Prof: Good morning
everyone.
We are finally there.
 
We are finally at the
Colosseum, the very icon of
Rome.
 
And because I think of the
Colosseum as the very icon of
Rome,
I've called today's lecture
"The Creation of an Icon:
The Colosseum and Contemporary
Architecture in Rome."
 
But before we discuss the
Colosseum, I want to say a few
words, a few more words,
about Nero, the last of the
Julio-Claudian emperors.
 
And I show you a portrait of
Nero here, ensconced in his
Domus Aurea, with the Fourth
Style wall of Fabullus behind
him.
 
And I wanted to just say,
and bring your attention to the
fact,
that it really is quite amazing
that we have the names of so
many of Nero's artists and
architects.
 
And that can only attest to the
fact that he must have gathered
around him truly the greatest
artists of the day,
artists whose accomplishments
were so superb that their names
had been recorded for posterity
at a time when very few artists
and architects names are
recorded.
And I just want to remind you
of that group.
Think, of course,
of the painter of Nero,
the man who was responsible for
painting the Third Style walls
of Nero's Domus Aurea,
Fabullus himself,
and who also appears to have
been the innovator of the Fourth
Style of Roman wall painting.
 
There was also Zenodorus,
who was the most famous bronze
caster of his day,
a Greek artist of great renown,
whom Nero hired to make his
colossal statue,
the colossal statue 125 feet
tall, out of bronze,
that depicted Nero in the guise
of the sun god Sol,
and a statue that was referred
to as "The Colossus."
And lastly, but not least by
any stretch of the imagination,
were the two architects of
Nero, Severus and Celer--
Roman architects we
believe--Severus and Celer,
who were responsible for the
Domus Aurea itself,
for all the architectural
innovations and experimentations
at the Domus Aurea.
 
And it was they who we believe
were the creators of the
remarkable octagonal room:
as I mentioned last time,
probably the most extraordinary
room we've seen thus far this
semester,
and one that's going to have
lasting impact on later Roman
buildings and complexes.
So the octagonal room,
and also I mentioned to you
other things in the villa,
including a banqueting hall
with a revolving ceiling.
 
So these men,
also great architectural
innovators.
 
So when Nero is forced to
commit suicide in 68,
we have to ask ourselves,
what happened to those artists?
What happened to those
innovations after Nero was
discredited?
 
And I mentioned also last time
that when Nero committed
suicide,
when he was discredited,
he received an official
damnatio memoriae from
the Senate,
a damnation of his memory,
which meant that his portraits
could be,
and were encouraged to be,
destroyed,
and the same with his buildings.
 
So what is going to happen to
the evolution of Roman
architecture when one of its
greatest patrons,
someone who encouraged the
greatest architects and artists
of the day,
when he and his memory are
annihilated and his buildings
are destroyed?
What is going to happen to
architectural innovation?
That's the main question we
need to ask ourselves today,
as we look at the buildings
that were commissioned by his
successors,
by members of the Flavian
dynasty--Vespasian,
Titus and ultimately Domitian.
We'll talk about Vespasian
today, a bit on Titus,
and then more on Titus and
Domitian on Tuesday.
What happens to these
innovations when they begin to
take over and when they begin to
commission buildings?
And we're going to see it's
mixed.
We're going to see a certain
move back toward a conservative
vision,
but we're also going to see
that Nero's innovations live on,
and that's the most exciting
piece of this particular Flavian
puzzle,
as we shall see.
 
So we see again Nero here.
 
And when Nero died in 68 A.D.,
what happened was not only that
he received a damnatio
memoriae,
but there were no other
Julio-Claudians to succeed him,
and Rome and the Empire were
plunged,
once again, into a very serious
civil war,
a civil war that was as
profoundly troubling as the
civil war that had followed
Caesar's death --
Caesars death,
as you know,
in 44 B.C.
 
And what emerged after this
civil war,
or during this civil war,
was one of the most complicated
and difficult years in Rome's
history,
the year 68 to 69,
during which Rome had four
emperors,
not co-emperors,
as Rome was to have much later
in its history,
but competing emperors,
in very quick succession,
some of them holding onto power
for only a few months.
These men were Galba,
G-a-l-b-a, whose portrait you
see on a coin in the upper left;
Galba who becomes emperor right
after Nero's death.
 
And you can see him in a
no-nonsense, realistic portrait
on that coin in the upper left.
 
He is succeeded very soon after
by a man by the name of Otho,
O-t-h-o.
 
You see him on the gold coin on
the right.
Otho who saw Nero as a soul
mate and had himself rendered
very much with a Neronian
hairstyle, as you can see.
And then third,
a man by the name of Vitellius,
V-i-t-e-l-l-i-u-s,
Vitellius who seems to have had
more chins than any other
emperor in the history of Rome,
as you can see in this
wonderful portrait now in
Copenhagen.
 
And then ultimately Vespasian,
V-e-s-p-a-s-i-a-n,
Vespasian, who was the only one
of these four who was able to
hold onto power long enough to
create a new dynasty:
a new dynasty that he called
after his family name--
Flavius was his family
name--the so-called Flavian
dynasty.
 
And fortune was on his side,
because he had two sons to
succeed him, Titus and Domitian;
and because he had two sons to
succeed him, he was able to
create a quite successful
dynasty, as we shall see,
that had lasting power.
So this is our second main
imperial dynasty,
the Flavian dynasty,
as opposed to the Augustan and
Julio-Claudian dynasty.
 
Now Vespasian came to power in
a civil war,
and like Augustus before him,
he recognized that although
coming to power in a civil war
could give you the authority
that you needed to govern,
it didn't give you the
legitimacy.
 
It was very important in the
eyes of the Romans to have had
an important foreign victory,
to give your dynasty
legitimacy.
 
Augustus came to power after
his civil war with Mark Antony,
but he looked to his victory
over the Parthians,
in the eastern part of the
Empire, to give his reign
legitimacy.
 
Vespasian does the same thing.
 
He comes to power in a civil
war.
He beats back other Romans.
 
So he has to look elsewhere for
legitimacy, and he also looks
east.
 
He looks specifically to Judea,
and he sends his son in,
his son Titus in,
to do war against Jerusalem,
and Titus was victorious in the
early 70s A.D.,
in this very important Jewish
War, that I'll have more to say
about later today and also
especially on Tuesday.
So Vespasian also is a--with
his son Titus--
is a victor in a foreign war,
and that becomes the basis of
their right to rule,
and we'll see references to
those Jewish Wars,
in their art,
even in our conversation today.
 
I also want to say with regard
to Vespasian,
not only was he a great
military strategist,
but he also seems to have been
an extremely shrewd politician,
someone who recognized that you
could use architecture in the
service of ideology--
and that's in fact what we're
going to see him doing today--
and he starts this from the
very beginning of his reign.
 
I go back here to--and we'll
look at it a number of times
today;
it really is going to loom
large in today's discussion--the
site plan of Nero's Domus Aurea
that we looked at last time.
 
And you'll remember the
location of the Golden House of
Nero,
up on the Esquiline Hill,
the only part of it that still
survives,
the so-called Esquiline Wing,
which you can see there.
And here, the great artificial
lake.
The Colossus by Zenodorus,
located over there.
And you can see the way those
are deployed in that 300 to 350
acres of area that Nero had his
architects build up.
Vespasian, as he thinks about
how to move forward,
with architecture and to begin
to commission buildings,
the first thing that strikes
him, very wisely,
is he does not want to
associate himself with Nero;
in fact, he wants to
disassociate himself with Nero,
who has now been damned.
 
But he looks back at the
Julio-Claudians and he
recognizes that there is some
merit in linking himself with
them,
and quite specifically with
Claudius,
who was the best--after,
in addition to Augustus--
was the best of the more recent
lot,
and Claudius was made into a
god at his death.
 
So he looks to Claudius,
and he notices the fact that
there is a Temple of Claudius
that was begun on this very
property by Claudius' wife,
his last wife,
Agrippina the Younger--
the woman with the poisoned
mushrooms--
Agrippina the Younger,
who also, you'll recall,
was the mother of Nero.
And Agrippina the Younger had
begun, after Claudius' death and
divinization,
a temple in honor of Claudius.
Nero, who had no particular
affection for his mother,
and as you'll remember had her
murdered,
decided that he didn't want any
part of her building project
either,
and put a stop to it;
especially when he decided that
he had other plans for this
particular area of Rome,
namely to build his pleasure
palace.
 
So Nero stops construction--he
doesn't destroy the building but
he stops construction on it--and
just leaves it as it is.
The light bulb goes on for
Vespasian,
and Vespasian says to himself:
"The best way that I can
use architecture to make a
connection,
to make a link between myself
and the Julio-Claudians,
especially Claudius,
is to finish the Temple of
Claudius that Agrippina
began."
And that's exactly what he sets
out to do, and he does this at
the very beginning of his reign.
 
We give a date of A.D.
 
70 to the so-called Temple of
Divine Claudius,
or as it is often referred to,
the Claudianum in Rome,
and you see again the location
of that Claudianum right here.
Now all that survives of this
building today is its platform,
and I'm going to show you some
details of that platform in a
moment: a tall,
great platform,
like the platforms of the
sanctuaries that we looked at
earlier this semester,
upon which the temple rested.
All that survives is part of
that platform.
And what I show you first here
is a restored view that comes
from the Ward-Perkins textbook,
where you can get a very good
sense of what this platform
looked like.
It was a two-storied platform,
as I think you can see very
well.
 
It had barrel-vaulted chambers.
 
It was made out of concrete;
barrel-vaulted chambers made
out of concrete.
 
And then, on the front,
there were doorways at the
bottom and windows on the second
tier.
And the facing,
the facing for the concrete was
travertine,
cut stone travertine,
which should immediately ring a
bell,
because you'll remember that it
was cut stone travertine that
was also used for Claudius'
harbor at Portus,
and also for the Porta Maggiore
in Rome.
And you'll remember also the
intriguing combination of
rusticated masonry and smooth
masonry for those two Claudian
buildings.
 
The same is true here.
 
So when Agrippina made a
decision to put up a building
honoring her husband,
after his death,
a temple that would be to him
as a divus,
she turns back to the style
that he himself seems to have
favored,
this combination of rusticated
and finished masonry,
to use for that building.
And I think this underscores
the point that I made last time.
This choice of style,
of this rusticated masonry
style, is not something that
happened by happenstance.
It is likely because of
Claudius' own predilection as a
patron,
so that when Agrippina decided
how it would be best to honor
him architecturally,
she wanted to honor him in the
style that he himself liked.
So she uses again this
combination of rusticated and
finished masonry.
 
I can show you again some
preserved sections of the podium
of the Temple of Divine Claudius
that will make this even
clearer.
 
Before I do--and you see it on
the right-hand side of the
screen--
just to remind you,
at the left,
of some of the great podia that
we looked at earlier this
semester.
And since the exam is coming
up, there's no time like the
present to see if you know your
stuff.
Can anyone identify this podium
here on the left-hand side of
the screen?
 
Student:  Is that the
Sanctuary of Jupiter Anxur?
Prof: Excellent.
 
The Sanctuary of Jupiter Anxur
at Terracina;
that's the podium.
 
And you'll remember what was
characteristic of it is that it
was made out of concrete.
 
It was faced with opus
incertum.
It had travertine at the
corners and over the arches,
and it had lateral arches,
as well as others,
to allow the free flow of
space.
So this idea of these great
concrete podiums that served as
the base for sanctuaries,
it's the same idea here.
We see again a podium that also
has arches, as you can see,
and then on the front of those
arches, in this case,
great pilasters.
 
And if you look at those
pilasters very carefully--
and again it's done out of
travertine in this case--
when you look at those very
carefully,
you see something very
interesting here,
that makes these slightly
different from the other two
that we saw.
 
Because you can see that the
capital is finished;
you can see the upper part of
the pilaster;
and then if you look very--and
then below that,
of course, you see these
rusticated blocks.
But if you look at the--in
between each of those rusticated
blocks,
very carefully--and I'll show
you a better image in a moment
where you can see this even more
clearly--
you will see that part of the
pilaster emerges in between each
of those rusticated blocks,
giving us even more the sense
that that finished pilaster is
somehow inside the rusticated
blocks,
waiting to emerge,
in a very interesting way.
And we could psychoanalyze
Claudius.
We've talked about his past and
how he was not--he was ignored
as a child, and he was shunted
aside because he stammered and
so on.
 
One could go very far and say
that's Claudius waiting inside
to emerge sometime;
it's like a cocoon that allows
the butterfly to emerge at some
point later in life.
We could try that.
 
I don't know whether you would
buy that.
But it's one way in which one
can think about this sort of
thing.
 
But clearly,
whatever it meant,
if it was just to point to his
antiquarian interest,
his interest in more
old-fashioned stone construction
at this particular point,
it does seem to have something
to do with the particular
personality of this particular
patron.
 
Here's another--here's just
comparing the podium of the
Claudianum to the Porta Maggiore
in Rome,
just to remind you of the
rusticated columns there,
the rusticated drums of these
engaged columns,
and then at the uppermost part
the way in which the upper part
of the column and the capital
are dressed smooth and seem to
emerge.
 
And that's when I first made
that point about the likelihood
that the column--
that we're supposed to read
this as the column completed
inside,
just waiting to break free;
and we see the same thing,
but a further elaboration of
that here.
And I think you can see that
much better in this particular
detail, where you can again see
the entire pilaster behind the
rusticated masonry.
 
You see the finished capital,
the finished entablature up
above,
and then you can make out the
entire pilaster all the way down
to the base,
and then superimposed,
or so it seems--
it's not really superimposed,
it's just carved in this way--
but in between those,
these rusticated blocks.
Again giving me,
at least, the sense that the
pilaster is done inside,
it's just waiting somehow for
its debut out of this travertine
block.
Now what about the rest of the
complex?
We don't know exactly,
but we have some general sense
that it is quite likely that it
was similar to the sanctuaries
that we looked at earlier,
the Sanctuary of Jupiter Anxur
at Terracina,
and Hercules at Tivoli.
And, in fact,
we do have some fragments of
this, on what is called the
Marble Plan of Rome.
I've referred to that before,
the so-called Forma
Urbis--
Forma Urbis,
F-o-r-m-a, new word,
U-r-b-i-s, the Forma
Urbis--which was a marble
plan of Rome,
that was made in the early
third century A.D.,
which was housed in a building
that I'm going to show you later
today.
 
And there are fragments of this
structure there that give us a
sense of what it looked like in
antiquity.
So we would've had the podium.
 
It's mis-restored here;
you have to imagine the two
tiers that we just looked at
before, not this sort of thing.
But those beneath,
serving as the podium,
or the decoration of the
podium, and then above a large
rectangular space with a temple,
pushed not quite to the edge of
the back wall,
but toward one of the walls,
dominating the space in front
of it,
as you can see.
 
We don't know exactly what that
temple looked like,
but it was probably a fairly
conventional temple,
on the order of so many that
we've looked at this semester.
What's interesting about this,
that's different from the other
sanctuaries that we saw,
is that in the rectangular
space above they seem to have
planted a lot of bushes,
as you can see here,
and that becomes a very popular
way of decorating these kinds of
complexes in the Flavian period.
We'll see another example later
today.
The greatest,
the most famous building that
was put up by Vespasian,
in the Flavian period,
was the so-called Colosseum,
which he began in the year 70
A.D.: so contemporaneous to the
construction of the Claudianum.
But it wasn't finished until
after his death--he died in 79;
he was emperor for nine years;
died of natural causes--it
wasn't completed until his son
Titus became emperor,
and Titus completed it and
dedicated it in the year 80.
We see a view of the Colosseum
from above, a Google Earth image
of the Colosseum,
from above.
It was a very large
amphitheater that could hold
50,000 people.
 
It was made of concrete,
as we shall see.
And this aerial view is very
helpful because it shows its
scale, its size.
 
It shows that in Rome today it
serves as a kind of giant
traffic circle,
as you can see here.
The Romans love the Colosseum,
because it is an icon of their
civilization,
but at the same time they hate
it, and they're always saying,
"Would that we could just
get rid of it,
so that traffic would be
smoother in this part of
Rome."
And, in fact,
there was a scheme a number of
years ago now--
probably several decades ago by
now--
there was a Texan who was
actually interested in buying
the Colosseum and bringing it to
Texas >
 
to display on his ranch.
 
And fortunately--Italy gave
some thought to that,
but they decided obviously that
they were not going to part with
the Colosseum--
and fortunately it has stayed
intact--
and I don't think the Romans
would have been too happy about
that,
at the end of the day,
despite the fact that they
curse it out on a fairly regular
basis.
But we see it here,
and it's a useful view because
it shows it in conjunction to so
many of the other buildings and
complexes we've been talking
about thus far this semester.
We're looking back from it,
toward the later Arch of
Constantine, that we'll look at,
at the very end of the course;
the Palatine Hill in the upper
left;
the Roman Forum beginning over
here, with the Temple of Venus
and Roma that was done in the
second century;
we'll talk about that also
later.
Here the great Via dei Fori
Imperiali, designed at the
behest of Mussolini.
 
And on the right side,
of course, the Imperial Fora,
with the Forum of Julius Caesar
and the Forum of Augustus that
we have also looked at this
semester.
So here you see it here.
 
And I'm going to show you once
again the site plan of Nero.
Because it's important to
know--one of the most important
things to know about this
monument is where it was sited.
And where it was sited shows us
again how incredibly shrewd
Vespasian was when it came to
establishing a political agenda,
and when it came to trying to
court the favor of the public.
He decided to raze--I mentioned
this before--
he razed to the ground Nero's
Domus Aurea: destroyed it,
destroyed it,
despite the fact that it had
been done by these great
architects,
despite the fact that it had
revolving ceilings.
It would've been a really cool
place for him to live
himself--think about it--he and
his dynasty.
But he decided to raze it to
the ground, for political
reasons, to discredit Nero;
and he hoped to gain favor with
the populace.
 
And what he did,
smartly, was to say,
"What I am going to do
with this property?
I'm going to return this
property to the Roman people.
I'm going to build on it
something that they would really
like to have."
 
So what he does is he fills in
the artificial lake,
and he uses the area on which
the artificial lake was
originally located to build the
Colosseum;
he puts the Colosseum right on
the location of the artificial
lake.
 
And the message is clear.
 
What did the Roman people want
more than anything else?
They wanted another--they
wanted an amphitheater where
they could go,
a large amphitheater,
where 50,000 of them could pack
in and watch animal and
gladiatorial combats.
 
There is no better way to gain
favor with the Roman populace
than to build a building like
this.
And to build it on top of
Nero's pleasurable artificial
lake--pleasurable only for
himself--was a huge coup on the
part of Vespasian.
 
And we see that happening here,
and right in proximity to the
Temple of Divine Claudius.
 
Notice the fact also,
the location of the Colosseum,
very close to the Colossus.
 
The name of the Colosseum was
really the Flavian Amphitheater,
after the family name Flavius,
the Flavian Amphitheater.
That's how it was known in
antiquity.
But it came quickly to be known
as the Colosseum,
not because of its colossal
scale, which is what most people
think,
but because of the Colossus,
because of the statue of
Zenodorus that stood nearby.
And, by the way,
the other thing that Vespasian
did was to have the features of
Nero erased,
on that portrait,
and to make them into the more
generic features of the sun god
Sol himself.
So the statue continued to
stand, but it was fixed up,
it was redone,
remade, so that it would look
like Sol and not like Nero.
 
But again the Colosseum takes
its name from that.
So if you are in any--we used
to have a Colosseum here,
in New Haven--but if you are,
in the future,
in any arenas that are called
Colosseums,
you'll know that that name goes
back to the Colossus of Nero,
the Colossus of Sol,
not to the Colosseum itself,
ultimately.
 
Although I think those who
named those arenas were
obviously thinking about the
Colosseum in Rome.
So the location of the
Colosseum, extremely important,
and a political statement on
Vespasian's part.
And we see this man,
this emperor of Rome,
Vespasian, very cleverly using
architecture to further his own
personal and political agenda.
 
This view, also this plan--a
cross-section and axonometric
view that all come from
Ward-Perkins--
are also very helpful in us
getting a sense of this
building.
 
And I think you can see very
quickly that,
like all other amphitheaters,
it had an oval or an elliptical
plan.
 
It was built up with concrete:
a series of barrel and annular
vaults.
 
And that elliptical plan
included essentially radiating
barrel vaults that--
barrel vaulted ramps and
passageways,
and a series of annular vaulted
corridors that provide lateral
circulation and that are
buttressed by the thrust of the
seating.
So it's a scheme that we know
already from the Amphitheater at
Pompeii.
 
We know it also particularly
well from the Theater of
Marcellus in Rome.
 
The Theater of Marcellus in
Rome was just down the street
practically--I'll show you an
aerial view later to show you
its proximity to the Colosseum;
it's not right next to it,
but it's within striking
distance.
And clearly the experiments,
the architectural experiments
in the Augustan period,
at the Theater of Marcellus,
were very important in terms of
this particular design;
it basically follows the same
general scheme.
The major difference,
of course, is that since the
Theater of Marcellus was a
theater,
it was semi-circular in plan,
whereas amphitheater
architecture is always
elliptical in plan,
and that is the case also for
the Colosseum.
If we look at the--I mentioned
that there are annular vaulted
corridors.
 
We're looking at the corridor
on the first floor of the
Colosseum.
 
And you can see very quickly
that it is of course made of
concrete.
 
How else would you get these
annular vaults that you see
here?
 
They're very well preserved;
they're easy to study.
And you can see that those
annular vaults rest on great
stone piers, these stone piers
made out of travertine.
Again, you can see that
extremely well in this
particular view.
 
That's the first floor.
 
On the second floor,
however, we see something
entirely innovative,
and that is the introduction of
a new form of vault that we
haven't seen before.
This is the so-called groin or
ribbed vault--spelled exactly as
you think it would be,
g-r-o-i-n;
the groin vault or the ribbed
vault.
And you get--when you take two
barrel vaults and make them
intersect, the angles that you
get create this kind of groin
vault;
and I show you a diagram here,
which makes that clear,
I think, to you.
And then a view of the second
story corridors,
to show you these actual groin
vaults,
these ribbed vaults that you
see here,
which are very interesting and
add something,
I think, to these structures.
 
And they become very,
very popular.
After they begin to be used in
the Flavian period,
they become very popular,
and we'll see the proliferation
of groin vaults,
from this time on.
So we talk--I talked at the
beginning about what are the
innovations of Nero's Domus
Aurea continued under the
Flavians?
 
Well we know that the
architects of Nero did not use
groin vaults,
but they were very interested
in the free flow of space,
and that interest in the free
flow of space continues here,
as does experimentation with
concrete,
and we see it in the use of
these groin vaults on the second
story of the Colosseum in Rome.
When you visit the Colosseum in
Rome today, you'll note that it
does seem quite stripped bare,
unfortunately.
But it's important for you to
be aware of the fact that it too
was highly decorated,
as so many other Roman
buildings.
 
And we do have engravings that
were made,
engravings and paintings,
that were made when the
Colosseum was in better
condition,
and when some of that stucco
and painted decoration still
existed.
 
And I show you two drawings
here that give you some sense of
that,
and you can see that all the
surface was covered with stucco,
and then with figural
decoration, all of which was
painted,
both the vaults themselves,
as you can see above,
and the corridors,
all of that very elaborately
decorated in ancient Roman
times.
This is obviously an exterior
view of the Colosseum in Rome.
The exterior of the building is
actually quite well preserved,
and I think as you gaze at it,
you certainly are struck by the
similarity of the scheme to the
scheme of the Theater of
Marcellus in Rome.
 
In this case,
the Theater of Marcellus
appears to have had three
stories, only two of which are
currently persevered.
 
This had four stories,
four tiers, as you can see
here.
 
Again, the structure itself is
concrete;
the facing is travertine.
 
We see these great arches,
these great arcades,
just as we saw them in the
Theater of Marcellus.
And then also,
just like the scheme of the
Theater of Marcellus,
columns that are placed in
between those arches on the
first three stories.
The columns in between those
arches on the first three
stories, just as the Theater of
Marcellus, have no structural
purpose whatsoever.
 
They do not hold the building
up, as they would have in a
Greek or Etruscan context.
 
The building is held up by the
barrel and annular vaults that
are made out of concrete.
 
So these columns have no
structural purpose whatsoever,
and they are here essentially
as the icing on the cake,
as ornamentation or decoration,
but ornamentation or decoration
that has certain meaning to it:
a meaning that certainly
conjures up ancient Greece.
 
Because you can see here that
they have used all the Greek
orders: the Doric order,
the Ionic order in the second
story,
the Corinthian order--all of
these are engaged columns--
the Corinthian order in the
third story,
and then in the fourth story we
see they used pilasters;
these are Corinthian pilasters
once again.
 
So Doric, Ionic,
Corinthian, Corinthian again at
the uppermost part;
columns that have no structure,
that are used here as pure
decoration, but decoration that
again has an ideological
connection.
At the very top you can see the
detail of the pilasters.
Between them you see some
travertine blocks that are
brackets that stick out.
 
Those were to support the
wooden poles that you'll
remember from our conversation
about the Amphitheater at
Pompeii,
supported the awning that was
used when there was rain.
 
Two more views of the exterior
of the Colosseum,
a little bit closer up,
where you can see very well
here the Doric order in the
first story,
the travertine facing,
the Ionic order in the second
story,
and then the Corinthian engaged
columns here,
and the Corinthian pilasters,
and then also the brackets,
extremely well preserved,
on the Colosseum in Rome.
 
The interior is a different
story entirely.
It is not as well preserved as
the exterior.
It is fascinating however to
see.
And I think you can tell from
this particular view of the
interior, where,
as always, we have so many
tourists inside the Colosseum.
 
I think they are very useful
because they give you a very
good sense of scale,
of how truly enormous this
building is.
 
They also show you that much of
what was once there is no longer
there, in the interior of the
structure.
As we look down on it,
we can see the elliptical shape
of the arena.
 
We can see the substructures
here, all made of concrete.
The ones that are below the
arena itself were used for the
storage of props,
but also for the housing of the
animals that were brought up for
animal combat.
There were small and larger
cages down here,
and I'm going to show you what
those looked like in a moment.
So that's the location of
those, but again not in very
good condition today.
 
Even more striking is the fact
that although you can see again
the concrete substructures for
the seats on which the
cavea rested,
if you look very carefully you
will see there's only a single
cuneus that is still
preserved,
with a small number of marble
seats.
 
The whole thing was sheathed in
marble in antiquity.
All of the seats would have
been marble.
Only that small section is
preserved, and I can show you
another view where we see the
same.
Here we're looking at that one
cuneus over here,
with that one set of marble
seats, the only marble seats
that are still preserved in the
Colosseum today.
"Why is that?"
 
you ask yourselves,
and you might ask me.
The reason for that is that the
Colosseum was used as a marble
quarry,
practically from the time--not
too long after it was built,
but certainly in the
post-antique period it was used
very significantly as a marble
quarry.
 
By whom?
 
By the great princes and even
by the popes;
the popes did not hesitate to
plunge the Colosseum for the
marble that they needed for the
buildings that they were putting
up around Rome.
 
The Colosseum ended up in some
extraordinary buildings.
So it was not for naught,
but at the same time obviously
it changed the face of the
interior of the Colosseum
forever, as we can see so well
here.
Two models of what the
substructures would have looked
like in the area of the
Colosseum where the animals were
kept.
 
And they had a system of ramps
and pulleys, and they took the
animals either up the ramps or
by pulley, from these cages.
You can see they had metal
grills in front of them.
Diverse animals,
kept down here below and then
brought up when needed,
through openings in the
pavement of the arena.
 
The arena would have been paved
with concrete--we have other
examples of that elsewhere;
I'm going to show you one
today--and there would have been
holes in that,
by which you could bring the
animals up to the arena.
This is a restored view of what
the Colosseum would have--
the interior of the Colosseum
would have looked like in
antiquity when a performance
was--
when a gladiatorial performance
was taking place.
We see that what they did was
they covered over the arena with
some kind of ancient version of
Astroturf.
They planted--they put trees
that they probably--I don't
know, real or fake trees,
I'm not sure which;
props that took the shape of
mountains, as you can see here;
and then the gladiatorial--the
animal combat would take place
against that backdrop.
 
You can also see the seats,
the cavea,
the wedge-shaped sections of
those seats, the cunei;
the 50,000 people packed in for
this special event.
And then at the uppermost part
you see the awning,
or this particular artist's
rendition of the awning.
I think it's very amusing that
the artist has rendered it like
an oculus,
which is pretty unlikely that
it looked quite like that;
but I guess that's a very Roman
thing to do, so he did that.
 
But it looks probably in
antiquity quite a bit more like
the awning that we saw in the
painting in Pompeii that
represented a characteristic
awning for a Roman amphitheater.
The Colosseum,
extremely famous in its own
day, continued to be famous in
antiquity.
I show you here a coin,
the reverse of a coin of a boy
emperor by the name of Gordian
III--
you see Gordian up there--the
reverse of his coin in the early
third century A.D.,
showing the Colosseum.
So we certainly know from that,
that it was still in good
condition and being used in the
third century.
We see the outside,
with its tiers of columns.
We see something,
an event going on inside.
We see people in the seats,
and we see those poles that
supported the awning here.
 
And, most interestingly,
we see the Colossus,
which was clearly still
standing also in the third
century A.D.:
the Colossus in which the
features have been changed from
those of Nero to those of Sol,
with the rayed crown.
 
It was very easy to do that
because, as I had mentioned,
Nero had been shown originally
himself as Sol,
with the rayed crown.
 
So all they had to do was
change the features of the face.
They could leave the crown,
and that crown clearly still
there, in the third century
A.D..
But just again as a reminder
that the Colosseum gets its name
from that colossal statue that
stood next door.
And this one last view of the
Colosseum.
This is a model--which you have
on your Monument List--
a model that probably gives you
as good an idea as any of what
the exterior of the building
looked like in antiquity.
And I use it here to show you
two things.
One: That we do believe,
on the second and third
stories, there were statues;
statues placed in the niches
beneath the arches.
 
And this also shows you very
well the way in which the wooden
poles rested on the brackets,
those wooden poles to serve to
support the awning of the
structure.
Anything and everything goes on
at the Colosseum.
When I started going to the
Colosseum more years ago than I
want to say, the Colosseum was
very easy to get into.
You popped over there,
you could walk in,
in a flash;
never a problem.
It's become one of the greatest
tourist sites in Rome.
And, in fact,
a warning, if you're going to
be making your way--
I think at least one of you
mentioned to me a Spring Break
trip--
but if you're going to be
making your way to the Colosseum
anytime soon,
or in the future,
it's actually not a bad idea to
go online;
you can now go online and you
can get tickets online for
places like the Colosseum.
 
You don't need it for most
places,
but for the Vatican,
the Colosseum,
the most popular,
it's not a bad idea to get
tickets in advance,
because then you can go on the
short line,
instead of the line that you're
going to have to wait for hours
to get in.
But while you're outside,
there's always something going
on.
 
This also never used to happen,
but recently the Romans have
gotten smart about realizing
that everyone wants a photo op,
and so they supply a host of
gladiators outside the
entranceway.
 
And especially since everyone
is on line for so many hours,
you might as well have
something to do.
So they stock the place with
modern gladiators,
who are more than willing,
for a certain number of euros,
to pose in your pictures.
 
And you see a young woman here
taking her boyfriend or her
husband,
whomever, a picture of him
playing the gladiatorial role
with this sword,
as you can see.
 
And lots of fun--it's fun just
to stand there and watch
everybody posing for these
extraordinary pictures.
We saw that in the Colosseum
the substructures were very
poorly preserved.
 
And so I wanted to show you
another amphitheater where they
are well preserved,
so you can get a better sense
of what those substructures
would have looked like in
antiquity.
 
And so I take us,
back south, we go down south to
Campania once again,
to a place called Pozzuoli--and
Pozzuoli is very near to Baia,
and near to Naples,
and near to Pompeii and
Herculaneum and so on--
a town that has one of the best
preserved Roman amphitheaters
from the ancient Roman world.
 
It dates to the late first
century A.D.
And I show you a view here of
the substructures of the
amphitheater,
the Roman Amphitheater at
Pozzuoli.
 
And you can see what I mean:
the annular vaulted corridors
down below, well preserved,
as are the cages in which the
animals were kept in antiquity.
 
The grates are gone,
but the cages are still there,
as is much of the ceiling.
 
And it's actually a fun place
to wander through,
because the light effects are
incredible;
the light effects through the
openings in that ceiling,
that were the openings through
which the animals were
transported,
by ramp or by pulley,
up to the arena.
 
Here's another view where you
can also get a great sense of
these substructures,
of the places where the animals
were kept,
and also of those openings in
the ceiling that allowed them to
be brought up above.
And you can also notice very
well here the fact that the
construction--
in this case,
late first century A.D.--
is concrete faced with brick,
faced with brick.
 
And we talked about another
important part of Nero's
architectural revolution was the
fact that they began to build
buildings that were brick-faced
concrete buildings.
We talked about the fact that
that had to do with the fire,
and the decision taken that
brick was more fireproof than
stone,
and they began to use it,
and we see it being used here.
 
So another important facet of
Nero's architectural revolution
that was not lost with the
emperor's death.
And here you can see the very
well-preserved pavement of the
arena,
done in concrete,
with these openings in it,
the same openings that you saw
just before,
from down below,
through which the light came.
 
These are the openings through
which props, animals--some of
them are very small;
some of them are larger--would
allow some things to be brought
up through them.
But you can also see there was
a big open area in the center
that was also used--
covered over,
when there was an event--
but that was also there in
order to allow a freer flow,
and allow the attendants to
bring the animals up to the top.
 
So again, a very well-preserved
pavement of the arena.
And you can also see in this
view that the seats,
the cavea of the Theater
at Pozzuoli, also extremely well
preserved.
 
You can't tell here,
but the division into
cunei the same.
 
So we look to this amphitheater
to give us a better sense of
what the interior of the
Colosseum would have looked like
in ancient Roman times.
 
We talked about the Temple of
Divine Claudius.
I remind you of a model of it
here again,
and the relationship of that
Temple of Divine Claudius with
the temple,
conventional temple,
on top of a very tall podium.
 
The fact that that looked back
to the architectural
experiments,
very early on,
second, first centuries B.C.,
at the Sanctuaries of Jupiter
Anxur at Terracina,
and of Hercules Victor at
Tivoli;
it was that kind of thing that
was being looked back to.
 
And it's interesting to see
that it was that same plan,
that idea of a great open
rectangular space,
with a temple as part of it,
that was used--
and with the temple put along
one of the longer ends--
that was used by Vespasian for
his own forum in Rome,
the so-called Forum Pacis;
it's sometimes referred to as
the Templum Pacis,
because we're not actually sure
how it was used.
 
We don't think it was actually
used as a typical forum with
shops and a law court and so on,
but may have been used in a
different way,
and I'll speak to that in a
moment.
 
So we don't quite know what to
call it, and we call it either
the Forum Pacis or the Templum
Pacis.
In order to see its location,
I show you this view of all of
the Imperial Fora in Rome,
those fora that line the Via
dei Fori Imperiali,
across from the Roman Forum.
We've already looked at--here's
the tail-end,
or the side of the Roman Forum
here,
and right next to it,
two fora that we've already
discussed: The Forum of Julius
Caesar and then the Forum of
Augustus.
 
Nothing else;
this wasn't there then;
this wasn't there then.
 
But Vespasian decides to build
a forum himself,
in close proximity to the Forum
of Augustus.
In fact, it's interesting to
see that it faces--the temple is
actually on this end--so in a
sense it faces the Forum of
Augustus.
 
So another smart,
strategic move on the part--
a smart political move on the
part of Vespasian to associate
himself not just with Claudius,
a good emperor who was
divinized, but also with
Augustus,
the founder of the
Julio-Claudian dynasty and the
first emperor of Rome:
so to build his structure
facing that of Augustus'--
his temple--facing that of
Augustus'.
 
But you can see that he wants
to outdo Augustus,
so he makes his larger than
Augustus'.
This area here,
that's labeled as the Forum of
Nerva, wasn't a forum at all,
at this point,
it was a street called the
Argiletum--A-r-g-i-l-e-t-u-m.
And that street,
the Argiletum--and you can see
it labeled up there--
that street led into a part of
Rome,
a residential area of Rome,
that I've referred to before,
called the Subura, S-u-b-u-r-a.
The Subura was again a place
where there were a lot of--I've
mentioned it again;
there were there,
a lot of apartment houses,
mostly made out of wood:
rickety apartment houses that
were lived in by a large number
of people,
with lesser means.
And there were consequently
always fires there.
And you'll remember that
Augustus' architects had to
build that large precinct wall
out of peperino to
protect the Temple of Mars Ultor
from the fires that used to
break out all the time in the
Subura.
So you have to imagine this as
a street, in between the Forum
of Augustus and Vespasian's
Forum Pacis, in ancient Roman
times.
 
Also interesting is again the
plan: a rectangle with a temple
on one end, dominating the space
in front of it.
You can see that there are
columns all the way around.
There are these alcoves that
open off the center space,
and you can see they're
screened, from that center
space, also by columns.
 
We know that some exotic
materials were used here:
marble that was brought from
other parts of the world.
We saw that beginning already
under Nero -- bringing marble
from Asia Minor and Africa and
Egypt and so on,
for his buildings.
 
That also continues under the
Flavians.
So another Neronian innovation
that remains important.
We see it here.
 
We see red granite columns used
for the colonnade.
We see yellow columns from
Africa, used for the columns
that screen these alcoves from
the larger space.
And then we see white marble
for the rest.
So this combination of imported
marbles used for the Forum Pacis
in Rome.
 
The Forum Pacis no longer
survives.
You can't see any of it today.
 
We do know its location though,
and we do have a good sense of
its plan,
once again from the so-called
Forma Urbis,
from this marble map of Rome
that has a few fragments of the
Forum Pacis.
You can see one fragment here,
one fragment here,
and then a third fragment up
there.
And those fragments are enough,
when we look at those,
study those and compare those
to other buildings,
to allow a very accurate
reconstruction.
It tells us the shape of the
temple,
and it shows us,
without any question--
because one of the fragments
includes lots of this--
that this too,
like the Claudianum in Rome,
had bushes, had bushes as a
kind of garden,
that decorated the center of
the structure.
So bringing the country,
in a sense, into the city,
for these incredible complexes.
 
This is a restored view--and
you see it also on your Monument
List--of what the Forum Pacis
would have looked like in
antiquity.
 
A quite severe façade,
as it seems,
with a number of entranceways.
 
The temple pushed up--in fact,
not only pushed up against the
back wall, but part of the
colonnade that flanks it on
either side.
 
You can see the red granite
columns.
You can't see the yellow
columns that would have been
further in, screening the
alcoves from the colonnade.
You see an altar right in front
of the temple.
You see the bushes that were
part of the plantings that made
this look like a kind of garden
complex in front of the temple.
We don't actually know if it
was used as a temple.
We have no divinity that's been
associated with it.
We actually think it may have
been used as a museum,
as a museum,
and I'm going to say more about
that in a moment.
 
Here's another reconstruction.
 
This one is from Ward-Perkins.
 
You can see that it is roughly
the same as--
it is the same as the other,
with one exception,
and that is it shows an
entranceway that's made up of
three doors and a number of
columns.
This was thought,
for a very long time,
to be the case that there was
an elaborate entranceway,
with columns and projecting
entablatures,
the sort of thing that we
haven't seen yet in built
architecture,
but we did see in Second Style
Roman wall painting.
 
But that idea has been
discredited, and now people
believe it is much more likely
that the façade was very
plain.
 
The reason that this idea came
to the fore is that eventually,
when the Argiletum was filled
in with a forum by Vespasian's
second son Domitian,
Domitian did build a forum that
is in part preserved,
and which we will look at next
week I believe.
 
But that forum had on the walls
a series of columns with
projecting entablatures.
 
And that does still exist now,
or part of it does still exist.
So I think that's what
originally gave archaeologists
the idea that that was there
before, and was part of
Vespasian's complex.
 
But that seems not to have been
the case, and the reconstruction
that you have on your Monument
List is the one that you should
go by.
 
Let's get back to the whole
point about the museum,
whether this served as a kind
of museum in the time of the
Flavian emperors.
 
I mentioned the great victory
that Titus had over Jerusalem,
a victory--at least from the
Roman point of view it was
great;
obviously it was not great for
Judea, because the area was
taken over by the Romans and the
famous Jewish Temple was
destroyed.
And Titus also did not hesitate
to ramble through the--
with his men,
with his soldiers--go through
the Temple and pick and choose
what he wanted to bring back to
Rome as spoils.
 
He took the great
seven-branched candelabrum from
the temple.
 
He took the Ark of the Covenant
from the Temple;
he took a whole host of other
items from the Temple,
and he brought them back to
Rome as trophies.
And we see this famous scene on
the Arch of Titus,
an arch that Domitian put up in
honor of his brother--and we'll
look at that on Tuesday.
 
The Arch of Titus has a scene
that depicts the Roman soldiers
bringing the seven-branched
candelabrum,
and a table with other objects
on it,
from that temple,
back to Rome,
and parading with those through
an arch.
Those spoils we know were
placed by Vespasian,
by his father,
with whom he shared a joint
triumph, because of this victory
over Jerusalem;
it was placed in the Forum
Pacis, once that was built.
So it was in part a place where
he could display the spoils of
war,
because of the fact that the
legitimacy that he gained
through this conquest was so
important to his dynasty,
to the right of his dynasty to
rule,
and to the right of his sons to
rule after him.
 
So he wants to make that point
clear.
But again he's very shrewd
politically and he also wants to
make sure that the people have
access to this.
He wants to remind them when
Nero was emperor of Rome,
he had things in his villa that
he would never have dreamed of
sharing with you.
 
You weren't able to come in and
dine there and have petals and
fragrances fall on you while you
dined;
you were not allowed into this
space.
"But now you can come to
the Colosseum and you can go to
this museum.
 
And while you're in the museum,
you might as well look at these
great spoils that I captured
from Jerusalem,
that bring credit to me and
legitimacy to my dynasty."
He also took--what's also
interesting and makes this more
museum-like,
is that he also took some of
the statuary that Nero had
stolen from Greece,
when he went there to compete
in those Olympic Games and so
on,
that he had stolen from Greece,
and elsewhere,
and put up in his villa,
he also put those in the museum
and opened that collection also
to the Roman people.
 
And we even know some of the
statues that were there,
that were taken from Nero's
Domus Aurea, and put into this
museum.
 
One of them was a famous cow;
a cow that had been done by the
well-known Greek artist,
Myron, M-y-r-o-n,
the Cow of Myron.
 
And the second was an image,
a sculpted image--we're not
sure;
I don't think we know whether
it was in marble or bronze,
the original--but an image of a
reclining Nile River,
who is surrounded by sixteen
kids, who are running around,
up and down on top of him and
around him.
 
Another famous statue that was
in Nero's possession,
that gets put into what appears
to have been a very important
museum.
 
You see here another Google--an
excellent Google Earth view,
aerial view,
of part of the Roman Forum.
The Colosseum,
of course, is way over here,
and we can see the central
part, or part of the central
part of the Forum.
 
We're looking back toward the
Victor Emmanuel Monument.
We're looking back toward the
Campidoglio, as redesigned by
Michelangelo,
the oval piazza.
And, in fact,
here we can even see,
in the upper left,
the Theater of Marcellus.
So you can see that the Theater
of Marcellus was basically in a
diagonal dialogue,
in a sense, with the Colosseum,
that was located back over
here.
The reason that I show this
view to you now is to point out
also the Tabularium,
which we've already looked at.
The archive sits on the back of
the Senatorial Palace,
redesigned by Michelangelo.
 
But right in front of it there
was a temple that was put up in
honor of Vespasian,
at his death,
by his son Titus.
 
And then when Titus died only a
few years later,
also of natural causes,
his brother,
Domitian, became emperor,
and Domitian decided to
rededicate the temple to both of
them,
to Vespasian and also to Titus.
 
So it became the Temple of the
two divi,
because Titus was also
divinized at his death.
And there were statue bases
that were found,
that stood in front of this
temple,
with inscriptions indicating
that they honored those two
individuals,
and that they were depicted,
undoubtedly,
in statues in front of this
temple.
 
Only three columns of that
temple still survive;
some of the foundations as
well, of course.
And you can see it in the Roman
Forum, right near the Tabularium
in Rome.
 
If you look at it,
you can see that these are
Corinthian fluted capitals .
 
It was probably a quite
conventional temple.
But you do see that there is a
frieze that seems to represent a
number of sacrificial
implements: a libation dish and
a pitcher,
and so on and so forth.
A very large chunk of that
frieze and entablature is still
preserved today.
 
It's not with the temple but
rather in the Tabularium itself,
and I show it to you here.
 
An extremely well-preserved
section of the decorative frieze
of the Temple of Vespasian,
the Temple of Divine Vespasian
in Rome,
which you see again dates to
around 79 to 81 A.D.
 
And it's very instructive,
not only in terms of the way in
which Titus first,
and then his brother,
were thinking of honoring
members of their family,
but also in how ornamental this
is.
This is decoration that is more
richly textured than any that
we've seen thus far,
and also more richly undercut.
The artists are beginning to
use the drill to create very
deep shadows among the
decorative motifs,
to make them stand out even
more.
And you might remember--I
didn't bring it back to show
you--
but you might remember that
section that I showed you from
the Temple of Venus Genetrix in
the Forum of Julius Caesar,
where I mentioned that that had
been restored in the time of
Domitian,
second son of Vespasian,
and also in the Trajanic
period.
 
And that the very deep carving
indicated to us not only that it
had been done later,
but also the fact that the
Flavians were particularly
interested in this very
ornamental decoration,
very deeply undercut
ornamentation.
 
And we see that so well here.
 
We see also the
interesting--the variety of
motifs in this frieze,
and in the decorative part of
it.
 
And then the frieze itself is
very interesting.
If we look at the objects,
we see that they are mainly
objects that are used in ritual
sacrifice.
We see the skulls of bulls,
just as we saw them in the
inner precinct of the Ara Pacis,
one on either side.
We see a libation dish.
 
We see an axe, over here;
that's to knock out the animals.
Here's the knife to slit the
throat of the animals;
the pitcher to pour wine on an
altar;
a whip, for whatever purpose
that had;
and then over here a helmet,
as you can see.
So all of these implements that
were used in sacrifice,
regularly used in sacrifice,
arranged like a still life,
against a blank background.
 
And I don't know about you,
but when I look at this I am
reminded of some of Fourth Style
Roman wall decoration;
of the still life paintings
that we saw in the Third and the
Fourth Style,
where you have individual
objects against a blank
background.
And also the decorative nature
of this conjures up some of the
decoration that we see,
the profusion,
the almost overly decorative
element of Fourth Style Roman
wall painting.
 
And since this dates to 79 to
81, and you'll remember the
Fourth Style is 62 to 79 at
Pompeii -- but we know that the
Fourth Style continued on;
it was the Fourth Style that
was the most popular style post
79, obviously not in Pompeii or
Herculaneum, but elsewhere in
the Roman world.
So this very much in keeping;
we're seeing in architecture
something very much in keeping
vis-à-vis decoration,
as we see in Fourth Style Roman
wall painting.
The last monument that I want
to show you today is in many
respects the most important.
 
That seems like a strange thing
to say, because what could be
more important than the icon of
Rome, the Colosseum?
But when we think about it,
the Colosseum was actually a
fairly conservative building.
 
Right?
 
It goes back to the
Amphitheater at Pompeii in its
general plan,
and it is quite similar to,
in fact very similar to,
the Theater of Marcellus,
which was done at the time of
Augustus.
And Augustus was trying to
connect his reign to that of
Periclean Athens,
and was using stone
construction.
 
And the Colosseum is of stone
construction,
although it also,
of course, makes use of annular
vaults made out of concrete,
and also innovates with the new
groin vaults.
 
But for all intents and
purposes a relatively
conservative building at this
time, the Colosseum was.
The building that I'm now going
to show you was not that way at
all,
even though it's a building
that is much less well known
than the Colosseum,
and it also doesn't exist any
longer,
unfortunately.
 
And those are the Baths of
Titus.
A very important structure for
us, the Baths of Titus--the
Thermae Titi--the Baths of
Titus, that date to A.D.
80, right smack in the middle
of Titus' brief reign of 79 to
81.
 
They were put up in Rome,
and they were put up in Rome,
not surprisingly--you know the
narrative here--
not surprisingly on that land
that had earlier been
expropriated by Nero:
another instance of the Flavian
emperors giving back to the
people.
You've given them a museum,
you've given them an
amphitheater,
and now you're going to give
them a bath.
 
Next to an amphitheater,
the bath is what they wanted
most of all --
a place where they could go to
bathe,
but also hang out with their
family and friends.
 
So again, giving back to the
people what they wanted;
a wise, shrewd political move
on the part of Vespasian,
being followed by his equally
shrewd son, Titus.
The location of the Baths of
Titus was next to--
actually what you see here,
on top of the Golden House,
is actually the plan of a later
bath,
the Baths of the emperor
Trajan, which we'll look at in
the future.
 
But the smaller Baths of Titus
were put to the--I believe it
was, yes--the west of the
Esquiline Wing of the Golden
House.
 
Right just between the Golden
House and where you see
'Esquiline' written up there,
was the location of the Baths
of Titus.
 
All that survives of the Baths
of Titus is part of one wall,
a brick-faced,
concrete wall,
with some engaged columns;
that's all we have.
But the building was still
standing--
the building was still much
better preserved in the
sixteenth century,
when it was drawn by
Renaissance architects,
most specifically by Andrea
Palladio--
his name I put on the Monument
List for you.
 
Andrea Palladio drew a very
complete plan of it,
and it is on the basis of that
plan that modern plans are made
of the Baths of Titus.
 
And I show it to you here.
 
And we believe this is a very
accurate plan of the Baths of
Titus.
 
And I compare it for you here
with?
Again, those of you studying
for the midterm,
what's this?
 
Student:  Stabian--.
 
Prof: The Stabian
Baths;
Stabian Baths in Pompeii,
second century B.C.
Very good.
 
And we talked about that as the
typical earlier bath structure.
And just a very quick review,
to remind ourselves of its
major features.
 
It had the palaestra
over here, surrounded by columns
on three sides;
the piscina or the
natatio,
swimming pool at the left.
And then most importantly the
bathing block on the right side
of the structure.
 
A men's section and a women's
section, with that sequence of
rooms: the apodyterium or
the dressing room;
the tepidarium,
rectangular,
or the warm room;
the caldarium,
hot room, with an apse and a
cold water splash basin;
and then, most importantly,
the frigidarium,
that small, round building with
radiating alcoves.
That was the typical Roman bath
structure,
until we begin to see our first
example in Rome of the so-called
"imperial bath"
structure,
the plan that is used by the
emperors for the baths that they
build in Rome.
 
It is possible that Titus' was
not the first.
There's been some
speculation--we know that Nero
had built a bath--
there has been some speculation
that Nero's Bath may have been
the first example of the
imperial plan,
but we don't know for sure.
But Titus'--of the ones that we
know, have the specifics about,
we know that Titus' was
definitely an example of this
imperial bath structure.
 
And the features that are
outstanding here,
that we need to focus on,
are the fact that this imperial
bath structure had a very
elaborate entranceway,
that consisted either of
columns on square bases,
or piers, in the front.
 
There seemed to have been a
series of groin vaults --
anytime you see an X in plan
that means a groin vault.
An elaborate stairway,
some more columns or piers
here,
and more groin vaults,
and another stairway,
leading into a double
palaestra,
in a sense;
or you could call it a combined
palaestra here,
on the southern side.
 
And you can see the cistern;
on the outside of the precinct,
you can see the cistern that
fed water into this bath
structure.
 
It's roughly rectangular,
as you can see,
and unlike the Stabian Baths at
Pompeii,
where you have the bath complex
on the right side,
you can see that the rooms that
are used for bathing are at the
center of the plan,
which makes sense from the
Roman standpoint.
 
You know the Romans were very
focused on axiality and
symmetry, and that's exactly
what they've done here.
They've placed the bathing
block in the center.
They've lined the rooms up
axially with one another.
They've placed rooms on either
side, symmetrical rooms,
it's the same on the left as it
is on the right.
The rooms are symmetrically
disposed around that central
bathing block.
 
And they've taken the
frigidarium,
which was the smallest--albeit
the most interesting
architecturally--
but the smallest room in the
bath, and they've made it the
largest room in the bath.
Because you can see at F a very
large,
cross-shaped room,
with an apse on one end,
a groin vault over the center,
a single large groin vault over
the center,
flanked by and buttressed by,
two barrel vaults,
one on either side.
And then opening off those
barrel vaults a series of
rectangular alcoves with,
as you can see,
with walls that are scalloped,
and then with columns that
screen those alcoves from the
central groin vaulted space.
So an entirely different way of
thinking about the
frigidarium.
 
Then that into the
tepidarium from the
frigidarium,
again through a screen of
columns--that's fairly
conventional,
rectangular--and then into--we
see here double caldaria,
two caldaria,
they also in a kind of cross
shape--
although a cross shape that
appears a little bit more
rounded than the case of the
frigidarium--
they too screened by columns on
three sides,
very open, allowing a free flow
of space,
in a way that was not true of
the Pompeian Baths where the
entrances were tiny,
from one room to another;
here a great deal of emphasis
on the free flow of space.
 
So what's very important here,
the way I want to end today,
is essentially where I began.
 
What innovations of Nero's
architecture lived on,
despite his damnatio
memoriae,
and despite the fact that his
buildings were destroyed?
His buildings no longer stood.
 
The Domus Aurea no longer
stood, to be studied.
And yet what we see is some of
the innovations did live on.
And the ones that did
include--and let me just
compare,
as the last image,
compare the octagonal room,
an axonometric view of the
octagonal room,
with the Baths of Titus in Rome.
What we see are some of the
experimentations that were
taking place in private
architecture,
palace architecture.
 
And I should make the point
that just as we've said that
tomb architecture was often very
eccentric and very experimental,
the same was true for private
architecture;
not surprisingly.
 
These are buildings that people
make personal decisions about.
How do I want to live?
 
In what kind of spaces do I
want to live?
And in what kind of building do
I want to be buried?
Those are very personal
decisions,
and they were much more likely
to be experimental decisions,
where public architecture had
to toe the line,
to a certain extent,
and had to be more closely
allied with what had gone
before,
and it was also more
referential in terms of looking
back to other emperors and so
on.
So we see experiments in
private palace and tomb
architecture,
villa architecture that we
don't tend to see as much in
public architecture.
But what we see happening here
is very momentous,
and that is the lessons that
were explored first in private
architecture are being adopted
in the most public of all Roman
buildings,
a bath building,
and it's being done in a very
different way from the
Colosseum.
 
Most important,
the most important adoptions,
innovations,
that were in Nero's Domus
Aurea,
that are also included in the
Baths of Titus,
are axiality,
symmetry--and I've described
both of those already--
new vaulted shapes,
which we also did see in the
Colosseum,
the use of the groin vault
extensively here.
 
And then perhaps most
importantly this free flow of
space,
the free flow of space,
the vistas,
the panoramas,
from one part of this bath
structure to another,
that is very different from the
bath structure of the past,
from the bath structures,
for example,
of Pompeii.
 
So what we see in sum is the
fact that despite Nero's
damnatio memoriae,
despite the fact that that
allowed authorities,
and in fact the new emperor,
to destroy the portraits of
Nero,
to raze his palace to the
ground--which Vespasian did
after all--
despite that,
the architectural innovations
of Nero's Domus Aurea lived on;
they lived on in the Baths of
Titus.
And we're going to see they
lived on in perpetuity,
and we're going to see them
continuing to have a huge impact
on the evolution of Roman
architecture.
Thank you.
 
