Ara Pacis Augustae Research Articles

Imperial Homecoming(s) and the Ara Pacis Augustae in 13 BC

AbstractAfter reflecting on the many dimensions that homecoming involves both in the present and in antiquity, the ceremonial enhancement of various returns of Caesar Augustus from military campaigns are briefly rehearsed through the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (4. 1–2) and other sources. These include the triumph following the battle of Actium (31/29 BC) and the celebration after the re-establishment of peace with the Parthians, which resulted in the cult of Fortuna Redux (19 BC). The Ara Pacis Augustae was decreed after Augustus' victories in Gaul (Res Gestae 12; Cassius Dio 54. 25. 1–4). The famous procession friezes have often been regarded as depicting the emperor's arrival celebrated as a ‘thanksgiving’ (supplicatio) in July 13 BC, but are better understood as memorializing the day on which the sacred space for the Ara Pacis was inaugurated in September. The friezes depict the emperor's family members as well as divine and mythical figures; while presented as naturalistic or historical, they are open to symbolic readings. In a certain sense, the senators enshrined the motif of Augustus' homecoming into the cult of Roman Peace (and Prosperity) and eternalized the ritualized blessing that this should bring to the Roman people. Cassius Dio's highly conflated account of the Senate's decrees in honour of the returning emperor was composed as criticism against servile flattering, but indirectly confirms the ideas underlying the Senate's decrees on the Actian Triumph, the cult for Fortuna Redux, and the sanctuary of the Ara Pacis: the salutary effect of Augustus' victorious return(s) to Rome should become a permanent blessing irrespective of the singular historical events.

Love and Politics 13–9 BC: The Loves of Tiberius and of Drusus and their Wives on the Ara Pacis Augustae

AbstractAmor plays a curious and complicated role in the Augustan regime, and especially in Augustus's secret plans to create a monarchy, for on the one hand the princeps wished to regulate love for all citizens – allegedly for the common weal – but on the other hand he had little success in forcing his relatives to love and marry one another with often disastrous and adulterous consequences that threw overboard several plans for the succession. Augustus compelled Tiberius to divorce Vipsania Minor to marry Julia with the allure of the throne, and Tiberius sold his soul for power. But Tiberius found it impossible to love Julia and after their only child died, he separated from her. In contrast, Drusus must have refused to divorce Antonia but still turned out to be Augustus's preferred step-son, not to mention the hero of the nation.The Senate voted to build the Ara Pacis Augustae on 4 July 13 BC in the consulship of Tiberius and Varus, and the inauguration proclaiming the successes of the Augustan regime in restoring peace and prosperity to the Roman people, occurred on 30 Jan. 9 BC in the consulship of Drusus and Quinctius Crispinus. Although several married couples appear on the Ara Pacis together, it is Drusus and Antonia who show the love between husband and wife, which Augustus later tried very hard to legislate, not that of Julia and Agrippa nor of Tiberius and Vipsania, and certainly not of Augustus and Livia, who appear separately. Val. Max. 4.3.3 says that Drusus loved his wife so much he never had sex with other women! This already famous story prompted the sculptors of the Ara Pacis to place Drusus and Antonia facing one another, not only as a role model and in deference to Augustus's natalism program, but also to add a touch of humanity to the frieze and to honor the daughter of Octavia and her husband, in whose consular year of office the monument opened.

New Light on the Relationship between the Montecitorio Obelisk and Ara Pacis of Augustus

The article takes as its point of departure recent work (Frischer forthcoming) critiquing the theory of Edmund Buchner about the relationship of the gnomonical instrument known as the Horologium Augusti and the Ara Pacis Augustae. As a result of this critique, the Montecitorio Obelisk could be situated with greater precision on the map of the city. A computer simulation showed that Buchner erred in positing that the shadow of the Montecitorio Obelisk went into the center of the Ara Pacis on Augustus’ birthday. In this article, computer simulations are used to develop a post-Buchnerian interpretation of the relationship of the obelisk and altar. Over 230 hitherto unrecognized solar and shadow alignments are reported. The first part of the article defines four zones around the monuments where the solar and shadows observations were made. In the second part of the article, specialists interpret the significance of the annual solar and shadow spectacle from various points of view. The conclusion synthesizes the results, arguing that the monuments were intentionally aligned and situated in order to propagate the same message as the one inscribed on two sides of the Montecitorio Obelisk [CIL 6.702 = ILS 91]: that Augustus was a devoted worshipper of the sun god (Sol), who brings Rome victory in war, peace, and prosperity through his earthly representative, the emperor.

Religión y culto en el <em>ara Pacis Augustae</em>

El ara Pacis Augustae, con toda su magnificencia como obra de arte y todas sus poderosas implicaciones políticas como creación del poder imperial, era esencialmente un altar, es decir, un lugar de culto oficial sometido a una determinada reglamentación religiosa y dotado de un calendario ceremonial específico. En consecuencia esta investigación ha sido ideada y desarrollada para presentar, discutir y, en su caso, dar respuesta a los problemas que presenta el ara Pacis como lugar de culto. El debate se integra y articula en el contexto más amplio de la naturaleza de las arae en la práctica cultual romana y se sustenta en el análisis de la tradición textual del ara Pacis y la propia evidencia arqueológica. Como resultado, se presenta el proceso de institución del ara Pacis Augustae en toda su extensión y complejidad, tanto en sus aspectos propiamente rituales como en su plasmación monumental.

The mythology of the Ara Pacis Augustae: Iconography and symbolism of the western side

The guiding idea of my article is to see the mythical and political ideology conveyed by the western side of the Ara Pacis Augustae in a (hopefully) new light. The Augustan ideology of power is in the modest opinion of the author intimately intertwined with the myths and legends concerning the Primordia Romae. Augustus strove very hard to be seen by his contemporaries as the Novus Romulus and as the providential leader (fatalis dux, an expression loved by Augustan poetry) under the protection of the traditional Roman gods and especially of Apollo, the Greek god who has been early on adopted (and adapted) by Roman mythology and religion.

Review: King Sigismund Chapel at Cracow Cathedral (1515–1533), by Stanisław Mossakowski

Stanislaw Mossakowski King Sigismund Chapel at Cracow Cathedral (1515–1533) Cracow: IRSA, 2012, 376 pp., 277 b/w and 89 color illus. €120, ISBN 978838983114 The importance of Cracow as a center of Renaissance humanism during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has long been recognized by Anglophone historians and linguists interested in the early modern achievements of scholars at the Jagiellonian University and their contacts with Italian counterparts. Among the more familiar figures are the humanist Filippo Buonaccorsi, called Callimachus (1437–1496), who served as tutor to the sons of King Casimir IV Jagiellon (r. 1447–92), and Nicolaus Copernicus, who studied ancient Greek, mathematics, and astronomy at the Jagiellonian. In spite of Cracow’s renown as a humanist center, there is a paucity of English-language scholarship dedicated to the architecture of Poland-Lithuania, which at its greatest extent, in the early seventeenth century, was the largest state in Europe. This lacuna is in part due to factors such as the linguistic inaccessibility of secondary scholarship written in Polish, as well as geopolitical circumstances between 1939 and 1989. Thus Stanislaw Mossakowski’s erudite monograph King Sigismund Chapel at Cracow Cathedral (1515–1533) , first issued in Polish in 2007, is a significant scholarly achievement. Mossakowski, the well-known and prolific former director of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, presents here the mausoleum that most clearly embodies some of the earliest Italian Renaissance visual forms to appear in the European borderlands of Poland-Lithuania. The study underlines the relevance of the Sigismund chapel to classically inspired architecture, and by extension to the rich traditions that inform East-Central European architectural history. In nine highly detailed chapters examining the monument’s site, patronage, ideology, and iconography, Mossakowski asserts the uniqueness of the commission and its significance to the broader history of early modern European, and particularly Italian, art and architecture. The centrally planned, elliptically domed monument, located on the south side of the Wawel cathedral nave, decorated and vaulted …

Addendum to “The Book Transformed”: The Physical History of the Ara Pacis Augustae

In March 2013, an article titled “The Book Transformed,” written by Charles Rhyne, was published in Visual Resources within the special issue “Digital Art History.” Rhyne's far-reaching discussion of the Ara Pacis Augustae, 13–9 BCE, a Roman monument with a complex modern history, was to be his final publication: he passed away one month after the article's appearance. I was Rhyne's research assistant, and thus am in a unique position to comment on his website devoted to the Ara Pacis (http://cdm.reed.edu/ara-pacis/). I have also taken this opportunity to augment his article with an outline of the monument's history on the basis of its physical evidence and to assess his strategy for using an online publication to document the Ara Pacis.

The Book Transformed

This article considers the interplay of traditional academic art history book forms with the transformations of Web publication. Special attention is given to the increased number, size, type, and quality of images, and to the new opportunities this provides for scholarly research, interpretation, and presentation. This interplay is considered through an examination of an academic website focused on one major work of art, the Ara Pacis Augustae (Rome, Italy, 13–9 BCE). This site (http://cdm.reed.edu/ara-pacis/) was published by Charles Rhyne and Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, on April 15, 2011, and is used extensively by students, teachers, scholars, and the public worldwide.

The Ara Pacis Augustae: Visual Rhetoric in Augustus' Principate

Scholars of rhetoric have veered away from non-traditional rhetorical artifacts in the classical period. In this article I examine the Ara Pacis Augustae, Altar of Augustan Peace, as one such overlooked rhetorical artifact. I argue the altar, although constructed as a war monument, shapes public memory to persuade the people of Rome to accept the dynastic succession of Augustus's heir. In addition, I show a variety of rhetorical theories operate on the altar in visual form including amplification, imitation, and enthymeme. Ultimately I contend that by focusing on non-traditional rhetorical artifacts, we can deepen our understanding of the rhetorical tradition in a period in which rhetoric is generally believed to have faded away.

Sacrificial Iconography: Creating History, Making Myth, and Negotiating Ideology on the Ara Pacis Augustae

AbstractAugustus, first emperor of Rome, invented a new genealogy, myth of origins, and history for himself and for Rome as he negotiated for authority with the Roman senate. As part of these negotiations the senate dedicated the Ara Pacis Augustae on the Campus Martius in 9 B.C.E. The function, location, and iconography of the monument participated in Augustus's attempts to link his present with the prehistory of Rome. In order for power and authority to be negotiated and legitimized, and for a history and myth to be invented, audience participation is required. This essay argues that the Ara Pacis Augustae was a symbol of the senate's participation and acceptance of Augustus's status, as well as a statement of its own power vis-à-vis that of the emperor.

Forerunners of the scrollwork on the Ara Pacis Augustae made by a Western Asiatic workshop

Forerunners of the scrollwork on the Ara Pacis Augustae made by a Western Asiatic workshop

Die Sonne, der Obelisk und die Ara Pacis Augustae/ The Sun, the Obelisk, and the Ara Pacis Augustae

From the fact that Rome lies at 41.9° northern latitude, the distance of the ara pacis Augustae from the obelisk was 85 m, the length of the obelisk is 30m and its shadow did not reach the ara during the summer half and reached it, provided the sun did shine, daily during the winter half it is concluded that the ara was situated 18.45° north of the west-east axis, and the shadow reached the ara at 16 o’clock and 24 minutes central European winter time.

The Ara Pacis Augustae and the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman Imperial Art

The Ara Pacis Augustae and the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman Imperial Art

The artists of the Ara Pacis: the process of Hellenization in Roman relief sculpture

The Ara Pacis Augustae, or Altar of Augustan Peace, was built to commemorate the return to Rome of the emperor Augustus and his general Agrippa, who had been away for many years on military campaigns. Dedicated in 9 BC, the monument consists of an altar and surrounding wall, both decorated with a series of processional friezes. Art historians and archaeologists have made the Ara Pacis one of the best-known, most studied monuments of Augustan Rome, and this book reassesses the artistic traditions in which its sculptors worked. Illustrated with over 250 photographs, Conlin's analysis demonstrates that the carvers of the monument's large processional friezes were not Greek masters, as previously assumed, but Italian trained sculptors influenced by both native and Hellenic stonecarving practices. Her systematic examination of the physical evidence left by the sculptors themselves - the traces of tool marks, the carving of specific details, the compositional formulas of the friezes - also incorporates an informed understanding of the historical context in which these artists worked.

The Ara Pacis Augustae and the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman Imperial Art

David Castriota examines one of the most important monuments of early Roman Imperial art, the Ara Pacis Augustae, the sculptured marble altar built to celebrate the peace, prosperity, and stability initiated by the reign of Augustus in the later first century B.C. Castriota argues that the floral decoration of the altar enclosure was profoundly significant, operating as a visual counterpart to the technique of metonymy in language. It utilised an array of realistic plants and flowers as allusive elements associated with various gods and goddesses, which together symbolised the support and blessing of the Roman divinities for the Augustan regime. Supporting his argument with evidence from Greek and Roman literature and religion, Castriota shows that the planners of the Ara Pacis adapted and expanded a long tradition of symbolic floral decoration from Greek monumental arts. Throughout his work, Castriota demonstrates that the Roman absorption of Greek precedent enabled viewers to recognise the intended message of divine sponsorship. By examining the origins of the Ara Pacis within its broader historical setting, the author provides new insights into a crucial period that witnessed the emergence of a distinctly Roman Imperial art.

The Ara Pacis Augustae and the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman Imperial Art. By David Castriota.

<i>The Ara Pacis Augustae and the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman Imperial Art</i>. By David Castriota.

What we see and what we don't see. Narrative structure and the Ara Pacis Augustae

What we see and what we don't see. Narrative structure and the Ara Pacis Augustae

The Goddess Ceres in the Ara Pacis Augustae and the Carthage Relief

This article offers a new interpretation for the relief panel located at the southeast corner of the Ara Pacis Augustae and for a related relief from Carthage based upon a detailed reexamination of their iconography. For the Ara Pacis relief, the type and attributes of the central figure point to her identification as Ceres, with possible polysemantic reference to this divinity's cultic connections with Tellus and Venus. The two side figures in the Ara Pacis relief are identified as a Nereid (sea nymph) and a Naiad (freshwater nymph). These divinities were associated in myth, cult, and art with Ceres. The identification of Ceres and the nymphs in this panel is shown to have significant implications for the interpretation of the sculptural decoration of the Ara Pacis as a whole, its place in the larger program of the Campus Martius, and Augustan political propaganda in general. In the similar relief from Carthage, Demeter/Ceres, Persephone, and Poseidon are identified in a scene that reflects the celebration of the Thesmophoria at the spring Kyane near Syracuse. The Syracusan cult of Demeter and Persephone was imported to Carthage in the fourth century and revived with the foundation of the Roman colony at Carthage in the middle of the first century B. C. It is proposed that the colonists erected a copy of the Ceres relief of the Ara Pacis, changing it to reflect the local cult of the Cereres.

Venus, Polysemy, and the Ara Pacis Augustae

The intentionally multiple iconography of the "Tellus" relief on the Ara Pacis Augustae deliberately was designed to create multiple meanings and associations. Attempts to limit it to one particular type, such as Pax, are not tenable because none of the actually existing iconographic details and symbols, including the companion figures, are exclusively those of Pax. The Zoilos relief and the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias shed new light on the iconography of Venus, as does the relation of the relief to the floral scrolls. The intentional polysemy of the relief is considered against the background of Republican representations, religious and artistic syncretism, the occurrence of multivalency in other areas of the Augustan culture (including the Res Gestae), and within the total concept of the artistic and architectural program of the Ara Pacis. The guiding idea was to represent the concept of the Pax Augusta not simply, such as by means of one image, but by evoking the richness of its ramifications. Hence the complex and associative imagery of this particular Andachtsbild.

The third man: restoration problems on the North Frieze of the Ara Pacis Augustae

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.