Augustan Rome Research Articles

Dorian Borbonus, Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome. 2014.

<b>Dorian Borbonus</b>, Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome. 2014.

A Literary Commentary on the Elegies of the Appendix Tibulliana by Laurel Fulkerson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2017. Pp. x, 384.

172 PHOENIX Alejandro Amenábar’s film Ágora (2009), which showed Hypatia’s Alexandria through the lens of post-9/11 discourse on extremism—he also offers fresh and exciting insights. Especially intriguing is Watts’s discussion of a diptych of two writings from eighteenthcentury France—the “Dissertation sur Hypacie” by the male writer “M.G.” together with the response of “Mademoiselle B.,” who had commissioned it—which reflects the ideological tensions in Hypatian reception and encapsulates the dynamics of continuation, re-shaping, and suppression that Hypatia’s story has undergone through the ages. The afterword takes its cue from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in order to reflect on the point where “the legend becomes fact” (149). Watts ends with an impassioned plea to push back and resist the temptation to just “print the legend,” and he largely succeeds in doing so himself. Inevitably, there are slips into a more hagiographical tone, but on the whole Watts’s book demonstrates how to “appreciate Hypatia for the person that she was, not the literary character that she became” (155). UniversitÈ at Basel / CÂ edric Scheidegger LÈ ammle University of Cambridge A Literary Commentary on the Elegies of the APPENDIX TIBULLIANA. By Laurel Fulkerson. Oxford : Oxford University Press. 2017. Pp. x, 384. The APPENDIX TIBULLIANA (AT) has been transmitted as the third (sometimes third and fourth) book of Tibullus’ poetry. The collection is traditionally broken up into four or five authors: Lygdamus ([Tib.] 3.1–6), [Tibullus] (7), the friend of Sulpicia (8–12), Sulpicia (13–18), [Tibullus] (19), and an anonymous poet (20). Its poems situate themselves in the literary world of Augustan Rome. With the exception of 3.7, they are written in the meter and style of erotic elegy. Their chronology and authorship, however, is much debated. Many argue that some or all of the poems are pseudonymous and should be dated to a later period. Most heatedly debated is the authorship of the Sulpicia poems (3.8–18). Commentaries on the book have been piecemeal and infrequent. K. F. Smith prints the entire corpus with a brief discussion of the poems in the Appendix, but only offers line-by-line notes for the Sulpicia cycle (4.2–14 [= 3.8–20]).1 H. Tränkle is the only one to cover the entire Appendix.2 E. Navarro Antolı́n provides commentary on Lygdamus’ poems (3.1–6); R. O. A. M. Lyne writes on the poems most commonly attributed to Sulpicia (3.13–18); and W. W. Batstone has published notes on all the poems by and about Sulpicia (3.8–18).3 While commentaries on the AT are well supplemented by a great deal of scholarship, Fulkerson’s new volume treating the whole is a welcome addition. Fulkerson approaches the AT as a complete book. In contrast to modern critics who have dismissed its poets as second-rate or amateur imitators, Fulkerson treats the 1 K. F. Smith (ed.), The Elegies of Albius Tibullus (New York 1913). 2 H. Tränkle (ed.), Appendix Tibulliana (Berlin and New York 1990). 3 E. Navarro Antolı́n (ed.), Corpus Tibullianum 111.1–6: Lygdami Elegiarum Liber (Leiden 1996); R. O. A. M. Lyne, Collected Papers on Latin Poetry (Oxford 2007) 341–367; W. W. Batstone, “Sulpicia,” in D. J. Rayor and W. W. Batstone (eds.), Latin Lyric and Elegiac Poetry: An Anthology of New Translations (New York 1995; second ed., London 2018) 261–265. BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 173 writers of the AT as “competent, even good, poets” working within the traditional rules of Roman erotic elegy alongside the canonical three: Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid (vi). She demonstrates in her introduction that the inclusion of these authors in our assessment of the genre expands and redefines what we know as Roman erotic elegy. To maintain her focus on elegy, she has omitted discussion of [Tib.] 3.7, an anonymous hexameter panegyric to Messalla. Her reason for doing so is clear and sensible (37–39). The absence of the panegyric, however, somewhat disrupts the process she advocates—to read the collection as if the poems “belong together” (37). The volume opens with an introduction, followed by the text...

Rhetoric In Situ

Rhetoric <i>In Situ</i>

Reading Augustan Rome: Materiality as RhetoricIn Situ

ABSTRACTThe first emperor of Rome, Augustus, exploited architecture to convey his sophisticated propaganda. He famously boasted to have found Rome a city of brick, and left it a city of marble. This claim has been considered an apt metaphor for the establishment of an imperial state, though the quantitative, physical veracity of the boast has never been fully interrogated. A team from UCLA mapped and modeled the marble projects added to Rome in the decades of Augustan power, using rule-based procedural modeling to generate numerous 3D, interactive, geo-temporal simulations of the entire cityscape with each marble intervention placed in situ topographically and chronologically. Broad, pan-urban views of the city’s evolution revealed that Augustan marble projects were neither overwhelming in number nor readily visible. Examination of the urban experience over time and space, however, revealed that marble construction had a constant and pervasive impact. Daily urban residents found their movements blocked by marble transports and their senses bombarded by the noisy, dusty work at construction sites. Thus, it was not the rhetoric conveyed by architecture that justified Augustus’ claim, but the rhetoric of the building act that spoke loudly and persuasively in situ.

Reading Augustan Rome: Materiality as Rhetoric In Situ

ABSTRACTThe first emperor of Rome, Augustus, exploited architecture to convey his sophisticated propaganda. He famously boasted to have found Rome a city of brick, and left it a city of marble. This claim has been considered an apt metaphor for the establishment of an imperial state, though the quantitative, physical veracity of the boast has never been fully interrogated. A team from UCLA mapped and modeled the marble projects added to Rome in the decades of Augustan power, using rule-based procedural modeling to generate numerous 3D, interactive, geo-temporal simulations of the entire cityscape with each marble intervention placed in situ topographically and chronologically. Broad, pan-urban views of the city’s evolution revealed that Augustan marble projects were neither overwhelming in number nor readily visible. Examination of the urban experience over time and space, however, revealed that marble construction had a constant and pervasive impact. Daily urban residents found their movements blocked by marble transports and their senses bombarded by the noisy, dusty work at construction sites. Thus, it was not the rhetoric conveyed by architecture that justified Augustus’ claim, but the rhetoric of the building act that spoke loudly and persuasively in situ.

HOSPITALITY NARRATIVES IN VIRGIL AND CALLIMACHUS: THE IDEOLOGY OF RECEPTION

This article highlights the extent and significance of the intertextual relationship between reception narratives in Virgil'sAeneid(Aeneas and Evander) and Callimachus’Aetia(Heracles and Molorcus) andHecale(Theseus and Hecale). Encompassing Aeneas’ succession to Hercules as Evander's guest, his failed pledge to his host and his acquisition of a shield on which his historical successor, Augustus, is depicted, Callimachean intertextuality informs the narrative of theAeneidin its widest sweep. As the archetypal scene of Homeric hospitality (Odysseus and Eumaeus) is received from Callimachus by the new Homer of Augustan Rome, the narrative of reception becomes one of intertextual and cultural appropriation, the dynamics of which are far from those of amicable exchange.

Book Review of Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome, by Dorian Borbonus

Book Review of Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome, by Dorian Borbonus

Online-Only Content

Next article FreeOPEN ACCESS ON AJA ONLINE (www.ajaonline.org)Online-Only ContentPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreOnline-only content accompanying American Journal of Archaeology Volume 121, Number 2 (April 2017)SUPPLEMENTARY CONTENTImage Gallery: Recontextualizing Nilotic Scenes: Interactive Landscapes in the Garden of the Casa dell’Efebo, Pompeii, by Caitlín E. BarrettImage Gallery: Communicating Context: Spain’s Newly Renovated Museo Arqueológico Nacional, by Josephine ShayaONLINE NECROLOGYCharalambos Bouras (1933–2016), by Nassos PapalexandrouBOOK REVIEWSClimate and Ancient Societies, edited by Susanne Kerner, Rachael J. Dann, and Pernille Bangsgaard. Reviewed by Guy D. MiddletonKition-Bamboula VI: Le sanctuaire sous la colline, by Annie Caubet, Sabine Fourrier, and Marguerite Yon. Reviewed by Pamela GaberThe Image of the Artist in Archaic and Classical Greece: Art, Poetry, and Subjectivity, by Guy Hedreen. Reviewed by Robin OsborneOrigins of Classical Architecture: Temples, Orders and Gifts to the Gods in Ancient Greece, by Mark Wilson Jones. Reviewed by Rhys F. TownsendLe temps de Rhodes: Une chronologie des inscriptions de la cité fondée sur l’étude de ses institutions, by Nathan Badoud. Reviewed by John LundL’architecture monumentale grecque au IIIe siècle a.C., edited by Jacques des Courtils. Reviewed by Mary B. HollinsheadAuthentizität und Originalität antiker Bronzebildnisse: Ein gefälschtes Augustusbildnis, seine Voraussetzungen und sein Umfeld/Authenticity and Originality of Ancient Bronze Portraits: A Forged Portrait of Augustus, Its Prerequisites, and Its Surroundings, edited by Stephan Lehmann. Reviewed by Carol C. MattuschPower and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World, edited by Jens M. Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin. Reviewed by John North HopkinsThe Archaeology of Nuragic Sardinia, by Gary Webster. Reviewed by Kyle P. FreundHousing the Chosen: The Architectural Context of Mystery Groups and Religious Associations in the Ancient World, by Inge Nielsen. Reviewed by Sandra BlakelyMedicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean World, edited by Demetrios Michaelides. Reviewed by Zuzana ChovanecCultural Memories in the Roman Empire, edited by Karl Galinsky and Kenneth Lapatin. Reviewed by Margaret M. AndrewsBuilding for Eternity: The History and Technology of Roman Concrete Engineering in the Sea, by C.J. Brandon, R.L. Hohlfelder, M.D. Jackson, and J.P. Oleson. Reviewed by Mark Wilson JonesColumbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome, by Dorian Borbonus. Reviewed by Emanuel MayerMonuments in Miniature: Architecture on Roman Coinage, by Nathan T. Elkins. Reviewed by Elizabeth Wolfram ThillCivic Monuments and the Augustales in Roman Italy, by Margaret L. Laird. Reviewed by Julia LenaghanArt of Empire: The Roman Frescoes and Imperial Cult Chamber in Luxor Temple, edited by Michael Jones and Susanna McFadden. Reviewed by Anne Hunnell ChenExcavations at Zeugma, edited by William Aylward. Reviewed by David ParrishThe Ceramics Industry of Roman Sikyon: A Technological Study, by Conor P. Trainor. Reviewed by Jaye McKenzie-ClarkHidden Lives, Public Personae: Women and Civic Life in the Roman West, by Emily A. Hemelrijk. Reviewed by Tatiana IvlevaList of Books Received Next article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 121, Number 2April 2017 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 32Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.3764/aja.121.2.online Views: 32Total views on this site Copyright © 2017 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Augustan Principate and the Emergence of Biopolitics: A Comparative Historical Perspective

This paper uses Foucault’s concepts “discipline” and “biopower” to expose the complexity of power relations in Augustan Rome and its historiography. Focusing on Augustus’ Res Gestae and Tacitus’ Annales, I argue that the absolute sovereignty of the emperor did not preclude the advancement of techniques to classify, hierarchize and normalize individuals, nor did Imperial sovereignty work against the development of a discourse about the enhancement and protection of the population. By demonstrating the conceptual and historical relevancy of Foucault’s modern power triad of “sovereignty-discipline-government” to first century CE Rome, the paper suggests that biopolitical societies have a far more extensive history than the one said to have started around the turn of the eighteenth century.

Dorian Borbonus: Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome.

Dorian Borbonus: Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome.

Book Review: A City of Marble: The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome

Book Review: A City of Marble: The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome

A City of Marble: The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome

A City of Marble: The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome

A City of Marble: The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome

A City of Marble: The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome

Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome by Dorian Borbonus

Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome by Dorian Borbonus

Social clustering in 5th-c. Constantinople: the evidence of the Notitia

Clustering of residents of similar social status, ethnic or religious identity, or geographical origin into distinct areas of a city is a “common, but by no means universal, attribute of urban neighborhoods”. Different cities within a single culture and era exhibit diversity in the occurrence and nature of clustering: “there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ pattern of clustering within, say, Medieval cities or Islamic cities”.The existence and nature of clustering in Roman cities have rarely been the object of systematic study, and most contributions have focused on textual evidence for clustering in the city of Rome. A recent consideration of Rome under the Principate findsno evidence for strong clustering along social lines. The evidence points rather to the reverse: social mixing, at all levels.Similarly, a study of the neighborhoods of Augustan Rome observes that,although areas of the city might develop reputations as more or less desirable, ancient Rome was not generally segregated by class. Apartment buildings for poorer residents existed alongside the houses of more affluent residents in almost every quarter of the city.

The City and the Text in Vitruvius’s de Architectura

Consistently at the beginning and end of books and major sections of De Architectura, Vitruvius reflects on the order in which he presents his material (e.g. 2.10.3; 4.3.3). He frequently stresses that the design of his treatise follows a particular ordo, but never makes explicit what this ordo actually is. The underlying structuring principle, however, is crucial to understanding the treatise’s literary design and architectural theory. On the macro level, as has been little appreciated to date, Vitruvius presents his material in the order in which a city is built from scratch – beginning with the choice of the correct site and the laying out of walls (book 1) and the collection of building materials (book 2), continuing with the construction of different types of building (books 3-7), and finally securing the future flourishing of the city by supplying it with water (book 8), clocks (book 9) and defence mechanisms (book 10). As we read the De Architectura book by book, the matrix of a city comes into being, adaptable according to local conditions or the size of the community (Fritz, 132-3). I argue that this macrostructure also creates an implicit parallel between the creation of a city and the creation of the text itself. As the treatise unfolds, the ideal city comes into being – the De Architectura. On the lexical level, the dominant metaphor Vitruvius uses to describe his own text is not the city (or any type of architecture) but the body. The implications of the corpus-metaphor have been explored in detail (Callebat 1989, McEwen 2003, Oksanish 2011). By using it, Vitruvius suggests that unlike his predecessors’ smaller projects, his own work is an organic whole, made up of its membra, its constituent parts. The metaphor conveys the perfect wholeness and completeness of the treatise as well as its harmonious proportions. What it does not readily seem to provide, however, is a natural ordo, a principle of arrangement. This is delivered instead by the process of city construction. The relation between the metaphor of the body and the more subtle, implicit metaphoricity of city construction lies at the core of Vitruvian architectural theory. The two source domains melt seamlessly into one another, since the city is both the result of human design and like a natural organism which grows and develops in accordance with nature – an ideal expressed, for example, in the famous Dinocrates-anecdote (2.praef). For Vitruvius, the city offered a natural ordo for a book on architecture, but I propose that the macrostructure of city-building also stands at the beginning of a larger trend in early Augustan literature, which relates to the contemporary concerns of colony foundation, as well as to the Augustan project of ‘re-founding’ Rome. The parallel between city and text appeals to a group of authors writing at the same time as or just after Vitruvius, who set up their projects and textual foundations explicitly to parallel or rival Augustus’ own building of a new Rome. For example, Propertius (4.1A) and Manilius (Astronomica 2.772-87) explicitly compare their literary undertaking to the construction of a city in order to make a point about literary ambition and prestige as well as (in the case of Manilius) arrangement (Fantham, Welch 25-7, Schindler 252-72). Their poetic cities even display the same combination of organic growth and human construction as Vitruvius’ macro-city. Analysis of the macrostructure of the De Architectura thus not only offers important insights into Vitruvian conceptions of architecture and literary ambition, but also throws new light on Vitruvius’ position within the literary environment of early Augustan Rome. Callebat, L. (1989), ‘Organisation et structures du De architectura de Vitruve’, in Geertman, H. and de Jong, J. J. (1989) (eds.), Munus non ingratum : proceedings of the international symposium on Vitruvius' De architectura and the hellenistic and republican architecture, Leiden 20-23 January 1987, Leiden, 34-8. Fantham, E. (1997), ‘Images of the city: Propertius’ new-old Rome’, in Habinek, T. and Schiesaro, A. (eds.), The Roman Cultural Revolution, Cambridge, 122-35. Fritz, H.-J. (1995), Vitruv: Architekturtheorie und Machtpolitik in der romischen Antike, Munster. Gros, P. (1992), Vitruve. De L’Architecture. Livre IV, Paris. Gros, P. (1994) (ed.), Le Projet de Vitruve: Objet, destinataires et reception du De Architectura, Rome. McEwen, I. K. (2003), Writing the Body of Architecture, Cambridge MA. Oksanish, J. M. (2011), Building the Principate: A Literary Study of Vitruvius’ “de Architectura”, diss. New Haven. Schindler, C. (2000), Untersuchungen zu den Gleichnissen im romischen Lehrgedicht, Gottingen. Welch, T. S. (2005), The elegiac cityscape: Propertius and the meaning of Roman monuments, Ohio.

Review: A City of Marble. The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome, by Kathleen S. Lamp

Review: A City of Marble. The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome, by Kathleen S. Lamp

A City of Marble. The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome by Kathleen S. Lamp

A City of Marble. The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome by Kathleen S. Lamp

Ritual e narrativa: A supplicatio no mito da Fortuna Muliebris (Dionísio de Halicarnasso, Antiquitates Romanae, 8. 39.1-53.1)

Mitos e rituais criam e reforçam os laços entre indivíduos e comunidade, legitimando o grupo e a autoridade, envolvendo o potencial mimético das performances. O principado augustano foi um momento rico de criação e de ressignificação de rituais e de mitos, expressos em ações e intervenções espaciais e numa literatura cuja observação permite uma via de acesso à compreensão do sistema de valores, do uso das tradições e das inovações no espaço público romano. Este artigo tratará da etiologia do santuário da Fortuna Muliebris na versão de Dionísio de Halicarnasso. As narrativas etiológicas da Fortuna Muliebris são um dos elementos mais significativos para a análise do sistema de valores e das distinções de gênero na Roma augustana, e estarão em pauta elementos verbais e visuais da performance das personagens, interessando à análise elementos vinculados a normas e tradições do ritual da supplicatio.

The origins of Turnus, Vergilian invention, and Augustan Rome

This article briefly surveys literary sources on the Rutulians and Turnus and finds them to have been neither particularly informative nor plentiful. In fashioning his portrait of Turnus and his people, Vergil exploited that dearth of information by countering it and adding details not found in the earlier traditions. His inventive portrait of the heritage of Turnus, which emphasizes ethnic diversity, creates several parallels between Turnus and Aeneas, and helps make him both a direct counterpart and formidable opponent to the Trojan hero. By making the two warriors more similar than different via their mixed Italian and Greek ancestry, Vergil homogenizes them to the ethnically complex population of Rome during the age of Augustus.