Good morning all. When we la, today's lecture, I have called, as you can see The Mother of all Forums, Civic Architecture in Rome Under Trajan. And I think you'll see what I mean, when we look both at a Trajanic bath building and also the Forum of Trajan in Rome, what I mean by mother of all forums. These were, were gargantuan buildings, bigger than anything that we have seen before and interesting in all kinds of ways. We left off with Nerva, with the Emperor Nerva, and you'll recall that Nerva was old and in fact also relatively sickly, when he became emperor of Rome. You'll also remember, and I remind you of his portrait on the left hand side of the screen, you'll also recall that he was a member of the Senate and that he was chosen by the Senate, one of their own to become emperor of Rome, the first emperor to come from the senatorial ranks in the history of Rome. But, because he, and he was very popular with the senate. But Nerva recognized quite early on that although he was popular with the senate and with the aristocracy, he was not a favorite of the army and he realized that was not a good position to be in, and so he wisely decided, very early on, that he would select the most popular military man, and the most highly successful military man in Rome, a man by the name of Trajan, as his heir and so Nerva adopts Trajan, and you see Trajan's portrait on the right hand side of the screen. Nerva adopts Trajan in 97 AD, so that in 98 when Nerva dies, because he dies after only sixteen months in office. When Nerva dies Trajan succeeds him without contest. Trajan was an extraordinary emperor for Rome. There are a number of important points about Trajan that should be made that have an impact on our understanding and analysis of his architecture. One of those is he's the first Roman emperor to be born outside of Italy. He was born in Spain. The first emperor born in Spain. That's not to say that Spain was the boondocks by any stretch of the imagination. Spain had already been colonized by Rome and was very highly developed with regard to it's civilization. He also came to power as a relatively young man. He was only 45 years of age. Couple years younger than Obama. And consequently, he was in very, and he was in very good physical shape, and so, he had the physical wear-with-all, to be the kind of energetic emperor that Rome needed at this particular point. He undertook many military campaigns, and very successfully. And he was the emperor that extended Rome to its furthest reaches, to its greatest borders, to its most extensive borders. During his reign and actually these were borders that were never gone beyond. After this point, we'll see that the emperor Hadrian consolidates the extent of the empire as reached by Trajan, and no one ever takes it beyond that. So this is going to be the furthest extent of the empire that we'll see in the course of the semester and he was also extremely wise when it came to his choice of the kinds of buildings that he wanted to put up, because he followed in the footsteps of Vespasian and Titus, by favoring major public architecture in Rome. And by issuing, a private architecture, he wanted above all to disassociate himself himself from, Nero, and from Domitian, who had favor palatial architecture, as you'll recall. And so, he build, he builds public architecture in Rome, and allies himself in this regard to such earlier emperors as Augustus . And as, as Claudius and as the Flavian dynasts and we're going to see that in his building projects today. Like so many other emperors when he came, first came to power he looked around to see which buildings had fallen into disrepair. And he decided to restore as many of those as he could and, and he chose very carefully again he obviously did not chose buildings of Nero many which had already been destroyed in any case but rather look back further. In fact dug deep into the Republic a time, a simpler time in many respects, and time prior to the shenanigans of, of the more monarchically minded emperors like Nero and Vespasian, Nero and Domitian, excuse me. And he restored buildings, from the republic and from the Augustan period. And he looked back for example to the forum of Caeser in Rome, the forum Iulium which you all know well and we've talked about it before and I'm not going to discuss it in any detail today just to remind you that it began to be restored that is the forum of Julius Caeser. Under Domitian, and that that restoration was completed by Trajan some, at some point during his reign, between 98 and 117 AD and I remind you of that here, you'll recall its location uh, right next to the Victor Emmanuel monument in Rome. You'll remember even though it was restored by Domitian and Trajan it has fallen on hard times, and if you look at the Temple of Venus Genetrix you see that all that survives besides the podium and the staircase are three columns from that restored version by Trajan. You see the same three columns over here and then you'll recall the great open space with colonnades on either side and then the market area, the shops or tabernae on the left. I showed you this view as well. Pointing out one of the architectural blocks, that belong to the restored building, the building under Trajan. And you can see that Trajan continues his interest in, ornamentation that was a characteristic of the Flavian period. Very ornamental, architectural decoration, very deeply carved with a strong contrast between light and dark, so he does continue this Flavian interest in very elaborate architectural decoration. You'll remember that the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the form of Julius Caesar had a pediment. That had in the center of that pediment a scene depicting Venus rising from the sea, and there is other Venus imagery, and I show you a detail on this on your monument list, I show you a detail of part of a freeze, that depicts cupids, winged, chubby, winged babies as you can see here, cupids, who are carrying the arms, you can see one with the sword sheath over here. They are carrying the arms and armor of Mars. Mars, of course the consort of Venus and Mars making reference also to military victory. This freeze as far as we can tell does belong to the Trajanic renovation of the building but it probably does look back to earlier, to an earlier Julian freeze that decorated the original temple in Rome. From this, from, and I use that restoration of the temple of Venus Genetrix in the form of Julius Caesar as an example of the kind of restoration work that Trajan embarked on at the beginning of his principate.
