CHAPTER 1: _Prehistoric Italy__The Mute Stones Speak: The Story of Archaeology in Italy

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[Illustration: (inside front and back covers)]

[Illustration]

THE

MUTE

STONES

SPEAK

[Illustration]

THE STORY

ARCHAEOLOGY

ITALY

PAUL MacKENDRICK

ST MARTIN’S PRESS · NEW YORK

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

proofreading which saved me from much error; and to Frank E. Brown, who

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

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

-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------

-----+------------+------------+-----|------+-----|------+-------------

850 |Benacci I | | | | | |

-----+------------+------------+-----|------+-----|------+-------------

800 | |Early | | | | |

| | Etruscans | v | v |

-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------

-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------

-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------

-----+----|-------+------------+------------+------------+-------------

600 | | | | | Carth. |

| v | | | Empire. |

-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------

550 | | | | |

-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------

-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------

450 | | | | | ware

-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------

400 |La Tène | | | |

-----+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------

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.

+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+

+---------------+---------+-------+----------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------+

| Milocca | + + | | -- | | | | 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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_ |

| | | | | |

| | | | +--------------+ |

| | | | | | |

| Vipsania === TIBERIUS Drusus I === Antonia II Antonia I === L. Domitius |

| | | +--+------+ |

| | | | | |

| | | ¦ 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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_

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