Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace), 13-9 B.C.E. (Rome)

Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace), 13-9 B.C.E.

Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris & Dr. Steven Zucker

On Smarthistory: http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/ara-pacis.html

On Khan Academy:

- 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.