Ancient rome Historical Background

Welcome to “History through Art”. Today we’ll be looking at the history, art and culture of Ancient Rome. To understand how works of the imagination mirror their times, let’s look at some of the events that influenced Romanoists.

According to Roman legend, the city of Rome was founded in 753 BC by twin warrior brothers Romulus and Remus who were raised by wolves. By the 3d century BC, Rome, the empire that began in the hills of central Italy not only controlled all of the Italian peninsula, including the Greek colonies in the south, but had spread its influence to nearby lands in the Mediterranean basin. The Romans saw themselves as mighty warriors, and indeed they were. By 133 BC, once-powerful Greece had become a mere province in Rome’s empire. Through continued trade and expansion, the Roman Empire spread and became a land richly diverse in culture.

Not only were the Romans successful conquerors, they also proved to be excellent diplomats, managers and amalgamators. They frequently were able to turn their former enemies into allies. They also took the best ideas of the cultures that they conquered and adapted them to Roman life. For example, Roman historians, such as Cato and Sullust, based much of their writings on Greek models. And we credit the Greeks again for the basic elements of Roman religion and philosophy. Eventually, Rome adopted a new religion – Christianity – born in the conquered land of Judea.

This is not to say that Rome did not find a way to leave a mark of its own. Its legal system, bureaucracy, and engineering projects, such as aqueducts and roads, were second to none. Even the United States Senate is based on the Roman model. Roman poets, such as Ovid and Virgil, produced some the world’s most powerful and original works. And the speeches of Cicero have long been considered premier works of Latin literature. Perhaps you’ll become familiar with these and other authors in a literature class.

The Romans maintained their empire for over 600 years. At its height, about AD 200, the empire was so extensive that it included Britain and Asia Minor. To say the least, the Roman Empire was enormous. Too great, in fact, for one central authority to maintain control and keep all its people free from ethnic and religious conflicts. Even after Constantine legalized the practice of all religions, including Christianity, the situation did not improve. In AD 395, the Empire was split in two: the capital of the West remained in Rome, while the capital of the East was Constantinople. This division, however, did not solve all the problems. A lack of unity among the people meant that the Romans were vulnerable to attack from outsiders who were eager to control some of their vast territories. This led to the fall of the Empire in AD 475.

You’ve seen how extensive and powerful the Roman Empire was. It’s not surprising then that even after its collapse Roman laws and artistic traditions persisted in many parts of Europe. Roman architecture is one example. It is characterized by the use of semicircular arches and domes. It’s evident in this aqueduct that brought water to Rome from many miles away, and in this Roman temple. The style was used well into the Middle Ages. Even today, Roman type arches and domes can be seen in many of our government buildings as well as in the magnificent villas, temples, and austere Christian basilicas in Europe. These examples serve to remind us of the contributions that the Romans made to Western civilization. As you will see these contributions were considerable and have continued to influence the artists and architects of today.

Part I

The art of Ancient Greece is one of her greatest gifts to posterity. But when one thinks of Ancient Rome, her gladiators, her government, or, perhaps, her armies are the conspicuous mementos. True, the vividly coloured murals at Pompeii are spectacular. So are the murals in neighboring towns, also preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. But Pompeii and its neighbors were gay seaside resorts, only provincial cousins of Rome. According to descriptions by Roman historians, the wall paintings in Rome itself far surpassed these from Pompeii. Indeed, it is probably because there is little else that survives to compare with it, that we prize the art of Pompeii and its neighbors so highly. Is this to say, then, that Roman art has little merit, that it is a second-rate rerun of the glorious Greek art which preceded it?

The relative merits of Greek and Roman art have been debated by scholars for centuries. Let’s leave the debate to the scholars and turn instead to a more meaningful way in which all art may be judged – that is, as a reflection of the culture that produced it. Just as pop art, like it or not, will give future ages a meaningful image of our society and its values, so Roman art is an excellent indicator of what mattered to people in Roman times. And just as our tastes change and develop in succeeding generations, so did those of Ancient Rome. The changes were reflected in simple things like hair styles, and dress, and in more complicated things like housing, places of worship, and imperial monuments. Changes in taste can also be seen in portraiture – from the idealistic, on the left, to the realistic on the right – and in the subject matter depicted in household and public decoration – from elaborate mythological scenes to simple decorative motifs. As you follow this brief discussion of the development and decline of Ancient Rome, you’ll be able to spot many other aspects of this civilization where new ideas supplanted old and then often were returned to.

It’s hard to begin at the beginning, for there’s much controversy over just where and when that is. Most likely, the original Latin people who settled Rome came from north of the Alps, prior to 1000 BC. Sometime before 800 BC, another mass of people, this time from the east, moved into the area north of Rome known as Tuscany. Hence, they were called Etruscans. During the 7-th century BC, these people moved south into Latin territory and took over the rule of Rome. And by the sixth century BC, the Greeks had begun settling in southern Italy and Sicily. Here are two of the temples they built there. But in 509 BC, the Etruscan kings who had been ruling Rome were tossed out by the Latin populace. For the next few centuries, it was the Romans’ turn to make conquests – and this they did with great success. Two hundred years before Christ, they controlled all of Italy and the entire Mediterranean coast in Europe and in part of North Africa.

But it’s time to take a closer look at the culture and the structure of the Republic which the Romans developed once they had ousted the Etruscan rulers. In essence, the Latins were a bourgeois, agricultural people. They remained basically unsophisticated, practical, and earthbound, no matter how many different cultures they assimilated during the course of their expansion. Hence, the art form in which they made their most distinctive contribution was architecture, the most utilitarian of the arts. The invention of concrete and the use of the arch on a monumental scale enabled them to build roads, bridges, and amphitheatres on a scale never before contemplated. And, like many basically middle-class societies, including our own, great size and scope were valued above painstaking detail.

In the other arts, too, we can see the matter-of-fact character of the Roman mind. The realism of Roman portrait sculpture is often surprising, especially when compared with the Greek. The idealized innocence of the Greek face on the left contrasts dramatically with the careworn Roman face on the right. The old cliché that “one cannot imagine any Greek statue carrying on an intelligent conversation” seems all the more true when compared with a typical Roman portrait. While the Greeks sought the ideal, the Romans preferred the ordinary and everyday. The Greeks used analogies of man and god to describe historical events while the Romans preferred to see the actual events in complete everyday, factual detail. Here are some Roman soldiers erecting a fortress prior to battle, for example.

In painting and mosaic, too, we find the Romans including such commonplace subjects as a donkey being brought his dinner. And to lend credibility to a human portrait, the Roman artist located his subject within a tangible setting. Like other land and tradition-bound societies, the Romans had a terrific knack for organization, illustrated here by the complex plan of the Roman Forum.

The organization of the Roman Republican government is still a model for modern societies. Their Senate, like ours, consisted of the most learned or influential people in the country. As a ruling body, both the strength and the weakness of the Senate was its capacity to prevent any one person’s obtaining strong individual powers. The loyalty of the well-organized and efficient Roman armies also contributed to the stability of the early Republic. So did the good judgment the Romans exercised in allowing conquered peoples to maintain their way of life almost completely intact.

In the early Republican Period the religion of the Romans, like other aspects of their culture, was essentially earth-bound. Here is the Roman goddess of spring, the Primavera. Roman religion really amounted to a superstitious nature worship: here, for example, is Flora, goddess of flowers. The concept of family was also worshipped with elaborate ritual and ceremony. A symbolic national fireside was watched over by Vesta, goddess of the domestic hearth. Here is one of her temples. Since the Romans readily adopted anything that struck their fancy in the customs of the people they conquered, they collected an astounding array of Greek and other Eastern gods during the Republican Period. Here is Hercules, translated from the Greek, Herakles. This is a follower of Bacchus, who was the Greek god, Dionysus. And here is Aphrodite, whom the Romans called Venus.

During the Imperial Period, after the death of Christ (who is seen here as the Good Shepherd), Christianity began to threaten the personality cult that surrounded the Emperor. From that time on the Roman leaders tried to control religion and make it a tool of the state. But until then, tolerance for foreign religious practices, such as the funeral dance seen here, and tolerance for foreign ideas in general, was a significant virtue of Roman civilization. And in art, the powerful influence of foreigners was never seriously threatened. Notice the Greek style in the symmetry of this 1st-century Roman work, in the deeply cut draperies on these 2nd-century Roman figures, and in the classical poses in this 3d-century Roman work. As you will see time and again the Romans consciously returned to their acknowledged masters in the field of art and culture, the Ancient Greeks.

Part II

During the 3d and 2nd centuries before Christ, the Roman armies expanded their conquests and began to bring home exotic booty of every description. The practical Romans developed their culture by capturing it from an earlier civilization. Practically prized were original works of art from Greece. The Greek immigrants in southern Italy had tried to imitate native Greek art, but they had long been influenced by the primitive, naturalistic art of the Etruscans, seen here. So now, genuine Greek masterpieces from Athens became fashionable and were widely sought.

A period of intense unrest ensued during the 1st century BC, due to three main causes: first, the wealth from abroad served only to make the rich richer; it did nothing to alleviate the plight of the poor. Secondly, it became necessary to hire an army from among the Roman’s former enemies because voluntary enlistment didn’t provide enough men for the expanded military operations. The third reason for the unrest was the creation of huge country estates and the importation of cheaper and better produce from abroad – both leading to the ruin of the small farmer. To cope with the increasing turmoil, generals, rather than aristocrats, became more and more powerful public figures. Here is Julius Caesar, the most famous Roman general of all.

When Sulla marched on Rome in 88 BC, the preceding decades of restlessness culminated in all-out civil war. Forty years later, Caesar turned the Republic into a dictatorship. He also made history by invading Britain. No real colonization took place in England for the hundred years following, but there are many Roman ruins dating from the 1st century AD on, such as this Roman theatre, Hadrian’s wall, separating England and Scotland, Roman baths, and these ruins of a Roman building. When Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, one of the three men who came to power as a triumvirate was Octavian. Seventeen years later Octavian was officially handed sole executive powers and was renamed Imperator Augustus.

In honor of Augustus’s most important achievement, the creation of peace, the Augustan Ara Pacis altar was erected. Here is the first instance of imperial art being strongly influenced by Greek models. The procession of dignitaries and the regular rhythms of the foreground figures are reminiscent of the Parthenon frieze. Yet, there is a profound difference. The Roman figures are real, everyday people – the little boy tugging on his daddy’s tunic, the woman telling a chattering couple to hush. These homely little touches in the Roman frieze make the comparable Parthenon frieze seem remote, abstract and other-worldly. Yet, for all their realism, the sculptures on the Ara Pacis are much more restrained and dignified than the late Hellenistic sculpture which evolved at the end of the Greek era. Indeed, the Ara Pacis is a perfect reflection of the times – people had confidence in and were proud of their emperor.

As conservatives, they looked back over their shoulders to the Golden Age of Greece for artistic ideals. Compare these figures from the Ara Pacis on the left and the Parthenon on the right. Yet their art also reflected the vivid realism which was the cultural legacy of their Hellenistic and Etruscan ancestors. The Etruscan portrait on the left precedes the Ara Pacis figure by three centuries. Architecture under Augustus also looks back to classical Greece. At first glance, the Maison Carree at Nimes looks very much like a small Greek temple. Yet when you look closely at the Parthenon, many subtle differences are discernable. The front and back are symmetrical, for example, with the freestanding colonnade running majestically around all four sides. On three sides of the Maison Carree, however, the colonnade is reduced to pilasters, columns attached to the wall. This makes the facade of the Roman temple a dramatic and theatrical focal point. Further, the Roman temple is usually part of the urban scene, so it is raised on a high podium to give it emphasis. The Greek temple, on the other hand, does not need this architectural emphasis, for it often sits atop raised and sacred ground. The temple is thus an altar in itself, remote and symbolic in function. Not so the Roman temple. In fact, the front porch often served a practical purpose as a political stage for the emperor. This use of the temple is just one example of how the Romans aggrandized the individual.

Yet actually, in the age of Augustus the personality cult of the emperor was still relatively subdued. Stuck off to the left, where the frieze has unfortunately been damaged, he is given no more importance than anyone else in the procession. But seventy years later, in the Arch of Titus, erected to commemorate Titus’s conquest of Jerusalem, the emperor is now clearly the hero and intended to be worshipped as such. Although the horses appear in profile, the chariot of Titus, on the right, is twisted to a three-quarter view in order to show the emperor in full face.

By the era of Trajan, at the beginning of the 2nd century, the Empire was at the height of its success. Indeed, the age of Trajan has often been likened to the Golden Age of Pericles in Greece. With its magnificent highway system, the imperial government was able to keep close tabs on her colonies. Again, a symbol of an age devoted to organization. No longer were the landed gentry and the rest of the senatorial class entrusted with important affairs of state. Rather, they were sent to govern the colonies while a highly skilled and trusted corps of professional politicians surrounded the emperor. As the self-importance of the emperor continued to expand, so did its artistic expression. Here, in a relief-covered column which commemorates Trajan’s victories over the Dacians, the emperor’s self-esteem is on elaborate display. Standing a hundred and twenty-five feet high, Trajan’s column includes more than one hundred and fifty separate episodes – in many of which Trajan figures largely.

In the Roman tradition, many of the scenes describe the practical down-to-earth side of life. We see the army building bridges and fortifications as well as the grim details of battle. Although no attempt is made to suggest space and proportion realistically, the artist’s techniques do permit incredibly accurate detail of dress, arms, and equipment. Thus, the historical narrative form proved to be perfectly suited to the typically Roman characteristic of describing their leader’s exploits in painstaking detail. So, as a monument to the original Latin elements, in an otherwise secondhand classical culture, the Column of Trajan is unsurpassed.

Part III

By the time of Hadrian, during the early 2nd century, the Romans had accumulated more than one hundred and eighty holidays. Here is a typical Roman sacrificial ceremony. Originally religious in nature, by now they were primarily an excuse to hold some form of entertainment – gladiatorial combats, wild animal hunts, horse races, mock sea battles, staged in an amphitheatre such as this, and stage shows, complete with mimes, musicians and dancers. The games involving man against beast or other men served a distinct purpose. They helped to distract and channel the emotions of the frustrated Roman citizen, who had less and less to do with his government, as the Empire and the authority of the emperor grew.

Emperor Hadrian, however, chose not to use the authority to make further territorial conquests. Instead, he concentrated on Greek philosophy and other studies. He much preferred to have himself portrayed as an allegorical figure, in the manner of a Greek hero, than the leader of his troops. Here we see him in a sacrifice to Apollo. Other examples of Hadrian’s love of all things Greek are the many Greek ideas he borrowed for his palace at Tivoli. These caryatids, which flanked the pool, are an adaptation of those on the Erechtheum in Athens. Hadrian also built the Temple of Venus and Rome, the only temple in Rome which had the symmetrical ground plan and freestanding colonnade of the classical Greek temple.

Copies of famous Greek statues, such as these two of the Doryphorous, multiplied rapidly during Hadrian’s regime, as did portraits of Hadrian and his followers in the guise of Greek gods. Note that this is the first Roman emperor to appear in a beard – a fashion copied from the Ancient Greeks. But, despite Hadrian’s passion for Ancient Greece, the building for which he is most famous had little in common with anything which had gone before him, let alone a Greek temple!

The Pantheon, whose spectacular dome equals half its height, was – and is – unique. It represents a brilliant melding of the classical column with the Roman vault. This elaborate interior makes the Pantheon a perfect antithesis to the Greek temple, whose columns and sculpture decorated the exterior, while the interior was relatively simple. With the Roman love of thick, concrete walls, the Pantheon is plain, not to say ugly on the outside, yet highly articulate and theatrical within. The spectator virtually stands inside a piece of geometric sculpture.

Art during the reigns of Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, who followed Hadrian, continued in a Greek-inspired vein – perhaps more deeply modeled and naturalistic than comparable Greek works, but essentially classical in feeling. One of the few pieces of sculpture in the round to survive, the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius conveys a monumental, larger-than-life-size feeling. More importantly, it marks the close of an age.

The classical realism and naturalism of the first two centuries of the Empire came to an abrupt halt in AD 180 under the rule of Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius. Inheriting none of his father’s administrative genius and sense of justice, Commodus was a decadent, tyrannical ruler. His only positive contribution was the completion of the memorial column planned by Marcus Aurelius. A brief comparison of Aurelius’s column with that of Trajan, completed seventy years before, immediately demonstrates the new abstract expressionistic style known as “late antique.” Note how simplified the scene from Aurelius’s column is compared with the elaborate detail in Trajan’s frieze. While the carving on Trajan’s column was quite flat, the modeling on Aurelius’s column, seen here, is now deeply cut and drilled, creating an exciting, rough-hewn, and merciless picture of war. No longer is the emperor seen in profile, addressing his men, in a fully detailed setting as is seen here on the Column of Trajan. Instead, each scene on Aurelius’s column is abstract and schematized with the Emperor turned more toward the spectator. Human pity for the vanquished barbarians, which was evident in Trajan’s column, is strikingly absent here. Now the bodies of the barbarians are twisted in angular distorted rhythms. The style is sketchy and the figures leap out at the spectator.

After Commodus, for almost the whole 3d century, the Empire was ruled by a series of soldier emperors. The Empire had grown too unwieldy to be run in peace from Rome. And as the chaotic conditions increased, artistic style grew more and more sketchy and confused, as unessential details were omitted. This is evident even in the badly damaged reliefs from the Arch of Septimus Severus, the first of the soldier emperors and the first emperor who didn’t gain power through blood relationship or the express wish of his predecessor. Instead, Severus was catapulted into power by his army, setting a precedent that resulted in nineteen changes of government, in the next seventy-two years. Here are some of the men who briefly reigned. Notice the careworn, troubled expressions on their faces.

During the 3d century, the tide of Roman conquest also turned. No longer were the Romans the aggressors. Here you see the Roman prisoner in the hands of a barbarian tribe. They now had to defend Italy against the barbarians who were drawn by the wealth and grandeur of the Empire. Here the barbarians set an angry lion against the Roman defenders. The soldier emperors, afraid to leave Rome for fear they would be ousted, rarely accompanied their armies. Thus, even victories were uninspiring events, and the historical narrative relief, so characteristic of Roman artistic achievement for two hundred years, died out with the Arch of Septimus Severus.

The historical narrative was revived for the last time in the Arch of Constantine, more than one hundred years later. With his dream of returning to the peaceful era of Augustus, which led him to shave off his beard in favor of Augustus’s youthful look, Constantine represented the only person with sufficient force of personality to pull the Empire together for a final burst of glory. In the late antique abstract style of art, we see his army’s victory at the Milvian Bridge – a victory which gave Constantine total power over the Roman Empire. When, fifteen years later, he moved the capital from Rome to Constantinople, he signed the death warrant for Rome as the hub of civilization – a position it had occupied for five hundred years. It is therefore appropriate that the Arch of Constantine, besides reviving the historical narrative relief as seen here, also has physically borrowed sections from historical reliefs of the past – namely, from the time of Trajan, in the frieze on the inside wall of the arch, from the time of Hadrian, in the circular medallions, and from the era of Marcus Aurelius, in the panels from the attic story. How dramatically these reliefs from former eras point up the clumsy abstract style which marked the end of Roman art. Perhaps, when Constantine decided to borrow from the past, he foresaw that his memorial arch would be the last on Roman soil, and thus, he purposely intended it to be a perfect summary of the best of Roman art.