These luxury goods are understandably linked very closely with the higher expressions of the figurative arts, specifically with bronze and marble sculpture in the round, and thanks to them a single cultural fabric developed which cut across virtually all the social classes capable of expressing artistic culture. From the aristocracy to the middle classes of the Italian towns, they could display their understanding of, and their ability to adapt to, both the formal and the ethical models prescribed by the princeps, through portrait sculpture and painting in their houses, through altars placed at crossroads and sculptures among their household furnishings, and through the use of bronzework, silverware and
57 On gem-cutting, see the excellent synthesis by C. Maderna-Lauter, in Kaiser Augustus 1988 (f 443) 44iff (with earlier bibliography). On the imperial cameos, see especially H. Jucker, JDAI91 (1976) 21 iff. 58 E. Kiinzl, in Kaiser Augustus 1988 (f 445) j68ff.
F. Baratte, he trtsor ttorflvrerie romaine de Boscoreale (Paris, 1986).
E. Simon, Die Portlandvase (Mainz, 1957); cf. Simon 1987 (f 577) i62ff.
On this there is no modern, up-to-date synthesis. See the collection of C. Isings, Roman Glass from Dated Finds (Groningen, 1957).
There is no standard work. See meanwhile E. Pernice, JOAI i i (1908) 2i2ff; M. Bieber, Die antiken Skutpturen und Bronqen des koniglicben Museum Fredericianum in Kassel (Marburg, 1915); R. Thouvenot, Catalogue des figurines et objets de bronze du Musee Arcbiologique de Madrid 1 (Paris, 1927); C. Boube Picot, Let bronzes antiques de Maroc (Rabat, 1971); J. Petit, Bronzes antiques de la collection Dutuit (Paris, 1980).
On all these kinds of materials, see A. Giardina, A. Schiavone (eds.), Merci, mercati e scambi nel Mediterraneo (Societd romana e prodst^ione scbiavistica 11, Bari, 1981).
pottery. The tota Italia of Augustus was expressed in calculated fashion through an unquestioned, capillary-like acceptance of the artisdc culture promoted by the princeps for his own city, and spread by those who belonged to this historical bloc in the towns and colonies of the empire.
iii. from tiberius to nero: the crisis of the model
Basically the reign of Tiberius was a pedestrian repetition of the pattern laid down by the Principate of Augustus. Tiberius' amply documented lack of enthusiasm for public works lies at the root of the extremely modest innovations of the period in town planning and architecture. The only important work in relief in the city of Rome was the temple of the Divine Augustus, called the templum novum divi Augusti, situated between the Palatine and the Capitol in the area of the vicus Jugarius, and this is balanced by the 'private' works dedicated by Livia to the memory of her deceased spouse and now deified father by adoption, the Palatine temple of the Divus Augustus and the colossal statue of him near the Theatre of Marcellus.[1144] These initiatives were of great importance, however, because it was undoubtedly in the early years of Tiberius, especially between a.d. 14 and 23, that the cult of the dynasty was spreading through Italy and the provinces along the path of the usual model of imitatio Romae. The effects of this diffusion are very striking, and they influenced both town planning and architecture, through the proliferation of temples of Augustus or of Rome and Augustus in Italy and the provinces, and of sculpture and decoration as well, with the endless commissions of statuary groups[1145] depicting what was already in an inscription of a.d. 3 3 called the domus divina, the divine house.[1146]
In fact a significant number of the portraits of the first imperial dynasty of Rome are Tiberian in date, and it is in the age of Tiberius that we even find new portrait-types of Divus Augustus (probably the so-called Forbes-type, which arguably comes from his colossal statue at the Theatre of Marcellus), as well as of Livia and of Tiberius himself.67 On the whole, however, art in the Tiberian age followed in the path traced by Augustus, but it accentuates the traits of formal stiffness and the progressive loss of organic unity and ideological coherence of the Augustan model. Portrait-sculpture - as in the images of Germanicus and Drusus Minor — is increasingly hard and dry; wall-painting unimaginatively echoes the schemes of the Third Style; the decoration of buildings and of funerary altars retraces the forms worked out in the mid-Augustan period, but less lightly and brightly.
The last years of Tiberius and the ephemeral reign of Caligula show the first skirmishes of a structural crisis in the formal and ideological model established by Augustus, although output continued to develop with explicit or implicit citations of Augustan works; with Claudius and Nero the crisis was finally revealed. In town-planning and architecture,68 the innovations which bore the richest implications for the future were those brought about by the definitive centralization in the hands of the princeps of all the machinery for carrying out public works, and by the huge, concomitant growth in the parasitic dependence of the urban plebs upon him. Augustus and Tiberius - but especially Augustus — had controlled this trend by diverting their investments into large works which bore witness to their own pietas. Claudius, on the other hand, constructed a large new port at the mouth of the Tiber, which joined with the great warehouses and similar edifices at Ostia to facilitate the supply of grain to Rome, and he reorganized the distributions of grain (frumentationes) at Rome, unifying in the porticus Minucia frumentaria the administrative offices for the distribution of food. Along the same lines of ever more grandiose intervention in the development of the city, are Nero's ambitious projects for urban renewal after the fire of a.d. 64. The very few works actually completed basically comprise the baths and gymnasium, which doubled the capacity of those of Agrippa (perhaps introducing a new type of bath plan, called 'imperial'), and the great market (macellum magnum), built on the Caelian Hill next to that dedicated to Livia on the Esquiline. However the triumph of the neo-baroque in this period is seen above all in the creativity of private architecture, especially in plans, and in the new conception of decorative elements. Among the latter, most noticeable is the predilection for rustic ashlar work, rich in chiaroscuro effects, which appears in more than one Claudian monument, from the grand pillared portico of the Porticus Claudii to the imposing facade of the Porta Maggiore, and to the substructures of the temple of the Divine Claudius which date from the earliest years of Nero. Even the decorative motifs on friezes and entablatures and on funerary altars and urns lose the stiff and severe execution of the Tiberian period to take on a new and accentuated interest in deep carving and shadows which enlivens garlands, bucrania (cattle skulls), heads of animals at corners, and so forth, thus setting the stage for the Flavian taste in decoration.