tomb-chamber
reproduces the look of a room in an Etruscan house. Such chambers
served again as shelters in modern times--against bombs in World War
II. In the central recess in the farthest wall is a bed for a noble
couple. It is flanked by pilasters bearing medallions of husband (on
the left) and wife (on the right). On the husband’s side appears the
end of a locked strongbox, covered with raised studs or bosses, with
a garment lying folded on top. On the wife’s side is a sturdy knotted
walking-staff, a garland, necklaces, and a feather fan. The couch has
lathe-turned legs; it is decorated with a relief of Charun and the
three-headed dog Cerberus, with a serpent’s tail. The couch rests on a
step on which a pair of wooden clogs awaits their master’s need. Above
the couch, and continuing all the way around the room, is a frieze of
military millinery: helmets with visors, helmets with cheek-pieces,
the felt cap worn under the helmet to keep the metal from chafing,
swords, shields, greaves or shin guards, and a pile of round objects
variously interpreted as missiles, decorations for valor, or balls of
horse-dung. The central pilasters, with typical Etruscan economy, are
decorated only on the sides visible from the door. What is represented
is the whole contents of an Etruscan kitchen. Identifiable objects
include a sieve, a set of spits for roasting, a knife-rack, an inkpot,
a dinner gong, a game board (not unlike those provided in English pubs
for shove-ha’penny) with a bag for the counters, and folding handles;
a ladle, mixing spoons, an egg-beater, pincers, a duck, a tortoise,
a cat with a ribbon around its neck, playing with a lizard; a belt,
a pitcher, a long thin rolling pin for making macaroni, a pickaxe, a
machete, a coil of rope, a pet weasel teasing a black mouse, a _lituus_
(the augur’s curved staff), a wine-flask of the familiar Chianti
shape, a knapsack, and a canteen. Over and flanking the door are
_bucrania_ (ox-skulls), wide, shallow sacrificial basins, and a curved
war-trumpet or hunting-horn. Surely never a household embarked better
equipped for the next world. This tomb is as good as a documentary
film; nothing ever found by archaeology brings Etruscan daily life more
vividly before our eyes.
While the Tomb of the Reliefs is full of homely details of Etruscan
life, the Regolini-Galassi tomb, also at Cerveteri, was crammed with
objects of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous waste. The tomb
is named for its discoverers, General Alessandro Regolini and Fr.
Vincenzo Galassi, arch-priest of Cerveteri in 1836. Its contents are
datable in the eighth or seventh century B.C. It consists of a long
narrow entrance-way or _dromos_, two oval side-chambers, and a long
narrow main tomb-chamber roofed with a false vault, “now,” says Dennis,
“containing nothing but slime and serpents.” When it was entered
through a hole in the roof on April 21, 1836, an incredible treasure of
gold, silver, bronze, and ceramics, over 650 objects in all, burst upon
the workmen’s gaze. All was cleared with feverish haste in less than
twenty-four hours, and no detailed inventory was compiled until seventy
years later. The riches are fabulous; to quote Dennis again, “here the
youth, the fop, the warrior, the senator, the priest, the belle, might
all suit their taste for decoration--in truth a modern fair one need
not disdain to heighten her charms with these relics of a long past
world.” In those days, Etruscan objects were not allowed to languish
in a museum. A report of 1839 states, “a few winters ago the Princess
of Canino [wife of Lucien Bonaparte] appeared at some of the [British]
ambassador’s fêtes with a _parure_ of Etruscan jewellery which was the
envy of the society, and excelled the _chefs-d’oeuvre_ of Paris or
Vienna.” Though the contents of the tomb have been now for many years
the pride of the Gregorian Museum in the Vatican, the definitive
publication did not appear until 1947.
The tomb contained three burials, including one of a woman of princess’
rank. With one of the males was buried his chariot (which was first
dismantled and its wooden parts ceremoniously burned); his funeral car,
plated with bronze in a sword-like leaf design; and his bronze bier,
with a raised place for the head and a latticework of twenty-nine thin
bronze bars. With the woman was buried a priceless treasure of gold, of
baroque barbarity: a magnificent golden _fibula_; a great gold pectoral
(Fig. 2.20) decorated in _repoussé_ with twelve bands of animal figures
(this, one would like to think, was what the Princess of Canino wore
to the ambassador’s party); gold and amber necklaces; massive gold
bracelets and earrings to match the pectoral; silver bracelets, rings,
pins, a spindle, and buckets, the latter decorated with fantastic
animals; ivory dice; a bronze wine-bowl, with a beautiful green patina,
decorated with six heads of lions and griffins, turned inwards; and
(reconstructed) a great bronze-plated chair of state with footstool,
the whole ornamented with vegetable and animal motifs; the arms end
in horse’s heads, the back legs in cow’s hoofs. To the second male
burial belonged a set of splendid bronze parade-shields; a bronze
incense-burner on wheels, with a rim of lotus-flowers in bronze; a
bronze vase-stand, with a conical base surmounted by two superimposed
oblate spheroids, supporting a bronze container for the vase, the whole
ornamented in _repoussé_ with bulls and winged and wingless lions;
bowls in silver and silver-gilt, decorated with horsemen, footsoldiers,
archers, lancers, chariots, lions, dogs, bulls, vultures, and palm
trees, in a style that might be Egyptian, Cypriote, or Syrian. Such of
the treasure as is imported from the Near East bespeaks the wealth of
Etruscan overlords; such as is of local manufacture bespeaks the Skill
of Etruscan craftsmen.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.20 Vatican City, Vatican Museum: gold pectoral
from the Regolini-Galassi tomb, Cerveteri. (Musei Vaticani)]
From other places, other clues to Etruscan life and customs. We may end
with two observations, both taken from tombs in Tarquinia: Etruscan
women were treated on a par with men; Etruscan sports were sometimes of
barbaric cruelty. The Tomb of the Leopards in Tarquinia (fifth century
B.C.) shows women (with dyed hair) reclining on the same dining-couch
with men; later (Tomb of the Shields, third century B.C.) women sat
at meals, while men reclined, but the sexes dined together; there was
no Oriental seclusion. The Tomb of the Chariots, also in Tarquinia,
shows women along with men in the stands watching athletic events:
horse-racing, the pole-vault, boxing, wrestling, discus-throwing,
and running. A tomb discovered by Lerici just in time to be restored
for the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome is called the Tomb of the Olympic
Victors, and shows similar events.
But Etruscan spectator sports were not always so innocent. On the
right wall of the Tomb of the Augurs in Tarquinia, a masked figure,
in a false beard, a blood-red tunic, and a conical cap, is portrayed
inciting a fierce hound to attack a hairy-chested figure, nude but
for a loin-cloth and carrying a club; his eyes are blinded by a sack
tied over his head, and his movements are impeded by a cord held
by a bystander. The victim is already bleeding from several savage
bites. Unless, handicapped as he is, he can club the dog to death,
he will surely be torn to bits. Perhaps this sanguinary and savage
scene represents human sacrifice (and, if so, it is none the less
forbidding), but it is a tempting hypothesis that what we have pictured
here is a predecessor of the kind of spectacle the Romans later
enjoyed in their amphitheaters, when gladiators fought to the death.
Gladiatorial contests were in fact traditionally of Etruscan origin,
first imported from Etruria for certain funeral games in 264 B.C.
We end, then, where we began, with archaeological evidence for Etruscan
influence, for good or for ill, upon Rome. As with the story of
prehistoric man in Italy, the Etruscan story is one of influences
in part originating in the Near East, in part indigenous, creating a
civilization with durable elements that could be and were transmitted,
playing a predominant rôle in forming the culture of ancient Italy.
The Etruscans are important in themselves, of course, but it is a
mistake to assume, because their language, unique on the Italian
peninsula, is non-Indo-European, that their culture is isolated, too.
As a culture of cities, Etruria must have had its effect, not without
cross-fertilization from Greek practice, upon Roman town-planning.
Etruscan political forms and practice recur in Roman usage. The
language claims our attention for the light it throws, however dimly,
on Etruscan politics, religion, and family life, and for the challenge
it has presented to modern scientific scholarship to penetrate its
mystery. Etruscan religion, as illuminated by archaeological finds, has
its own fascination, foreshadows Roman formalism, and is noteworthy
for changing, under the stress of political and economic decline, from
an optimistic to a pessimistic view of the after-life. Etruscan art,
especially terracotta sculpture, shows a striking vitality, humor,
and independence; Etruscan architecture makes its impact upon Roman.
Finally, the evidence of artifacts as to Etruscan daily life shows a
standard of material comfort, and even of luxury, not to be achieved
again on the peninsula for two hundred years. Etruscan equality of
sexes foreshadows the independence of Roman women; the brutality of
Etruscan games is to strike an answering chord in sadistic Roman
breasts. Etruria has its own intrinsic fascination, yet for the Western
world its major interest must lie in its legacy to Home. When Etruscan
culture was at its brilliant, golden height, Rome was a primitive
village of wattle-and-daub huts. Archaeology has been able to trace
the metamorphosis of those huts into palaces, with all the concomitant
story of grandeur and barbarity; to that metamorphosis the rest of this
book will be devoted.
3
Early Rome
Everyone remembers that Augustus left Rome a city of marble, but too
few people recall that he found it a city of brick. The picture of Rome
in most people’s minds is of a marble metropolis, proud mistress of a
Mediterranean Empire. This to be sure she eventually became, but the
archaeological evidence is that until the end of the third century B.C.
Rome looked tawdry, with patched temples and winding, unpaved streets.
To trace the development is fascinating, and archaeology is our chief
guide.
The story that we read from the earth begins not in Rome itself but in
the Alban Hills, extinct volcanoes in the Roman Campagna, sixteen miles
southeast of Rome, close to Castel Gandolfo, the lovely lakeside spot
where nowadays the Pope has his summer palace. Here, in a pastureland
called the Pascolare di Castello, some peasants in 1817 were cutting
trenches for planting vineyards. Under the topsoil of the Alban Hills
is a thick bed of solid lava, called tufa, which seals in a layer
of ashes. In digging their trench the peasants cut through the lava
seal and revealed large _dolia_, jars of rough clay, each of which
contained, in an urn shaped like a miniature oval hut, the ashes of
a cremation burial, together with _fibulae_, objects in amber and
bronze, and numerous vases. It was not until fifty years later that
a committee of experts, including the same Pigorini who afterwards
overstepped his evidence about the _terremare_, first connected the
burials with the city of Alba Longa, traditionally founded in the mists
of prehistory by the son of Aeneas. In 1902, in cremation graves from
a necropolis to which we shall return, on the edge of the Roman Forum
itself, hut-urns and artifacts were found so similar to those from the
Pascolare that the inference of cultural connection was inescapable.
Whether Alba Longa was the metropolis and Rome the colony, as stated by
the literary sources, or the other way about, was not evident from the
artifacts.
A necropolis or graveyard implies an inhabited site. The inhabited site
of Alba Longa was destroyed by the Romans about 600 B.C. Where was the
inhabited site that used the Forum in Rome as a necropolis? It could
hardly have been the Forum itself, which was a swamp not drained and
fit for habitation until about 575 B.C., a date which, as we shall see,
marks the end of the necropolis. Could it have been the Palatine Hill
which rises from the south side of the Forum? At first sight it seemed
unlikely that any evidence for prehistoric habitation could be found
on the Palatine, since the hill was covered with the substructures of
Imperial palaces. But beneath these as early as 1724 were found the
remains of the mansions of Republican nabobs (recorded in literature,
too, as having lived here), and beneath these in turn why should there
not lie the traces of even earlier dwellings? Vergil had pictured
Aeneas humbly entertained on the Palatine by Evander, and lodged in a
hut with swallows under the eaves. Excavations published in 1906 by
the great Italian archaeologist G. Boni (who lived in a villa on the
Palatine, and whose memorial bust appropriately adorns the Farnese
Gardens there) found under the Flavian Palace traces of huts containing
artifacts matching those found in the Forum necropolis.
These artifacts fell into two phases. The first included the rough
handmade pottery called _impasto_, which we have already seen to be
characteristic of Villanovan sites; serpentine _fibulae_ (which match
those found in the First Benacci period at Bologna); ware incised with
a clamshell in dogtooth, meander, and swastika patterns, or with a
rope-like clay _appliqué_; pierced beads, spools, and a curious kind
of Dutch oven with a perforated top, examples of which were known from
the Forum necropolis and the Alban Hills, but not elsewhere. Artifacts
of a different and more developed type, belonging, therefore, to a
second phase, included pots with thinner walls, sharper profiles (as
seen in elevation drawings), and more complicated handles; they are
decorated with spirals and semicircles, apparently compass-drawn. There
was even a miniature clay sheepdog, his curly coat represented by
circles impressed with a metal tube or a hollow reed. Such artifacts
match those found in the evolved Villanovan culture, dated in the
first half of the sixth century B.C. This culture is contemporary
with a rich, sophisticated one in Etruria, but the techniques in Rome
and its vicinity are much more primitive than in Etruria. We conclude
that the Palatine village was infinitely less prosperous than, say,
the contemporary Etruscan cities of Caere or Tarquinia. But equally
primitive artifacts are found in the Alban Hills burials, certain tombs
on the Quirinal and Esquiline Hills in Rome (discovered when the city
expanded after Italy’s unification in the 1870’s), and in burials in
hollowed-out tree-trunks from the Forum necropolis, the latter now on
display in the Forum Antiquarium.
In 1907 D. Vaglieri began excavations in the southwest corner of the
Palatine which revealed cuttings in the rock. These were actually,
though Vaglieri did not recognize them as such, cuttings for early
Iron Age huts, the date being an inference from the artifacts, whose
stratification Vaglieri did not record. After a sharp controversy
with Pigorini (whose prestige, because of public interest in the
_terremare_, was then at its height), the dig was suspended, leaving
one but half-excavated. Here, in this intact area, excavations were
resumed in 1948 by a younger specialist in the prehistoric archaeology
of Italy, S. M. Puglisi. This time, the methods were rigorously
scientific, and the cultural strata were observed and recorded with
meticulous care. Puglisi recognized that a scientific dig requires
the constant presence on the site during working hours of a competent
archaeologist; no precise results can ever be obtained by an excavation
director who visits his site only a couple of times a week, since
unsupervised workmen can hardly be expected to respect levels of
stratification, preserve the right artifacts, or keep accurate
excavation notebooks, without which, of course, no scientifically valid
conclusions can be drawn.
In the area left undug by Vaglieri, Puglisi was able to distinguish
five levels, which have been schematically reproduced on the walls
of the Palatine Antiquarium. The top level consisted of nine feet
of ancient dump. But the four levels beneath the dump amounted to
six-and-a-half feet of compact, undisturbed strata, of which the bottom
eight inches represented what had collected on the hut floor while it
was still in use. Here the sherds were very tiny, for they had been
walked on, it being the regular practice of Iron Age man--and woman--to
live comfortably in the midst of their own debris. The hearth (one of
the Dutch ovens was discovered in fragments _in situ_) was near the
center of the hut, very close to a cutting for a central supporting
post--the first evidence ever found for such construction. But there
was no danger of setting the central post on fire, since the cooking
flame was entirely enclosed within the clay of the oven. Bits of fallen
wattle-and-daub revealed the wall-construction. There were animal
bones and impasto sherds bearing the marks of fire, but none of the
shiny black pottery called _bucchero_ (the best examples of which are
rarely found in Rome in contexts earlier than 700 B.C.) and no painted
ware. This level, then, belonged to the first phase of the Iron Age,
dated, by parallels with the finds from beneath the Flavian Palace,
about 800–700 B.C. (The traditional date of Rome’s founding is 753.)
The lowest level being so shallow, and the sherds showing the marks of
fire, the inference is that the hut had not been occupied very long
before it was burned down.
The contents of the next superimposed level, two feet deep, show that
the site was next used as a kitchen-midden or refuse-heap. Here the
deposits resemble those from a well (dug long ago but never described
in a detailed scientific article), in the sanctuary of Vesta in the
Forum, which is dated in the second phase of the Iron Age (700–550
B.C.), corresponding in the tradition to the reigns of the five
Roman Kings from Numa to Servius Tullius.[A] These finds include
polished _impasto_, with high or twisted handles and out-turned rims;
slat-smoothed ware covered with a thin coating or engobe of reddish
clay, ornamented with double spirals and palmettes, and of a size to
fit on the Dutch ovens; sherds of fine _bucchero_ (the first evidence
of imports from Etruria), and of a coarser grey local imitation;
painted ware, of the style known as sub-Geometric, imported from south
Italy, and also some local imitations identified by their cruder
technique.
[A] It will be convenient to record here for future reference
the traditional dates (B.C.) of Rome’s seven kings:
Romulus: 753–716 Etruscan Dynasty:
Numa Pompilius: 716–672 Tarquinius Priscus: 616–578
Tullus Hostilius: 672–640 Servius Tullius: 578–534
Ancus Marcius: 640–616 Tarquinius Superbus: 534–509
The next higher level shows fat-bodied “bloodsucker” _fibulae_, and
flanged tiles, some with horses molded in low relief, betraying a
completely different and more sophisticated building technique, like
that used in Etruscan temples. The artifacts matched those found in
the level under the late Republican House of the Griffins and under
the “House of Livia” on the Palatine, and in the upper strata of the
shrine of Vesta well; they are associated with the huts built in the
Forum after it was drained; that is, with a transitional period after
about 575 B.C. The lower date suggested by the archaeological finds for
this second phase corresponds to the dates assigned by the literary
tradition to Rome’s Etruscan kings, Tarquin I, Servius Tullius, and
Tarquin the Proud.
The hut itself (Fig. 3.1) was a large one (12 × 16 feet), sunk
about a yard into the tufa of the hill, with six cuttings for the
perimetral posts, two for a front porch, and one for the central
support. The cuttings, averaging fifteen inches in diameter, are wider
than is necessary for posts to support so flimsy a structure; the
logs were probably held upright by wooden or stone wedges. The hut,
reconstructed, represents a historical fact very much like what Vergil
had in mind when he described the sleeping quarters assigned by Evander
to Aeneas, and such _capanne_ can be found in out-of-the-way places of
the countryside near Rome even today. Lucretius, Vergil, and Livy all
knew what a Bronze and an Iron Age meant; their generation venerated a
replica of the “Hut of Romulus” on the Palatine. It suited Augustus’
propaganda purpose to stress Rome’s rise from humble origins; so, too,
to us, archaeology’s picture of Rome’s primitive beginnings may well
make the story of her later expansion seem more impressive, and her
domination of subject peoples less overbearing.
* * * * *
[Illustration: FIG. 3.1 Rome, Palatine. Prehistoric hut, reconstruction.
(G. Davico, _Monumenti Antichi_ 41 [1951], p. 130)]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.2 Rome, Forum necropolis, showing cremation and
inhumation graves. (MPI)]
Archaeology’s second major contribution to our knowledge of early Rome
is provided by Boni’s excavation of the Forum necropolis (Fig. 3.2),
the results of which are displayed with great clarity in the Forum
Antiquarium, installed in the cloister of the church of S. Francesca
Romana in the Forum itself. The surviving part of the necropolis
stretches between the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, on the north
side of the Forum, and a late Republican structure to the east which
was pretty certainly (to judge from the built-in beds, the narrow
rooms, and the analogy with a building similar in plan at Pompeii,
certainly identified by its erotic pictures) a house of ill-fame. The
original extent west and southward was probably much greater. The
graves have now been filled in, but their sites are marked by plots
of grass, round for cremation graves, oblong for inhumation ones. The
two types sometimes cut into each other; what inferences are warranted
by this fact are better postponed until we have discussed the grave
contents.
The Forum nowadays is an austere, even at first sight a forbidding
place. It looks much more attractive in a painting by Claude Lorraine
or a print by Piranesi, with a double row of olives planted down the
middle, romantic broken columns, oxen and peasants scattered about the
flowered greensward in picturesque confusion, and the Arch of Septimius
Severus buried up to its middle. But picturesqueness is not everything.
The Forum is history, stark history; every stone is soaked in blood.
To understand that history, mere picturesqueness had to be sacrificed;
Boni’s graves are not picturesque; they are informative. From them the
historical imagination can create a picture of Rome’s beginnings which
no Piranesi print could rival.
Sixteen feet of picturesqueness had to be cleared before Boni could
reach the necropolis level. The cremation tombs are small circular
wells, most of them containing, as in the Alban Hills tombs, a
_dolium_ or large jar, covered by tufa slabs. In the _dolia_ were
found ash-containers, often in the shape of miniatures of huts like
the full-sized ones on the Palatine. The oblong graves contained
rough sarcophagi of tufa, or coffins made of hollowed-out oak logs.
Both types of tomb contained, intact on discovery, tomb furniture not
differing much between the types, and not differing much from the
finds in the bottom two levels of Puglisi’s Palatine hut; _i.e._, rough
_impasto_, decorated with incised spirals, parallel lines (done with a
comb) or zigzags; _bucchero_, some _fibulae_ inlaid with amber, glass
beads, tiny enamel plaques, remains of funeral offerings of food. It
is all very humble, a far cry from the Regolini-Galassi treasure,
though some of the tombs are of the same date. The finds show that
the necropolis was in use from the ninth to the sixth centuries B.C.
The site was, as we saw, on the edge of a swamp; when the swamp was
drained, the cemetery went out of use, and huts, of which more later,
were built over it.
In the necropolis, sometimes inhumation graves cut into cremation ones,
sometimes vice versa. There is thus no ground for assuming that the
cremation graves are older, especially as the grave-contents of the two
types are so similar. The difference is not one of time but of funeral
practice, as today; it suggests two different populations living
peacefully together. The cremators were related to the people whose
graves were found so long ago in the Alban Hills, and, as we have seen,
to the Palatine hut-dwellers. Who were the inhumers? We know that other
Roman hills than the Palatine were inhabited from very early times,
though the natural features of the Palatine seem to give it priority:
plenty of fodder, abundant water within easy reach, a retreat made safe
at night by the hill and the river for the people and their livestock.
But habitation of the Esquiline and Quirinal Hills in the sixth century
is attested by a number of tombs from a total of 164 found there in
the 1870’s. The finds from these were never scientifically recorded,
and they have never been published, but it is noteworthy that they
include weapons, which are absent from the cremation-graves in the
Forum. It looks as though the Esquiline folk were invaders, with a more
warlike tradition than the Palatine hut-dwellers. The Esquiline folk
might earlier have used the Forum necropolis for inhumation. We know
that the Sabines buried their dead. Literary tradition (the Rape of
the Sabine Women) records that the early Romans got their wives from
among the Sabines. Numa Pompilius, the second of the legendary Roman
kings, bears a Sabine name. Might not the two types of graves in the
Forum necropolis represent the peaceful fusion of cremating Latins and
inhuming Sabines who had laid aside their warlike ways?
* * * * *
On top of the Forum necropolis, when the swamp was drained, huts were
built. The archaeological evidence for this phase of early Rome’s
history was provided by Boni’s stratigraphic excavation (recently
confirmed by the Swede Einar Gjerstad) to the northwest of the site
of the equestrian statue of the Emperor Domitian in the middle of the
Forum. Gjerstad dug a trench sixteen feet long and eleven feet wide,
down to virgin soil, which he found nineteen feet below the present
Forum level. On the earth wall of the trench the story of the centuries
could be read in the successive levels (Figs. 3.3 and 3.4). Between
levels three and nineteen, six pavements could be counted, but level
nineteen takes us, to judge by the pots found in it, only back to about
450 B.C. In layers twenty to twenty-two, Gjerstad found three pebble
pavements, which he dates about 575 B.C. If he is right in assigning
to this date the beginning of monarchic Rome, he has pushed its date
down in our direction over 150 years from the traditional 753 B.C. But
there is more history below this. Strata twenty-three to twenty-eight
are remains of huts, similar to but (pottery again) later than the ones
on the Palatine. Gjerstad dates them in two phases: 650–625 and 625–575
B.C. Rather than push the traditional date down so far, it seems
plausible to suppose that these huts represent the period assigned
by the literary tradition to the early kings, and to argue that the
sophisticated period, symbolized by the Forum’s earliest pebble
pavement, was inaugurated by Rome’s earliest Etruscan king, Tarquin I.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.3 Rome, Forum. Excavation at Equus Domitiani,
showing strata. (E. Gjerstad, _Early Rome_ I, p. 37)]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.4 Rome, Forum. Excavation at Equus Domitiani,
schematic drawing of strata. (E. Gjerstad, _Antiquity_ 26 [1952], p.
61)]
These other huts confirm the other archaeological data, which show
that what later was unified into urban Rome was originally a group
of simple hut-villages clustered on various hills, the Forum huts
having spilled down, as it were, from the village on the Palatine. The
huts in the level just above the Forum necropolis represent a still
earlier stage of this spillover; they antedate the earliest huts in
Gjerstad’s twenty-nine levels. By the date of Gjerstad’s earliest
pebble pavements, the huts in the necropolis area have been replaced
by a more developed domestic architecture, perhaps with rooms opening
on a central court. These houses have rectangular plans, mud-brick,
wood-braced walls, and tufa foundations. At the spillover stage, the
villagers from the various hills formed some kind of confederation
symbolized archaeologically by the two types of graves in the Forum
necropolis, and in literature by the tradition of the joint religious
festival called the Septimontium.
The period of the first pebble pavement (575 B.C.) is one of major
change, from village to urban life, to a city now for the first time
boasting a civic center, destined to become the world’s most famous
public square, the Roman Forum. Of the same date are the earliest
remains on the Capitoline Hill, which was to be the _arx_ or citadel
of historic Rome. Of the same date are the earliest artifacts from the
Regia, which later generations revered as the palace of the kings. Of
the same date is a sophisticated phase of the round shrine of Vesta,
which encircled the sacred flame, symbol of the city’s continuity. The
literary tradition would date the last two earlier, at least to Numa’s
reign. However no architectural remains have so far been discovered
which associate them with the earlier date.
In his interpretation of the archaeological evidence about the date of
the beginning of the Roman Republic, Gjerstad is just as iconoclastic
as about the dating of the kings. His argument, more ingenious than
convincing, is that an event as important politically as a change from
a monarchy to a republic should be reflected in the artifacts, changing
from richer to poorer, whereas no such objective evidence of a cultural
break is visible in the levels dated by him (perhaps more closely
than the facts warrant) at 509 B.C. Such a cultural break does not
come until some fifty years later, when Etruscan imports cease. There
are grave difficulties in pushing the date of the Roman Republic’s
beginning down so far, of which the chief is a list (the _Fasti_) of
pairs of consuls 509–450 B.C. where many names are too obscure to
have been invented. Gjerstad’s excavation, in sum, is important as
confirming the accuracy of Boni’s methods, and as telling us much about
the village stage of Rome, but the absolute chronology cannot be said
to be as yet firmly fixed, nor the traditional one definitely upset.
* * * * *
Apart from absolute chronology, what unequivocal evidence can
archaeology provide that early Rome was ruled by kings? The ideal
evidence would be an inscription, and one was discovered in 1899 in the
Forum near the Comitium, where, in the open air in front of the Senate
House, the popular assembly met. The inscription is called the _lapis
niger_ stele, because it lies under a later pavement of black marble
(_lapis niger_), now preserved under a deplorable corrugated iron roof.
But the stone on which it is carved is not marble but tufa, identified
as having come from the quarries of Grotta Oscura in the territory of
Veii, some nine miles north of Rome.
On the various kinds of tufa or volcanic stone in use in early Rome
there hangs a tale. In 1924 an American, Tenney Frank, published an
epoch-making study of Roman building materials in which he put the
dating of Roman monuments on a firmer basis by distinguishing several
different kinds of tufa used by Roman builders at successive dates.
Subsequent studies have blurred the dividing lines and shown the
possibility of overlap, but Frank’s nice eye for discriminating tufas
has revolutionized the architectural history of the Roman Republic. The
following table illustrates Frank’s methods:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Type Characteristics Quarries Where used
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cappellaccio flaky dark Rome Capitoline temple
grey ash (509 B.C.)
Grotta Oscura friable greyish 2½ mi. N. of Forum stele,
yellow Prima Porta “Servian” Wall,
Tullianum
(prison)
Fidenae flecked black Castel Giubileo, Castrum, Ostia
fragments 5 mi. N. (338 B.C.)
(scoriae) of Rome Argentina
Temple A
(ca. 200 B.C.)
peperino peppered; can Marino (Alban Tomb of
be carved Hills 11 mi. Scipios (early
SE) 3rd cent.)
Altar,
Argentina C
(ca. 186 B.C.)
sperone coarse-grained Gabii Milvian Bridge
brown (12 mi. E) (109 B.C.)
Monteverde reddish, olive Across Tiber Sullan pavement
streaks nr. _Lapis niger_
Anio brown Cervara Tomb of
(35 mi. ENE) Bibulus (before
50 B.C.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
FIG. 3.5 Rome, Forum: _lapis niger_ stele. Note the word RECEI, which
may be evidence for the historicity of Rome’s kings. (P. Goidanich,
_Mem. Acc. It._ 7.3 [1943], Pl. 9)
]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.6 Rome, Forum. Rostra, third phase (fourth-third
century B.C.). (E. Gjerstad, _Skrifter_ 5 [1944], p. 142)]
The _lapis niger_ stele, inscribed on tufa of the second type in this
series, could be of the very late sixth century B.C., and this date is
borne out by the very archaic letter-styles (Fig. 3.5), which resemble
those on the Aules Feluskes stele from Etruscan Vetulonia. Interpreting
what the stone says is not made easier by the fact that the top is
cut off and the lines are inscribed _boustrophedon_ (like the Lemnian
stele among other examples), so that in successive lines the beginning
and the end are alternately missing. In the left-hand column below is
printed the latest text of the letters as they appear on the stele; in
the right-hand column, a translation into classical Latin, filling the
blanks; below, a translation of this oldest of all Latin inscriptions:
QVOI HOI QVI · HV[nc locum violaverit,
SAKROS ⁝ ESE manibus] SACER · SIT;
ED SORD ET SORD[ibus qui haec contaminet]
OKAFHAS OCA, FAS
RECEI ⁝ IO REGI, IV[dicio ei habito
EVAM adimere rem pr]EVAM ·
QVOS ⁝ RE QVOS · RE[x per hanc senserit
M ⁝ KALATO vehi via]M, KALATOREM,
REM HAB HAB[enis eorum, iubeto
TOD ⁝ IOVXMEN ilic]O · IVMENTA
TA ⁝ KAPAI ⁝ DOTAV · CAPIAT, VT · A V[ia statiM
M ⁝ I ⁝ TER PE · ITER PE[r aversum locum
M ⁝ QVOI HA pergant puru]M · QVI HA[c]
VELOD ⁝ NEQV VOLET, NEQV[e per purum
IOD ⁝ IOVESTOD perget, iudic]IO, IVSTA
LOIVQVIOD QO ⁝ LICITATIONE, CO[ndemnetur].
“Whosoever defiles this spot, let him be forfeit to the shades of
the underworld, and whosoever contaminates this spot with refuse,
it is right for the king, after due process of law, to confiscate
his property. Whatsoever persons the king shall discover passing on
this road, let him order the summoner to seize their draft animals
by the reins, that they may turn out of the road forthwith and take
the proper detour. Whosoever persists in traveling this road, and
fails to take the proper detour, by due process of law let him be
sold to the highest bidder.”
Obviously the inscription thus restored and interpreted, marks a spot
which is taboo, its ill-omened nature being further emphasized by the
later black marble pavement, which was fenced off by a balustrade of
thin white marble slabs set on edge. Beside the stele is a U-shaped
shrine or altar,[B] on a higher level and therefore of a later date
than the inscription. Archaeology provides no clue to the purpose of
this structure, but learned Romans believed it marked the tomb of
Romulus, their first king. This would be a sacred spot indeed, not to
be profaned by the feet of men or animals. From one edge of the shrine
run the remains of a semicircular platform with steps (Figs. 3.6 and
3.7), also later in date than the inscription. The platform was the
Rostra, so called because of its decoration, after 338 B.C., with the
bronze _rostra_ or ramming-beaks of captured enemy war-galleys. The
Rostra was in historical times the speakers’ platform; from it in one
of its phases resounded the sonorous oratory of Cicero. But it was also
the spot from which traditionally funeral orations were delivered,
while modern men wearing, according to Roman custom, the death-masks
of their ancestors sat behind the orators in curule chairs on the
platform. To the logical Roman mind a platform beside the tomb of the
first king would seem the appropriate place for funeral speeches.
[B] Professor Ferdinando Castagnoli and Dr. Lucos Cozza
reported in 1959 the discovery, at Pratica di Mare, ancient
Lavinium, sixteen miles south of Rome, of a series of
thirteen such altars, together with an inscription on
bronze, with lettering like that of the _lapis niger_
stele. They date their finds in the late sixth century B.C.
Since American excavations at Rome’s Latin colony of Cosa in 1953
identified as a Comitium a circular, step-surrounded space in front of
the local Senate House, it appears that the semicircular steps leading
to the platform in Rome were Rome’s Comitium, and new excavations to
prove or disprove this were started in 1957.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.7 Rome, Forum. Rostra, fifth phase (Sullan).
(E. Gjerstad, _op. cit._, p. 143)]
Careful equations between the fifteen levels in the Comitium and the
twenty-nine levels near the equestrian statue of Domitian prove the
Comitium a monument of the Roman Republic: the first phase coincides
with the Republic’s beginning, and its last with Caesar and Augustus,
in the late first century B.C., when the Republic ends. Thereafter
freedom of speech, and an arena for it, were but a memory. But the
first Rostra rose where it did because the founders of the Roman
Republic associated it with the first of Rome’s kings.
The _lapis niger_ inscription, which refers twice to a king, rests on
a base which cannot be older than the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390
B.C. (for the base is on the same level as the second of the Comitium
pavements, laid over traces of a major fire, and the Gauls set Rome
on fire). But an inscription of course is a movable monument, and the
present location of the stele may not be where it was originally set
up. Furthermore, letter styles so archaic are probably older than 390
B.C.: the alternatives, then, are either that the stele, of venerable
antiquity, was reset, on a new platform, as a part of rearrangements
after the fire, or that it is a deliberately archaizing copy of a much
older original. The theory that the king (_rex_) referred to is not
the temporal monarch, but the _rex sacrorum_, a Republican priest of
later Republican times who inherited the king’s religious functions, is
virtually ruled out by the letter-styles.
The _lapis niger_ stele presents one aspect of primitive Roman religion
under the kings: the taboo. Another is the pious tending of the sacred
flame on the public hearth, a rite performed in historical times by
the Vestal Virgins in Vesta’s shrine at the east end of the Forum. The
superstructure of the shrine as now restored there yielded no remains
earlier than the Gallic fire, but the round plan must reflect the shape
of a primitive straw hut of the Palatine type, with central hearth and
smoke-hole, and the earliest artifacts, from the previously mentioned
well there, are dated in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. The
shrine of Vesta, then, preserves another memory of Rome of the kings.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.8 Rome, Republican Forum. (G. Lugli, _Roma
Antica_, Pl. 3)]
Kings, like ordinary mortals, need a dwelling place. Traditionally in
Rome, this was the Regia (related in root to _rex_, “king”), on the
trapezoidal plot between the Forum necropolis and Vesta’s shrine (see
plan, Fig. 3.8). Romans believed its first occupant was the Sabine
Numa, the second and most pious of the kings, but no archaeological
remains confirm so early a date (traditionally 716–672 B.C.). It seems
unlikely that the king could have dwelt there before the necropolis
was closed, for the king was a priest, and it was unlucky for a priest
to look upon a cadaver, or upon death. The earliest datable masonry
remains are a foundation in _cappellaccio_ of about 390 B.C., another
evidence of rebuilding after the Gallic fire. But there might well have
been, before the fire, a more primitive structure in wood, revetted in
terracotta; indeed, fragments of terracotta revetment, some of a late
sixth or early fifth century style and some even earlier, were found
there, as well as a grey _bucchero_ sherd scratched with the word _rex_
in archaic letters. The Regia, as it stands, is the result of at least
three rebuildings, the last in 36 B.C. It still has an old-fashioned
air: ancient, straggling, intractable, very holy: the shape of its
ground-plan never changing from beginning to end. In keeping with the
Etruscan tradition--as at Marzabotto--the building is oriented north
and south. Its south side was a dwelling, later the office of the
Pontifex Maximus; among the great Romans who worked in this building
was Julius Caesar. The rest of the Regia was an area partly unroofed.
It was a shrine of Mars, hung with shields and a magic lance that
quivered at the threat of war. The Pontifex Maximus recorded yearly,
day by day, on a whitened board in the Regia, events in which he and
his fellow priests had a professional interest: temple-dedications,
religious festivals, triumphs, eclipses, famines, rains of blood,
births of two-headed calves, and other prodigies. Fragments of this
lost archaeological record, piously kept by the pontiffs, turn up in
extant Roman history: Livy often refers to them at the end of his
account of a year, particularly an unlucky year.
Orientation like the Regia’s is an Etruscan practice, and it is with
domination by the Etruscans that we should expect Rome’s primitive
simplicity to evolve into something more like grandeur. The literary
tradition ascribed to the Etruscan, Tarquin the Proud, Rome’s last
king, a great Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, built by the
forced labor of Roman citizens, and decorated by Etruscan artisans like
Vulca of Veii, the sculptor of the Apollo (page 52). It took World War
I to confirm this literary tradition archaeologically. The Italians,
on the Allied side in that war, ousted the Germans from their Embassy,
splendidly situated on the Capitoline Hill in the Palazzo Caffarelli,
and remodelled the palace into a museum. In the process was revealed
a massive podium, sixteen feet high, built without mortar of blocks
of _cappellaccio_, the oldest of Rome’s building stones. Fortunately,
diagonally opposite corners were found, making it possible to establish
how impressive were the podium’s dimensions: roughly 120 × 180 feet.
Three corners of the podium having been isolated, archaeologists were
able to fit into the plan the remains of a substructure which had been
found in 1865 under the Palace of the Conservatori. This substructure,
now built impressively into a corridor of the Conservatori Museum,
proved to be the support for columns. The platform as a whole, then,
was the podium of a temple, the largest of its time, over twice the
size, for example, of the one at Marzabotto. Traces of the settings for
the columns proved them to be placed too wide apart to be connected
by architraves in stone; they must instead have been great wooden
beams. The wood would have been revetted or faced with terracotta, and
in fact enough fragments of terracotta revetments were found on the
site to establish this temple as decorated in the typical Etruscan
style. If its sculptures were as striking as the Apollo of Veii,
they were masterpieces indeed. The temple, repeatedly and ever more
grandiosely rebuilt--in one phase it was roofed with gilded bronze,
and the cult statue was gold and ivory--was the center and symbol of
Rome’s religious life. Here the triumphal processions ended. Here the
triumphing general, surrounded by his spoils of victory, descended
from his chariot drawn by four white horses, and passed through the
open doors and the clouds of incense to give thanks to Jupiter the Best
and Greatest for his victory. From the cliff behind the temple, the
Tarpeian rock, traitors were thrown to their deaths; here, in 133 B.C.,
Tiberius Gracchus, the friend of the people, was murdered. Religion,
dignity, pride, greed, pomp, tragedy: all are the stuff of Roman
history; all are here, and archaeology illumines their story. Horace
boasted that his poetry would endure “so long as, with the mute Vestal,
the Pontifex climbs up to the Capitoline Temple.” For him as for us
Rome was the Eternal City, and the Capitoline was the symbol of its
permanence. Through the assaults of riot, fire, earthquake, poverty,
popes, barbarians, limekilns, wind, rain, and earth, the foundations
have endured.
* * * * *
The literary tradition tells us how Rome’s Etruscan monarchy fell: of
Tarquin’s despotism and his son’s rape of Lucrece, daughter of a Roman
aristocrat, whose husband avenged her and allegedly became one of
Rome’s first pair of consuls. It tells us how the Roman nobles rose,
drove out the Tarquins, and founded the Roman Republic. Archaeology
cannot confirm the traditional date (indeed the founding of temples,
Etruscan style, continues, as we saw, for half a century after 509).
But about the middle of the fifth century the contents of the tombs on
the Esquiline begin to grow mean and shabby. Contact with Etruria has
been cut off, and the Romans make a virtue of necessity, pass sumptuary
laws against excessive display, and practice simplicity and frugality.
The late fifth century B.C. in Rome, as archaeology reveals it, is a
period of isolation, stagnation, and retrenchment.
Hardly had the new Roman Republic rallied to conquer Veii
(traditionally in 396 B.C., after a ten-year siege, like Troy’s), when
the Gauls descended from the north with fire and sword. Rome bought
them off, and, resisting the temptation to move to Veii, fell to
rebuilding, mindful of how its ancestors had built their city up out of
forest and swamp; in love with their protecting hills, their fruitful
open spaces, their busy river. The building was done planlessly; the
main concern was to strengthen defenses.
The primitive Rome of separate villages on the hills had been defended,
at most, by separate palisades and ditches. It is with King Servius
that literature associated the Rome of impressive buildings and a
beetling wall, of squared stone, sturdy enough to repel all invaders.
With how much justification Roman historians called the wall “Servian,”
we are now to learn. The tradition associates Rome’s earliest wall
with Servius Tullius, who falls between the two Tarquins, and certain
surviving traces of earthwork and masonry, plus the Cloaca Maxima, or
Great Drain through the Forum, are assigned by some archaeologists
to the sixth century. Indeed until 1932 most scholars accepted the
sixth-century date for the whole early circuit. But in that year the
Swedish archaeologist Gösta Säflund (who seven years later was to
explode Pigorini’s myth about the _terremare_) published the results of
some painstaking fieldwork which radically changed the picture.
Beginning with the Palatine and working counter-clockwise, Säflund
examined every inch of the surviving circuit ascribed to Servius
(see Fig. 2.3), and for stretches which had been torn down during
Rome’s great expansion (after she became the capital of a united
Italy in the 1870’s) he had access to unpublished notes and sketches
by Boni and another great nineteenth-century Italian archaeologist,
Rodolfo Lanciani. Everywhere he paid careful attention to materials,
techniques, dimensions, mason’s marks, the relation of the wall to
terrain, neighboring tombs, and ancient artifacts found in its context.
It was chiefly from the building material that Säflund drew his
conclusions.
The stone was in the main Grotta Oscura tufa, which he knew from
Tenney Frank’s studies to have been in use in the year (378 B.C.)
in which Livy says the censors contracted to have a wall built of
squared stone. Furthermore, some of the Esquiline tombs already
mentioned, containing mid-fourth century artifacts, were outside the
line of the Grotta Oscura wall, while some of the tombs containing
archaic artifacts were inside. The Romans rarely buried their dead
within a city wall: the inference is that at the date of the earlier
tombs, Rome had no proper ring-wall, while by the date of the later
(fourth-century) tombs a circuit wall had been built. The Great Drain
through the Forum is also of Grotta Oscura, and is therefore probably
to be dated in 378, like the wall, though some feeder lines are in
_cappellaccio_, which, as we have seen, was the earliest volcanic stone
the Romans used, and we know--because we know the Forum swamp was
drained by 575 B.C.--that there must have been some sort of drainage
system--possibly open ditches--earlier than 378.
But Säflund found Fidenae tufa also. This he knew, again from Frank’s
study, to have been in use from about 338 B.C. down into the second
century. It had been used to patch the wall in places. What more
appropriate time for such repairs than when Hannibal was threatening
the city, in 217 B.C.? Thereafter, Roman and Latin colonies, advanced
bases, served her in the office of a wall, and her own fortifications
were allowed to fall into disrepair.
But there are places in Rome’s wall where Monteverde stone has been
used for arches, rising from footings set in concrete; in other places
the wall has a concrete core faced with Anio tufa. Säflund knew that
concrete was little in use in Roman building before 150 B.C., and that
it had become a favorite material by Sulla’s time (see p. 129). Sulla
had marched on Rome in 88 B.C. and taken it; he must have reinforced
the wall to keep his enemy Marius from duplicating his own feat. And
Sulla included the bridgehead on the far side of the Tiber in his
circuit, reinforced the Aventine Hill, and added _ballistae_ (great
catapults for shooting stones) in arched casemates flanking the main
gates.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.9 Rome, “Servian” Wall of 378 B.C., surviving
stretch beside Termini railway station. (Photo Paul MacKendrick)]
Thus Säflund distinguished three building periods for the so-called
“Servian” Wall, though none as early as King Servius Tullius. One
section of earth work or _agger_, on the Quirinal Hill, faced in
part with small blocks of _cappellaccio_, looked older than 378
B.C., and Säflund knew from observations at Ardea, Cerveteri (and,
as we now know, Anzio) that the use of the earthwork was standard
in the sixth century to reinforce weak places on hilly sites. Some
early sixth-century sherds, but none later, were found _under_ the
agger. This helps to confirm that the agger was a part of Rome’s
sixth-century, genuinely Servian defenses, never a complete ring-wall,
but an adjustment and reinforcement of natural defenses, later
incorporated into the circuit wall of 378 B.C. A splendid stretch of
the facing of this reinforced agger, 100 yards, survives today by the
Termini railroad station (Fig. 3.9).
But Säflund’s careful observations did more than redate the wall in its
several phases. By comparison of the mason’s marks, hacked in Greek
letters on the heads of the Grotta Oscura blocks only, with similar
marks found on the blocks of the fortifications of the Euryalus above
Syracuse, in Sicily (built in the late fifth century B.C. by Dionysius
I), Säflund was able to demonstrate that Rome’s wall was built by
Sicilian workmen, Rome not having the manpower or the skill at the
time. (Dionysius for his wall had employed 6000 men and 500 yoke of
oxen.)
The wall of 378 B.C. is evidence that Rome had emerged from the
doldrums into which the Republic had begun to sink. Before 390 B.C.
she had depended on men, not walls. The Gallic sack had proved her not
invincible, and had also, as war emergencies will, produced a new sense
of solidarity. The wall symbolizes it, and so does the bill passed
in 367 B.C. (while the wall was still under construction), opening
the highest office in the Republic to plebeians. Thus a reinforced
oligarchy was formed, which by 338 B.C. could beat its once powerful
enemies, the neighboring settlements linked in the Latin League;
proudly (even arrogantly) mount the beaks of enemy ships on the new
Rostra; and embark upon a career of Manifest Destiny in Italy. The
Republic had reached adulthood.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.10 Rome, Largo Argentina, temples. (G. Lugli,
_Monumenti Antichi_, 3, fac. p. 32)]
There were other outward and visible signs of the Republic’s new
maturity and prosperity. The gods deserve their reward for fighting
on the side of the biggest battalions, and so the expanding Republic
built temples. In another age of arrogant expansion, in 1926, not long
before Säflund began his work on the walls, slum clearance in front of
the Argentina theater (on the site of the portico of Pompey’s theater,
where Caesar was murdered) revealed the foundations of four Republican
temples (Fig. 3.10), nowadays the haunt of countless tomcats. The gods
to whom the temples were dedicated being unknown, they were named,
with proper archaeological sobriety, Temples A, B, C, and D. The
foundations of Temple C, the third from the north, are the deepest; it
is therefore the oldest. It is set in the Italic manner at the back of
a high podium, built of Grotta Oscura tufa; its mason’s marks match
those on the “Servian” wall. Clearly it was built by the same masons or
in the same tradition. The podium carries the distinction of being the
oldest surviving datable public building in Rome. Terracotta revetments
found in excavating are of fourth century type. Besides meanders, the
so-called “Greek frets” or “key” design, an angular pattern of lines
winding in and out, their decorative motifs include strigil patterns:
parallel troughs, made by the workman’s thumbs in the wet clay, and
then painted in contrasting colors. The strong curve of the profile
resembles that of the strigil or scraper used by athletes in the
gymnasium to remove caked oil and dirt from their bodies; hence the
name. The roof’s peak and corner ornaments, called _acroteria_, have
spikes set in the clay to discourage birds from perching and committing
nuisances. This temple and its three later fellows are still a long
way from the grandiose marble and gold of the Augustan Age, but they
are an equally long way from the primitive wattle-and-daub huts of the
Palatine village. They mark a stage in the painstakingly unravelled
archaeological story of Rome’s expansion, which we shall follow at
various newly-excavated sites in Italy.
4
Roman Colonies in Italy
Rome’s wall begun in 378 B.C. took twenty-five years to build. However
secure she might feel behind it, immediately beyond the gates lurked
enemies. To the north the Gauls, to the east and south, Italic tribes
(whom Rome successively feared, rivalled, dominated, and invited to
partnership; of these the Samnites were the most fearsome), on the
seas the Syracusan and Carthaginian navies--all represented a clear
and present danger. Rome’s population being inadequate to keep legions
in the field, much less a fleet at sea, against all these threats at
once, she evolved a system of advanced bases, called Latin colonies
(Fig. 4.1), manned partly with trustworthy local non-Romans, though
with a hard core of Roman legionaries. This avoided undue drain on the
Roman manpower, and placed the responsibility for frontier defense upon
frontiersmen who had the greatest interest in their own security.
During the last thirty years the efforts of archaeologists of several
nations; for example, Italians at Ostia, Belgians at Alba Fucens,
Americans at Cosa have added much to the sum of our knowledge of
these frontier outposts: their fortifications, street plan, public
buildings, housing arrangements, and the surveyed (“centuriated”)
quarter-sections of land (allotments) stretching away from the walls
into the countryside round about. From these brute facts inferences can
be drawn, about what prompted the founding of these outposts (was the
motive always military?), about relations with neighbors and with Rome,
about communications, about economic, social, and cultural life.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.1 Roman colonization. (P. MacKendrick,
_Archaeology_ 9 [1955], p. 127)]
At Ostia, at the Tiber’s mouth, historical tradition said that there
had been Romans settled since the days of King Ancus Marcius, and that,
even earlier, Aeneas had landed there and built a camp. In 1938 the
great Italian archaeologist Guido Calza began soundings to ascertain
the date of the oldest surviving stratum. The area he chose was beneath
Ostia’s Imperial Forum, where the two main streets, the _cardo_ and
the _decumanus_, crossed. (The Via Ostiensis, from Rome to the river
mouth, determined the line of the _decumanus_.) What he found (Fig.
4.2) was a set of walls enclosing a rectangle 627 feet long and 406
feet wide. The wall was built of roughly squared blocks of tufa in a
technique not unlike that of Rome’s wall of 378 B.C., but since there
was Fidenae stone in it, Calza dated the wall somewhat later than 378.
The wall was pierced by four gates of two rooms each, with portcullis.
The south gate was demolished in the early Empire to provide space for
a temple of Rome and Augustus; the north gate gave way under Hadrian
to the massive podium of a Capitolium, but the footings of the east
and west gates survive, well below the level of the Imperial pavement.
Calza found drains within the walls, and traces of four other streets
(unpaved) besides the _cardo_ and _decumanus_, but no identifiable
buildings. Some terracotta revetments found in the area suggest an
unidentified temple of the third century B.C. No traces earlier than
the late fourth-century wall have been found in the excavated area of
Ostia. Either Ancus Marcius’ foundation is a myth, or it was planted in
some thus far undiscovered spot, of which all the plowing and digging
in the neighborhood has left no trace.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.2 Ostia, _castrum_, plan. (G. Calza, _Scavi di
Ostia_, 1, fac. p. 68)]
What Calza found at Ostia was a coastguard station, or _castrum_,
planted by the Romans at the river’s mouth once their control of
the sea was established by their victory over Antium’s navy (which
produced the bronze beaks on the Rostra). The normal complement of such
a station was 300 men. A contingent of that size could have manned
Ostia’s _castrum_ wall with one soldier every six feet. Thus the prime
motive of the founding was military, and the _castrum_ plan is like
the familiar and standard plan of a Roman army camp. But the civilian
plan antedated the military: Polybius in his description of the Roman
camp of about 150 B.C. says that it was planned _like a town_ (_i.e._,
with a rectangular grid like Marzabotto). And Ostia’s function must
from the beginning, or soon after, have been commercial as well as
military. Its site at the river mouth was as ideal for collecting the
customs as for guarding the coast. Grain from Egypt and Sicily to feed
Rome may from the earliest days have been landed here and stored in
warehouses for later shipment upriver by barge. At all events history
records the appointment as early as 267 B.C. of a special finance
officer or _quaestor_ for Ostia, and Calza found the footings of
warehouses of Republican date. The terracotta revetments mentioned
above date from this period. The houses and shops remained humble for
seven generations, but those generations saw the departure of many a
fleet, and the arrival of many a consignment of grain. An inscription
dated in 171 B.C. marking the limits of public land in Ostia shows that
by then it had expanded far beyond the _castrum_ walls. But the story
of Ostia’s development, her new wall under Sulla, new theater under
Augustus, new port under Claudius, new garden apartment houses under
Trajan, and the rest, belong to later chapters.
* * * * *
In the last half of the fourth century Rome fought two wars against the
Samnites. Alba Fucens (Fig. 4.3) in the Abruzzi, one of her advanced
bases in the Second Samnite War, has been explored since 1949 by
the Belgians. It lies 3315 feet above sea level, on the Via Valeria
sixty-eight miles east-northeast of Rome. (The sixty-eighth milestone
of the Valeria was found _in situ_ inside the colony wall.) Alba’s site
dominates five valleys. The Latin colony of 6000 families planted here
in 303 B.C. assured Rome’s communications on two sides of Samnium,
eastward to the Adriatic and southeastward through the Liris valley.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.3 Alba Fucens, plan. (J. B. Ward Perkins, “Early
Roman Towns in Italy,” Fig. 9)]
The pride of Alba is its walls, nearly two miles of them, surrounding
the three hills on which the colony lies. The material is limestone,
which breaks at the quarry into irregular, polygonal blocks. These
are set without mortar. The excavators distinguished four different
building techniques in the wall. They assumed that the roughest
sectors, built of enormous blocks, were the oldest, coeval with
the foundation of the colony. These polygonal walls, common all
over central Italy, used to be called Pelasgian or Cyclopean, and
were formerly assumed to be of immemorial antiquity, but recent
archaeological work has pushed the dates of most of them down into the
late fourth century or later. At Alba the techniques involve the use
of smaller blocks and more careful workmanship in successive phases,
until finally with the use of cement we reach the 80’s B.C. and the age
of Sulla. On the northwest, where the hill has the gentlest slope, the
circuit is triple, and the outermost is the latest. The loop to the
north was the _arx_; it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1915. The
wall is pierced by four gates, some with portcullis and bastions. The
Via Valeria entered at the northwest, made a right-angled turn, passed
the civic center, and emerged at the southeast; that is, it was made to
conform to a grid plan within the colony, a grid plan laid down despite
the hilly terrain, which made terracing necessary.
Excavating Alba’s civic center, the Belgians found a Forum, with altar
and miniature temple, buried under many feet of earth. They also
found a basilica (a rectangular roofed hall with nave and two side
aisles, used as a law court and commercial center), presenting its
long side, with three entrances, to a portico facing the Forum. Beside
the basilica, a market, with baths on one side and a temple on the
other, with early revetments, repeatedly restored. An adjoining street,
parallel to the Valeria, was lined with shops, including a fuller’s
drycleaning establishment and at least one wine shop. The doorsills
still show slots for the shutters. In front of the shops ran a portico
supported on high pilasters. In the curb were holes where customers
might tie their mules. At the corner of the _decumanus_, the excavators
found charming statuettes of elephants, used as street signs. Under
the market were revealed subterranean chambers accessible only by
manholes; the excavators suggest that these are the very dungeons, dark
underground _oubliettes_, where prisoners of state like King Syphax
of Numidia in 203 B.C., King Perseus of Macedonia in 167, the Gallic
chief Bituitus in 121 were incarcerated, for the Romans often used
their colonies as detention points.
Levels, construction techniques, and artifacts assigned various dates
to these buildings, but their earliest phases fall in the Republican
period, in the age of Sulla or earlier. To the age of Sulla belongs
also a handsome rock-cut theater. There is an amphitheater of the early
Empire; as we know from a new inscription, its donor was Macro, the
notorious informer under the Emperor Tiberius, who brought about the
fall of the Emperor’s ambitious and scheming favorite, Sejanus.
Walls, grid, civic center, public buildings: these made of Alba a
smaller and more orderly replica of Rome. The general layout is
repeated so often in so many places that it suggests a master plan made
in the censors’ office in Rome. By the time Cosa was founded, in 273
B.C., the Romans already could draw on the experience of founding at
least eighteen colonies.
* * * * *
Cosa, where the writer did his first excavating, may be used to supply
a little more detail on materials and methods in field archaeology.
Seven eight-week spring seasons of excavation there (1948–1954),
modestly intended as laboratory training for young American
classicists, have in fact resulted in a remarkably complete picture of
an old-style Latin colony. The site was chosen for excavating because
it looked attractive from air photographs, because it was convenient
to Rome (ninety miles up the Via Aurelia on the Tyrrhenian Sea), and
because its walls were almost perfectly preserved, great gray masses
of polygonal limestone looming up as high as a four-story building
on a 370-foot hill that rises out of the reclaimed swamplands of the
Tuscan Maremma. For Cosa was planted, carved out of the territory of
the once proud Etruscan city of Vulci, to mount guard over Rome’s newly
acquired marches, and to affirm Rome’s name and supremacy in a restive
neighborhood.
A large assortment of gear is necessary for a modern scientific dig,
even a modest one: for surveying and levelling, clinometer (which
measures slopes), plane-table (which measures angles), alidade (which
shows degree of arc), prismatic compass with front and back sights
(for taking accurate bearings; the prism brings the object being
sighted, the hair-line of the front sight, and the reading on the
compass card all in a vertical line together), leveling staves marked
in centimeters (for measuring elevations); templates for recording the
curves of moldings; brooms, brushes, and mason’s tools for cleaning
the architectural finds; zinc plates and sodium hydroxide pencils for
electrolysis of coins; measuring tapes of all sizes, mechanical drawing
instruments, trowels, marking-pegs, cord, squared paper, large sheets
of filter paper for taking “squeezes” of inscriptions, catalogue cards,
India ink, shellac, cardboard boxes, small cloth bags, labels, journal
books, field notebooks, and a small library of technical manuals.
The gear was divided between the villa where the staff lived and an
abandoned Italian anti-aircraft observation post on the site itself,
whose concrete gunmounts made excellent drying floors for freshly
washed potsherds.
Ambitious excavations use a light railway for carting earth to the
dump, but at Cosa, which ran on a shoestring budget ($5000 for eight
weeks), the vehicle was the wheelbarrow, the track a set of boards
bound at the ends with iron to keep them from splitting. Twenty of the
local unemployed formed the corps of workmen. The foreman, in better
times a master carpenter, used a pick with all the delicacy of a
surgeon with a scalpel.
The first step in excavating a site is to lay down a grid--fifty-meter
squares are convenient--marked with wooden stakes set in cement
and levelled. During the ten months of the year when there was no
digging and Cosa was abandoned to the shepherds, they operated on the
conviction that the stakes marked the spot where the treasure lay
buried. They would overturn them and dig like badgers, and each new
season would have to begin with a partial re-survey.
A typical excavating day would begin with the removal of surface
earth in wheelbarrows. As large objects came to light--bits of
amphora, roof-tile, terracotta revetments--they were placed in shallow
yard-square wooden boxes called _barrelle_, equipped fore and aft with
carrying shafts, and labelled accurately with the precise designation
of the area from which the finds came: Capitolium Exterior South, Level
I; Arx North Slope, Surface, and the like. Small objects--bone _styli_,
small sherds, loomweights (pierced terracotta parallelepipeds, whose
weight held the threads hanging straight down on an ancient vertical
loom), lamps, fragments of inscriptions--went into separate marked
cloth bags. Thus the horizontal and vertical findspot of each object
was precisely known, so that when a dated or datable object was found
in a level, the whole level could be automatically dated, and so the
whole mosaic painstakingly put together and the history of the site
analyzed, or, as the archaeologist says, “read.” The meanest potsherd,
accurately defining a context, thus becomes more valuable historically
than a whole museum shelf full of gold jewelry from an unstratified dig.
When a _barrella_ and a set of cardboard boxes had been filled, they
were carried to the excavation shack and sorted. Objects that could
not be “read”--shapeless bits of rubble, parts of coarse pots without
profile of base or rim--were discarded, the rest sent to be washed.
After washing and drying, cataloguing began. Every object was painted
with a small square of shellac, on which its catalogue number was
written in India ink and then shellacked over to preserve it. A letter
indicated the dig, another the season, a number showed the place of the
object in the chronological sequence of finds. A typical entry might
read like the card, p. 101. Leica or plate photographs were taken of
all important finds and separately indexed for ready reference in the
final publication.
CC 1487 Capitolium Exterior South
Level I
Moulded terra-cotta revetment
Width 0.17 (centimeters)
Height 0.14
Thickness 0.03
Pale pink terra-cotta, much pozzolana. All edges preserved, slight
crack lower right corner. Nail-holes each corner. Strigillated
cornice moulding above, finishing in a half-round moulding,
enriched thunderbolt pattern in field. Thunderbolt runs from
upper left to lower right, tapering to points at ends, hand grip
in center; enriched on either side of hand grip with seven-point
sword-and-sickle palmettes. Photograph.
After the workmen’s day (7:00 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., with a half-hour for
lunch) was over, there was still much for the staff to do. Pottery,
spread out on trestle tables, had to be examined, joins made where
possible, types distinguished. (Careful attention at Cosa to plain
Roman black glaze has led to an arrangement of types in a dated series
which will be useful for future dating on other sites.) Evenings
were devoted to writing up the journal, studying the manuals, making
drawings, planning the next day’s dig, and shop talk. The results of a
typical season’s work, in 1950 on the _arx_ at Cosa (Fig. 4.4), were
to isolate a second temple at right angles to the Capitolium, restore
on paper the design of several sets of terracotta revetments, follow
the line of the Via Sacra from the _arx_ gate to the Capitolium, clear
the _arx_ wall, get down to bedrock beside the Capitolium, discover a
terracotta warrior who was part of the pedimental sculpture of an older
temple under the excavation shack, and in general get a pretty clear
idea of the religious center of the colony as it was, perhaps, in the
time of the elder Cato, in the early second century B.C.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.4 Cosa, _arx_. (F. E. Brown)]
[Illustration: FIG. 4.5 Cosa. (J. B. Ward Perkins, _loc. cit._, Fig. 8)]
In the two seasons preceding the discoveries on the _arx_ just
described, much work had been done. In the survey to set up the
fifty-meter grid, Cosa’s own ancient rectangular grid of streets, with
pomerial street running just inside the wall as at Marzabotto, came out
clear enough to be plotted on the plan (Fig. 4.5), together with the
standard blocks of housing, like the identical “ribbon-development”
apartment blocks of a welfare state, which compensated the pioneers for
whatever fleshpots they had given up in the metropolis or elsewhere.
Housing was found to occupy two-thirds of Cosa’s thirty-three acres,
while public buildings took just over twenty per cent, and streets
the rest. The site, which is waterless, was found to be honey-combed
with cisterns: over sixty-five were plotted. The mile-and-a-half of
walls, with their eighteen towers, spaced an effective bowshot apart,
had been closely examined. They were found to be built with two faces
and a rubble fill. The outer face was handsomely finished, with tight
mortarless joints, and sloped seven degrees back--this is called
“batter”--from the perpendicular; the inner face was left rough.
Potsherds of the Etrusco-Campanian style found in the rubble fill were
of a period matching Livy’s date of 273 B.C. for the colony. It was
clear that the walls, which show throughout no difference in technique,
were built all at one go, at the time the colony was founded. Those
impatient of the Roman reputation for perfect engineering will be
pleased to know that the ancient craftsmen, when they came to close
the ring of the wall, found they had made an error of from two to four
Roman feet. (The Roman foot approximately equals the English.) The
three gates were examined, and found to be of two rooms, with the main
gate grooved on its inner walls with slots for the rise and fall of the
portcullis, as at Alba. Bordering the roads leading from the gates were
tombs. The director of the excavations, by skindiving, examined the
outworks of the port, built to prevent silting, and established them
as Roman. They were parallel jetties 350 feet long, supported on huge
piers measuring twenty by thirty Roman feet, and forty-five Roman feet
apart.[C]
[C] Undersea exploration, one of the most fascinating branches
of archaeology, has not been carried as far in Italy as in
France (see, _e.g._, P. Diolé, _4,000 Years under the Sea_
[New York, 1954]). But this is a convenient place to report
a 1950 Italian operation off Albenga, on the Ligurian coast
between Genoa and the French border. Along this stretch of
the Italian Riviera fishermen’s nets had frequently brought
up amphorae, presumably from an ancient wreck, which was
soon located in twenty fathoms. The use of an iron grab
damaged the sunken hull, but an impressive number and
variety of objects were recovered. The ship yielded up over
700 more or less intact cork-sealed, pitch-lined amphorae,
from a cargo of perhaps thrice that number; their shape was
that current in the second and first centuries B.C. Some
had contained wine, others still held hazel-nuts. Campanian
black-glaze pottery, of a type datable in the last half of
the second century B.C., was found in sufficient quantity
to enable Professor Nino Lamboglia, who was in charge of
the operation, to set up a whole typology of black-glaze
ware, based on types, fabric, and glaze, a typology which
proved a useful check for dating Cosan pottery, and for
which the Cosan results have provided some corrections.
Lead pipes and lead sheathing resembled those found in the
ships from Lake Nemi (see Chapter 7), and a stone crucible
with molten lead in the bottom suggested that running
repairs could be carried out at sea. Fragments of three
helmets, of unusual design, may have been intended for
Marius’ army, which was campaigning in the north against
Germanic tribes in the late second century B.C. The finds
are on display in the Albenga Museum (see N. Lamboglia,
“Il Museo Navale Romano di Albenga,” _Rivista Ingauna e
Intemilia_ [1950] Nos. 3 and 4).
The 1949 campaign concentrated on the Capitolium (Fig. 4.6), situated
so that its central _cella_ lay over a cleft in the rock, from which
some kind of oracular fraud could be perpetrated. Between porch and
_cellae_, running the width of the building, was a cistern lined with
the waterproof cement called _opus signinum_, made of lime, sand,
and pounded bits of terracotta. The temple walls, which stand on the
south to an impressive height, visible far out to sea, were built of
brick-like slabs of the local calcareous sandstone, set in mortar.
On the north, the line worn in the rock by water dripping gives mute
evidence of the wide overhang of the roof, Etrusco-Italic style. Some
of the terracotta revetments belonged to the older, wooden temple. It
must have made a brave show when it was new, covered with brightly
painted tiles, its pediment and roof ornaments glittering in the sun.
The last four campaigns of digging attacked the Forum area, thickly
overgrown with asphodel, acanthus, and thistles. Here lay the remains
of an ungainly but monumental triple arch of about 150 B.C., the oldest
dated arch in Italy. It had a central roadway for wheeled traffic,
two side arches for pedestrians, and a stone bench attached to the
outer face where old men could sit in the sun and gossip. There was a
basilica, as big as a New England town hall, like Alba’s (but older:
about 180 B.C.). It presented its long side to the Forum, had a nave
and two side aisles, and a tribune for the presiding judge at the back,
with a vaulted cell, perhaps the local lock-up, beneath it. At some
time in the early Empire the basilica was abandoned as a legal center,
and restored as a festival hall, or intimate theater.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.6 Cosa, Capitolium. (Fototeca)]
Other buildings turned out to hold fascinating secrets. A complex
beside the basilica turned out to be an Atrium Publicum, a public hall
in the form of the central unit of an Italic house, which was rebuilt
as an inn for the patrons of the adjoining festival hall. When, about
A.D. 35 (on the evidence of pottery--the “Arretine ware” characteristic
of the period), the basilica wall collapsed, it crushed and entombed
in place the inn’s complete furnishings and equipment. The excavators
suddenly found their hands full of tableware, kitchen crockery, and
all sorts of household gear, in metal, glass, and stone; decorative
pieces, including a lively marble statuette of Marsyas; and objects of
personal adornment, including a fine engraved amethyst. For the first
time outside of Pompeii an ancient building had yielded not only its
structure but its contents.
On the other side of the basilica, excavation of what had been called
Building C brought further surprises. When the workmen had stripped
the surface humus off the area of the forecourt, the excavators found
themselves looking at a perfect circle of dark earth enclosed by a
sandy yellow fill. Further digging established this as a circular,
theater-like structure, big enough to hold 600 people. There was an
altar in the middle. This must have been the Comitium, the colony’s
assembly-place (Fig. 4.7). Building C, behind it, must have been the
Curia, or Senate House. The undisturbed fill under the Curia floor
proved completely sterile; hence the curia must have been built at a
date near the foundation of the colony. At this stage both Curia and
Comitium were apparently of wood, replaced in a second phase, before
the end of the third century B.C., with purple tufa from nearby Vulci.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.7 Cosa, Comitium. (L. Richardson, Jr.,
_Archaeology_ 10 [1957], p. 50)]
A healthy site, an orderly plan, a water supply, strong walls, housing,
provision for political and religious needs: the basic necessities are
all here, at Cosa, and all as early as the founding of the colony.
By hard work, painstaking accuracy, and intelligent inference, Brown
and Richardson, the excavators of Cosa, have given us the clearest
possible picture of the physical structure of a Roman colony well on
in the first intense period of history in the planting of advanced
bases. Cosa is clearly the fruit of long practice and Etrusco-Italic
tradition, untouched by Hellenism (no Greek architectural language
in sculptural or ornamental marble) or by new-fangled techniques (no
brick or concrete in the early phases). When we carry down Cosa’s
architectural history to the early Empire, we infer the death of
freedom of speech from the remodelling of the basilica into a theater.
And when freedom of speech and public life died, the colony lost its
sense of community. Its thirty-three acres would have held 3000 to 3500
settlers comfortably. But the first draft of settlers numbered probably
2500 families. (We infer families, not soldiers only, from the
discovery of loomweights, hardly appropriate for Roman legionaries.)
2500 families make a population of at least 7500, and probably more,
given Italian philoprogenitiveness. Some of these must have lived well
outside the colony; only those whose centuriated allotments, explained
below, lay nearest the walls would have lived in the colony proper.
The holders of more distant plots would come to town only for market,
worship, litigation (as long as the basilica lasted), or refuge from
raiding parties of Gauls or other enemies. And so, under despotism, the
community disintegrated. The temples held on longest. “Only the gods,
in the end,” writes Professor Brown, “held steadfastly to their ancient
seats.”
* * * * *
By derivation, a _colonia_ is a place where men till the soil.
Colonists were assigned centuriated allotments. Since traces of
centuriation have been found both at Alba Fucens and at Cosa (Figs. 4.8
and 4.9), as well as at nearly fifty other certain and half as many
possible sites in Italy, this seems an appropriate place to discuss the
subject. Wherever colonies were planted, wherever land was captured,
confiscated, redistributed to the poor or to veterans, the surveyor
with his _groma_, or plane-table, was on hand. Air photography is a
great help in revealing traces of the Roman surveyor at work, for
modern land-use has often overlaid the ancient traces, leaving ancient
crop-marks as the only clue. The standard surveyor’s unit was the
_centuria_ of 200 _iugera_ (the _iugerum_, five-eighths of an acre,
being the area an ox could plow in a day), and a side of twenty _actus_
(776 yards), its corners marked by boundary stones, some of which
survive. There has been too little digging to confirm the results of
air reconnaissance, but it seems clear that some centuriation goes back
to the late third century B.C. Dr. Ferdinando Castagnoli, the Italian
expert, is inclined to date that of Alba and Cosa at least this early,
as well as large stretches in the fertile Campanian plain northwest of
Naples.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.8 Alba Fucens, centuriation.
(F. Castagnoli, _Bull. Mus. Civiltà Rom._ 18 [1954–1955], p. 5)]
[Illustration: FIG. 4.9 Cosa, centuriation. (F. Castagnoli, _loc.
cit._, p. 6)]
The surveyor liked to link up his centuriated grid with a colony plan.
Thus at Cosa the _groma_, for siting the allotments, could have been
set up in the Porta Romana (the northeast gate), and at Alba the line
of the Via Valeria inside the walls, if projected, would cut the lines
of centuriation at right angles. The four sides of the _centuria_
were usually marked by roads, the inner subdivisions by narrower
roads, trees, hedges, or drainage or irrigation ditches. Modern
land-use often follows the line of the ancient: one stretch recently
laid out and now in use at Sesto, west of Florence, deliberately
follows the traces of Roman centuriation, restored by a classically
trained engineer for modern man to admire. As with the grid inside
a colony wall, the centuriated grid of allotments was laid out from
a basic _cardo_ and _decumanus_. The Roman surveyors were balked by
no natural barriers. Bradford cites one line of centuriation running
as high as 1600 feet above sea level (though within the _centuriae_
the furrows might follow the contours) and another, in Dalmatia,
continues from a peninsula across to the mainland, spanning an arm of
the Adriatic Sea three miles wide. In north Italy, where the flatlands
of the Po Valley made the survey easy, one can ride from Turin (Roman
Augusta Taurinorum) to Trieste (Roman Tergeste), three hundred miles,
through centuriated systems all the way. The same air photographs
which revealed neolithic sites to Bradford in Apulia showed Roman
centuriation, too, and subsequent digging turned up pottery of Gracchan
date (about 133–122 B.C.). A particularly extensive stretch, outside of
Italy, is found in Tunisia. It has been traced from the air 175 miles
from Bizerta to Sfax, and southwestward from Cape Bon for 100 miles
inland. It probably goes back to ambitious plans of Gaius Gracchus,
about 122 B.C., to resettle Rome’s urban proletariat.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.10 Paestum: Roman grid of streets
(air-photograph).
(Italian Ministry of Aeronautics)]
The examples of colonized and centuriated sites mentioned here hardly
even scratch the surface of the subject. Dozens of others remain to
be explored, on hilltops and headlands, by rivers and crossroads, the
length and breadth of Italy. Recent excavation at the Latin colony of
Paestum, on the coast fifty miles southeast of Naples, has traced the
Roman grid (Fig. 4.10), identified yet another Comitium, and produced
over 1,000,000 small finds. And still other colonial sites lie under
populous modern towns and cities: examples, in chronological order of
planting, are Anzio, Bimini, Benevento, Brindisi, Spoleto, Cremona,
Piacenza, Pozzuoli, Salerno, Vibo Valentia, Bologna, Pèsaro, Parma,
Modena, and Òsimo. Their foundation-dates span the years from about
338 to 157 B.C., the expanding years of the Roman Republic, the years
of “Manifest Destiny.” Their continued existence compliments the
Roman founders’ nice eye for a promising site, but makes large-scale
investigation of Roman levels difficult or impossible, for residents
of flourishing modern cities naturally resist resettlement in the
interests of archaeology. Excavation in these populated areas must
wait upon repair of war damage, urban improvements (as when laying
new sewer mains reveals Roman ones that follow the grid of the Roman
streets), or new building to bring new facts to light. No colony has
been completely excavated. At least forty per cent of ancient Ostia
and Pompeii remains to be dug. But generations of archaeologists of
many nations have dealt patiently and intelligently with the evidence.
Perhaps, considering the long span of two-and-a-half millennia since
the earliest tradition of the planting of Roman colonies, the wonder is
not that we know so little but that we know so much.
What archaeology has revealed is the story of the exploitation of a
frontier, with much that is exciting, and much that is sordid. There
are many points of resemblance to the history of the American West,
though two differences should be emphasized: the Romans often planted
their outposts in the territory not of savages but of their cultural
equals, and the Roman frontier was settled not by private but by
government enterprise. But the likenesses are striking. Centuriation
produces something like quarter-sections; land grants to veterans
resemble grants under the Homestead Act; the Roman grid town-plans were
reproduced in our Spanish settlements of the Southwest. And perhaps,
on the Roman as on the American frontier, the atmosphere was less
democratic than Frederick Jackson Turner thought.
What archaeology digs up in the colonies is material remains, brute
facts, but what it infers is men; men marching out in serried ranks
under their standards for the formal act of founding (_deductio_);
Romans and local Italians living side by side with some degree of
amity and equality; Romans impressing their ways and speech on the
peoples round about; Roman slum-dwellers given a new chance in the
new territory; large estates broken up to give land to the landless;
grizzled veterans settled in the quiet countryside after a lifetime of
hard campaigning; Romans homesick in strange places; undergoing the
rigors of frontier existence; subject to the ferment of success and
failure; forging a cultural life (the epic poet Ennius, the dramatist
Pacuvius, the satirist Lucilius, all came from Roman colonies).
The grid plans, in town and country, as Bradford has pointed out,
show, if not genius, then strong determination and great powers of
organization. The grids are, like the Romans themselves, methodical,
self-assured, technically competent. They are also regimented,
arbitrary, doctrinaire, and opportunist. This was the price the
Mediterranean world had to pay for the security of the Roman peace.
But before that peace-without-freedom could be enjoyed, the Roman
Republic was to suffer its death throes. That blood-bath was the work
of the nabobs of the last century before Christ, who left their stamp,
as nabobs will, on the buildings they erected to testify to their
glory.
5
Nabobs as Builders: Sulla, Pompey, Caesar
The aftermath of Sulla’s second march on Rome in 83 B.C. was a spate
of political murders and confiscations. The profits were enormous, and
Sulla used them for the most ambitious building program in the history
of the Republic. His motive was in part the desire to rival what he
had seen in the cities of the Greek East, in part his understanding
that massive building projects are the outward and visible sign of
princely power. And so he monumentalized the same Forum in which
he displayed the severed heads of his enemies, planning, in the
Tabularium, or Records Office, a theatrical backdrop for the tragedy
which in the ensuing years was to be played below. He settled 100,000
of his veterans in colonies in central and south Italy. He built or
reinforced walls in Rome, Ostia, and Alba Fucens; theaters in Pompeii,
Alba, Bovianum Vetus, and Faesulae; he built temples in Tibur, Cora,
Tarracina, Pompeii and Paestum. And this is only a sample of his
prodigious building activity. But by all odds the most grandiose of
his completed projects took shape at Praeneste (nowadays Palestrina),
a little over twenty miles east of Rome, where he sacked the town to
punish it for taking the side of his enemy Marius. He then built or
restored there the great, axially-symmetrical, terraced Sanctuary of
Fortune, the most splendid monument in Italy of the Roman Republic.
In 1944 allied bombing sheared off the houses from the steep
south-facing slope where the medieval and modern town was built, and
revealed the plan of the Sanctuary. Now, after fourteen years of
excavation and restoring (reinforcement with steel beams, injecting
liquid concrete, loving reproduction of the craft of ancient masons),
the plan is clearer than it has been at any time since antiquity. The
finds are displayed to advantage in the Barberini Palace at the top of
the Sanctuary, splendidly reconstructed as a museum. The site repays a
visit perhaps more than any other in Latium.
The archaeological zone of Palestrina falls into an upper and a lower
part. In the lower area exciting discoveries were made in 1958. Its
southernmost retaining wall, and the monumental ramped entrance, the
Propylaea--enlivened in antiquity with jets of water playing--was
cleared. Between it and the buildings of the lower zone, excavation
seventy years before had shown traces of pools and shaded porticoes.
In 1958, also, the façade was removed from the cathedral in the center
of the lower zone, revealing behind it an imposing Roman temple with a
lofty arched entrance, its _cella_ corresponding to the forward (south)
part of the nave of the present church. To the left rear (northwest)
of this temple was a natural cave, long known as the Antro delle
Sorti, where, according to time-honored local lore, the lots were cast
which gave this sanctuary of Luck its fame. The cave, the excavators
discovered, had been monumentalized into the apse of a building (not
shown in the plan), its floor paved with a mosaic representing the sea
off Alexandria. The mosaic was sunk a couple of inches below floor
level and sloped forward to allow a thin film of water to play over it,
which brightens the colors and makes the mosaic fish extraordinarily
realistic. The mosaic also portrays architectural elements--an altar,
column, and capital--in what corresponds to the so-called Second Style
at Pompeii, dated in the first half of the first century B.C.
Opposite this building in the plan is another with a grotto much like
the natural cave on the left. It was from this apse, again at a level a
couple of inches below the rest of the floor, that the famous Barberini
mosaic (Fig. 5.1) came, a late Hellenistic copy of an original of
the early Ptolemaic age in Egypt. It is now handsomely restored and
displayed in the museum at the top of the Upper Sanctuary. The mosaic
combines a zoological picture-book of the Egyptian Sudan--its real
and fabulous monsters labelled in Greek--with a spirited scene of the
Nile in flood, with farm-house, dove cote, a shipload of soldiers,
crocodiles, hippopotamuses, an elegant awninged pavilion, a towered
villa in a garden, a group of soldiers feasting in mixed company (after
them, the deluge), more wine, women and song in an arbor nearby, behind
the pavilion a temple with statues of Egyptian gods in front, before
them a man riding, his servant following afoot with baggage; behind the
arbor a straw hut, with ibises in flight above it; in the flood waters,
canoes (one loaded with lotus blossoms) and two large Nile river
craft with curving prows--altogether the most spirited essay which
has come down to us in the art of the mosaic. Interest in Egypt is a
striking feature of both Pompeian and Roman wall-painting of the last
half-century of the Republic and the early Empire. Examples are the
scene from Pompeii of pygmies fighting a rhinoceros and a crocodile,
now in the Naples Museum, the cult scenes from the Hall of Isis under
the Flavian Palace on the Palatine, and the frescoes of the Pharaoh
Bocchoris in the Terme Museum from the villa under the Farnesina.
Alexandria was then the intellectual and artistic capital of the
world. The Lucullus who founded the Sullan colony at Praeneste appears
from an inscription found in the lower area to be not the famous _bon
vivant_ (who had been in Alexandria, the first foreign general ever to
be entertained by a Ptolemy in the palace) but his brother Marcus.
Nevertheless the two brothers were very close, and the more famous of
them may have supplied the mosaic, the mosaic-maker, or the idea of
using Egyptian motifs.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.1 Palestrina, Museum. Barberini mosaic. (Museum
photo)]
M. Lucullus’ name was carved on a fallen epistyle, a marble block
intended to connect two columns. Where did the block belong? Gullini,
the excavator, connected it with a building which ran between the two
apsidal halls in the lower area. What survives is a back wall, built in
the technique called _opus incertum_, a strong lime and rubble wall,
studded externally with fist-sized stones of irregular shape. This
technique was standard in the age of Sulla. The wall was decorated
at regular intervals with two stories of half-columns, ingeniously
combining function with decoration: they mask drainage conduits. The
pavement in front of the wall shows the marks of two column-bases
in two different rows, enough to justify restoring on paper a whole
forest of twenty-four columns. Two dimensions are known: the diameter
of the bases and the height of the half-columns on the wall behind.
Their proportionate relation is appropriate to Corinthian columns,
and some Corinthian capitals of a size to fit were found in the area.
Working from these finds, the architect Fasolo could restore on paper
a two-story basilica (Fig. 5.2, bottom) between the two apsidal
halls (only one hall is shown in the reconstruction). The basilica
is on a higher level than the newly-isolated temple to the south of
it. The difference in level is made most clearly visible by sets of
superimposed columns on the southwest side of the basilica (where the
lower columns are below the basilica pavement level), by the pavement
below the _piazza_ of the modern town, and in the façade of the
right-hand (eastern) apsidal hall, which is in _opus incertum_, while
its lower level, the colony’s _aerarium_ or treasury, heavily built of
tufa blocks, had the difference in construction hidden by a portico
with Doric columns.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.2
Palestrina, Sanctuary of Fortune, reconstruction.
(H. Kähler, _Gnomon_ 30 [1958], p. 372)]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.3 Palestrina, Sanctuary of Fortune, inclined
column capitals.
(G. Gullini, _Guida_, Figs. 13 and 15)]
The terrace marking the transition between the lower area and the
Upper Sanctuary used to be covered by houses and shops, all damaged or
destroyed by the 1944 bombing. When the debris was cleared away, it
was found that the modern buildings had rested on a two-level terrace
(I and II in the reconstruction), and had backed against and protected
from centuries of weathering 325 magnificent feet of polygonal wall.
The wall gives an architectonic front to the cliff and is at the same
time functional. Its top was the architect’s base line; on it he built
his complex, a splendid series of superimposed terraces, which, now
that the rubble from the bombing has been cleared away, is revealed in
all its magnificence, of ramps (III), Hemicycle Terrace (IV), Terrace
of Arches with Half-columns (V), and Cortina Terrace (VI), all leading
up to the final stepped hemicycle (VII) with the circular _tholos_ for
the cult statue at the very top. A draped torso in blue Rhodian marble
(now in the museum), of a size to fit the _tholos_--whose dimensions
are preserved in the fabric of the Barberini Palace--may be the cult
statue of the goddess Fortune: Lady Luck herself.
The next level is approached by a pair of imposing ramps running east
and west, converging on an axis. Fasolo and Gullini found that the
ramps were supported by a series of concrete vaults, concealed, all but
one, by a facing of _opus incertum_ (see p. 120). The exception is the
central vault, which was left open, lined with waterproof concrete,
and made into a fountain-house. The terrace in front of the ramps is
beautifully paved with polygonal blocks. A room--perhaps priests’
quarters--at the bottom of the left ramp is decorated in the Pompeian
First Style--embossed polychrome squares, red, buff, and green, with
dado. Houses at Pompeii thus decorated are dated between 150 and 80
B.C., so that this decoration accords with a Sullan date. The decorated
room is paved with waterproof cement with bits of white limestone
imbedded in it. The technique, called _lithostroton_, was in vogue in
Sulla’s time.
On the ramps were found three curious column capitals, which at first
puzzled the excavators, and then gave the clue to the whole complex on
top of the ramps. What is odd about the capitals is that they incline
(Fig. 5.3) twenty-two degrees with respect to the axis of the columns.
Since this slant corresponds to the grade of the ramp, the columns must
have been intended to bear an inclined architrave or beam of stone.
This poses a difficult problem in statics; that Sulla’s architect
solved it is the wonder of his modern successors. The roadway up the
ramp shows, on the outboard (south) side of a drain running up its
middle, a stylobate (course of masonry on which columns rested) with
cuttings for column bases. Reading these stones, Fasolo and Gullini
concluded that the outboard half of the roadway up the ramp was roofed,
while the inboard half was open to the sky. On the extreme outboard
edge of the roadway are preserved the remains, about a yard high, of
a wall in _opus incertum_, with the bottoms of half-columns, their
fluting laid on in stucco, mortised into it at intervals corresponding
to the cuttings in the stylobate. The half-round profile at the bottom
of the wall suggests projecting the same profile all the way up.
This involves restoring a blank windowless wall (windows would make
it too weak to bear the weight of the roof) closing the entire south
side of the porticoed roadway, blocking the breath-taking view across
Latium to the sea, and forcing the eye upward to the top of the ramp.
Architectural members designed to be clamped together in pairs, of
a size to fit the tops of the inclined capitals, gave the answer to
the question how the portico was roofed. One of the pairs supported
a barrel vault, the other a vertical masonry wall designed to mask
the spring of the vault. Other architectural members, with an oblique
chamfer, found at the top and the bottom of the ramp, suggest that
the ends of the vaults were masked with a pediment or gable end, and
therefore that the whole vault was covered with a pitch roof. The two
ramps debouch at the top in an open space paved in herringbone brick,
a sort of balcony with--at last--a splendid view southward. To the
north a stair led to the next level, the level of the Hemicycle Terrace.
The Hemicycle Terrace (IV) is planned, Fasolo and Gullini discovered,
symmetrically to the axis of the whole composition, at this level
marked by a central stair which has suffered a good deal from having
had a modern house built on top of it. One can make out, however, that
the stair was narrowed at one point (where there may have been a gate)
by fountain niches on either side. The play of water is important
at every level of the Sanctuary. Under the stair passes a vaulted
corridor connecting the two axially symmetrical halves of the terrace.
Closest to the stair on each side are four arches; beyond these, the
monumental hemicycles which are the architectonic center of each wing.
They have vaulted, coffered ceilings, and a concentric colonnade with
Ionic-Italic (four-voluted) columns. Before they were restored, these
were badly corroded, and covered with verdigris from the acid of the
coppersmith’s shop which occupied the spot before the bombing. The
epistyle carries an inscription, almost illegible, but apparently
referring to building and restoring done on the initiative of the local
Senate, presumably after the Sullan sack. The outer surface or extrados
of the vaults is concealed--as it was on the porticoed ramp--by a story
called an attic, in _opus incertum_, divided into rectangular panels by
engaged columns with semicircular drums in tufa. At the back of each
hemicycle runs a platform approached by two steps, with consoles on
which planks could be placed to make more room; this suggests that it
was intended for spectators to stand on. The pavement, as in the room
at the foot of the ramp, is _lithostroton_; the likeness in the paving
justifies the inference that the two terraces (III and IV) were built
about the same time. On the far side of each hemicycle are four more
arches. In front of the right-hand (eastern) hemicycle is a wishing
well, with footings round it from which Fasolo and Gullini have been
able to restore to the last detail, with the help of some architectural
fragments, a small round well-house, with a high grille above its
balustrade, now to be seen in the museum. Coins found in the well,
whose heaviest concentration is in the mid-second century A.D., suggest
that the well-house is much later in date than the terrace on which it
stands. But the well-house stands on the central terrace of seven; it
may have been the spot where, in the early days of the Sanctuary, the
lots were cast. From either end of the Hemicycle Terrace ramps (Fig.
5.4) ascended to the Cortina Terrace (VI), the next but one above.
[Illustration:
FIG. 5.4 Palestrina, Sanctuary of Fortune. Model from southwest,
showing buttresses, and ramp from Hemicycle Terrace to Cortina
Terrace. (H. Kähler, _Ann. Univ. Saraviensis_ 7 [1958], Pl. 39)
]
The stair which divides the Hemicycle Terrace leads to the Terrace
of the Arches with Half-columns (V), also symmetrically planned on
the axis of the stair. There are nine deep arches on either side of
the stair. Possibly these were stalls for the various guilds--wine
merchants, wagoners, cooks, weavers, garland-makers, second-hand
dealers, money-changers--who, as we know from inscriptions, made
dedications to Fortune, and had a financial interest in her Sanctuary.
Here again close observation has enabled the excavators to tell
exactly how the façade of this terrace looked when it was new. The
even-numbered arches are narrower and lower than the odd-numbered ones,
are left rough within, and are floored with a pebble fill, from all of
which it is inferred that they were not meant to be seen. Sills found
_in situ_, and uprights, cornices, and volutes, found on the Hemicycle
Terrace, where they do not fit into the architecture, and therefore
must have fallen from above, can be restored as blind doors set in the
walls which closed the even-numbered arches. Small travertine panels,
with a molded surround, and a cornice above, found on this terrace,
will have been set into the wall on either side of the blind doors, at
lintel level. The same decorative motif was found in place on the back
wall of the basilica area in the lower zone. The repetition of motif
makes an aesthetic link between the two levels. The odd-numbered arches
are mosaic-paved and plastered, and were therefore meant to be visible.
Enough remains in place to show that the profile of the arch was set
with tufa blocks supported on pilasters. These alternating open arches
framed with pilasters and closed arches with blind doors all supported
an epistyle and cornice which in turn supported the parapet of the
Cortina Terrace above.
The Cortina Terrace (VI), nearly 400 feet deep, was a hollow square,
open to the south except for a balustrade, closed to the east and west
by a three-columned portico, connected at the back (north) with a
_lithostroton_-paved vaulted corridor, called a cryptoporticus, which
runs under the stair to the semicircular Terrace VII. Again, similarity
of plan and décor ties the whole ensemble together. (Nowadays, the
approach to Terrace VII is by a double-access stair, but this is of the
seventeenth century.) At the back of the terrace, six arches, three on
either side of the central stair, gave access to the cryptoporticus. At
either end of the three-arch sequence is an arched projecting fountain
house in appearance not unlike a Roman triumphal arch, with a pair
of narrow windows in its back wall, opening on the cryptoporticus.
Heavy deposits of lime on the back wall suggest an arrangement whereby
persons passing through the cryptoporticus could look out through a
thin sheet of water onto the Cortina Terrace. Enough traces remain to
restore on paper the three-columned portico on the east and west. It
was roofed with a pair of barrel vaults, coffered like the ones in the
hemicycles of Terrace IV (another aesthetic link), and roofed like the
great east-west ramps which connect Terraces III and IV. The portico’s
outer walls were buttressed, and the north-south ramps from the
Hemicycle Terrace also helped to counter the outward thrust.
And so we come to the exedra, the seventh of the superimposed terrace
levels, a most holy place, where the priests could appear and offer
sacrifice on an altar in full view of the faithful assembled on the
semicircular steps. At the top of the exedra there now rises the
splendid semicircle of the Barberini Palace, but plate glass let
into the museum’s ground floor paving shows the tufa footings of a
semicircular series of columns, which must have been the middle set
of another double portico answering to the one on the Cortina Terrace
below, and, like it, double-barrel-vaulted and pitch-roofed, but
of course semicircular in plan instead of U-shaped. Access to the
porticoes was not on the central axis of the whole complex, but by
a short narrow stair at either end of the exedra. (We shall see how
Hadrian, too, centuries later, liked these split-access arrangements.)
But, though there is no direct approach, the distance between the
columns on either side of the main axis is extra-wide, to give a
better view of the circular building (_tholos_) above and behind, the
culminating point of the whole plan, where the cult statue was placed.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.5 Palestrina, Museum. Sanctuary of Fortune, model.
(J. Felbermeyer photo)]
Such is the careful plan of the complex, justifying this detailed
treatment because it is a turning point in the history of Roman
architecture, perhaps the most seminal architectural complex in the
whole Roman world. Everything (Fig. 5.5) centers on an axis, everything
rises, aspires to the apex at the cult-statue, embracing a superb
and at each level more extensive view of the plain stretching away
southward to the sea. The materials and technique with which this form
is realized and supported are interesting in themselves and for what
they contribute to the dating of the Sanctuary. The basic materials are
tufa, limestone, and concrete; no marble is used except in statuary.
Limestone, which in Roman architecture comes to predominance later than
tufa, is used for the facing of polygonal walls and _opus incertum_,
for décor (_e.g._, the Corinthian capitals of tufa columns), for
pavements. The limestone spalls or chips left over from the facing
of _opus incertum_ were used in concrete cores and for fill. Tufa is
used for footings, structure in squared blocks (_e.g._, caissons for
concrete), the voussoirs, or wedge-shaped blocks, of arches, column
drums, the core of stuccoed decorative elements, cornices, corners.
Both materials are subordinate to concrete.
The use of concrete at Palestrina amounts to an architectural
revolution, and, as often, the revolution in taste is combined with
a revolution in materials and methods. This strong, cheap, immensely
tough material enabled the architect to enclose space in any shape;
henceforward architects could concentrate on interiors, and the day of
the box-like temple was over. The architectural history that culminates
in the Pantheon begins here. The architect was clearly more expert
in the use of concrete than in the use of stone. Palestrina concrete
is hydraulic, a combination of limestone chips and mortar made of
_pozzolana_ (volcanic sand) and lime. Concrete footings, Fasolo and
Gullini found, go down to bedrock everywhere; _e.g._, each of the three
rows of columns of the Cortina Terrace portico rests on a foundation
wall of concrete based on bedrock, while the space between is hollow,
to relieve weight. For the same reason the whole hollow square of the
Cortina Terrace rests on a series of rectangular concrete coffers
with a stone fill. The result of this use of concrete is that the
whole Upper Sanctuary is structurally a single unit. Each level is
planned as a step toward, and a retaining wall of, the level next
above. The stresses, Fasolo reports, are never more than about three
pounds per square yard for walls and eight pounds per square yard
for columns; this in a structure which is in effect a skyscraper 400
feet high. There is repetition of motif throughout, not from paucity
of imagination, or because it is the easy way, but of set aesthetic
purpose, to emphasize the concealed structural unity and to use the
functional parts of the complex to give architectonic unity to the
whole. Thus the upper hemicycle stair repeats the two hemicycles of
the lower terrace, and the relation between them is a triangle, which
repeats in a different plane the triangle of the double converging
ramp. The arches are treated as beams to bear the weight of stone
construction, and the stone construction is a caisson for the concrete.
Fasolo and Gullini argue ingeniously for a date earlier than Sulla
for the Sanctuary, but their arguments have not found general favor.
The most that can be said is that certain inscriptions mentioning
restoration, reconstruction, or dedications to Fortune earlier than 80
B.C. imply a previously existing and probably much simpler structure,
centering on the east half of the Hemicycle Terrace, but nothing in the
technique or materials now visible or inferred requires other than a
Sullan date for any part of the Sanctuary.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.6 Kos, Sanctuary of Asclepius, reconstruction.
(R. Herzog and P. Schatzmann, _Kos_ 1, Pl. 40)]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.7 Tarracina. View toward Circeii from Temple of
Jupiter Anxur.
(H. Kähler, _Rom und seine Welt_, Pl. 49)]
In materials and methods, in massiveness and axial symmetry, the
Sanctuary of Fortune bears a Roman stamp. But when we recall the
experience of Sulla and his lieutenants, the Luculli, in the Creek
East, Greek influence is very likely. Of the many Hellenistic Greek
complexes available for comparison, the closest in spirit to Palestrina
is the Sanctuary of Asclepius on the island of Kos in the Dodacanese,
in the southeast Aegean Sea, where the major temple, built in the
mid-second century B.C., is the focal point of a grandiose composition
(Fig. 5.6). Placed on the highest of three terraces, it is framed by
a three-sided colonnade like the Cortina Terrace at Palestrina, and
approached by three successive monumental stairways leading up the
lower terraces, which are arched as at Palestrina. A few standard
architectural ingredients, arches, colonnades, monumental stairways,
are grouped as a clearly defined composition, easy to grasp, simple,
bold, plastic, the few standard elements firmly juxtaposed. Contrasts
of scale, an elevated and central position, an axial approach, all
make of the temple the focal, culminating point of the composition.
It is exactly so at Palestrina, and in scores of other Hellenistic
sanctuaries. Also noteworthy in both places is “the same outspoken
taste for vista. Not only is the triple-terraced sanctuary visible
from afar, not only is the crowning element, a temple, a beacon toward
which visitor and worshipper alike are drawn by the now familiar
devices of setting, frontality and access, but again, once we have
reached the summit, a scene of breathtaking beauty, of unexpected
amplitude, of mountain, sea and plain confronts us.” The words are
those of Phyllis Lehmann, from whom the description of the site at Kos
draws heavily, but they were reinforced by a visit made by the present
writer to the island in September, 1956, expressly to compare the
site with Palestrina. Mrs. Lehmann goes on, “Although many factors,
notably the sanctity of a cult spot, were involved in the choice of
such sites, their architectural treatment attests a keen awareness of
landscape setting as a prime aesthetic ingredient in the total effect.”
The unknown architect-genius who planned Palestrina probably knew
the Greek Sanctuary at Kos; he was certainly in touch with the main
movement of mind of his age. But the final impression of this dynamic,
utterly functional, axially symmetric complex is not Greek but Roman,
a great memorial façade to celebrate the end of a Civil War. Italy as
well as Greece can provide ground-plans by which parts of the Sanctuary
at Palestrina might have been inspired, notably one in Cagliari in
Sardinia, and another at Gabii, near Rome.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.8 Tarracina. Temple of Jupiter Anxur,
reconstruction.
(F. Fasolo and G. Gullini, _Il Santuario di Fortuna Primigenia_, Pl.
25)]
This Roman classical masterpiece has, then, ancestors; what about its
descendants? They are many: from the Sanctuary of Fortune contemporary
and later architects learned much. An example of this influence is
the Temple of Jupiter Anxur at Tarracina, above the Via Appia where
it touches the coast sixty-seven miles south of Rome. Here the use
of concrete, of _opus incertum_, of arch and vault, of setting and
landscape, is in the unmistakable idiom of Sulla’s architect. It is
an architectural complex and a seascape which mediates, as Palestrina
does, between man and nature. It is designed to capture attention
from the colony below, to become more impressive as one approaches,
and to give a gradually widening view of the sea as one ascends. The
temple was oriented north and south, with a portico behind (Fig. 5.8).
It is set at an angle upon a tremendous concrete podium, with arched
cryptoporticus as at Palestrina. On the seaward side the play of light
and shadow on the podium arches is enormously impressive; on the side
toward Sperlonga the sturdy blind buttress arches are again strongly
reminiscent of what we have seen on the Terrace of the Half-columns.
Within the cryptoporticus (the vaults under the Temple platform)
the play of light and shadow is again very satisfying, and yet the
structure is functional as well: the cryptoporticus lightens the huge
weight of the concrete, and the sturdy concrete construction has stood
the test of time.
Another Sullan descendant is the Tabularium (Public Records Office)
in Rome (Fig. 5.9), finished in 78 B.C. by Quintus Lutatius Catulus,
to whom Sulla’s veterans transferred their allegiance after Sulla’s
death. It was a part of Sulla’s plan for monumentalizing the Forum,
to provide, as it were, a scenic backdrop for it, which serves at
the same time as a terrace-level to give order to the Capitoline
Hill above. Its plan, its frontality, and its use of arch, vault and
concrete is in the Palestrina tradition. There is a cryptoporticus in
concrete, fronted by arches framed in half-columns placed at points
in the wall which required extra strength. The upper levels of the
Tabularium were removed by Michelangelo when he designed the Palazzo
del Senatore, Rome’s city hall. Perhaps this may be taken as a symbol
of the extent and the limits of the influence of Palestrina’s architect
on Renaissance masters. One archeologist, Heinz Kähler, has argued,
ingeniously but without carrying conviction, for an influence of the
Cortina Terrace and the exedra above it upon the design of Pompey’s
theater in Rome: one nabob borrowing architectural effects from another.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.9 Rome, Tabularium. (Fototeca)]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.10 Tivoli, Temple of Hercules Victor,
reconstruction.
(Fasolo and Gullini, _op. cit._, Pl. 27)]
Finally, about the time of Cicero’s consulship (63 B.C.), Palestrina
influenced the Sanctuary of Hercules Victor at Tivoli, well-known to
many from Piranesi’s etching as the Villa of Maecenas. Like Kos and
Palestrina (Cortina Terrace), it had a portico on three sides, and a
temple against the back wall. Nowadays it houses a paper-mill, but
forty years ago the portico was uncluttered. There was an approach
by ramp and semicircular stair (Fig. 5.10), very theatrical, like
Palestrina and the Tabularium; the material is again concrete faced
with _opus incertum_. The podium is again supported on concrete
vaults, and lightened by a complicated arrangement of subterranean
rooms. A vast cryptoporticus pierces the whole podium to carry the
Via Tiburtina, the main road from Rome to Tivoli. The famous terraced
gardens of the Villa d’Este nearby, with their plays of water, felt
the inspiration of Palestrina; their architect, Pirro Ligorio, has
left sketches of our site made by him on the spot. Pietro da Cortona,
Bramante, Raphael, Palladio and Bernini also knew and sketched
Palestrina. Another successful terrace plan inspired by Palestrina is
Valadier’s treatment in the 19th century of the steep slope up the
Pincio from the Piazza del Popolo in Rome.
Palestrina inspired the architects of the Roman Empire, too: for
example--one among many--it influenced to some extent (see also p.
267) the architect of Trajan’s Market in Rome, who uses terracing,
concrete, and framed arches (but the arches are flat, the framing is
pilasters instead of half-columns, and the façade is brick instead of
_opus incertum_.) The inspiration does not stop here: it is to be found
on the Palatine, in Hadrian’s villa near Tivoli, Diocletian’s Baths in
Rome, and his palace at Spalato, and the Basilica of Maxentius in the
Roman Forum.
From his building, from which the history of Roman architecture really
begins, we can reconstruct the personality of the architect. It makes
the whole history of Roman architecture come alive, when we really
know one complex. The architect was a master of the manipulation of
surface, of light and shade, of counterthrust, controlled views, the
unitary plan, of space both full and empty. For him, organic function
is also decorative; the stylistic fact is the constructive solution;
his organization is clear, his use of the classical “orders” of
Graeco-Roman architecture, Tuscan and Ionic, in stone as bearing walls
is classical in its combination of beauty and function. The plan of
his Sanctuary imposed itself as well on the secular plan of the colony
below. He is a real genius, one of the greatest architects of all time.
He achieves his magnificent results by creative imitation of earlier
models, and in this he is Roman. Because his imitation is creative, it
does not peter out in formalism, but has a seminal effect upon other
architects of the Republic, the Empire, the Renaissance. A detailed
study of his masterpiece not only leaves us profoundly impressed with
the patience, thoroughness and imagination of Italian archaeologists;
it reinforces again the lesson of the continuity of history and the
cultural importance for the whole western world of the Roman Republic.
* * * * *
Sulla went into voluntary retirement and--a rare achievement in his
time--died in bed. The next nabob to equal him in stature, violence,
and unconstitutionality was a man who had begun his career as Sulla’s
lieutenant, Pompey the Great. Victories in Sicily and Africa, against
slaves, pirates, and Mithridates, brought him enormous spoils; he too
turned his mind to buildings to monumentalize his glory. The result
was Rome’s first stone theater, in the Campus Martius, dedicated in
his third consulship (52 B.C.) but begun in his second (55 B.C.), in
a great show involving 500 lions and seventeen to twenty elephants.
What survives of it is little more than a curve in a Roman street,
some blocks of tufa beneath a Roman square, and a memory. Beneath
the curve of the Via di Grotta Pinta, which perpetuates the outline
of its _cavea_, one may visit today, in the lower regions of a Roman
restaurant, the underpinnings of the great building, which once held
12,000 spectators. The technique of these vaults, a development of
_incertum_ called _opus reticulatum_, involves setting pyramidal
bricks, point inward, in a lozenge pattern into a cement core. But
though the entire superstructure has disappeared, an ancient plan
survives. In the late second century A.D. the Emperor Septimius Severus
caused to be placed on the wall of the library in Vespasian’s Forum of
Peace a marble Plan of Rome, the _Forma Urbis_, which has come down to
us in over 1000 fragments. The ingenuity with which these have been
pieced together (work still going on in 1959) would make a story in
itself, but for our present purpose only four fragments (Fig. 5.11) are
relevant. The two parallel walls to the right (which is west; north is
at the bottom) give a fascinating insight into the puritanical Roman
mind at work. Straitlaced Romans objected to theaters as immoral.
Pompey’s architect therefore designed at the top of the theater’s
_cavea_ a temple of Venus Victrix, represented by the two parallel
walls in the plan. The theater seats might then pass as a hemicycle
approach to a temple (compare the hemicycle approach to the _tholos_ at
Palestrina). Puritanism was appeased.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.11 Rome, Pompey’s theater and portico, from
_Forma Urbis_. (G. Lugli, _Mon. Ant._, 3, p. 79)]
Behind the stage the marble plan shows a great rectangular portico,
with a double garden-plot in the middle, where we may restore in
imagination trees planted, fountains playing, and works of art
displayed. At a Senate meeting in a building associated with the
portico, on the Ides of March, 44 B.C., Caesar fell at the base of
Pompey’s statue, pierced by twenty-three daggers. What may be the tufa
blocks of this very building are visible today through a sheet of plate
glass in a pedestrian underpass in the Largo Argentina. (Temples A and
B of the Largo Argentina appear to the left in the plan.)
Caesar was a greater man than Pompey. His spoils of victory, after
eight years in Gaul, were richer, and so was his building program.
The most impressive surviving evidence of it is the ground plan of his
basilica, the Basilica Julia in the Republican Forum, and, north of the
old Forum, which Rome and his own grandeur had outgrown, a grandiose
new one, the prototype of an Imperial series.
The Basilica Julia was planned and executed at Caesar’s direction
between 54 and 46 B.C., to balance the second-century Basilica Aemilia
opposite. All that remains is pavement and piers, but the size of the
piers is enough to show that the building had two stories, presumably
with a balcony to afford a view of spectacles in the open space of
the Forum below. Time and man have dealt harshly with the basilica.
When it was excavated, in the 1840’s, a medieval limekiln was found on
the pavement. This, plus the knowledge that its stone was sold by the
oxcart load in the Middle Ages for the benefit of a hospital which rose
on the site, explains what happened to the superstructure. Scratched
on the pavement are rough sketches, done by ancient idlers, of statues
which once adorned the building or the Forum adjacent, and over eighty
“gaming-boards,” scratched circles divided into six segments on which
dice were thrown and counters moved. Lawyers’ speeches apparently did
not always hold the full attention of the Forum hangers-on.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.12 Rome, Via dell’ Impero, inaugurated by Benito
Mussolini, 1932.
(University of Wisconsin Classics Dept. photo)]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.13 Rome, Imperial Fora, plan, showing actual and
hypothetical coincidence of axes.
(P. von Blanckenhagen, _Journ. Soc. Arch. Hist._, 13.4 [Dec., 1954],
Fig. 2)]
Caesar’s Forum has left more impressive remains. It cost him a fortune,
since his enemies, owners of the expropriated houses, charged him
100,000,000 sesterces, five million uninflated dollars, for the land.
Its excavation was begun in 1930, and finished in three years, by
Corrado Ricci, as a part of Mussolini’s (Fig. 5.12) grandiose plan
for systematizing the center of the city and restoring the ancient
dictator’s Forum to set off a modern dictator’s monument, a new street,
the Via dell’ Impero, driven through slums and ancient monuments to
connect the Coliseum with his headquarters in the Palazzo Venezia.
The excavation exposed the southern two-thirds of Caesar’s Forum;
the rest lies under the new street. The Forum as revealed by Ricci
is another example of axial symmetry (Fig. 5.13), a narrow porticoed
rectangle, over twice as long as it was wide, with a temple set in
the Italic fashion on a high podium at the back. Working with great
patience and delicacy, Ricci set up three of the temple’s fallen
columns (Fig. 5.14), with their architrave, frieze, and cornice.
Some of the architectural blocks leave between the dentils--a row
of projecting tooth-like rectangular members below the cornice--two
small distinctive marble disks side by side like a pair of spectacles.
This is the “signature” of Domitian’s architect Rabirius, and prove
that a restoration of the temple was planned during his reign (A.D.
81–96). There are Cupids in the interior frieze, which prove that the
temple was dedicated to Venus, Caesar’s ancestor. To have gods for
ancestors lent distinction to a Roman clan, though Caesar knew as well
as any skeptic what it really meant. He knew his pedigree back to an
ever-so-great grandfather, and God knew who _his_ ancestor was. In the
_gens Iulia_ the line was traced back to Iulus the son of Aeneas, who
was the son of Anchises and Venus.
The portico, like that behind Pompey’s theater, was an art museum.
Ancient authors mention a golden statue of Cleopatra (one of the
dictator’s few sentimental gestures?), a golden breastplate set with
British pearls, and a bronze equestrian statue of Caesar on his famous
horse which had human front feet!
The ground to the south of the Forum rises over fifty feet to the
slopes of the Capitoline Hill. This difference in level was filled with
three setback stories of luxury shops in massive rectangular blocks of
_peperino_. The Street of the Silversmiths, the _Clivus Argentarius_,
ran above and behind the shops at the Forum level. This whole complex
survives.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.14 Rome, Forum of Caesar. (Fototeca)]
Three men on horseback, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar, subdued East and
West for Rome, and used part of the profits to change the face of Rome
in forty years. They would have said that they did it out of what the
Romans called _pietas_, a threefold loyalty to family, state, and gods.
Each, to reflect credit on his family which ruled the state, on the
gods his ancestors, and on the state his perquisite, erected great
public buildings in the city to be his monument. Sulla’s dramatic
revamping of the old Forum, Pompey’s theater and portico, and Caesar’s
new Forum made of a shabby civic center a metropolis almost worthy to
vie with the cities of the Greek East. Almost, but not quite, for the
building material was still local stone, stuccoed tufa or the handsome
limestone from Tivoli called travertine, which weathers to a fine gold,
and has ever since been Rome’s characteristic building material. It
was considered worthy in the Renaissance to build the fabric of St.
Peter’s. For its next transformation, this time into a city of marble,
Rome had to wait for the rise to power of the greatest nabob of them
all, Caesar’s adopted son and successor, Octavian-Augustus.
6
Augustus: Buildings as Propaganda
In 1922, after the success of the Fascist march on Rome, Benito
Mussolini felt acutely the need for an aura of respectability to
surround his upstart régime. Another swashbuckling _condottiere_,
1965 years earlier, Caesar’s heir Octavian, had felt the same need.
Both resorted to the same method: an ambitious building program, and
a vigorous propaganda campaign designed to substitute for dubious
antecedents a set of more or less spurious links with the heroes of the
glorious past. About Fascist architecture the less said the better;
the other point will be the subject of this chapter. In fourteen years
(1924–38) Italian archaeologists changed the face of central Rome, and
in the process of glorifying _Il Duce_, added more to our knowledge of
Augustan Rome than the previous fourteen centuries had provided.
Octavian’s building activity, both before and after he took the
title Augustus, was prodigious. In his autobiography he boasts of
restoring no less than eighty-two temples. He built many new ones
besides, and embellished Rome, and his own glory, with his new Forum,
a portico, his arch, his grandiose mausoleum, an Altar of Peace, and,
in addition, arks and gardens, baths, theaters, a great library,
markets, granaries, docks, and warehouses. Meanwhile he himself lived
in ostentatious simplicity in a modest house on the Palatine, and
encouraged the cult of antique austerity by restoring the hut of
Romulus. At his death Rome was at last an Imperial metropolis: the city
of brick had become a city of marble. Rome had gained grandeur and lost
freedom in the process. Toward the assessment of the gains and losses,
the excavators’ discoveries in Augustus’ Forum, at his arch, in his
mausoleum, and particularly in the difficult and ingenious recovery
and reconstruction of his Altar of Peace have made the most important
contributions.
* * * * *
Ever since 1911, Corrado Ricci had dreamed of excavating the site of
Augustus’ Forum (see Fig. 5.13), known to lie to the northeast of
and at right angles to Caesar’s, overlaid by modern construction. In
1924 Mussolini gave him his chance, and by 1932, when the Via dell’
Impero was opened with Fascist pomp (see Fig. 5.12), the Fora of
Caesar, Augustus, Nerva, and Trajan had all yielded up secrets to the
archaeologist’s spade.
Of Augustus’ Forum, when Ricci began to dig, the most conspicuous part
was the firewall at the back, separating it from the fire-trap slums
of the Subura, ancient Rome’s redlight district. The firewall is over
100 feet high, the exposed parts in travertine, the rest in _peperino_
and _sperone_, the traditional Italic building stones, of the period.
This use of local materials, combined, as Ricci was to discover, with
marble, is the symbol of the compromise, the amalgam of Italic and
Greek materials, methods, and forms, which is the hallmark of the
Augustan Age.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.1 Rome, Forum of Augustus, model by I. Gismondi.
(Mostra Augustea della Romanità, _Catalogo_, Pl. 35)]
When the buildings cluttering the site had been cleared away, the
plan (Fig. 6.1) was found to be based upon that of Caesar’s Forum: a
rectangular portico with a temple at the back. But the rectangle was
enriched at the sides with curves, as at Palestrina earlier and in
Bernini’s portico in front of St. Peter’s later. Each of the hemicycles
had, let into the walls on two levels, niches two feet deep, big
enough to hold statues of half life size. Excavations in the area of
the south hemicycle as early as 1889 had turned up fragments of drapery
in Carrara marble, and bits of inscriptions which, in combination
with literary evidence, gave to the great Italian epigraphist Attilio
Degrassi the clue to the subjects of the statues. The inscriptions,
called _elogia_, recorded the _cursus honorum_, or public career, of a
set of heroes, triumphing generals, or others who had deserved well of
the Republic. Three examples are Aulus Postumius, who, with the help of
the Great Twin Brethren Castor and Pollux (the household gods of the
Julian clan), beat the Latins at the battle of Lake Regillus in 496,
and built his divine helpers a temple in the Forum; Appius Claudius
the Blind, who built the Appian Way (312 B.C.) and an aqueduct; and
Sulla--nabobs and builders all. But there was space in the two levels
of hemicycle niches, and in others hypothetically restored in the
portico’s rectilinear wall, for over fifty statues with _elogia_. So
Degrassi made a search for other stones similarly inscribed, some of
which turned up in the most unlikely places.
One had been used as a marble roof-tile of Hadrian’s Pantheon; it was
in the Vatican collection. Another was found in a vineyard near Rome’s
north gate, the Porta del Popolo. The former immortalized one Lucius
Albinius, who took the Vestal Virgins in his wagon to Caere for safety
when the Gauls were threatening Rome in 390 B.C. The latter was of
Sulla’s great rival Marius, the friend of the people. The dimensions,
letter-heights, and letter-styles of both made their origin in
Augustus’ Forum extremely likely. A set of seven more had been known
since the seventeenth century or earlier as coming from the site of the
Forum of Arezzo, ancient Arretium, in Tuscany. The texts of some of
these turned out to be copies of _elogia_ from the Forum of Augustus.
This justified the inference that in this matter of a Hall of Fame,
provincial cities imitated the metropolis. Thus those _elogia_ from
Arezzo for which no Roman prototype had been found might yet give a
clue to what the Roman collection had once contained. This inference
enriches the list by the names of Manius Valerius Maximus, conciliator
of class struggles, and Rome’s first dictator (494 B.C.); Lucius
Aemilius Paullus, one of the greatest _triumphatores_ of them all, who
beat the Macedonians at Pydna in 168 B.C., and symbolized the union of
Roman traditions with Hellenism, as Augustus aspired to do; Tiberius
Sempronius Gracchus, father of the reforming Gracchi; and Sulla’s
lieutenant Lucius Licinius Lucullus, whose brother was responsible for
the terraces and hemicycles at Palestrina.
The south hemicycle and portico, then, ingeniously connected Augustus’
name with a set of nabobs, builders, successful generals, philhellenes,
and men remarkable for piety to the gods or popularity with the masses.
What of the north hemicycle? Here Ricci discovered the _elogium_ of
Rome’s and Augustus’ legendary ancestor, _pius Aeneas_ himself, who
also appears on the Altar of Peace; a set of the Kings of Alba Longa;
Romulus, also probably on the Altar of Peace; Caesar’s father; Marcus
Claudius Marcellus, Augustus’ much beloved heir, whose untimely
death Vergil movingly mourns in the _Aeneid_, and whose ashes lay in
Augustus’ mausoleum; and Nero Claudius Drusus, Augustus’ stepson, who
also is figured, like Aeneas and Romulus, on the Altar of Peace. It
looks very much as though the Hall of Fame on this side of the portico
was intended to connect the legendary Kings of Alba and Home with the
Julio-Claudian dynasty. And the climax of it all was yet to come. At
the end of the north portico Ricci excavated a square room with a
pedestal at the back. On the pedestal he found a cutting for a colossal
foot, seven times life size. Forty feet up the back wall were the
put-holes for the struts of a huge statue. Whose? The Forum’s temple
was dedicated to Mars, but the place for the god is in his temple. The
most likely candidate is the _Dux_ himself, Augustus, father of his
country, in whom Roman history came, in more senses than one, to a full
stop.
Medieval limekilns tell, as usual, how the rich marbles which decorated
both portico and temple were broken up and melted down into whitewash,
but three marble Corinthian columns sixty feet high give some idea of
the temple’s grandeur. Its podium, lofty in the Italic fashion, was
not solid marble, simply tufa revetted or veneered with thin marble
slabs, an economical, and, some might say, dishonest way of making a
city of marble of the desired Hellenic appearance. The statue-base at
the back of the temple (which was apsidal to match the hemicycles in
the porticoes) is too wide for a single figure. The cult statues must
have been of Mars and Venus, another delicate reference to the ancestry
of Augustus’ adoptive clan. The temple itself was vowed, the literary
sources tell us, at the battle of Philippi (42 B.C.) to Mars Ultor,
avenger of the murder of Julius Caesar, and Caesar’s sword was piously
preserved as a relic in it. The Forum did not neglect the arts. Like
Caesar’s, and like Pompey’s portico, it was a museum. It did service
also for literature: we are told that lectures were delivered in the
hemicycles. Begun in 37 B.C., the Forum took thirty-five years to
finish. By 2 B.C. other propaganda devices--especially the arch, the
Altar of Peace, Vergil’s epic, Livy’s history, and Horace’s lyric--had,
as we shall see, given the desired respectability to Augustus, the
Prince of Peace.
* * * * *
It was the victory of Actium (31 B.C.), over the combined fleets of
Antony and Cleopatra, that enabled Octavian to pass as the Prince
of Peace. In 1888–89, in the old Forum, between the Temples of the
deified Julius and of Castor, were excavated the footings of an
arch, originally with a single passageway, later enlarged to three.
This arch was identified from literary sources as the one erected by
Augustus to commemorate that victory, enlarged later when another
occasion for propaganda arose. The arch itself is a routine affair,
with plenty of precedent, though one might ponder the propriety of
thus gloating over Antony, a former colleague and a Roman citizen.
(Gamberini, the excavator, even found, in the bottom of square stone
receptacles beside the arch, laurel seeds which suggest that the tree
of victory was prominent in the landscaping of the arch.) But, given
the Roman propensity in general, and Augustus’ in particular, for
propagandizing in stone, the question naturally arose what opportunity
for self-advertisement the arch offered. The answer was not given until
Degrassi published another book in 1947.
For many years archaeologists had believed that on the walls of the
nearby Regia had been engraved the _Fasti Consulares_ (lists of Roman
consuls from the founding of the Republic and probably of the kings as
well), and the _Fasti Triumphales_ (lists of triumphing generals from
Romulus to 19 B.C. I have remarked in another book[D] how much one
can learn of a people by what they make lists of: Greeks, of Olympic
victors; Americans, of baseball averages; Romans, of statesmen and
military heroes). But in 1935 a careful study of the Regia by the
American F. E. Brown proved that the part of its wall where the _Fasti_
must have begun was masked in the rebuilding of 36 B.C. by another
structure, and that the space available, carefully measured for the
first time by Brown, did not fit the surviving _Fasti_, which were
discovered in 1546 and are still preserved in the Conservatori Museum.
Clearly the Regia was not the place where the _Fasti_ were inscribed.
Since two-thirds of the extant fragments were found between the Temple
of the Deified Julius and the Temple of Castor, and since their
dimensions suited those of the footings of the Arch of Augustus, the
inference was clear. It was on the arch (Fig. 6.2) that the consular
_Fasti_ were carved, and this is now the universally accepted opinion.
They were displayed on either side of the lateral passageway, where
pedestrians could read them, the consular lists framed by pilasters
with a pediment above (reconstructed in the museum by Michelangelo),
the list of _triumphatores_ on the corner pilasters of the enlarged
arch. The result of this display was again, as in Augustus’ Forum,
to connect the upstart Octavian with a more respectable or heroic
past. His name appears twice among the _triumphatores_ (the slab that
referred to Actium is unfortunately missing) in a list that began
with Romulus and contained the names of the greatest heroes of Roman
history; in the consular lists his name figured twenty-four times. This
collocation and repetition could do him no harm.
[D] _The Roman Mind at Work_ (Van Nostrand, Princeton, 1958).
In the consular lists the names of Mark Antony and his family have
suffered _damnatio memoriae_; that is, they have been first inscribed
and then chiselled out. In the list of _triumphatores_, on the
contrary, Antony’s name is allowed to stand. What is the legitimate
inference from this? Clearly it is that the two lists were inscribed at
different times, and that on the first occasion our _condottiere_ felt
a certain insecurity, which by the time of the second had disappeared.
Literary sources date the second occasion in or shortly after 19 B.C.,
after the Roman standards disgracefully lost by Crassus at Carrhae had
been recovered from the Parthians. In these eleven years or so the
_condottiere_ Octavian had become Augustus, the Revered One, Expander
of Empire, Father of his Country, Prince of Peace. Within those
years Vergil’s _Georgics_ had cast an aura of beauty over Octavian’s
resettlement of veterans on the land; the _Aeneid_ had connected this
modern Aeneas, the pious one, the bearer of burdens, with his legendary
ancestors; Horace’s Roman Odes had praised Augustus’ religious and
moral reforms; and Livy’s history had put into Augustan prose the
lays of ancient Rome. Augustus could afford to be magnanimous to his
enemies: he had seen to it that most of them were dead.
[Illustration: ARCO DI AUGUSTO NEL FORO ROMANO
FIG. 6.2 Rome, Forum. Arch of Augustus, reconstruction. (Fototeca)]
But it was not enough that the past be controlled and rewritten, and
connected with the present on splendid monuments. Augustus must control
the future, too; even after his death men must admire and worship him
and his dynasty. To this end he began (literary sources tell us it
was in 28 B.C.) in the Campus Martius a massive mausoleum (Fig. 6.3),
which should be reminiscent in shape of the great Etruscan _tumuli_
of centuries before, and in mass of such wonders of the world as the
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus or the pyramids of Egypt. This monument,
which through the centuries has been successively fortress, circus,
park for fireworks displays, bull-ring, and concert-hall, was stripped
to its gaunt core in 1935, as another part of the Fascists’ Augustan
plan to attach themselves to the memory of Augustus. The excavators,
Giglioli and Colini, found within the circular ring of the mausoleum’s
vertical outer wall a series of concentric vaulted corridors (Fig.
6.4) in concrete, rising four stories or 143 feet, surrounding a
central hollow cylinder where Augustus’ ashes were to lie. A statue of
the great deceased would have surmounted the cylinder, and the whole
massive structure would have been heaped with earth and planted with
cypresses. Before the door stood the bronze tablets bearing Augustus’
autobiography--a calmly audacious fabrication of history, it has
been justly called. In the corridor around the central cylinder were
placed the marble containers for the urns of members of the dynasty.
Some of the containers were found _in situ_, though their ashes--and,
ironically, Augustus’ as well--had long ago disappeared.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.3 Rome, Mausoleum of Augustus. (Fototeca)]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.4 Rome, Mausoleum of Augustus, plan and elevation.
(G. Lugli, _Mon. Ant._, 3, p. 197)]
It was Augustus’ fate to outlive his lieutenants, his relatives (see
the family tree, Fig. 6.5), and all his favorite candidates for the
succession. There lay, for example, the ashes of his stepson Drusus,
his nephew, the young Marcellus, and his grandchildren, Lucius and
Gaius; his lieutenant Agrippa; his sister Octavia, once given in a
dynastic marriage to Mark Antony; his stepson Tiberius’ one-time wife
Agrippina, divorced to give place to Augustus’ daughter. Agrippina
survived Augustus; who knows what palace intrigue brought her ashes
here? Her one-time husband’s ashes rested here, too, and those of
Germanicus, Tiberius’ adopted son, also those of the mad Emperor
Caligula, of Claudius, Vespasian, Nerva, and Septimius Severus’ consort
Julia Domna (for the Severan dynasty, too, had need of respectability).
In stripping the mausoleum to its core, and building a deplorable
neo-Fascist _piazza_ on one side of it, an equally deplorable
concrete shed for the reconstructed Altar of Peace on the other, the
archaeologists of the ’30s stripped Augustus, too, of his pretensions.
Yet the decayed grandeur, the disappointed hopes, the inevitable
passing of régimes, strike their own note of pathos and mortality:
“_My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair._”
However unfortunate the building that protects it may be, the
reconstructed Altar of Peace in the Field of Mars must be recognized as
one of the great triumphs of Italian archaeology. Sculptured reliefs
from this structure were first discovered, though not recognized
as such, as long ago as 1568, in the underpinnings of what is now
the Palazzo Fiano, on the Corso, Rome’s _cardo_, which overlies the
ancient Great North Road, the Via Flaminia. Other soundings were made
in 1859 and 1903, and the reliefs were first recognized as belonging
to the altar in 1879. But it was not until 1937–38 that G. Moretti
carried through the incredibly ingenious and patient work which led to
the almost complete recovery and reconstruction of the altar and the
historic sculptured frieze surrounding it.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.5 GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE JULIO-CLAUDIAN CAESARS
NOTICE that Julius Caesar left no descendants, but adopted his
great-nephew Augustus. Connections with Augustus were later traced by
descent from his daughter Julia, his stepsons Tiberius and Drusus, or
his sister Octavia. The names of emperors are in capitals. Numerals in
parentheses show the order of marriages. Single lines indicate blood
relationship; double lines, marriage; the dotted line, that the Cn.
Domitius is the same person.
C. Julius Caesar (d. 85 B.C.)
|
+-----------------------------------+----------------+
| |
Julia I === M. Atius Balbus C. Julius Caesar, the dictator
| (murdered 44 B.C. See Suetonius
Atia =========== C. Octavius _The Deified Julius_)
|
+-----------------------------------------------------+
| |
Scribonia === (2) AUGUSTUS (3) === (2) Livia (1) === Ti. Claudius Nero |
| (d. A.D. 14) (d. A.D. 29) | M. Antonius === (2) Octavia I (1) === C. Marcellus
| | (d. 30 B.C.) | | (d. 40 B.C.)
| | | |
| | | +--+-----------+
| | | | |
Julia II === (3) M. Agrippa (1) === Pomponia | | M. Marcellus Marcella === M. Messalla I
(d. in exile | (d. 12 B.C.) | | +---------+ (d. 22 B.C. See |
A.D. 14) | | +--------------+ | Virgil, _Aeneid_ |
| | | | | VI, 854 ff.) +-----------+
| | | | | |
| | | | +--------------+ |
| | | | | | |
| Vipsania === TIBERIUS Drusus I === Antonia II Antonia I === L. Domitius |
| | (d. A.D. 37) (d. 9 B.C.) | | |
| | | +--+------+ |
| | | | | |
| | | ¦ Cn. Domitius Domitia === M. Messalla II
| | | ¦ |
| | +-----------+-----------------------+ |
| | | | ¦ | |
| Drusus II === Julia IV ║ Germanicus ¦ CLAUDIUS (3) === Messallina
| (murdered | (executed ║ (d. A.D. 19) ¦ (murdered | (d. A.D. 49)
C. Caesar (d. A.D. 4) A.D. 23) | A.D. 31) ║ ¦ A.D. 54) |
L. Caesar (d. A.D. 2) (Note 1) ║ ¦ (Note 3) |
Agrippa II (Murdered A.D. 14) ║ ¦ |
Agrippina I (d. in exile A.D. 33)===================================+ ¦ |
Julia III (Note 2) | ¦ |
| ¦ |
| ¦ |
Agrippina II (murdered A.D. 59)(1) ============================= Cn. Domitius |
Nero Caesar (executed A.D. 31) | +----------+----+
Drusus Caesar (d. in prison A.D. 33) | | |
CAIUS (Caligula) (murdered A.D. 41) NERO ======= Octavia II Britannicus
Julia V (d. in exile, A.D. 42) (suicide (murdered (murdered
A.D. 68) A.D. 62) A.D. 55)
NOTE 1. A daughter of Drusus II and Julia IV married Rubellius Blandus;
their son, Rubellius Plautus, was executed by Nero. NOTE 2. Julia III
had a daughter who married Junius Silanus; several of their descendants
were executed by Nero. NOTE 3. After the death of Messallina Claudius
married his niece Agrippina II; there were no children.
FIG. 6.5 Family tree of the Julio-Claudians.
(P. MacKendrick and H. Howe, _Classics in Translation_, 2, p. 370)]
A colossal engineering problem arose because the Palazzo Fiano rested
upon wooden piles driven into the water which in this part of Rome
underlies most of the buildings. These piles, and reinforcements to
them, pinned down some of the marble blocks of the altar itself. To get
the blocks out by ordinary methods, even if the water level had made
it possible, would have caused the collapse of the building. Previous
excavators had resorted to driving narrow, damp, dark tunnels, with
incomplete results. Moretti resolved on more heroic measures; the
solution is a credit to modern Italian engineering. The weightiest and
worst-supported part of the palace lay directly over the altar; there
were deep splits in the palace walls; only the extraordinary tenacity
of the _pozzolana_ mortar held them together. With infinite capacity
for taking pains, the damaged parts of the walls were taken down and,
by injection of liquid concrete, restored segment by segment, brick by
brick. (The Italians call this process _cuci e scuci_, sew and unsew.)
The subsoil was so uneven in profile and so soaking wet that a new
masonry substructure was impossible. Moretti, in consultation with
his engineers, determined to shift the weight of the palace wall onto
a sort of enormous sawhorse or _cavaletto_ (Fig. 6.6) of reinforced
concrete. Holes were drilled sixty-five feet to a firm footing and
filled with concrete; on this were built concrete piers to support the
legs of the sawhorse. Between each pier and the corresponding leg was
inserted a hydraulic jack (_martinetto_) adjustable to suit the various
stresses exerted by the bearing walls. A grid of steel girders ran from
pier to pier for reinforcement.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.6 Rome, Altar of Peace. Plan showing how corner
of Palazzo Fiano was supported and a dike frozen around the remains of
the altar. (G. Moretti, _Ara Pacis Augustae_, Pl. 36)]
Once the corner of the building was supported by the concrete sawhorse,
the problem was only half-solved, for water covered the altar up to the
top of the outside steps. Pumping was labor in vain; it would only have
weakened the substructure of the palace and adjoining buildings. What
were needed were dikes, to keep the water out while the area inside
them was emptied. But a cement dike was impossible, because of the maze
of water, gas, and sewer mains, heat, power, and light conduits which,
at all levels and in all directions, crisscrossed the subsoil of this
busy part of modern Rome. A trench about five feet wide was dug, with
a 230-foot perimeter. From a horizontal pipe laid in it, fifty-five
three-inch pipes ran down vertically at equal intervals to a depth of
twenty-four feet. Into these pipes was pumped carbon dioxide under a
pressure of eighty atmospheres. Radiation from the refrigerant in the
vertical pipes froze the surrounding muddy earth, and the impenetrable
dike was a reality. The water inside covering the altar was then pumped
out, and all the architectural blocks and fragments could be removed.
Thus succeeded one of the most difficult and delicate excavations
ever made. All was finished to meet a deadline, the bimillennary of
Augustus’ birth, September 23, 1938.
What Moretti now had to work with in his reconstruction was not only
the slabs and fragments he had just extracted, but also the finds
from previous excavations going back to 1568 (Fig. 6.7). Over the
intervening years these had been scattered. Most of the 1568 finds
had been sawn into three lengthwise (for the slabs were over two feet
thick, too heavy for easy transport) and shipped to Florence to the
Grand Duke of Tuscany, who then owned the Palazzo Fiano site in Rome.
One slab was in the Vatican Museum, another in the Villa Medici (seat
of the French Academy in Rome), still another in the Louvre. The finds
from the 1859 dig had also been kept unrestored in the palace, and then
transferred to Rome’s Terme Museum. One slab was found in re-use face
down as a cover for a tomb in Rome’s Church of the Gesù.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.7 Rome, Altar of Peace. Plan showing fragments
discovered up to 1935. (G. Lugli, _Mon. Ant._, p. 185)]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.8 Rome, Altar of Peace. Plan showing results
of Moretti’s excavation, still _in situ_ under the Palazzo Fiano.
(Moretti, _op. cit._, Pl. 5)]
These were all decorative elements. Under the Palazzo Fiano still
remain the tufa footings and some of the travertine pavement (Fig.
6.8). These, though they were not removed, made it possible to
visualize and reconstruct the plan. The altar itself, in the center of
its enclosed platform, proved to be U-shaped, with the open end of the
U facing west, toward the Campus Martius, and approached by a flight
of steps. The whole was fenced off by a marble wall about thirty feet
square and sixteen feet high, with wide doorways on east and west.
Since the pavement sloped, and there was provision for drainage, the
inference was warranted that the altar was originally open to the sky.
Each face of the enclosure wall bore two wide horizontal decorative
bands separated by narrower bands, on the outer face of meanders, on
the inner, of palmettes. On the outer face the wide upper band bore
a frieze with over 100 figures; the lower one motifs from nature:
acanthus scrolls, bunches of grapes, the swans of Augustus’ patron
Apollo, and a lively population of small animals. The inner face
carried, above, a motif of swags of fruit festooned between ox-skulls
(_bucrania_); below, a series of long, narrow, recessed, vertical
panels, giving the effect, in marble, of a wooden fence. Many of the
Slabs were found where they fell and were easily fitted into their
proper place in the reconstruction (Fig. 6.9). Of the slabs in museums
casts were taken. Thanks to careful observation of joins, repeats of
floral motifs, the identity of historic figures, veins in the marble,
and treatment of unexposed surfaces, these slabs, too, found their
proper places. The job was done in the workrooms of the Terme Museum,
with twenty-four large cases of fragments to work with, plus the full
slabs and casts. The altar was finally rebuilt on the banks of the
Tiber next to Augustus’ mausoleum.
The result was worth the effort, for the Altar of Peace is universally
acknowledged to be the greatest artistic masterpiece of the Augustan
Age, blending Roman spirit with Greek forms, occupying in Roman art the
same exalted position as the Parthenon frieze in Greek, and destined to
inspire, as we shall see, many monuments with historic subjects in the
following decades and centuries.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.9 Rome, Altar of Peace, G. Gatti’s
reconstruction. (MPI)]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.10 Rome, Altar of Peace, frieze with portrait of
Augustus. (MPI)]
The figured upper panels on the enclosure’s outer face are the most
interesting part of the monument. On the north and south faces a
procession moves westward. It is imagined as turning the corner of
the enclosure and entering the west doorway to sacrifice at the altar.
The heads on the north side were heavily restored in the Renaissance,
but the fasces, the laurel crowns, the senatorial shoes and rings,
the cult objects carried make it clear that the procession is of
magistrates and priests. The south side, which faced the city, must
have been considered the most important half, and here, indeed, many
historical figures of Augustus’ family and court have been identified.
It is noteworthy how the division of the friezes into dynastic and
non-dynastic halves parallels the arrangement of the Hall of Fame in
Augustus’ Forum.
The face in the upper right corner of the fragmentary left panel in
Fig. 6.10, though cracked badly across the eye (for the whole weight
of the Palazzo Fiano rested upon it for centuries), is recognizable
from other portraits, from what remains of the profile, and from the
treatment of the hair, as Augustus himself. The figures in the spiked
caps to the far right are _flamines_, priests of Jupiter and Mars. The
figure second to the left of the first _flamen_, all by himself in the
background, is a spectator, the very type of the old Republican Roman.
Lictors with the fasces precede the figure to the spectator’s left of
Augustus. This figure, then, must be the consul of the year, with the
other consul on the other side of the Emperor.
But of which year? The consuls of the year 13 B.C., when the building
of the altar was officially decreed, were Varus (who fell in the
Teutoberg forest twenty-two years later) and Tiberius. Those of the
year 9 B.C., when the altar was consecrated, were Drusus and Quinctius
Crispinus. Now the slab pictured in Fig. 6.11 contains on its left
edge, on either side of the veiled background figure with her finger
on her lips (who is Augustus’ sister Octavia) a family group. This has
been almost certainly identified as Drusus (in uniform, with short
tunic), and his wife, Antonia Minor, holding their son Germanicus
by the hand. Drusus can hardly be in two places at once. Therefore
the consuls on the earlier slab are those of 13 B.C., and the whole
procession is imagined as that of the altar’s _constitutio_, when the
marble version was not yet finished, not yet, perhaps, even begun. This
hypothesis explains the treatment of the enclosure’s inner face, where
the recessed panels represent a temporary wooden fence. The swags in
marble relief, of barley, grapes, olives, figs, apples, pears, plums,
cherries, pine cones, nuts, oak leaves, ivy, laurel, and poppy--all
the riches of a fertile Italy at peace--were originally painted, like
Della Robbia terracottas, against a blue background. They must have
been intended to render the natural festoons swinging in the open air
against the blue sky. The _paterae_, or sacrificial bowls, in two
alternating patterns of gilded marble, which hang above the swags, must
be imagined as suspended from an upper crossbar.
The persons in Fig. 6.12 are of the greatest historical interest. The
tall man with a fold of his toga over his head, whose careworn face and
pronounced Roman nose make a recognizable portrait, can be identified
from other likenesses as Augustus’ lieutenant Agrippa, acting as
Pontifex Maximus. The child clinging to his toga is then one of his
sons, Gaius or Lucius. Gaius, the elder, born in 20 B.C., would have
been, in 13, of the age represented here; a modern symbol of Aeneas’
son Ascanius, or Romulus, the son of Mars. The woman in the background
with her hand on his head would then be Gaius’ mother Julia, Augustus’
daughter, whom he was later to banish for her immoral conduct. The
older woman in the foreground, the most carefully wrought female figure
in either frieze, would then be Julia’s stepmother, the redoubtable
Empress Livia.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.11 Rome, Altar of Peace, frieze with family group
of Julio-Claudians. (MPI)]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.12 Rome, Altar of Peace, frieze probably
portraying Agrippa, Julia, and Livia. (MPI)]
The family group to the right of Drusus in Fig. 6.11 is also pregnant
with history. The shapely woman with her hand on the small boy’s
shoulder is identified as Antonia Major, Mark Antony’s daughter by
Octavia. The small boy grasping a fold of his uncle Drusus’ cloak grew
up to father the Emperor Nero. The girl to the spectator’s right
of the small boy is his sister Domitia; her father, Lucius Domitius
Ahenobarbus, later commander of the Roman army in Germany, has his hand
raised over her head. The elderly background figure with the kindly,
lined face is perhaps Maecenas, Augustus’ secretary of state for
propaganda, the patron of Vergil and Horace.
The whole atmosphere of the procession is very Italian, quite
intimate and informal, without central focus. Its members face in all
directions, and are so incorrigibly chatty that Octavia must command
silence, finger to lips. Here, in these realistic groups, are the
living likenesses of some of the men and women whose ashes later lay
in Augustus’ mausoleum, of some of the men and women who made a Golden
Age. Here are the pages of history made flesh, and here are all the
basic ideas of the Augustan program: the pretense of the revived
Republic, in the consuls and lictors; the emphasis on religion, in
the _flamines_ and the veiled Pontifex; the dynastic hopes, in little
Gaius; the subvention of literature, in Maecenas.
The east and west ends of the enclosure each contain, on either side
of the doorways, a figured panel, four in all, of which two are well
preserved. The one to the right of the main (west) entrance portrays a
grave, bearded figure (Fig. 6.13) offering sacrifices, with the aid of
two acolytes, upon a rustic altar before a small temple containing tiny
figures of the Penates as Castor and Pollux, whose connection with the
_gens Iulia_ we have already noted. The sow in the lower left corner
is the famous one with the thirty piglets, whose discovery was to tell
Aeneas where to found his city. (What purported to be the original
sow and all the piglets, pickled in brine, was on display in a Latin
town in Augustus’ age.) From the sow the inference is that the bearded
figure is Aeneas; he symbolized the past of Rome, and the ancestry of
Augustus.
The panel to the left of the east entrance (Fig. 6.14) has as its
central figure a full-breasted woman, whose face closely resembles the
Livia of the south frieze. She has fruits in her lap, chubby naked
babies in her arms, a miniature cow and a sheep at her feet, grain and
poppies behind her. She is flanked by obviously allegorical figures
of Air (riding a swan), and Water (riding a sea monster). Fresh water
gushes from an amphora in the lower left corner; a saltwater harbor
(indicated by waves, and perhaps the arch in the background) is at
the lower right. Surely this is _Saturnia Tellus_, the fruitful earth
of an Italy at peace, that Vergil sang of in the _Georgics_, rich in
crops, flocks, and herds, but fruitful most of all in _men_. Of the
two fragmentary panels, the west one is restored as a scene of Mars,
the Shepherd, the wolf, and the twins Romulus and Remus. (The Mars
was acquired from a private owner in Vienna, whose Roman art dealer
had told him it came from the Palazzo Fiano.) The east one, the least
well preserved of all, probably represented the goddess Roma seated
upon a trophy of arms, like Britannia on an English penny. Thus one
pair of end panels is symbolical, while the other is mythological; the
processional frieze deals with contemporary history. The whole makes a
tripartite arrangement which is artistically very satisfying. At the
same time, victorious Rome, fruitful Italy, the remote founder, and the
first king, are all symbolically related here, as in other Augustan
monuments, to the contemporary scene and the fortunes of the dynasty.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.13 Rome, Altar of Peace. Aeneas sacrificing.
(MPI)]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.14 Rome, Altar of Peace. Tellus or Italia. (MPI)]
After the grandeur of the enclosure, the decoration of the altar
itself seems modest and unpretentious, perhaps deliberately so. Winged
sphinxes support rich volutes, the graceful S-curves which bound the
altar table on either side. Beneath, there is a sacrificial scene,
with the six Vestal Virgins neatly arranged in order of size. In the
sacrificial scene itself, the victims are a steer, a heifer, and a
fleecy sheep. The attendants carry the sacrificial knives, platters,
pitchers, and other paraphernalia. One twists the horns of the steer,
another the tail of the heifer, to keep them moving. Altar and
enclosure together provide our most complete visual record of a Roman
state religious ceremony. And the whole complex, with its religiosity
and historicity, is prolific of descendants: the Arch of Titus, the
Cancelleria reliefs (to be discussed in Chapter IX), Trajan’s Column
(to be discussed in Chapter X), his arch at Beneventum, the Arch of
Constantine, the Column of Marcus Aurelius, the Arch of Septimius
Severus. It is the prototype of them all, and the most masterly:
tranquil, unpretentious, stately yet intimate, delighting in nature,
perfectly balanced between country and city, perfectly symbolizing
the Augustan Peace, when men would beat their swords into plowshares,
and study war no more. But within 100 years the altar began to be
neglected. Perhaps, looking behind the façade, some old Republicans
were moved to ask, “Where is the Altar of Liberty?”
* * * * *
A Forum, an arch, a tomb, an altar: taken together, as recent
archaeology has revealed them to us, they epitomize the Augustan Age.
In the Forum and the arch, the past recaptured, and pressed into the
service of the régime. In the altar, the heroic and warlike past
implicit in the orderly and peaceful present. In the tomb, posterity,
the future generations, invited to marvel at the dynasty and what
it has wrought. Behind all this, we can see that Augustus, the most
ruthless power politician of them all, was simply continuing the
careers of the great captains and dynasts of the past, like Caesar,
Pompey, and Sulla. The refulgence of the monuments but reflects his
monolithic control of the state, his cracking open of the seams of
the old régime. In the history of art and architecture, Augustus’
contribution is the applying of a standardized scheme of décor, as he
applied a standardized scheme of administration, to the whole Empire.
Henceforward Rome is the producer. She crystallized the styles and
re-exported them to the world that lay at her feet. Next we shall see
how the Julio-Claudian Emperors, from Tiberius to Nero, exploited what
Augustus had begun.
7
Hypocrite, Madman, Fool, and Knave
Roman historians branded the Julio-Claudian successors of
Augustus--Tiberius (A.D. 14–37), Caligula (37–41), Claudius (41–54)
and Nero (54–68)--as a hypocrite, a madman, a fool, and a knave. The
hypocrite spent millions rehabilitating Asia Minor after an earthquake,
the madman provided Ostia with a splendid aqueduct, the fool built for
the same city a great artificial harbor, the knave rebuilt Rome--after
burning it down first, his enemies said--with a new and intelligent
city plan. But it would be easy to interpret the Julio-Claudian age
as one of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous waste: there were
many who fiddled before Rome ever burned. Thus both Tiberius and
Caligula built on the Palatine grandiose palaces, and Nero’s Golden
House, as we shall see, outdid them all. Tiberius’ monstrous barracks
at the city wall for the praetorian guard introduces a sinister note.
Claudius’ Altar of Piety, modelled on Augustus’ Altar of Peace,
shows how derivative official art can be. Out of the complexity of
this half-century, as archaeology reveals it to us, I have chosen
four examples, one from each reign: a stately pleasure-dome of
Tiberius by the sea at Sperlonga; a pair of extraordinary houseboats,
probably Caligula’s, from the Lake of Nemi; the curious subterranean
basilica at the Porta Maggiore in Rome, which flourished briefly and
mysteriously in the reign of Claudius; and Nero’s fabulous Golden House.
* * * * *
In August, 1957, road improvements near Sperlonga, on the coast,
about sixty-six miles southeast of Rome, offered G. Iacopi of the
Terme Museum the opportunity for partially restoring, and closely
examining, the ruins of a well-known villa there, commonly called the
Villa of Tiberius. Making soundings near the villa in a wide, lofty
cave fronting on the beach (Fig. 7.1), partly filled with sea-water,
Iacopi discovered that the natural cave had been made over into a
_nymphaeum_ or _vivarium_, a round artificial fish-pool, with a large
pedestal for statuary in the middle, and artificial grottoes opening
behind (Fig. 7.2). In the pool and the grottoes, buried under masses of
fallen rock, Iacopi and his assistants found an enormous quantity--at
last accounts over 5500 fragments--of statuary. The fallen rock gave
a clue for dating at least one phase of the cave’s existence, and a
possible confirmation of the popular name for the adjoining villa. For
the historian Tacitus mentions that in A.D. 26, Tiberius, dining in a
natural cave at his villa at Spelunca, was saved from being crushed
under falling rock by the heroism of his prefect of the praetorian
guard, Sejanus, who protected him with his own body. This is very
likely the actual cave which Iacopi explored, though his discoveries
suggest that there were additions after Tiberius’ time.
The exploration was carried on under difficulties of several kinds. The
Italian budget for archaeology is notoriously inadequate; the cave was
subject to flooding from springs, and lashing by winter storms; and
it contained a dangerous quantity of ammunition and explosives stored
there in World War II. The first difficulty was temporarily overcome by
the generosity of the engineer in charge of the road-building nearby;
the second by installing three pumps and building a dike; the third by
keeping an ordnance expert constantly on duty.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.1 Sperlonga, Cave “of Tiberius.” (G. Iacopi, _I
ritrovamenti_, etc., Fig. 8)]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.2 Sperlonga, Cave “of Tiberius,” reconstruction.
(G. Iacopi, _op. cit._, Fig. 18)]
When the finds from the cave were first reported in the press, great
excitement was caused by the announcement--premature, as it turned
out--that among the fragments of sculpture were some resembling the
Laocoön group. The original Laocoön group had been described by Pliny
the Elder as carved out of a single block, probably with the sculptors’
names on the base, whereas the famous Vatican Laocoön is not monolithic
and is unsigned. Among the Sperlonga finds, on the other hand, were
fragments of a Greek inscription giving the names of the three Rhodian
sculptors mentioned by Pliny (but not in the precise form transcribed
by him: in the Sperlonga inscriptions, their fathers’ names are
recorded, in Pliny not), plus some colossal pieces (the central figure
would have been nineteen feet eight inches tall) including parts of
two snake-like monsters, presumably the serpents sent by Athena to
punish Laocoön and his sons for resisting the proposal to drag the
Wooden Horse within the walls of Troy. This great group, much larger,
earlier (according to Iacopi, on the somewhat doubtful evidence of the
letter-styles of the Greek inscription, which he would date in the
second or first century B.C.) than the Vatican version, and different
in conception, fits the pedestal in the middle of the circular pool.
Another inscription goes some way to explain both the quantity and
the arrangement of the sculpture in the grotto. In ten lines of Latin
verse it describes how a certain Faustinus adorned the cave with
sculpture for the pleasure of his Imperial masters, choosing subjects
which, Vergil himself would admit, outdid his own poetry. One of the
subjects mentioned is Scylla, the fabulous cave-dwelling sea-monster,
with a girdle of dogs’ heads about her loins, who guarded the straits
of Messina. Now in the cave, carved in the living rock, at the right
of the entrance, is the prow of a ship, set with blue, green, yellow,
and red mosaic, and presenting some evidence of having once had a
marble superstructure. To this ship Iacopi would assign some of his
key figures: a bearded Ulysses in a seaman’s cap, his face expressing
horror; a lovely archaic statuette of Athena (Fig. 7.3), grasped by
a huge hand (Athena might be the figurehead); Scylla’s gigantic hand
seizing a seaman by the hair, and a terrified mariner who has taken
refuge from Scylla at the ship’s prow. A niche carved in the rock above
the ship would be an appropriate vantage-point for Scylla herself; in
one fragment one of her dog’s heads has bitten deep into a sailor’s
shoulder. It is true that the mosaic names the ship _Argo_, but Iacopi
explains this as a generic name for a ship, not necessarily referring
to the one that bore the Argonauts.
If Iacopi is right about this group, it was a baroque or even rococo
effect that Faustinus arranged for his Imperial masters. But the
Laocoön and Scylla groups by no means exhausted his fancy or his
pocketbook: there was Menelaus with the body of Patroclus, Ganymede
borne to heaven by an eagle (carved so as to be seen to best effect
from below, and therefore possibly belonging to a pedimental treatment
of the cave façade). There are heads of gods and heroes, satyrs and
fauns, a charming Cupid trying on a satyr’s mask, a delightful head
of a baby with ringlets over the ears--all in the fanciful, complex,
sometimes tortured baroque style of Hellenistic Pergamum and Rhodes.
These are all of fine crystalline Greek island marble, so that they may
be Greek originals. The soapy native Carrara stone is normally used in
Roman copies--and in too much modern American church sculpture.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.3 Sperlonga, Cave “of Tiberius.” Head of archaic
statuette of Athena. (Iacopi, _op. cit._, Fig. 11)]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.4 Nemi, Braschi finds (1895) from ships. (G.
Ucelli, _Le navi di Nemi_, p. 19)]
At the present writing the Sperlonga cave cannot be said to have
yielded up all its secrets. It is not even certain that the equipping
of Tiberius’ outdoor dining-room as a lavish baroque museum took
place in Tiberius’ lifetime, for the donor, Faustinus, may be the
rich villa-owner of that name who was a friend of the poet Martial,
and therefore of Domitianic date. The residents of Sperlonga want
the sculpture kept where it was found, to entice tourists; the
archaeologists want to take it to Rome for analysis and reconstruction.
Meanwhile, definitive conclusions are impossible. But one thing
is certain: the bizarre taste of the place, whether Tiberius’ or
Domitian’s, is characteristic of the first century of the Empire, and
reflects the gap between the ostentatious rich and the church-mouse
poor which was one day to contribute to the Empire’s fall.
* * * * *
The same fantastic extravagance marks our next finds. Seventeen miles
southeast of Rome, cupped in green volcanic hills, lies the beautiful
deep blue Lake of Nemi, the mirror of Diana. Here divers, as long ago
as 1446, reported, lying on the bottom in from sixteen to sixty-nine
feet of water, two ships, presumably ancient Roman. A descent was made
in a diving bell in 1535. Another attempt in 1827 used a large raft
with hoists and grappling irons, and an art dealer tried again in 1895,
but all three efforts were chiefly successful in damaging the hulls,
tearing away great chunks without being able to raise the Ships to the
surface. The 1895 attempt did, however, produce a mass of tantalizing
fragments (Fig. 7.4): beams; lead water-pipe; ball-bearings; a number
of objects in bronze, including animal heads holding rings in their
teeth, a Medusa, and a large flat hand; terracotta revetment plaques, a
quantity of rails and spikes, and a large piece of decking in mosaic.
This treasure-trove, displayed in the Terme Museum, naturally whetted
appetites, not least Mussolini’s. He determined to get at the ships by
lowering the level of the lake, a colossal task undertaken eagerly by
civil and naval engineers enthusiastic about classical civilization.
The job was made easier, but no less expensive, because there existed
an ancient artificial outlet, a tunnel a mile long, dating from the
reign of Claudius, which could be used to carry off the overflow. The
pumps were started on October 20, 1928, in the presence of the _Duce_.
After various vicissitudes over a space of four years, the lake level
was lowered seventy-two feet, and by November, 1932, the first ship
was installed in a hangar on the shore, and the second (Fig. 7.5) lay
exposed in the mud.
The ships proved to be enormous by ancient standards, of very shallow
draft, very broad in the beam (one was sixty-six feet wide, the other
seventy-eight) and respectively 234 and 239 feet long (Fig. 7.6). They
were larger than some of the early Atlantic liners. Their 1100 tons
burden gave them ten times the tonnage of Columbus’ largest ship.
The task of freeing the ships of mud and debris, recording the finds
level by level, reinforcing the hulls with iron, shoring them up,
raising and transporting them to the special museum built for them
on the lake shore proved in its way to be as great a challenge to
Italian patience and ingenuity as the job of excavating the slabs and
fragments of the Altar of Peace from under the Palazzo Fiano. There was
always the danger of the ships’ settling in the mud in a convex curve,
springing the beams. The excavating tools used were made entirely of
wood; iron would have damaged the ancient timbers. As each section
of the hull emerged from the water that had covered it for so many
centuries, it was covered with wet canvas to keep it from deteriorating.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.5 Lake Nemi, second ship exposed.
(Ucelli, _op. cit._, p. 97)]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.6 Lake Nemi, ship, elevation. (Ucelli, _op.
cit._, Pl. 4)]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.7 Lake Nemi, imaginative reconstruction of ship.
(Ucelli, _op. cit._, p. 29)]
The hulls proved to be full of flat tiles set in mortar. These overlaid
the oak decking, and over these again was a pavement in polychrome
marble and mosaic. Fluted marble columns were found in the second
ship, suggesting a rich and heavy superstructure (Fig. 7.7). A round
pine timber from the first ship, thirty-seven feet long and sixteen
inches in diameter, with a bronze cap ornamented with a lion holding
a ring in its teeth, proved to be a sweep rudder, one of a pair. It
showed that these enormously heavy vessels (the decking material alone
must have weighed 600 or 700 metric tons) were actually intended to be
practicable, and to move about in the waters of the lake.
Clay tubes, flanged like sewer-pipe to fit into each other, were
arranged in pairs to make an air-space between one level of deck
and another. This suggests radiant or hypocaust heating, as in a
Roman bath: these floating palaces, or temples, or whatever they
were--perhaps both--had bathing facilities. Wooden shutters warrant the
inference that the ships were provided with private cabins. A length
of lead water-pipe stamped with the name of Caligula has been used to
date the ships to that reign (and indeed in some ways they accord well
with Caligula’s reputation for madness), but of course there is nothing
to prevent lead pipe of Caligula’s short reign (A.D. 37–41) from being
used in Claudius’, and many scholars, on the evidence of the art
objects found, would date the ships in the latter reign.
Boards in the bottom of the hold were removable to facilitate cleaning
out the bilge. This was done with an endless belt of buckets, some of
which were found, and are on display, restored, in the museum. Over the
ribs of the hull was pine planking, then a thin coating of plaster,
then a layer of wool treated with tar or pitch, finally lead sheathing
clinched with large-headed copper nails.
The second ship had outriggers supporting a platform for the oarsmen,
and a bronze taffrail decorated with herms--miniature busts tapering
into square shafts. A number of mechanical devices of great technical
interest was found: pump-pistons; pulleys; wooden platforms (use
unknown), one mounted on ball-bearings, another on roller-bearings; a
double-action bronze stem-valve (perhaps for use in pumping out the
bilge), which had been welded at a high temperature (1800° Fahrenheit);
anchors, one with the knot tied by a Roman sailor still intact,
another with a moveable stock, anticipating by over 1800 years a
similar model patented by the British Admiralty in 1851. Its use is to
cant the anchor, giving it a better bite in the mud.
In 1944 the retreating Germans wantonly burned the ships in their
museum. Their gear, stored in a safe place, survived. From careful
drawings made at the time the ships were raised, models were made to
one-fifth scale. They are now on display in the restored museum.
The ships did not contain within themselves clear evidence about
what they were used for. Whether they had some religious purpose
in connection with the nearby Temple of Diana, or were used as
pleasure-craft, or both, they reflect, like the cave at Sperlonga, the
mad extravagance which increasingly characterized the Roman Empire on
its road to absolutism.
* * * * *
In 1917, on Rome’s birthday, April 21, a landslip beside the
Rome-Naples railway line outside the Porta Maggiore revealed, forty-two
feet beneath the tracks, a hitherto unsuspected and most remarkable
underground, vaulted, stucco-ornamented room, the so-called “basilica,”
which will serve as a third example of archaeology’s contribution
to our knowledge of the Julio-Claudian age. To protect the basilica
against damage from seepage and vibration from trains--240 a day
pass directly above it--it was enclosed in 1951–52, at a cost of
over $500,000, in a great box of waterproof reinforced concrete with
footings anchored nearly twenty-four feet beneath the level of the
basilica pavement.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.8 Rome, subterranean basilica at Porta Maggiore,
general view.
(Fototeca)]
One entered the chamber in antiquity--it was always underground--down a
long vaulted ramp which made a right-angle turn and emerged in a little
square vestibule, whose skylight provided the basilica’s only natural
light. Beyond the vestibule was a vaulted nave (Fig. 7.8) ending in
an apse, and two side aisles. The profiles of the piers upholding the
vaults, and of the arches connecting the nave with the side aisles,
are irregular; and the piers are set at eccentric angles (Fig. 7.9):
this suggests a curious method of construction. A trench must have been
dug through the surface tufa corresponding to the desired perimeter
of the building. Then six square pits were dug, one for each pier,
and the outline of the arches and doorways formed in the virgin soil.
Then mortar was poured in. When it had set, the entrance corridor was
dug and the interior of the basilica emptied of earth through the
skylight in the vestibule. Then vault, piers, and walls were stuccoed.
In the late Republic and after, Roman artisans showed great skill in
ornamental stucco-work, a far cry from the wattle-and-daub, in the
primitive huts, which is the remote ancestor of the refined work in the
basilica, and a symbol of how far on the road to sophistication Rome
had traveled from her humble beginnings.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.9 Rome, subterranean basilica at Porta Maggiore.
(_Legacy of Rome_, p. 407)]
In the basilica the stucco-work is divided by moldings into squares,
rectangles, and lozenges, filled with figures in low relief of great
delicacy and elegance. Some are simple scenes of daily life, and many
others are part of the standard repertory of Roman art, but the key
motifs will bear, as we shall see, a single, serious interpretation.
The apse, the focal point of the whole structure, was reserved for a
special scene of central importance.
The central panel of the central vault shows a naked human figure, a
pitcher in his hand, carried off by a winged creature. (The interior
of the figure is eaten out; this is due not to vandalism but to the
depredations of a parasitic insect related to the termite.) In the
four surrounding panels are four other motifs. A hero wearing a lion’s
skin shoots with a bow a monster guarding a maiden chained to a rock.
A beautiful, seated, half-naked woman cradles a statuette in her left
arm; a bearded middle-aged man stands before her. A young man in a
short tunic, carrying a leafy branch or a shepherd’s crook, leads off a
woman by the hand. A veiled female figure takes from a tree guarded by
a serpent a fleecy object to give to a man kneeling on a table nearby.
How are these scenes to be interpreted? Do they share a common motif?
According to the French Professor Jérome Carcopino, they do.
The central subject is Ganymede borne heavenward to be Jupiter’s cup
bearer. The hero with the lion’s skin is Hercules rescuing Hesione.
The woman with the statuette is Helen with the Palladium, the ancient
image on which Troy’s safety depended; the wise Ulysses stands before
her. Or it might be Iphigenia, in faraway Tauris, about to bear past
the Thracian King Thoas the statuette of Artemis which will release her
brother Orestes from torment by the Furies. In the next panel, if the
young man is carrying a branch, he is Orpheus bringing Eurydice back
from Hades; if he is carrying a shepherd’s crook, he is Paris kidnaping
Helen. The veiled female is of course Medea getting the Golden Fleece
for Jason. The common theme is deliverance. Ganymede, liberated from
earthly ties, is borne on wings to the bliss of Heaven. Hercules can
free Hesione because, according to some versions of the myth, he has
been initiated into the mysteries. The statue, whether of Athena or of
Artemis, guarantees the safety of the city or person who possesses it.
Helen, in some accounts, can read the future and assuage men’s pain;
or, if the theme is Orpheus and Eurydice we may recall that in an early
version of the myth the ending was happy. Jason and Medea are freed
from fear of the dragon through rites of magic initiation.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.10 Rome, subterranean basilica at Porta Maggiore,
apse.
(Fototeca)]
Does the great scene in the apse (Fig. 7.10) harmonize with the
interpretation? In it, on the right, a graceful veiled woman, holding
the lyre of a poetess, descends a cliff into the sea. She is pushed
by a baby winged figure standing behind her. Beneath, waist deep in
the water, a figure with a cloak outspread stands ready to receive
her and escort her to the opposite shore. There, on another cliff,
stands an imposing naked male figure, in his left hand a bow, his right
outstretched in blessing. Behind him sits a young man thoughtfully
supporting his head on his hand. Below in the sea yet another figure
holds an oar and blows a horn in greeting. Any Roman intellectual would
recognize the scene: it is Sappho, encouraged by Cupid, received by
Tritons, blessed by Apollo, making the lover’s leap to join her beloved
Phaon for eternity. This is not suicide, but liberation from earthly
love into an eternity of perfect harmony of the senses with the sublime
and the supernatural. The scene is consistent with the others, and
provides a further clue to the interpretation of the whole, for Pliny
the Elder, in his encyclopaedic _Natural History_, says that the myth
of Sappho and Phaon was made much of by a sect called neo-Pythagoreans,
inspired by the number-mysticism, and the belief in immortality, of
their founder, Pythagoras of Samos, who flourished in the late sixth
century B.C. These beliefs were refined in the Hellenistic Age, and
taken up by heterodox Roman intellectuals.
This elegant underground chamber, so restrained and literary in décor,
so small in size (it measures less than thirty by thirty-six feet) is
just the place for a chapel for such an élite and aristocratic sect
of ancient freemasons. The hypothesis is borne out by the discovery
beneath the floor of the bones of a puppy and a suckling pig, the
preferred _pièces de résistance_ for a neo-Pythagorean cult meal,
perhaps the meal that inaugurated the chapel.
And still other motifs in the stucco decoration strengthen the
hypothesis, by stressing redemption, salvation, initiation: a winged
victory; a soul arriving in the Isles of the Blest; a woman with a
flower, symbolizing Hope; a scene of Demeter, the earth goddess, and
Triptolemus, the hero of agriculture, of whom much was made in the
Eleusinian mysteries. Other reliefs show the reverse of the coin: the
punishment of the uninitiate. The satyr Marsyas is flayed alive for
presuming to challenge Apollo to a competition in music. The Danaids,
for the crime of murdering their husbands, perform forever the useless
labor of drawing water in perforated jars. There are other sinners:
Medea with her slain sons; Pasiphaë, the monstrously adulterous Cretan
queen; Phaedra, trying her wiles on her sinless stepson; Hippolytus,
over-chaste votary of the maiden-goddess Artemis; King Pentheus
murdered, for scoffing at the Dionysiac mysteries; his mother, Agave,
carries his severed head aloft in Bacchic frenzy. To these has not been
given the true neo-Pythagorean vision of the truth; they are portrayed
here to symbolize their doom to a private Hell of their own making.
Two long panels on either side of the spring of the central vault
reinforce the general intellectual tone. In one, schoolboys recite
their lessons before a seated schoolmaster with a ferule in his hand.
In the other, the Muse of Tragedy attends the coming-of-age ceremony of
a Roman adolescent. (Some interpret this scene as a marriage; if so,
the sect will have allegorized it in some way.) We know that the sect
was open to both sexes; reliefs in the wall-panels of the basilica show
men and women making offerings.
The stuccoes of the vault were in excellent condition when found.
(They have since suffered from dampness, now being corrected by
air-conditioning.) Also, they show no traces of addition or repairs,
but the wall-panels were desecrated in antiquity by vandals, the
consoles for offerings ripped off, the lamps and chapel gear carried
away. It looks as though the chapel had had a short life, and the cult
a violent end. Will history provide a date? Tacitus mentions in his
_Annals_ a rich Roman, Titus Statilius Taurus, known to have owned
property near the basilica, who fell foul of Claudius, was accused
of practicing _magicas superstitiones_, and escaped his sentence by
committing suicide in A.D. 53. The style of the stuccoes fits this
date, the décor of the basilica fits the cult, its state when found
fits Tacitus’ story. We may suppose that everything within reach was
looted, the chamber filled in, and probably never seen again until the
spring day 1864 years later when the landslide by the railway revealed
its existence.
* * * * *
In 1907 the German archaeologist F. Weege, following in the footsteps
of Renaissance explorers of 1488, made his way through a hole in the
wall of the Baths of Trajan, near the Coliseum, to find himself in a
labyrinth of underground vaulted corridors and rooms partly filled with
rubble, which had once been part of an Imperial palace, the Golden
House of Nero. Setting lighted candles at every turning to guide his
way back, he explored as many as he could of the eighty-eight rooms of
this small part of the palace-complex, sometimes crawling with lighted
candle over rubble that filled a room nearly to the vault, while
spiders and centipedes, and other nameless creatures scuttled away from
him into the darkness.
The rooms had been filled with rubble by Trajan, with a twofold
purpose: to make a firm substructure for his baths, and to continue
the work of the Flavians in damning the memory of the conspicuous
consumption and conspicuous waste of the hated Nero. Thirteen
hundred and eighty-four years later, when the underground rooms were
rediscovered, among the visitors was Raphael, who decorated a loggia
in the Vatican Palace in the style of the fantastic paintings on
Nero’s walls. Since the buried rooms were grottoes, the paintings
were “grotesques”--as often, the word has survived, while its history
has been forgotten. Other visitors were Caravaggio, Velasquez,
Michelangelo, and Raphael’s teacher, Perugino. The names of many a
famous artist are scrawled right across the face of the ornaments of
the vaults. An Italian poem, written not long after the discovery of
America, speaks of artists’ underground picnics in the Golden House.
The picnickers crawled on their bellies to enjoy their subterranean
meal of bread, ham, apples, and wine.
The result of Weege’s more scientific investigation was the working out
of a new plan. The western half of the complex (Fig. 7.11) proved to
be conventional, with the rooms grouped about a peristyle with garden
and fountain. Rooms 37 and 43 have alcoves: it is easy to imagine them
as the Imperial bedchambers of Nero and his beautiful red-haired wife
Poppaea. In Nero’s bedchamber were hung the 1808 gold crowns he won in
athletic competitions in Greece, if competitions they can be called,
when all the prizes were awarded to Nero in advance, and armed guards
drove off all would-be rivals.
The eastern wing (Fig. 7.12) is more unorthodox in plan, and more
interesting. The main approach opened into Room 60, the Hall of the
Gilded Vault, so called from the ornate painted stucco ceiling,
divided into round and rectangular fields in gilt, green, red and
blue, depicting mythological and erotic scenes, very different in tone
from the restraint of the subterranean basilica. Hippolytus, off to
the hunt, receives a letter containing incestuous proposals from his
stepmother Phaedra. Satyrs rape nymphs, Venus languishes in the arms of
Mars, Cupid rides in a chariot drawn by panthers. And yet we are told
that the painting in this pleasure dome was done by the solemn dean of
Roman artists, Fabullus himself, the John Singer Sargent of his day,
who always painted in full dress, wearing his toga.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.11 Rome, Golden House, west wing.
(G. Lugli, _Roma antica_, p. 358)]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.12 Rome, Golden House, east wing.
(G. Lugli, _op. cit._, p. 359)]
Room 70 is a vaulted corridor 227 feet long, with sixteen windows
opening to the north in the impost of the vault, which is painted
sky-blue as a _trompe d’oeil_. Seabeasts, candelabra, and arabesques,
sphinxes with shrubs growing out of their backs, griffins, centaurs,
acanthus-leaves, Cupids, gorgons’ heads, lions’ heads with rings in
their mouths, dolphins holding horns of plenty, winged horses, eagles,
tritons, swags of flowers make up the riotous décor. In recesses
in the walls landscapes and seascapes, impressionistically painted,
attempt the illusion of the out-of-doors. Halfway down the corridor the
vault is lowered. Here it supported a ramp which led to the gardens
above.
Room 84 is octagonal, lighted by a hole in the roof, anticipating, as
we shall see, Hadrian’s Pantheon. Perhaps this was the state dining
room, described by ancient sources as hung on an axis and revolving
like the world. Its ivory ceilings slid back and dropped flowers and
perfumes on Nero’s guests.
The most controversial room of all is the apsidal number 80, decorated
with scenes from the Trojan war: Hector and Andromache, Paris and
Helen, Thetis bringing Achilles his shield. Nero was fascinated by the
Trojan War: it was an epic of his own composition on the fall of Troy
that he recited as Rome was burning. What was in the apse? Equivocal
Renaissance reports place the finding of the Vatican Laocoön somewhere
in this area, the apse is of a size to fit the statue, and the subject
is appropriate to a room full of Trojan motifs. The statue’s baroque
quality would have appealed strongly to Nero’s taste. This is the
circumstantial evidence for room 80 as the findspot of one of the most
notorious statues of antiquity. That this survey of the Julio-Claudian
age should approach its end, as it began, with mention of the Laocoön,
suggests how conventional was the repertory of Roman taste.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.13 Rome, Golden House, reconstruction drawing of
whole area. (_Fototeca_)]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.14 Rome, the Neronian Sacra Via.
(E. B. Van Deman, _Mem. Am. Ac. Rome_, 5 [1925])]
But a description of the rooms of the Golden House is not quite the
whole story. In 1954 the Dutch archaeologist C. C. Van Essen published
the results of careful probing in the whole section of Rome for half a
mile around the Coliseum, where he found traces of Nero’s palace in a
number of places on the perimeter. For the Golden House was much more
than the complex of rooms just described. It was a gigantic system
(Fig. 7.13) of parks, with lawns, groves, pastures, a zoo. Over its
central pool later rose the great bulk of the Coliseum. Within these
grounds, twice the extent of Vatican City, was a great Versailles in
the midst of the teeming metropolis. The eighty-odd rooms we have been
describing made up but one of several palaces in the grounds. And an
American, Miss E. B. Van Deman, working from some very unlikely-looking
architectural blocks piled beside the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina
in the old Forum, was able in 1925 to restore on paper (Fig. 7.14)
the monumental approach, over 350 feet wide, to the palace grounds
from the old Forum and Palatine. It was a mile long, with arcades of
luxury shops, and eight rows of pillars. Its plan is concealed today
under mounds of dumped earth between the Hall of the Vestals and the
Arch of Titus. Beside it rose a colossal statue of Nero, 120 feet
tall, now marked by a pattern in the pavement. When Hadrian desired
to remove the statue to make room for his Temple of Venus and Rome,
it took twenty-four elephants to do the job. But decades before, his
predecessors the Flavians had done what they could, with the Baths of
Titus and the Flavian Amphitheater (the proper name of the Coliseum) to
erase the memory of Nero’s monstrous extravagance, and turn his palace
grounds to public use.
* * * * *
The four archaeological examples from the Julio-Claudian age discussed
in this chapter were chosen for their intrinsic interest, not to
illustrate a thesis. But they do prove a point all the same. Tiberius’
_al fresco_ dining room, with its monstrous and tortured statuary
(even though some of it be later in date); Caligula’s houseboats, with
their incredibly heavy profusion of work in colored marble, mosaic,
and bronze; Nero’s Golden House, with its labyrinth of gaudy and
over-decorated rooms of state, all testify to a decadent extravagance
beyond Hollywood’s wildest aspirations. By comparison, the cool, quiet
taste of the subterranean basilica is an oasis and a relief, but even
this is a commentary on Claudius’ intolerance. And it has about it an
air of holier-than-thou Brahminism, the furthest possible contrast
with the warmth, the close contact with common people, which marked
the Christianity that was to be preached in Rome not long after the
basilica-sect was outlawed. One cannot but marvel at the staying-power
of the organism that could survive this prodigality, this cleavage
between class and mass, for over three centuries. But as we focus our
attention upon the excesses of court and of metropolis, we ought not to
forget that in the municipal towns of Italy and the Empire life went
on, more modestly, quietly, and decently. Archaeology gives us precious
proof of this in a pair of buried cities of the Flavian Age, Pompeii
and Herculaneum.
8
The Victims of Vesuvius
One day in 1711 a peasant digging a well on his property in Resina,
on the bay five miles southeast of Naples, came upon a level of
white and polychrome architectural marbles, obviously ancient. This
chance find led to the discovery of what proved to be the buried
town of Herculaneum, destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius of August
24, A.D. 79. Workmen digging in 1748 by the Sarno canal, nine miles
farther along the bay, found bronzes and marbles on a site which
an inscription, discovered fifteen years later, identified as
Herculaneum’s more famous sister city, Pompeii. Thus began a saga of
excavation which has told the modern world more about ancient life
than any other dig in the long history of archaeology, and this in
two towns which have left almost no record in literature. In a few
hours of a summer afternoon the eruption stopped the life of two
flourishing little cities dead in its tracks: dinner on the tables, the
wine-shops crowded, sacrifices at the moment of being offered, funerals
in progress, prisoners in the stocks, watchdogs on their chains. The
townsfolk had not even time to gather their possessions. Ironically,
going back for their little hoards of gold and silver spelled death
for many of them, under the hail of pumice-stone and ashes (or, at
Herculeaneum, the river of lava) which asphyxiated (Fig. 8.1) or
engulfed them. At Herculaneum, on the afternoon of the eruption, rain
turned the volcanic ash to mud, which solidified, burying the town
thirty to forty feet deep. Electric drills and mechanical shovels are
needed to dig there, so progress has been slow. Even Pompeii, under its
shallower layer of pumice-pebbles and light ash, is still only about
three-fifths excavated.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.1 Pompeii, victims of Vesuvius, from House of
Cryptoporticus.
(V. Spinazzola, _Pompeii: ... Via dell’ Abbondanza_, 1, p. 443)]
For a century and a half after their rediscovery the two sites were
treated almost entirely as a quarry for works of art, as a plaything
for the various dynasties that misruled Naples, and as a romantic
stop on the Grand Tour. The discovery of ancient artifacts here
revolutionized the taste of Europe: Ludwig of Bavaria built a replica
of a Pompeian house at Aschaffenburg; Winckelmann, the great Romantic
art historian, conceived here many of his notions of the wonders of
Greek art; Casanova’s brother copied some of the paintings, and did
a brisk business in forgeries. Nelson’s mistress, Lady Hamilton, was
a frequent visitor: her husband was British ambassador to Naples.
Goethe was impressed by Pompeii’s smallness; Napoleon’s marshal Murat
supervised the dig, and Garibaldi made Alexandre Dumas his Director of
Antiquities here. A generation of Victorians sobbed over _The Last Days
of Pompeii_, and the young Queen herself visited the Site in 1838.
But it was not till the era of scientific archaeology--which came to
Pompeii and Herculaneum with Fiorelli in 1860--that the buried cities
began to add their never-ceasing stores to the sum of our knowledge of
ancient town-planning, public life, private life in town and country
houses, trade and tradesmen, religion, and art.
* * * * *
[Illustration: FIG. 8.2 Pompeii, air view. (University of Wisconsin
Classics Dept. collection)]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.3 Pompeii, plan. (MPI)]
One of the results of scientific excavation at Pompeii was to reveal
at last the town plan (Fig. 8.2), after decades spent in sporadic
digging for treasure trove, in cutting paintings out of walls, filling
in the excavated houses, and moving on without system to a new area.
The plan as now revealed (Fig. 8.3) shows the least regular streets in
the southwest quadrant of the town around the Forum; this, therefore,
should be the oldest part; and in fact architectural terracottas found
here, in the so-called _Foro triangolare_, are dated in the sixth
century B.C. Elsewhere the pattern of a rectangular grid is clear,
making possible the division of the city for purposes of archaeological
reference into nine regions. Each region is subdivided into numbered
blocks, or _insulae_; each _insula_ into numbered houses. The whole
160 acres, big enough for a population of from fifteen to twenty
thousand, is surrounded by a wall, in which archaeologists, on the
basis of building materials and techniques, have detected four phases.
The earliest, with a facing of squared limestone, dates from the fifth
century B.C.; the latest, marked by the addition of high towers, from
the time of Sulla, who settled some of his veterans here in a colony
grandiosely named the _Colonia Veneria Cornelia Pompeianorum_. Masons’
marks from the third phase (280–180 B.C.) are in Oscan letters, the
alphabet of ancient Italy’s major language, next after Latin and Greek.
Inscriptions (street signs for example) show that Oscan persisted as
Pompeii’s third language, along with Latin and Greek (for the area
around Naples had originally been settled by Greeks, and they kept
their culture), down almost to the time of the eruption. The wall shows
the marks of the stone catapult-balls of the Sullan siege; some of the
balls were found preserved as souvenirs in houses. After the Sullan
phase the wall was allowed to fall into disrepair, mute evidence of the
security of the Augustan peace.
* * * * *
Whatever curtailment of liberty seemed a price worth paying for
security in Rome, Pompeii at least enjoyed an active political life.
The evidence is a vast series of election “posters,” painted in red
and black on house and shop walls. In these, individuals and groups
(for example, the fullers or laundrymen, the fruit-vendors, the
fishermen, dyers, bakers, goldsmiths, muleteers, and a private club
of gay blades who call themselves the _seribibi_, late drinkers) urge
their fellow-citizens to vote for candidates for aedile, the highest
municipal office. For one block of supporters the candidate’s gratitude
must have been extremely limited: the notice read: “The sneak-thieves
support Vatia for the aedileship.” The bases for the invitations to
vote for a candidate like “Vote for _X_: he won’t squander public
funds,” will have a strong appeal for the modern reader.
There was no interference with due process, to judge by the basilica
in the Forum, where Pompeii’s legal business was transacted: it is
Pompeii’s largest and most important public building. Tiles found in
it stamped in Oscan come from a level which shows that the building
dates at least from 120 B.C. Across the Forum from the basilica is the
_comitium_, for town meetings and elections: at the south end of the
Forum are three buildings, identified as the meeting-place of the town
council, with municipal offices on either side.
Pompeii was well-supplied, too, with public amenities. The streets were
paved, and supplied at the main intersections with stepping stones,
which did not interfere with the passage of high-axled wagons, though
some stepping stones were removed in 1815 to allow the Queen of Naples’
coach to pass. (Nowadays visitors with a taste for ostentation can
be carried through Pompeii in a sedan chair.) Lead water-pipes found
everywhere show that all but the very humblest houses were supplied
with running water. There were no less than three sets of public baths,
of which the largest was under construction when the catastrophe came.
The baths had radiant heating and elegant stuccoed vaults. There were
separate sets of rooms for men and for women, and an enormous number of
lamps found in one establishment shows that it was in use also in the
evening hours.
That the intellectual as well as the physical needs of the population
were catered to is deduced from the existence of two stone theaters,
one open to the sky, with a capacity of 5,000; one roofed, a _théatre
intime_, for about 800. Both antedate the earliest stone theater in
Rome. But the Pompeians did not push the intellectual life to extremes.
The portico behind the large theater was remodelled in Nero’s reign to
make a barracks for gladiators, complete with armory and lock-up, where
three of them were found asphyxiated in the stocks. The amphitheater
has seats for 20,000. Legends scrawled on its walls, and on house-walls
all over town, testify to the gladiators’ popularity with their fans:
gladiatorial records are registered (twenty-four fights, twenty-four
victories; the losers most often are murdered and forgotten), and one
champion is recorded as _SVSPIRIVM PVELLARVM_, the one the girls sigh
for.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.4 Pompeii, House of the Moralist.
(Spinazzola, _op. cit._, 2, p. 728)]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.5 Pompeii, House of the Moralist, reconstruction.
(Spinazzola, _op. cit._, 2, p. 756)]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.6 Pompeii, House of the Moralist, triclinium.
(Spinazzola, _op. cit._, 2, p. 752)]
But Pompeii’s greatest contribution is to our knowledge, almost
indecently intimate, of the private life of its inhabitants. This
information comes primarily from the town houses and the suburban and
rustic villas. The best guidebooks go into some detail on seventy-eight
of these in Pompeii, and thirty-one in Herculaneum; hundreds more
go unrecorded. In the face of this _embarras de richesse_, rigorous
selection is necessary, and a description of a few houses and villas
must suffice. To represent town houses I choose the “House of the
Moralist” (_Regio_ III, _Insula_ iv, House 2–3), on the Via dell’
Abbondanza, a shopping street of average houses. (The aristocratic
quarter was in _Regio_ VI.) Excavations on this street by Vittorio
Spinazzola between 1910 and 1923 were carried out according to a
method new in Pompeii, which made the dead street come alive with
extraordinary vividness. Spinazzola’s meticulousness preserved and
reconstructed the traces of upper stories, with windows, balconies,
and loggias; of gardens, with the discovered roots of their trees
and plants replaced by modern ones of the same species. The colorful
painted signs and notices on the house and shop fronts, instead of
being detached as in the past and transferred to the museum in Naples,
were left _in situ_, protected by glass and awnings, and the house
interiors, with their furniture and wall-paintings, were kept intact.
All this Spinazzola published in 1953 in a colossal book of 1110 folio
pages, with over 1000 figures and ninety-six large plates. His account
is the more important because the House of the Moralist, having been
kept inviolate by volcanic ashes for so many centuries, was badly
damaged by Allied bombs in 1943. (There were Germans quartered in the
hotels near the excavation entrance.) The ground floor plan (Figs.
8.4 and 8.5) of that house shows two dwellings thrown into one. The
smaller, on the left, has typical features: its vestibule leading to an
_atrium_ or patio off which open a summer and a winter dining room and
a light-well planted with flowers and shrubs. The winter dining-room
is frescoed in glossy black; it has a vaulted, coffered ceiling, and
a high window closed by a shutter planned to slide into the wall.
The usual peristyle, or rectangular portico behind the _atrium_, is
missing, its function supplied by the loggias on the upper floor and
the large sunken garden behind the larger house. The garden was planned
as a little grove sacred to Diana. Her statue was found in the middle
of the garden, with a little bronze incense-burner in the shape of a
ram still in place on its pedestal, and large trees planted around it.
The pleasant summer dining room fills the garden’s southwest corner. In
it the marble-topped table was found set for a meal or sacrifice (Fig.
8.6). In the corner was a brazier and a pitcher for hot water. Three
couplets painted on the wall prescribed etiquette for the diners,
and give the house its name: “Don’t put your dirty feet on our couch
covers; if you bicker at table you’ll have to go home; be modest and
don’t make eyes at another man’s wife.” There was a dumb-waiter to
serve the pleasant loggias on the upper floor overlooking the garden.
The pointed jars, amphorae, in the basement, suggest that the Moralist
was a wine merchant. A stamp found there gives his name: Gaius Arrius
Crescens. Election notices painted on the house front show that he and
his family were up to their ears in local politics.
A sumptuous suburban dwelling is the sixty-room Villa of the Mysteries
outside Pompeii’s Herculaneum gate, the noblest and grandest known
of its kind. It was built on a seaward-facing slope, with a terrace
and subterranean vaults. A careful analysis by its excavator, Amedeo
Maiuri, of its building materials and décor shows six phases, of which
the earliest, in squared blocks of local limestone, includes the
rectangular block of rooms numbered 2–8 and 11–21 in the plan (Fig.
8.7), and is dated 200–150 B.C. At this stage the villa was surrounded
on three sides by a pleasant open portico, and the curved exedra or
belvedere (see the plan) did not yet exist. The next stage is marked by
the use of handsome light gray tufa instead of limestone, includes the
peristyle and small _atrium_ (_atriolum_ in the plan), and the modest
bathing rooms (42–44) beyond. It dates from the time of Sulla. The
next two periods are dated from the prevalent styles of wall-painting,
to be discussed in the section on art below. They take the villa’s
building history through the reign of Augustus. In the Julio-Claudian
period--the date is again made precise by the style of painting--the
villa became useful as well as ornamental: the rustic quarters 52–60
were added, and an upper floor overlooking the vestibule. The latter is
more elegant than the rustic quarters, less so than the noble eastern
rooms. The inference is that in this period the owner used the villa
only occasionally, leaving the management of its business end to a
resident factor who lived on the upper floor (see the reconstruction,
Fig. 8.8) where he could keep his eye on the bailiff and the slave
farm-hands. The portico (P 1–4) was now provided with a windowed wall
between its columns, and the sunrooms (9–10) were created, with their
splendid view, open to the southern sunshine, ideal for a winter siesta.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.7 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries.
(A. Maiuri, _La Villa dei Misteri_, p. 41)]
When the volcano finally struck, the villa was undergoing extensive
remodelling, having apparently not yet recovered from an earlier
catastrophe for which there is other evidence, both archaeological
and literary: an earthquake in A.D. 62. The master’s quarters were
found empty of their contents, as though after the earthquake he had
moved out altogether, and sold his elegant furniture at auction. A
stamp reveals the name of the new owner: Lucius Istacidius Zosimus.
Istacidius is a noble Samnite (Oscan) name; Zosimus is Creek. The
inference is that the new owner was a freedman of the former master,
who bought up the property and turned the entire establishment into
a farmhouse. Evidence of the tasteless change from elegance to stark
practicality was found everywhere: piles of mortar, columns and
architraves taken down and stored, rooms closed off, an ugly new wall
run straight across one of the most tasteful rooms in the master’s
quarters (6), a heap of onions piled on a mosaic floor in an alcoved
master bedroom, farm tools in the graceful southwest sunroom (9). The
apsidal room (25) was apparently destined to become a shrine to the
Emperor. In it the statue of Augustus’ consort, the Empress Livia, in
painted marble with the head inserted in a second-hand torso (which was
found [Fig. 8.9] propped against the peristyle wall) was apparently to
be set up.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.8 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, reconstruction.
(A. Maiuri, _op. cit._, p. 56)]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.9 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, Statue of
Livia, as found.
(A. Maiuri, _op. cit._, p. 227)]
On the rustic side of the villa, business was going on as usual. The
winepress (Fig. 8.10) was ready for use in the coming vintage; rough
wine was ready in large amphorae protected by woven straw like a modern
_fiascone_ of Chianti or Vesuvio. Farm tools (picks, hoe, shovel,
hammer, pruning hooks) were found hanging in a room (32) beside the
vestibule. The porter was on duty. He was found dead in his dark
little room (35), on his finger a cheap iron ring set with an engraved
carnelian, by his side the five bronze coins which may have been his
life savings. He must have heard the dying screams of the adolescent
girl whose skeleton was found in the vestibule nearby. Three women
were crushed in the rustic quarters (55) when the roof fell in. The
excavators found their disordered skeletons, their gold rings and
bracelets, a necklace of gold and glass paste beads, and, lying nearby,
ten silver coins. In the cryptoporticus were found the bodies of four
men, with wine or water jugs by their side. They had hoped the sturdy
vaults would hold, and they did, but the mephitic fumes proved deadly.
(Altogether, it is calculated that Vesuvius claimed 2,000 victims in
Pompeii.) The nine wretched cadavers in the Villa of the Mysteries were
the last inhabitants of a mansion which in its day had been one of the
most elegant in all Italy.
Though space does not permit a detailed account of the fascinating
things Herculaneum has to tell us, the subject of suburban villas
cannot be left without mentioning a famous one there, still not fully
explored, where in 1752 were found, in a narrow room with cupboards,
a vast number of what were at first taken for charred billets of
wood. Later, traces of writing were found on them: they turned out
to be papyri, a whole library of 1800 rolls. A machine invented to
unroll them ruined more scrolls than it unwound, but finally, by 1806,
ninety-six were deciphered. They proved to be works of an Epicurean
philosopher named Philodemus, to whose patron Lucius Calpurnius Piso
(father of Caesar’s wife Calpurnia) and his descendants the villa may
have belonged. It had a gracious peristyle, gardens, fishponds, and
a belvedere overlooking the sea at the end of a long graveled walk.
In the garden was found a whole gallery of sculpture in bronze and
marble, now included among the most famous pieces in the National
Museum in Naples. Here a cultured Roman patrician could combine in the
ideal Epicurean way the calm contemplation of the beauties of nature
and of art with the philosophic study of the atomic structure of the
universe.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.10 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries. Wine-press,
reconstructed.
(Maiuri, _op. cit._, p. 101)]
A more rustic villa, between Pompeii and Boscoreale to the north, shows
what the establishment of a capital farmer of the first century A.D.
was like. The owner’s quarters were modest. Business came first: most
of the ground floor is taken up with stable, wine and oil presses,
threshing floor, and slaves’ quarters. Slaves were a problem: one
rustic villa has quarters for thirty and stocks for fourteen. The
Boscoreale wine store had a 23,000 gallon capacity, and enough stone
jars were found to hold 1,300 gallons of olive oil. The proprietor
of this villa, however, was not without his fondness for aesthetic
ostentation. In a wine vat here was found in 1895 a treasure of 108
embossed silver vessels and 1000 gold coins. They were bought by
the banker Count Edward de Rothschild, much to Italian disgust, and
presented to the Louvre. One pair of cups represents a series of
skeletons, one garlanded, another with a heavy bag of money, a third
with a roll of papyrus, a fourth with a lyre; the whole bears the
legend, the tragic irony of which the proprietor of the villa was to
discover: “Seize hold on life; tomorrow is uncertain.” Another treasure
in silver, of 118 pieces, all now securely in the Naples museum, was
discovered in 1930 in a nail-studded chest in the strong room under a
town house (I.x.4) called the “House of the Menander” after a fresco of
the dramatist on the walls.
* * * * *
But it is not only the nabobs, their villas, and their treasures which
Pompeii reveals to us. Ancient tradesmen, their lives, work, and
tastes, about which literature tells us almost nothing, become more
real for us here than anywhere else in the ancient world except Ostia.
In the market facing the Forum the excavators found fruit in glass
containers, and the skeletons of fish and sheep. There are inns for
muleteers and carters by the city gates, and innumerable wine shops,
the bar open to the street, its top pierced to hold cool amphorae of
wine or covered bronze vessels for hot drinks (Fig. 8.11). Wine prices
are scratched on walls, together with other _graffiti_ of more or less
extreme indecency, referring usually to the oldest of the professions.
One says, “I am yours--for two _asses_” (the _as_ was a small
copper coin worth, at the time this _graffito_ was scribbled, about
two-and-a-half cents). Another, in large letters over a bench at the
Porta Marina, advises loungers to READ THIS SIGN FIRST, and offers the
charms of a Greek prostitute named Attiké at sixteen _asses_. This sort
of thing prompted the more sober-sided Pompeians to write more than
once on the walls (of the large theater, amphitheater, and basilica)
the couplet, one of the most famous of the hundreds found at Pompeii:
“_I wonder, wall, that you do not go smash,
Who have to bear the weight of all this trash!_”
Other _graffiti_ complain of unrequited love: “I’d like to bash Venus’
ribs in” (from the basilica), or “Here Vibius lay alone and longed for
his beloved” (perhaps from an inn). Snatches from the love-poets, Ovid
and (strangely) the tortured, neurotic Propertius, are frequent, and
tags of Vergil remembered from schooldays. _Graffiti_ keep a running
account of daily purchases of cheese, bread, oil, and wine; or the
number of eggs laid daily by the chickens. A reward is offered for the
recovery of a stolen bronze pitcher. Income property is advertised
for rent, or gentlemen’s upstairs flats (_cenacula equestria_). A
metal worker, doing a brisk business in chamber pots, has scratched on
his wall a memo of the days fairs are held in nearby towns. He made
surveyors’ instruments as well: our only example of a surveyor’s plane
table (_groma_) comes from his shop. In a bronze-bound chest in the
house of a rich freedman banker, Lucius Caecilius Jucundus, were found
his complete (and involved) accounts, on 153 wax tablets. His bronze
bust, with its shrewd, ugly, kindly face, warts and all (Fig. 8.12),
was also found in the house. It reveals the very type of the _nouveaux
riches_, not in the least ashamed of being “in trade,” who came to be
the ruling class in the last days of Pompeii.
The wealth of tradesmen can be judged by the quality of the decoration
of their houses, in which they often plied their trade, for the ancient
world’s slave economy did not foster the factory system. Thus in the
house of the jeweler Pinarius Cerialis (III,iv,4), his showcase was
found containing fine engraved cornelians, agates, and amethysts, some
of the work unfinished, and also the tiny, delicate tools of his trade.
In the House of the Surgeon (VI.1,9–10) surgical instruments were
found, including probes, catheters, gynaecological forceps, pliers for
pulling teeth, and little spoons, perhaps for extracting wax from the
ears. These provide our best evidence for ancient surgical techniques.
Stephanus’ _fullonica_ (laundry: I.vi.7) was found with the imprint of
the fallen front door left clearly in the ashes. The padlock was on the
outside, from which the inference is that this establishment served
as laundry only; if it had been a dwelling, the lock would have been
on the inside. A skeleton behind the door had with him a bag of 107
gold and silver coins. Since two-thirds of them had been minted years
before, under the Republic, one assumes that this was not merely the
day’s take, but a hoard; all the shop’s moveable capital. Built in at
the back were the small vats where the dirty clothes were trodden, to
get out the dirt and grease, and the larger ones for rinsing. The upper
floor and courtyard were used for drying: in the courtyard wall were
found the small putholes for the canes over which the wet clothes
were hung. Near the entrance was the clothes press, in which a pressing
board was worked down upon the folded clothes by means of a pair of
large wooden screws.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.11 Pompeii, _thermopolium_ or bar. (MPI)]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.12 Naples, National Museum. Bronze bust of
Caecilius Jucundus, from Pompeii.
(B. Maiuri, _Il Museo Nazionale di Napoli_, p. 71)]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.13 Pompeii, House of D. Octavius Quartio, garden,
reconstruction. (Spinazzola, _op. cit._, 1, p. 418)]
Across the street from the laundry a painted shop front shows the
operations of a felter’s establishment, where wool was matted together
with a fixative, under repeated manipulation and pressure, until
it acquired a consistent texture, like a piece of cloth. Felt was
in demand for caps, cloaks, slippers, and blankets (the latter for
both man and horse). The shop sign shows workmen at tables holding
the carding comb and knives of their trade. In the middle of the
picture other men, naked to the waist, are at work at shallow troughs
impregnating the wool with the coagulant (Pliny the Elder says it was
vinegar) which is being heated by a stove beneath the troughs. To
the right, the proprietor--his name was Verecundus--proudly holds up
a red-striped finished sample. To the left, Mercury, the patron of
tradesmen, is painted emerging from a Tuscan temple with a money bag
in his hand (“Hurrah for profit,” says a Pompeian _graffito_). Below
is the proprietor’s wife at a table, in spirited conversation with a
female customer who is trying on slippers. No literary discussion,
primary or secondary, can match the vivid concreteness of this
archaeological record.
The house (II.v.1–4) of Decimus Octavius Quartio (or Marcus Loreius
Tiburtinus--authorities differ about the occupant’s name) belonged
to a potter, to judge by a small kiln, with the potter’s stool and
samples of his wares, found in a workroom. This is interesting enough,
but more interesting still is this tradesman’s taste, as revealed by
his house and garden. Hardly a corner of the house is left unfrescoed,
and the paintings include two ambitious cycles; nine episodes from
the saga of Hercules, and fourteen from the _Iliad_. (The House of
the Cryptoporticus [I.vi.2–4] presents twenty-five _Iliad_ episodes
from an original 86, badly damaged when the last owner, an obvious
Babbitt, turned the cryptoporticus into a wine cellar and made over
the dining room for public use.) The potter was besides a connoisseur
of gardens; his is the most charming that Pompeii can boast. His
_impluvium_--for catching rainwater in the _atrium_ (courtyard or
patio)--is double-walled, for flower-boxes; behind the _atrium_ is
a formal flower bed, with walks around it on three sides; the chief
feature of the sunken back garden (Fig. 8.13), nearly twice the area
of the house itself, is a pair of long narrow fish pools, planned
perpendicular to each other to form a T, and trellised (Fig. 8.14) so
that vines could grow over them. The walls of the pools were painted
blue to deepen the color of the water. At one end of the crossbar
of the T is the pleasantest _al fresco_ dining alcove imaginable.
Statuettes embellish the alcove and the sides of the pool. There is a
little shrine in the alcove; another, with a fountain, where the two
pools meet; still another, with a fountain in front of it, two-thirds
of the way along the upright of the T. Putholes in the garden wall
show that there were shed roofs there to protect exotic plants and
flowers. The plum trees, oaks, shrubs, arbors, and plants with which
the garden was filled in orderly rows, with walks between, have been
replanted, after identifying them from their roots found in the ashes.
Forty-four amphorae were found buried to their necks in a row along one
side of the garden. Perhaps they served as flower pots; it is equally
possible that they were a wine store, for this potter’s house has no
wine cellar. In a corner and under the arbors along the walks there
were wooden seats and little marble tables, for rustic picnics in the
pleached shade. The difference of levels, the fountains, shrines,
statues, arbors, trees, and the painted colors, red, gray, green,
yellow, and blue, all judiciously restored, make this age-old garden
extraordinarily vivacious. Here archaeology has once more given the
lie to the hackneyed stereotype of the lifelessness and colorlessness
of classical antiquity, and has proved that in landscape-gardening,
at any rate, there is something to be said for the _bourgeois_ taste
of Pompeian tradesmen. Some had a taste for music, too, to judge
by some frescoes in the small but gracious House of Fabia (I.vi.15).
One portrays the mistress of the house with sheet music in her hand.
Another shows what appears to be a music lesson, our only example of
the lyre being played four hands. Indeed archaeology, by revealing
these middlebrows to us in three dimensions, their shops and artifacts,
inns and bars, street signs and _graffiti_, loves licit and illicit,
tools and equipment, their tastes and pleasures, has given us,
especially in Pompeii, a truer picture of the average, ordinary ancient
Italian man than Latin literature provides. For Latin literature, with
some exceptions like Plautus’ plays, tends to be written by highbrows
for highbrows. (Yet paradoxically, the best literary picture of an
ancient Babbitt, Petronius’ Trimalchio, _was_ drawn by a highbrow for
highbrows.)
[Illustration: FIG. 8.14 Pompeii, House of D. Octavius Quartio, garden,
with trellis and pool. (Spinazzola, _op. cit._, 1, p. 396)]
* * * * *
Pompeii has enriched, too, our knowledge of the ancient Italian’s
relation to his gods. The archaeological documents for Pompeian
religion include the temples, innumerable household shrines, wayside
altars, frescoes, inscriptions, and _graffiti_. Of the ten temples,
three, ruined in the earthquake, had not been repaired at the time
of the final débacle, seventeen years later. One had reverted to the
use of a private association, and two were dedicated to the Imperial
cult, to which generally only lip service was paid. One piece of
evidence on this is the cynical _graffito_ from a farm in nearby
Boscotrecase: “Augustus Caesar’s mother was only a woman.” Of the
rest, only the temple of the Egyptian Isis shows real signs of the
prosperity that comes from devout support. The truth is that the
real god of Pompeii--as of most other cities ancient and modern--was
the God of Gain. The state religion, cold and formal, offered little
comfort: the warmth and promise came from Oriental religions, of which
Isis-worship was one and Christianity another. There is no evidence of
Christianity’s having penetrated Pompeii by A.D. 79, unless the ominous
_graffito_, “SODOMA, GOMORA,” be taken as a sign. But Pompeii, close
to the Italian end of the trade-route from Alexandria, is permeated
with things Egyptian, and there is much evidence of enthusiasm for the
cult of Isis. The earliest building stones of the temple (VII.vii)
belong to the end of the second century B.C., and were thrown down in
the earthquake of A.D. 62. But _this_ temple was not left derelict:
it was immediately reconstructed from the ground up in the name
of a six-year-old boy, who was rewarded for his piety by honorary
membership in the town council. The cult, with its promise of personal
immortality, received rich gifts from its votaries. Its marble lustral
basin, for holy water; statues and statuettes, including of course
the goddess herself, with her rattle that kept off evil spirits; the
striking bronze bust of an actor-donor; lamps; sacrificial knives; the
ornamental marble curb of a well; candelabra, and rich frescoes, some
with likenesses of white-robed, shaven-headed priests, which decorated
the precinct and the walls, are now among the treasures of the National
Museum in Naples.
Family cults flourished in Pompeii more than the official religion,
to judge by the fact that nearly every house and workshop has its
private shrine, usually housing busts of ancestors (for in this the
Romans were downright Japanese), and adorned with a picture of a snake,
representing the family’s Genius, or guardian spirit. Sometimes, as
in the House of the Cryptoporticus, there is a handsomely decorated
private shrine to one of the Olympian deities, in this case Diana.
The trades had their patron saints: Mercury (god also of thieves) for
commerce; Minerva, who invented weaving, for the clothmakers; the
hearth goddess Vesta for the bakers. The front of the felter’s shop
described above is emblazoned with a magnificent Venus in a chariot
drawn by four elephants. Sex, too, had its enthusiastic worshipers: a
dyer’s vat (IX.vii.2) bears a relief of an enormous winged phallus, set
in a temple whose _acroteria_ are also phalluses, of smaller size. But
perhaps the perfect symbol of the religion of this tradesmen’s town
is a fresco in the House of the Cryptoporticus, in which the family of
Aeneas (the symbol of Rome) is shown guided to its destiny by Mercury,
the god of trade.
* * * * *
Is all this great art? A fair answer to the question should come from
an analysis of what is usually regarded as the masterpiece of Pompeian
painting, the fresco in Room 5 of the Villa of the Mysteries.
This analysis must be prefaced by a word about the four more or less
successive styles into which archaeologists have succeeded in dividing
the vast corpus of Pompeian painting. The First (or “incrustation”)
Style, found in buildings (_e.g._, at Palestrina) dated by their
fabric and technique from 150 to 80 B.C., uses colored stucco to
imitate marble dadoes, rusticated blocks, and revetments. The Second
(or “architectural”) Style (80 B.C.-A.D. 14) imitates architectural
forms, uses perspective, and throws the field to be painted open to
mythical or religious subjects. The Third (or “Egyptianizing”) Style
(A.D. 14–62) flattens out painted architectural detail into painted
“surrounds” or frames for panels which look like hanging tapestries,
worked out with fine detail in a miniaturist’s technique. The Fourth
(or “ornamental”) Style (A.D. 62–79) features infinite vistas, with
figures moving amid fantastic architecture. Examples of the last three
styles are frequent in the Villa of the Mysteries, but the great
sequence from which the Villa takes its name is of the Second Style and
Augustus’ reign.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.15 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, fresco: woman
being scourged. (MPI)]
In this sequence, against a background of brilliant Pompeian red, are
painted, almost life-size, a series of twenty-nine figures subdivided
into ten groups. At the left of the door in the northwest corner (as
one enters from Room 4) a boy reads what is apparently a ritual from
a papyrus roll; a woman, perhaps his mother, points to the words with
a stylus. Next is a scene of ritual washing of a myrtle branch; one
of the servers, in deep décolleté, and with pointed ears, carries the
papyrus ritual roll at her waist in a fold of her _stola_. In the next
group a fat, blonde-bearded, naked old Silenus plays a lyre, a faun
plays his pipe, and his consort gives suck to a goat. Then comes the
figure of a woman in motion so violent that her drapery swirls about
her as she raises a hand in horror at one of the scenes that follows.
But between her and the scene that repels her are three other groups.
First, another trio, of a Silenus and two fauns. The Silenus is giving
one of the fauns a drink out of a silver bowl; the other faun frightens
the drinker with a Silenus mask held so as to be reflected in the
surface of the wine. Second, the central scene, in the center of the
east wall: a naked god, identified as Bacchus by the thyrsus (the staff
tipped with a pine cone) which lies athwart his body, and by the vine
leaves in his hair, leans back in the lap of a figure who must be his
bride, Ariadne. Third, a kneeling woman unveils an erect purple-draped
object, surely the Mystery of Mysteries, a phallus. Beyond her is the
scene of horror (Fig. 8.15): a half-naked female figure with huge
black wings raises a whip to scourge a woman, surely the candidate
for initiation, who cowers, her back bare, her face buried, in the
lap of a seated woman who strokes the victim’s dishevelled hair to
comfort her. Beyond her a naked Bacchante whirls in an orgiastic dance,
clicking castanets high in the air above her head. In the last two
scenes a woman in bridal yellow, on an elegant ivory stool, does her
hair while a Cupid holds a mirror. Another Cupid, with his bow, looks
on. And finally, a matron, with her mantle draped over her head like a
priestess, sits, leaning on a cushion of purple and gold, on a chair
with a footstool, and watches gravely.
This fresco, which clearly portrays a Dionysiac ritual, and connects
it with marriage and fertility, has undeniable power. It packs into
a confined space--it is less than sixty feet long, on three sides of
a room measuring only 16 × 23 feet--movement, rest, fear, horror,
magic, abandon, and orgy. It illustrates better than anything else
from Pompeii how the Augustan age assimilated Hellenistic Greek art
into an Italian idiom. Yet somehow the final impression, here and in
lesser examples of Pompeian painting, is that the artist is working
from a memory of great paintings seen in collections or museums, from
a repertory, or from sketch books of famous works of art. His work
is well above the inn-sign or wallpaper level, he is competent and
sophisticated; no hack, but no genius either. And so, with all respect
for the natural enthusiasm of the excavator, the question with which
this section began must be answered in the negative. This is not great
art, but it is the next thing to it, and no modern _bourgeoisie_ since
the sixteenth-century Dutch has had the taste to fill its houses with
such able work. But we must conclude that the great value of Pompeian
art is in documentation, of the practical taste of ordinary people.
* * * * *
Maximilian, later to be Emperor of Mexico, when he visited Pompeii in
1851, found it terrible, its rooms like painted corpses. Since then,
modern archaeological methods (scientific, not miraculous) have brought
the corpses to life. What archaeology has presented to us here, as at
its best it always does, is not things but people, at work and play, in
house and workshop, worshiping and blaspheming, and after their fashion
patronizing the arts. So vividly does archaeology reveal them that we
are moved to say with Francis Bacon, “_These_ are the ancient times,
when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient, by a
computation backwards from ourselves.”
As the rain of ashes was covering Pompeii, and the river of lava
engulfing Herculaneum, life in Rome, that Eternal City, went on. It
was the age of the Flavians. Vespasian, the _bourgeois_ founder of the
dynasty, died just a month before Pompeii was buried. He and his sons,
the good Titus and the wicked Domitian, enriched Rome with splendid art
and architecture.
9
Flavian Rome
Two _fora_, an amphitheater, an arch, a sculptured relief, a palace,
a stadium: these may stand as typical of archaeology’s contributions
to our knowledge of the Flavian age. As in the Julio-Claudian dynasty,
the buildings and the sculpture epitomize the atmosphere of the time,
the last three decades of the first century A.D. After the excesses
of Nero and the bloodbath of A.D. 69--a year of civil war which saw
three Emperors in succession, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, raised to the
purple and then murdered--the Roman people wanted “normalcy.” Under
Vespasian and Titus they got it; under Domitian the pendulum swung
again--and so did the headsman’s ax.
Flavian architecture and art sum up, too, the personalities of
the Emperors. The bluff, no-nonsense Vespasian, the Emperor of
reconstruction, symbolized, in his majestic Forum of Peace, what one of
his staff called the “immense majesty” of the peace he had brought to a
war-torn world, and Vespasian gave credit, in the frieze of the _Forum
Transitorium_, to the artisan class which was his ardent supporter.
Again, true to his _bourgeois_ origins, he built for the people, over
the pool of Nero’s Golden House, the great amphitheater which posterity
was to call the Coliseum. Titus summed up the great moment of his
short life when he immortalized his capture of Jerusalem on his arch at
the top of the old Forum. Domitian, would-be _triumphator_, would-be
rival of his great predecessors, exalted, in the reliefs recently
found under the Cancelleria palace in Rome, the military prowess of
the dynasty which in his view culminated in himself. He took over
Vespasian’s _Forum Transitorium_, to thrust himself into a class with
Augustus and his own father; reared on the Palatine a palace to outdo
the Golden House; and, with philhellenism genuine or affected, built in
the Campus Martius a stadium for footraces in the Greek fashion.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.1 Rome, Forum of Peace, Colini and Gatti
reconstruction from _Forma Urbis_. (G. Lugli, _Roma antica_, Pl. 6)]
* * * * *
Since very little of Vespasian’s Forum of Peace remains above ground,
recourse for information about it must be had in the first instance to
literature. Pliny the Elder, who was on Vespasian’s staff, described
it as one of the most beautiful squares in the world, embellished as
it was with trophies of war, including the famous seven-branched gold
candlestick from the temple in Jerusalem, carved in relief on the Arch
of Titus.
A fragment of the previously-mentioned Marble Plan of Rome, the _Forma
Urbis_, inscribed with the letters CIS (Fig. 9.1), is easily restored
to something like [Forum Pa] CIS, Forum of Peace. It shows a portico,
on one side walled, on the other colonnaded, the colonnade approached
by steps. An open space is incised with a series of three long indented
strips, apparently representing formal garden-plots. The fragment also
shows one right angle of a structure which should be an altar.
Faced with the thousand pieces of the Marble Plan, archaeologists play
the fascinating game of making joins, as in a jigsaw puzzle. In 1899
Lanciani announced the discovery of a new fragment which joined with
the piece of the Marble Plan already mentioned. It filled out the
rectangular shape of the altar, added two more rows of garden-plots,
and supplied another side to the portico, at right angles to the other.
This side had two rows of columns, four of which were represented as of
larger dimensions than the others, and as standing on plinths or square
bases. These two fragments made possible restoration, on paper, of a
considerable part of the Forum’s plan. Given the Roman architectural
principle of axial symmetry, Lanciani could be sure that the altar
belonged in the middle of one side of the portico-surrounded space,
towards the back. He could restore two more column-bases; and, knowing
that there must have been three rows of garden-plots on either side of
the altar, and that the scale of the Marble Plan was 1:200, he could
arrive at the original length of one inner side of the portico--about
325 feet. But there paper hypothesis had to rest, awaiting excavation.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.2 Rome. _Forum Transitorium, Colonnacce_ before
excavation.]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.3 Rome. _Forum Transitorium, Colonnacce_ after
excavation.
(M. Scherer, _Marvels of Ancient Rome_, Pls. 162 and 165)]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.4 Rome, Imperial Fora, model. (F. Castagnoli,
_Roma antica_, Pl. 4)]
The opportunity did not arise until 1934, in connection with
systematizing and beautifying with lawns the borders of Mussolini’s
grandiose new Via dell’ Impero, already mentioned as having been
cut through slums from the Coliseum to the Piazza Venezia. The two
projecting columns of the _Forum Transitorium_ (“Forum of Nerva”),
southeast of the Forum of Augustus, were cleared, under the direction
of A. M. Colini, of medieval and modern detritus down to their plinths
(Figs. 9.2 and 9.3); the podium of the Temple of Minerva, at the end of
this Forum, uncovered; and the _peperino_ wall behind the projecting
columns isolated. Close in back of this wall, on the Forum of Peace
side, Colini found large columns in African marble, which, he inferred,
marked the missing northwest side of that Forum. Its general location
had been known since 1818, but only now was there a _precise_ point in
modern Rome’s subsoil from which, with the help of the Marble Plan, the
true dimensions of Vespasian’s portico could be measured. Also, another
fragment of the Marble Plan, not joining the two previously mentioned,
showed the very stretch of wall and the columns which Colini had been
excavating, as well as the plan of Minerva’s temple, whose podium he
had uncovered.
Now that the plan of Vespasian’s Forum could be precisely fitted into
the plan of modern Rome, it became clear that some fragments of large
fluted white marble columns, found in the southeastern part of this
area as long ago as 1875, belonged to the part of the portico where the
larger columns shown on the Marble Plan would fall. Colini now made
another join on the Marble Plan, adding to Lanciani’s fragment another
piece, previously known but not connected, which showed the Temple of
Peace at the back of the portico. It was an apsidal building, wider
than it was deep, with a pedestal for the cult statue indicated in the
apse. If it survived today it would come within a few feet of touching
the north corner of the Basilica of Maxentius. The south side of the
rectangular hall to the right of it coincides with the actual wall
of the church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, which was the findspot--in
1562--of the fragments of the Marble Plan itself. This square hall
was one of the libraries of Vespasian’s Forum. Since the principle of
axial symmetry nearly always operates, justifying the hypothesis that
what appears on one side of the axis of a Roman plan will have a twin
on the other; and since the Romans usually built their libraries in
pairs (one Latin, one Greek), Colini quite reasonably restored on paper
another rectangular hall to the left of the apsidal temple. A section
of the polychrome marble pavement, excavated by Colini east of the
church wall, was less than an inch thick, too thin to be exposed to the
weather. Colini inferred that it must have been part of the flooring of
the library in which the Marble Plan was displayed.
An ingenious combination--“joins” recognized on the Marble Plan,
actual excavation, and inference--had now made the Forum’s general
outline clear, but Colini was not yet done. Overlying the Forum’s
outer (northeast) perimeter wall, as he had plotted it, rose the
medieval Torre dei Conti, built by the brother of Pope Innocent
III. Re-examining beneath this tower the ancient remains, in squared
travertine, ordinary tufa, and _peperino_, Colini was able to establish
that they formed part of Vespasian’s Forum, a great ornamental
rectangular niche on its northeast side, with two columns of African
marble in front of it. Symmetry would dictate another matching niche
further to the southeast in the same wall, and a pair on the opposite
side to correspond. Pink granite columns found in the excavations
belonged to the portico; marble gutters proved that it had a pitched
roof. Finally, in 1938, the plan was complete enough for a model
of the Forum to be made (Fig. 9.4) for Mussolini’s Mostra Augustea
della Romanità, a great exhibition of models and photographs of Roman
architecture and engineering, casts of inscriptions, and replicas of
artifacts.
* * * * *
But Vespasian’s Forum, famous as it was, and valuable as its restored
plan is to illustrate archaeological inference at work, is overshadowed
by his mightiest monument, which has survived to become the very
symbol of pagan Rome to modern times: the Flavian Amphitheater or
Coliseum. More perhaps than any other classical monument, its stones
are steeped in blood and memories; in the blood of gladiators and wild
beasts, and perhaps of Christian martyrs, in memories of medieval
battles, Renaissance plundering of stone (much of the travertine in St.
Peter’s came from it), and Victorian moonlight visits. Having resisted
earthquakes, fire, and demolition, it is now menaced by the vibrations
of modern traffic. Work on strengthening its walls against this new
threat has been going on since 1956.
For sheer mass the Coliseum deserves its name. It is a third of a mile
around, and the Italian engineer G. Cozzo has calculated that 45,000
cubic meters of travertine went into its outside wall, over twice as
much into the whole structure. But the achievement here is not mere
massiveness, but precise engineering, careful calculations of stresses
and strains, avoidance of crowding at entrances and exits, perfect
visibility, ingenuity in the arrangements for getting the wild beasts
into the arena. (Perhaps this is the place to recall that it was upon
the Coliseum that Charles Follen McKim based his design for the Harvard
Stadium.) The site chosen, the bed of the pool of Nero’s Golden House,
was good propaganda and good engineering. Propaganda-wise, it made for
good public relations to turn a detested Emperor’s pleasure grounds
into a place for public enjoyment. (Neither Vespasian nor the Roman
mob would have thought of the slaughter of men and beasts as anything
but enjoyable; their attitude at best was that of Hemingway to a
bullfight.) From the engineering point of view, it saved much costly
excavation to pump out the pool and use it for the substructure of
the arena, and in the low, soft ground, footings could go deep: eight
feet of concrete under the _cavea_. Besides, the huge mass of debris
from the demolished Golden House could be cannily reused in the new
fabric. The first step was to erect a skeleton of travertine piers, a
double row, built of squared blocks held together not with mortar but
with metal clamps. The holes where these clamps were wrenched out, 300
metric tons of them, in the metal-starved Middle Ages, are visible
today throughout the fabric. Differences in construction suggest that
the huge project was divided into four quadrants, each assigned to a
different contractor. Most of the work is honest, so that, for example,
one cannot get the proverbial penknife blade into the joints between
the blocks of the piers, but in the northwest quadrant the work is
shoddy. This is precisely the section that has given the most trouble
under the strain of the traffic vibrations of modern times.
Inside the second concentric ellipse of piers begins a set of radial
walls which supported the seats. The slope of the seats was perfectly
calculated for perfect visibility. The vaults of the lower levels
were left open until the upper level piers were finished. This made
possible the use of derricks to lift heavy blocks to the upper levels.
The third-story piers have one course of blocks projecting, to provide
a step to support the scaffolding required for building the wall on the
fourth level. This wall is built of smaller blocks than those used on
the lower levels, to facilitate lifting, and it is full of second-hand
materials; column drums, for example, which may have come from the
Golden House. The outer face of the fourth-level wall is equipped with
240 consoles, projecting brackets jutting out from the wall to support
masts. Corresponding to each in the cornice above is a hole for the
mast. The mast, Cozzo argues persuasively, was fitted with rope and
pulley. The rope descended obliquely and was fastened to another below
which ran elliptically at a convenient height above the podium of the
arena. Awnings, fixed to these ropes, could be rolled up or down in
strips as the sun’s position dictated. Awnings being made of canvas,
this duty was assigned to detachments of sailors--the logical Roman
administrative mind at work.
When the skeleton was finished, the space between the piers in the
radial walls was filled in, on the ground level with tufa, on the
second level with lighter materials, brick and cement. Only then
were the vaults completed. The stairs were ingeniously planned to
give access from the ground direct to each level separately. This
both emphasized distinctions (VIPs in the lowest tier, women at the
top; compare the separate second-balcony stairs in modern theaters)
and facilitated entrance and exit. Each outside entrance--there were
originally eighty--bears a Roman numeral. This corresponded to a number
on the admission ticket, and divided the 45,000 or 50,000 spectators
into manageable groups.
The arena proper was surrounded by a wall, high enough to protect the
spectators from the beasts (VIPs not being regarded as expendable), but
not so high as to block the view of the arena from the seats behind.
Slots in the top of this wall are the postholes for a dismountable
fence which supplied additional protection. Literary sources say it was
of gilt metal surmounted by elephants’ tusks. In front of the fence ran
a catwalk where archers were stationed to shoot beasts which got out of
hand.
The arena was originally floored with wooden planking, removable for
the mock naval battles which were staged here in the early years of
the amphitheater’s existence. Since this had been the site of Nero’s
artificial pool, flooding must have been comparatively easy. But though
slaves fought and killed each other in these naval battles, they were
less sanguinary, and therefore less popular, than gladiatorial contests
or beast fights, and changing back and forth from murder on water to
murder on land was a nuisance, so the naval battles were transferred
elsewhere. The area below the arena floor was then filled in with
complicated substructures, which finally revealed their secret to Cozzo
in 1928.
The area under the catwalk in each quadrant contains eight cell-like
rooms (A in Fig. 9.5), each big enough to hold a man, and approached
by a short corridor. Opening out of each corridor, forward and to the
left of a man sitting in the cell, are three adjoining shafts, a small
square one (a), a large rectangular one (b), and another square one (c)
of medium size. How are these to be explained? Cozzo reasoned that a
beast was released from his cage near the center of the substructure,
into the corridor (1) shown in Fig. 9.6, with a portcullis (a) at the
end of it. The portcullis was raised, and the beast charged into the
transverse corridor (2). This was too narrow for him to turn back; he
was therefore forced to go forward into the open elevator-cage (3).
The attendant in the cell (A in the previous figure) then released
a counterweight, whose rope ran in shaft (a) of Fig. 9.5, while the
weight itself rose and fell in shaft (c); the elevator-shaft is (b).
The elevator door then closed; the elevator rose, activated by the
counterweight, to position (4) in Fig. 9.6. The beast emerged into the
narrow upper-level corridor (5–6), raced up the ramp (7), and emerged,
slavering for fresh meat, through the trapdoor (8) into the arena.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.5 Rome, Coliseum, beast elevator.
(G. Cozzo, _Ingegneri Romana_, Fig. 170)]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.6 Rome, Coliseum, beast elevator, elevation.
(Cozzo, _op. cit._, Fig. 175)]
[Illustration:
FIG. 9.7 Rome, Coliseum, model, showing colossal statue of Nero
(left center). Arch of Constantine (bottom left), and gladiators’
barracks (right center). (P. Bigot, _Rome Antique_, fac. p. 44)
]
This is not the only ingenious device in the Coliseum. The substructure
piers along the arena’s long axis are cut obliquely. Why? Cozzo
reasoned that on them rested, at an angle below the horizontal, hinged
sections of the area flooring, on which stage sets could be placed, and
the whole section of flooring raised by counterweights to the arena
level, to provide appropriate backdrops or scenery for the fights.
Against such backdrops, scenes from myth or history were acted out, the
protagonists tortured to death before delighted spectators. We hear of
11,000 beasts, and 5,000 pairs of gladiators, fighting to the death in
one session in the arena. In 1937, demolition of houses east of the
Coliseum revealed the ground plan of part of the gladiators’ barracks,
with armory, infirmary, baths, and, for training bouts, a miniature
amphitheater, with seats for rabid fans (Fig. 9.7). To celebrate
the millennium of Rome, in A.D. 248, elephants, elk, tigers, lions,
leopards, hyenas, hippopotamuses, a rhinoceros, zebras, giraffes,
wild asses, and wild horses (captured in Africa; see Fig. 13.5) were
slaughtered in the Coliseum. This market of flesh did not cease till
the sixth Christian century.
* * * * *
Vespasian did not live to see the Coliseum completed. It was dedicated,
still unfinished, under Titus in A.D. 80. The chief surviving monument
of Titus’ reign is his arch, commemorating his conquest of the Jews in
A.D. 70, but, since the inscription upon it refers to him as deified,
it is clear that the arch was not finished until after his death.
Built of valuable Pentelic marble, it would never have been preserved
if it had not been incorporated, in the Middle Ages, into a fortress
of the powerful family of the Frangipani. The last vestiges of the
Frangipani tower were not removed from the arch until 1821. It was
then reinforced and its missing portions restored in travertine. It
is chiefly famous for the relief on its inner jamb showing (Fig. 9.8)
Titus’ army carrying in triumph the spoils of Jerusalem, including the
table of the shewbread, the seven-branched candlestick, and the silver
trumpets. In the relief opposite, Titus stands in a four-horse chariot,
with the goddess Roma leading the horses, and Victory crowning him with
a laurel wreath. The frieze under the cornice, not unrelated to the
small inner altar frieze of the Altar of Peace, portrays a procession
of priests, sacrificial animals, and troops carrying on their shoulders
small platforms bearing representations of cities and places conquered
by Roman arms, including a personification of the River Jordan. The
motif in the highest part of the inner vault, showing Titus--who was
a burly man--carried off to heaven by an eagle, is as conventional as
the Ganymede in the vault of the underground basilica at the Porta
Maggiore. In the years since Augustus, Roman official art had become
conventional without ceasing to be historical.
* * * * *
[Illustration: FIG. 9.8 Rome, Arch of Titus, showing relief with spoils
of Temple at Jerusalem. (Fototeca)]
To the good Titus succeeded the wicked, psychopathic, tyrannical
Domitian, the greatest builder-Emperor since Augustus, and one under
whom the Empire took a long stride on the road to absolutism. One
evidence of Domitian’s self-aggrandizement turned up unexpectedly in
1937, under the Palazzo della Cancelleria in the Campus Martius, seat
of the papal Chancellery, and an enclave of Vatican City. Curiously,
the palace already had an intimate connection with the Flavians: many
of the stones in its fabric were robbed in the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth century from the Coliseum. In connection with extensive
repairs to the building, deep excavations beneath it revealed the
tomb of the consul Aulus Hirtius, a lieutenant of Julius Caesar’s,
who died in office, and in battle against Mark Antony, in 43 B.C.
Leaning face inwards against this tomb were five slabs which proved to
be part of a marble historical relief. A sixth slab was found later
nearby, still within papal jurisdiction; a seventh, found under the
sidewalk, technically outside the Pope’s control, was first claimed
by the Roman civil authorities, but a trade was made for the slab of
the Altar of Peace then in Vatican hands, and all the slabs are now
reunited in a courtyard of the Vatican Museum.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.9 (_top and bottom_) Vatican City. Cancelleria
reliefs. (Musei Vatican)]
The seven slabs combine into two sections of some sixteen figures
each, almost complete (Fig. 9.9). The more fragmentary of the two
contains near its right end an instantly identifiable figure, with the
characteristic beaked profile of Vespasian (Fig. 9.10). He is greeting
a young man, surely one of his sons. Comparison with known portraits
of Titus and Domitian leads to the conclusion that it is the latter
who is represented here. The greeting is taking place in the presence
of lictors, Vestals (identified from their characteristic headdress),
_apparitores_ or beadles (at either end), a helmeted female figure (the
goddess Roma or, according to others, the war-goddess Bellona, or the
personification of martial courage), and two male figures, one bearded
(the Genius of the Senate), and one beardless, with a cornucopia
(the Genius of the Roman People). The other section is at once more
complete, more difficult to interpret, and more interesting. Several
of the conventional figures recur: the lictors, Roma, the two _Genii_.
There are also six soldiers (in the uniform and with the arms of the
praetorian guard); the wing of a Victory; a helmeted female wearing
the _aegis_, the characteristic breastplate of Minerva; the helmeted,
bearded male figure beside her must be another divinity, Mars. The
remaining figure, the first on the second slab from the left (see Fig.
9.11), is rendered in profile, and is clearly intended as a portrait,
but close examination, by Dr. F. Magi, Director of the Vatican
Museums, shows that it was reworked in antiquity.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.10 Vatican City. Cancelleria reliefs. Detail of
head of Vespasian. (Musei Vaticani)]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.11 Vatican City. Cancelleria reliefs. Detail
showing how head of Domitian was transformed into that of Nerva. (Musei
Vaticani)]
Here archaeological ingenuity again goes to work. The two sections
of the total relief obviously (from the similar technique and the
recurrence of conventional figures in both) belong together. The
presence of Vespasian places both sections in the Flavian age. Of
the three Flavians, only Domitian was sufficiently hated to have had
_damnatio memoriae_ practiced upon him, to alter his portrait into
another’s. And the most conspicuous alteration of the head consists
in hacking off a fringe of curls on the forehead; such a fringe was
Domitian’s characteristic hair-style. It remains to inquire whose the
new profile is. In the context, it must be an Emperor. The most likely
candidate is Domitian’s successor, Nerva, the first of the “five good
Emperors.” The new profile, with its irregular nose, lined forehead,
and sunken checks, suits the known iconography of that tired old man.
Left with the question why, then, the portrait of Domitian on the other
section of the relief was left undamaged, Magi argued that the Senate,
on second thought, had considered the alteration into Nerva not enough:
the relief was dismantled altogether, and its slabs carefully stacked
against Hirtius’ tomb for the future use of one of the stonecutters
whose yards are known to have been numerous in the area.
Two questions remain: the occasion for carving the relief in the first
place, and the building that housed it. The occasion for greeting
Vespasian must be the most memorable one of his reign: his triumphant
return from Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The occasion for greeting Domitian
must be an equally memorable one, almost certainly his setting out
on a campaign, or his return from a military victory (because of the
prominence of the winged figure and the Mars on the relief). Domitian’s
military successes were not many; the likeliest is his campaign of A.D.
83 against a German tribe, the Chatti. If carving the monument would
take a year, as competent sculptors report, the earliest possible
date for the finished relief would be A.D. 84; on grounds of style
one authority, Miss Jocelyn M. Toynbee, would date it eight or nine
years later. To celebrate the same victory, Domitian built the Temple
of Fortuna Redux (Good Luck and Safe Return), and this temple, Magi
thinks, is a reasonable place to suppose the reliefs to have been
displayed. In them the whole Roman state is portrayed as asking of the
founder of the Flavian dynasty and of his son the peace and prosperity
which the Julio-Claudians had failed to give. Like the fresco of the
Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii, the relief is not great art but a
great document, a measure of the distance Roman sculpture had travelled
in the scant century since the Altar of Peace. It is a courtier’s
exaltation of a monarch; a solemn, highly rhetorical affirmation of
Imperial sovereignty and pride in Rome’s dominion. And perhaps there
is a moral in it, too: it summarizes the history of the dynasty, from
the triumphant reception of the first Flavian to the explosion of hate
which damned the memory, by altering the face, of the last. And these
slabs, the expression of a despot’s pride, end leaning against the
simple tomb of a lieutenant of Julius Caesar who died fighting, he
would have said, to save for his fatherland its free institutions.
* * * * *
In A.D. 86 Domitian set about continuing the work begun by Vespasian on
the narrow Forum between the Forum of Peace and that of Augustus, which
we have had occasion to mention earlier. (The final dedication was not
to occur until Nerva’s reign.) In effect this Forum was an ingenious
device to monumentalize the street which led from the old Republican
Forum to the unsavory Subura district and workers’ quarter to the
north. Caesar’s Forum was Venus’ precinct; Augustus’ belonged to Mars.
A convention had been established, a canonical way of doing things:
hence Vespasian dedicated his larger Forum to Peace, the _Forum
Transitorium_ to Minerva. Domitian, his devotion to Minerva already
established by his having given her prominence on the Cancelleria
relief, now remodelled Vespasian’s temple to her, raising it on a high
podium. The podium alone remains, with its relieving arch marking
where the Cloaca Maxima or great sewer passed below. But the original
monumentalizing of the street by Vespasian had involved building a
colonnade, of a type common in the frescoes of the Pompeian Third
and Fourth Styles. Along its architrave, which was richly decorated
on its under side, ran a continuous frieze whose technique resembles
that of the Cancelleria relief on a small scale, for the art of the
Flavian reigns is recognizably related. The dentils in the cornice show
between them the characteristic “spectacles-signature” of the architect
Rabirius, who may have worked for Vespasian as well as for Domitian.
The surviving section of the frieze portrays Minerva among the nine
Muses, and the punishment of Arachne, who for presuming to rival
Minerva’s skill at weaving was turned into a spider. The sculptor took
the occasion to carve artisans (the figure of a fuller survives) and
household scenes, of spinning, weaving, and dyeing, all under Minerva’s
special patronage. One sees the wool basket, the upright loom, the
scales for weighing the day’s stint, the proud display of a finished
roll of cloth. In the attic above the surviving section of the frieze
stands the goddess in relief, wearing the characteristic cloak of a
Roman general!
Recent excavation has added little to earlier knowledge of this Forum,
but it is of absorbing interest for what it adds to our portrait of
the Flavians. Domitian takes over his father’s plan, and pushingly
insinuates himself, as it were, between his father and the Empire’s
founder, both of whom he envied and tried to emulate. But it was
beyond even his effrontery to associate himself with the Minerva who
was patroness of artisans; nothing could be more incongruous than
his connecting his elegant dilettantism with the homely arts of the
household. The frieze is probably a part of Vespasian’s plan: its theme
suits his plain personality, and the references to handicrafts suit its
location on a street leading to a worker’s quarter. The support of the
workers (and of their wives, whose influence was all the more important
to win because it was indirect) was worth having, and meanwhile
Minerva’s connection with the Muses (the creative arts and literature)
could be turned by Domitian to his purpose: he desired to be known as a
patron of the arts.
* * * * *
The showiest surviving result of Domitian’s patronage of the art of
architecture is his palace on the Palatine, planned by the famous
Rabirius, and finished perhaps in A.D. 92. Here is a return, after
the comparative austerity of his father’s and brother’s reigns, to
the baroque extravagance of Nero. Since no final publication of this
important complex has ever appeared, the best archaeology can do is to
comment on the palace as reflecting Domitian’s personality, as indebted
to earlier, and seminal of later Roman architecture. Its throne room
(21B on the plan, Fig. 9.12), with its colossal niches for statues,
was built for an Emperor with delusions of divinity. The dining room
(H) had a dais to elevate the god-Emperor above his guests, but the
peristyle (D), originally faced with marbles polished like mirrors (to
reflect possible assassins), was planned by a terrified mortal who
feared stabs in the back. (Blocks from the peristyle cornice show, as
in the _Forum Transitorium_, Rabirius’ “spectacles-signature.”) The
restless inward and outward curves of the rooms at 21E in the west
block (the public part) of the palace, and at 23C and D in the eastern
private quarters, were made possible by the flexibility of poured
concrete, which, as we saw in Chapter V, makes it possible to enclose
space in any shape (see reconstruction, Fig. 9.13). This fluidity
appealed to Hadrian, the most gifted amateur architect among the
Emperors, and he imitated it, as we shall see, in his Villa near Tivoli.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.12 Rome, Palatine, Palace of Domitian, plan. (G.
Lugli, _Roma antica_, Pl. 8)]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.13 Rome, Palatine, Palace of Domitian,
reconstruction. (F. Castagnoli, _Roma antica_, Pl. 44.1)]
The _impluvium_ (pool for rain-water) in the peristyle (23B) of the
private quarters contained a fountain, and is curiously treated with
cut-out segments of circles, with cuttings in its top face for setting
statues. This combination of plays of water and works of art is in
the taste of the Sperlonga villa of Tiberius: ancient sources find
a parallel between that monarch’s suspicious, tyrannical nature and
Domitian’s. The small temple in the upper peristyle (24E), connected
with the “mainland” by a curious seven-arched bridge, was built,
to judge by its materials and technique, two centuries later than
Domitian. But his is the “stadium” (26). Its portico makes it unlikely
that it was ever a track for running races in the Greek style; he was
to build such a stadium full-scale in the Campus Martius in A.D. 93.
The Palatine stadium, in spite of its apsidal Imperial spectator’s box
(the model for Bramante’s Vatican Belvedere), was probably a garden
for shady strolling. Perhaps Hadrian had this plan in mind when he
built the so-called “Painted Porch” or “Poecile” of his villa, to which
we shall return. It is hard to realize that all this splendor lies
only 100 yards from the site of “Romulus’” straw hut. The difference
measures the distance Roman culture had travelled in 800 years.
Nowadays, one can sit under the umbrella pines of a summer evening and
hear symphony concerts played in Domitian’s stadium-garden. On such
occasions it may seem less of a pity that the Palatine is incompletely
excavated. Here, on this hill of dreams, as Miss Scherer calls it, one
can imagine Domitian’s palace rich with many-colored marbles, bright
with paintings and gold. One can wander in the dappled light among
oleander and orange-trees, golden broom and scarlet poppies, and admire
how the mellow brick glows rose-colored in the afternoon sunlight.
One can appreciate the mood of the Romantics for whom, a century
and a half ago, all Rome had this dream-like quality. One can argue
that their attitude may not have been scientific, but it produced the
classical revival in architecture. Here is the old dilemma, but its
horns are properly labelled not art and science, but sentiment and
intelligence. If we want truly to understand ancient Rome, the choice
is clear. Sentiment is not a Roman quality; intelligence is. The
atmosphere of Domitian’s reign was not dream but nightmare. The natural
beauty of the Palatine is attractive but adventitious; the essence of
the place is of another kind, starker, grander, more disciplined, than
a nineteenth-century water color, and behind it looms always the shadow
of violence.
* * * * *
Not violence but intelligence, and the affectation of Hellenism, lies
behind Domitian’s stadium (for Greek games) and odeum, or music hall
(for literary and musical competitions) in the Campus Martius. The
shape of the stadium has been preserved almost intact in the loveliest
of Rome’s squares, the Piazza Navona (Fig. 9.14). In 1936 the driving
of a great new street, the Corso del Rinascimento, north and south
through the Campus Martius, as a part of Mussolini’s ambitious new city
plan, gave an opportunity for definitive examination of the stadium’s
remains, preserved in the cellars of shops and the crypts of churches.
This Colini undertook, and emerged from his mole-like labors with
a plan (Fig. 9.15) and a model (Fig. 9.16) of the stadium, a prime
example of what archaeology can do with bits and pieces. Nowadays
remains of the hemicycle are visible under an insurance building
outside the north end of the _piazza_, and one travertine pier is to
be seen under the arcade of the Corsia Agonale, in the middle of the
stadium’s east side. Beneath this area are traces of the footings, of
cement poured in caissons, thicker and stronger the farther east they
go, to support the increasing weight of the rising tiers of seats
above. Brick stamps found here date the building to A.D. 93 or a little
after, with evidence of major repairs under Hadrian--another Greek
lover--and Caracalla--another violent despot.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.14 Rome, Piazza Navona, air view. (A. M. Colini,
_Stadium Domitiani_, frontispiece)]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.15 Rome, Stadium of Domitian. (Colini, _op.
cit._, Suppl. Pl. B)]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.16 Rome, Stadium of Domitian, Gismondi model.
(Colini, _op. cit._, Pl. 16)]
Colini found that Domitian’s architect, to compensate for providing
here only one _ambulacrum_ or vaulted corridor for sauntering, where
the Coliseum had two, widened his corridor at regular intervals between
the stairs to provide halls where spectators--the stadium had seats
for 30,000--might congregate between footraces. The stadium was built
in a repeated sequence: stair, entrance, hall, entrance, stair,
which gives classical orderliness and efficiency to the plan (perhaps
Rabirius’). In the center of the west side was the Imperial box: the
crypt of the church of Sant’ Agnese marks its substructure. Here,
according to legend, the good saint suffered martyrdom, condemned by
the Emperor Diocletian to the brothels that flourished in the stadium
arcades. The whole building profited by the experience of the builders
of the Coliseum, as they in turn had profited from the experience
of the builders of the Theater of Marcellus. Thus its exterior was
adorned with engaged columns, Doric on the first level, Corinthian on
the second. But the total effect was deliberately different, graceful
where the Coliseum was massive, dedicated to Greek footraces instead of
Roman blood-sports. The only thing of its kind outside the Greek world,
the stadium was a deliberate flouting of Roman tradition. This was in
Domitian’s manner. The Roman people rejected it, in theirs. To them,
Greek footraces represented foreign degeneracy, nudism, and immorality.
No sooner was the tyrant murdered (in a courtier’s plot sparked by
his wife) than they went back to their simple pleasures of watching
the murder of gladiators and wild beasts. Domitian’s odeum, traces of
which were found south of the stadium in 1936–37, did not suffer the
same fate, for it could be used for pantomime (see Fig. 13.1) and other
degraded forms of dramatic art.
Here then, is a part, a small part, of what archaeology can tell us of
the prodigious Flavian activity in architecture and in art. It will be
noticed that, not for the first or the last time in Roman history, the
greatest tyrant is also the greatest builder. (He is also Rome’s last
great Emperor who did not come from the provinces.) Absolutism was the
price Rome paid for its grandeur. But, in the century after Domitian’s
murder, absolutism marked time. Nerva’s successor, the Spaniard Trajan,
is the second of the “five good Emperors,” under whom the metropolis
and its port prospered, and the provinces lived content.
10
Trajan: Port, Forum, Market, Column
Archaeologically speaking, the most important sites in Italy to
illustrate Roman events and the Roman way of life in the happy
reign (A.D. 98–117) of Trajan--called _Optimus Princeps_, “best of
princes”--are the port of Ostia, which in his time reached its apogee,
and his Forum, the last and grandest of the Imperial Fora.
Our present knowledge of Ostia, extending far beyond the early
_castrum_ discussed in Chapter IV, is due in large part to the devoted
skill of Guido Calza. Under some pressure from Mussolini, who wanted
the dig finished for an exposition scheduled for 1942 (but never
inaugurated), he supervised the removal in four years of over 600,000
cubic yards of earth, recovering some seventy of the 170 acres enclosed
within Ostia’s Sullan wall. What he uncovered he rejuvenated but did
not falsify: his method was much the same as Spinazzola’s in Pompeii.
This was his principle: “Better to brace than repair, better repair
than restore, better restore than embellish; never add or subtract.”
His aim was not to suppress inconvenient ugliness, but to remove
impediments to study and understanding. He restored mosaics, making a
clear distinction between the old _tesserae_ and the new; re-erected
columns, put balconies back in place, rebuilt wooden ceilings to
protect houses from the weather. He detached wall-paintings, reinforced
them with cement and wire mesh, and replaced them, covered with glass,
and protected against mold by the insertion of lead plates into the
wall below the painting, to retard the spread, by capillary action, of
dampness. He sealed the tops of walls, freed flights of stairs from
rubble, opened out windows which had been bricked up in late antiquity.
He planted trees, and set a privet hedge to mark the line of the city
wall. He restored the ancient drainage-system. The result of all this
careful work was to present to the modern world a picture of Roman life
under the Empire only a shade less vivid than Pompeii. And the picture
is not of a provincial town, but of the very vestibule of Rome itself,
in fact a Rome in miniature, for Ostia gives an excellent notion of
what life in the metropolis was like at the height of the Empire. And
thanks to the careful work on the brick stamps by Professor Herbert
Bloch of Harvard, most of the buildings excavated can be dated with
a very fair degree of precision, so that Ostia’s development can be
accurately traced from end to end.
We know from an inscription that Trajan’s artificial harbor, whose
completion marked the beginning of Ostia’s peak of prosperity, was
built in A.D. 104. Ostia proper was at the very mouth of the Tiber, but
silting, which today has put the beach of modern Ostia (Ostia Lido)
three miles beyond the seawall of the ancient town, early made the city
docks impracticable for any but the smallest vessels, so that Trajan
built his harbor beside (indeed over the necropolis of) Claudius’,
two-and-a-half miles northwest of the town. The traffic in grain and
luxury goods to feed and pander to the more or less refined tastes of
the largest and richest city in the world made Ostia vastly prosperous.
The evidence is building activity, dated by brick stamps, impressed on
building tiles, and bearing the names of consuls, tile manufacturers,
or both. There was a slight time-lag, while prosperity built up. Only
twelve per cent of the datable buildings in Ostia belong to Trajan’s
reign; forty-three per cent were built or restored under Hadrian. Then
activity tapers off again: seventeen per cent of the buildings are of
Antonine date (A.D. 138–192), while only twelve per cent belong to the
age of the Severi (A.D. 193–235). Thereafter Ostia, whose fortunes rose
with Rome’s, declines with her also.
The most illuminating way to describe what archaeology has to tell us
about Ostia is to follow the plan used for Pompeii, treating in order
the town and its population, municipal life and public amenities,
housing arrangements, trade and industry, and the evidence for Ostia’s
religious life. Art in Ostia hardly deserves separate treatment: it
is, naturally, less well-preserved than at Pompeii, and what there is
seldom rises above the level of pure documentation.
The plan of Ostia (Figs. 10.1 and 10.2) is regular but not regimented.
It has unity in variety; it combines utility, a monumental quality,
and the scenic. Its backbone is the major east-west street, the
_decumanus_, nearly a mile long, and once colonnaded, which runs
from the Porta Romana straight to the Forum. Beyond the line of
the west _castrum_ wall it forks sharply to the left, ending at
the Porta Marina, which once fronted directly on the sea. The main
north-south street, the _cardo_, began at the Porta Laurentina on
the south--Ostia’s triplicity of gates is an Etruscan heritage--and
ran, shaded and porticoed, northwestward to the dazzling whiteness
of the colonnaded, marble-enriched Forum. Then it split in two on
either side of Hadrian’s Capitolium and passed north between balconied
houses to the river. Sixteen per cent of Ostia’s total area, exactly
the same proportion as a modern city such as Madison, Wisconsin, was
devoted to streets. Twelve per cent of Ostia was taken up by baths,
fifteen per cent by warehouses (for Ostia was first and foremost a
commercial town), and fifty-seven per cent by houses, most of which
are middle-class apartment blocks. Knowing the total housing area
available, and calculating twenty-six square meters of space for each
person, Calza reckoned the maximum population at 35,000 to 40,000.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.1 Ostia. (G. Calza, _Scavi di Ostia_, 1)]
[Illustration: FIG. 10.2 Ostia, air view. (H. Kähler, _Rom und seine
Welt_, Pl. 199)]
The evidence for Ostia’s municipal life comes mostly from inscriptions,
over 6000 of them, many unpublished. They show that Ostia, like most
Italian towns, imitated Rome: since Rome had a pair of chief municipal
officers, the consuls, Ostia had a pair also, the _duoviri_. There was
a town council of 110 members, which met in a marble-floored council
house facing the Forum. Legal activity went on across the street in the
basilica, also paved with marble, and with a pleasant portico facing
the Forum. It had a charming frieze of Cupids carrying garlands. Both
buildings are of Trajanic date; the prevalence of marble in them can be
explained by the ease with which the stone could be brought by ships
in ballast. There was a municipal plutocracy, whose names occur and
recur on honorific decrees (praising them for benefactions), and on
tombs near the Porta Romana and Porta Marina. The names are those of
businessmen and freedmen, not of the old Roman aristocratic families.
And as the years wear on men seldom hold office more than once, for
it grew to be an expensive honor. If taxes assessed by the Imperial
treasury were not collected in full, town officers had to make up the
deficit out of their own pockets.
Public amenities included a theater, baths, and a fire department. The
theater, built in Augustus’ reign (about 12 B.C.), and often restored
and enlarged, seats 2700, and is used nowadays for outdoor performances
of Greek and Roman plays. Behind it is a portico where theater patrons
might saunter, with a temple in its midst built by Domitian. In a
combination of business with pleasure typical of Ostia, seventy offices
face the four sides of the portico. These offices, to be discussed in
more detail below, were maintained by local branches of firms from all
over the Empire.
Ostia was well equipped with public baths. The three most interesting
belong to the middle years of the second century A.D. The Baths of
Neptune, near the theater (_Regio_ II, _Insula_ iv), have a large
entrance hall paved with a spirited mosaic showing Neptune driving four
sea-horses, surrounded by Tritons, Nereids, dolphins ridden by Cupids,
fabulous sea monsters of every kind, and two young men swimming. The
Baths of the Seven Sages (_Reg._ III,x) are named from a painting
in their dressing room which depicts the seven wise men of Greece,
each labelled with an off-color couplet describing in some detail the
intimate connection between constipation and the intellectual life. The
most interesting of all are the Forum Baths (_Reg._ I,xii). A recent
study by an American heating engineer, E. D. Thatcher, underlines
how well the Romans understood the principles of radiant heating (of
floors, walls, bathing pools, and even vaults), and orientation of
bathing rooms to catch the maximum amount of sunlight, and to provide
a windbreak, so that, although the large windows were not glazed,
the rooms were usable on most days of the year, even in winter, with
additional provision, proved by put-holes, of a rigging of canvas for
the coldest days. If the windows had been glazed, bathers could not
have acquired a tan, whose therapeutic and fashionable implications
were the same for an Ostian as for us. Thatcher calculates that an
unglazed room in the Forum Baths was usable ninety-eight per cent of
the time: hence glazing was not worth while. The Romans knew, as the
Forum Baths show, that the flow of heat is always from a hotter body
to a colder one, and that air temperature alone is no criterion of
comfort. In fact one may be comfortable in a much lower air temperature
than that found in most American houses and public buildings, provided
one does not lose more heat than one is generating at the time. The
floor and wall surfaces of the Forum Baths radiated enough warmth to
keep bathers comfortable in relatively cool air with unglazed windows.
The courtyard of the baths was paved with white mosaic to reflect light
and heat. A room which commanded a maximum of sunlight has radiant heat
in the floor only, not in the walls. The various rooms of the baths
were heated to different temperatures; Romans achieved with differently
heated areas what we achieve with thermostats. The whole complex of the
Forum Baths, Thatcher concludes, shows a sophistication in the use of
radiant heating well beyond what modern engineers have achieved.
Though brick construction made Ostia more nearly fireproof than a
modern city of frame dwellings, the grain for the dole stored in the
city’s numerous warehouses was too valuable a commodity to risk, so
a cohort of firemen detached from the main corps in Rome was kept at
the ready in barracks behind the Baths of Neptune (_Reg._ II,v). The
barracks, built under Hadrian, surround an arcaded courtyard with
rooms opening off. A latrine with a shrine in it thriftily combines
cleanliness with godliness. At the end of the courtyard opposite the
entrance is a platform which still bears the bases of statues of
Emperors worshiped by the firemen as a part of the Imperial cult.
As at Pompeii, so at Ostia, the houses are the most interesting part
of the city, not least because Ostian houses differ completely in plan
from Pompeian ones. The great majority are apartment houses, tall,
many-windowed brick blocks, with or without shops on the ground floor.
They were designed to be rented out in flats, with separate access to
the upper stories from the street. Some have balconies, opening both
on the street and on garden courtyards where many families shared the
pergolas, fountains, trees, shrubs, pools, and statue-studded lawns,
as they shared also the large common latrines. The Casa dei Dipinti
(_Reg._ III,iv; see Fig. 10.3) is such a block, built in Hadrian’s
reign. The ground-floor flats have mosaic floors and paintings of
mythological scenes, figures of poets and dancers, landscapes, and
fantastic motifs. At the end of the garden is yet another of Ostia’s
combinations of the useful with the ornamental: a number of large
_dolia_, terracotta jars sunk in the ground for storing oil or grain.
Despite the panegyrics of the excavators, there is a certain deadly
sameness about these flats where the lower middle class lived their
lives of quiet desperation, as they do in the unfashionable quarters of
Rome today.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.3 Ostia, Casa dei Dipinti, Gismondi’s
reconstruction. (Alinari)]
The occupants of Ostia’s flats were largely tradesmen or minor civil
servants. Their livelihood came from Ostia’s two artificial harbors
(Fig. 10.4). The earlier, begun under Claudius in A.D. 42, is now
the site of a military airport, whose engineers have preserved the
traces (Fig. 10.5) of the two curving moles which enclosed a basin
over 850,000 square yards in area. Ancient sources say there was an
artificial island between the arms of the moles, with a lighthouse on
it which became the symbol of Ostia: it is often figured in mosaics. A
canal, now the Fiumicino branch of the Tiber, connected the harbor with
the main stream.
Grandiose as it was, the harbor was ill-protected from prevailing
winds: a storm in A.D. 62 wrecked 200 ships anchored or berthed in
it. Trajan therefore built a smaller but more efficient basin (Fig.
10.6), hexagonal in shape and with numbered berths where ships might
tie up to discharge their cargoes directly into warehouses on all six
sides. A complicated entrance with a right-angled turn protected it
completely from the hazards which had plagued Claudius’ harbor; it also
was connected with the Claudian canal. Nowadays it forms a pool on the
Torlonia estate, and access to it is almost invariably refused.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.4 Ostia, harbors. (Calza, _op. cit._)]
[Illustration:
FIG. 10.5 Ostia, harbors of Claudius (traces of the mole show in
a different color in the air photograph), and of Trajan (the
hexagon). (Italian Ministry of Aeronautics)
]
[Illustration: FIG. 10.6 Ostia, harbor of Trajan, model.
(Mostra Augustea della Romanità, _Catalogo_, Fig. 104)]
The ships that unloaded at the quays of Claudius’ or Trajan’s harbor
came from all over the Mediterranean. Their agents had their in-town
offices in the portico behind the Augustan theater, called by the
Italians the _Piazzale delle Corporazioni_. Each office had an emblem
in mosaic before its door, indicating the commodity it imported or
the service it rendered. These mosaics, plus inscriptions, document
the greatest variety of goods and services, giving a clear idea how
busy the port of Rome was in the high Empire. The commodities included
furs, wood, grain, beans, melons, oil, fish, wine, drugs, mirrors,
flowers, ivory, gold, and silk. Among the service personnel were the
caulkers, cordwainers, grain-measurers, maintenance-men for the docks,
warehouses, and embankments, shipwrights, bargemen, carpenters, masons,
muleteers, carters, stevedores, and divers for sunken cargoes. The
home offices, often recorded in the mosaics, include ports famous or
forgotten in North Africa, Sardinia, Gaul, and Spain. Ostia proper,
as well as the ports, was full of warehouses where these multifarious
goods were stored. Their plan, multistoried around a courtyard, was
to influence the luxurious _palazzi_ of the Renaissance. (When McKim,
Mead, and White built the Boston Public Library, for example, their
ultimate model was an Ostia warehouse.) The headquarters of the various
guilds grew, in the second and third centuries, very luxurious, with
airy courtyards and temples in imported marble, testifying to the power
and prosperity of these ancient labor unions. Perhaps, then as now,
the labor leaders were more prosperous than the rank and file, for in
Ostia as in Pompeii, the multitude of small shops, of fishmongers,
fullers, and millers, and the omnipresent _thermopolia_ or bars, are
humble enough, often with dark, cramped living quarters behind or on a
mezzanine.
Ostia’s world-wide trade made her a melting-pot, and her temples
reinforce the point. Besides the temples of the Imperial cults and the
official religion, like the Temple of Rome and Augustus, Hadrian’s
lofty Capitolium, and the half-scale Pantheon, all in the Forum, there
is, near the Porta Laurentina (_Reg._ IV,i) the temple of the Phrygian
Great Mother, where her emasculated priests once clashed their cymbals.
Near the Porta Marina (_Reg._ III,xvii) is the temple of the Egyptian
Serapis, conveniently located for sailors just in from the Levant.
Everywhere there were shrines of the Persian Mithras: eighteen of them
have been found, ranging in date from A.D. 160 to 250. They always
occupy a retired, obscure corner of a pre-existent building; they are
apparently intended to symbolize the cave where Mithras was born to his
life of struggle with the powers of darkness for the immortal souls
of men. They are usually oblong with shallow benches along the sides,
with an altar or cult statue at the end. The favorite cult statute is
of Mithras slaying the bull; being washed in the blood of a freshly
slaughtered bull brought redemption into immortality to Mithras’
votaries. One Ostian Mithraeum, that of Felicissimus (_Reg._ V,ix;
see Fig. 10.7) has a mosaic pavement representing the seven stages of
initiation, somewhat like the degrees of freemasonry. Each has its
appropriate symbol: the Crow, the Bridegroom, the Soldier, the Lion,
the Persian (with a scimitar), the Sun-runner, and the Father, or
Worshipful Master. The cult was for men only: it appealed to merchants,
freedmen and soldiers.
In the fourth century in Ostia some of these were won away by another
Oriental religion, Christianity. A house (_Reg._ IV, iii) with a
mosaic of the communion chalice, set with the Christian symbol of the
fish (the initial letters of the word for “fish” in Greek stand for
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour”) may have been the residence of
the bishop. A remodeled bath (_Reg._ III,i) made over into a humble
Christian basilica, may be the place where Augustine worshiped in A.D.
387, as recorded in his _Confessions_. Part of the tombstone of his
mother Monica, who died in Ostia, was found a few years ago in the
neighboring modern village of Ostia Antica. The altar of the Mithraeum
next to the basilica was found smashed by Christian wrath into a
thousand pieces.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.7 Ostia, Mithraeum of Felicissimus.
(G. Becatti, _Scavi di Ostia_, 2, p. 107)]
When Saint Augustine worshiped in Ostia, the city was already in full
decline. The Emperor Constantine had revoked its municipal status, and
assigned it to the village called Portus which had grown up around
Trajan’s harbor. The cemetery of Portus, on Isola Sacra, the island
between the Fiumicino and the principal mouth of the Tiber, contains
a few Christian burials. It is chiefly noteworthy for the class
distinctions it reveals between the wealthy in their fine vaulted
brick tombs, embellished with paintings and mosaics (very like those
found in the cemetery under St. Peter’s), and the poor, whose ashes
rest in the miserable amphorae stuck in the low-lying ground. By the
end of the fourth century, burials in this cemetery ceased, mute
and pathetic evidence of the decline of Portus itself. Ostia proper
agonized on to its end. The flat slabs of inscriptions are re-used as
shop-counters, or to mend pavements. Architectural marbles are sawed
up into latrine-seats. Statues are reduced to lime or used, whole or
decapitated, to repair breaches in the city wall. The water-pipes break
and are not repaired, fallen house-walls are left lying, rubble piles
up forty feet deep. Sacked by the barbarian, decimated by malaria,
Ostia by the fifth century was desolate, and the road to Rome overgrown
with trees. Only a Christian chapel by the theater, marking the spot
where a Christian was martyred, was left to mark the spot.
* * * * *
Besides embellishing the Forum at Ostia with its basilica and
council-house, Trajan, through his architect, the Syrian Apollodorus
of Damascus, adorned Rome with the last, largest, and finest of the
Imperial Fora (see Figs. 5.13 and 9.4). We know from an inscribed
record, the _Fasti Ostienses_, found in re-use to repair a floor in an
ancient private house in Ostia, that its dedication day was May 18,
A.D. 113. Its general plan has been known since the French excavations
of 1812. Its inspiration is the porticoes of Caesar’s Forum and the
apses and the Hall of Fame of Augustus’. In conception it is axially
symmetric and tripartite: the Forum proper, the basilica, and the
famous Column behind, flanked by a pair of libraries. Hadrian added the
Temple of the Deified Trajan, now destroyed, which closed the vista to
the west.
The Forum proper lay at right angles to the Forum of Augustus, its
façade bowed slightly out, like the _Forum Transitorium_. Its entrance
was through a triumphal arch, added in A.D. 117, after Trajan’s death.
In the middle of the great porticoed square, over 620 feet wide, with
apses on either side, was placed a great equestrian statue of Trajan;
the Romans used to say that never did a horse have such a stable.
At the back of the open square which forms the Forum proper lay
the basilica, its two short sides curved, like the sides of the
Forum, into apses. The basilica presents its long side to the Forum
as Italian basilicas regularly did, but was much grander than the
basilicas of Alba, Cosa, or even the Basilica Julia in the old
Forum. The basilica had two double rows of columns, in gray granite
and polychrome marble: the yellow _giallo antico_, from Numidia;
the striated green _cipollino_, “onion-stone”; the purple-streaked
_pavonazzetto_, “peacock-stone”--Italian masons have over 500 different
names for marble. The architraves were marble, crystalline white from
Mt. Pentelicus in Attica. The walls were veneered with marble, from
Carrara. The roof was plated with gilt bronze. It was this magnificence
which the Christians sought to imitate in their great early basilica
churches in Rome, where the high altar stood in the place of the
judges’ tribunal: Old St. Peter’s, Santa Sabina, St. John Lateran,
St.-Paul’s-Without-the-Walls, San Lorenzo. Trajan’s goodness as
_optimus princeps_ was legendary to early Christians; Trajan’s basilica
supplied a noble model for early Christian churches; Pope Sixtus V did
Trajan a grave injustice when he replaced his statue at the top of the
Column with one of St. Peter.
Behind the basilica a pair of small libraries, one Greek and one Latin,
faced the tiny square in the midst of which rose Trajan’s 100-foot
column. Its shaft, of Parian marble, was wound about with 155 scenes on
the twenty-three spirals of the great scroll, whose bands grow wider
the higher they go, so that they were “readable” to a great height,
especially from the library balconies. Unrolled, the scroll would be
650 feet long. It described in 2500 figures the events of Trajan’s two
campaigns, of A.D. 101–102 and 105–106, against the Dacians, ancestors
of the modern Rumanians. It is because of Trajan’s conquests, imposing
Roman culture, that Rumanians speak a Romance language, derived from
Latin, today.
To what that great scroll has to tell us about the Roman attitude--and
the sculptor’s--to the art of war we shall return. For the moment
another matter is of interest: the inscription on the column-base.
It states that the column marks the height of earth that was removed
to make room for it. For centuries it was inferred that Trajan’s
engineers had cut away a whole saddle connecting the Esquiline with
the Capitoline Hill. But in 1907 Boni published the results of
excavations around the base of the column, which revealed a street,
a wall, and houses, dated by their pottery--Arretine and earlier--to
the late Republic. Hence there probably never was a saddle of hill
here. What then does the inscription mean? Boni fixed his eye on
the terraced slope of the Quirinal to the north of the Forum, and
concluded--rightly, as later excavation proved--that what Trajan was
referring to was the cutting down and terracing of this slope for some
purpose to be connected with the Forum. What that purpose was did not
transpire until 1928, when Corrado Ricci cleared the area of medieval
and later accretions and discovered the six levels of Trajan’s Market
(Fig. 10.8).
The terrace treatment clearly goes back for inspiration to the
Sanctuary of Fortune at Praeneste. Brick stamps show that the Market
was built before the Forum: the shape in which the hill was dug out
left space for the Forum apse when it came to be built. Form follows
function: the hemicycle shows the classical virtues of symmetry,
regularity, and creative exploitation of tradition, but the shape
is practical, too: it allows space for nearly twice as many rooms as
would have been possible with a rectilinear front. The shop fronts
are good-looking as well as utilitarian. The ground floor rooms are
handsomely framed in travertine; the second level windows are arched,
and framed with pilasters, much as at Praeneste, with pediments
alternately curved and triangular, the triangular pediments are
sometimes deliberately broken, never coming to an apex, a trick of
style imitated with success by eighteenth century English furniture
designers like Chippendale. But this is an old thing in a new way, for
here the material is not stone but brick, the beautifully-proportioned
rose-red Roman kind, used unashamedly without veneer of stucco or
marble, like the rose-red arcades of Renaissance Bologna.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.8 Rome, Trajan’s Market. (Fototeca)]
Some of the rooms have drains in the floor for carrying of spilled
liquid; the inference is that these were wine or oil shops; those
without such provision would be for dry commodities like grain. There
are 150 of these shops altogether, all more or less identical. The
whole complex has the air not of private enterprise but of a government
project, and it seems a reasonable guess that here we have the
headquarters of the _annona_, the government dole of wine, oil, and
grain, the cargoes of the ships that docked in Trajan’s port of Ostia.
Access to the second level is by stairs at either end of the hemicycle,
not in the middle. The split approach is borrowed from the exedra
of Terrace VII at Praeneste. (It was brick stamps in these stairs
that enabled Bloch to date this complex in the first decade of the
second century A.D.). The second-floor shops open onto a semicircular
vaulted corridor with windows opening on the Forum. On the third level
variety within unity, plus ease of access for wagons, is achieved
by a semicircular street on which the third level shops face. A
straight stretch of paving running north and south, called the Via
Biberatica--“Pepper or Spice Street”--and concealed by the façade,
contains shops with balconies, as at Ostia. Stairs ascend from this
level to a great rectangular cross-vaulted basilical hall, with shops
opening off it at two levels. Some archaeologists think this was the
place where the dole was distributed; others see in it ancient Rome’s
wholesale grain, oil, and wine market, like the Pit in Chicago where
bidding fixes the day’s commodity prices. The interconnecting suites of
rooms on the fifth and sixth levels are clearly not shops, but offices
for administrative personnel. One large centrally-located room, with a
view over the whole complex, would be a good place for the office of
the superintendent of the entire affair, the _praefectus annonae_.
Trajan’s Market did not let his people forget his generosity. Trajan’s
Column did not let them forget his prowess in war. Though casts have
often been made of the reliefs on the column--the earliest to the order
of Francis I of France, in 1541--the best photographs were not taken
until 1942, when a scaffolding erected around the column to protect it
from air attack made close-ups possible. The _optimus princeps_ appears
more than fifty times, larger than life. He dominates the sea voyages
(he handles the tiller personally), the marches, the river-crossings,
the councils of war, the reviews, the encounters in the open field, the
sieges, the sacrifices, the submissions of enemy chiefs.
Because of the fascinating detail of the reliefs, Trajan’s Column tells
us as much about the Roman army and navy as Pompeii and Ostia do about
civilian life. Nor is this all: we learn a great deal, too, about
provincial and native customs and culture. Most important, the unknown
sculptor has impressed his personality and his feelings upon what he
carved. There is an occasional touch of rough humor--a slave falling
off a mule, a Dacian ducked in the Danube--and a scene or two in which
Trajan, deprecating the humility of submissive native chiefs, seems
to be following Vergil’s advice to spare the meek. But the dominant
note is Vergil’s, too: the horror of war. Some of the detail is worth
recording.
The army and navy first. The transports, with cars in two banks, and
auxiliary sail, have ramming-beaks, adorned with an enormous eye, for
luck, or with a sea monster. The soldiers are jacks-of-all-trades: we
see them woodcutting and reaping, but most often at the interminable
work of building palisaded camps, with tents of skins, a new camp every
night when they were on the march. They built their permanent camps
of squared stones: the sculptor shows the soldiers carrying them in
slings on their shoulders, or in baskets. The walls had towers, with
balconies, from which flaming torches gave signals by night. Catapults
were mounted on the battlements; other catapults are horse or mule
drawn, or mounted on improvised wooden bases like stacked railroad
ties. We see the standards of the legions--the famed Eagles--and the
standard-bearers, wearing animal heads for helmets, like Hercules. On
the march the men carry their gear in bundles on the ends of their
pikes, like tramps with their worldly goods done up in a bandanna.
We see something of provincial towns and their citizens. The army
embarked from an Adriatic port, Ancona or Brindisi, and sailed across
to Illyricum. Here the cities ape Rome, with arches, columned temples,
theaters, and amphitheaters. The citizens turn out in a body, leading
their children by the hand, to greet their Emperor with upraised right
arms, as in a Fascist salute, and to offer sacrifice. The Danube is
crossed on a great bridge, the work of Apollodorus, with masonry piers
and wooden superstructure. Then one is in wild country, with exotic
flora and fauna, including an especially bloodthirsty wild boar. The
natives live in straw huts, and wear trousers: this last, to a Roman,
sure proof of barbarism. In battle they use short hooked swords, and
carry sinister dragon-head standards. Their cavalry, horses and all,
are protected from head to foot with scaly armor.
It is exciting, but it is terrible. Dacian women burn Romans alive;
Romans impale the severed heads of Dacians before the walls of their
camp (Fig. 10.9), or present them, dripping with gore, to the Emperor.
A Dacian is assassinated with a sword thrust as he pleads for mercy.
Bodies are trampled underfoot in battle, prisoners are dragged along
by the hair. The Dacian king commits suicide rather than fall into
Roman hands; his subjects burn their capital to the ground to deny
it to the Romans. The story of the first campaigns is separated from
the second by a Victory writing on a shield; immediately thereafter
the deadly, monotonous round begins again. The pathos of some of the
scenes heightens the horror, as when two comrades carry tenderly from
the field the limp body of a mortally wounded Dacian youth, or a whole
tribe, with babies in arms, or children carried on their fathers’
shoulders, comes to make the act of submission. At the end looting,
with the Dacian treasure loaded on the backs of mules. These scenes,
with their implied criticism of warfare, are the closest the Romans
ever came to pacifism.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.9 Rome, Trajan’s Column, detail. (P. Romanelli,
_La colonna traiana_, Fig. 60)]
The province won with so much blood, sweat, and tears by Trajan was
consolidated by his successor Hadrian (who had fought in the campaigns)
and taught the arts of peace. Hadrian, that restless traveler, spent
little of his reign in Rome, but he adorned the city with some of its
grandest buildings, for which he himself probably drew the plans, and
he built near suburban Tivoli a villa greater than Versailles.
11
An Emperor-Architect: Hadrian
About Trajan’s successor Hadrian (A.D. 117–138) archaeology and
literature, interlocking, tell us so much that we can write his
biography from his buildings, with an occasional assist from written
sources. The buildings of his reign are numerous and brilliantly
designed. We shall take as examples three from Rome and three from
the unique complex of his Villa near Tivoli: the Temple of Venus and
Rome, the Pantheon, and his mausoleum; the _Teatro Marittimo_, the
_Piazza d’Oro_, and the Canopus. All can be dated with more precision
than usual, because in Hadrian’s time the practice became general of
stamping bricks with the names of the consuls of the year they were
made. Professor Bloch’s accurate study of, and sound inference from,
over 4600 stamps, most of them from Hadrian’s reign, have put all
students of Roman archaeology deeply in his debt.
An attempt to understand Hadrian through his buildings rests upon
the hypothesis that he was himself his own architect, inspired by
the ferment of building activity in Rome in Domitian’s and Trajan’s
reigns, when he was growing up. The hypothesis is perhaps justified by
an inference from an anecdote recorded by Dio Cassius, a Roman senator
and consul from Bithynia in northwest Asia Minor, who wrote in Greek
a history of Rome from the beginning to A.D. 229. Dio’s story is that
once when Trajan was in conference with his architect, Apollodorus of
Damascus, Hadrian interrupted, and Apollodorus, angered, said, “Oh,
go and design your pumpkins!” We infer that Apollodorus’ reference to
“pumpkins” was intended to pour scorn on certain of Hadrian’s designs
for vaults, involving pumpkin-like concave segments with re-entrant
groins between, such as are still to be seen in Hadrian’s Villa, in
the vestibule of the Piazza d’Oro, and in the Serapeum at the end of
the Canopus (Fig. 11.1). The same anecdote records that Apollonius so
piqued Hadrian, later, by his criticisms of the design of the Emperor’s
Temple of Venus and Rome, that Hadrian had him first exiled and then
put to death. This is how Hadrian is established as an architect, and a
vindictive one at that.
Hadrian’s most baroque flights of architectural fancy are to be seen
at his villa near Tivoli, where the various complexes of buildings are
scattered over an area 1000 yards one way by 500 yards the other. The
buildings, which far outdid Nero’s Golden House in extent and grandeur,
include palaces, large and small, for manic and for depressive moods
(plan [Fig. 11.2] A,G,R,S,T,U,V,W), guest-quarters (B), a pavilion (C),
dining rooms (D,E,K), baths (F,O,P), a library (the apsed building to
the right of G), porticoes (H,J), pools (between H and J, and northwest
of X), slave quarters (J,N), a stadium (L), many cryptoporticoes (for
example, M), firemen’s barracks (between A and M), a palaestra or
wrestling ground (Q), and a vaulted temple of Serapis (X). Excavation,
and the carrying off of statues, with which Roman museums are crammed,
began as early as 1535, and continues to the present. It has been
followed by reconstruction (Fig. 11.3) and general tidying up: the
Italian authorities report the clearing away of 13,200 pounds of
briers!
[Illustration: FIG. 11.1 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa. Serapeum at Canopus,
showing “pumpkin” vaults. (Piranesi)]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.2 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa. (H. Kähler, _Hadrian
und seine Villa bei Tivoli_, Pl. 1)]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.3 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, model. The round
building (left center) is the Teatro Marittimo; the Piazza d’Oro is at
the upper left; the Canopus, with colonnade, pool, and Serapeum, is
near the center of the upper right quadrant. (MPI)]
The setting of Hadrian’s villa near Tivoli takes full advantage of
landscape: the view embraces mountains in one direction, distant
Rome and the sea in the other. There is the color of pines, olives,
ripe grain, pasture, and vineyard, the sound of cicadas by day and
nightingales at twilight. And when the villa was new, everywhere was
the sound of water and the color of marble. For this enormous Folly,
this Roman Versailles, the immensity of all this space devoted to the
whims of one man, untrammelled by any limitations of technique or
money, is the perfected product of 200 years of Roman experience in
elegant country living. Its builder occupied it but little. Eleven
of the twenty-one restless years of his reign were spent in foreign
travel. He named parts of his villa for famous buildings and places he
had seen in the Greek East: the Academy and the Painted Porch (_Stoa
Poecile_) in Athens, the Canopus near Alexandria. He even created a
mile of cryptoporticoes which he called a “Hell” (_Inferi_, the Lower
Regions): in his tortured life he had been there, too, as we shall
see. But the buildings are idiosyncratic, not imitative, except in
the creative Roman way. Hadrian, the Spaniard, was quick to learn.
He always spoke Latin with an accent (his Greek was better), but his
architecture was pure Graeco-Roman, using the architectural vocabulary
of the past to create a new architectural language of his own.
His earliest architectural essay at the villa, to judge from the brick
stamps, is the so-called “_Teatro Marittimo_” (the round complex at G;
see also Fig. 11.4). Its earliest bricks date from the first year of
his reign. (Of course the bricks need not have been used in the year
they were made, and indeed will often have been put aside for several
years to season.) Some bricks in the fabric of the _Teatro Marittimo_
are dated A.D. 123, an _annus mirabilis_ in Roman brick production, to
meet the vast requirements of Hadrian’s many projects, some ready to
build, some still on the drawing-board. These bricks point to later
restorations of the original plan, but the point here is that the
fundamental design, very characteristic of Hadrian, must have been
laid down early. Much light on this complex, and on the villa as a
whole, has been cast by the sensitive, perceptive work of the German
Heinz Kähler, who, undaunted by the burning of all his carefully drawn
plans in World War II, redid and published them in 1950, illuminating
as never before our picture of Hadrian as man and architect.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.4 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Teatro Marittimo, air
view. (H. Kähler, _Rom und seine Welt_, Pl. 188)]
The entrance to the _Teatro Marittimo_ was through a portico to the
north (at the bottom of the air photograph) which approached a door in
a high circular brick wall, insuring complete privacy from the rest
of the villa. Inside the wall was a circular portico, concentric with
the portico a moat. The _Teatro Marittimo_ is now restored (through
the philanthropy of an Italian tire manufacturer, impressed by the
likeness of its plan to his product), and the moat is filled with
water. When it was dry, its floor showed a pair of grooves in an arc,
one on either side of the main axis. The grooves were made by the
rollers of a drawbridge worked from a small room on the edge of the
inner circle. On the site of one of the drawbridges there is now a
permanent foot-bridge, visible in the air photograph. On the circular
island, the columned arc between the drawbridges is a vestibule where
the Emperor might receive his friends. Beyond it is a diamond-shaped
peristyle, originally with a fountain in the middle: its sides are
segments of circles which if projected would be tangent to the outer
wall of the moat. Beyond the peristyle is an apsidal room; the apse
has the same arc as the vestibule. This would be a pleasant place for
intimate dinner parties. The rooms on either side might be bedrooms.
A broad window opens from the dining room onto the moat, with a view
directly on an alcove let into the circular wall on the axis of the
far side. From the alcove the view leads through eleven differently
shaped and differently lighted spaces back to the entrance portico and
a far-distant fountain to the north.
It remains to describe the rooms east and west of the peristyle. The
central apsidal room of the three on the west (to the right of the
peristyle in the air photograph) is a deep bath with a window over the
moat. Steps lead up to the low sill: Hadrian could choose between tub
and moat for bathing. To the south is the dressing room, to the north
the steam bath and furnace room. East of the peristyle is a circular
room whose interior cross-walls form a double T, creating two alcoves
for reading. Each would be appropriate to its season: the eastern for
winter mornings and summer afternoons, the western for summer mornings
and winter afternoons. The two adjoining rooms would be just right for
a small library, of some 1500 rolls, half Greek and half Latin; the
main library lay conveniently to the southwest (right center in the air
photograph). It is tempting to see in this suite of rooms the study
where the Emperor wrote his resigned, sentimental, mannered little poem
to his soul (or is it to the soul of his beloved Antinous?):
“_Little soul, gentle and drifting,
Guest and companion of my body,
Now you will dwell below in pallid places,
Stark and bare;
There you will abandon your play of yore._”
The remaining odd corners would house latrines, little conservatories,
cupboards, and pantries.
This earliest Hadrianic building perfectly expresses one aspect
of the man: his genius, his moodiness, his striving for form, his
restlessness. With its wall, its moat, and its drawbridge, it is all
designed for privacy and quiet. From any room one gets a view of
variously lighted sections of space: _chiaroscuro_ to match moods
grave and gay. In the midst of axial symmetry, unrest is everywhere:
in the curved forms, in the abrupt switches from light to dark, from
roofed to open spaces, from horizontal architraves to the vertical
play of the central fountain. The unrest is central: the midpoint is
water and inaccessible. Tension and split are expressed in the divided
bridge approach. All is indirection, schizophrenia, avoidance of
forthrightness. As an architectural exercise, it is uniquely abstract,
a proposition of Euclid in brick and marble, at one moment seeming to
involve nothing but circles, at another, nothing but squares. It is
probably no accident that its total diameter is almost exactly the same
as the Pantheon’s. It would have suited the complexity of Hadrian’s
mind to design a grandiose habitation for all the gods to the self-same
dimensions as this splendid toy, the habitation of a restless,
schizophrenic man whom his subjects worshipped as a god. The gods had
made Hadrian in their own image; seconded by flattering courtiers, he
was returning the compliment.
The next building in Hadrian’s architectural biography is his Temple
of Venus and Rome, built facing the Coliseum to rival the most
splendid buildings of Athens and the Greek East. Literary sources
give its foundation date as Rome’s birthday, April 21, A.D. 121; the
brick-stamps, of 123, 134, and the fourth century, tell the story of
long years of building and late restoration. The restoration probably
followed Hadrianic lines; at any rate the proportion of straight to
curved profiles in the apses--exactly half and half--is Hadrianic
language, repeated in the Pantheon. The essence of the plan is two
apses back to back, one for Venus and one for the goddess Roma. They
may be interpreted as a colossal architectural pun. Venus is a goddess
of love, Love is AMOR, and AMOR is ROMA spelled backward. The symbolism
does not stop here. Hadrian is Caesar: his is the heritage, if not
the blood, of the Julian line, and the temple is a reminder of the
greatness of Rome, firmly established by Augustus, and smiled upon
by Augustus’ ancestress, Venus. The plan (Fig. 11.5 and 11.6) was
ingenious and devious, in Hadrian’s manner. The exterior is foursquare
and conventional: the interior, with its vaults and apses, was novel
and emphasized curves: compare the interplay of the square and the
round in the _Teatro Marittimo_. Daring as it was, the design was the
butt of the criticisms which cost Apollodorus his life. He had said
that the temple should have been set on a high podium, which could have
housed various paraphernalia useful in the Coliseum opposite, and that
the vaulted apses had been designed too low for the statues in them:
“If the goddesses wish to get up and go out, they will be unable to do
so.” The first half of Apollodorus’ criticism is unjustified: Hadrian
was designing a Greek temple, not an Italic one. About the second half
we cannot judge, for certain, for brick stamps show the apses to belong
to the fourth century reconstruction, but the proportions, as we saw,
are Hadrianic (Fig. 11.7). The temple was set in the midst of a forest
of sixty-six columns of grey granite. When it was re-excavated in 1932,
some of the columns were re-erected; the positions of others were
ingeniously marked by clumps of shrubbery trimmed to the proper shape.
The excavators found under the pavement an octagonal room interesting
in itself, and significant for its place in Roman architecture. The
level at which it was found is lower than that of Nero’s Golden House.
(Hadrian’s temple was built in the grounds of what had once been the
Golden House; the reader will recall the twenty-four elephants needed
to move the colossal statue of Nero and make room for the temple.) The
octagonal shape appears in the dining room of the Golden House itself,
in Domitian’s palace on the Palatine, and in a room in the Small Baths
at Hadrian’s villa (O on the plan, Fig. 11.2). The cupola of Nero’s
octagonal dining room, together with its lighting through a hole in the
roof, reappears on a grand scale in the Pantheon. This is what we mean
by saying that Hadrian adapted to his own new architectural language
the vocabulary of pre-Neronian, Neronian, and Domitianic buildings.
Here once again modern archaeology illuminates the development of Roman
architecture by demonstrating and dating the classical use of new
things in old ways, and old things in new.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.5 Rome, Temple of Venus and Rome, Gismondi
model. (F. Castagnoli, _Roma antica_, Pl. 27.2)]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.6 Rome, Temple of Venus and Rome. (Castagnoli,
_op. cit._, p. 85, Fig. 2)]
Shortly after the consecration of the Temple of Venus and Rome, Hadrian
set out on the first of his great tours of his Empire. He visited the
western provinces, making arrangements, among other things, for the
building of the great wall bearing his name that runs from Tyne to
Solway in the north of England. He visited the provinces of Africa,
Cyrene and Crete. Finally, in A.D. 123, he reached Bithynia, and there
met Antinous (Fig. 11.8), the sulky, langorous, adolescent boy who, for
the remaining seven years of his short life, and even more after his
tragic death by drowning--perhaps suicide--in the suburb of Alexandria
called Canopus, was to dominate Hadrian’s existence and inspire his
whole creative activity. It is not surprising that the Emperor,
childless and unhappily married, should find deep satisfaction in the
company of this boy. The psychological aspects of the affair, and the
possible effect of Hadrian’s infatuation upon his architecture have
been treated with delicacy and understanding by Marguerite Yourcenar
and Eleanor Clark.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.7 Rome, Temple of Venus and Rome, apse (note
size of scale figure). (Paul MacKendrick photo)]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.8 Antinous. (Alinari)]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.9 Rome, Pantheon. (Fototeca)]
The first Hadrianic building that could have been designed after
the meeting with Antinous is the Pantheon (Fig. 11.9), “the oldest
important roofed building in the world that still stands intact.” On
the evidence of the brick-stamps, its framework was complete by A.D.
125, and the whole building perhaps finished by 128. Until 1892 the
building passed as the work of Augustus’ lieutenant Agrippa, because
the inscription that runs across the architrave of the rectangular
porch in front of the drum, “Marcus Agrippa built this when he was
consul for the third time” (27 B.C.), was taken at its face value. But
in 1892 the entire fabric was found to be full of stamped bricks of
Hadrianic date, and the building therefore Hadrianic throughout (with
Severan restorations, also recorded in an inscription). The Agrippa
inscription partly follows the Roman practice of repeating the original
dedication in a restored structure, partly reflects the Emperor’s mock
modesty. His involuted nature found satisfaction in seldom inscribing
his own name on the buildings he designed. His contemporaries knew well
enough who the architect was. And the elaborate mystification served
also to point up his identifying himself with Augustus, which we saw
first in the Temple of Venus and Rome. Whether Hadrian thought of
himself as a new Augustus or not, certainly Augustan domed buildings
at the seaside resort of Baiae, on the Bay of Naples, influenced his
architecture. Hadrian played the game out in the way he handled the
transition between the circular and the rectangular parts of his plan
(Fig. 11.10). On either side of the entrance to the drum, behind the
porch, he designed rectangular projections with huge half-vaulted
apses cut out of the front: one of these apses would have contained a
statue of Agrippa, the other of Augustus. And Romans passing between
them (through the great bronze entrance doors that still survive) would
marvel at how self-effacing was their Emperor-architect.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.10 Rome, Pantheon. (G. Lugli, _Mon. Ant._, 3,
fac. p. 126)]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.11 Rome, Pantheon, interior, 19th-century
reconstruction, drawing by fellows of French Academy in Rome.]
The interior (Fig. 11.11) carries forward that liberation of religious
architecture from the Greek tyranny of the rectangular box, which can
only come about through the use of poured concrete, and which we saw
first in the Sanctuary of Fortune at Praeneste. Here Hadrian plays
with geometrical abstractions, as in the Teatro Marittimo. The game
is to describe a sphere in a cylinder: if the curve of the dome were
projected beyond the point where it meets the vertical walls of the
drum, the bottom of the curve would be just tangent with the floor.
The very pavement, with its alternation of squares and circles,
plays up the geometrical _jeu d’esprit_. (Beneath this pavement
lies the simple rectangular plan of Agrippa’s temple.) Furthermore,
both the plan and the interior view show that the walls of the drum
are not solid, and that they continue the architect’s vast toying
with geometrical concepts. The walls are lightened with niches (for
statues; one, of Venus, wore Cleopatra’s pearls in her ears). The
niches are alternately rectangular and curved; the result is that the
hemispherical cupola is supported not on a solid wall but on eight huge
piers. In order to reduce the bearing weight of the superstructure upon
the niches, into the concrete fabric above the apertures were built,
concealed by polychrome marble revetment, elaborate brick relieving
arches, which run as barrel vaults right through the walls. The cupola
itself is designed with sunken stepped coffers, to lighten it, and to
exaggerate the perspective, and to play yet again with the alternation
of curve and straight line. The concrete of the cupola, which is
thinner toward the top, is made with pumice, the lightest material
available. But in spite of the pains taken to lighten the enormous
mass, the piers gave under the weight of the cupola, and external
buttresses proved necessary (see plan, Fig. 11.10), which spoiled the
exterior effect. Hadrian is an amateur to the end; his vaults do not
hold, his cupolas need bracing, his foundations give--and yet the
essence of his designs has lasted forever.
The Pantheon is lighted solely through the great hole, thirty feet
across, at the top of the cupola. (The building is so large that the
inconvenience from rain is negligible.) The best possible idea of the
perfection of this great building is to be gained by looking down into
the interior from high above, from the edge of the hole in the roof.
This dizzy height, at which one may glory or despair according to the
measure of one’s acrophobia, is reached by a stair behind the left
apse in the porch. The stair gives access to the cornice at the top
of the drum; one then walks half-way round the cornice, which is wide
but unrailed, to the back of the drum, where a flight of steps, only
half-railed, leads up over the lead plates (the original gilt bronze
was sent to Constantinople in the seventh century), to the aperture,
from which those with a head for heights can gauge the aesthetic
satisfaction of realizing that the interior is exactly as high as it is
wide. The total effect, massive, daring, playing with space, yet not
entirely successful technically, reflects the man.
One wonders what Hadrian’s tortured and cynical spirit would make
of the vicissitudes his building has suffered. A Barberini pope in
the seventeenth century used the bronze of the porch roof to make
the canopy over the high altar of St. Peter’s, and guns for the
papal fortress, Castel Sant’ Angelo (which had once been Hadrian’s
mausoleum); of this vandalism the wags of 1625 made the famous
epigram, “_Quod non fecerunt barbari fecerunt Barberini_,” which
might be paraphrased, “The Barberini rush in where barbarians fear
to tread.” At the same time Bernini added a pair of ridiculous bell
towers--called “the ass’s ears”--which were not taken down until the
nineteenth century. Perhaps Hadrian would be better pleased to know
that men like himself were buried in his building: a great creative
artist--Raphael--and two Italian kings.
While the Pantheon was being built, an activity unexampled in the
history of Roman architecture was going on at the villa. To the
fruitful years after 125 belongs the uniquely inspired plan (Fig.
11.12) of the most important palace in the villa complex, called the
_Piazza d’Oro_, the Golden Square. Its “pumpkin” vestibule (K in the
plan) has already been mentioned. In many of its features, including
the hole in the roof, the eight supporting piers, and the alternation
of curved and rectilinear niches, it is a quarter-scale Pantheon,
but there is greater frankness in the display of the structure, both
internally, in the groined vault, and externally, where the octagonal
plan is left clearly visible, instead of being concealed by the skin
of the drum, as in the Pantheon. Except perhaps for the cross-vaulted
passages N,N, the portico is conventional; excavation in the summer of
1958 revealed footings for formal flower beds, as in the portico of
Pompey’s theater, and in Vespasian’s Forum of Peace.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.12 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Piazza d’Oro. (H.
Winnefeld)]
The part of the complex which shows Hadrian’s full genius is the
palace-block, south of the portico (plan A-I). Here the vastness,
sweep, and richness of the _Piazza d’Oro_ comes to its climax in a
design which has been called lyrical, feminine, and even Mozartian.
Here, if anywhere, can be detected the influence of Antinous. The
frieze-motif, for example, is Cupids (riding sea-monsters), but since
this theme is borrowed from the _Teatro Marittimo_, which, at least
in its earliest phase, antedates Antinous, too much should not be
made of it. The center of the composition is the four-leaf-clover
room at A, with a fountain in the middle. Its walls sweep in and out,
with a sinuous, wave-like movement, as though the room were alive,
and breathing. The outswinging arcs open into light-wells (C,C; B
is a curved nymphaeum, with statue-niches alternately curved and
rectilinear, from beneath which the water flowed down steps into a
reflecting pool; the fourth side is the entrance). The inswinging arcs
open into bell-shaped rooms (a,a,a,a). These serve to counter the
thrust of the centrally-pierced cupola (see the reconstruction, Fig.
11.13), which may have successfully solved the problem of transition
from octagonal ground-plan to circular dome. The cupola was supported
(none too well, for it has fallen and left no trace) on eight delicate
piers, in what we now see to be Hadrian’s standard but ever-varied
manner. The six tiny apsidal rooms (b) are latrines; their water-supply
came from fountains at the back of the bell-shaped diagonal rooms,
yet another example of the Roman combination of the useful with the
ornamental.
Off the central clover-leaf open on each side five rectangular rooms
(I is a late addition), all but one barrel-vaulted; the exception
(G) had a cross-vault. Each set opens onto a light well. At the back
of the central room (E) in each set is a statue-niche. The view from
the back of these rooms runs, as in the _Teatro Marittimo_, through
variegated light and shade. E was diagonally lit from the light-well;
the light-well itself, a variant on the conventional atrium, had
probably a square _compluvium_, or open skylight; the central room was
lit by the round cupola-aperture, and so on. The whole design, with its
indirect lighting, plays of water, and works of art, is light and gay,
reflecting the Emperor’s brief years of pleasure with his _inamorato_;
what the Empress Sabina thought is not recorded. But here again is the
tension that comes from an inaccessible midpoint. And whose statues
were in the niches? Whatever may have been the case in Antinous’
lifetime, after his death Hadrian deified him, identifying him with
Apollo, Dionysus, Hermes, Silvanus, Osiris, and other gods, and
surrounded himself with reminders of him in marble. Of the statues of
Antinous in Roman museums, a number variously estimated at from sixteen
to thirty comes from the villa.
Hadrian’s happiness was short-lived. In A.D. 128 he set out again on
his travels, accompanied by Antinous. They wintered at Athens, which
Hadrian enriched with monuments, passed over into Asia Minor, and down
through Syria into Egypt. Here, in 130, Antinous died, probably a
suicide, to please his master or to avoid his passion. Hadrian’s grief
was more baroque than any of his buildings. From this point his life
becomes one long death-wish. The most massive symbol of this is his
mausoleum, whose great concrete drum, approached by Hadrian’s bridge,
the _Pons Aelius_ (nowadays the Ponte Sant’ Angelo) still dominates the
right bank of the Tiber near St. Peter’s. The latest Hadrianic bricks
in it are dated A.D. 134; it must have become an important part of the
Emperor’s plans when he returned to Rome, mourning Antinous, in 132
or 133. Its plan goes back to Etruscan _tumuli_, via the Mausoleum of
Augustus--creative imitation again. The square block on which the drum
rests has almost exactly the dimensions of the Augustan monument’s
diameter. A spiral ramp leads up to the tomb chamber in the very
center of the drum. The top was spread with earth and planted with
cypresses, the trees of death (Fig. 11.14), and the whole surmounted by
a colossal group in bronze, perhaps of Hadrian in a four-horse chariot,
now replaced by the archangel Michael, who gives the mausoleum
its present name, Castel Sant’ Angelo. When the death he longed for
agonizingly came, from dropsy, in A.D. 138, Hadrian’s ashes were
laid beside those of the wife he had never loved, in the core of the
monument which symbolized his despair at the death of the only creature
to whom this strange man had ever given his affection. The great pile
has been successively fortress, prison (immuring, among others, the
great Renaissance scientist Giordano Bruno), and, since 1934, military
museum.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.13
Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Piazza d’Oro, reconstruction.
(H. Kähler, _Hadrian_, Pl. 16)]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.14
Rome, Hadrian’s Mausoleum, reconstruction.
(S. R. Pierce, _Journ. Rom. Stud._ 15 [1925])]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.15 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Canopus, plan. (MPI)]
But before his death Hadrian dedicated one more section of the villa
to mourning his loss. This is the Canopus (Figs. 11.1 and 11.15),
named for the suburb of Alexandria where Antinous met his untimely and
unhappy end. The original plan may have antedated Antinous’ death--the
latest stamps reported by Bloch are dated A.D. 126--but after the
disaster Hadrian, deliberately turning the knife in the wound, must
have made this complex a memorial of the place where it happened.
For the approach is along a pool (excavated and restored 1954–1957)
intended to be reminiscent of the canal which gave access to the
Canopus at Alexandria. The latest finds make it possible to restore the
pool with its south end fitted with dining couches. The north end is
apsidal, edged with a curious colonnade whose architrave is flat over
one pair of columns and arched over the next pair. Along the sides were
found perfect (and entirely unimaginative) copies of the Caryatids,
the maidens who upheld the south porch of the Erechtheum; these would
be memories of past happiness in Athens. Flanking the maidens were
Sileni. Other marbles, adorning the apsidal north end of the colonnade,
included, in order, an Amazon, a Hermes, a river god representing the
Tiber, another representing the Nile, an Ares, and another Amazon. All
this uninspired archaism is depressing; in the ageing, heartbroken
Hadrian taste and inspiration alike are dead.
The colonnade led to the terminal half-dome (another “pumpkin,” it
will be recalled) and secondary structures, the whole long known as
the Serapeum (there was such a temple in the Alexandrian Canopus). It
is complex in plan, at once _nymphaeum_ and temple, with its hemicycle
deepened at the back into a long narrow apsidal gallery in which some
commentators have seen a deep sexual significance. Here Hadrian has
turned, to catalyze his flagging inspiration, to older civilizations,
dead or dying like himself. Once again, for the last time, and feebly,
he has made of what they have to offer something uniquely his own. In
the Canopus, as in the Teatro Marittimo and the Piazza d’Oro, there is
no single satisfactory viewpoint: the result is an effect of motion, in
curved space, in varied light and shade, involved with water, the whole
a polyphonic counterpart to Hadrian’s own restlessness.
The buildings we have studied present a partial portrait of the man.
Hadrian the hunter, the soldier, the statesman comes out clearly in
reliefs, coins, and inscriptions we have not room to treat. But the
buildings reflect the dilettante Hadrian, uneasy, moody, whimsical,
formal, distant, unapproachable, tense, self-conscious, cold. They
show many facets of his character: in the Teatro Marittimo, his love
of privacy, and his restlessness; in the Temple of Venus and Rome,
the neat, abstract quality of his mind, his sense of humor, his
self-conscious pairing of himself with Augustus; in the Pantheon,
abstraction and Augustus again, plus an awareness of his own grandeur;
in the Piazzo d’Oro, complication, involution, febrile gaiety. In the
mausoleum, the obsession with his own grandeur and with the memory
of Augustus recur, and something new has been added: death-wish and
posturing with grief. These last two attitudes are to be read again in
the fabric of the Canopus, together with a failure of creativity which
marks the beginning of the end.
Hadrian is not the only Emperor whose personality may be read in the
artifacts of his reign, but he is unique in being himself his own
architect. This in turn creates a problem. How much in his work is
genuine self-expression, how much mere playing with form? But the very
putting of the question gives insight into Hadrian’s character. The key
is schizophrenia: unrest and self-consciousness where there might have
been the easy confidence born of unchallenged Empire; loneliness in
the midst of a crowded court; genius that failed; a love that killed.
These are the contradictions that have caused Hadrian to be saluted--a
dubious compliment--as “the first modern man.” In his architecture,
perhaps more eloquently and poignantly than in any other Roman work,
the mute stones speak.
* * * * *
With Hadrian an era ends. Juvenal, who wrote during his reign, is the
last secular classical Latin poet of importance. Hadrian’s successor,
Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138–161) was modest and plain-living where Hadrian
had been flamboyant and extravagant. The autobiography (written in
Greek) of _his_ successor, Marcus Aurelius (161–180), is throughout
a tacit criticism of Hadrian: his boy-love, his architecture, his
dilettantism. Marcus Aurelius’ son and successor, Commodus (180–192),
was a monstrous megalomaniac beside whose excesses those of Caligula,
Nero, or Domitian pale into insignificance. The next dynasty, the
Severi (193–235), founded a military absolutism which degenerated into
anarchy (235–284). Under Diocletian (284–305) absolutism is intensified
and grows more rigid. Under Constantine (306–337) the Empire’s creative
center shifts to Constantinople (old Byzantium made new, in the Greek
east), a new religion triumphs, and the story of Christian archaeology
begins. True, the two centuries from Hadrian through Constantine are
represented by some of Rome’s most impressive surviving monuments: the
Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, the Column of Marcus Aurelius, the
Arches of Septimius Severus and of Constantine, the Baths of Caracalla
and Diocletian, Aurelian’s Wall, and the Basilica of Maxentius. But,
artistically, many of these are derivative; _e.g._, Marcus Aurelius’
Column imitates Trajan’s; Constantine’s arch incorporates reliefs from
earlier, more creative reigns. Yet while the artistic impulse flickers
and dies, Roman skill in military and civil engineering, as exemplified
in baths and aqueducts, roads and walls, continues unabated.
12
Roman Engineering
In this chapter strict chronology must be violated, and steps retraced,
to discuss in specific detail something of what archaeology has to tell
us about the most practical aspect of the Romans’ genius: their talent
for engineering. This is best exemplified in roads, baths, aqueducts,
and fortification-walls.
We have reached in our historical survey the end of Hadrian’s reign,
A.D. 138. By this date the main lines of the great consular roads
leading from Rome had all been laid down, and later Emperors faced only
the problems of maintenance, till the barbarians cut Rome’s lines of
communication, and the moving of the administrative center to Milan,
Ravenna, and Constantinople reduced their importance. The most recent
archaeological investigation of Roman roads in Italy has concentrated
on tracing the lines of major and minor Roman highways and the native
tracks that preceded them, a work of great urgency, in view of the
modernization which is rapidly changing the face of Italy, especially
in the vicinity of Rome.
If we turn to Roman baths, like those of Caracalla in Rome, begun in
A.D. 211, we are back on the chronological track again, but we find
that the last major archaeological work upon them was done at the end
of the last century, and that their chief interest today lies in the
inspiration they have offered to modern architects.
As for aqueducts, the last important ancient one was built under the
Emperor Alexander Severus, in A.D. 226, but working back from that date
we can profitably review the difficult and absorbing topographical
work done in tracing the courses of the major aqueducts by a devoted
Englishman and an American woman.
Finally we shall review the work of another Englishman in tracing
the chronology and building techniques of ancient Rome’s last great
fortification, Aurelian’s Wall, begun in A.D. 271 and still in large
part standing. Its alterations and repairs have been traced down
to the middle of the sixth century of our era. The examples chosen
should justify the Romans’ high reputation for engineering skill,
and illuminate Roman history, at the same time underlining on the
one hand our debt, for the facts we know and the inferences we draw,
to the careful work of modern archaeologists, and on the other the
catalytic effect, in the case of the baths, of Roman work upon our own
architecture of the day before yesterday.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.1 Roman road construction. (U.S. Bureau of
Public Roads)]
Roman roads (see Fig. 4.1) echoing to the measured tread of marching
legions, had made a large contribution to unifying Italy by the time
the last great consular highway, the Via Aemilia, opened up the Po
valley from Ariminum to Placentia in 187 B.C., but their work of
carrying commerce and ideas was unceasing. Of course there were roads
in Italy before the Romans: the name and route of the Via Salaria, from
the salt-pans at the Tiber’s mouth up the valley into the Apennines,
suggest that it must have been in use since prehistoric times. The
Via Latina, named not for a Roman consul but for a people potent in
central Italy until the Romans broke their league in 338 B.C., must
count as a pre-Roman road, and its winding course along the foothills
must antedate the draining of the Pomptine marshes and the laying
down of the straight course across them from Rome to Tarracina and
thence to Capua of the _regina viarum_, the queen of roads, the Via
Appia. It bears the name of a Roman censor of 312 B.C. This is the
first of the great highways, and it deserves its fame for its bold
conquest of natural obstacles, its arrow-straight course across the
marshes, but its gravel surface was not replaced by stone pavement
until 293 B.C., and then only as far as the suburb of Bovillae. And
its course, like that of many another Roman road, was not always so
arrow-straight. In the hills behind Tarracina it followed the contours;
it was not until Trajan’s time that another bold stroke of engineering
cut through the high, rocky Pesco Montano to let the road pass by the
more direct coastal route. (Some authorities hold that the Romans
preferred straight roads because the front axles of their vehicles were
rigid.) Trajan’s engineers showed their pride in their work by incising
monumental Roman numerals, still visible, to mark the depth of the cut
every ten feet from the top down, until the road level was triumphantly
reached at CXX.
Along the Appia, and the other consular roads radiating from Rome,
traces of the ancient stone paving are occasionally preserved. The
paving blocks are usually _selce_ (flint), polygonal in shape and
closely fitted without mortar. While most Roman roads prove on
archaeological examination to consist of paving blocks laid in a
trench and packed with earth and _selce_ chips, it will be worthwhile
to record the ideal method of laying a pavement--strictly speaking
a mosaic pavement--as recommended by the architect Vitruvius, a
contemporary of Augustus. The method illustrates the Roman engineer’s
infinite capacity for taking pains.
After the field engineer (1 in the reconstruction, Fig. 12.1), assisted
by the stake man (2), had aligned the road with his _groma_, he ran
levels with the _chorobates_ (3) with the roadman’s help (4). A plow
(5) was used to loosen earth and mark road margins; then workmen dug
marginal trenches (6) to the depth desired for the solid foundations.
Laborers (7) shoveled loose earth and carried it away in baskets.
The next step was to consolidate the roadbed with a tamper (8). Now
the roadbed was ready for its foundation, the _pavimentum_ (9), lime
mortar or sand laid to form a level base. Next came the _statumen_,
or first course (10), fist-size stones, cemented together with mortar
or clay, the thickness varying from ten inches to two feet. Over this
was laid the _rudus_ or second course (11), nine to twelve inches
of lime concrete, grouted with broken stone and pottery fragments.
Next the _nucleus_, or third course (12), concrete made of gravel or
coarse sand mixed with hot lime, placed in layers and compacted with
a roller. Its thickness was one foot at the sides, eighteen inches at
the crown of the road. Finally, the _summum dorsum_ or top course (13),
polygonal blocks of _selce_ six inches or more thick, carefully fitted
and set in the _nucleus_ while the concrete was still soft. Sometimes,
when archaeologists have taken up a stretch of Roman road, they have
found the _selce_ blocks rutted on the under side: the economical
contractors, happily untroubled by high-priced labor, had repaired
their road by turning the worn blocks upside down. Standard curbs (14a
and b) were two feet wide and eighteen inches high; paved footpaths
(15a and b) often ran outside them. Conduits (16) under the curb, with
arched outlets (17) opening beside the right of way, took care of
draining surface water. Milestones (18) marked the distance from Rome
and the name of the Emperor responsible for repairs. From the names of
successive Emperors on milestones of the same road, archaeologists have
calculated that the average life of a highway was thirty to forty years.
Two points should be emphasized: first, this represents an ideal method
of construction, not often exemplified in practice; second, to a
modern engineer a road like this would seem insufficiently elastic, a
five-foot wall in the flat, too rigid for the stresses and strains to
which it was subjected. Hence perhaps the frequent need for repairs,
but Roman traffic was lighter than ours, and the very fact that we can
write about the roads at all is a tribute to their durability. Upon
roads like these, under the Empire, travelled the Imperial posting
service, with relays of messengers, and post-houses where horses and
carriages could be changed. Under exceptional conditions the Emperor
Tiberius, using this service, once travelled 180 miles in a day, a rate
of speed not equalled on European roads until the nineteenth century.
The next major road laid out after the Appia must have been the
Valeria, which was needed for eastward communication via Tivoli
with the new colony of Alba Fucens, founded, as we saw, in 303 B.C.
Archaeology has shown that in general the foundation of a colony
precedes the laying down of the metalled military road. This is true of
Cosa (foundation date of the colony, 273 B.C.; probable date of the
Via Aurelia which served it, about 241); of Ariminum (founded 268 B.C.;
reached by the Via Flaminia in 220), and of the Roman colonies in the
Po valley; _e.g._, Bononia (Bologna: founded 189 B.C.; reached by the
Via Aemilia after 187). The full extension of the Via Valeria beyond
Alba to the Adriatic had to await the pacification of the Samnite
tribes of central Italy and the granting of citizenship to Italians
after the “Social” War, in 89 B.C. Milestones on this last stretch
belong to Claudius’ reign (A.D. 41–54).
A recent (1957) survey of the central section of the Valeria by the
Dutch scholar C. C. Van Essen illustrates the methods and results
of archaeologists working in the field with topographical problems.
Faced with the palimpsest of more than two millennia overlying the
road he wanted to trace, Van Essen paid particular attention to such
roadmarks as Roman milestones; ancient tombs (which regularly lined
Roman roads in the vicinity of towns); supporting walls, in Roman
headers-and-stretchers; rock-hewn causeways; bridges, where Roman
materials and workmanship can be distinguished from modern (as has
been recently done for the bridges of the Via Flaminia by Michael
Ballance of the British School at Rome; there the striking thing is
the predominance and good quality of the work done under Augustus, who
had a vested interest in assuring efficient communications with his
veterans dispersed in colonies in north Italy). Stretches of ancient
pavement are rare on the Valeria, having been destroyed by medieval and
modern resurfacing, by the plow, and by torrents and earthquakes, but
the trench in which it was bedded can often be distinguished on air
photographs. What struck Van Essen chiefly was the frequency with which
the ancient Via Valeria would run straight on, with steep gradients,
where the modern road resorts to sweeping curves or hairpin bends.
Ancient vehicles, the heaviest of which were perhaps only a quarter
the weight of a modern light European car (Roman wagon, perhaps 440
pounds; Volkswagen, 1650), and scarcely ever carried loads of over 1100
pounds, would be less troubled by steep gradients than a modern heavy
truck. Even so, at Tagliacozzo, about six miles on the Rome side of
Alba Fucens, the grade is so steep that Van Essen supposes the ancient
inhabitants hired out oxen to help the straining horses on the upslope.
Van Essen noted that the telegraph lines, following the comparatively
straight course of the ancient road, often gave a clue to its presence.
The ancient sixty-eighth milestone of the Valeria, found, as we saw,
within the walls of Alba Fucens, provides a good comparison of the
respective lengths of the ancient and the modern roads. Since the
Roman mile (4861 English feet) was slightly shorter than the English,
sixty-eight Roman miles corresponds to slightly over sixty-two English
miles, whereas the modern Via Valeria covers about 113 kilometers, or
approximately seventy miles, to reach Alba.
Archaeologists have not confined their interests to the great consular
roads. Minor highways in areas away from the main stream of traffic
are often more rewarding, since they tend to be better preserved, and
offer some chance to trace the pre-Roman systems that underlie or
intersect them. The district just north of Rome has been surveyed in
this way by members of the British School at Rome since 1954, only
just in time, for there prevails in this region a situation analogous
to the rapid disappearance of Indian remains in the American West with
the building of the great hydroelectric dams. In the country north
of Rome, since World War II, there has been an extensive program of
land expropriation, reclamation, and resettlement of small farmers, an
excellent thing for rehabilitating the Italian peasantry, but fatal for
archaeological remains, since the plan involves the use of the deep
plow, an ideal instrument for obliterating traces of ancient roadways.
Thus it is that members and friends of the British School, spurred
on by the Director, John Ward Perkins, a worthy successor of the
indefatigable Thomas Ashby, are to be seen braving wind and weather as
they scour the countryside for Roman and pre-Roman roads from Veii to
beyond Cività Castellana, armed with large-scale maps, air photographs,
and brown paper bags for collecting the potsherds which are the
evidence of ancient roadside habitation.
The British School’s most significant recent work has been carried on
from Nepi, a Roman colony allegedly of 383 B.C., twenty-eight miles
north-northwest of Rome, and Falerii Novi, about four miles farther
north. Falerii Novi was built by the Romans from the ground up in 241
B.C. to house the inhabitants of Falerii Veteres (Cività Castellana) a
hostile native Faliscan center, which the Romans completely destroyed.
But the old city must have been resettled, for ruts in the third
century B.C. road connecting the new city with the old are not of
standard Roman width, and were probably made by Faliscan wagons. The
_cardo_ of the new settlement is formed by a new road connection with
the south, the Via Amerina (Fig. 12.2); in the course of exploring
this the British archaeologists found traces from which the older road
system (Fig. 12.3) which it partially supplanted, may be inferred. At
Torre dell’ Isola, just north of Nepi, for example, they found, by the
wall of a medieval castle, sherds with the cord-impressed chevrons
characteristic of Villanovan ware, and part of one of the portable
hearths which we met first in the primitive hut on the Palatine in
Rome. These sherds provide evidence for habitation here at least as
early as on the Palatine. The discovery of similar sherds within the
walls of Etruscan Veii suggests a people inferior culturally to the
Etruscans, and probably living in subjection to them.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.2 Roman roads of the _ager Faliscus_. (_Papers
Brit. Sch. at Rome_ 12 [1957], p. 68)]
These people were the Faliscans. Their settlements must have required
road connections, especially between their chief city, old Falerii, and
Veii, with which it was allied. These roads the British archaeologists
have identified in deep cuttings, identified as pre-Roman by
inscriptions in Etruscan characters. (Faliscan was a dialect of Latin,
but Etruscan inscriptions occur.) These earliest cuttings, sometimes
nearly fifty feet deep, are driven impressively through cliffs,
cut downward from the surface in a succession of working levels to
match the slope of the finished road, with careful attention paid to
drainage. Pre-Roman stone piers probably carried timber bridges, but
most of the roads are mere ridgeway tracks, not unlike the medieval and
modern farm tracks still to be found in the district. The Faliscans
were apparently capable of ambitious engineering, but were driven by
poverty to avoid it. The Romans used Faliscan cuttings when they found
it convenient, it being their way to take things as they found them,
introducing modifications only to the minimum extent necessary to suit
their own needs.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.3 Faliscan roads of the _ager Faliscus_.
(_PBSR_, _loc. cit._, p. 105)]
The most interesting and the most certainly identified Faliscan roads
discovered in the British survey are in the neighborhood of Grotta
Porciosa, a fortified site about four miles north-northeast of Cività
Castellana and a mile and a half west of the Tiber. It controlled the
ridge between two gorges, a natural route for a cross-country road
between the Tiber and the towns of Gallese, Corchiano, and Cività
Castellana. In these towns the Romans had no interest: the two main
Roman roads in this area run not cross-country but north and south, the
Via Flaminia close to the Tiber, the Via Amerina on the high ground
five or six miles to the west. These roads bypassed all the towns just
mentioned. But the cross-country tracks, on which the local inhabitants
would travel, are visible both in air-photographs and on the ground,
where they show no trace of Roman paving. At Grotta Porciosa itself,
excavation would be required to reach the early Faliscan level; the
majority of sherds found is local black glaze of a quite late pre-Roman
period (mid-third century B.C.).
What is most striking about the British results is the contrast they
point up between native and Roman. Where the native tracks usually
follow the line of least resistance, the Roman Via Amerina is driven
across any obstacle, with what Ward Perkins aptly calls “ruthless
thoroughness,” whenever there is no reasonable alternative. One might
almost think that the new road was built deliberately to impress; in
any case the massive viaducts and lofty bridges served to symbolize to
the Faliscan peasantry the Roman conqueror’s energy and resources, by
which it was hopelessly outclassed. With the same ruthlessness with
which they imposed their roads upon the landscape, the Romans imposed
law and order upon the countryside. The archaeological evidence is
the way in which the peasants shifted from their old anarchical life
in small strongholds of armed retainers, which is what Grotta Porciosa
must have been, down into settled life in Roman cities, or in the open
country beside the Roman roads. The great primeval Ciminian Forest,
northwest of Nepi, once the fearsome haunt of brigands, was cleared
under the Romans and turned into farms. When after eight centuries
Roman power waned, the countryside reverted to pre-Roman conditions;
the country-folk crept back into the cliff-top villages, there to
remain until quite recent times.
These, the results of careful and enjoyable outdoor work in the Italian
countryside by a United Nations of archaeologists, enable us to
appreciate how the competence of the Roman road-builders made possible
both the cold-bloodedness of the Roman conquest and the security of the
Roman peace.
* * * * *
That security brought in its train prosperity, and even luxury, of
which the symbol is the grandiose Roman public baths. Though Agrippa,
Nero, Titus, and Trajan all built baths whose sites and plans are
known, the most grandiose, and the clearest in plan, are the Baths of
Caracalla, begun in A.D. 211. The Baths of Diocletian, built a century
later, are equally vast, but their plan has been obscured by the
incorporation into their fabric of the church of S. Maria degli Angeli
and the Terme Museum. The Baths of Caracalla, known to thousands of
visitors as the summer setting for Rome’s outdoor opera, were built on
a vast platform, twenty feet high, with an area of 270,000 square feet,
greater than that of London’s Houses of Parliament. Excavations in
1938, when the Baths were being prepared for their metamorphosis into
an outdoor opera house, revealed in the substructure vaulted service
corridors, wide enough for vehicles, widening out at intersections
into regular underground public squares, with provisions for rotary
traffic. Access to the lower reaches was by stairs let into the central
piers of the main building. The principal entrance to the baths was
to the north (over the edge of the platform at the top center of the
air-photograph, Fig. 12.4). It was flanked by numerous small rooms
which in the difficult post-war years housed teeming families of
Italy’s homeless. (Their unique opportunity of a summer evening to
admire the sleek prosperity of the operagoers recreated the gulf that
yawned between haves and have nots in Imperial Rome, and contributed
not a little to Italy’s unrest.)
The main bath building was set in the northern half of the great open
space provided by the platform, and was surrounded with gardens. Facing
these on the perimeter was a variety of halls, for lectures, reading,
and exercise. Those on the east and west were contained in curved
projections (exedras). A part of the western exedra appears in the
lower left corner of the air-photograph. Beneath it in a subterranean
vault was discovered in 1911 what was at that time the largest
Mithraeum (shrine of the Persian god Mithras) in Rome.[E] To the south
(lower right on the photograph) was a stadium whose seats were built
against the reservoir which supplied the baths: this was fed by a
branch from one of the great aqueducts, the Aqua Marcia.
[E] In 1958 Dutch archaeologists excavated a larger one under
the church of S. Prisca on the Aventine Hill.
The main block of the baths is distinguished for its axial symmetry.
The most prominent room was the circular _caldarium_, or hot bath (just
to the right of center in the photograph). It is between its main piers
that the opera stage is set. Behind it the vast rectangular open space
(82 × 170 feet) is most logically interpreted as a grand concourse
whence the patrons of the baths (as many as 1600 in peak hours) could
move unimpeded to the bathing rooms of their choice. This central room
was groin-vaulted in coffered concrete, in three great bays supported
by eight piers (Fig. 12.5). The rooms around the central rectangle,
with their enormously thick walls, were ingeniously arranged as
buttresses to resist the thrust of the colossal vaults.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.4 Rome, Baths of Caracalla, air view.
(Castagnoli, _Roma antica_, Pl. 35)]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.5 Rome, baths of Caracalla, great hall,
nineteenth century reconstruction.]
The large open spaces at the east and west ends of the main block
were exercise-grounds. The exedras adjacent to their inner sides were
decorated in the early fourth century with the splendidly satiric
mosaics of athletes now in the Lateran Museum. With their broken
noses, low foreheads, and cauliflower ears, they are the very type
of overspecialized brutal brawn which intellectuals in all ages have
delighted to ridicule.
The large rectangular area at the rear center was the cold swimming
pool, or _frigidarium_; perhaps the rooms on either side were dressing
rooms. Below the pavement of the baths the excavators discovered tons
of L- or T-shaped iron bolted together in the form of a St. Andrew’s
cross. The possible inference is that some part of the baths was roofed
with iron girders, designed to support bronze plates ingeniously
contrived to reflect sunlight onto the bathers below. (The evidence for
the bronze plates and the sunroom is not archaeological but literary,
and, chiefly because the literary source had little or no idea what he
was talking about, has raised apparently insoluble controversy.)
Excavations were going on in the Baths on a langorous summer afternoon
in late June of 1901 which the American architect Charles Follen McKim
spent there. That afternoon bore fruit soon after, when he was asked
to design for the Pennsylvania Railroad a great terminal station in
New York. McKim, lover of Rome and founder of the American Academy
there, belonged to the school of architects for whom the grand manner,
as found in Roman baths, the Pantheon, and the Coliseum, formed the
basis of design for works of the first rank. He desired to symbolize
in Pennsylvania Station the monumental gateway to a great city,
which should at the same time perform efficiently its function of
handling large crowds. To a man of his training and prejudices, the
Baths of Caracalla seemed to fill the bill. He is reported to have
assembled on one occasion a huge band of workmen in the Baths in
Rome, simply to test the aesthetic effect of huge scale upon crowds
passing under the arches. (Crowds there must always have been, in the
heyday of the baths, motley, colorful crowds, speaking many tongues;
there is easily room for 2500 patrons at a time. We may imagine them
bathing, sauntering, making assignations; conversing idly or upon
philosophical subjects; thronging the lecture rooms, the library, the
picture-gallery; running, jumping, racing, ball-playing, or watching
spectator-sports in the stadium at the back.)
The station plan (Fig. 12.6) shows how creatively McKim imitated Roman
architecture. The succession of portico, vestibule, arcade, vestibule,
staircase, which leads to what before remodelling of 1958 was the
climax in the great central concourse, is noble architectural language,
beautiful ordering of space, which Hadrian would have understood, and
so is the balance in the façade, the alternating rhythms throughout
the building of open and closed, big and little, wide and narrow.
In the arcade, the repeated rhythms (now spoiled by advertising)
emphasize the traditional, and the movement which is the essence of
transportation. The great central hall, once a pool of open space,
is even larger (340 × 210 feet, and 100 feet high) than the one that
inspired it in the Baths; it is longer than the nave of St. Peter’s. In
it McKim contrived to preserve simplicity, dignity, and monumentality
in spite of mechanical distractions, as when he used the protruding
tops of ventilator shafts as pedestals for lamp-standards. The other
refinements, too, are in the Roman manner and material. The rich golden
stone facing of the great room is travertine imported from Tivoli, here
used for the first time in America (and now badly in need of cleaning).
The structural steel and glass in the concourse leading to the trains
may have been inspired by the girders in the Baths of Caracalla. The
statistics that record 1140 carloads of pink granite brought from
New England to build the half-mile of exterior walls are in the Roman
tradition, and so is the vast extent of the eight-acre structure, and
the six years it took to build. The efficiency is Roman, too: access on
all four sides, carriage drives twice as wide as the normal New York
street of 1910--when the building was opened--a traffic-flow plan that
separated incoming and outgoing passengers.
Pennsylvania Station belongs to a vanished era, an era of princely
magnificence, of willingness to spend on purely aesthetic pleasure.
The young architectural fellows of McKim’s Academy in Rome are
impatient with what it stands for, but perhaps they are letting their
understandable and proper scorn of soulless copying--of which there
is far too much in American monumental architecture--stand in the way
of their appreciation of a building which has worn well, and earned
accolades--especially by contrast with recent tawdry and misguided
additions in plastic--from such emancipated critics, friendly to modern
trends in architecture, as Talbot Hamlin and Lewis Mumford. In a day
of what a less temperate critic than these has called “the monstrous
repetition of cellular facades cloaked with vitreous indifference” by
“sedulous apes to the latest expressions of technological baboonery,”
it may be salutary to look with understanding at how successful a
modern architect of genius can be with a Roman model.
* * * * *
Roman baths needed oceans of water. It was supplied by another triumph
of Roman engineering, the system of aqueducts. The eleventh and last
of the ancient aqueducts was built by the Emperor Alexander Severus in
A.D. 226; the earliest, the Aqua Appia, dates back to the same builder
and the same year--312 B.C.--as the _regina viarum_. The network (Fig.
12.8) supplied Rome with over 250,000,000 gallons of water every
twenty-four hours. When New York was thrice the size of Severan Rome,
its aqueducts supplied only 425,000,000 gallons daily.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.6 New York, Pennsylvania Station, McKim plan.
(A. H. Granger, _Charles Follen McKim_, p. 77)]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.7 New York, Pennsylvania Station, waiting room,
before “modernization.”
(Granger, _op. cit._, fac. p. 82)]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.8 Rome and environs, map showing aqueducts. (V.
Scramuzza and P. MacKendrick, _The Ancient World_, Fig. 33a)]
We owe our knowledge of Rome’s aqueducts to three people, one ancient
and two modern: Sextus Julius Frontinus, water commissioner under
Trajan, whose book on aqueducts survives, Dr. Thomas Ashby, former
Director of the British School at Rome, and Miss Esther B. Van Deman
of the American Academy. For over thirty years, before modernity
removed the traces, this devoted pair tramped the rough country between
Tivoli and Rome, plotting the courses of the major aqueducts. Their
definitive work is well-nigh as monumental as the aqueducts themselves.
Together they explored the mazy course of the aqueduct channels, above
ground and below, along crumbling cliffs and the edge of deep gorges,
over walls, through briers, across turnip fields, in the cellars of
farm-houses and wine-shops. They climbed and waded; Ashby explored
downshafts “with the aid of several companions and a climber’s rope,”
and when they were through, the courses and the building history
especially of Rome’s four major aqueducts, the Anio Vetus (272–269
B.C.), the Marcia (144 B.C.), the Claudia (A.D. 47), and the Anio Novus
(A.D. 52)--all repeatedly repaired--were better known than they had
been since Frontinus’ day, and fellow archaeologists were in a position
to draw from their detailed pioneer work important conclusions about
Roman hydraulic engineering and about Roman culture.
Following Frontinus’ indications, Ashby and Miss Van Deman found the
sources of the four great aqueducts at over 1000 feet above sea level,
in springs or lakes in the upper reaches of the Anio valley, near
Subiaco, Mandela, and Vicovaro. The airline distance of the sources
from Rome varies from twenty-four to twenty-seven miles, but to follow
the contours the aqueducts took a circuitous course, so that their
actual length is from forty-three to sixty-two miles. Though the modern
reader associates Roman aqueducts with the magnificent lines of arches
(Fig. 12.9) stretching across a once-empty Campagna near Rome, the fact
is that well under a third of a Roman aqueduct’s course was normally
carried on arches: the rest was tunnel or side-hill channel. The reason
for this was in part economy, in part strategic considerations: an
aqueduct below ground is harder for an enemy to find and cut. When
the Goths finally did cut the aqueducts in the sixth century A.D.,
the seven hills of Rome became, and remained for centuries, unfit for
civilized habitation.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.9 Aqueducts near Capannelle, reconstruction
(painting).
(Deutsches Museum, Munich)]
The four aqueducts, Ashby and Miss Van Deman found, followed the course
of the Anio fairly closely from their source to just below Tivoli,
where, having lost half their altitude, they turned south along the
shoulder of the hills to Gallicano. In this stretch, at Ponte Lupo, the
Aqua Marcia crosses a gorge on a bridge that would test the mettle of
the most seasoned archaeologist, for it epitomizes Roman constructional
history in stone and concrete for almost nine centuries. After
Gallicano the intrepid pair traced the aqueducts’ course westward,
where, by a system of tunnels, inverted siphons (the Romans knew that
water would rise to its own level), and side-hill channels they cross
the broken gorges of the Campagna to a point south of Capannelle
racetrack, six miles from Rome, whence they proceed on the famous
arches to the Porta Maggiore. From reservoirs in the city the water
was distributed in lead pipes (one, of Hadrianic date, has walls three
inches thick, and weighs eighty-eight pounds per running foot), with a
strict priority, first to public basins and fountains (the Aqua Julia
alone supplied 1200 of these), next to baths (extensions of the Marcia
supplied those of both Caracalla and Diocletian), then to private
houses. Surplus was used for flushing the sewers. Attempts were made to
control the priorities by running the pipes for private use only from
the highest levels of the reservoirs, but Frontinus complains bitterly
of illegal tapping.
In the Gallicano-Capannelle stretch special archaeological ingenuity is
required, first to find the channels, and then to decide which belongs
to which aqueduct. Where the channels have entirely disappeared,
through the disintegrating action of floods, earthquake, tree roots,
or plowing, the course can be defined by plotting the occurrence of
heaps of calcium carbonate on the ground. This is the aqueduct deposit.
Roman water is extremely hard, and the heaps mark where once there were
downshafts (_putei_) for inspection and cleaning the channels, which
without such maintenance would soon have become completely blocked with
deposit. Frontinus says the downshafts occurred regularly every 240
feet, and Dr. Ashby found many at just this interval.
For distinguishing one aqueduct from another there are many criteria.
The first is construction materials. The earliest aqueducts are built
of cut stone, the latest of brick. Miss Van Deman was famous for her
precise dating of building materials; she was the only archaeologist
in Rome who could date a brick by the _taste_ of the mortar. A second
criterion is quality of workmanship. The Claudia, for example, is
notoriously jerry-built: where abutments are found which should be
solid, but are instead one block thick, filled in with earth behind,
that channel belongs to the Aqua Claudia. A third criterion is mineral
deposits. Thus the Marcia was famous for its purity; the crystalline
lime deposits were quarried in the Middle Ages, polished, and used to
decorate altars. The Anio Novus, on the other hand, is distinguished by
a singularly foul deposit. A fourth criterion is directness of course:
the older the aqueduct the more sinuously it runs; a channel found
meandering by itself along the contours is likely to be that of the
Anio Vetus.
The total impression the aqueducts give is one of efficiency,
organization, and heedlessness of expense, under the Republic as
well as under the Empire. They were built with the spoils of wars
or the tribute of provinces. The Marcia, built with the proceeds of
the loot of Carthage and Corinth, cost 180,000,000 sesterces, or
$9,000,000 uninflated. The Tepula, of 125 B.C., was perhaps built with
the profits from the organization of the new province of Asia. From
Agrippa’s time onward, and especially in Frontinus’ administration,
the aqueduct service employed a large bureaucracy; overseers,
reservoir-superintendents, inspectors, stonemasons, plasterers (the
stone-built channels were lined with two or three coats of hydraulic
cement), and unskilled laborers. Maintenance was a constant problem.
Arches needed propping, filling in, or brick facing; piers needed
to be buttressed or brick-encased. There was no attempt to produce
high pressure: lead pipes would not have stood it, and for public
use it was not necessary. There was no attempt to make the aqueducts
financially self-supporting: their original building was one of the
benefactions expected of successful commanders. Since these nabobs
expected a _quid pro quo_ in the gift of power, the aqueducts are
a symbol, under the Republic of irresponsible oligarchy, and under
the Empire of increasingly irresponsible autocracy, though “good”
Emperors like Augustus, Claudius, Trajan, and Hadrian had a hand in
them. In Augustus’ reign were built the Julia, the Virgo, and the
Alsietina. Trajan built a northern line from Lago di Bracciano to
Rome’s Trastevere quarter on the right bank of the Tiber: part of
its course runs under the courtyard of the American Academy. Hadrian
executed major repairs, datable by the omnipresent brick stamps. But
even good Emperors knew no way of financing such public works except
bleeding the taxpayer. In municipalities, private capital was absorbed
in such public enterprise, with no return in income or local employment
commensurate with the capital involved. So one major conclusion from
Ashby’s and Miss Van Deman’s work is that the Romans were better
engineers than they were economists. Let the last word on aqueducts be
Pliny the Elder’s: “If one takes careful account of the abundant supply
of water for public purposes, for baths, pools, channels, houses,
gardens, suburban villas; the length of the aqueducts’ courses--arches
reared, mountains tunnelled, valleys crossed on the level--he will
confess that there has never been a greater marvel in the whole world.”
* * * * *
One of the latest pieces of Roman engineering, to a knowledge of which
archaeology has recently contributed, is Aurelian’s Wall. It has
been meticulously studied by a pupil of Ashby’s, I. A. Richmond, now
Professor of Archaeology of the Roman Empire at Oxford. Two-thirds of
it is still standing (Fig. 12.10), to the disgust of those interested
in the unimpeded flow of Rome’s traffic, to the delight of those in
love with Rome’s past. It was twelve miles long, twelve feet thick,
sixty feet high; it had 381 towers, each with a latrine, and eighteen
portcullised gates, nine of which survive (Fig. 12.11). Though the
Renaissance humanist Poggio Bracciolini had examined the wall as
early as 1431, and the Frenchman Nicholas Audebert had studied it
scientifically in 1574, Richmond was still able to make important
contributions. He emphasizes, for example, that one-sixth of the
wall incorporated buildings: tombs, houses, park walls, aqueducts,
cisterns, porticoes, an amphitheater, a fortress. The inference is that
the wall had to be built with speed and economy, in the face of the
threat of barbarians in north Italy and a depleted treasury. Strategic
reasons, of course, dictated the protection of the aqueducts. The use
of tombstones as latrine covers shows, says Richmond, that the wall
builders “had their religious scruples under excellent control.” It was
a sense of urgency and not solicitude for works of art that prompted
them, when they built a garden wall at Porta San Lorenzo into the
circuit, to leave the statues in their niches and pack them round with
clay.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.10 Rome, Aurelian’s Wall, from south, near Porta
Appia.
(H. Kähler, _Rom und seine Welt_, Pl. 252)]
[Illustration: _Aurelian’s Wall and Major Monuments_
LEGEND
_Roads and Gates_
I Porta Pinciana--Via Salaria
II Porta Salaria
III Porta and Via Nomentana
IV Porta and Via Tiburtina
V Porta Praenestina (Maggiore): major aqueduct junction; Via
Praenestina
VI Porta Asinaria--Via Tusculana
VII Porta and Via Latina
VIII Porta and Via Appia
IX Porta and Via Ostiensis
X Porta and Via Portuensis
XI Porta Aureliana (S. Pancrazio); Aquae Alsietina and Traiana; Via
Aurelia
XII Porta and Via Flaminia
_Monuments_
1 Forum
2 Argentina Temples
3 Cloaca Maxima
4 Pompey’s Theater and Portico
5 Imperial Fora
6 Altar of Peace
7 Augustus’ Mausoleum
8 Subterranean Basilica
9 Golden House
10 Coliseum
11 Cancelleria Palace
12 Domitian’s Stadium
13 Temple of Venus and Rome
14 Pantheon
15 Hadrian’s Mausoleum
16 Baths of Caracalla
17 Baths of Diocletian
18 Cemetery under St. Peter’s
FIG. 12.11 Rome, Aurelian’s Wall, plan, with major Imperial monuments.]
Richmond also found that in the phase of the wall identified as
Aurelian’s by building materials and brick stamps, the workmanship
differed sharply from one curtain to another. The inference from
this was that various stretches were assigned to various gangs of
workmen--mostly civilian, since the legions were needed in the North,
and for Aurelian’s campaign against the Parthians in the East. These
workmen belonged to the various city guilds, or _collegia_, some
experienced in construction, some not, but all pressed into service in
the emergency.
Richmond distinguished the bottom twenty-four feet of the wall as
the original phase. It was built of brick-faced concrete--that its
bricks were often second-hand is inferred from the many Hadrianic
stamps--surmounted by a gallery with loopholes outside and an open,
bayed arcade inside, with a crenellated wall-walk above. Access to
the wall was by the towers only; Richmond inferred that the planner
aimed to keep excited and irresponsible civilians from interfering
with defense, and the wall-detail from pilfering or philandering in
the adjoining houses and gardens. In this phase the wall was plain,
efficient, functional, simple, and uniform, built to a standard size
and pattern. Its many gates show that there was no very formidable
danger: the intent was to provide a barrier to shut chance bodies of
undesirables out of the city as on far-flung frontiers structures like
Hadrian’s Wall shut them out of the Empire.
In its second phase another thirty-six feet of wall was fitted on to
the base provided by Aurelian’s. In some places the addition was only
six feet thick, the other half of the original width being left as a
passage for the circulation of materials and messages. A wall sixty
feet high reduced the required number of defenders, since it had
nothing to fear from an enemy equipped with scaling ladders. In this
phase machines did the work of men: if there were two _ballistae_ to
a tower, the expensive and impressive total of pieces of artillery
would have been 762. Heightening the wall meant heightening the tower,
sometimes to five stories. A start was made toward monumentalizing the
gateways, but it petered out, though the effect can be admired in the
Porta Asinaria near the Lateran, which was restored in 1957–58. For
the workmanship of this phase is identical with and therefore of the
same date as the Basilica and Circus of Maxentius (who reigned A.D.
306–312); when he was defeated by Constantine at the battle of the
Milvian Bridge, and the capital moved to Constantinople, neither the
money nor the motive for monumentality any longer existed.
The next major alteration is dated by inscriptions to A.D. 401–403, the
reign of Honorius. It was prompted by the threat that the city might
be sacked by Alaric the Visigoth. It involved second-hand stone facing
for the curtains of the wall, and square bases for the towers. The
photograph (Fig. 12.10) shows this Honorian phase at the Porta Appia.
The upper stories of the round towers belong to Maxentius’ addition,
while halfway up the face of the curtain between the rectangular towers
to the left of the gate can be seen the patching required to add
Maxentius’ brickwork to the battlements of Aurelian’s original wall.
(To distinguish the building phases of the Porta Appia, Richmond had to
crawl into the base of a tower through a very small hole, while a small
uninvited audience bet on his chances of sticking.) The new battlements
were built in a way that shows that in this phase Rome could no longer
afford artillery: archers replaced _ballistae_. By now the Empire is
Christian, and crosses begin to appear on the keystones of the gate
arches, as prophylaxis against the devil. Later, in what Richmond
describes as “an age of vanishing standards of faith and hygiene,” an
indulgence of 100 days was granted for kissing one of these crosses.
They were no help: the wall was assaulted by earthquakes (A.D. 442),
and by Goths (A.D. 536 and 546), and repeatedly repaired. Belisarius
in 547 restored it all, with the help of palisades, in twenty days,
and equipped it with spring-guns the force of whose projectiles could
impale five men, and with mantraps or deadfalls, barrow-like devices
which could be pushed over on assailants. But the repairs are botched
work, appropriate to what Rome had become: no longer an Imperial
capital, but a minor metropolis of an outlying Byzantine province. All
the same, the wall was never really breached till the advent of heavy
artillery, when Garibaldi’s men attacked the Porta San Pancrazio in
1849.
* * * * *
What Richmond’s work has done is to epitomize, in the history of a work
of Roman engineering, Rome’s decline and fall. This is the latest point
in ancient history to which our survey will take us. In the 1300 years
since the Palatine huts we have, with archaeology’s help, traced Rome’s
rise to grandeur and her agonizing decline. Spiritually, Rome never
fell. The Papacy in a sense is the ghost of the Roman Empire sitting
crowned upon its grave: the symbol is the Popes’ palace-fortress
installed in Hadrian’s mausoleum, or St. Peter’s basilica overlying
what is in part a pagan cemetery. It will be appropriate in the final
chapter to confront Caesar with Christ, by describing a late Imperial
hunting lodge in Sicily, and a tomb beneath the high altar of St.
Peter’s, which by the fourth century A.D. was believed to be the last
resting place of the apostle who was a fisher of men.
13
Caesar and Christ
In the official Italian archaeological journal _Notizie degli Scavi_
for 1951 were reported recent excavations of a grandiose villa near
Piazza Armerina, in central Sicily, which had already received some
notoriety in the press, for depicting “Bikini girls” in very brief
bathing suits (Fig. 13.1). Of this villa traces had always existed
above ground, and as early as 1754 the discovery had been reported
there of a “temple” (probably the basilica numbered 30 in the plan,
Fig. 13.2), with a mosaic floor. In 1881 the trilobate complex (46) was
excavated, and in 1929 the great Sicilian archaeologist Paolo Orsi,
the expert on prehistoric remains on the island, dug there. Major
funds--500,000 lire--made possible large-scale excavation between 1937
and 1943, as a part of _Il Duce’s_ plans for a major celebration of
the bimillennary of Augustus’ birth. After the war, government support
to the tune of 5,000,000 lire (which inflation reduced in value to
$8,000, only a tenth as much as the earlier grant) made it possible to
finish excavating the villa and to take steps to preserve _in situ_ the
mosaics which are its chief glory. This is one of the few excavations
on Italian soil whose chief avowed intent was to encourage tourism, and
it has succeeded. Piazza Armerina is a boom town, boasting a new hotel,
and its narrow streets are choked with sightseeing busses.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.1 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, “Bikini
girls” mosaic. (B. Pace, _I Mosaici di Piazza Armerina_, Pl. 15)]
Both the mosaics and the villa’s ambitious plan make it a sight worth
seeing. There are forty-two polychrome pavements, involving the setting
by the ancient workmen of 30,000,000 individual mosaic rectangles, or
_tesserae_, over an area of more than 3500 square yards, a complex
unique in extent in the Roman world. The plan, too, is one of the
most ambitious known to archaeology, rivalling that of Nero’s Golden
House, Hadrian’s villa, or Diocletian’s palace at Spalato on the
Dalmatian cost. The villa lies three-and-a-half miles southwest of
Piazza Armerina, nearly 2,000 feet above sea level, on the west slope
of Monte Mangone, in the midst of green orchards and pleasant groves of
nut trees. Its altitude assured its being cool in summer; its setting
under the lee of the hill protected it from winter winds. But the
slope required terracing, and so the villa was laid out on four levels
centering on three peristyles and a portico (plan 2,15,41,26). The
parts are connected by irregular rooms (13,14,40). The technique of the
masonry shows that the whole complex is of one build, characterized by
asymmetrical symmetry, strange, twisted ground-plans, a fondness for
curves, and off-center axes, all of which shows a definite break with
conventional classicism. The structure is light and elastic: the dome
over the three-lobed state dining room (46), nowadays replaced by an
unnecessarily ugly modern roof to protect the mosaics, was built of
pumice concrete, lightened still further by setting in it lengths of
clay pipe and amphorae, to reduce the weight of the superstructure on
the bearing walls.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.2 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, Gismondi’s
reconstruction. (Pace, _Mosaici_, p. 33)]
From a strange polygonal porticoed atrium (2) steps lead down to
a porticoed horseshoe-shaped latrine (6) and to the baths (7–12),
where spatial architecture runs riot, with single and double apses, a
clover-leaf, and an octagonal _frigidarium_ or room for taking a cold
plunge (9). The middle terrace, east of the baths, centers on a huge
trapezoidal peristyle (15), with a complex fountain, embellished by
a fish mosaic, in the middle, and living rooms opening off to north and
south. South of the peristyle a higher terrace is occupied by an odd
elliptical court, shaped like a flattened egg, with a buttressed apse
at the west end, the trilobate dining room at the east, and a triple
set of conventional rectangular rooms, with mosaics of Cupids vintaging
and fishing, to the north and south. The total effect is of an
agreeable contrast between straight and curved walls. Returning to the
rectangular peristyle, we find to the east of it a long double-apsed
corridor, like the _narthex_, or long narrow portico, in front of an
early Christian church. East of this is a suite of rooms centering on
the vast, off-centered, apsed basilica--larger than Domitian’s on the
Palatine in Rome--which was the earliest part of the villa excavated.
On either side of this is a series of rectangular and apsed rooms, the
private quarters and nursery, to judge by the mosaics. An aqueduct
limits the villa on the north and east. The servants’ quarters are
not yet excavated; they probably lay to the southwest, to the left of
the monumental entrance (1). The whole is complicated, consistent,
functional, organic, clearly the work of a master architect who will
challenge comparison with the builder of the Sanctuary of Fortune at
Praeneste or with Hadrian himself.
The mosaics must have been done in a hurry by huge gangs of craftsmen,
probably imported from North Africa, since the technique resembles that
of mosaics at Volubilis, Hippo, Carthage, and Lepcis. Mosaic-making is
slow work; nowadays it takes a careful workman six days to lay a square
meter of tesserae. To finish the job in the space of a few years must
have required a swarm of as many as 500 artisans.
Apart from their vast extent and their subject-matter--of which more in
the sequel--the mosaics are of prime importance for the contribution
they make to dating the villa. About its date there is controversy.
Professor Biagio Pace (who excavated here in the ’30’s), relying on
stylistic similarities to late (fifth century A.D.) mosaics in Ravenna
and Constantinople, would date the villa in about A.D. 410, and ascribe
its ownership to a rich Sicilian landed proprietor. Pace’s pupil G. V.
Gentili, who was in charge of the 1950 excavations, argues, following
the Norwegian archaeologist H. P. L’Orange, for an earlier date. One
piece of evidence not adduced by him is conclusive in his favor. The
double-apsed entrance (8) to the baths contains a spirited mosaic
depicting the Circus Maximus in Rome, full of life and movement, with
the chariots of the four stables, the Greens, Blues, Whites, and Reds,
all represented. The Green--the Emperor’s favorite--wins, not without
a collision. Down the center of the oval track runs the _spina_, or
division-wall, surmounted by various monuments, including a single
obelisk in the center (Fig. 13.3). Now it is known that Augustus set
up an obelisk in the Circus Maximus, and that in A.D. 357 Constantius
added another: therefore any representation of the Circus with only
one obelisk must be earlier than 357. Pace’s late date is therefore
excluded.
Is there any possibility of still more precise dating? Gentili thinks
there is. Beginning from the _a priori_ proposition that a complex
architecturally and artistically as grand as this must be beyond the
means of any private citizen, however rich, he assumes that the villa
must have been built to the order of an Emperor. Which one? To answer
this question he looked among the mosaics for possible portraits,
and he found them in several places. For example, in the vestibule
(13) between the baths and the trapezoidal peristyle (15) there is an
obvious portrait study of the mistress of the villa flanked by two
children, presumably her son and daughter. The son has a squint. He is
represented again, with the same squint, in the northeast apse of the
_frigidarium_ (9), in the room of the small hunting scene (23), and
in the vestibule of Cupid and Pan (35). (The effect of the squint is
achieved by setting one eye with a square tessera, the other with a
triangular one.)
[Illustration: FIG. 13.3 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, Circus
Maximus mosaic. (Dorothy MacKendrick photo)]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.4 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, small hunting
scene, mosaic. (Pace, _Mosaici_, Fig. 30)]
Now was the time to have recourse to the study, there to take down
from the shelves the works of the Byzantine chronicler John Malalas.
He records that Maxentius, the son of the Emperor Maximian Herculius
(A.D. 286–305), Diocletian’s colleague, was cross-eyed. Armed with this
firm clue, Gentili examined the mosaics again, looking for proof or
disproof that the villa belonged to Maximian. He found proof. Knowing
that Maximian Herculius equated himself with Hercules, as his name
shows, he looked for, and found, evidence in a colossal sculptured head
of Hercules from the basilica apse, and in the mosaic, of preoccupation
with that hero and his exploits. Over and over again, in the borders of
robes, in foliage, and self-standing (in 4) he found representations
of ivy, which was Hercules’ symbol: the initial of its Latin name,
_hedera_, is the initial of the hero’s name. Furthermore, one of the
most extensive and important mosaics in the villa, that in the state
dining room (46), has as its subject the labors of Hercules. Gentili’s
case looks conclusively proven; it was buttressed when he took up
the Circus mosaic (8), to back it with concrete and replace it, and
found under it a hypocaust containing coins of the late third century,
presumably dropped by the workmen who laid the mosaic in the first
place.
The subjects of the mosaics are in part more or less conventional
mythological scenes. Odysseus hoodwinks the one-eyed Sicilian giant
Polyphemus, making him drunk with a great bowl of wine (27); an
obliging dolphin rescues the musician Arion from a watery grave (32),
and Orpheus with his lyre charms a vast array of animals, including a
goldfinch, a lizard, and a snail (39). Still more interesting are the
mosaics which show Maximian’s interests. He appears to have had three
obsessions: hunting, the circus, and his children. The three scenes
of the chase (23,26,33) have prompted L’Orange to suggest that the
villa was built as a sumptuous hunting-lodge, but the great basilica
shows that it was adapted also to the uses of more formal protocol; the
Imperial court must sometimes have met here.
The smaller hunting scene (23) is divided into five bands (Fig. 13.4).
At the top, two eager hounds, one gray, one red, are off in full cry
after a fox. Next below, a young hunter identified by Gentili as
Constantius Chlorus, Maximian’s adopted son, accompanied by our old
friend the squint-eyed Maxentius, sacrifices to Diana, the goddess of
the hunt. The third band is devoted to fowling--with birdlime--and
falconry, the fourth to the fox, gone to ground and besieged in his den
by the dogs. In the fifth, on the left a stag is about to be caught in
a net stretched across a forest path in the unsporting Roman way; on
the right is a boar-hunt with an unorthodox hunter just about to make
the kill by dropping a large rock from above on the boar’s head. In the
center is a vivid huntsman’s picnic. The hunters, wearing puttees, are
sitting under a red awning. While they are waiting, one of them feeds
the dog. A black boy blows on the fire, over which a succulent-looking
trussed bird is roasting. Servants fetch bread from a wicker basket;
another basket harbors two ample amphorae of wine.
This is an intimate _genre_ scene. More impressive is the large hunting
scene which crowds the whole 190-foot length of the double-apsed
corridor (26). Here the aim portrayed is to catch exotic North African
animals alive for the wild beast hunts in amphitheaters like the
Coliseum. In the south apse is a female figure symbolizing Africa,
flanked by a tiger and an amiable small elephant with a reticulated
hide. The figure in the opposite apse who has a bear on one side, a
panther on the other may be Rome, the animals symbolizing her dominion
over palm and pine. In this case Africa is the point of departure of
the captured beasts, Rome their destination. Between the two apses
the hunting scenes unfold amid fantastic architecture in a rolling,
wooded landscape sloping down to the sea in the center, teeming with
fish. On land, animals attack each other (a leopard draws blood from a
stag’s belly), and hunters in rich embroidered tunics hurl javelins,
in the presence of the Emperor, at snarling lions and tigers at bay,
set traps baited with kid for panthers (the kid being spread-eagled
in a way that looks curiously like a parody of the Crucifixion). The
hunters act as bearers--their heads camouflaged with leafy twigs, like
Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane--or drag a lassoed bison toward the red
ship that will transport it to Italy. A horseman, having stolen a tiger
cub, delays the mother’s advance by dropping another cub in her path.
A hippopotamus and a rhinoceros are among the game; smaller animals
are hauled to the ships in crates on ox-carts; a live trussed boar is
carried slung on a pole; a recalcitrant ostrich and an antelope are
being pushed up a gangway (Fig. 13.5), while the gangway of another
ship is groaning under the weight of an elephant with a checkerboard
hide like the one flanking Africa in the apse. Most curious of all,
just in front of this same apse the tables are turned: a man has taken
refuge in a cage against the attack of a fabulous winged griffin, with
the head of a bird of prey. The crowded, vivid, barbarous artistry of
this mosaic brings us to the very threshold of the Byzantine age; in
Rome’s past, only the Barberini mosaic at Palestrina can match it.
In Maximian’s family even the children were brought up to take part
in blood sports. Room 36, a child’s room, perhaps Maxentius’--his
squint-eyed portrait recurs in the anteroom (35)--portrays a child’s
hunt, in three bands, full of characteristic Roman insensibility to
animal suffering. In the upper band, a boy has hit a spotted hare
full in the breast with a hunting spear, while another has lassoed a
duckling. The middle band portrays hunting mishaps: a small animal
nips one fallen small boy in the leg; a cock attacks another with its
beak and spurs. In the bottom register one boy clubs a peacock, a
second defends himself with a shield against a buzzard, and a third has
plunged his hunting spear into the heart of a goat.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.5 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, large hunting
scene, mosaic (detail). (MPI)]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.6 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, Labors of
Hercules, mosaic (detail). (Pace, _Mosaici_, Pl. 7)]
The child’s Circus (33), unlike the hunt, is rather fantastic than
brutal. Around a _spina_ with a single obelisk, as in room 8, run four
miniature chariots drawn by pairs of birds in the appropriate stable
colors: green wood-pigeons, blue plovers, red flamingoes, and white
geese. As usual, Green wins, and is awarded the palm. Servants with
amphorae sprinkle the track to lay the dust. It is all vivid, detailed,
alive, more illuminating than a dozen pages in a handbook.
The masterpiece among the mosaics is clearly the labors of Hercules
cycle in the _triclinium_ (46). These were part of a standard
repertory, available for copying from a book of cartoons (we have
seen this sort of thing in Pompeii), but here the artist has stamped
his own personality on the hackneyed scenes. In his hands they are at
once learnedly allusive and bloodily violent. Thus the Augean stables,
which Hercules cleaned by diverting a river to run through them, are
simply suggested by a river and a pitchfork. Violence is often rather
hinted at than insisted on, as in the slit-like eye of the dying
Nemean lion, or the Picasso-like protruding eye of the terrified horse
of Diomedes (Fig. 13.6). Sometimes the effect is gained by a topical
touch, as when Geryon, the triple-headed giant, is given a suit of
scaly armor, like the barbarians (cataphractarii) on Trajan’s column.
But the full baroque excess, as insistent as in the frieze from the
Pergamene altar, or the Laocoön group, comes out in the scene in the
east lobe where five huge giants, foreshortened with a technique which
anticipates Michelangelo’s on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,
convulsively, despairingly, imploringly, yet full of impotent rage,
turn their deep-sunk eyes to heaven as they strive to pull from their
flesh Hercules’ deadly arrows, steeped in the blood of the Centaur
Nessus. In the north lobe the apotheosis of Hercules is no doubt
the mosaicist’s enforced tribute to his Imperial master, but in the
scenes of metamorphosis in the entrance-ways to the apses--Daphne
into a laurel, Cyparissus into a cypress, Ambrosia into a vine--he is
following his own paradoxical bent, accepting as it were the challenge
of expressing so dynamic a thing as the change from one form to another
in the obdurate medium of mosaic.
The ten “Bikini Girls” (38) come last, because these mosaics, which
overlie another set, are obviously later than the rest. They owe
their fame to the scantiness of their costumes, as brief as any to
be seen on modern European beaches. Gentili thinks they are female
athletes, being awarded prizes, but Pace may be nearer the truth in
supposing that they are pantomime actresses, with tambourines and
_maracas_, performing in a sort of aquacade, the blue _tesserae_ in
which they stand representing water. There is ancient evidence for this
curiously decadent art-form. Martial speaks of actresses dressed--or
undressed--as Nereids swimming about in the Coliseum, and the Church
fathers fulminate against such spectacles. When the orchestra of the
most august of theaters, that of Dionysus in Athens, was remodelled
in Roman times to hold water, we must suppose, since the space is
too small for mock naval battles, that the place once sacred to the
choruses of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides was thereafter used
for the aquatic antics of just such actresses as the Piazza Armerina
mosaics portray. Tastelessness and grandeur, conspicuous waste and a
daring architectural plan: this paradoxical blend, so characteristic of
the villa, explains both what is meant by decline and why it took the
Empire so long to fall.
* * * * *
The villa at Piazza Armerina belongs to an age when Christians were
persecuted: the motifs in the mosaics are almost aggressively pagan.
But Maximian’s son-in-law Constantine became in the end a convert to
Christianity, and built, beginning about A.D. 322, in honor of St.
Peter, a great basilica church on the Vatican Hill, replaced in the
Renaissance by the present building. In 1939, at the death of Pope Pius
XI, who had asked to be buried in the crypt of St. Peter’s, excavations
for his tomb created the occasion for transforming the crypt into
a lower church. In lowering the floor level of the crypt for this
purpose, the workmen came, only eight inches down, upon the pavement
of Old St. Peter’s, Constantine’s church. This in turn rested upon
mausolea with their tops sliced off, and their interiors rammed full of
earth. At the direction of Pius XII, these mausolea were scientifically
excavated.
What was revealed was a pagan Roman cemetery, in some places thirty
feet below the floor of the present church. The mausolea were all
in use and in good repair when Constantine began his church in A.D.
322: the earliest brick stamp found in the area dates from the reign
of Vespasian, A.D. 69–79. The excavations were carried out under
conditions comparable in difficulty only to the recovery of the Altar
of Peace: the same constant battle with seepage, the same problem of
underpinning one structure in order to read the message of another.
Under these formidable difficulties, the cemetery was cleared, and
archaeologists found the reason why Constantine moved a million cubic
feet of earth and went so far as to violate sepulchres to build Old
St. Peter’s on just this site. Whatever modern walls it was necessary
to build were carefully marked with Pius XII brick-stamps, that future
archaeologists might be in no doubt as to which masonry was modern
and which ancient. The cemetery may now be visited by small groups
with special permission, under the expert guidance of a polyglot
archaeologist. The story he has to tell was not published until over
ten years after the excavation began, in a massive two-volume _Report_
which stands fifteen and three-quarters inches high, contains 171 text
figures and 119 plates, and weighs fourteen pounds. Fortunately its
objectivity is as impressive as its bulk. The archaeological evidence
is lucidly set forth, and no conclusions are drawn which exceed it.
We know from Tacitus that Nero, in his search for scapegoats on whom to
shift the blame for Rome’s great fire of A.D. 64, martyred Christians
in an amphitheater on the Vatican Hill, and tradition has it that in
this amphitheater St. Peter, too, suffered martyrdom. It was to test
the validity of this tradition that Pius XII ordered the cemetery
under St. Peter’s excavated. What was found was a series of twenty-one
mausolea and one open area (P in the plan, Fig. 13.7), all facing
southward onto a Roman street. The mausolea are plain brick on the
outside, highly baroque within, enriched with mosaics, wall-paintings,
and stucco-work. There are both cremation and inhumation burials,
but when the mausolea were filled in inhumation was beginning to
predominate. Of the mausolea only M is entirely Christian in décor;
others began as pagan, later admitting Christian burials, or adapt
pagan motifs to Christian symbolism. M contains the earliest known
Christian mosaics, which Ward Perkins and Miss Toynbee call a microcosm
of the dramatic history of Christianity’s peaceful penetration of the
pagan Roman Empire. They are dated by technique and motifs to the
middle of the third century A.D. The subjects are Jonah and the whale,
the Fisher of Men, the Good Shepherd, and, in the vault, Christ figured
as the sun. The wall paintings of the cemetery are mostly pagan, the
contractors’ stock-in-trade, depicting in myth or in symbol the soul’s
victory over death. The great artistic interest of the mausolea is in
the stucco-work, both in relief and in the round, superior in quality
to that of the subterranean basilica at the Porta Maggiore. Some of it
is of unparalleled scale and complexity, excellently preserved (Fig.
13.8), and now protected from dampness by large, constantly burning
electric heaters. Of stone sculpture in the round there is very little;
it was probably removed by Constantine’s workmen. But there are many
marble sarcophagi with pagan and Christian motifs, testifying to
the artistic revival enjoyed by the Roman world with the peace of
the Church in A.D. 312. They show how the stonemasons carved them as
blanks, filling in details like inscriptions and portrait busts to the
customer’s order. There is a pathetic one of a baby, who died, the
inscription tells us, when he was six months old. There are reliefs
of Biblical scenes: the children in the fiery furnace, Joseph and his
brethren, the three Magi, and what may be the earliest Christian cross,
dated about A.D. 340; (an alleged cross at Herculaneum is more probably
the scar of a ripped-away wall bracket).
[Illustration: FIG. 13.7 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s,
plan of west end.
(J. Toynbee and J. Ward Perkins, The Shrine of St. Peter, p. 136)]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.8 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s,
Mausoleum F, stuccoes.
(Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro)]
The cemetery tells us something about the status and the religious
convictions of its owners and occupants. Of the persons recorded in
its inscriptions, over half have Greek names. They are freedmen or
descendants of freedmen, many in the Imperial civil service. Some
are tradesmen, some artisans. Only one was of Senatorial rank: his
daughter’s body was wrapped in purple and veiled in gold. The richness
of the tombs bespeaks an attitude that is modern enough, or rather
neither ancient nor modern, but a constant. Paradoxically, importance
is attached to material things, to the race for riches and creature
comforts, while at the same time there is a preoccupation with the
after life, a return, after the skepticism of the earlier Empire, to a
belief in a personal immortality in store for those who have led moral
lives. The deceased are connected with the world they have left behind
by tubes for libations, that wine and milk may be poured down on their
bones. Heaven is variously conceived: as a place of blessed sleep, or,
like the Etruscan heaven, a succession of banquets, wine, and gardens.
Grief is swallowed up in victory; the dead have their patron heroes:
Hermes, Hercules, Minerva, Apollo, Dionysus, the Egyptian Isis or
Horus--and Christ.
But the pagan cemetery, interesting as it is for the light it casts on
the middle class of the early fourth century of our era, is not the
centrally important archaeological discovery under St. Peter’s, nor
does it supply the motive for Constantine’s location of his church just
here. That motive the excavators found in the open space they named
“Campo P.” Campo P is separated from mausoleum R by a sloping passage,
called the Clivus; the drain under the passage contains tiles with
stamps dated between the years 147–161, which fall within the reign
of Antoninus Pius. A painted brick wall, since made famous as the Red
Wall, separates the Clivus from Campo P. Into this wall are cut three
superposed niches, two in the fabric of the wall itself, one beneath
its foundations, which were actually raised on a sort of bridge at this
point to protect the cavity. In front of the niches traces were found
of a modest architectural façade, called the Aedicula, or little shrine.
In the cavity the excavators found human bones, which they have never
identified further than to describe them as those of a person of
advanced age and robust physique. The Aedicula penetrated above the
pavement of Old St. Peter’s and formed its architectural focus. The
conclusion is inevitable that Constantine in A.D. 322 planned his
basilica to rise just here, at great trouble and expense, because he
believed the lowest niche, under the Red Wall, to enshrine a relic of
overarching importance, nothing less than the bones of St. Peter. There
is thus no doubt whatever, on objective evidence, that the Aedicula was
reverenced in the fourth Christian century as marking the burial place
of the founder of the Roman church.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.9 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s,
Campo P.
(Toynbee and Ward Perkins, _op. cit._, p. 141)]
But this is not the end of the problem. The next question is, “How
early can the burial, by objective archaeological evidence, be
demonstrated to be?” The answer to this question must be sought, if
anywhere, in the context of Campo P. This proved on excavation to be an
area of poor graves, marked, like those of the necropolis of the Port
of Ostia on Isola Sacra, simply by a surround and a pitched roof of
tiles, without any of the pomp of costly marble sarcophagus or richly
stuccoed mausoleum. It is to the class which would be buried in such
pathetic graves as these that the earliest Roman Christians (of the
age of Nero [A.D. 64]) must have belonged. (Since the _Report_ was
published, Professor Magi, whom we have already met in connection with
the Cancelleria reliefs, has discovered, under the Vatican City parking
lot, another cemetery, also of poor graves, of the first century A.D.;
there is no cogent proof that they are Christian.) The graves in
Campo P (Fig. 13.9) were found to lie at various levels: the deepest
must be the earliest. The deepest is the one called by the excavators
Gamma (see plan, γ, Fig. 13.9): it lies five-and-a-half feet below the
pavement of Campo P, and it partly underlies, and is therefore older
than, the foundations of the Red Wall, which in turn is dated by the
Clivus drain about the middle of the second century A.D. Grave Theta
(θ) is higher, and therefore later, than Gamma. It is a poor grave,
protected by tiles, one of which bears a stamp of Vespasian’s reign
(A.D. 69–79). It is unsafe method to date an archaeological find by a
single brick stamp which could be second-hand, used at any date later
than its firing, even much later. But the stamp creates at least a
presumption that Theta may be dated as early as A.D. 79, and, if so,
Gamma must be earlier still. Since both these graves appear to have
been dug in such a way as to respect the area just in front of the
Aedicula, it follows that the bones in the lowest niche must be earlier
than either grave.
This is the process by which it is possible (but not rigorously
necessary, on the evidence) to date the bones before A.D. 79, perhaps
in the reign of Nero; perhaps they are the bones of a victim of the
persecution of A.D. 64; perhaps they are the bones of St. Peter.
They were evidently disturbed in antiquity, for this is not a proper
burial, but simply a collection of bones; the head, for example, is
missing. The original burial must have lain athwart the line of the
later Red Wall: when the builders of the Red Wall hit upon it, they
may, knowing the legend of St. Peter’s martyrdom in the amphitheater
somewhere near this spot, have assumed that this was his grave, and so
they arched up the Red Wall’s foundations to avoid disturbing it. The
next step was to build the Aedicula (Fig. 13.10), an act associated in
literary sources with Pope Anacletus (traditional dates, A.D. 76–88),
but since not even the most pious Catholics suppose the Aedicula to be
this early, an emendation of the name into Anicetus (_ca._ 155–165) is
defensible: it is paleographically plausible, and it suits the date of
the Red Wall. The traces of the Aedicula as found were asymmetrical:
its north supporting column had been moved to make room for a wall
that was built sometime before Constantine to buttress the Red Wall,
which had developed a bad crack from top to bottom. The excavators
found the north face of this buttress wall covered with a palimpsest of
_graffiti_, only one of which--in Greek--refers to St. Peter by name,
though some others may do so in a cryptic way, and all testify that
this spot was one of particular sanctity, much frequented by pilgrims.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.10 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s.
Aedicula, reconstruction by G. U. S. Corbett. (Toynbee and Ward
Perkins, _op. cit._, p. 161)]
The shrine under St. Peter’s is not the only spot in Rome associated
with St. Peter. Another is under the Church of San Sebastiano,
two-and-a-half miles out, just off the Appian Way. Here excavation has
found _graffiti_ mentioning St. Peter and St. Paul, a room for taking
ceremonial meals, and Christian tombs of the third century A.D. Some
scholars believe, but without cogent archaeological evidence, that
St. Peter’s body, in whole or in part, was moved to this retired
spot off the main road, from the Vatican Hill, for safety during
the persecutions under the Emperor Valerian in A.D. 258. This would
explain the association of the San Sebastiano site with the apostle;
the assumption that the bones were returned to the Aedicula after the
danger was past would explain--though it is not the only possible
explanation--the disturbed state in which the excavators found them.
In any case, in the years between the building of the Aedicula and
the centering of Constantine’s church upon it, there was continuity
of pious commemoration of the spot. This is proved by the _graffiti_
on the buttress wall, and by a series of burials, Alpha, Beta, Delta,
Epsilon, and Mu (α, β, δ, ε, μ) all motivated by a desire to be
buried as close as possible to the Aedicula, and all, to judge by
their contents--remains of cloth in Beta, for example, showed gold
threads--belonging to important people. Some scholars (not including
the excavators) have supposed that these are the graves of early Popes.
This was the state of affairs in Campo P when the building of
Constantine’s basilica began. The Aedicula was made the focus of
the whole building plan: it was left projecting above the pavement
of the new church, and it was covered by a canopy upheld by twisted
columns. (It is an extraordinary coincidence that Bernini, when he
built the canopy over the altar of the Renaissance church, chose
twisted columns to uphold it, though he could not possibly have known
that Constantine’s canopy also involved this detail.) Constantine’s
architect, in the classical tradition, paid the secular Roman basilica
the compliment of creative imitation.
It was not until about A.D. 600 that the altar was placed directly
over the shrine, and the presbytery raised to accommodate it. By that
time, the tradition was firmly established that pious pilgrims should
leave a votive coin in front of the Aedicula: here in the fill the
excavators found 1900 coins, Roman, papal, Italian, and from all over
Europe, ranging in date from before A.D. 161 uninterruptedly down to
the fourteenth century. Also about A.D. 600, at the same time as the
placing of the altar directly over the shrine, the two upper niches in
the Red Wall were combined into one, the Niche of the Pallia, where the
vestments of newly-consecrated archbishops were put to be sanctified by
close contact with the bones of the first Bishop of Rome: a shaft in
the floor of the niche led down to the grave.
The shrine and the Constantinian church survived the sacks of Rome both
by the Goths in A.D. 410, and by the Vandals in A.D. 455; the Saracens
in A.D. 846 were not so respectful. In their search for treasure
they handled the Aedicula very roughly, and it is likely that it is
from this sack, and not from the persecution of A.D. 258, that the
disturbance of the bones should be dated. In any case, after the sack
the life of the shrine went on as before, and in the Renaissance church
as in its predecessor the shrine remained the focal point, one of the
most venerated spots in Christendom.
* * * * *
With the shrine of St. Peter, venerable, still vital, going back to the
two roots of western civilization, pagan Rome (itself the transmitter
of Greek culture) and Christianity, it is fitting that we should end
our survey of what archaeology has to tell us about the culture to
which ours owes so much. The two complexes, the grandiose pagan villa
and the humble Christian shrine, which we have discussed in this
chapter, are interrelated. The villa is one of the last manifestations
of a culture that is played out, the shrine marks the beginning of
a new culture that will produce its own grandiose monuments and in
its turn be threatened by decline. In a sense, with the simplicity
of St. Peter’s shrine the historical cycle returns to the simplicity
of primitive Rome. But it is not simply a matter of returning to
beginnings and starting over again; the new culture stands upon the
shoulders of the old. The Christian shrine has the look of a pagan
tomb-monument in the Isola Sacra necropolis; Constantine’s church
has the look of a pagan Roman basilica. The language of the Mass is
still Latin; the Pope is Pontifex Maximus. The striking thing is the
continuity, and this is the most important lesson that archaeology has
to teach. Again beneath St. Peter’s, as at so many other ancient sites,
what the archaeologist digs up is not things but people. The remains in
the niche under the Red Wall are not dry bones; they are live history.
The breathing of life into that history is a major and largely unsung
triumph of the modern science of archaeology, patiently at work over
the last eighty years. To come to know a fragment of our past is to
recognize a piece of ourselves. Perhaps, as archaeology interprets
history, making the mute stones speak, we may come to know our past so
well that we shall not be condemned to repeat it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 1: _Prehistoric Italy_
R. J. C. Atkinson, _Field Archaeology_ (London, 1946)
P. Barocelli, “Terremare, Palatino, orientazione dei _castra_ e
delle città romane,” _Bulletino Communale_ 70 (1942), 131–144
John Bradford, “The Apulia Expedition: An Interim Report,”
_Antiquity_ 24 (1950) 84–95
----, _Ancient Landscapes_ (London, 1957), 85–110
F. von Duhn and F. Messerschmidt, _Italische Gräberkunde_, 2 vols.
(Heidelberg, 1924–1939)
C. F. C. Hawkes, _The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe_ (London,
1940)
G. Kaschnitz-Weinberg, “Italien mit Sardinien, Sizilien, und
Malta,” in W. Otto and R. Herbig, _Handbuch der Archäologie_, 2
(Munich, 1954), 311–397
G. Lilliu, “1000 Years of Prehistory: Sardinia, the _Nuraghe_ of
Barumini and its Village--a Recent Large-scale Excavation,”
_Illustrated London News_ 232 (1958), 388–391
H. L. Movius, Jr., “Age Determination by Radiocarbon Content,”
_Antiquity_ 24 (1950), 99–101
T. J. Peet, _The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy_ (Oxford, 1909)
D. Randall-MacIver, _Villanovans and Early Etruscans_ (Oxford,
1924)
----, _The Iron Age in Italy_ (Oxford, 1927)
----, _Italy before the Romans_ (Oxford, 1928)
G. Säflund, “Le terremare,” _Skrifter Utgivna av Svenska
Institutet i Rom_ 7 (1939)
R. B. K. Stevenson, “The Neolithic Cultures of Southeast Italy,”
_Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society_ 13 (1947), 85–100
J. Whatmough, _The Foundations of Roman Italy_ (London, 1937)
R. E. M. Wheeler, _Archaeology from the Earth_ (Oxford, 1954,
reprinted in Pelican Books, 1956)
CHAPTER 2: _The Etruscans_
N. Alfieri, “The Etruscans of the Po and the Discovery of Spina,”
_Italy’s Life_, No. 24 (1957), 91–104
---- and P. E. Arias, _Spina_ (Florence, 1958)
P. E. Arias, “Considerazioni sulla città etrusca a Pian di Misano
(Marzabotto),” _Atti e Memorie della Deputazione di Storia
Patria per le Provincie dell’ Emilia e di Romagna_, 4 (1953),
223–234
S. Aurigemma, _Il R. Museo di Spina in Ferrara_ (Ferrara, 1936)
R. Bloch, “Volsinies étrusque: essai historique et topographique,”
_Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’École française de
Rome_, 59 (1947), 9–39
J. Bradford, _Ancient Landscapes_, 111–144
E. Brizio, “Relazione sugli scavi eseguiti a Marzabotto presso
Bologna dal novembre 1888 a tutto maggio 1889,” _Monumenti
Antichi_, 1 (1891), cols. 248–426
_Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum_, II.i,3 (Tarquinia) (Leipzig,
1936)
G. Dennis, _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_,^3 2 vols. (London,
1883)
M. Falkner, “Epigraphisches und archäologisches zur Stele
von Lemnos,” in W. Brandenstein, _Frühgeschichte und
Sprachwissenschaft_ (Vienna, 1948), 91–109
C. M. Lerici, “Periscopic Sighting and Photography to the
Archaeologist’s Aid,” _Ill. London News_ 232 (1958), 774–775
M. Pallottino, _Etruscologia_^3 (Milan, 1955), Engl. trans.,
Pelican books, 1955
----, _Etruscan Painting_ (Geneva, 1952)
L. Pareti, _La Tomba Regolini-Galassi_ (Vatican City, 1947)
E. Pulgram, _The Tongues of Italy_ (Cambridge, Mass., 1958)
G. Ricci _et al._, “Caere: Scavi di R. Mengarelli,” _Mon. Ant._ 42
(1955), cols. 1–1186
J. B. Ward Perkins, “The Problem of Etruscan Origins,” _Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology_ 64 (1959) 1–26
G. E. W. Wolstenholme and C. M. O’Connor, eds., _Ciba Foundation
Symposium on Medical Biology and Etruscan Origins_ (London and
Boston, 1959). Important contributions by H. Hencken (29–47),
and J. B. Ward Perkins (89–92), among others.
CHAPTER 3: _Early Rome_
F. E. Brown, “The Regia,” _Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome_
12 (1935), 67–88
L. Curtius, A. Newrath, and E. Nash, _Das antike Rom_^3 (Vienna,
1957)
A. Degrassi, _Inscriptiones Latinae liberae rei publicae_, I
(Florence, 1957)
T. Frank, “Roman Buildings of the Republic: an Attempt to Date
them from their Materials,” _Papers and Monographs of the Am.
Acad. in Rome_ 3 (1924)
E. Gjerstad, “Il comizio romano dell’ età reppublicana,”
_Skrifter_ 5 (1941), 97–158
----, “Early Rome I,” _ib._ 17 (1953)
----, “The Fortifications of Early Rome,” _ib._ 18 (1954), 50–65
P. G. Goidanich, “L’iscrizione arcaica del Foro Romano e il suo
ambiente archeologico,” _Memorie dell’ Accademia d’Italia_,
series 7, vol. 3 (1943), 317–501
R. Lanciani, _Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries_
(Boston, 1888)
G. Lugli, _I monumenti antichi di Roma e suburbio_, 3 (Rome,
1938), 23–50
----, _Roma antica: il centro monumentale_ (Rome, 1946)
_Oxford Classical Dictionary_ (Oxford, 1949), art. “Tabulae
Pontificum”
S. B. Platner and T. Ashby, _A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient
Rome_ (Oxford, 1929)
S. M. Puglisi, “Gli abitatori primitivi del Palatino,” _Mon. Ant._
41 (1951), cols. 1–98
L. Richardson, Jr., “Cosa and Rome: Comitium and Curia,”
_Archaeology_ 10 (1957), 49–55
I. S. Ryberg, _An Archaeological Record of Rome from the Seventh to
the Second Centuries B.C._ (London, 1940)
G. Säflund, “Le mure di Roma reppublicana,” _Skrifter_ 1 (1932)
M. R. Scherer, _Marvels of Ancient Rome_ (New York and London, 1955)
I. G. Scott, “Early Roman Traditions in the Light of Archeology,”
_Mem. Am. Acad. in Rome_ 7 (1929), 7–116
CHAPTER 4: _Roman Colonies in Italy_
G. Becatti, “Sviluppo urbanistico,” in G. Calza, _Scavi di Ostia_,
1 (Rome, 1953)
J. Bradford, _Ancient Landscapes_, 145–216
F. E. Brown, “Cosa I: History and Topography,” _Mem. Am. Acad. in
Rome_ 21 (1951), 7–113
F. Castagnoli, “I più antichi esempi conservati di divisioni
agrarie romane,” _Bulletino del Museo della Civiltà Romana_ 18
(1953–1955), 1–9
----, “La centuriazione de Cosa,” _Mem. Am. Acad. in Rome_ 24
(1956), 147–165
----, “Le ricerche sui resti della centuriazione,” _Note e
discussioni erudite_ a cura di Augusto Campana, 7 (Rome, 1958)
F. de Visscher and F. de Ruyt, “Les Fouilles d’Alba Fucens (Italie
centrale) en 1949 et 1950,” _L’Antiquité Classique_ 20 (1951),
47–84 and later reports in successive volumes. See also report
of 1955 campaign, _Notizie degli Scavi_ (1957), 163–170
G. Guiccardini Corsi Salviati, “La centuriazione romana e un’
opera attuale di bonifica agraria,” _Studi Etruschi_ 20
(1948–1949), 291–296
P. MacKendrick, “Asphodel, White Wine, and Enriched Thunderbolts,”
_Greece and Rome_, new series, 1 (1954), 1–11
----, “Roman Colonization and the Frontier Hypothesis,” in W. D.
Wyman and C. B. Kroeber, eds., _The Frontier in Perspective_
(Madison, 1957), 3–19
J. Mertens and S. J. de Laet, “Massa d’Alba (Aquila): Scavi di
Alba Fucense,” _Not. Scav._, ser. 8, vol. 4 (1950), 248–288
----, “L’urbanizzazione del centro di Alba Fucense,” _Memorie dell’
Accademia dei Lincei_, ser. 8, vol. 5 (1954), 171–194
L. Richardson, Jr., “Excavations at Cosa in Etruria, 1948–1952,”
_Antiquity_ 27 (1953), 102–103
Doris M. Taylor, “Cosa: Black-glaze Pottery,” _Mem. Am. Acad. in
Rome_ 25 (1957), 68–193
J. B. Ward Perkins, “Early Roman Towns in Italy,” _Town Planning
Review_ 26 (1955), 127–154
CHAPTER 5: _Nabobs as Builders: Sulla, Pompey, Caesar_
F. Fasolo and G. Gullini, _Il Santuario della Fortuna Primigenia a
Palestrina_, 2 vols. (Rome, 1953)
G. Gullini, Guida del Santuario della Fortuna Primigenia a
Palestrina (Rome, 1956)
J. A. Hanson, _Roman Theater-Temples_ (Princeton, 1958)
H. Kähler, review of Fasolo and Gullini, _Gnomon_ 30 (1958),
366–383
----, “Das Fortunaheiligtum von Palestrina Praeneste,” _Annales
Universitatis Saraviensis (Philosophie-Lettres)_ 7 (1958),
189–240
Phyllis W. Lehmann, “The Setting of Hellenistic Temples,” _Journal
of the Society of Architectural Historians_ 13.4 (1954), 15–20
G. Lugli, _Roma antica_ (Rome, 1946), 177–179, 245–258 (Caesar’s
buildings)
----, _I monumenti antichi_, 3 (Rome, 1938), 70–83 (Pompey’s
theater)
Platner and Ashby, _op. cit._, under Chapter 3
Giovanna Quattrocchi, _Il Museo Archeologico Prenestino_ (Rome,
1956)
Eugénie Strong, “The Art of the Roman Republic,” _Cambridge Ancient
History_ 9 (1932), 803–841
E. B. Van Deman, “The Sullan Forum,” _Journal of Roman Studies_ 12
(1922), 1–31
C. C. Van Essen, _Sulla als Bouwheer_ (Groningen, 1940)
CHAPTER 6: _Augustus’ Buildings as Propaganda_
B. Andreae, “Archäologische Funde und Grabungen im Bereich der
Soprintendenzen von Rom 1949–1956/7,” _Arch. Anzeiger_ (1957)
cols. 110–358
Curtius, Newrath, and Nash, _op. cit._, under Chapter 3
A. Degrassi, “Elogia,” _Inscriptiones Italiae_ 13.3 (Rome, 1937)
A. Degrassi, “L’edifizio dei Fasti Capitolini,” _Rendiconti della
pontifica accademia di archeologia_ 21 (1945–1946), 57–104
----, “Fasti,” _Inscriptiones Italiae_ 13.1 (Rome, 1947)
G. Lugli, _I monumenti antichi_, 3 (Rome, 1938), 194–211
(mausoleum)
----, _Monumenti minori del Foro Romano_ (Rome, 1947), 77–84 (arch)
G. Moretti, _Ara Pacis Augustae_, 2 vols., (Rome, 1948)
H. Riemann, “Pacis Ara,” in Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll-Mittelhaus,
_Realenkyklopädie_ 18 (1942), cols. 2082–2107
I. S. Ryberg, “The Procession of the Ara Pacis,” _Mem. Am. Acad. in
Rome_ 19 (1949), 79–101
----, “Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art,” _ib._ 22 (1955)
J. M. C. Toynbee, “The Ara Pacis Reconsidered and Historical Art in
Roman Italy,” _Proceedings of the British Academy_ 39 (1953),
67–95
CHAPTER 7: _Hypocrite, Madman, Fool, and Knave_
S. Aurigemma, _La basilica sotterranea neopitagorica di Porta
Maggiore in Roma_ (Rome, 1954)
G. Bandinelli, “Il monumento sotterraneo di Porta Maggiore in
Roma,” _Mon. Ant._ 31 (1927), cols. 601–848
J. Carcopino, _La Basilique pythagoricienne de la porte majeure_
(Paris, 1926)
G. Cultrera, “Nemi--la prima fase dei lavori per il recupero delle
navi romane,” _Not. Scav._ (1932), 206–292
G. Iacopi, _I ritrovamenti dell’ antro cosidetto “di Tiberio” a
Sperlonga_ (Rome, 1958)
G. Ucelli, _Le navi di Nemi_ (Rome, 1940)
E. B. Van Deman, “The Sacra Via of Nero,” _Mem. Am. Acad. in Rome_
5 (1925), 115–126
C. C. Van Essen, “La topographie de la Domus Aurea Neronis,”
_Mededeelingen der Kon. Nederland. Akad. van Wetenschappen_,
afd. Letterkunde, nieuwe Reeks, Deel 17 (Amsterdam, 1954),
371–398
J. B. Ward Perkins, “Nero’s Golden House,” _Antiquity_ 30 (1956),
209–219
F. Weege, “Das goldene Haus des Nero,” _Jahrbuch d. deutsch. arch.
Inst._ 28 (1913), 127–244
CHAPTER 8: _The Victims of Vesuvius_
R. C. Carrington, _Pompeii_ (Oxford, 1936)
E. C. Corti, _The Destruction and Resurrection of Pompeii and
Herculaneum_ (London, 1951, unaltered from original German of
1940)
M. Della Corte, _Case ed abitanti di Pompeii_^2 (Pompeii, 1954)
E. Diehl, _Pompeianische Wandinschriften_^2 (Bonn, 1930)
A. Maiuri, _La Villa dei Misteri_,^2 2 vols. (Rome, 1947)
----, _Ercolano_^4 (Ministry of Public Instruction _Guides_, Rome,
1954)
----, _Ercolano: I nuovi scavi (1927–1958)_ I (Rome, 1958)
----, _Pompeii_^8 (MPI _Guides_, Rome, 1956)
L. Richardson, Jr., “Pompeii: the Casa dei Dioscuri and its
Painters,” _Mem. Am. Acad. in Rome_ 23 (1955)
V. Spinazzola, _Pompeii alla luce degli scavi nuovi di Via dell’
Abbondanza (Anni 1910–1923)_, 2 vols. and vol. of plates (Rome,
1953)
A. W. Van Buren, “Pompeii,” in _RE_, (1952) cols. 1999–2038
CHAPTER 9: _Flavian Rome_
P. H. von Blanckenhagen, _Flavische Architektur_ (Berlin, 1940)
A. M. Colini, “Forum Pacis,” _Bull. Comm._ 65 (1938), 7–40
----, _Stadium Domitiani_ (Rome, 1943)
G. Cozzo, _Ingegneria Romana_ (Roma, 1928)
C. Liugli, _Roma antica_ (Roma, 1946), 269–276 (Forum Pacis, Forum
Transitorium), 319–348 (Coliseum), 486–493, 509–516 (Palace of
Domitian)
F. Magi, _I Rilievi Flavi del Palazzo della Cancelleria_ (Rome,
1945)
M. Scherer, _op. cit._ in Ch. 3, 49–62 (Palatine); 75–76 (Arch of
Titus), 80–89 (Coliseum), 101–102 (Forum “of Nerva”)
J. M. C. Toynbee, _The Flavian Reliefs from the Palazzo della
Cancelleria in Rome_ (Oxford, 1957)
CHAPTER 10: _Trajan: Port, Forum, Market, Column_
C. Becatti, _Scavi di Ostia_ 2 (Rome, 1954) (Mithraea)
G. Boni, “Roma--Esplorazione del Forum Ulpium,” _Not. Scav._
(1907), 361–427
J. Bradford, _Ancient Landscapes_, 248–256 (Claudius’ and Trajan’s
harbors)
G. Calza, _Scavi di Ostia_, 1 (Rome, 1953)
---- and G. Becatti, _Ostia_^4 (MPI _Guides_, Rome, 1957)
----, _La necropoli del Porto di Roma nell’ Isola Sacra_ (Rome,
1940)
J. Carcopino, _Daily Life in Ancient Rome_ (New Haven, 1940),
173–184 (businessmen and manual laborers)
P. Ducati, _L’arte classica_^3 (Turin, 1948), 619–628 (Trajan’s
Forum and Column)
K. Lehmann-Hartleben, “Die antiken Hafenanlagen des Mittelmeeres,”
_Klio_, Beiheft 14 (1923), 182–198 (Claudius’ and Trajan’s
harbors)
G. Lugli, _Roma antica_ (Rome, 1946), 278–307 (Trajan’s Forum and
Market)
---- and C. Filibeck, _Il Porto di Roma imperiale e l’agro
Portuense_ (Rome, 1935)
R. Meiggs, art. “Ostia,” in _Oxf. Class. Dict._ (Oxford, 1949)
P. Romanelli, _La colonna traiana: relievi fotografici eseguiti in
occasione dei lavori di protezione antiaerea_ (Rome, 1942)
E. D. Thatcher, “The Open Rooms of the Terme del Foro at Ostia,”
_Mem. Am. Acad. in Rome_ 24 (1956), 167–264
CHAPTER 11: _An Emperor-Architect: Hadrian_
S. Aurigemma, _Villa adriana_^3 (Tivoli, 1955)
H. Bloch, “I bolli laterizi e la storia edilizia romana,” _Bull.
Comm._ 65 (1937), 115–187
E. Clark, _Rome and a Villa_ (New York, 1952), 141–194
H. Kähler, _Hadrian und seine Villa bei Tivoli_ (Berlin, 1950)
G. Lugli, _I monumenti antichi_, 3 (Roma, 1938), 123–150
(Pantheon), 693–708 (Hadrian’s mausoleum)
----, _Roma antica_ (Rome, 1946), 234–240 (Temple of Venus and Rome)
D. S. Robertson, _A Handbook of Greek and Roman Architecture_^2
(Cambridge, 1954), 246–251 (Pantheon), 252–254, 316 (Piazza
d’Oro)
A. W. Van Buren, “Recent Finds at Hadrian’s Tiburtine Villa,” _Am.
Journ. of Archaeology_ 59 (1955), 215–217 (Canopus)
M. Yourcenar, _Mémoires d’Hadrien_ (Paris, 1951; Engl. trans., New
York, 1954)
L. Ziehen, art. “Pantheion,” in _RE_ 18 (1949), cols. 729–741
CHAPTER 12: _Roman Engineering_
_American Architect_ 98 (Oct. 5, 1910), 113–118 (Pennsylvania
Station)
W. J. Anderson, R. P. Spiers, and T. Ashby, _The Architecture of
Ancient Rome_ (London, 1927), 99–113 (Baths)
T. Ashby, _Aqueducts of Ancient Rome_ (Oxford, 1935)
Van Wyck Brooks, _The Dream of Arcadia_ (New York, 1958), 239 ff.
R. J. Forbes, _Notes on the History of Ancient Roads and their
Construction_ (Amsterdam, 1934), 115–168
M. W. Frederiksen and J. B. Ward Perkins, “The Ancient Road Systems
of the Central and Northern Ager Faliscus,” _Papers of the
British School at Rome_ 12 (1957), 67–208
H. S. Jones, _Companion to Roman History_ (Oxford, 1912), 40–49
(Roads)
L. Mumford, “The Disappearance of Pennsylvania Station,” _New
Yorker_ 34 (June 7, 1958), 106–113
H. Plommer, _Ancient and Classical Architecture_ (London, 1956),
338–344 (Baths)
Sir Albert Richardson, R.A., Letter to New York _Times_, Mar. 1,
1959
I. A. Richmond, _The City Wall of Imperial Rome_ (Oxford, 1930)
G. H. Stevenson, “Communications and Commerce,” in _The Legacy of
Rome_ (ed. C. Bailey, Oxford, 1923), 141–172
E. B. Van Deman, _The Building of the Roman Aqueducts_ (Washington,
1934)
C. C. Van Essen, “The Via Valeria from Tivoli to Collarmele,”
_Papers Br. Sch. at Rome_ 12 (1957), 22–38
CHAPTER 13: _Caesar and Christ_
B. M. Apollonj-Ghetti, A. Ferrua, E. Josi, E. Kirschbaum,
_Esplorazioni sotto la confessione di San Pietro in Vaticano
eseguite negli anni 1940–1949_, 2 vols. (Rome, 1951)
G. V. Gentili, “Piazza Armerina: grandiosa villa romana in contrada
Casale,” _Not. Scav._ (1951), 291–335
----, _The Imperial Villa of Piazza Armerina_ (MPI _Guides_, Rome,
1956)
H. P. L’Orange and E. Dyggve, “Is it a Palace of Maximian Herculeus
that the excavations of Piazza Armerina bring to light?,”
_Symbolae Osloenses_ 29 (1952), 114–128
M. Guarducci, _La tomba di Pietro_ (Rome, 1959; there is also an
English translation)
E. Kirschbaum, _The Tombs of Peter and Paul_ (New York, 1959)
B. Pace, _I mosaici di Piazza Armerina_ (Rome, 1955)
J. M. C. Toynbee and J. B. Ward Perkins, _The Shrine of St. Peter
and the Vatican Excavations_ (London, 1956)
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
Achilles, 192
Actium, 150, 152
Admiralty, 182
Aemilius Paulus, L., 149
Aeneas, 63, 67, 92, 142, 149, 152, 165, 167, 220
Africa, 138, 235, 262, 283, 332, 336, 337
Agave, 188
Agrippa, 154, 165, 285, 286, 309, 320
Agrippina, 156
Alaric, 325
Alba Fucens, 91, 95, 97, 98, 104, 105, 109, 116, 266, 302, 304
Alba Longa, 63, 149
Alban Hills, 62, 64, 69, 70
Albenga, 104_n._
Albinius, L., 148
Alexander Severus, 299, 314
Alexandria, 117, 118, 219, 283
Altheim, 3
Amazon, 294
Ambrosia, 340
Anchises, 142
Ancona, 271
Ancus Martius, 66, 92, 94
Andromache, 192
Anicetus, Pope, 347
Anio (tufa), 86, 317, 318
Antinous, 278, 283, 285, 291, 292, 294
Antonia (major), 165
Antonia (minor), 164
Antonines, 253
Antoninus Pius, 296, 345
Antony, Mark, 150, 151, 152, 154, 165, 238
Anzio, 35, 87, 94, 112
Apollo, 29, 52, 83, 162, 187, 188, 292, 344
Apollodorus (of Damascus), 265, 271, 274, 281
Apulia. _See_ Puglia
Aqua Appia, 148
Arachne, 242
Ardea, 35, 87
Arene Candide, 8
Ares, 294
Arezzo, 51, 148, 149
Argo, 176
Ariadne, 222
Ariminum. _See_ Rimini
Arion, 335
Arno, 25
Arnoaldi, 18, 20
Arretine ware, 107, 267
Arrius Crescens, C., 205
Artemis, 185, 186, 188
Ascanius, s. of Aeneas, 63, 142, 165
Ashby, T., 305, 317, 318, 319, 321
Asia Minor, 27, 29, 172, 292
Athena, 175, 176, 186
Athens, 280, 292, 294, 340
Audebert, N., 322
Augean Stables, 339
Augustine, St., 263
Augustus, 62, 67, 90, 95, 145, 146, 149–52, 154, 160, 162, 167, 170,
172, 205, 218, 225, 236, 256, 281, 286, 295, 321, 327, 333.
_See also_ Octavian
Aules Feluskes, stele, 27, 36, 77
Babbitt, 215, 218
Babylonia, 43
Bacchus, 222
Bacon, Francis, 223
Baiae, 286
Ballance, M., 303
Balzi Rossi, 8
Barberini, 289
Belgians, 91, 95
Belisarius, 325
Bellona, 239
Benacci, 18, 64
Benevento, 112, 170
Bernini, G. B., 137, 146, 289, 349
Bithynia, 283
Bituitus, 98
Bizerta, 112
Bloch, H., 252, 269, 273, 294
Bocchoris, 118
Bologna, 18, 112, 268, 303
Bolsena, 29, 35
Bonaparte, Lucien, 57
Boni, G., 63, 67, 71, 74, 85, 267
Boscoreale, villa at, 211
Boscotrecase, 218
Boston, Public Library, 262
Bovianum Vetus, 116
Bovillae, 300
Bracciano, Lake, 321
Bracciolini, Poggio, 322
Bradford, John, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 13, 24, 46, 54, 111, 112, 115
Bramante, D., 136, 246
Brindisi, 112, 271
Britannia, 168
British School at Rome, 2, 304
Brizio, G., 32
Bronze Age, 7, 10, 13, 14, 17, 67
Brown, F. E., 107, 109, 151
Bruno, G., 294
Byzantium, 296
Caecilius Jucundus, L., 213
Caere. _See_ Cerveteri
Cagliari, 132
Caligula, 156, 172, 181, 194, 296
Calpurnia, 209
Calpurnius Piso, L., 209
Calza, G., 92, 94, 95, 251, 256
Campagna, Roman, 62, 318
Campo di Servirola, 14
Canale, 22, 24
Canino, Princess of, 57, 58
Canopus, at Alexandria, 283, 295
Cape Bon, 112
Capestrano, Warrior of, 22
Capua, 42, 51, 300
Caracalla, 248
Caravaggio, M., 189
Carcopino, J., 185
Carrhae, 152
Carthage, 17, 91, 320, 332
Caryatids, 294
Casanova, G. B., 197
Castagnoli, F., 78_n._, 109
Castel Gandolfo, 62
Castellazzo di Fontanellato, 10, 11, 13
Castor, 148, 167
Cato the Elder, 46, 101
centuriation, 109
Cerberus, 56
Certosa, situla, 20
Cerveteri, 29, 47, 54, 57, 64, 70, 87, 148
Ceryneia, Hind of, 52
Charun, 33, 51, 56
Chatti, 240
Chicago, Pit, 269
Chippendale, 268
Chiusi, 29, 41
Christ, 342, 344
Christianity, 195, 263
Cicero, 78, 134
Ciminian Forest, 309
Civil War, 132
Cività Castellana, 305, 308
Clark, Eleanor, 283
Claudius Caecus, Ap., 148
Claudius, Emperor, 95, 156, 172, 173, 179, 181, 194, 252, 303, 321
Claudius Marcellus, M., 149
Cleopatra, 142, 150, 286
Clusium. _See_ Chiusi
Colini, A. M., 154, 228, 229, 247, 248
Columbus, 179
Commodus, 296
Como, 20
Constantine, 263, 296, 325, 340–42, 345, 349
Constantinople, 288, 296, 298, 325, 333
Constantius, 333
Constantius Chlorus, 336
Cora, 116
Corchiano, 308
Corinth, 320
Corinthian, 120, 150, 320
Cortona, Pietro da, 136
Cosa, 79, 91, 98, 100, 101, 103, 105, 107, 111, 266, 302
Cozza, L., 78
Cozzo, G., 230
Crassus, M. Licinius, 152
Cremona, 112
Crete, 14, 283
Crucifixion, 337
Cumae, 48
Cupids, 142, 176, 187, 190, 222, 256, 257, 291, 332, 335
Cyclopean walls, 95
Cyparissus, 340
Cyprus, 17, 58
Cyrene, 283
Dacia, 267
Dalmatia, 112
Danaids, 188
Danube, 270, 271
Daphne, 340
Degrassi, A., 148, 151
Della Robbia ware, 165
Demeter, 187
Dennis, G., 25, 47, 57
Diana, 178, 204, 219, 336
Dimini, 3
Diocletian, 250, 296
Diomedes, 339
Dionysius I, 88
Dionysus, 222, 292, 344
Domitia, 167
Domitian, 71, 142, 178, 223, 224, 236, 238, 240–43, 246, 247, 250,
256, 273, 283, 296, 332
Domitius Ahenobarbus, L., 167
Doric, 120, 250
Drusus, Nero Claudius, 149, 154, 164, 165
Ducati, P., 18, 24
Dumas, A. (père), 198
Dutch art, 223
Egypt, 8, 33, 58, 94, 118, 120, 154, 219, 220, 262, 292, 344
Elba, 48
Eleusinian mysteries, 187
Ennius, 114
Epicureans, 211
Este, 18, 20
Etruria, Etruscans, 17, 20, 24, 25–61, 104, 105, 108, 154, 292
Euclid, 280
Euryalus, 88
Eurydice, 185, 186
Evander, 63, 67
Fabullus, 190
Faesulae, 116
Falerii Novi, 305
Falerii Veteres. _See_ Cività Castellana
Faliscans, 305
Fascists, 145, 146, 154, 156, 271
Fasolo, F., 120, 122, 123, 125, 129, 130
_Fasti_, 74, 151, 152, 265
Faustinus, 175, 176, 178
Ferrara, museum, 33
Fidenae (tufa), 86, 94
Fiorelli, G., 198
Fiumicino, 260, 265
Flavian Amphitheater. _See_ Rome, Coliseum
Flavians, 189, 194, 195, 223, 236
Florence, Archaeological Museum, 25
_Forma Urbis._ _See_ Marble Plan
Francis I, 270
François, A., 36
Frangipani, 236
Frank, T., 74, 86
Frontinus, Sex. Julius, 317, 319, 320
Furies, 185
Gabii, 132
Gaius Caesar (g.-son of Augustus), 165, 167
Galba, 224
Gallese, 308
Gallicano, 318, 319
Gamberini, R., 151
Ganymede, 176, 185, 236
Garibaldi, G., 198
Gauls, 32, 35, 80, 82, 84, 88, 91, 109, 148, 262
Genius, 219, 239
Gentili, G. V., 333, 340
Geometric ware, 22
_Georgics_, 152, 168
Germanicus, 156, 164
Germans, 182, 202
Geryon, 339
Giant’s Grave, 17
Giglioli, G. Q., 154
Gjerstad, E., 71, 73, 74
Goethe, J. W. von, 198
Golasecca, 20
Gomorrah, 218
Goths, 318, 325, 350
Gracchus:
C. Sempronius, 112;
T. Sempronius (elder), 149;
T. Sempronius (younger), 84
Greece, Greeks, 24, 33, 48, 52, 88, 137, 144, 146, 151, 162, 197, 207,
223, 225, 229, 246, 250, 277, 280, 281, 286, 344
Grotta Oscura (tufa), 74, 85, 86, 88, 90
Grota Porciosa, 308
Guglielmi, Marchese, 47
Gullini, G., 120, 122, 123, 125, 130
Gustav VI, King, 20
Hades, 185
Hadrian, 94, 127, 148, 194, 246, 248, 253, 258, 262, 265, 272,
273–297, 313, 319, 321, 324, 332
Halicarnassus, Mausoleum of, 154
Hamilton, Emma Lady, 198
Hamlin, T., 314
Hannibal, 86
Harvard Stadium, 231
Hector, 192
Helen, 185, 186, 192
Hellenism, 247
Hemingway, E., 231
Herculaneum, 195–97, 209, 223, 344
Hercules, 52, 185, 215, 271, 335, 344
Hermes, 51, 292, 294, 344
Herodotus, 27
Hesione, 185, 186
Hippo, 332
Hippolytus, 188, 190
Hirtius, A., 238, 240
Hollywood, 194
Honorius, 325
Horace, 150, 152, 167
Horus, 344
Humbert I, 289
Iacopi, G., 173, 175, 176
_Iliad_, 215
Illyricum, 7, 271
Ionic, 137,
Ionic-Italic, 124
Iphigenia, 185
Iron Age, 13, 16, 18, 20, 64–67
Isis, 219, 344
Istacidius Zosimus, L., 207
Istituto Geografico Militare, 2
Italia, 168
Italic culture, 27, 90, 91, 107, 146, 150, 281
Japanese, 219
Jason, 185, 186
Jefferson, T., 8
Jerusalem, 225, 226, 236, 240
Jews, 235
Jonah, 342
Jordan R., 236
Joseph, 344
Julia, d. of Augustus, 165
Julia Domna, 156
Julio-Claudians, 149, 171, 172, 182, 192, 194, 205, 241
Julius Caesar, C., 82, 139, 142, 144, 150, 170, 241;
the elder, 149
Juno, 32
Jupiter, 32, 83, 84, 164, 185
Juvenal, 296
Kähler, H., 134, 278
Kos, Sanctuary of Asclepius, 118, 130, 132, 134
Lamboglia, N., 104_n._
Lanciani, R., 85, 226, 227
Laocoön, 175, 176, 192, 339
Latins, 71, 88, 91, 95, 98, 148
Latium, 18, 20, 22, 35, 123
Lavinium, 78_n._
_Lays of Ancient Rome_, 41
Lehmann, Phyllis, 132
Lemnos, 27, 29, 77
Leontini, 22
Lepcis, 332
Lerici, C. M., 46, 47
Libby, W. F., 15
Ligorio, Pirro, 136
Lilliu, G., 15–17, 24
Lipari Is., 22
Liris valley, 95
Livia, 165, 168, 207
Livy, 67, 86, 104, 150, 152
London, 309
L’Orange, H. P., 333
Lorraine, Claude, 69
Louvre, 160, 211
Lucilius, 114
Lucius Caesar, 165
Lucrece, 84
Lucretius, 67
Luculli, 130
Lucullus:
L. Licinius, 149;
M., 119
Ludwig I, 197
Lutatius Catulus, Q., 134
McKim, C. F., 231, 262, 312, 313
Macro, 98
Macstrna, 36
Madison, Wis., 253
Maecenas, 167
Magi, F., 240, 241, 346
Magi, the three, 344
Maiuri, A., 205
Malalas, John, 335
Mandela, 317
Marble:
African, 228, 230;
Carrara, 148, 176;
Parian, 266;
Pentelic, 235, 266
Marble Plan, 138, 226, 228, 229
Marcellus, M. Claudius, 154
Marcus Aurelius, 296
Maremma, 98
Marius, 86, 105_n._, 116, 148
Mars, 82, 149, 150, 164, 165, 168, 190, 239–41
Marsyas, 107, 187
Martial, 178, 340
Martyrs, 230
Marzabotto, 29, 31–33, 35, 43, 45, 82, 83, 94, 103
Masseria Fongo, 3
Matera, 7
Maxentius, 327, 335, 337
Maximian, 335, 337
Maximilian, 223
Medea, 185, 186, 188
Medusa, 178
Menelaus, 176
Mengarelli, P., 47
Mercury, 215, 219, 220
Mesopotamia, 8
Messina, 175
Michael, archangel, 294
Michelangelo, 134, 152, 189, 339
Milan, 298
Minerva, 32, 219, 239, 242, 344
Mithras, 263
Mithridates VI, 138
Modena, 112
Molfetta, 7
Monica, 263
Monteverde (tufa), 86
Moretti, G., 156, 158, 160
Mostra Augustea della Romanità, 230
Mozart, 291
Mumford, L., 314
Murat, J., 198
Muse(s), 188, 242, 243
Mussolini, B., 140, 145, 146, 178, 179, 228, 230, 247, 251, 327
Mycenae, 14
Naples, 111;
museum, 118, 201, 211, 219
Nemean lion, 339
Nemi, Lake, 104_n._, 172, 178, 182
Nepi, 305
Nereids, 257, 340
Nero, 167, 171–73, 189, 194, 224, 296, 309, 342, 347
Nerva, 156, 240, 250
Nessus, 339
New York, Pennsylvania Station, 312
Nile, 118, 294
_Notizie degli Scavi_, 327
Numa, 66, 71, 73, 80
Numidia, 266
_nuraghi_, 15, 18, 24
Octavia, 154, 164, 165, 167
Octavian, 144, 145, 150, 152.
_See also_ Augustus
Odysseus, 335
Olympic victors, 151
Olynthus, 32
Orestes, 185
Orpheus, 185, 186, 335
Orsi, P., 18, 22, 24, 327
Orvieto, 29
Oscan, 200, 207
Osimo, 112
Osiris, 292
Ostia, 91, 92, 94, 95, 114, 116, 172, 212, 251–65, 269, 270, 340, 351
Otho, 224
Ovid, 212
Pace, B., 333, 340
Pacuvius, 114
Paestum, 112, 116
Palestrina, Sanctuary of Fortune, 116–38, 139, 146, 267, 286, 332
Palladio, A., 136
Palladium, 185
Pan, 335
Paris, 185, 192
Parma, 112
Parthenon frieze, 162
Parthians, 152, 324
Pascolare di Castello, 62, 63
Pasiphaë, 188
Passo di Corvo, 3, 6, 7, 8
Patroclus, 176
Pega valley, 33
Pelasgian walls, 95
Penates, 167
Pergamum, 176, 339
Perseus, King, 97
Perugia, 29
Perugino, 189
Pesaro, 112
Pesco Montano, 300
Petronius, 218
Phaedra, 188, 190
Phaon, 187
Philippi, 150
Philodemus, 209
Phoenicia, 17
Phrygia, 27, 262
Piacenza, 43, 45, 112, 299
Piazza Armerina, 327, 339, 340
Picasso, 339
Picenum, 20
Pigorini, L., 10, 11, 13, 14, 24, 27, 32, 63, 65, 85
Piranesi, G. B., 25, 69, 134
Pius:
XI, 341;
XII, 341
Placentia. _See_ Piacenza
Plautus, 218
Pliny (elder), 175, 187, 215, 225, 321
Pollux, 148, 167
Polybius, 94
Polyphemus, 335
Pompeii, 32, 107, 114, 116, 118, 188, 195, 196–223, 241, 242, 251,
253, 258, 262, 270
Pompey, 138, 142, 144, 170
Pomptine marshes, 299
Ponte Lupo, 318
Pontifex Maximus, 82, 165, 167, 351
Pope(s), the, 238, 326
Poppaea, 190
Populonia, 29, 48, 51
Porsenna, Lars, 41
Portus, 263
Postumius, A., 148
Pozzuoli, 112
Praeneste. _See_ Palestrina
Pratica di Mare, 78_n._
Propertius, 212
Ptolemy XI Alexander II, 120
Puglia, 1, 112
Puglisi, S. M., 65, 70
Pythagoras, 187
Quinctius Crispinus, T., 164
Quintilius Varus, P., 164
Rabirius, 142, 242, 243, 250
Randall-MacIver, D., 14
Raphael Santi, 136, 189, 289
Rasenna, 40
Ravenna, 298, 333
Reggio Emilia, 14
Regillus, Lake, 148
Remus, 168
Renaissance, 137, 164, 189, 230, 268, 322, 341, 349
Resina, 196
Rhodes, 175, 176
Ricci, C., 140, 142, 146, 149, 267
Richardson, L., Jr., 107
Richmond, I. A., 321
Rimini, 18, 112, 299, 303
Roma, goddess, 168, 236, 238
Romantics, 246
Roma Quadrata, 11
Rome:
--Altar of Peace, 145, 146, 149, 150, 156–70, 172, 179, 236,
238, 241, 341
--Altar of Piety, 172
--American Academy in, 2, 312, 314, 317, 321
--Aqueducts, 310, 314–21
--Arches:
of Augustus, 145, 150–52, 170;
Constantine, 170, 296;
Septimius Severus, 69, 170, 296;
Titus, 170, 194, 225, 226, 235
--Atrium Vestae, 194
--Aurelian’s Wall, 296, 299, 321–26
--Aventine Hill, 87
--Basilicas:
Aemilia, 140;
Julia, 140, 266;
of Maxentius, 137, 229, 297, 325;
Ulpia, 265, 266
--Baths:
of Caracalla, 296, 298, 309, 319;
Diocletian, 137, 296, 309, 319;
Titus, 194;
Trajan, 189
--British School at, 2, 304
--Campus Martius, 138, 154, 156, 160, 225, 236, 246, 247
--Cancelleria reliefs, 170, 225, 238–41, 242
--Capitoline:
Hill, 73, 83, 84, 134, 142, 267;
Temple, 32, 52;
Wolf, 51
--Castel Sant’ Angelo. _See_ Mausoleum of Hadrian
--Churches:
Gesù, 160;
SS. Cosma e Damiano, 229;
San Giovanni in Laterano, 266;
San Lorenzo, 266;
San Sebastiano, 348;
S. Francesca Romana, 67;
Sant’ Agnese, 250;
San Paolo fuori le mura, 266;
Santa Sabina, 266;
Santa Maria degli Angeli, 309
--Circuses:
of Maxentius, 325;
Maximus, 333
--Clivus Argentarius, 142
--Cloaca Maxima, 85, 86, 242
--Coliseum, 140, 192, 194, 224, 228, 230–35, 236, 250, 280, 281,
312, 336, 340
--Columns:
of Marcus Aurelius, 170, 296;
Trajan, 170, 265, 266, 269–72, 339
--Comitium, 74, 79
--_Domus Aurea._ _See_ Golden House, below
--Equus Domitiani, 71, 79
--Esquiline Hill, 64, 70, 84, 86, 267
--Fora:
of Augustus, 145, 146–50, 152, 170, 241, 265, 266;
Caesar, 140, 146, 150, 241, 265;
of Peace, 138, 224–26, 289;
Romanum, 63, 64, 67, 69, 73, 116, 134;
of Trajan, 146, 251, 265–66;
Transitorium (“of Nerva”), 146, 224–25, 228, 241–43, 266
--French Academy, 160
--Golden House, 172, 173, 189–94, 224–25, 231, 274, 283, 329
--House of Livia, 67, 146
--Hut of Romulus, 67, 146, 246
--Largo Argentina, 139;
temples in, 88
--Mausolea:
of Augustus, 145, 149, 154–56, 162, 167, 170, 292;
of Hadrian, 273, 289, 292, 294, 326
--Milvian Bridge, 325
--Mithraea, 310, 310_n._
--Museums:
Conservatori, 83, 151;
Lateran, 312;
Terme, 118, 160, 162, 173, 178, 309;
Villa Giulia, 25, 52.
_See also_ Vatican City
--Odeum of Domitian, 250
--Palatine: 63, 64, 69, 85, 137, 172, 246, 305;
Antiquarium, 65;
Farnese Gardens, 63;
Flavian Palace, 63, 66, 118, 225, 243–47, 283, 332;
House of Griffins, 67;
huts, 64, 70, 90, 326;
stadium, 246
--Palazzi:
Caffarelli, 83;
della Cancelleria, 236, 239;
Fiano, 156, 160, 164, 168;
del Senatore, 134;
Venezia, 140, 228
--Pantheon:
of Agrippa, 286;
of Hadrian, 129, 148, 192, 273, 281, 283, 285–89, 295, 312
--Piazze:
Navona, 247;
del Popolo, 137
--Pons Sublicius, 13
--Ponte Sant’ Angelo, 292
--Porte:
Appia, 325;
Asinaria, 325;
del Popolo, 148;
Maggiore, 319;
San Lorenzo, 322;
San Pancrazio, 326
--Porticus of Octavia, 145
--Quirinal, 64, 70, 87, 267
--Regia, 41, 73, 80, 151
--Rostra, 78
--Septimontium, 73
--“Servian” Wall, 85–90
--Stadium of Domitian, 225, 247–50
--subterranean basilica, at Pta. Maggiore, 74, 172, 182–89, 236, 342
--Subura, 146, 241
--Swedish Institute, 2
--Tabularium, 116, 134
--Temples:
of Antoninus and Faustina, 69, 194, 296;
Castor, 148, 150, 151;
Deified Julius, 150, 151;
Deified Trajan, 265;
Fortuna Redux, 241;
Minerva, 228–29;
Peace, 229;
Venus and Rome, 194, 273, 274, 280–83, 286, 295;
Venus Victrix, 139
--Theaters:
of Marcellus, 250;
of Pompey, 88, 134, 150, 289
--Torre dei Conti, 229
--Trajan’s Market, 137, 267–69
--Trastevere, 321
--Vatican Hill, 342
--Vesta, Shrine of, 66, 67, 73, 80
--Vie:
Biberatica, 269;
di Grotta Pinta, 138;
dell’ Impero, 140, 146, 228
--Ville:
Medici, 160;
under Farnesina, 118
Romulus, 66, 78, 149, 151, 152, 165, 168
Roselle, 29, 42
Rosetta Stone, 42
Rostra, 88
Rothschild, Edward de, 211
Ruspoli, 47
Sabina, 292
Sabines, 71
Säflund, G., 85, 87, 88
St. Paul, 348
St. Peter, 266, 342, 347, 348
St. Peter’s. _See_ Vatican City
Salerno, 112
Samnites, 22, 91, 95, 207, 303
San Fuoco d’Angelone, 3, 6
San Giovenale, 20
Santa Severa (Pyrgi), 42
Sappho, 187
Saracens, 350
Sardinia, 14, 17, 18, 262
Sargent, J. S., 190
Satricum, 52
Scherer, M., 246
Scylla, 176
Sejanus, 98, 173
Septimius Severus, 138, 156
Servius Tullius, 33, 66, 67, 85, 87
Sesklo, 7
Sesto, 111
Severi, 253, 285, 296
Sfax, 112
Sicily, 17, 18, 22, 94, 138, 326
Siculans, 22, 24
Silenus, 222, 294
Silius Italicus, 36
Silvanus, 292
Sixtus V, Pope, 266
Social War, 303.
_See also_ Civil War
Sodom, 218
Solway, 283
Spain, 262
Spalato, 137, 329
Sperlonga, 133, 172, 173–78, 182, 246
Spina, 29, 33, 43, 51
Spinazzola, V., 202, 251
Spoleto, 112
Statilius Taurus, T., 188
Stone, Kirk H., 2
Stone Age, 17
Subiaco, 317
Sulla, L. Cornelius, 86, 95, 97, 98, 116, 118, 120, 123, 124, 130,
134, 138, 142, 144, 148, 170, 200, 205
Su Nuraxi, 15–17
Swedish Institute in Rome, 2
Syphax, King, 97
Syracuse, 22, 91
Syria, 58, 292
Tacitus, 173, 188, 342
Tagliacozzo, 304
Tarpeia, 84
Tarchunies Rumach, Cn., 36
Tarquinia, 25, 29, 38, 40–42, 46–48, 51, 54, 60, 64
Tarquinius Romanus, Cn., 36
Tarquins: 38, 84;
Tarquinius Priscus, 66, 67, 73;
Tarquinius Superbus, 66, 67, 83, 84
Tarracina, 116, 132, 300
Tauris, 185
Tavoliere, 2, 3, 7, 8, 13, 20, 24
Tellus, 168
_terremare_, 10, 13, 14, 20, 24, 32, 63, 85
Teutoberg Forest, 164
Thatcher, E. D., 257
Thetis, 192
Thoas, 185
Tiber, 25, 162, 252, 260, 265, 292, 294, 299
Tiberius, 98, 154, 164, 171–73, 176, 178, 194, 302
Tibur. _See_ Tivoli
Tin (god), 32
Titus, 223, 224, 235, 236, 238, 309
Tivoli: 302, 318;
aqueducts near, 317;
Hadrian’s Villa near, 137, 246, 272, 273, 274–80, 281, 283, 286,
289–92, 294–95, 329;
T. of Hercules Victor, 134;
T. at Sibylla, 116;
Villa d’Este, 136
Torlonia, 260
Torre dell’ Isola, 305
Torre Galli, 22, 24
Toynbee, Jocelyn M., 241, 342
Trajan, 95, 250, 273, 309, 321
Travertine, 144, 313
Trieste, 112
Trimalchio, 218
Triptolemus, 187
Tritons, 187, 257
Troy, 175, 185, 192
Tuchulcha, 51
Tufas, table of, 75
Tullus Hostilius, 66
Turin, 112
Turner, F. J., 114
Tuscan, 137, 215
Tyne, 283
Ulysses, 176, 185
Uni, 32
Vaglieri, D., 64
Valadier, J., 137
Valerian, 349
Valerius Maximus, Man., 149
Vandals, 350
Van Deman, E. B., 194, 317–19, 321
Van Essen, C. C., 192, 200, 303
Vatican City:
cemetery under Annona, 346;
Old St. Peter’s, 341, 345;
St. Peter’s, 144, 146, 194, 230, 265, 289, 292, 313, 326, 341, 350;
St. Peter’s, cemetery under, 342, 345, 347, 349, 350;
Sistine Chapel, 339;
Vatican Museum, 25, 57, 148, 160, 175, 238;
Vatican Palace, 189, 246
Veii, 29, 38, 52, 83–85, 305
Velasquez, D., 189
Velcha, 51
Venus, 142, 150, 190, 219, 241, 286
Vergil, 63, 67, 149, 150, 152, 167, 168, 175, 212, 270
Versailles, 194, 272, 277
Vespasian, 138, 156, 224, 225, 228, 231, 235, 238, 240–43, 341, 347
Vesta, 219
Vestals, 80, 148, 168, 238
Vesuvius, 196, 209
Vetulonia, 27, 29, 36, 77
Vibenna, 36
Vibo Valentia, 112
Vibrata valley, 8
Vicovaro, 317
Victor Emanuel II, 289
Victoria, Queen, 198
Victory, 236, 239, 271
Vie:
Aemilia, 299, 303;
Amerina, 305, 308;
Appia, 132, 148, 300, 301, 348;
Aurelia, 98, 303;
Flaminia, 156, 303, 308;
Latina, 299;
Ostiensis, 92;
Salaria, 299;
Tiburtina, 136;
Valeria, 95, 97, 111, 302, 303
Vienna, 168
Villanovan(s), 13, 18, 20, 22, 24, 27, 29, 64, 305
Virginia, 8
Vitellius, 224
Vitruvius, 301
Volterra, 29
Volubilis, 332
Vulca, 52, 83
Vulci, 26, 29, 36, 42, 52, 98, 107
Ward Perkins, J. B., 305, 308, 342
Weege, F., 189, 190
Winckelmann, J. J., 197
Wisconsin, U. of, 2
Yourcenar, M., 283
Zagreb, 40, 42
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the correction was apparent, and
otherwise left unresolved.
Page numbers in the List of Illustrations were printed in italics. To
improve readability, the italics indicators are not shown here.
Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.
Some images have been rotated 90° to make them easier to read.
In the original book, two or three images often were placed on the same
page and sometimes overlapped each other to save space. In this eBook,
they are shown separately, in Figure-number sequence.
Images have been moved, when necessary, between paragraphs, so the page
numbers in the List of Illustrations do not always match the actual
positions of the images in this eBook.
Images were of various sizes in the original book. Here, most are shown
at a uniformly-large size, while a few are shown even larger to make
details and text identifications readable.
FIG. 2.9 was printed as shown, apparently mirror-image, perhaps as a
rubbed impression.
FIG. 7.4 had no caption; the one shown in this eBook was copied from
the List of Illustrations.
FIG. 8.7’s “Legend” was difficult to read and has not been transcribed.
Page 301: “CXX” was enclosed in a rectangular medallion.
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