Ok! Our next video will focus on the end of the Julio-Claudian line
so group of emperors that were all joined together by a similar
ancestry; similar family line,
This family included Augustus, but then began to include a number
of what we
now consider to be "Bad Emperors". These emperors that
tended to be more ineffective; that were
not well received either by the Senate or by the public. Those emperors include
people like
Nero, who we see here, who was the last of the Julia Claudian emperors,
and also people like Caligula, who we won't have
too much time to talk about, but very famous stories or
infamous stories exist about him as well. What we will be focusing on in terms of
architecture here
is a building called the "Domus Aurea" or Golden House,
so this was the new palace that Nero constructed for himself
following a great fire in the year 64
AD or CE. So, as you can imagine,
Rome is very tightly packed city. You can see that here in this reconstruction
image or this illustration.
Very, very dense city. A city that was
very, very tightly packed. Similar to maybe
cities like New York today where rents are high
and you don't have a lot of space. However Nero took
a large amount of land that had become available following the fire
and built for himself what essentially was a very, very large country villa
in the center of the city, so we can see how it includes things like
artificial lakes and large courtyards, so
basically taking up quite a bit of space in the center of the city.
Today, you can go and see
the remnants of this structure. There is some excavation that happens
there, and so we'll see some of the interior shots but
most at the luxurious materials that decorated this
golden house or "Domus Aurea" have been removed -- the sculptures as well -- the
decorations
no longer really exist because there's been so much
looting and archaeology, that is, discovery and removal from this area.
Also, because Nero was not an Emperor that was
appreciated -- following his rule he was forced to commit suicide --
Because of that, the palace was very much
covered over eventually the Coliseum will go in the area where one of the
lakes
or where one of the water features are. The large lake will be replaced by the
Coliseum. So
anyways the memory of the Palace is kind of a stain on the city.
Let's focus in on the octagonal room, which is part of one in the wings of the
Domus Aurea.
So the octagonal exists like this today said to be designed by Severus and
Celer,
and so we see here a structure that's quite important for later architectural
developments. So it's important just to keep in mind some of the
vaulting techniques that we see here and some of the lighting effects that we see
because when we get on to structures like the Pantheon we will be repeating and
discussing some of
the techniques and terms
that we use here. So you can see there's a large opening right at the center here,
an oculus-like form,
that we will also see in the Pantheon in just a little bit.
But there was also a system of what we call groin and barrel vaulting
in these outer corridors, so I'll show you that in just a second.
This was probably a dining room. It probably had
some water features close by; they probably took advantage of some of the
vaulting systems for lighting effects. You have to imagine that the room would
have been richly adorned not only
with paintings or frescoes, but also with valuable materials all of which
unfortunately do not survive,
but by having people or individuals in this structure, you can get a sense of it's
scale,
a sense of its grandeur, and a sense of
the large quality at this building project because this is just one small
room within a very, very substantial palace.
So just getting an idea what these vaulting structures are -- just so we have them in
mind --
and this is a reconstruction of how it may have been decorated
so that's one proposal, but on the outer area you can see there are areas
for groin vaults and
barrel vaults and so a barrel vault is just a perfectly semicircular arch
that is then repeated over and over again to create basically what is
half of a barrel form. If you cut a barrel in half, you
kind of would get the sense of what a barrel vault would look like.
So basically a curved space that's covering a room, and then if you take two barrel vaults
intersect them, you get what's called a groin vault, so this is the groin area or
the join
between the two vaults, and so both barrel vaulting and groin vaulting
are very very important in Roman construction, but also very important in
later
religious construction, so we will see them in churches and in mosques, and we'll
begin to see more creative uses of these architectural forms.
And also, I just wanted to point out -- so you have opening here
with the oculus, but then you also had light that would stream in on the outer portion
here.
So as said, there were numerous lighting effects that
were taken into consideration when designing this structure
and the Romans seem to have become very interested in creating these types of
impressive structures. Alright, there's just another view
to give you more of a three-dimensional quality of how those
vaulted systems
would extend out from the octagonal room.
So as I mentioned the palace was very, very large. The "Domus Aurea" was a
very large
essentially country villa in the middle of the city. It was not well received.
Nero was not a favorite by the end of his rule.
So, he became known as one of the bad emperors.
A new emperor comes into power named Vespasian,
and his family is the Flavian -- the Flavian dynasty
and so the Flavians create an amphitheater. They drain the artificial lake
where the Doums Aurea had this artificial lake.
They drain it, and they take this private location and make it a place for the
public. They make it a place
where people can go and see games and games and
entertainment were at very important part of life in ancient Rome.
If you're going to pay to live in the capital -- if you were going to pay that
premium for living in the center
of the empire -- you were going to want impressive entertainment so
the city had theaters and sometimes temporary amphitheater set up,
but when the Coliseum was created the city now had an extremely tall
very large -- the largest amphitheater, very impressive structure, where people
could come and see
games and games would last all day. The
calendar of games and holidays
a with very extensive in ancient Rome. It seemed to grow by the year,
so this became a really important structure just for
going to enjoy the city and enjoy the recreation
that was available there. So it fit somewhere around 60,000 people or so.
It would have been relatively comfortable. It had things like drinking
fountains and limited restrooms.
They had sails that are basically like coverings
that they would use on particularly hot days, and Rome, of course, in the
summer is a very, very warm city, so this was a way at keeping things relatively
cool.
And there were expensive seats.
There are certain areas that were more luxurious. People would have
an idea where they're supposed to sit through I'm a ticket which would tell
them where they would enter and what level they could sit in,
so it was all very regimented in a similar way to how are
sports arenas are -- so telling you exactly where you're
supposed to seat and certain seats are more expensive than others and more desirable
than others.
The way the Coliseum looks today -- most of the marble seats have been
removed.
So sometimes they'll put in temporary seating. Unfortunately
a lot of the building material was removed later on in later constructions
around Rome so a lot of the older structures became
and basically sites to take stone and to take valuable material
when they were needed for other building projects. Also Rome was sacked a
number of times, so
those are also occasions when valuable materials would be taken
but you can see that the inside is pretty rough. You can get a sense of
the chambers down below, where people could wait, where people and
things could be stored. There would be a floor, of course,
over it showing you a reconstruction from the movie "Gladiator".
But anyways, you would have this floor; you would have seats,
and when they do have concerts in the Coliseum today,
they will put up a temporary floor and temporary seating.
Another really interesting type of sculpture that we see in the Flavian period is
the continuation of portraiture.
We know portraiture is an important part ancient Roman culture.
We can really easily date female portraits typically because of the hair
style. So the Flavian hairstyle was very distinct.
We have this very distinct -- very large hairstyle,
almost beehive style, and we also tend to see these really striking
female portrait where the face tends to look a little bit older, more matronly
with a very perfect, youthful, Venus-type body, or
Aphrodite in the Greek form, type body, so here we
see this Venus pudica gesture -- covering up her
breasts and genitalia in a modest gesture
however having these more matronly features -- so combining
an esteemed woman
a mother who has been through childbirth who has experience
combined with this ideal body of
this ideal mother figure in ancient Rome. Venus was very, very important
in the city of ancient Rome, so it seems to be an
unusual type of funerary sculpture -- that's what they were
probably created for -- to commemorate people's mothers. So seems unusual
to us today
but I think it provides a lot of insight into the culture as we reflect back on it.
Our next structure is "The Forum of Trajan" which was known as one of the most beautiful
structures
in all of Rome when it was created. It was built with money
from the Dacian campaigns, so a lot of the structures in Rome
were built with money from different military campaigns so
and this was built with money from the Dacian campaigns, the Coliseum was
built
with money from campaigns in Jerusalem.
So you can see that these campaigns were necessary for building large projects
in the city. So let me just go through the structure and unfortunately
very little of it survives. You have this large open space here. You have exedrae on
either side.
You have a basilica structure here -- known as the Basilica Ulpia,
two libraries -- one for Latin one for Greek, and then you have a column, which
commemorates those Dacian campaigns, and finally, a temple
dedicated to the divine Trajan and so you can see that towards the back.
And so this structure is very interesting because the Basilica gives us a
sense
of what later churches are going to look like, so keep this structure in mind.
A basilica in anicent Rome was typically for judicial affairs
but will be repurposed in the Christian period with an aisle here, seats,
and an altar
to create a longitudinal plan for a church. So this is the basilica
Ulpia, the family name
of Trajan, who is known as one of the best emperors and who takes
the empire
of Rome to its largest extent. And then this is his column, where you can see
those stories of the Dacian campaigns wrap around the column -- very difficult to
see --
but we imagine that when the libraries were on either side, you could stand up on the
balconies and maybe get a better sense
what was going on on the column.
Next, we have Hadrian. Hadrian was a "Grecophile". He loved Greece.
He started wearing a beard, which was relatively unusual and
which is something we see for example with Pericles, who was a leader in
ancient Greece. So that's something interesting about Hadrian.
Also he had a relationship with a young man named
Antinous, so he was married but he also had
this homosocial relationship with Antinous
and Antinous became a favorite of Hadrian, but he died at a very, very young
age -- at nineteen -- and they're actually going down the Nile
in Egypt, so this became a really suspicious story
different conspiracies developed, but Hadrian actually had a
temple dedicated to Antinous,
declared him a god, like he did with his wife as well,
and he had a large number artworks commissioned to commemorate Antinous --
this beautiful young man.
Here we see him in Egyptian dress connected to this idea that he
died in the Nile or
that he died in Egypt. So here we see Antinous.
The fact that Hadrian had this relationship was not unusual, but the
fact that he
was so sad when Antinous died is quite striking --
that he took so much time to commemorate him.
Next, I just wanted to point out his wife -- this is Sabina, and so you can
see
she also was declared goddess, and this becomes very popular around this time.
So Trajan is declared a god. Augustus is declared a god.
Sabina the wife is declared a god [or goddess], so
this becomes quite common around this time, so you can see she's being carried
aloft on this winged creature,
this is her funeral pyre. Down below is a personification
of the Campus Martius where often these pyres would take place,
and then you can see Hadrian here pointing up towards the sky. And you know
of course it's Hadrian -- we can see his beard
there. And here I'm just showing another bust portrait, so
just to reinforce the fact that a lot of deifications or the process
apotheosis -- this was happening a lot
among the royal or imperial family among
the Emperor and his family. Our final structure for the
High Empire is the Pantheon. The Pantheon is
a structure that was to commemorate all the gods. It's very unusual because
most structures dedicated to gods that were considered pagan by the Christian
period were destroyed,
however this structure was considered pretty special,
and so it was dedicated to the Virgin
and now it functions as a church, but also as a tourist site
to see this structure. So we know that Hadrian really liked
domed forms, so we see there's a large dome on top
of it. It also says "Marcus Agrippa, consul for the third time,
built this," and that's actually Marcus Agrippa who was an
figure that was an associate of Augustus, and we know that there was an
earlier Pantheon that he helped to build.
Another one burned down I think under Domitian,
but eventually this one probably designed by
Hadrian or by Apollodorus of Damascus or a different
architectural associate.
This was designed under Hadrian. It was one of Hadrian's favorite structures. Hadrian
generally did not like being in Rome,
but he was very proud of this structure. There would have been a large courtyard in
front of it.
There would have been bronze decoration. Unfortunately that does not
survive today.
As we look at the dome, we get a sense of how large it is. How it tends to be
thinner at the top and then very think here. You have walls that are something
like twelve to twenty feet
thick in different areas because there's so much weight coming
down from this poured concrete dome.
So very, very striking in its overall design. You have a perfect sphere
that can fit inside of the space.