Good morning. Today's lecture is entitled “The Prince and the Palace: Human Made Divine on the Palatine Hill.” And I want to begin essentially where we left off, and that is with the emperor Vespasian, the founder of the Flavian dynasty. And the political shrewdness that Vespasian demonstrated when he made the decisions that he did, when he made the decision especially to use architecture to further his political agenda. And you'll recall that the way in which he did that was that he, and I'm just going to show you the site plan once again on the Esquiline and Palatine hills. The site plan that shows us how he did this. How he did this was he recognized that he didn't want to associate himself with Nero, But it was to his advantage to associate himself instead with the Emperor Claudius. And he did that by finishing, the platform, and indeed the temple itself, that we looked at, at that time, when we looked at, last time. And that is the Temple of the Divine Claudius, the Claudianum, that had been begun by Agrippina the Younger. He completed that as a nod to Claudius and again a very smart political move on his part. He also, as you'll recall, raised the Domus Aurea of Nero to the ground. Covered up what was left of it otherwise, and then he filled in the artificial lake. And he used the property that the artificial lake was on to build the Colosseum, which itself was a shrewd gift to the Roman people to gain their favor and he did succeed in that regard. Equally important, perhaps even more important, is the decision that Vespasian made in the year 79 AD. And that decision, and we see a portrait once again of Vespasian on the right-hand side of the screen, now in Copenhagen. The decision he made in 79 was to appoint his elder son Titus as co-regent. And we see a portrait of Titus on the left hand side of the screen in military costume. We see him, it's a portrait that was found in Herculaneum so that it needs to date prior to 79. So very likely sometimes in the 70s that particular statue was put up. Now the reason it was smart politically to appoint Titus as his co-regent was that Titus was extremely capable. He was also extremely popular in Rome with the people, with the Senate. And it, what it did was to ensure the succession. To ensure the succession, and so when Vespasian died of natural causes. In 79 A.D. Titus was prepared to takeover, and indeed he did, and he took over without any contest whatsoever, which was, was a great accomplishment. Titus, however, oh and Titus by the way was young when he became emperor, he was in his early thirties about 32. Full of energy, and he needed it for what lay ahead, because he was unlucky. And his, his reign was affected by three major events, the first of which you know intimately already, and that is the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Titus' reign was 79 to 81. So in 79 A.D., A.D. Vesuvius erupts and Titus has to deal with the consequences of that, covered over, as you well know, almost all of Campania. In the year 80, he suffered, or Rome suffered, a very serious plague, which Titus also had to deal with. He had to marshal all of his energy and all his ingenuity to deal with a very serious plague in Rome, a very serious plague in Rome, and that plague was, was followed by a fire, also an exceedingly serious fire. So Titus had his hands full, and perhaps it's not surprising given all the stress of those years that he too died of natural causes in 81 [LAUGH] at a very young age. But despite what he went through during 79 to 81 Titus, Titus' claim to fame was something that happened much earlier, and I've mentioned it before. And that is something that happened already in the year A.D. 70. And it was in the year A.D. 70 that Vaspasian sent his elder son to Jerusalem, to Judea, to get involved in a major military war, and it, it was Titus as you'll recall who was victorious in the Jewish wars. And that took place in 70 A.D., 70 A.D., and it was extremely important not only in itself from Rome's standpoint. But also because it provided legitimacy to the Flavian dynasty. I mention that the that when a Roman dynasty came to power in a civil war, which was the case both for Augustus after the civil war 40 the civil war that was, that Rome was plunged into after Caesar's death. And was the case again for Vespasian after the chaos of the year 68, 69. They needed a foreign victory to gain legitimacy. So for the Flavian dynasty, the war over Jerusalem was, gave them that legitimacy, and was therefore extremely important in terms of the art and ideology of the Flavian dynasty. I want to turn to an arch that was put up in honor of that very victory over Jerusalem sometime after A.D. 81. It was the so-called Arch of Titus, the most, one of the most famous Roman monuments of all. And it was put up, although it bears Titus' name, it was put up not by him but by his brother Domitian, his younger brother Domitian, who succeeded him after Titus' death. Which is why we date it to some time after A.D. 81. I want to show you first its location because that itself is significant. We are looking at the Google Earth view of the Roman Forum. You see the Roman Forum here. You see the Colosseum up at the top center. You see the Capitoline Hill, or Campidoglio, here, the Victor Emanuel monument here. Pointed these out many times before. The Via dei Fori Imperiali of Mussolini, the Imperial Forum, to the left. Again, the Roman forum here, and the Palatine Hill, which we're going to be concentrating on today. But you'll remember that Nero's hope was to link the Palatine Hill with the Esquiline Hill, which is right up to the left of the Colosseum, and to do that via a spur hill, a spur hill that's located just right here, a bit above my finger, a spur hill called the Velia, V-e-l-i-a that was to link the two. And you'll remember Nero's plans for his Domus Transitoria, this palace that was to serve as a point of transit between those two hills. And you'll recall also the remains of some of the rooms from the Domus Transitoria. So this was again land that had been, that had been built up by Nero. So it's not surprising to see the Flavians once again. Titus following suit, and then his younger brother, Domitian, following suit, to use land that had earlier been used by Nero, for new Flavian monuments, in this case, an arch put up to the victory that Titus celebrated over Jerusalem. And if you look very carefully again, just a bit, a few inches above where my finger is, you will see the Arch of Titus standing on that spur hill on the Velia between the Paletine and the Esquiline hills. The Arch of Titus again which dates to after A.D. 81, was placed right next to the Sacred Way, or the Via Sacra. It doesn't span the street, but it's placed right next to it, adjacent to it. And I think you can see that very well in these two views here, which also show that a, quite a bit of ancient road actually survives, or a piece of ancient row, road actually survives in the Roman Forum. It's on the slope that you see here, and you can see the way in which it goes right by the Arch of Titus that you see to its right. This is a view up the hill, up the Sacred Way, toward the Velia, and here down, from the Arch of Titus, down into the rest of the Forum. And again you can see the polygonal masonry of the ancient road still preserved. The Ancient Way, the Via Sacra, was the road that the triumphant general took when he returned to Rome after a great military victory. So this is exactly the road that Titus himself would have taken when he came back from, from Judea. And, and walked in triumph, or rode in triumph, in his chariot, along the Sacred Way and up to the Capitoline Hill. Because the triumphant general, who was, who was garbed with the attributes of Jupiter, in this procession, made his way up to the Capitoline Hill, would, would get off his chariot up there, right at the altar, in front of the Temple of Jupiter OMC, and make a sacrifice to Jupiter. So you have to imagine Titus doing this along with Vespasian, because you'll remember I mentioned to you they celebrated a joint triumph. That Titus was willing to share his triumph, with his father Vespasian. So they both would have come in, in triumph into Rome after this great victory. Once again you can see the arch in the view on the right. Another view of the arch here which shows it on the Velia, and here you can get a very good sense of the way in which that spur hill unites the Palatine and the Esquiline, as well as the proximity of the arch of Titus to the Coliseum. We are seeing that the Flavians are building up a certain area of Rome with their monuments, and this is no exception. The view that we see here from the Forum of the, of one side of the Arch of Titus shows a modern inscription, but we'll see that there is an ancient inscription on the other side. And we're also going see that although the arch looks very well preserved, it was actually quite heavily restored, by an architect by the name of, of Giuseppe Valadier. And that happened in the 19th century that Valadier, Giuseppe Valadier, restored the Arch of Titus, and the part of the, the arch that is ancient is essentially the central section right here. That, the mostly on the other side actually. On this side just the Spandrels and the inner panels here, and on the other side we'll see, well I'll show you when we get to the other side. So this side important to know that the inscription is a modern one. Here's the other side of the arch, where you can see again the central section is ancient, with the spandrels, these triangular areas here. The columns on this side are ancient, the keystone is ancient, the frieze up above the keystone is ancient, the inscription is ancient on this side, but all the rest was restored by Valadier. As I said in the 19th century, and Valadier did something very interesting and, and archaeologically very very forward thinking. In that since the center of the arch was made out of Greek marble, Pentelic marble, P-e-n-t-e-l-i-c, Pentelic marble from Mount Pentelikon in Greece. Which in itself is interesting, because we saw that the Flavians were using imported marble in their buildings. I've mentioned that already before, so we, we see a continuation of that trend here, use of Pentelic marble for the arch. But when Valadier did the restorations her, or the reconstruction, he used travertine For the modern parts of the arch, so that when you, probably isn't so evident to you at this view. But when you stand in front of the arch, you can see the difference in the materials, and he wanted to point out to the spectator that there was a difference between the ancient part of the monument and the modern part of the monument, as restored by him. This view on the left, there are quite a number of preserved paintings and engravings, that show the arch before the Valadier reconstruction. And you see one of those over there, and you can see we're looking at the same side of the arch here, as we are here. So once again, you can see the ancient what survived of the ancient arch, the central part, the two columns on bases the keystone the, the spandrals, the frieze and then the, and then the inscription. What does that say? Right? Okay, fine, we'll accept that. So we'll, and we see that here, and this is another one of those Roman monuments that was essentially preserved because of re-use over time, or at least the part of it that, that still exists. And this was turned into, as so many other monuments, was turned into a fortress at one point, a fortress that was owned by the Frangipani family in Italy. So, that's the ancient part, the rest restored by Valadier. And you have to also reconstruct in your mind's eye that this arch would've served as a kind of statue base for a representation or for a sculptural group in bronze that would have represented Titus, and perhaps Vespasion also, together, seated in a chariot being led by four horses a big a great quadric of group. It was customarily placed on the top of such arches. Below that the inscription plaque. Below that as I've already described, a frieze. I'm going to show you that frieze in a moment, than the spandrels. And then in the center here, two great panels, one on either, figural panels. One on either side of the arch.
