The last of the great architectural monuments from the city of Rome during the reign of Augustus is the Ara Pacis Augustae, the Altar of Augustan Peace, a modest-sized (ca. 10m2) free-standing altar designed for sacrifices to the goddess Pax, or Peace (Figure 21.4). Voted by the Senate in 13 BC, then built on the Campus Martius along a main thoroughfare, the Via Flaminia, the altar was officially dedicated in 9 BC. The monument did not survive intact into modern times. Sculptural pieces have turned up under the privately owned Palazzo Fiano since the sixteenth century, with excavations carried out in 1903 and 1937—38. The altar was then reconstructed with the surviving fragments, although not on its original location or orientation.
The altar proper lay inside an open-air space bounded by an enclosure wall, with entrances on the west (main entrance) and the east. Relief sculpture decorated the entire monument, with the figural scenes on the upper half of the outside of the precinct wall attracting most attention. The monument commemorates the peace brought to the Roman state by Augustus, and discreetly honors Augustus as a new founder of the city and state, a worthy successor of Romulus and Aeneas. As we have seen, these themes, the bringing of peace and the linking of the Augustan present with the legendary origins of the state, play an important role in the public arts of Augustan Rome. The style of the sculpture is very much in the naturalistic tradition of Greek art, a fact that reminds us that however Italic or Roman the subjects, a Greek manner of presentation still mattered enormously.
Figure 21.4 Ara Pacis, Rome
The east and west doorways were flanked by large relief panels with allegorical scenes emphasizing the divine and heroic underpinnings of the Roman state. On the north-east side a personification of the goddess Roma sits on a pile of armor. The message is clear: peace through conquest, with Roma defeating her enemies in order to bring peace. On the left side is a well-preserved (and partly restored) panel showing “Fruits of Peace.” A female personification of plenty, variously identified as Mother Earth (Tellus), Venus, Italia, or Peace, holding two babies, sits on a rock, surrounded by animals, plants, and fruits. On either side, nymph-like creatures framed by billowing cloaks attest to peace on both land and sea. They ride animals: one woman is on swan back, above an overturned jug, which represents the beginning of a spring, whereas on the other side, we see a nymph on a rather frightening sea creature.
Beside the west entrance, the main entry to the altar, the fragmentary north-west panel shows the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. Mars, the boys’ father, and the shepherd who later raised the children look on. On the better-preserved south-west panel, Aeneas, just landed in Latium, pours a libation of thanks onto an altar. Two boys bring fruit and a sow for sacrifice.
The south and north exteriors, again the upper half (the lower half being carved throughout in elegant floral patterns), are decorated with a different kind of scene altogether. Here we see a specific historical event: men, women, and children in procession, coming to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone of the altar on July 4, 13 BC (Figure 21.5). Augustus walks among them, in the center of the south side, but he is inconspicuous, as befitted the public persona he liked to project. Also processing are officials, priests, and members of Augustus’s family, including women and children, each person illustrated with a slightly different stance, movement, or
Figure 21.5 Procession frieze (detail), Ara Pacis, Rome
Expression. The scene is tranquil, calm, dignified. The style recalls that of the Parthenon frieze from fifth-century BC Athens, with idealized naturalistic representations of people, but there are significant differences. Although the Parthenon frieze also shows a religious procession, it is generalized; it does not show a particular procession in a specific year. Moreover, its cast of characters differs: horseback riders, animals brought for sacrifice, and gods in attendance — but not the Athenian political leadership. In another series of processional images that we have seen, the reliefs of Achaemenid Persepolis (Chapter 10), the overall calm, harmonious tone matches that of the Ara Pacis. But at Persepolis the processors bear tribute; the king awaits, seated, to receive it. The smooth functioning of the empire is emphasized, but so, too, is the distinction between ruler and ruled. Augustus, in contrast, hides his rulership, instead taking his place among the many functionaries who together embody the Roman state.
The message imparted by the Ara Pacis procession is the orderly, beneficial rule of Augustus and his family. With such other pictorial vehicles for ideology as the mythological panels on the east and west sides of the Ara Pacis and the sculpture of the Forum of Augustus, and the lesson proclaimed by his discreet house carefully located on the Palatine Hill, Augustus could feel confident that public art and architecture in the capital city contributed fully to the new chapter in Roman history: the end of decades of civil war and the renewal of the Roman state.
Legitimacy stressed by connections with the key gods and heroes of the Roman people; his own achievements made clear, never for his own glory, but always, really, for the stability and prosperity of the Roman state — these themes Augustus made basic to his concept of rule. There is something very Greek about this — fifth-century BC Athenian, that is. Augustus’s successors, as we shall see, will continue to adorn the city with great monuments. But in a Hellenistic rather than Periklean manner they will offer themselves the grandeur, private as well as public, that they considered appropriate to their imperial status.
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