From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 (48 page)

Gladiatorial combats in the amphitheatre might be supplemented with
venationes
, animal fights or hunts, or even only exhibitions. Men pitted against animals,
bestiarii
, were not gladiators but at first condemned criminals and later specially trained men; they too could become stars who prided themselves on their scars and bites. More pleasant was the exhibition of trained animals, as elephants which danced and dined and even, under Tiberius, walked a tight-rope; a race of chariots drawn by camels was staged by Claudius. Augustus exhibited in the arena or elsewhere an Indian rhinoceros, a white elephant from Siam, and a large snake, probably a python; under Nero a polar-bear made its appearance. The vast numbers of animals, as elephants, lions, tigers, leopards, panthers and hippopotami, that had to be shipped to Rome to gratify Roman cruelty gave rise to a large-scale trade in wild-beasts.

Italy

These ghastly displays, with their degrading influence on the spectators, lasted for centuries. The
ludi bestiarii
persisted until the sixth century, but the Christian emperors gradually took action against gladiatorial combats: in 326 Constantine forbade condemnation
ad bestias
, and in 404 after the monk Telemachus had been torn to pieces by the angry spectators when he had jumped into the arena to separate the combatants, Honorius suppressed by edict gladatorial combats in the West.

The demand for theatres, amphitheatres, circuses, baths and other public buildings naturally stimulated architecture. The establishment of colonies and the development of older towns throughout the provinces, and especially in the less urbanized west, gave employment to workmen and architects alike, and each municipality strove to outdo its neighbour in the splendour of its public buildings. In Gaul, for instance, there was tremendous building activity under Augustus. Arelate, Nemausus, Forum Julii, Vienna, Lugdunum and Augustodunum (Autun) all had Augustan walls (incidentally if Londinium and Verulamium had enjoyed the same privilege, accorded to Roman colonies and those with Latin rights in Gaul, they would not have succumbed so easily to Boudicca’s attack). Other famous Augustan monuments in Gaul included the Maison Carrée, a temple built by Agrippa, at Nîmes; possibly the famous Pont du Gard which majestically carried an aqueduct over the river to bring water to Nîmes (though it may be later); and the temple at Vienne. In Spain and Africa also similar development took place, and although these were all lands where city life had long been known, their external appearance must have been changed considerably during the early principate.

The great architectural changes that Augustus had brought about in Rome have already been mentioned (pp. 192 ff.). The contribution of Tiberius included a temple to Divus Augustus, barracks for the Praetorian Guard (Castra Praetoria: traces of the brick and concrete walls survive), and a sumptuous palace on the Palatine, which contrasted with the modest house of Augustus; Tiberius also developed Augustus’ villa at Capri into a large estate.
Gaius constructed a private Circus on the far side of the Tiber, where the first Christian martyrs were to suffer. Claudius was much concerned with engineering, and endowed Rome with two new aqueducts, while the triumphal arch which celebrated his conquest of Britain was a transformation of an existing aqueduct-arch where it crossed a main road. The reconstruction of the city by Nero after the Great Fire has already been mentioned (p. 261). His Domus Aurea is interesting not only for the scale of its conceptions, but also for its wall-paintings (which influenced artists of the early Renaissance in a building which still survives under the later Baths of Trajan) and for its circular dining-room with a revolving ceiling. This probably had no religious significance (the conception was not, as has been suggested, that of a sacred palace for the Sun-god, borrowed from the Parthians) but it illustrates the love of Nero (‘incredibilium cupitor’) for mechanical marvels. More important is the purely architectural significance of this room since it is probably an early example of a new use of the shape of space within a building at the expense of the function of the masonry masses that contained it: this conception was to become increasingly fruitful in the architecture of the later Empire.
¹
Another interesting building which looks to the future and in its arrangement anticipates in some respects the later Christian basilica, is the underground hypogeum near the Porta Maggiore. Probably of Claudian date, it is a vaulted and arched hall, with stucco decorations that suggest that it may have formed the meeting-place for a mystery religion, perhaps Neopythagorean. Augustan architecture had in the main followed the Greek classical tradition: it had added the use of fresh materials (coloured stone and veined marble from Numidia, Phrygia and Euboea), but with all its excellence it was following a conventional Greek pattern. Under Nero, however, Augustan classicism began to be complemented by bolder developments which led on to the amazing buildings of the Flavian emperors and their successors.

Domestic architecture also received a stimulus in the rebuilding of Rome after the fire. Space was valuable and the tendency was to build upwards. The houses known to us from excavation at Ostia reveal the type of building at Rome: a high block built around a central arcaded court, with shops, windows and balconies facing outwards on to the streets, now often laid out on a grid-system; the rooms would be let as flats. At Pompeii, on the other hand, where an earthquake in A.D. 63 led to much rebuilding, the richer inhabitants continued to live in the more old-fashioned rambling houses of one or two storeys only, built around atrium and peristyle. The heating of some houses was improved in the Augustan period by the adaptation to private dwellings of the system, used in baths, of heating a floor by a furnace underneath (hypocaust); this was extended during the first century by the use of box-tiles in the walls to circulate the heat.

In wealthier houses it was customary to have mural paintings.
²
Many
survive at Pompeii, and these have been classified in four styles. The earliest Incrustation style was followed in the first century B.C. by the so-called Architectural style which lasted until the end of Augustus’ reign. Here the wall-surface was broken into a number of architectural features designed to produce an illusion of space; the panels were often filled with pictures which were not ‘pictures on the wall’ but designed to show, as it were, the open country beyond the wall. Examples of this style are the scenes from the
Odyssey
from the Esquiline, the smaller landscapes in the house of Livia (probably the home of Augustus) on the Palatine, the lovely garden scene, with shrubs, birds, flowers and butterflies, which create the illusion of a real garden, from the villa of the empress Livia at Prima Porta, and the ritual scenes from the House of the Mysteries (Villa Item) at Pompeii. This style overlapped with the Third or Ornate style (from
c.
20 B.C.), in which the painted architecture becomes more elaborate and the painted groups become more like panelpictures. The fourth or Intricate style from
c.
A.D. 50 to the destruction of Pompeii showed pictures, often impressionistic, set in fantastic architecture: examples are the paintings in the House of the Vettii and the shop-front sign of Venus Pompeiana in a car drawn by elephants, both at Pompeii, and those of the Domus Aurea at Rome.

Many of the achievements of the Augustan age must have been commemorated in paintings, as they were in sculpture and other arts, but such paintings have all perished. An impression of their style, however, can be gleaned from some cameos, whose composition is essentially pictorial. Two of the most famous, themselves exquisite works of art, are the sardonyx ‘Gemma Augustea’ in Vienna which depicts one of the German triumphs of Tiberius (7 B.C. or A.D. 12), and the ‘Grand Camée de France’, a composition grouped around the figures of Tiberius and Livia.
³

Portraiture is represented by a few paintings from Pompeii and in the continuation of the tradition in sculpture that flourished in the late Republic (p. 161 f.). It was desirable that the appearance of Augustus, the founder of the new age, should be made known to as many of his grateful subjects as possible. His portrait was most widely diffused by means of the coinage, but numerous statues and busts also were set up in Italy and the provinces. They show great variety and various aspects of his personality, and their style tended to be reflected in portraits of Agrippa, Tiberius and Gaius. The individuality, and indeed the dignity of Claudius is brought out in most of his portraits. With Nero, and increasingly under his successors, a great blending can be observed between the classical plastic style, which emphasized the essential character of the subject, and the more realistic Roman emphasis. The coinage also presents a fine portrait-gallery from Augustus to Nero, including the more important members of the imperial family; while the reverses blazoned forth the imperial achievements in a way which even the illiterate
could understand, the obverses revealed the ruler who was thus speaking to his subjects. And he was revealed in portraits made by artists of great skill; many of the die-cutters were Greeks, and it is appropriate that Nero with his Greek interests should have been served so well in this respect: his portraits artistically rank very high.

Among the most important products of Augustan art are the reliefs of the Ara Pacis (p. 193).
⁴
The altar itself stood in a precinct of which the internal walls were decorated with sculptured festoons; the external walls had a lower frieze of foliage and above, on the longer sides a processional frieze, on the shorter ends four panels with allegorical scenes of Empire. Of the last the most famous is Terra Mater, seated amid a pastoral scene of great fertility and beauty; another depicts the Arrival of Aeneas in Latium; another Romulus and Remus. The processional frieze shows Augustus offering libation, followed by the priests, members of his family and a long file of senators. Instinct with serenity and religious feeling, this great reminder of the majesty of Rome is yet a very human document (as the child clinging to the cloak of the pontifex shows); it is also a historical document, depicting the actual consecration of the altar in 13 B.C. and skilfully showing the
princeps
as
primus inter pares
, a figure sharing in the common ceremony, yet by the slightest emphasis subtly marked off from the rest. It is also, both in subject and style, a work in which Greek and Roman elements are skilfully harmonized and embodies Augustan art at its highest.

Emphasis on one outstanding work should not obscure the rich profusion of the Augustan and Julio-Claudian age, of which a few examples may be named. The two silver cups from Boscoreale near Pompeii, with reliefs depicting Augustus as world-ruler, and Tiberius’ triumph; the gilt-bronze plaque of a sword-sheath, showing Tiberius enthroned; the fierce bronze wolf-heads from Gaius’ ships recovered from Lake Nemi; the bronze gladiatorial helmet from Pompeii with scenes in relief from the Trojan War; the bronze horses, now on St Mark’s in Venice; cameos, gems, portraits, statues and other works, all deserve mention, if space allowed. Thus, in art and architecture the great creative activity of the Augustan period was followed up in the succeeding years. In literature, however, there was a much sharper falling off from the golden age of Virgil, Horace and Livy: the silver age was at hand.

Literature might have been expected to flourish under the Julio-Claudians since the emperors themselves were writers. Tiberius wrote a poem on the death of Lucius Caesar, an autobiography, letters and speeches; he was a student of Greek literature and rhetoric and composed poems in Greek; he
also liked the society of learned men. Gaius, if not a writer, was an effective speaker, and his criticism of Seneca as ‘sand without lime’ suggests no lack of judgement. The wide literary and historical interests of Claudius have already been mentioned (p. 244), together with Nero’s artistic abilities and his encouragement of public competitions (p. 259 f.). Germanicus also composed a competent verse paraphrase of Aratus’ poem on astronomical matters, a task already attempted by Cicero. His daughter, the younger Agrippina who was Nero’s mother, wrote her autobiography.

But there is another side to the picture. Under a rule that was tending towards autocracy, freedom of expression became more hazardous, and Tacitus attributed the decline in literature as well as the corruption of oratory to political causes. Tiberius suppressed some works: he is said to have killed two minor poets for attacks on him in their poems, and at Sejanus’ instigation Cremutius Cordus, an elderly senator, was prosecuted for treason and his History was publicly burned (A.D. 25). This was a work on the Civil Wars down to at least 18 B.C., in which Cassius was described as ‘the last of the Romans’ and Augustus was not praised. Gaius allowed suppressed works to be published, and Cremutius’ History, of which copies had been saved by his daughter, re-appeared, and was used by later writers as the elder Pliny and Seneca. Under Nero the suppression of Piso’s conspiracy involved the death of the writers Lucan and Seneca; Petronius was another of his victims.

But in addition to political considerations, more technical reasons led to the decline of literary achievement: the influence of rhetoric and too close an imitation of the past. The introduction of the teaching of rhetoric in Rome had not met with a ready welcome (see p. 171), but under the early Empire it was all-pervasive. Declamation was a regular method of instruction in the schools, and boys learnt to speak on a thesis whether deliberative (
suasoria
) or argumentative (
controversia
).
⁶
The themes were often stock-subjects remote from real life, such as, according to the criticism of Petronius, pirates and tyrants who ordered sons to chop off their fathers’ heads. This rhetorical training was the culmination of a boy’s education, to which preparatory linguistic and literary studies had led up; basically it may have been a valuable training but it was too often carried to extremes. Further, it was not confined to the classroom, and declamation became a fashionable social activity, while from the time of Augustus it became common for authors to recite their new works to an audience before publication. This whole approach to literature led to a competitive spirit in which authors tended to try to outdo each other in mere cleverness, in striving for epigrammatic effect, unusual collocations of words and a heightened colouring: the
sententia
(an epigram or pointed saying) became the ideal, and the bane, of literature. The tendency was for prose to become more artificial and often poetic in diction (few writers approached the skill of Tacitus in brilliantly making rhetoric his servant),
while poetry became more prosy. The effect of rhetoric on poetry is seen at its best in Ovid, who thus forms a link between the earlier Augustan poets and those of the Silver Age.

Another check on creative work was an undue attempt to imitate the immediate past. This appreciation of the values of the Augustan poets was in itself no bad thing, nor was the following of great models: the Augustans themselves had been inspired by Greek models. But veneration for the past, and in particular for Virgil, was carried to excess; lacking his genius, his admirers might have been wiser to have struck out more boldly on lines of their own. There was much genuine love of poetry, but it could not shake itself free from the stranglehold of rhetoric: much good work was produced, but it was second-rate when compared with that of the Augustan age, silver rather than gold.