Lecture 9 - From Brick to Marble: Augustus Assembles Rome |
Professor Kleiner discusses the transformation of Rome by its first emperor, Augustus, who claimed to have found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. The conversion was made possible by the exploitation of new marble quarries at Luna (modern Carrara) on the northwest coast of Italy. The lecture surveys the end of the Roman Republic and the inauguration of the Principate and analyzes the Forum of Julius Caesar and the Forum of Augustus. Professor Kleiner shines a spotlight on Caesar's attempt to link himself to his divine ancestress Venus Genetrix and on Augustus' appropriations of Greek caryatids and other decorative motifs that associate his era with the Golden Age of Periclean Athens. Finally, she analyzes the Ara Pacis Augustae, a monument commissioned upon Augustus' return to Rome after achieving diplomatic victories in Spain and Gaul, and serving as the Luna marble embodiment of the emperor's new hegemonic empire.
Claridge, Amanda. Rome, pp. 10-14 (historical background), 148-151 (Forum of Julius Caesar), 158-161 (Forum of Augustus), 184-192 (Ara Pacis Augustae and Horologium Augusti)
Ward-Perkins, John B. Roman Imperial Architecture, pp. 21-44
The lectures in HSAR 252 are illustrated with over 1,500 images, many
from Professor Kleiner's personal collection, along with others from
a variety of sources, especially Wikimedia Commons, Google Earth, and
Yale University Press. Some plans and views have been redrawn for
this project. For specific acknowledgments, see:
Image Credits - Lecture 9
[PDF]
Yale University 2009. Some rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated on this page or on the Open Yale Courses website, all content on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0)