Last Wednesday Professor Englert demonstrated, very convincingly I think, that one way to view Livy's History is to see it as a literary monumentum intended to help reconstruct Rome after almost a century of horrendous civil strife. Professor Englert, as well, drew our attention to the fact that Augustus also sought to rebuild Rome. Given his political position, however, Augustus did not need to limit himself, like Livy needed to, to only doing so in words. He was able, over the duration of his reign, to establish actual programs intended to rebuild Rome morally, religiously, politically, architecturally, and urbanistically. For today you read two texts that discuss these works of Augustus: "The Accomplishments" or the Res Gestae of the Divine Augustus, an autobiographical inscription that once stood just before his tomb, and the life of Augustus written by Suentonius about one hundred years after Augustus' death. My talk this morning will use these two texts to understand how the city of Rome was transformed under Augustus as part of his desire to recreate or to refound Rome anew. (LIGHTS DOWN, SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT).

I would like to begin by making the point that Rome is a place. That is, Rome is city, located on the Tiber River in central Italy. I think this point needs to be made because the word, Rome, is often used to refer not only to this location, but to the entire Roman empire in general. You may recall, as Professor Englert pointed out in his lecture last week, that Livy often plays off of this double meaning of Rome: that of the center or city versus that of the periphery or provinces. This interplay bewteen Rome as both center and periphery is one of the key themes of this course this semester, but today I will be using the word, Rome, only in the precise geographical sense.

The idea of Rome as a place, is important because, place, is tangible. A place really exists. You can point to it. You can stand on it. You can do things there or do things to it. Place, because it can continue to exist across time, can also be a tangible link to the past. A place may have existed in the past, when earlier people pointed to it, stood on it, did things there or did things to it. While the people and events which occurred at a place are long gone, we can associate ourselves with the past and perhaps with these people by making reference to some event at the place where it occurred. I think that this desire to link ourselves to the past is one function that national monuments such as Ellis Island or the Gettysburg Battlefield serve. But I would suggest that this use of place to connect people in the present with the past is particularly acute in a culture that lacks the means of documenting the past with the modern technologies available to us today. I hope you after my talk today you will believe that this is indeed the case for the Ancient Romans. The Romans, in fact, objectified this idea by believing that a location was inhabited by what they called a genius loci, or a god of the place. A genius might have a shrine and could be prayed to or offered sacrifices.

It should be clear from the tour of Rome that Evander gives Aeneas in Bk 8 of the Aeneid, and Camillus's speech in Bk 5 of Livy, that place, as a link between past and present, is a key concept of the literature of the Augustan period. In referring to known sites visited during Aeneas' tour Virgil stresses the continuity between Rome's very ancient past and the Augustan present. Professor Englert suggested that in tying stories to specific sites and buildings in Rome, Livy was attempting to erect a sort of memory palace of historical exempla for readers of his era. Augustus in his "Res Gestae" empathizes that he did not create a new Rome, but rather that he carefully restored and enhanced what as already there. He did so by focusing his projects on places that had had great significance throughout the Republican period. Thus, all three of these authors, Virgil, Livy, and Augustus connect the present with the past through using specific sites in the city.

This morning I will develop the idea of the specificity of place in Rome, by showing how the city of Rome under Augustus was transformed. That is, I want to examine how Augustus reshaped the city to connect specific sites of the past with himself. We will look at where Augustus and his immediate followers intervened in the city, and see what was built and how their work while claiming to continue Republican tradition, in fact, irreversibly transformed Republican places, traditions and forms into ones appropriate for the new form of rule that was taking shape under Augustus.

Before turning to Augustus, we need to set the stage. First I will introduce you to the topography of the city and then briefly discuss some aspects of the development of the city during the Republic. I'll conclude this introductory section by outlining how Julius Caesar first began to manipulate the Republican city. (Slides left and right)

In terms of natural features Rome is a relatively simple site. In antiquity the site was dominated by the Tiber River. The small island at the bottom of the major bend provided the last easy crossing of the Tiber before it emptied into the sea about fifteen Roman miles to the south. The other main features of the site are the hills, seven in legend, but less, or more depending how you want to group them. On the east side of the river we find the Capitoline, Palatine and Aventine close to the Tiber and the Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline (consisting of the Oppian and the Cispian) and the Caelian further east. On the west side of the river (that is transtibernum or trastevere in modern italian) is the Gianiculum and to the northwest, the Vatican

The areas between river and hills were rather marshy. And the names of these regions were in general determined not by their topographic features, but by their later use. The area between the Capitoline and the Palatine eventually came to be known as the Roman Forum. That between the Palatine and the river, the Forum Boarium or the Cattle market and that between the Capitoline and the River, the Forum Holitorium or the vegetable market. The vast area to the North in the large bend of the River was known as the Campus Martius or the Field of Mars.

Because the low lying areas were so wet, it is not surprising to discover that the earliest archaeological remains which indicate permanent habitation have been found on the hills. (SLIDE LEFT) The most extensive discoveries date to the eight century and were found on the west corner of the Palatine where the foundations of an iron age village of twig and mud houses has been excavated which I show you in a model in the slide on the left. With the eighth-century date for this iron age village on the Palatine, we have a rather astonishing correlation between archaeological record and the mythological foundation by Romulus in 753, recounted by Livy. However, we might want to proceed with some caution, since there are traces of similar villages on the Esquiline suggesting that the Palatine village was not unique. These hill top villages permitted relatively easy defense and escape from the rather fetid conditions of the marshes below, which were reserved for burying the dead.

According to the archaeological evidence, what seems to have happened between say ca 750 and ca 600 BCE was that these hill top villages formed some sort of federation that eventually came under Etruscan domination. This interpretation of the archaeological evidence, if correct, corresponds with the literary tradition which we read last week in Livy. Sometime between 650 and 575 BCE Etruscan engineering skills were used to drain and pave the area between the Capitoline and the Palatine transforming the former marsh into an important civic center, the Roman Forum. At the end of the sixth century, literary and archaeological evidence tells us that a large Etruscan style temple dedicated to Jupiter optimus maximus was constructed on the Capitoline overlooking the Forum. Slightly more than a century later, apparently not long after the sack of the Gauls in 387/86, a masonry defensive wall was constructed around the city. Thus by the middle of the fourth century BCE Rome had taken the basic shape it would retain down to the end of the third century CE. (POINT OUT ON MAP)

For the next 500 years, the Capitoline and the Roman Forum were the main architectural foci of city. The Capitoline with the temple to Jupiter Optimus Maximus was the city's most important religious center. The forum (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT), the main meeting place of Rome served as the city's legislative, judicial and mercantile center. On the right we have a view showing the forum as it looks today after the excavations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and on the left in a reconstruction portraying an airview of how the forum might have looked in the second century BCE (SLIDE RIGHT)

As the Forum developed overtime, it came to be dominated by the Curia or Senate House and the Comitium the circular assembly place for the people. These two structures standing in the northwest corner of the forum were separated from the Forum proper by the Rostra or speakers' platform. The two long sides of the forum were enclosed by shops and basilicas, a sort of all-purpose building used for commercial, judicial and political business. The shorter sides had an assortment of administrative and cult buildings of various dates and styles. Though it was the official center of the city, you can see here that the forum was a rather amorphous open plaza, framed by a conglomeration of different building types, built at various times in the city's history.

There was no department of public works in the Rome of the Republic. Architectural projects were the responsibility of the Patrician class. For the senators, architectural patronage was not only a responsibility, it was also an opportunity to express their power and to bring them prestige and status. Patrons were able to keep their names and accomplishments before the people, as Roman buildings were almost always emblazoned with inscriptions recording who was responsible for constructing them. As an example of the desire to perform or at least be associated with such public projects, you might recall Livy's story in Book two of the two consuls who battled with each other over the chance to dedicate the temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline. In this case, there was an opportunity to get credit for a temple without even having to pay for it.

In particular, the city benefited from the generosity of victorious generals who erected public buildings to celebrate their triumphs. Often such building were erected ex manibus that is paid for by the booty taken as spoils by the victorious general. Imagine General Schwarzkopf using a large percentage of his book royalties recounting his glorious victories in Iraq to pay for a new school or governmental administration building. Though the analogy is not exact, it does suggest how far the ancient Roman notion of architectural patronage is from our own.

While this system did provide for the major building projects, its dependence upon the self-interest of upper-class sponsors meant that it was applied rather haphazardly. Showy public buildings such as temples, basilicas and theaters received the bulk of this sort of patronage, often leaving more mundane structures such aquaducts, sewers and housing out of the picture.

Established during the Rome of the Kings recounted by Livy, and continued throughout the Republic, this mode of architectural patronage was how public buildings came to be erected in Rome. Julius Caesar in the middle of the first century accepted the traditional role of architectural patron, but did so on a new scale. (SLIDE RIGHT)

Despite the constant state of war, the city and the empire had grown immensely over the course of the first half of the first century BCE. To provide the necessary administrative facilities, Caesar reorganized and extended the Roman Forum (shown in the upper right of the right slide). Spending exorbitant sums, Caesar as early as 54 BCE began purchasing parcels of land in the commercial district to the northwest of the Roman Forum. Ostensibly an extension of the Roman Forum, these purchases were for a new Forum, the forum of Caesar also known as the Forum Julium. It stood, in reality, as an independent structure.

(1: POINT OUT ON RIGHT)

(2: THEN CHANGE SLIDE LEFT)

The forum Julium, shown in a reconstruction model on the left, introduced a new sort of public space to Roman architecture. Instead of the irregular and heterogeneous conglomeration of the Roman Forum, the forum Julium consisted of a large rectangular courtyard enclosed by colonnades on three sides and a temple on its fourth. The temple dedicated to Venus Genetrix, that is Venus in the guise as the founder of the Julian Clan dominates the space. The temple is set back against one short side with its facade directly opposite the main entrance. This arrangement established a major longitudinal axis down the length of the open courtyard. While glorifying Caesar and the Julian family the forum provided the much needed space for ever expanding political, judicial and commercial business of the growing Roman empire. (SLIDE LEFT)

Along with building his own Forum, Caesar also sponsored work in the Roman Forum itself. There he transformed its arrangement to reflect the new political realities of the time. On the left, we see a reconstruction of the pre-caesarian arrangement of the Roman Forum, and still on the right the plan of the Forum, as it was transformed under Caesar. Caesar began rebuilding the curia or senate house which had been burned in 52 BCE. In doing this, he paved over the Comitium, where the people had met in front of the curia. As you can see on the plan on the right, in its rebuilt form, the curia was no longer a major focus of the Roman Forum. Instead it was pushed back behind the corner of the adjacent basilica, so that it has essentially become an appendage to Caesar's new Forum Iulium. On the plan on the right, we can also see how the rostra or speaker's platform, once used to address the assembly in the no-longer extant Comitium, was moved out into the center of the forum creating a major axis down its length, and now serving merely as a platform from which the Roman people were harangued, rather than a place from which motions were presented to the public for debate or vote. Caesar further regularized the forum by replacing the basilica on the southwest side and renaming it, the basilica Julia, after his own family.(SLIDE LEFT)

The other main area where Caesar focused his patronage was the Campus Martius, just north of the city walls. Here, at the south end of the Campus Martius outside of the pomerium or sacred precinct of the city proper, he rebuilt the building in which the voting of the comitia centuriata took place. (POINT OUT) This structure, renamed the Septa Julia, reportedly was built entirely in marble, and ran over a mile in length. In addition Caesar devised a plan to divert the Tiber behind the Vatican Hill to provide more land for further development of the Campus Martius.

Caesar in his new Forum, the Roman Forum and the Campus Martius acted as the traditional architectural patron. Yet the unrivaled scale of his projects and the high handed treatment of the Curia as well as the grandiose plans for re-channeling the Tiber were symptomatic of how far he overstepped the traditional roles. Such highhandedness in his architectural patronage perhaps contributed to the general aristocratic dissatisfaction which led to his assassination in 44. Once his adopted son (SLIDE RIGHT), Octavian, later Augustus, established control, he too began to rework the city to serve his own ends. It is very clear from examining not only the projects themselves, but also the timing of their construction, that Octavian learned the lessons of Caesar well. Like Caesar, he reworked the Roman Forum, built a new forum and did extensive work in the Campus Martius. Octavian, however, was much more sensitive to Republican traditions, and at least made the pretense of preserving them. This pretense is one of the main themes of his "Res Gestae."

Suetonius, the other reading you did for today, provides us with three famous sayings of Augustus which are indicative of the princeps's approach to rebuilding Rome. They are: first, "Make haste slowly," related to us in section 25; second, "I found the city made of brick and left it made of Marble," related in section 28; and third, in section 99, "How does it look,? Have I performed the comic opera of life properly?"

On the death of Caesar, Octavian could make haste slowly. Because of his youth he had time to devise a some sort of plan as well as the time to carry that plan out. He also had to make haste slowly in order not to suffer the same fate that Caesar had. Thus, Octavian was careful to focus on what needed to get done. Before he began entirely new projects of his own, Octavian began by continuing those begun by his adoptive father. In the first decade after Caesar's death, he completed the voting precinct in the Campus Martius, the Forum Julium, and the new curia, rostra and basilica in the Roman Forum. Wisely, he dropped the grandiose idea of diverting the Tiber.

Early in his reign, Octavian/Augustus also completed projects which he had begun with the other members of the second triumvirate, such as the temple to the Divine Julius at the southeast end of the Roman Forum, which had been begun in 42 BCE. By completing this project dedicated to his father, as well as the ones Caesar had begun himself, Octavian emphasized his piety towards his father and the Julian clan. And as both Suetonius' Life and the Res Gestae tell us, the restoration of 82 temples in 28 BCE demonstrated Octavian's piety towards the Gods.

Octavian was also careful to attend to the utilitarian needs of the city. In 33 he appointed his close friend and supporter Agrippa to overhaul Rome's water delivery and drainage systems. In addition to doubling the city's water supplies, Agrippa constructed a new bridge across the Tiber, repaired the river's retaining walls and provided municipal baths in the south end of the Campus Martius (POINT OUT). All these early projects show that Octavian indeed did make haste slowly.

Though a rhetorical exaggeration, we can see a kernel of truth in Augustus's statement that he transformed Rome from a city of brick into one of marble, if we examine his new forum, just north of that of his adoptive father's. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT) Suetonius tells us that Augustus's new forum was needed, like the earlier Forum of Caesar, to provide space for new state functions and the burgeoning bureaucracy of empire. In the plan on the right, we can see that Augustus's forum, labeled #4, is laid out at exactly right angles to the Forum of Caesar, labeled #8. The two fora are related to each other by precise axial geometry. The rather informal geometrical relationship between structures such as found in the Roman Forum is gone. The forum of Augustus repeats strict rectangular plan of the earlier Forum of his father with some elaboration and is clearly meant to complement and rival it. (POINT OUT)

(SLIDE RIGHT) The Forum and temple are in ruins but extensive excavations, coins related structures and copies of its sculpture allow us to reconstruct its architectural and sculptural programs in detail. The Forum of Augustus consists of a central rectangular courtyard about 125 meters long by about 118 meters wide surrounded on three sides by a colonnade whose exterior walls were 35 meters high. On axis, on the short side opposite the main entrance, a huge temple dominated the central space. Projecting from the outer flanks of the colonnades were two large semi circles.

The temple, the main focus of the Forum, was dedicated to Mars Ultor that is to Mars the Avenger. Octavian had vowed the temple in 42 BCE before the Battle of Philippi in anticipation of the God's help in avenging the murder of Caesar. The project was only begun sometime after the battle of Actium of 31 and only dedicated in 2 BCE. The entire complex in the tradition of triumphant Republican generals was constructed "ex manibus" that is from booty won in battle.

The only deviation from the strict rectangular plan is the Southeast corner. Suetonius tells us that Augustus was unable to purchase this parcel from its owner, so rather than seizing it he continued to build without it.

The forum and the temple in particular was huge in scale and lavish in materials. The entire complex was executed in marble and not the less precious local stone that had been traditionally used for such projects. The bulk of the marble for the forum and temple was brought south to Rome from the new imperial quarries at Luna or modern day Carrara. Much of the details of the pavement and the flanking colonnades, however, were executed in colored marbles imported from around the empire. The colored porticoes established a stark contrast with the gleaming white of the temple to Mars. An effect not visible in the reconstruction on the left. (SLIDE RIGHT)

It is worth taking a moment to contrast the Forum of Augustus with a familiar Greek monument the Acropolis, and the temple of Mars Ultor to the Parthenon to outline the differences between Roman and Greek approaches to architecture. As we see with the model of the Acropolis on the Right. The Greek sanctuary is laid out without any strict geometrical relationship between the buildings. The buildings appear to be only casually related to one another, set roughly at diagonals to each other.

In the Forum of Augustus, on the other hand, the buildings are related to each other by strict axial and right-angle geometry. Unlike the Parthenon, the temple to Mars establishes a main axis and looms above the viewer to dominate the space. The viewer's experience in the forum of Augustus is entirely controlled and contained by the space defined by the buildings. The height of the structures effectively screens out views of anything beyond the Forum. All you experience in a space like the Forum of Augustus is what is enclosed within it. As far as the Roman architect was concerned the only landscape that you should perceive is the one defined within the walls of the forum.

Experiencing the Acropolis is really quite different. Imagine yourself walking through it. The buildings in the Greek sanctuary are distributed across the site and not physically linked together. Views beyond the Acropolis are not only possible but encouraged by the wide spaces left between the buildings. There is no axis, and there is no attempt to control and dominate the viewer's movement through the space of the Acropolis in the same way that it is in the Forum of Augustus.

Note too the differences in design between the Greek and Roman temples. The Parthenon rises from a flight of only about a half dozen steps which run around all four of its sides. Presumably one can access the building from any of the four sides. Although the peak of the roof established an axis emphasizing the short sides, the main entrance, which is on the far left side of the slide, is not clearly marked. One needs to search a bit in order to finally find the entry into the main cella. Finding the entrance into the Mars Ultor temple in the forum of Augustus however is not such a problem. The temple of Mars is more isolated from the viewer. It is set on a tall base and only has steps across its front. Thus, unlike the Greek temple, the Roman temple can only be approached from one side and can be entered from only that one side. And while columns surround three sides of this Roman temple, the fourth is set back against the precinct wall of the forum, and is therefore much less of a free standing structure than the Greek temple. While the Parthenon is presented and emphasized as a three dimensional object standing isolated in space, the temple to Mars Ultor is much more of a two dimensional facade. The concentration of figural sculpture in the pediment of the temple to Mars rather than all around as on a Greek temple, such as the Parthenon, emphasizes the facade of the Roman structure as well.

Like the Parthenon, the Temple of Mars Ultor and the Forum of Augustus has an elaborate sculptural program. I don't have time today to examine it in detail, but I would like to point out a couple of features of it. (SLIDE RIGHT) The facade of the temple like the rest of the sculptural program of the Forum is in fact a billboard making claims about Augustus and his place in Roman history and Roman cosmology. The labeling on the slide on the right tells us that the cult statues on the interior included not only Mars at the center, as we might expect, but also on the left Venus in her guise as Genetrix of the Julian clan, and on the right the deified Julius Caesar, Augustus's adoptive father.

The porticoes along the flanks of the Forum were also richly adorned with over life-sized freestanding statues depicting the great men from Rome's historical and mythological past. On the axis of the left semi circular projection stood an image of Aeneas, founder of the Julian line and on the right, Romulus the founder of the city proper.

There was also a series of sculptures decorating the second story or attic of the portico. In the attic story (SLIDE RIGHT) were a series of shields ornamented with heads of various divinities from around empire between female supports known as Caryatids which I show you here in the slide on the right (POINT OUT). These female figures should be familiar to you, as they are exact copies at a reduced scale of the caryatids of the south porch of the Erectheum on the Acropolis in Athens (SLIDE LEFT). Many authors have suggested that the use of these fifth-century figures (SLIDE LEFT) as models for the Augustan sculptures indicates a desire to link the achievements of Augustan Rome to the intellectual achievements of the so-called Golden age of fifth-century Athens. Possibly, but I wonder why the message of such Greek themes would be a part of such a structure so "Roman" in its architectural design and political message.

If we turn to the only architectural treatise surviving from Antiquity, we find a quite different and very Roman meaning for these female statues. The treatise the work of an ex-Army engineer named Vitruvius, was written as a gift for Augustus sometime during the 20s BCE. According to Vitruvius (I.6) the female columns or the Caryatids were developed in Greece as representations of captured woman, that is as trophies of war. Taking Vitruvius' contemporaneous historical discussion of Caryatids into consideration, I would suggest that the Caryatids in the Forum of Augustus are not so much a reference to the intellectual achievements of Augustus so much as to the military ones. Perhaps the Augustan examples allude to the fact that the battle of Philippi took place in northeastern Greece. If this is the case, the use of the Caryatids as trophies would parallel the collection of deities in between them that appear to represent those deities of the captured regions of the empire. (SLIDE LEFT)

In addition to providing space for law courts, because the existing Fora were no longer adequate, the forum of Augustus also served as the department of state or the foreign office. As Suetonius tells us, here, foreign princes were received, and from here, provincial governors were sent out from the capital. Here too, the senate deliberated about war. It was also where young Roman citizens received the toga of manhood. In essence, the Forum of Augustus served as the assembly and reception hall of the Roman Empire. The lavish marble setting was probably intended to astonish Roman and Foreigner alike and help make Rome look the part of the cosmopolitan capital of an empire which the city had become, by giving it an aura of Hellenistic respectability.

We can see how Augustus's claim to have transformed Rome into a city of Marble easily leads into the third of Augustus's saying relayed by Suetonius. That is: "How does it look,? Have I performed the comic opera of life properly?." This saying conveys the essential Augustan fascination with facades dissimulation, the concern for keeping up appearances and making everything look right. In terms of architecture, this Augustan ideal is best seen in his work in the Roman Forum and on the Palatine hill. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT) (NB: THE RIGHT SLIDE IS BLANK)

Augustus continued Republican traditions in patronizing the Roman Forum. Augustus's work in the forum, however, was not piecemeal and haphazard like traditional Republican patronage. Rather, it was so systematic and so thorough, that by the time of Princeps's death in 14 CE, there was hardly a structure in the Roman Forum that had not been touched by his program.

His earliest work in the Forum completed earlier projects. At the north and west end, he completed Curia and the rostra which had been begun by Caesar. More importantly, at the opposite end of the open space, he completed the Temple to the Deified Julius which he and his two co-rulers had begun in 42. The location of the temple closed off the southeast end of the forum, and made the Roman Forum much more like the Forum of Caesar and the slightly later Forum of Augustus than it had been previously. With the rostra opposite, it established a monumental axis much like the temples of Mars Ultor and Venus Genetrix in their respective fora. (POINT OUT AND THEN CHANGE SLIDE RIGHT)

Augustus transformed the project somewhat by incorporating a second rostra into the design of the temple. This second speaker's platform, directly opposite the one moved and rebuilt by his adoptive father to the west was, however, reserved exclusively for Funeral orations for the Julian Clan. (POINT OUT) Moreover, in 19 BCE a triumphal arch, honoring Augustus for the return of the Parthian standards, was built just to the south of the new temple.(POINT OUT) (SLIDE LEFT) The outer openings bore an inscription listing all the consuls dating back to the beginning of the Republic emphasizing Augustus's claim that he was merely perpetuating the Republic under his rule.(SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT)

Later, a second arch was apparently built on the north side of the temple honoring Gaius and Lucius, Augustus's presumptive heirs. (POINT OUT) Thus, though claiming merely to finish the project, Augustus by adding the second rostra and the two arches unquestionably altered it. The addition of the arches to himself and his heirs on the south and the north sides transforms the area around the temple from one merely celebrating Caesar to one celebrating three generations of the Julian clan and thereby proclaiming the Julian dynasty.

These arches serve not only as a billboard to make such claims visually through inscriptions and sculpture, but also to articulate them spatially. Triumphal arches by their very nature shape, control and restrict circulation through a space. Arches, such as these found on either side of the temple to the deified Julius control movement into and out of the plaza of the Roman Forum. Placing arches dedicated to members of the Julian clan to either side of the temple transformed the Roman Forum into a Julian space, by creating a focus on Julian structures. To enter the Forum from the east, people did not merely pass by Julian buildings, they passed through them.

Over the course of his long reign, Augustus and members of his immediate family were able to rebuild the basilicas on both long sides of the Roman Forum as well as many of its temples and shrines (POINT OUT ON PLAN ON THE LEFT). While he rebuilt theses structures using traditional building types that had a long history, inscriptions, materials, especially the new Luna marble and a new stylistic vocabulary, similar to that used in the Forum of Augustus made these new buildings around the Forum unmistakably Augustan in character and appearance. All the Augustan structures on the Roman Forum served to control, regularize and focus what had previously been a disparate space into a unified Julian one. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT)

A second area in Rome where we can see the facade of Augustan Propaganda at work is on the Palatine, where Augustus's house was located. You should recall that both Suetonius' biography of Augustus and the Res Gestae stress the simplicity of the Princeps's living arrangements. The Palatine area was a bit up-scale but the excavations of what seems to have been the house of Augustus, shown on the plan on the right, revealed a modest and unpretentious structure of traditional form. But what of the specific location? Note, that Augustus's house is directly connected with the Temple to Apollo just to the right. The location and direct communication between temple and house suggest a more than casual relationship between the two Augustan structures.

The temple of Apollo on the Palatine was vowed by Octavian in 36 BCE and dedicated 8 years later. Its site had been determined by a lightening bolt that had struck near Augustus's house. It was the first new temple he built in his own name and the temple was universally admired as the most magnificent of the buildings commissioned by Augustus. Like the Forum of Augustus and its Temple to Mars Ultor, the temple to Apollo on the Palatine was built out of solid marble.

The connections between Augustus and Apollo were numerous and rich. The temple was a votive for an Augustan victory in Sicily. Apollo also had looked out favorably on Augustus at Actium where there was a major shrine to the deity. The success of Augustus under the aegis of Apollo had lead to the rumor that the Princeps was actually the son of the god. Building his house immediately adjacent to and connected with the temple of Apollo establishes a physical and symbolic link between himself and the god, and underscores the personal relationship between them. Indeed, Republican simplicity stands here along side claims to, or at least suggestion of, divinity.

The siting of the house of Augustus has deeper reverberations as well. To the north of the house was another famous place. (SLIDE LEFT) There, not far from Augustus's house, was a mud and stick hut, probably much like the reconstruction shown in the slide on the left. Known as the Casa Romuli or the house of Romulus, it was preserved as a sort of shrine marking the very spot where Romulus, the city's founder, had lived (Dionysius of Halicarnass Roman Antiquities, 1:79.11). Reportedly its form and material went back the eighth century, the date of the city's legendary foundation. You might recall that Octavian considered renaming himself Romulus before the Senate renamed him Augustus.

Also near the house, stood the Temple to Magna Mater (Great Mother) a cult imported to Rome in the late third century from the Phrygia, the area of Troy, and thus, the homeland of Aeneas, the father of the Roman race. Given its physical relationship to such historically important structures on the Palatine, the siting of the house of Augustus appears to maximize the meaningful associations and allusions to the recipient. On the one hand, the modest house itself suggests the continuation of Republican ways, a tenet central to Augustan propaganda. While on the other, the nearby buildings make allusions to the distant past such as to Troy, Aeneas, and Romulus, as well as the more recent past, and even allude without stating it outright, to Augustus' possible divinity. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT)

A third place where we see the facade of Augustan propaganda is in the Campus Martius. As I mentioned above, the southern end of the campus, just outside the fourth-century walls, received a great deal of attention from Agrippa who built predominantly utilitarian structures there before his death in 12 BCE. To the North, stretched out near or along the via Flaminia, the major road into the city from the north, were the giant sun dial, the Ara Pacis and Augustus's tomb. (SLIDE RIGHT AND POINT OUT) Here too what had once been the site of heterogeneous collection of buildings was now reshaped into an area dominated by Augustan structures, so that as you entered or left Rome, the first or last thing you saw was the work of Augustus and his circle. I'll return Augustus's patronage in this area of the city on Wednesday, when I discuss the Ara Pacis. (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT) (PAUSE)

You know from reading the "Res Gestae" and Suetonius's "Life" of Augustus that the Republican ideal of private sponsorship for public good is one that Augustus adopted or perhaps better put co-opted with a vengeance. This claim of using tradition allowed him to present himself as a patron of the old Republican mold, while in reality, he had modified the tradition to suit his ends. Under Augustus, architectural patronage became almost the exclusive preserve of the Princeps, his family and his closest associates. However, though limiting the patronage to his immediate circle, patronage was on a vastly larger scale than the city had ever seen previously, and one which, in general, was more systematic.

This more systematic mode of patronage was used to generate specific meaning of the structures that were built by inserting them into the city at specific locations. Building Rome was by necessity a piecemeal and additive process. That is monuments are inserted gradually into the urban fabric, only over a long period of time, so that the fabric accumulates denser and denser associations over time.

By its very nature, a city like Rome could not be planned or re-planned from scratch. Topographical irregularities, constant and continual use, competing demands from different interest groups, to name only a few limitations, made a grand master plan of Rome impossible almost from the city's inception just as it still does today. In this light you might consider what took place with the rebuilding of Rome at the end of Book Five of Livy. Rome's long history, however, offered a wide spectrum of patrons, building types and locales and the like, which allowed specific urban interventions to be calculated for maximum effect. And since time immemorial architectural patrons in Rome had carefully selected exactly where they built their buildings.

Even if they could have, Augustus and his architects wouldn't have wanted to rebuild the city from scratch because by carefully inserting their projects into the existing urban fabric, their buildings could generate a rich array of meanings and associations. The Augustan program needed to be linked to the past and one way to do this was to build or rebuild at particular sites in much the same way. Though Augustus was perhaps the greatest master of using Rome this way to his own ends, this mode of associative siting was truly a Republican mode of architectural design. As we saw last week, Livy shapes his history of the Republic around specific sites. He shows that there was in Rome, a sense of place, and if there is the slightest grain of truth in Camillis's speech in Livy, the importance of place would seem to date back to Rome's earliest history. Thus, in his approach to architecture as in other areas, Augustus turned back to Republican roots, but transformed them to his own ends. Thank you and have a good morning.

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Created: 10 Feb. 1997 Last Modified: 10 feb. 1997