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  • Prof: Good morning, all.

  • The title of today's lecture is, "The Roman Way of Life

  • and Death at Ostia, the Port of Rome."

  • On Tuesday we spoke about architecture under the emperor

  • Hadrian, the extraordinary emperor Hadrian.

  • We talked about the buildings that he commissioned,

  • and some of which he also had a hand in designing since,

  • as we mentioned, he was an amateur architect

  • himself.

  • We spoke about that Greek import, the Temple of Venus and

  • Roma, and also about the two major

  • commissions during his principate,

  • the Pantheon in Rome and Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli.

  • The main takeaway point vis-à-vis both of these

  • buildings-- and you see them once again now

  • on the screen, at left and right--is that

  • Hadrian followed the lead of Trajan before him.

  • What Trajan had done, and Apollodorus of Damascus had

  • done, in the Forum of Trajan and in

  • the Markets of Trajan, and that is to combine,

  • in one building complex, both the traditional and the

  • innovative strands of Roman architecture.

  • The traditional that goes back to Greek and Etruscan

  • architecture and is marked by the traditional elements,

  • the traditional vocabulary of architecture,

  • namely columns and walls and the roofs that they support;

  • and then more innovative Roman architecture,

  • which is predicated on concrete construction,

  • faced with a variety of materials, from stone to what

  • we'll see today as the ascendance of brick as a facing,

  • which began, as you'll recall,

  • after the fire in A.D.

  • 64 in Rome.

  • Again, looking at these two buildings as examples of what

  • Hadrian, he and his architects, tried to do.

  • The Pantheon, you'll recall on the left,

  • has a traditional porch, a porch that looks very much

  • like a typical Greek, Etruscan or Roman temple,

  • but then a revolutionary body, when you walk inside the

  • building, a revolutionary cylindrical drum and

  • hemispherical dome.

  • And then with regard to Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli,

  • I show you a view of the Canopus, and you'll recall that

  • the Canopus makes use of columnar architecture.

  • There are columns that border one end of the pool,

  • although they are columns with a twist because you can see they

  • support a straight and an arcuated lintel,

  • which we saw in Second Style Roman wall painting,

  • in painting, and then eventually it begins

  • to infiltrate built architecture,

  • comes to the fore under Hadrian.

  • So that's a playing around with those lintels in a way you

  • wouldn't have seen in Greek and Etruscan architecture,

  • but still relies, in the main,

  • on the traditional vocabulary of architecture.

  • But then you'll recall, on the other end of the pool,

  • a building that was meant to conjure up the Serapeum in the

  • Temple of Serapis in Canopus, in Egypt, but that was made out

  • of concrete construction and that had a segmented dome,

  • a kind of pumpkin dome that we believe that Hadrian designed

  • himself.

  • So this extraordinary combination of traditional and

  • innovative Roman architecture; that we see the hallmark of

  • Hadrianic architecture, and a gift that he gave to the

  • future evolution of architecture.

  • The other major contribution of the Hadrianic period,

  • that Hadrian himself had less to do with because it was

  • already bubbling up after the fire in A.D.

  • 64, is the move that we're going to see today toward

  • multi-storied housing.

  • We saw that begin already at the last gasp of Pompeii and

  • Herculaneum.

  • You'll remember after the earthquake of 62,

  • and before the eruption of Vesuvius,

  • the Pompeians and those who lived in Herculaneum began to

  • build, began to add additional stories

  • to their residential structures, and that meant for the most

  • part a second story being added to their residential structures,

  • but they never went beyond that.

  • What we see beginning to happen, especially under

  • Hadrian, is an increased taste for

  • multi-storied buildings, multi-storied domiciles,

  • but multi-storied residences that had more than two stories,

  • even up to as many as five stories: essentially apartment

  • houses.

  • And our best example for such apartment houses are in the city

  • of Ostia, the port city of Rome,

  • and it's therefore to the city of Ostia that we are going to

  • turn to today.

  • And, in fact, we'll spend the entire lecture

  • on the city of Ostia, because like Pompeii and

  • Herculaneum before it, especially like Pompeii,

  • we have an extraordinary array of not only private domiciles,

  • but also public architecture from the city of Ostia that

  • gives us an outstanding sense of what this city looked like in

  • antiquity.

  • I show you a plan of Ostia in its heyday.

  • You'll remember that the city was actually founded very early

  • on.

  • At the very beginning of the semester, we looked at the town

  • plan of Ostia, which dated to the mid-fourth

  • century B.C., around 350 B.C.

  • And you'll recall--and I'll remind you of this plan in a

  • moment-- you'll recall that it was

  • founded as-- it was actually Rome's first

  • colony, although it was a colony in

  • Italy obviously, not outside the mainland,

  • but its first colony in Italy, or anywhere for that matter.

  • And it was founded, as so many of these first

  • colonies were, as a military camp.

  • It was laid out as a castrum,

  • as you'll recall.

  • And that castrum, one can see in the very

  • center-- I'm going to show you a better

  • view of this from Ward-Perkins in a moment--

  • but you can see that kernel of the castrum plan right

  • here in the center of this plan.

  • But what this plan shows you is the way in which the city grew

  • over time.

  • Again, it began in the Republic, it continued to be

  • developed during the Republic.

  • It was under Augustus that some new buildings,

  • some public buildings were added to the locale,

  • including the Theater, and we're going to look at the

  • Theater today.

  • And then ports were added, as you'll remember--and I'll

  • review that momentarily--ports were added at Portus,

  • by Claudius and also by Trajan.

  • And it was after the Port of Trajan that the city really

  • began to take off in terms of its commercial activity,

  • and much of the building that we see in the city,

  • as it looks still today, belongs to the Hadrianic period

  • and into the time of the successors of Hadrian,

  • the so-called Antonine emperors, whose architecture

  • we'll also be studying this semester.

  • While this plan is on the screen, let me just point out

  • the location of Rome-- the arrow points this way--the

  • so-called Via Ostiense, the route, the street that

  • leads from Rome to Ostia; the Via Ostiense.

  • And actually the city road becomes the town--the country

  • road; the country thoroughfare

  • becomes the city street, the main city street,

  • the decumanus of the city of Ostia.

  • You can also see in this plan the location of a place called

  • Isola Sacra, up there, which we will see was the main

  • cemetery for Ostia.

  • Yes, there are tombs outside the city walls,

  • also elsewhere in the city, but our most- best-preserved

  • tombs are from this area called Isola Sacra;

  • and I'll show that to you also today.

  • And here you can see the Tiber River, the Tevere,

  • the Tiber River wending its way from Rome to Ostia.

  • And it is of course along the Tiber that we'll see warehouses

  • were located, and where the ships went back

  • and forth to export or import material,

  • products from Rome to Ostia and back again.

  • Again, we talked about the building of ports at Ostia.

  • We talked especially about the port that Claudius commissioned,

  • at Portus, and I remind you of it on the back of a Neronian

  • coin, a coin of Nero; obverse with Nero's portrait,

  • reverse representing that Claudian port.

  • And we see it there.

  • You'll remember it had curved breakwaters, which you can see

  • in that coin depiction, and a river god at the bottom;

  • boats in the center, as well as the lighthouse.

  • We see all of that on the coin.

  • And you'll remember that the breakwaters were made up of

  • columns that partook of that rusticated masonry that Claudius

  • so favored.

  • Down here, a painting that I've shown you before,

  • that is on the walls of the Vatican in Rome,

  • the Vatican Museums in Rome, where you can see Claudius'

  • port, with its curved breakwaters and

  • its lighthouse over here.

  • And then the port that was added by Trajan during his

  • reign, a multi-sided additional port right here.

  • And it was again the construction of that particular

  • port that really brought commerce even more--

  • this area had been used since the mid-fourth century B.C.,

  • but it begins to really take off;

  • there's a real efflorescence during this period.

  • And it is therefore not surprising that with commerce

  • booming there was more need for residential architecture,

  • for those who lived there, for the traders and so on and

  • so forth who lived there, and we see this,

  • the building of not only civic buildings but especially of

  • private domiciles begins to move very rapidly apace.

  • The city becomes more crowded and there becomes this need to

  • build up vertically, as well as horizontally;

  • and we'll see that development today.

  • Tourists who go to Rome really miss the boat by not going out

  • to Ostia in larger numbers, because most tourists don't

  • tend to take the trip out to Ostia.

  • But it's well worth it, and it's very easy to get to.

  • It only takes about 25 minutes to a half an hour on a suburban

  • train, to get from Rome to Ostia.

  • So it's a not-to-be-missed experience.

  • And I show you one of these trains in the upper left that

  • takes you very easily from Rome to the site of Ostia.

  • There are a number of stations in Ostia.

  • One of them is Ostia Centro, the downtown of Ostia,

  • which you see in that view in the upper left.

  • And the other is Lido di Ostia, which means "the

  • beach," and I show you a view of Lido di Ostia down here.

  • Now looking at that nice view of the ocean--

  • I know you've all been, you're back from spring break,

  • but still it's nice to reminisce about what some of you

  • may have been doing during spring break and see this

  • wonderful view of the scene.

  • It looks very enticing, but I can tell you that it's

  • not, once you get there.

  • It's very polluted.

  • This is not one of the great beaches of the world.

  • So don't be seduced by Lido di Ostia.

  • Stay on the train and make your way to the site called Scavi di

  • Ostia, which is the excavations of

  • Ostia, the archaeological excavations,

  • where you can see, as you saw, as one sees in

  • Pompeii, an ancient Roman city,

  • extremely well preserved.

  • And you see a glimpse of it over here, and you can tell even

  • just from this glimpse that we are dealing here with a city

  • that is not unlike Pompeii.

  • It has streets and sidewalks, and it has buildings along the

  • side of either of those.

  • But there is one main difference between this and what

  • we saw at Pompeii-- and you can see it very well in

  • this image-- and that is that these houses,

  • that are along the street, look different than those did

  • in Pompeii in that they are made out of concrete,

  • faced with brick: a very different kind of

  • appearance, and one that is

  • quintessentially Ostian and makes this city well worth a

  • visit.

  • In fact, if we think of Pompeii as the quintessential

  • first-century A.D.

  • Roman city, we should think of the city of Ostia as the

  • quintessential second-century A.D.

  • city, the best example that we have of what a second century,

  • a Hadrianic and Antonine city, would have looked like,

  • and that is what makes it so important to us.

  • Here I remind you again of the original plan that we looked at,

  • the plan from the mid-fourth century B.C.,

  • 350 B.C., from Ward-Perkins, that shows you the original

  • castrum of the first colony: this rectangular space,

  • very regular, with its own wall surrounding

  • the city, with the cardo,

  • the north-south street, and the decumanus,

  • the east-west street, intersecting exactly at the

  • center of that city.

  • And then at that intersection, as was Roman practice,

  • the placement of the forum of the city,

  • a great open rectangular space with a temple pushed up against

  • the back wall, in this case a Temple of

  • Jupiter, a Capitolium, dominating the space in front

  • of it, and then other buildings around

  • it, as you can see.

  • Although there's a striking difference between this forum

  • and the forum that we saw at Pompeii,

  • because you'll remember at Pompeii the various major

  • buildings, the Basilica,

  • the Temple of Apollo, and so on, sort of radiating

  • out from the central core of the forum.

  • We don't see that here.

  • We see the buildings sort of placed separately,

  • from that main forum space.

  • But in every other respect very similar to the general plan of

  • these early Roman cities .

  • What's also useful about this particular plan is the fact that

  • it shows you the way, as time went by and as the city

  • grew, it shows you the way in which

  • the cardo and the decumanus were extended,

  • and then the other buildings of the city were added here and

  • there: a number of baths; lots of private residences.

  • This is a particularly important building here at 15

  • and 16, which we'll look at today:

  • 15 is the Theater and 16 is the so-called Piazza of the

  • Corporations, the Piazzale delle

  • Corporazioni, which is very significant,

  • and we'll look at that soon.

  • If you go and visit the city of Ostia today,

  • and enter at the ticket booth, what you see almost immediately

  • is again a polygonal masonry street,

  • looking very much like Pompeii.

  • But once again there are no stepping stones in Ostia,

  • unlike Pompeii -- the plot thickens there in terms of why

  • we see those in Pompeii and don't seem to see them anywhere

  • else.

  • You walk along that polygonal masonry street pavement and you

  • see both the remains up here in the upper left of the original

  • Republican city wall, and it should bring back

  • memories of opus quadratum,

  • or ashlar masonry, that we saw at the beginning of

  • the semester.

  • You can see it's consistent with the age in which it was

  • built in the Republic.

  • But then over here, as you make your way along on

  • one of the main streets, you see what is characteristic

  • of Ostia as a whole, and that is concrete

  • construction, brick-faced concrete

  • construction, both for the residences and

  • also for the public buildings, and also for the religious

  • structures, namely the temples in this city.

  • The reason for this, of course--it takes us back to

  • the Neronian period, the great fire of 64,

  • when it was realized -- you'll remember the Subura,

  • which was located back beyond the precinct walls of the Forum

  • of Augustus, the area where the working poor

  • of Rome lived, primarily in rickety apartment

  • houses that were made out of wood;

  • multi-storied houses.

  • Those were actually multi-storied,

  • but they were always going up in flames,

  • and there was a recognition after the great destruction of

  • the fire of 64 that the Romans needed to fireproof their

  • buildings, and they recognized the fact

  • that brick is better at protecting the structure from

  • fire than stone is, and stone can burn,

  • and they actually began to-- as we know, we talked about

  • this before-- they began to build their

  • houses and many of their civic structures out of concrete faced

  • with brick.

  • And we see that development especially well here in Ostia.

  • And Ostia is extremely important for us also because

  • many comparable buildings that were put up in the city of Rome

  • itself no longer survive.

  • The same apartment houses that we're going to see at Ostia did

  • exist in Rome.

  • We have some remains of them.

  • There's a very prominent one at the base of the Capitoline Hill,

  • to the left of the hill as you climb up that hill.

  • But we have very little evidence for this in Rome,

  • and so we have to rely on Ostia to give us the best picture of

  • apartment building in Rome, in Roman architecture in the

  • second century A.D.

  • Here is a spectacular view of Ostia as it looks today,

  • from the air, and we are obviously looking

  • down on the forum, on the great open rectangular

  • space of the forum, with columns around it.

  • We are looking also at the Capitolium,

  • at the Temple of Jupiter, which is a very large

  • structure, as you can see here,

  • made out of concrete, faced with brick.

  • It is a typical Roman temple, unlike Hadrian's Temple of

  • Venus and Roma, because we can see that it has

  • a façade orientation; it has a single staircase;

  • it has a deep porch, freestanding columns in that

  • porch.

  • So a typical Roman structure and--it's a typical Roman

  • temple.

  • And then you can also see its vast scale.

  • There are a couple of people standing here who look miniscule

  • in relationship to this building,

  • and only part of the building, in fact the full height of the

  • building, is not even preserved here.

  • So it was even larger still than what you see.

  • The reason for its size is twofold: one,

  • because we have already seen that this taste for larger and

  • larger buildings has really taken off.

  • We saw it in Hadrian's Forum in Rome.

  • We saw it in Domitian's Palace on the Palatine Hill.

  • We saw it in Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, and in the Pantheon,

  • the largest span, the largest dome ever built.

  • So this taste for largeness, grandiosity in architecture,

  • has really taken off.

  • So it's not surprising to see this Capitolium,

  • which was built in the Hadrianic period,

  • specifically 120 A.D., also being large in scale.

  • But there's a second and perhaps even more important

  • reason, and that is in a city in which

  • all of the-- most of the houses are what are

  • called insulae-- i-n-s-u-l-a in the singular;

  • a-e in the plural--insulae,

  • multi-storied apartment buildings, often of as many as

  • five stories.

  • If you want your Capitolium to stand out in that city,

  • and be seen up above those apartment houses,

  • you've got to build it very high.

  • And that is undoubtedly the reason that they--

  • one of the two reasons, the more important reason--

  • that they have built this temple so large,

  • and especially so tall, so that you could see the

  • Temple of Jupiter from everywhere in the city of Ostia.

  • Here's a view of the Temple as it looks today in isolation,

  • again, only part of its height preserved,

  • but enough for us to get a very good sense of its concrete

  • construction, brick facing here,

  • and as I've already described, the single staircase,

  • the columns in the porch and so on.

  • I mentioned already that it was under Augustus that a theater

  • and an entertainment district was added to the city of Ostia,

  • and that building, you see the remains of it here,

  • along one of the major streets of the city of Ostia.

  • It was renovated in around 200 A.D.;

  • that is, in the early part of the third century A.D.,

  • so considerably later.

  • It was expanded to be able to hold 2,500 spectators at that

  • particular point, and much of the concrete and

  • brick-faced construction belongs to that renovation.

  • One can't imagine a building quite like this in the age of

  • Augustus.

  • So what you're seeing here is primarily the restored view,

  • the restored version of this building.

  • But what you can see, that does at least link it back

  • to the Augustan period, is the fact that the design of

  • the façade is very similar to the design of the

  • Theater of Marcellus in Rome, with the arches,

  • and in this case pilasters between them --

  • that same general scheme that we saw for theater and for

  • amphitheater architecture, used here.

  • The main difference, of course, is the fact that we

  • have concrete construction with brick facing,

  • rather than concrete construction with stone facing,

  • travertine in the case of the Theater of Marcellus.

  • I haven't yet shown you a Roman latrine, but today is the day

  • for the Roman latrine.

  • But you have to imagine, of course,

  • that in any major public building, like a theater,

  • where you're going to have a lot of people there at the same

  • time, you have to provide a public

  • latrine.

  • And when I say a public latrine, I really mean a public

  • latrine.

  • There was no privacy, as you can see,

  • in this latrine whatsoever.

  • What it is composed of, as you can see,

  • is a bench that lines the walls, with a series of holes in

  • it, and then just one single drain

  • that encircles the building.

  • So this gives you an idea of where you had to go,

  • if you needed to go, during intermission,

  • if you were attending the Theater in Ostia.

  • One of the most important buildings at Ostia is connected

  • to this Theater.

  • I'm showing you now the plan of the Theater, which corresponds

  • to theaters that we've looked at throughout this semester;

  • a typical Roman plan.

  • It has a semi-circular orchestra.

  • It has a stage building or scaenae frons here.

  • It has a semicircular cavea,

  • the seats, which are placed on top of, of course in this case,

  • a concrete foundation.

  • This, like other Roman theaters, is an urban

  • phenomenon.

  • There was no hill to build this on,

  • so the Romans had to build--the Ostians had to build their own

  • hill out of concrete, and then support the

  • cavea on top of that.

  • But the cavea is made of stone seats;

  • they used stone for the seats, as is traditional in Roman

  • theater architecture.

  • But we see that this Theater is appended to a porticus.

  • Now we've seen a porticus with these

  • theaters before; it was in fact characteristic

  • of theater design.

  • And if you think back to the Theater in Pompeii,

  • for example, you'll remember that that

  • porticus, which had little shops all

  • around it, or small cubicles all around

  • it, was used as a place where you could go during intermission

  • to relax, to walk around,

  • to buy a playbill, to pick up a souvenir T-shirt

  • or whatever the equivalent was in those days:

  • a souvenir of your experience that evening at the theater.

  • And so we see that same general scheme here,

  • this whole idea of this open rectangular space,

  • with some columns, and then with these little

  • cubicles all along.

  • But in this case it was not meant to be a place for

  • souvenirs or a place to store props.

  • But instead what we see is something quite fascinating,

  • given the fact that the city of Ostia was primarily a commercial

  • city, a place where items were

  • exported and imported.

  • Because it was a major port or harbor city,

  • what this was used for instead--hence its name the

  • Piazzale delle Corporazioni-- is a series of businesses that

  • were-- the import/export business

  • essentially is what these spaces were used for.

  • And I'll show you.

  • Actually some of them are quite well preserved and I can show

  • you indeed what they looked like.

  • Then in the center something we also don't see in the Pompeii

  • Theater, a small temple in the center,

  • a temple that corresponds to Roman temples that we've looked

  • at thus far: its rectangular shape;

  • its flat side and back walls; some columns in the deep porch;

  • a single staircase; façade emphasis,

  • as you can see here; relatively small in scale,

  • as these kinds of things go.

  • And it has been speculated by the main excavator of this site

  • that it was used as a--that it was dedicated to some god whose

  • name we don't know; we don't know which god or

  • goddess this was dedicated to.

  • But the excavator has speculated that it was probably

  • some god that had something to do with commerce,

  • and the blessing of commerce, and that probably some trade

  • guild, one of the trade guilds that

  • had its businesses set up here, may have been the

  • commissioners, may have paid for,

  • indeed commissioned this particular temple.

  • And I think that's as good a theory as any,

  • and may well be the case.

  • This is a view--we're standing at the top of the cavea,

  • looking down over that cavea.

  • We can see the cunei or wedge-shaped sections of seats.

  • We can see the stone that has been used for those seats.

  • We can see the semicircular orchestra,

  • the scalloped face of the stage, and then one can imagine

  • the scaenae frons, with its forest of columns

  • behind; that part is not well preserved.

  • And there also would have been--I'll show you a restored

  • view a little bit later where you'll see that there was a much

  • higher wall in between this and the Piazzale that lay beyond.

  • The wall is no longer there, so we can see very well through

  • these columns, the small temple that was put

  • up by that trade guild, to some god of commerce.

  • And then we can also see these cubicles all along the way,

  • that were used as these import and export emporia.

  • This is a view of the temple as it looks today.

  • We can see that single staircase, fairly narrow

  • staircase here; the façade orientation;

  • a couple of the columns, including a Corinthian column,

  • that are still preserved from that small structure.

  • And then here a very useful view showing us again these

  • interesting spaces, rectangular spaces along here,

  • fronted in each case by columns.

  • We'll see that those columns are made out of cement,

  • faced with brick -- so shades of the Sanctuary of Hercules at

  • Tivoli.

  • We haven't seen this before, I mean, since then.

  • And that was a very unusual view.

  • Here we're seeing something that actually becomes more

  • common in the second century, making concrete columns and

  • then facing them with brick.

  • I'd like to show you a few views of these import/export

  • businesses, as I've called them; one of them here,

  • where we can see that the architecture itself,

  • the walls and the columns are only partially preserved.

  • You have to imagine that in antiquity they went up higher

  • than this.

  • But what is well preserved are the mosaics on the floor of each

  • of these, or many of these spaces.

  • And you can see they're all done in black-and-white mosaic,

  • just the two colors.

  • You can see the interest that the Ostians had in geometric

  • shapes.

  • They have inside these very abstract, inside the shop here,

  • these abstract patterns, although they've made an

  • attempt to vary them.

  • But then in the front, something very interesting,

  • that we see throughout, is the use of sea imagery.

  • Because again they were in the import and export business,

  • they were busy sending ships back and forth,

  • from Italy to other parts of the Roman world by sea,

  • and so it's almost all sea imagery.

  • Here we see two heraldic dolphins--dolphins are

  • particularly popular in these scenes--

  • facing one another, as a kind of advertisement or

  • shop sign for this particular enterprise.

  • Here's another one, where you can see--I like this

  • dolphin in particular; he's nicely preserved and he

  • has a wonderful serpentine tail, with a lot of flourish at the

  • end here, as you can see.

  • And then inside an image of a boat;

  • you can see it's partially preserved.

  • What's wonderful about this example is it shows us that

  • although these are fairly simple in design,

  • and are meant essentially as advertisements for the shop,

  • the artist and the patron have taken real care to think about

  • what you're going to see when you're standing where.

  • So that they have oriented these so that when you're facing

  • the shop and deciding whether you're going to pick this one--

  • there's 61 of these, by the way, around the

  • perimeter of this structure, so you had a lot of choice,

  • in terms of which enterprise you were going to,

  • where you were going to go to.

  • If you wanted to ship something from Ostia somewhere else,

  • or receive a delivery, you had a lot of choices.

  • Although I don't doubt some of them specialized in different

  • parts of the world, shipping to Egypt or shipping

  • to Asia Minor.

  • But you can see here the dolphin.

  • When you're standing, deciding whether you want to go

  • in, the dolphin, you face the dolphin.

  • Once you're inside, and standing and talking to the

  • owner, if you turn around and look back, you're going to see

  • the boat head on.

  • So they've really--they've orchestrated this in such

  • a--they've paid real attention; it's not done willy-nilly,

  • they've paid attention to what you're going to see where,

  • when you are entering and inside these spaces.

  • Here's another one, not only dolphins,

  • dolphins, dolphins, more dolphins and more

  • dolphins, but you also see in this case a

  • lighthouse, which could either be a

  • representation of their local lighthouse,

  • or some lighthouse somewhere else that this particular place

  • ships to.

  • And then the last one, which is the one on your

  • Monument List, with two boats.

  • So again, how does one ship things from Ostia elsewhere?

  • By boat, and so they tend to represent boats.

  • So you've kind of seen it all; dolphins, boats and lighthouses

  • tend to be the items that are chosen for these so-called

  • advertisements.

  • But this one is very useful too because you can see the shapes

  • and the colors of the tesserae that are used

  • here.

  • And although these are very effective, you can see that this

  • is not the Alexander Mosaic; these are not done with that

  • kind of skill.

  • They use only black and white, the simplest possible scheme,

  • no colors, and you don't get the sense,

  • as you do with something like the Alexander Mosaic,

  • when you step back from it, it could almost be a painting,

  • it's done that well, with the cast shadows and the

  • crumpling figures so well presented.

  • Here it's something quite different, more abstract,

  • and the stones are not as fine.

  • You can see they haven't paid as much attention to getting

  • them perfectly shaped.

  • But nonetheless it's very effective, and it really

  • does--it does what it intended to do.

  • One of the sad things--it's great to see,

  • and if you go out to Ostia, make a special point of seeing

  • these and taking pictures.

  • Because I've been looking at these for many years,

  • and every time I'm there it seems that there are fewer

  • tesserae there-- these are the originals--there

  • are fewer tesserae than there were before.

  • I'm not saying that people take them,

  • although I think people do take them,

  • but just that over time, by tourists walking on them

  • extensively, they get loose and they get

  • spread around the site, and they haven't done as good a

  • job as I think they should at Ostia,

  • in keeping these mosaics together.

  • Here's a restored view of the whole complex,

  • where I think you can see that, although the Theater and the

  • Piazzale are connected to one another,

  • and are part of the same scheme, and are a development,

  • a further development in evolution,

  • that is particularly appropriate for this commercial

  • city of Ostia, that comes out of the orbit of

  • that earlier theater and porticus complex at

  • Pompeii.

  • We can see that although they're part of that same

  • complex, they are distinct from one another.

  • If you look at the Theater and the cavea up above,

  • with the original wall of the scaenae frons preserved--

  • we're looking at it from the back--you can see that that was

  • very high.

  • So only if you were way up at the top of the cavea

  • would you really get a sense of what lay beyond,

  • and once you got into the Piazzale over here,

  • with its temple, and with its various shops,

  • you were in another world, a commercial world.

  • Also interesting is the fact that although they're open to

  • the sky today, in antiquity there was a

  • covered colonnade, as you can see here,

  • that would have covered those shops,

  • and you would have had to go in between the columns and back

  • along the passageway in order to check out what the options were.

  • The city of Ostia, like all Roman cities that

  • we've talked about-- Rome, Pompeii,

  • Herculaneum, and so on--

  • all obviously had a selection of bath establishments.

  • Ostia was no exception.

  • There are a number of baths preserved, from the Roman city

  • of Ostia, this being one of them, the so-called Baths of

  • Neptune, that dates to 139 A.D.; the Baths of Neptune,

  • so called because of the spectacular mosaic,

  • black-and-white mosaic, of Neptune, on the floor.

  • I'll show it to you in a moment, but go into it in more

  • detail a bit later in the lecture.

  • If we look at the plan of the Baths of Neptune in Ostia,

  • I wondered if any of you can tell me whether this is a plan

  • that corresponds to the earlier bath buildings at Pompeii--

  • the Stabian Baths or the Forum Baths--

  • or conforms more closely to the imperial bath type that we saw

  • in Rome, from the time of Titus,

  • let's say the Baths of Titus and Trajan.

  • Any thoughts?

  • You grimaced, but maybe I'll ask you.

  • Do you have a--pick on you.

  • Student: The earlier one.

  • Prof: The earlier one, absolutely.

  • And why, why do you say that?

  • Student: Because the central open area and the

  • palaestra, and then the series of bath

  • rooms.

  • Prof: Excellent, excellent, that's exactly

  • right.

  • We see the palaestra on one side, with the

  • natatio, or the piscina,

  • that usually accompanied it, over here.

  • And then on the other side, all aligned in a row,

  • the typical bath, the bathing block,

  • including the apodyterium,

  • the tepidarium, the caldarium and the

  • frigidarium; although the frigidarium

  • is not a round alcoved structure at all --

  • so in that sense perhaps influenced by some of what came

  • in between those early baths at Pompeii and the imperial baths

  • in Rome.

  • But, and of course also note here the shops that line the

  • front of it, which is also characteristic of

  • the Stabian Baths and the Forum Baths at Pompeii.

  • So they could have chosen the other,

  • but obviously felt that this was much more appropriate to

  • this commercial town, to use the smaller,

  • more intimate bath type here than the imperial baths that had

  • been developed in Rome from the first century A.D.

  • on.

  • Just a glimpse of the black-and-white mosaic that

  • gives this bath its name, the Baths of Neptune;

  • you see Neptune here.

  • But you can also see the way in which every room in the bath--

  • which was made out of concrete, faced with brick,

  • as you can also tell from this view--

  • every room was covered with these black-and-white mosaics.

  • Ostia is the land of the black-and-white mosaic.

  • I'll return to that in a moment.

  • Perhaps most importantly, of anything that I show you

  • today, are the apartment houses of Ostia, and it's to those that

  • I'd like now to turn.

  • What you're looking at on the screen is a model of what one of

  • these apartment houses would have looked like.

  • This one is the so-called Insula, i-n-s-u-l-a,

  • of Serapis, the Insula of Serapis.

  • And we're looking at it in a model that is in that museum of

  • casts that I've referred to a number of times this semester,

  • at a place, in a part of Rome called EUR,

  • E-U-R, that area that was built up in the Fascist period by

  • Mussolini in the 1930s.

  • This model is in that museum, and it gives us as good an idea

  • as anything I could show you of what one of these apartment

  • houses looked like in its heyday,

  • in the time of Hadrian.

  • The word insula, I should mention,

  • it can be used in two ways.

  • An insula either refers to a multi-storied apartment

  • house, or it refers to a block of houses in a city like Ostia.

  • It's used, for whatever reason, it was used interchangeably to

  • refer to either a block or to an individual house.

  • So pay attention to that when you read about an insula

  • or insulae.

  • Again, this one dates to the second century A.D.,

  • the Insula of Serapis.

  • And it basically was like a modern condominium,

  • and often more than one of these insulae were next,

  • were clearly next to one another, but more than one

  • sometimes shared a common bath.

  • So they would sometimes build a bath building that would be used

  • by those who lived in those two apartment houses.

  • Now what's characteristic of this,

  • especially as we think about it in relationship to early

  • domus architecture, that we saw at Pompeii,

  • those single-family dwellings, is the need in this teeming

  • commercial city to accommodate a very large population in a small

  • amount of space -- people on the whole who could

  • not afford single-family dwellings,

  • who needed to be housed in these apartment buildings.

  • They build up vertically, and, as you can see,

  • they go up to as many as five stories,

  • and we see that the Insula of Serapis was indeed a

  • five-storied structure.

  • It is made out of concrete.

  • It is faced with brick.

  • And what is particularly interesting about the brick

  • facing here-- and this is going to be our

  • first example of this, at Ostia--is the fact at some

  • point the Romans realized that brick was really attractive in

  • its own right, and it didn't need to be

  • stuccoed over anymore.

  • If you think back to the Domus Aurea,

  • even in the Domus Aurea, the building was made out of--

  • the palace was made out of concrete faced with brick,

  • but the façade was gilded,

  • and inside, you'll remember, Fabullus was commissioned to

  • cover the entire interior of the structure with stucco,

  • and then paint it.

  • So you would have had no sense, when you were standing in the

  • Palace of Nero, in Nero's day,

  • that it was a brick-faced concrete structure.

  • But somewhere along the way, and it comes to the fore in the

  • second century A.D., they realized:

  • "Hey, this brick is actually pretty attractive in

  • its own right.

  • It has texture.

  • We can vary the color; we can use a reddish brick,

  • we can use a slightly yellowish brick.

  • We can add some stucco, to make some decorative

  • effects.

  • This looks awesome."

  • And we think some innovative architects got the idea,

  • innovative designers, to "let's leave it,

  • let's not stucco it over, let's let it speak for

  • itself."

  • And that was a very wise decision, because as you'll see

  • today, the buildings that we have

  • remaining from Ostia, that were unadulterated brick

  • exteriors, without stucco,

  • are absolutely magnificent, and they became,

  • the designers became real experts at rendering it in an

  • extraordinary way.

  • I think you can get a sense of that even in this model.

  • So exposed brickwork here.

  • You see these arches are made of bricks that are kind of wedge

  • shaped and look like the sort of thing we saw earlier in stone.

  • Those wedge-shaped sections of stone that we saw,

  • for example, in the Falerii Novi Gate,

  • we see that sort of thing here.

  • It may have been used, just as it was in the Pantheon.

  • You'll remember how they used them during the building process

  • to keep the concrete from settling before it dried,

  • but they realized afterwards that these could be positioned

  • in a way that made them very attractive in their own right

  • ultimately.

  • We can also see that they have added moldings,

  • usually with stucco, added moldings that make the

  • building more attractive, sometimes even little

  • pediments, as you can see over some of the windows over here.

  • So they come up with strategies to make this brick look even

  • more attractive than it was on its own.

  • Note also the shops in the first story.

  • Some of these are shops, some of these are actually

  • staircases that lead you to the uppermost stories.

  • And once again, it's clear that the Romans have

  • become so adept at using concrete that they are able to

  • open up these walls.

  • The openings are larger than they had been even before,

  • and so they become very good at dematerializing the wall in a

  • way that becomes increasingly sophisticated over time.

  • The most famous house at Ostia is in a sense mine,

  • because it's called the Casa di Diana, the House of Diana,

  • at Ostia.

  • And we see a view of it here, as it looks today.

  • It was a multi-storied apartment building,

  • a multi-storied insula.

  • Only two of those stories are preserved now.

  • I'll show you a restored view of what the original looked like

  • momentarily.

  • But we see it here, as it looks today:

  • concrete faced with brick, exposed brick,

  • brick enjoyed in its own right.

  • Very large openings that lead into--they're either

  • entranceways into the structure, or lead to staircases,

  • or open up onto shops.

  • We can see here in actuality the same sort of thing we saw in

  • the model from EUR, and that is the use not only of

  • exposed brick, but also of moldings that are

  • added, either in brick sometimes,

  • or also sometimes in stucco, of the nice overhangs that they

  • have created above the second-story windows,

  • up there.

  • We also see a lot of Italian school children in Ostia,

  • and Pompeii also, but particularly Ostia because

  • of its proximity to Rome, and all the schools that they

  • have in the city of Rome; lots of kids always out in

  • groups, and they always seem to have T-shirts of the same color.

  • So you'll see one red school and one yellow school and one

  • blue school; it's a lot of fun.

  • And every one of them has their--it's so funny to me,

  • they have their cell phones and they're all clicking,

  • clicking, clicking, as they walk through these

  • buildings.

  • I'm not sure they're looking at anything, but they're definitely

  • clicking, to record the fact that they were at Ostia;

  • perhaps that's for student papers, I don't know.

  • But here a detail of the Insula of Diana, looking through one of

  • these entranceways into the rest of the structure.

  • And I'll bet you're as struck as I am in looking at this,

  • that with regard to vista, the interesting panorama and

  • vista.

  • It doesn't matter whether you're building out of rubble or

  • stone or opus incertum or concrete faced with brick,

  • there is that aesthetic, that Roman aesthetic,

  • of building things in such a way that wherever you're

  • standing in that structure you're going to be looking from

  • one part of the building to another,

  • and you're going to be struck by the wonderful scenes that you

  • see within that building and from that building,

  • outside of that structure.

  • Here's the restored view of the Insula of Diana,

  • where you can see that originally it was a four-storied

  • structure.

  • It's a cutaway and an axonometric view:

  • four-storied structure.

  • And this particular restored view is also extremely helpful

  • because it shows us that these houses did not have the

  • peristyle courts, or the hortus that we

  • know from the domus italica or the Hellenized

  • domus.

  • There was no space for that in this commercial city.

  • There is no emphasis on the greenery and the wonderful

  • fountains and statuary that we saw in Pompeii.

  • And keep in mind, of course, that Pompeii,

  • in Campania, was essentially a resort town;

  • a very different kind of feel than Ostia, this teeming

  • commercial center.

  • So what they replaced those with here, in order to get more

  • light into the structure, is a kind of a light well;

  • and you see that light well up here, where there are also

  • windows on multiple stories.

  • And, in fact, I would imagine that those were

  • the choicest apartments to have, because they would have been

  • less noisy than what you can imagine an apartment along the

  • street must have been, with all the activity going in

  • and out of the thermopolia and the other shops down

  • below; the cart traffic and so on.

  • So again I imagine the light well apartment would have been

  • highly desirable.

  • Speaking of thermopolia, we have them at Ostia,

  • as we have them at Pompeii, quite a number of them.

  • And I show you the best preserved, which happens to be

  • in Diana's House, and I show it to you here,

  • the Thermopolium of the Casa di Diana at Ostia.

  • You can see that right at the entranceway they have put a

  • black-and-white mosaic.

  • You see inside just what we saw at--just exactly the same thing

  • that we saw at Pompeii, one of these counters that

  • would have had recesses in it.

  • So you have to imagine, just the same as we saw there,

  • a kind of fast food emporium, where you would take a peek at

  • what looked good for the day, make your choice.

  • If you go inside the thermopolium of Diana,

  • you see hanging on the wall a painting,

  • which it seems likely may have served as a kind of shop sign

  • that might have been hung outside the building to

  • advertise what you could get in this particular

  • thermopolium.

  • And if we look at what's depicted here,

  • it's a still life of objects, and we see what seems to be a

  • pomegranate on the right, hanging on a nail, on the wall.

  • In the center--I don't know if you can see it from where you

  • sit, but in the center a block that

  • supports what looks like a drinking cup that has little

  • round things floating in it, lentils or chickpeas or

  • something like that.

  • And then at the far left there's a plate that also is on

  • a block, a plate that has a carrot and some other

  • vegetables.

  • So this may have been a vegetarian, I guess this was a

  • vegetarian restaurant in Pompeii;

  • one of the healthier places one could go, if one wanted a

  • snack--in Ostia, excuse me.

  • If you go to Ostia, by the way, you really do want

  • to set aside a day to do that, because by the time you take

  • the half an hour ride out there, get there--there's a lot to see.

  • And it used to be, if you'd go there for a day,

  • which I've done many, many times, there was

  • absolutely nowhere to eat.

  • So you had to remember to bring your--

  • and nowhere to get a bottle of water,

  • so you'd have to remember to bring your bottle of water,

  • and maybe a snack.

  • But they have rectified that in recent years;

  • the last few years they've finally put up the Caffetteria

  • degli Scavi, which loosely translated is the

  • Excavation Café, the Cafeteria of the

  • Excavations at Ostia.

  • And it's actually a wonderful place.

  • I have to say it's very modern.

  • It has a wonderful deck with tables and the ubiquitous

  • Italian white umbrella where one--and the food is actually,

  • for a cafeteria, ain't bad;

  • Italian pasta is always hard to make bad, it's always good.

  • And then inside, I thought you'd be amused to

  • see, when they decided on the

  • cor for the interior of the cafeteria,

  • with its simple tables and chairs, they put brick on the

  • wall, and they then hung up these

  • wonderful versions of the Piazzale delle Corporazioni

  • black-and-white mosaics.

  • So again, very--Italians are really,

  • they do build Ferraris after all, they are very good at

  • design and aesthetic, and pay a great deal of

  • attention to that, and consequently always make

  • one's surroundings pleasant.

  • Warehouses.

  • This was a commercial port.

  • We talked about the fact that in commercial ports one needs

  • warehouses.

  • We began the semester with a warehouse, in fact,

  • the Porticus Aemilia in Rome, along the banks of the Tiber.

  • And I remind you of that here.

  • Here's the Tiber, a model of the Tiber,

  • with the Porticus Aemilia.

  • You'll remember that was made out of concrete.

  • It was one of the earliest examples of concrete

  • construction in the Republic in Rome: a series of barrel vaults

  • linked to one another, on three tiers,

  • as you'll recall, with axial and lateral spatial

  • relations inside that structure.

  • Ostia needed its own warehouses as well.

  • It had them in the Republic already, but it began to add to

  • them in the second century A.D.

  • And it's fascinating to see what happens when you build a

  • warehouse out of concrete faced with brick.

  • You get an extraordinary structure that looks very much

  • like an insula.

  • If I had put this up and said: "What is this?"

  • And you said: "It's an

  • insula," you would sort of be on the

  • mark, because it looks exactly like an insula;

  • but it is a warehouse.

  • And this is the most famous warehouse in Ostia,

  • the so-called Horrea--because the word horrea,

  • h-o-r-r-e-a, is warehouse in Latin--

  • the Horrea Epagathiana, which you have on your Monument

  • List, which dates to 145 to 150 A.D.

  • This is the entrance to the Horrea Epagathiana.

  • It is again made out of concrete, faced with brick;

  • exposed brickwork, brickwork enjoyed in its own

  • right, for its own aesthetic here.

  • We can see that it is like the apartment houses in that it is

  • multi-storied, with the large entranceways,

  • or entranceways into the structure,

  • down below, and then the smaller windows up above.

  • They have monumentalized the entrance, the main entrance,

  • to the structure, by giving it columns supporting

  • a pediment.

  • Very grand, in fact, and we haven't--

  • it's interesting to see that even with this brick-faced

  • concrete architecture, the Romans have not lost their

  • interest in Hellenizing works of art and using touches of ancient

  • Greece to monumentalize and to make more cultured,

  • in a sense, the entranceway into this structure.

  • So we see these columns, engaged columns,

  • supporting a pediment above, capitals on those columns,

  • as you can see here.

  • All of this done in concrete faced with brick.

  • And you can see here, this is an outstanding example

  • of the way in which they have used brick to their advantage.

  • They have recognized that you can vary the color;

  • you can have a reddish brick; you can have a yellowish brick.

  • So here they've used red brick to face the column shaft,

  • and then a yellow brick for the capital.

  • So there's a distinction between the shaft and the

  • capital.

  • And they have even used the most expensive material,

  • marble, for the inscription plaque,

  • where they identify this building at the Horrea

  • Epagathiana, and then the pediment above.

  • And you can see, if you look at the pediment

  • decoration and if you look at the volutes of the capitals,

  • you will see they have used a small amount of stucco to enable

  • them to create the spirals of the volutes,

  • for example, and some of the more delicate

  • decorative work in the pediment above.

  • Another subtlety, another nice subtlety;

  • it just shows you the amount of effort and time and money that

  • went into this commission.

  • Also this very nice pilaster that is placed right next to the

  • column, which makes a wonderful

  • transition from the column, the roundness of the column,

  • to the squareness of the pilaster,

  • to the shape of the doorway.

  • The aesthetics very much on the mind of this particular

  • designer, as well as the vistas; again, this idea of looking

  • through one space, seeing another opening and

  • wondering where that opening is going--

  • all of that very, very carefully designed by the

  • architect.

  • Here's another view head on of this elaborate doorway,

  • leading into the Horrea Epagathiana,

  • announcing with the inscription exactly where you are and what

  • this building was used for in antiquity.

  • A detail of the pediment, where we can see the

  • inscription.

  • We can also see the capitals, the use of stucco work here,

  • and the very elaborate work that they have done to decorate

  • the pediment above.

  • Just a few more details of the columns, where you can see even

  • better this capital, and the way in which they have

  • used brick.

  • They have used brick even for the acanthus leaves.

  • You can see that there are acanthus leaves here.

  • This is actually an example, one of the few we've seen,

  • of the composite capital, with the acanthus leaves of the

  • Corinthian, and the volutes of the Ionic.

  • We saw it on the Arch of Titus in Rome.

  • But here we see that they've used brick, and then only at the

  • uppermost part, where the leaf has to curve

  • over, do they add the stucco.

  • And this is just a warehouse, and yet a tremendous amount of

  • effort has gone into making it an extraordinarily beautiful

  • building.

  • And it shows again that they are absolutely going over the

  • top, in terms of their being enamored of what they can do

  • with brick facing; that they are now able to

  • expose.

  • Once they can expose it, they're much more willing to

  • put the effort into it, to make it really attractive.

  • And if you go into the courtyard of the Horrea

  • Epagathiana-- and by the way,

  • behind, within these areas here,

  • we have annular vaulting--you can see these niches that have

  • been placed here.

  • They don't really need these niches in this courtyard of this

  • warehouse.

  • What did they use these niches for?

  • Well perhaps they put little statuettes of gods that those

  • who worked here favored and protected their daily toil here

  • in the Horrea Epagathiana.

  • But look at the attention that they've paid to these niches,

  • that have no other purpose than to be attractive,

  • and possibly again to hold these statuettes.

  • But you can see here again, with this combination of stucco

  • work for the pilasters and the capitals, and brickwork;

  • brickwork creating these interestingly shaped lozenges

  • and triangles, to create--shows an interest

  • again in geometric form and the contrast of one geometric form

  • to another, just as we saw in

  • black-and-white mosaic, capitalized on by these

  • designers.

  • Now I don't want to leave you with the impression that because

  • brick is now exposed and enjoyed in its own right,

  • that there are no walls that were stuccoed and painted in

  • Ostia.

  • That would be a misconception, because there are still painted

  • walls in Ostia.

  • On the insides of some of these buildings they still opted to

  • stucco over the wall and to paint it.

  • And I want to show you just one glorious example:

  • the Insula of the Painted Vaults,

  • which dates to 150 to 200, is one that has one of our best

  • preserved ceilings, walls and ceilings anywhere in

  • a Roman house-- you can see how well preserved

  • it is here-- and it is what we call the

  • spoked-wheel effect, because the ceiling decoration

  • does look like a spoked wheel.

  • We can also see this division; in fact as you look at it,

  • I think you'll be as struck as I am by the fact that as we look

  • at this spoked wheel, we really get the sense that

  • we're looking at one of Hadrian's pumpkin domes in

  • paint.

  • Because you can see the segmented dome effect here,

  • and also, in a sense, the octagonal effect that one

  • also gets from this structure, as well as the effect of the

  • ribs of a groin vault, as you can see well here.

  • But it's a painted version of a pumpkin dome,

  • and it's not surprising to see that Hadrian's pumpkin domes

  • took off in this way.

  • I also just want to mention to you that while there's a fair

  • amount of what we call post-Pompeian painting,

  • Roman painting after A.D.

  • 79, almost all of it is an exploitation of the Fourth Style

  • of Roman painting, as we know it from Pompeii.

  • There's actually not as much invention as one would expect,

  • after 79, in Roman painting.

  • I want to show you very briefly the Insula of the Muses;

  • the Insula of the Muses in Ostia, which dates to around

  • A.D.

  • 130, because this is one of the few single family dwellings that

  • we see in the second century in Ostia.

  • You can see, if you look at the plan,

  • that it is arranged not around an atrium but around a peristyle

  • court, here; although there aren't columns,

  • there are these piers, as you can see also in plan.

  • But just as we saw in the late first-century A.D.

  • houses in Herculaneum, from between the earthquake and

  • the eruption of Vesuvius, the triclinium has

  • become the most important room in the house.

  • You enter into it here.

  • You have a vestibule, you have this court,

  • and then you have, on axis, the triclinium

  • of the house.

  • But what makes this particular house most distinctive is the

  • fact that every single floor is covered with mosaic.

  • So, as I said to you before, the black-and-white mosaic

  • reigned supreme in the city of Ostia,

  • and it's clear that everyone who could afford it decorated

  • every room of their house with mosaic.

  • And although this doesn't come from this particular house,

  • this comes from the House of Apuleius in Ostia.

  • It's not on your Monument List, you don't have to remember it,

  • but I just wanted to show it to you,

  • because it's a marvelous example of what can be done--

  • I wish it were a little more in focus--

  • but it's a marvelous example of what could be done,

  • and was done, using black-and-white mosaic in

  • Ostia; only black and white

  • tesserae, with a Medusa head in the

  • center.

  • And then if you--this is one of those examples,

  • illusionistic examples, that as you look at it and

  • focus on it, it's hard to tell exactly

  • what's in the foreground, what's in the background.

  • It's got that like an op art effect that those of you who

  • know Op Art of the 1960s-- and I show you an example of

  • it, a painting from the Blaze series by the Op artist Bridget

  • Riley of the 1960s.

  • I've mentioned so many times in the course of this semester that

  • there isn't anything that the Romans didn't do before anybody

  • else, and this is,

  • and Op Art is an example of that.

  • So we do see Op Art in Ostia, and we see it obviously also

  • much later in more contemporary painting.

  • Another bath structure in Ostia, this one the Baths of the

  • Seven Wise Men or the Seven Sages;

  • dates to A.D. 130.

  • I show it to you only to show you this one circular room,

  • and not because it's a bath building,

  • but rather because it has a wonderful mosaic on the floor;

  • again, a circular structure, with a circular mosaic,

  • once again done in black and white.

  • And if you look at this, you can see that what we have

  • represented here-- I'll show you a detail in a

  • moment-- is a flowering acanthus plant

  • that has intertwined within its leaves hunters and the hunted,

  • hunted animals and their hunters, in combat,

  • as you can see here.

  • And here's a detail where you can see once again done entirely

  • in black-and-white mosaic: the hunters,

  • the animals, very carefully depicted,

  • interspersed among these flowering acanthus plants;

  • very effectively done.

  • This is another view of the Baths of Neptune,

  • in Ostia, which we looked at before, dates to 139 A.D.

  • And this is a good view because it shows you not only the

  • brick-faced concrete construction of these

  • structures, but also the mosaics

  • themselves, and how every single room of this bath was covered

  • with black-and-white mosaic.

  • The pièce desistance,

  • the finest mosaic in the complex, is this one,

  • and it's the one from which the bath gets it name,

  • the Baths of Neptune, because we see Neptune himself

  • in the center of this scene.

  • It's not surprising that the god of the sea was chosen as an

  • appropriate subject for a bath building.

  • We see him here with his trident--that's how we know it's

  • him--being carried along by four horses.

  • He's holding the reins of those horses.

  • His mantle is billowing up behind him.

  • One expects to see a chariot here;

  • one thinks of this as Neptune in a chariot,

  • but it's not Neptune in a chariot.

  • You can see that these horses, by the way,

  • aren't fully horses but the front part is a horse and the

  • rest is a sea creature, and you can see that the legs

  • of Neptune are interwoven with the tail of the sea creature;

  • he's in fact using the tails of those sea creatures almost like

  • skates, as he makes his way along

  • this--or water skis, I guess is a better way of

  • putting it; water skis, as he makes his way

  • from right to left, across the white background.

  • One of the interesting things about this mosaic is you see the

  • tension in the minds and work of this artist,

  • on the one hand making these very abstract black shapes

  • against a white background, but at the same time paying a

  • lot of attention to the actual musculature,

  • to what the chest of the god Poseidon would have looked like,

  • as you look at it; there's very pronounced

  • musculature that's carefully done here by the artist.

  • Here are our friends the dolphins frolicking,

  • dolphins with cupids on their back,

  • some fairly--other floating figures,

  • a female figure on the back of another sea creature,

  • all of this going on, on the floor of the Baths of

  • Neptune.

  • But what's particularly interesting,

  • I think, is the same sort of thing that we saw in the

  • Piazzale delle Corporazioni, and that is that the artist has

  • designed this in such a way that it doesn't matter which part of

  • the room you're standing in.

  • Wherever you are standing, you can look onto the floor,

  • from where you are standing, and see at least some of the

  • figures head on; whether you're standing here,

  • whether you're standing here, whether you're standing up

  • there or to the right, you are always seeing some,

  • not all but some, of the figures head on.

  • So again this is not--this is done with great care,

  • and orchestrated to fit the space in which it was located.

  • Here a detail of the mosaic that we just looked at,

  • showing Neptune and his horses and sea creatures.

  • The most important development that happens at Ostia,

  • with regard to residential architecture,

  • later in its history, is we do begin to see the

  • re-emergence of the domus,

  • already in the second century and then even more so in the

  • third and fourth centuries A.D.

  • And I want to show you quickly two examples of that,

  • because they tell us a good deal about late residential

  • architecture in Ostia, and also by association in Rome.

  • This is the Domus of Fortuna Annonaria, an axonometric view

  • of that house.

  • It dates to the late second century A.D.,

  • but was remodeled significantly in the fourth century A.D.,

  • and I think we really need to think of it as more a

  • fourth-century house than as a second-century house.

  • And, by the way, Ostia was still thriving in the

  • third century.

  • By the year 400 A.D., it was abandoned,

  • but in the third century still a thriving--and early fourth

  • century--still a thriving city.

  • We see this house here.

  • It's an axonometric view from Ward-Perkins.

  • The most important features, besides the fact that it's a

  • single-story dwelling, single-family dwelling,

  • is the fact that it has an open court here,

  • with a pool; that it has the

  • triclinium as the most important room of the house;

  • so that continues on in residential architecture.

  • But there's a particular taste for apses in these late Roman

  • buildings.

  • You can see that this one has an apse, not so unlike the apse

  • that we saw in Domitian's Palatine Palace on the Palatine

  • Hill.

  • It is finally starting to catch on, among others.

  • We see that you go into that room through three arches,

  • on columns.

  • And this idea of supporting a triple arch on columns is also a

  • very popular motif in domestic architecture in later antiquity.

  • And look also at the fact that on the left-hand side of the

  • triclinium there is a fountain.

  • So the incorporation of a fountain;

  • a pool court here, a fountain there,

  • an apsed triclinium, and then views through triple

  • arches, supported by columns,

  • all characteristic features of late Roman domestic

  • architecture.

  • This is a view obviously, through the columns,

  • supporting that triple arch, toward the fountain on the left

  • and toward the apse in the center of the structure.

  • And you can see the remains of marble revetment,

  • real marble revetment, that was used both on the

  • floor, for the pavement, and also on the walls.

  • The other house I want to show you briefly is the Domus of

  • Cupid and Psyche, the more famous of the two.

  • This dates, without any question, to late antiquity,

  • to around A.D.

  • 300.

  • The House of Cupid and Psyche, we see it first in plan,

  • and you can see it's very simple.

  • An entranceway here, a long corridor,

  • a series of cubicula on one side of that corridor.

  • There may have been a second story on a small part of the

  • house.

  • You can see the stairway there.

  • As you walk along the corridor, you eventually end up in the

  • very large triclinium.

  • So again, from the time of the House of the Mosaic Atrium in

  • Herculaneum to here, the triclinium gaining

  • in importance.

  • As you walk along that corridor, you look through a

  • series of columns, supporting arches,

  • as we'll see, customary of buildings of this

  • time.

  • And then look at this wall, which is scalloped for a

  • fountain -- so another one of these fountain courts that seems

  • to be popular during this period.

  • Here's a view into the room with the lovers,

  • the famous statue of Cupid and Psyche, the little young Cupid

  • and Psyche embracing one another.

  • That's from that statue that the house gets its name.

  • One of the best-preserved marble revetted rooms in the

  • history of Roman architecture is this room here,

  • probably the triclinium in the House of Cupid and

  • Psyche.

  • You can see that even marble from the walls is preserved,

  • as well as on the pavement and on the steps and on the side,

  • the base of the walls as well.

  • Brick-faced concrete construction,

  • faced with real marble.

  • What makes this particular house especially appealing,

  • besides that wonderful statue, is the fact that although

  • there's the usual touches of maroon and green that we tend to

  • see in many of these Roman pavements,

  • most of the color is pastel, and it makes it look

  • particularly attractive, and it goes particularly nicely

  • with the red and yellow of the brick construction.

  • And I show you a detail here, of that marble revetment,

  • which gives you as good an idea as anything I have shown you

  • this semester of what the original Hellenistic palaces of

  • the kings, the palaces of Nero and

  • Domitian would have looked like in their heyday.

  • And a detail of the statue of Cupid and Psyche,

  • and the room in which that found itself;

  • it can still be seen there today.

  • And the marble revetment once again done in pastel colors of

  • the floor, and of the walls,

  • giving us again an excellent sense,

  • not only of fourth-century domestic architecture

  • cor, but also what so many of the

  • buildings that are no longer preserved,

  • whose revetment is no longer as well preserved as one would

  • wish, what they would have looked

  • like in antiquity.

  • A view through the corridor, through the columns,

  • in this case grey granite columns, that probably would

  • have supported an arcade, but then without question the

  • fountain on the side of the wall that is scalloped,

  • both down here and the wall itself,

  • and then the columns there do support arches.

  • So this whole concept of columns supporting arches,

  • very much a part of late Roman house design.

  • In the very few minutes that remain, I just want to say a few

  • words about--we've talked about the life of this port city.

  • I want to talk about--since I said the lecture was about life

  • and death-- I want to just end with saying

  • a few words about the tombs in which the people who lived here

  • were buried.

  • People all up and down the social pyramid lived in this

  • commercial center.

  • The simplest tombs--and by the way,

  • I mentioned to you already that there are tombs both outside the

  • city of Pompeii , on the major roads,

  • and then a little bit further away at this place called Isola

  • Sacra, or the Sacred Island,

  • where one can see particularly well-preserved tombs from those

  • who lived in Ostia of the second century.

  • The working poor were buried in very simple tombs,

  • of two types.

  • The upper part of clay amphoras, just the upper part;

  • they were broken and then the upper part was stuck into the

  • ground.

  • The remains of the person were placed below the ground,

  • and then the spout could be used to pour wine libations

  • into.

  • The other simple type was tiles that were--

  • the body was placed below, and then tiles were arranged

  • around it, looking almost like a kind of a

  • house that helped to protect -- this idea of the houses of the

  • living and the houses of the dead,

  • that were meant to protect the body.

  • But most of the tombs are of what we call the house type.

  • We looked at the house type on the Via Appia,

  • in the age of Augustus in Rome; a tomb that resembles a house

  • from the front, with a doorway,

  • and a couple of windows, and then an inscription plaque.

  • And note the use of the travertine jambs and lintel

  • around it, just as we saw in the Markets of Trajan in Rome.

  • But if you look at these, in this very good view from the

  • side, you will see that almost all of these are barrel-vaulted

  • tombs; which is characteristic of

  • second-century tomb architecture,

  • at Ostia, at Isola Sacra, these barrel-vaulted structures

  • with facades that make them look like houses.

  • Here's a detail of one of them, one of these house tombs,

  • with again the travertine jambs down below,

  • with the touch of a pediment up above--

  • they haven't lost their interest in Hellenization to a

  • certain extent; windows here, slit windows here;

  • an inscription, a long inscription plaque that

  • tells us who was buried there.

  • And then very often in these wonderful tombs for this

  • commercial center, these panels that are done in

  • terracotta that tell us something about the profession

  • of those who are buried here.

  • Here's probably a shipper was buried here, someone who made

  • his money in the import and export business.

  • And over here you can maybe barely make out a representation

  • of a mill, just as those that we would

  • have--saw in Pompeii, or we saw on the Tomb of the

  • baker Eurysaces; a mill with a worker and a mule

  • that is helping to rotate the mill of the bakery;

  • so perhaps a baker also from this particular family.

  • I've superimposed a couple of other terracotta plaques,

  • making them a little larger here, to show you that these two

  • belong to people who've made their profession by sharpening

  • knives, knife sharpeners,

  • and they not only sharpen knives--

  • and you can see them both doing this,

  • in this scene--but they also sold them.

  • And I love the way in the still life, they're arrayed every

  • possible knife that you can sharpen here or buy,

  • from these individuals.

  • And what do you think the professions were of these two?

  • This one clearly a shop, someone selling things in a

  • shop -- looks like vegetables once again, asparagus and maybe

  • broccoli or some such over there.

  • But what about this one, what was the profession of this

  • one?

  • Student: Midwife.

  • Prof: Midwife, midwife.

  • And I love this, because here we have this

  • woman, about to give birth.

  • She's got another woman holding her and giving her support.

  • And here the midwife, instead of looking at what

  • she's doing-- she's reaching in,

  • but she's not, but instead of looking at what

  • she's supposed to be concentrating on,

  • she's looking out at the spectator,

  • just to make sure that we don't forget her features for

  • posterity, on this tomb relief,

  • from her tomb in Ostia.

  • We saw columbaria, these underground columbaria,

  • with these niches where they placed the cremated remains of

  • the deceased and had inscriptions.

  • We see the same sort of thing in the interiors of tombs at

  • Ostia, but they are above ground rather than subterranean at

  • Ostia.

  • And we also see--and basically the last point I want to make

  • today-- is we also see in the interiors

  • of these tombs at Ostia, not only those niches for the

  • cremated remains, but it's in the second century

  • A.D., the time of Hadrian on,

  • that inhumation, burial becomes the norm,

  • largely under the influence of the spread of Christianity,

  • the idea that the soul needs to ascend to heaven,

  • and so you have to maintain the bodily remains.

  • And so we begin to see in these interiors what we call

  • arcosolia, a-r-c, arco,

  • a-r-c-o-s-o-l-i-a, arcosolia,

  • which are these much larger niches where bodies are placed,

  • bodies are buried, and then they are covered over

  • with a marble slab that might have the inscription naming the

  • deceased, or a figural scene.

  • And just in closing, to show you one last tomb that

  • we're going to look at next time,

  • the Tomb of the Caetennii in the Vatican Cemetery in Rome,

  • to show you that these concrete, brick-faced tombs,

  • with windows, and with very elaborate

  • interiors, also begin to be put up in

  • Rome, in the second century A.D.

  • We'll look at those.

  • The title of next time's lecture is "Bigger is

  • Better"; we're really going to culminate

  • our move toward larger, more grandiose buildings then.

  • And then on Thursday we will finally move out to the

  • provinces by studying Roman architecture in Roman North

  • Africa.

  • Thank you.

Prof: Good morning, all.

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16.ローマの港オスティアでの生死をかけたローマ流の生き方 (16. The Roman Way of Life and Death at Ostia, the Port of Rome)

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    Sofi に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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