- We're standing in the marvelous
new museum that was designed
by Richard Meier to hold
the Ara Pacis.
One of the most important
monuments from Augustan Rome.
- Ara Pacis means Altar of Peace.
Augustus was the first emperor of Rome.
- And the person who established the Pax Romana
that is the Roman Peace.
The event that prompted
the building of this altar to peace,
under Augustus, was Augustus'
triumphal return from military
campaigns in what is now Spain and France.
- And when he returned, the senate
vowed to create an altar commemorating
the peace that he established in the Empire.
And apparently on July 4th in the year 13
the sacred precinct was marked out
on which the altar itself would be built.
It's really kind of wonderful
because today it's July 4th, 2012.
- Now we're talking about the Ara Pacis
but of course this has been reconstructed
from many, many fragments that were discovered
some in the 17th century, mostly
in the 20th century.
- Actually it's a small miracle that
we've been able to reconstruct this at all
it had been lost to memory.
- The remains of it lay under someone's palace
when it was recognized what these fragments
were it because really important to
excavate them and to reconstruct the altar.
- That was finally done under Mussolini,
the fascist leader in the years leading up
to the second world war and during the
second world war.
And that was important to Mussolini
because Mussolini identified himself with Augustus,
the first emperor of Rome.
Mussolini was very much trying to reestablish
a kind of Italian empire.
We should talk a little bit about what an altar is.
- Sure, when we talk about the Altar
really what we are looking at is the walls of
the precinct around what is in the middle
of the Altar where sacrifices would have occurred.
- The Altar itself is interesting and important when
we think about Augustus.
Augustus is establishing a centralized
power.
Rome had been since its earliest founding years
when it was under the rule of kings,
it had been controlled by the senate.
It had been a republic.
- That's right. And a senate was basically
a group of the leading elder citizens of Rome.
So Rome was a republic and it really was
a republic until Julius Caesar, who was
the dictator and Augustus' uncle.
And then Caesar is assassinated,
there's civil war, and then
peace is established by Augustus.
- Right. Augustus, whose real name was Octavian,
was given the term Augustus as a kind of
honorific as a way of representing his power.
And it's interesting the kind of politics that
Augustus involved himself with.
He gave great power back to the senate,
but by doing so he established real and central
authority for himself.
- He made himself princeps, or
first among equals. But of course,
he controlled everything.
- He also held the title of Pontificus Maximus,
that is the head priest of the state religion
and so he held tremendous power.
- Now don't forget too, that his uncle,
Julius Caesar, had been made a god,
and so he also represented himself
as the son of a god.
- And so the idea of establishing this altar
has a political as well as spiritual significance.
- He's looking back to the golden age
of Greece, of the 5th century B.C.,
but he's also looking back to the Roman Republic.
He's reestablishing some of the ancient rituals
of traditional roman religion.
He's embracing traditional Roman values.
- But even as he's doing that,
he's remaking Rome radically.
He's changing Rome from a city of brick
to a city of marble, and the Ara Pacis
is a spectacular example of that.
- And when we look closely at the Ara Pacis
what we're gonna see is that this
speaks to the sense of a "Golden Age" that
Augustus brought about in the Roman Empire.
- One of the most remarkable elements
of the Ara Pacis is all of the highly decorative
relief carving in the lower frieze.
- And that goes all the way around
it apparently shows more than 50 different
species of plants; they're very
natural in that we can identify these species
but they're also highly abstracted
and they form these beautiful, symmetrical,
and linear patterns.
- There is a real order that's given to the
complexity of nature here.
Let me just describe quickly what I'm seeing:
this massive, elegant acanthis leaf
which is a native plant,
which were made famous in Corinthian capitols.
And almost like a candelabra,
growing up from it,
we see these tendrils of all kinds of plants
that spiral.
- And there're also animal forms
within these leaves and plants,
we find frogs and lizards and birds.
- And the carving is quite deep,
so that there's this sharp contrast between
the brilliance of the external marble and
then the shadows that are cast.
It seems to lift off the surface.
- And art historians interpret all this
as a symbol of fertility,
of the abundance of the Golden Age
that Augustus brought about.
- We also see that same pattern
repeated in the plasters
that frame these panels.
And then we also have meander,
that moves horizontally around
the entire exterior.
And it's above that meander that we see
the narrative friezes.
- These panels relate, again, to this Golden Age
that Augustus establishes.
These refer back to Aeneas, Rome's founder,
and Augustus' ancestor.
We see other allegorical figures
representing Rome and peace.
- We have to be a little bit careful
when we try to characterize what
precisely is being represented.
There are lots of conflicting interpretations.
- And these allegorical or mythological scenes
appear on the front and back of the altar,
and then on the sides of the altar
we see a procession.
- We've walked around the outer wall,
and we're now looking at
a panel that's actually
in quite good condition.
But that doesn't mean
we really know what's going on.
- No, there's a lot of argument
about what the figure in the center
represents.
Some art historians think this
figure represents Venus.
Some think it represents the figure of peace,
some the figure or Tellus, or Mother Earth.
In any case, she is clearly
a figure that suggests fertility
and abundance.
- She's beautifully rendered;
look at the way the drapery clings
to her torso so closely
as to really reveal the flesh underneath,
like the goddesses on the Parthenon
on the Acropolis in Greece.
- And on her lap sit two children,
one of whom offers her some fruit.
There's fruit on her lap.
On either side of her sit two
mythological figures who
art historians think represent the
winds of the Earth and the sea.
- Well, look at the way the drapes
that they're holding whip up,
creating these beautiful,
almost halos around their bodies.
- And at her feet,
we see an ox and sheep,
so there's a sense of harmony,
of peace and fertility.
- And that must have been such
a rare thing in the ancient world.
- Well, Augustus reigns after decades
of civil war, after the assassination
of Julius Caesar.
So I think there's a powerful sense
that this was the Golden Age.
- So let's walk to the sides now
and take a look at the procession.
The frieze moves from the
back wall of the precinct,
up towards the very front, on both sides.
And the figures are also facing
towards the main staircase.
- Art historians are not really clear what
event is being depicted here--
- Art historians aren't clear
about any of this, are we?
- No. [laughter]
Uh, there are a couple of
posibilities that have been raised.
One is that what we're seeing is
the procession that would have taken place
at the time the altar was inaugurated.
The figures that we see here are priests,
and we can identify those figures
because of the veils on their heads.
And there also seem to be members
of Augustus' family,
although their identities are not
quite firmly established.
- We think we know which figure
is Augustus, although the marble
itself is not in especially
good condition, and we've lost
the front of his body.
And we also think we can identify
one of his most important ministers.
- And that would be Agrippa.
If we think about this as looking back
to the frieze on the parthenon
from the Golden Age of Greece,
those figures are all ideally beautiful,
they don't represent anyone specific
so much as the Athenian people, generally.
- But these are portraits.
- That's right, and we can't
always identify them for certain,
but they really are specific individuals
on a specific date,
taking part in a specific event.
- It's interesting to think about it
because of course, throughout the
Republic, portraiture in stone
was something the Romans
were extremely good at.
And so it doesn't surprise
me that they would not
look to the idealized, so mush as
look to the specific.
- We also notice those differences
in the depth of the carving;
some figures are represented
in high relief, other figures that
are supposed to be in the background
are represented in low relief.
So there's a real illusion of
space and of a crowd here
at the procession.
- Another way that the specificity
of the Romans is expressed, is
through the inclusion of children.
This is a sacred event,
and a formal event,
and yet there are children
doing what children do;
that is to say they're not
always paying attention.
- There are a couple of interpretations
that have been offered about
the presence of children here.
Augustus was actually worried about
the birth rate and passed laws
that encouraged marriage and
the birth of children.
It originally was painted –
we would have seen pinks and
blues and greens – and
it's very difficult to imagine that when
we look at the marble today.
- Well, it's true. Especially in
Meier's building which is
so stark and modern,
it's almost a little garish
to imagine how brightly
painted this would have been –
they were pretty bright!
- They were. So one of the
things that Augustus said of
himself was that he found
Rome a city of brick, and he left it
a city of marble.
Augustus created an imperial city,
and here we are 2000 years later
in the Rome that Augustus created.