Thus the vein of formal inspiration began in a transplantation of neo- Attic craftsmen into a Roman environment which dates back to the middle of the second century B.C., with the activity of the school of
Timarchides, and it must have been re-invigorated under Augustus, thanks to the pax Augusta and the gradual extension of imperial monopoly over marble quarries. The very concentration of refined sculptors' studios around the palace, to which discoveries at the Domus Tiberiana on the Palatine and at Baiae bear witness, must have encouraged both centralization in the development of models and the creation of schools and workshops far more stable than those which had existed in the past, and thus the formation of an artistic tradition less sporadic and occasional than that of the late Republic. The proof of this is to some extent also offered by the solid fabric of Classicizing style which developed in the age of Augustus and which essentially continued into the reign of Domitian, when there probably occurred a new influx of artists and craftsmen from the eastern Mediterranean, in the wake of the pharaonic building programmes undertaken by that emperor.17
ii. the creation of the augustan model
The death of Julius Caesar put a sudden end to the grandiose projects of urban transformation cherished by the dictator.18 It would fall to Octavian Augustus to resume, especially after Actium, the plans of his adoptive father, whose purpose it had been to imprint the Julian name (nomenlulium) on the imperial capital. The first steps of the young princeps were informed by the same dynastic conception that had characterized Pompey's works in the Campus Martius and Caesar's own designs.
Typical of this is the choice of model for his own mausoleum, possibly begun in 27 B.C., which recalls that of the tomb of Alexander;19 while both the public and the private activities of his appointed successor, Agrippa, between the Campus Martius and the right bank of the Tiber, carried out in the years from 33 to 19 B.C., were certainly inspired by great Ptolemaic models. This can especially be seen if we consider the close link between Agrippa's urban villa across the Tiber (trans Tiberim) — most likely the so-called Casa della Farnesina — and the stagnum (pool) and the Euripus (canal) located at the edge of the complex made up by the Pantheon, saepta (voting enclosure), baths, campus Agrippae and porticus Vipsaniae, all completed or planned by him.20 This foreshadows the similar egyptianizing effects which Hadrian would recreate a century and
Workshops were formed in the age of Domitian to respond to the demands of his colossal building programme, a phenomenon still little investigated (and responsible for the improbable Domitianic chronologies sometimes attributed to such works as the great Trajanic frieze). See the preliminary remarks of M. Torelli, in L'Vrbs - Espace urbain et bistoire 1987 (a 96) 5 76ff.
On these projects and Caesarian town planning in generaclass="underline" Gros and Torelli 1988 (a 41) 117ff and i67ff; H. v. Hesberg, in Kaiser Augustus 1988 (f 443) 93ff.
" H. von Hesberg, in Kaiser Augustus 1988 (f 443) i2iff.
20 F. Coarelli, MEFRA 89(1977) 8i6ff; id. in Kaiser Augustus 1988 (f443) 7iff; Roddaz 1984(0 200) 23 iff (with useful bibliography).
a half later in his villa at Tivoli, with its evocative coupling of baths and Canopus; but it recalls above all the model of urban organization offered by Alexandria and repeated by the Augustan plan of regiones and vici. The tradition of the viri triumph ales of the late Republic was also revived by Augustus with the theatre dedicated to his first heir Marcellus (23 B.C.) and with the restoration of the temple of Apollo in Circo attached to that theatre, thanks to which he was able to reinforce the Apollinian propaganda, launched after Actium, with a more traditional reference to the memory of the nomen lulium which was associated with the first dedicator of the temple, Cn. Iulius (consul in 431 в.с.).21 The construction of the temple of Palatine Apollo (36-28 в.с.) next to his house bore the same dynastic imprint. Watched over by the Magna Mater (an obvious symbol of the Trojan origins of both his^wxand of Rome), and by his personal god, the prophet Apollo (who had been a reliable guide during the clash at Acdum), the house evokes the model of the palaces of Hellenistic kings, which were likewise protected by the great personal deities of the basileusP- And another reminder of Egypt is offered by the solarium, the colossal sundial centred on the obeliscus Augusti, which he laid out on the extreme northern boundary of his city, a most unusual horologium set as it were in a gigantic garden (10 в.с.).23
In his other opera triumphalis, the Forum of Augustus,24 which he vowed in 42 and inaugurated in 2 B.C., he follows yet again in Caesar's footsteps. On the pediment of the temple of Mars Ultor (Mars the Avenger), at the end of the Forum, Caesar's divine ancestress Venus Genetrix stood side by side with Augustus' Mars Ultor: a sacred marriage which was to be interpreted in a dynastic sense. To this Augustus added statues representing his own ancestors, mythical and historical, on one side of the Forum, and these faced a Romulean procession of the great men, the summi viri, of the city's history, on the other side. The gens of the new Aeneas and the new Romulus thus recapitulated the historical fortunes of Rome, a theme which was, as we shall see, developed in the Ara Pacis and which well displays the substance of the ideology of the Augustan Principate: the princeps, and he alone, had the right to mix or to juxtapose the public with the private. And indeed, in 19 B.C., Cornelius Balbus was the last triumphing general able to erect an edifice from his spoils, the theatrum with the crypta Balbr, after him there would be no more triumphs, save for those enjoyed by the emperor or his family, and consequendy monuments would no longer be erected to celebrate the personal glories of the Roman aristocracy.
We may safely assert that, even if some works were completed a little later, in the course of the penultimate decade of the century the most complex and daring initiatives in architecture and urban planning of the Augustan period came to an end. Nevertheless, even where he did not erect new buildings or where the ideological interweaving of past and present was more subtle, Augustus imposed through his programme a new coherence on buildings which already existed, restoring a few — in his Res Gestae he claims to have restored eighty temples! - or adding some others, so as to compose a unified ideological design whose aim was the customary glorification of his own role as princeps. This is apparent above all in the old Forum Romanum. Here the reconstruction of the main temples and public buildings - the temples of Castor and Pollux, of Saturn, and of Concordia, the basilicas, the Curia, and the regia - have the evident objective of imposing the nomen lulium as extensively as possible on the most majestic urban complex of the city, while at the same time 're-employing' all the venerable buildings within the context of his personal propaganda. Thus new messages were skilfully juxtaposed with or superimposed on ancient ones: his wife Livia was paired with Concord (a.d. 6); his grandsons theprincipes iuventutis were joined with Castor and Pollux (a.d. 7). But a quite different and crucial role was played by a few additions to the Forum which were statements of Augustan policy, that is, by the dynastic temple of the Divine Julius - which was set between two triumphal arches of Augustus, the one celebrating his victory at Actium (29 в.с., later tactfully transformed into a Dalmatian arch), the other his Parthian success (19 B.C.) - and by the Portico of Gaius and Lucius (a.d. 2). These monuments very elegantly exclude 'undesirable' buildings from the open space, undesirable either because they were associated with other aristocratic families, or because they could not be integrated into the new, Augustan ideological system: for example, the basilica Aemilia on the one hand, the regia and the aedes Vestae, which were replaced in the conception of the princeps by his residence on the Palatine, on the other.25