Neo-Attic workmen were also engaged in the creation of the most important monument of Augustan sculpture, the Altar of Peace, Ara Pacis, which has come down to us in an exceptional state of preservation.45 Voted (constitute) by the Senate on 4 July 13 B.C., the date of the princeps' return from Gaul and Spain, and consecrated (dedicata) on 30 January 9 B.C., the wedding anniversary of Augustus and Livia, the monument restated, but in a form much more grandiose and with the much more pronounced maiestas, majesty, of the lex arae (the sacred law concerning sacrifice at the altar), the motifs which had appeared in an altar dedicated to Fortuna Redux in 19, near the temples of Honos and Virtus outside the Porta Capena, to celebrate the return of Augustus from the East. Both altars wished to exalt in public forms a custom which was traditionally private and informal, the ire obviam (in Latin) or the
45 Torelli 1982 (p 596) 276; S. Settis, in Kaiser Augustus 1988 (p 443) 400ff.
apantesis (in Greek), that is the going to meet a person of high rank outside the traditional boundaries of the city - here represented at the southernmost extremity by the Altar of Fortune Who Brings Back, and at the northernmost by the Altar of Peace. In fact both monuments were intended as substitutes for a triumph which Augustus no longer wanted (Flor. 11.34). However - and this is a typically Augustan trait — the renunciation of the triumph and of the excessive honours voted by the Senate was here rewarded with the establishment among the forms of state ceremony of a private custom with a dynastic flavour. The celebration of the return (reditus) became in this way an integral part of the prerogatives of the princeps, through a process in which the Ara Pacis is the basic point of both arrival and departure.
The placing of the monument, beside the Via Flaminia but open to the Campus Martius, is significant. In this case the northern boundaries of the city are imaginary (as is the 'realistic' depiction of the reditus on the reliefs), but setting the altar a Roman mile from the pomerium is a concrete representation of mos, insofar as it separates imperium militiae from imperium domi, the imperia of war and peace. According to juridical tradition, in passing this imaginary line the magistrate was obliged to take on the clothes and demeanour of imperium domi. Placing the altar at this point (where at that time the new pomerial line was drawn) is a clear announcement of peace, and at the same time it is the result of that choice and it alone (not of some obscure cabbalistic leanings), fully conforming to the Augustan habit of formally reviving traditional values, even though they may be introducing nova exempla.
Evocation of the past extends also to the shape of the monument, which is a traditional U-shaped altar set at the centre of a small enclosure. With its imitation of pillar posts at the four corners and of wooden panelling within, this enclosure is intended to reproduce a templum in terris, a space set aside for auspicia and auguria. At the same time, with the two doors (which are contrary to the norm for augural templd) and with the metallic appearance of the vegetal decoration on the exterior, it also recalls the shrine of Janus Quirinus in the Forum. Both suggestions serve to evoke the aura of augural charisma created by the princeps around his own person and the message of peace implicit in his return. The choice of the double model - augural temple and Janus Quirinus - is also reflected in the themes of the decorations in relief which embellish the exterior of the enclosure. The lower part of these reliefs presents swags of acanthus leaves populated with Apollinian swans, imitating metalwork and thus the bronze structure of the Janus Quirinus.
The upper parts of these exterior reliefs present friezes with human figures. On the long sides facing north and south these depict a procession. This cannot be a procession of 13 b.c., since that never took place, nor one of 9, which if it did occur would not have seen among its participants Agrippa, who is shown on the frieze but who had died in 12. It is rather a theoretical, idealized depiction of an imperial reditus for which it clearly aims to establish a norm. It means to depict the reditus of 13 B.C. not as it was but as it should have been, so that in future the return of the princeps might be marked by that same ire obviam, with the same participants and in the same order. An order of procession very carefully worked out by protocol embraces both sides: priests from the ordo sacerdotum in front (pontifices and augures on the south side, XVviri and VHviri, on the north) are followed by members of the domus Iulia ranged according to the ordo affinitatis, their ranking by relationship to him, which was prescribed by mos and by Augustus' testamentary wishes. He himself is presented, significantly, in the robes of one sacrificing for his own return, a focal point between priests and relatives. The observation of details of protocol is extremely careful, as is shown, for example, by the presence of the flamines out of order at the shoulders of an Augustus presented in his role as pontifex maximus (another chronological 'imprecision'), or by the distribution of the two branches of the family on two sides, following firm genealogical logic. As usual, details appear on the frieze which have no relevance to protocol, but which allude rather to matters of status or propaganda, such as the elder Drusus shown in military costume, or the two children Gaius and Lucius Caesar dressed in the manner of participants in the lusus Troiae. The panels beside the doors depict the goddess Roma between Honos and Virtus, and Venus-Tellus- Pax among heavenly breezes (aurae caelestes), on the east side; those on the west, Mars and the lupercal, and Aeneas sacrificing the Laurentine sow, with a complex interweaving of meaning and structural responses between themes and iconographies.
Iconographical echoes among panels on the same side serve to confirm common meanings within the diversity of subjects. Aeneas and Mars, founders respectively of the gens Iulia and the populus Romanus, are paired — as would happen in the Forum of Augustus — by the omen of the discovery of a mythical animal (the sow and the she-wolf). This prodigy augurs the beginning of different heroic ages and different families, but these are united by the fact that Aeneas was the son of Venus while Mars was her husband, and she in her turn appears on the other side of the monument in the position of the templum which, according to augural law, is sinistima, or the most favourable of all, and rightly so. On this side the iconographical resemblances serve to establish the indivisibility of the pairing Roma—Venus (a couple later consecrated by Hadrian in his colossal temple) and Roma-Pax, a pax Romana in which Rome, flanked by Honos and Virtus, provides the ethical and political key to the monument, where Venus—Pax among the aurae caelestes provides the religious key. Here there is also a series of possible combinations, running from the formulaic 'pax terra marique parta' to the less ritual but more inclusive 'Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas' of Lucretian memory. These two goddesses, representing divine time (aetas) and successful conclusions (res prospere gestas), and Mars and Aeneas, embodiments of heroic ages (aetates) and of beginnings (initio) on the west side, correspond precisely with each other, symmetrical both directly and chiastically. With a perfect circularity of thought and expression, Rome and Mars represent the dimension of the urbs, Venus and Aeneas the dimension of the gens: the origins and fulfilment of both are evoked moving from west to east, their revivalist character in the opposite direction. Augustus proceeds from the Via Flaminia across the space of the templum, with the passage rich with omens (augurium augustum) over the central augural line, and peacefully celebrates the triumph offered and refused, moving between the two goddesses to leave the temple as the new Aeneas and the new Romulus (proceeding east to west). In the anniversary sacrifices of 3o January and 4 July, entering from the west and leaving from the east side, the princeps or the priests on his behalf experience anew the 'historic' sequence of the primordia urbis and the primordiagentis (the beginnings of the city of Rome and the Julian family), to bear witness to the fact that, thanks to the new Aeneas and the new Romulus, city and family are turning again to the perfection of a new age, nova aetas, a novus ordo saeclorum.