Week 6

Theatre of Pompey

Italo Gismondi
in the Museum
of Roman
civilization,
Rome
Conjectured Image
Temple of Mars [Avenger]
Caesar
1st BCE: Bust found at Ancient Thera
 Iconography: Denarius: Military Mint
48-47 BCE
• Obverse: goddess wearing
an oak leaf wreath (Pietas?)

• Reverse: Gallic military

trophy with shield
Gallic trumpet (carnyx), an
axe with an animal head

Berlin Museum
 Danaris: Mint of Africa
47-46 BCE
• Obverse: head of
Venus

• Reverse: Aeneas
leaves Troy carrying
Anchises and the
Palladium

Berlin Museum
The Emperor Augustus
Ara Pacis
 Res Gestae
• 19) I built the Senate House, and the Chalcidicum
adjacent to it, the temple of Apollo on the Palatine with
its porticoes, the temple of the divine Julius, the Lupercal,
the portico at the Flaminian circus, which I permitted to
bear the name of the portico of Octavius after the man
who erected the previous portico on the same site, a
pulvinar at the Circus Maximus, (2) the temples on the
Capitol of Jupiter Feretrius and Jupiter the Thunderer, the
temple of Quirinus, the temples of Minerva and Queen
Juno and Jupiter Libertas on the Aventine, the temple of
the Lares at the top of the Sacred Way, the temple of the
Di Penates in the Velia, the temple of Youth, and the
temple of the Great Mother on the Palatine.
• 20) I restored the Capitol and the theatre of Pompey, both works
at great expense without inscribing my own name on either.

• 2 I restored the channels of the aqueducts, which in several

places were falling into disrepair through age, and I brought
water from a new spring into the aqueduct called Marcia,
doubling the supply. 3 I completed the Forum Julium and the
basilica between the temples of Castor and Saturn, works begun
and almost finished by my father, and when that same basilica
was destroyed by fire [AD 12], I began to rebuild it on an
enlarged site, to be dedicated in the name of my sons, and in
case I do not complete it in my life time, I have given orders that
it should be completed by my heirs. 4 In my sixth consulship [28
BC] I restored eighty-two temples of the gods in the city on the
authority of the senate, neglecting none that required
restoration at that time. 5 In my seventh consulship [27 BC] I
restored the Via Flaminia from the city as far as Rimini, together
with all bridges except the Mulvian and the Minucian.
• 21) I built the temple of Mars the Avenger and the Forum
Augustum on private ground from the proceeds of booty. I built
the theatre adjacent to the temple of Apollo on ground in large
part bought from private owners, and provided that it should
be called after Marcus Marcellus, my son-in-law. 2 From the
proceeds of booty I dedicated gifts in the Capitol and in the
temples of the divine Julius, of Apollo, of Vesta and of Mars the
Avenger; this cost me about 100,000,000 sesterces. 3 In my
fifth consulship [28 BC] I remitted 55,000 lb. of aurum
coronarium contributed by the municipia and colonies of Italy
to my triumphs, and later, whenever I was acclaimed imperator,
I refused the aurum coronarium which the municipia and
colonies continued to vote with the same good will as before.
 Livy
• Book 1: the foundation myth of Rome

– Mythology and aetiology

– Representation of Rome
– Representation of Emperor

• Test Case: The Rape of Lucretia – the Rape of

the Sabine Women
 Virgil’s Homeric Odyssey
• ‘As I walked I recognised a little Troy, a citadel modelled on great
Pergamum and a dried-up stream they called the Xanthus. There was
the Scaean Gate and I embraced it....’
• Aen.3.350-3
•  
• ‘I was walking away from the harbour leaving ships and shore behind me
when I caught sight of Andromache, offering a ritual meal and
performing rites to the dead in a grove in front of a city on the banks of a
river Simois, but not the true Simois of Troy.... She fainted, and only after
a long time was she at last able to talk to me: ‘Is this a true vision? Is it a
true messenger that comes to me, son of the goddess? Are you alive? If
the light of life has left you, why are you here? Where is Hector?...
• Aen.3.300-313
 Homeric Character
• ‘he suddenly saw, laid out in order, depictions of the battles fought at Troy...
Aeneas even recognised himself in the confusion of battle, with the leaders
of the Greeks all around him’ Aen.1.485-489
•  
• ‘A sudden chill went through Aeneas and his limbs grew weak. Groaning, he
lifted his hands palms upward to the stars and cried: ‘Those whose fate it
was to die beneath the high walls of Troy with their fathers looking down on
them were many, many times more fortunate than I. O Diomede, bravest of
the Greeks, why could I not have fallen to your right hand and breathed out
my life on the plains of Troy, where fierce Hector was killed by the sword of
Achilles, where great Sarpedon lies and where the river Simois caught up so
many shields and helmets and bodies of brave men and rolled them down in
its current?’
• Aen.1.92-102  
•  
• ‘Hearing the young warrior, Hercules checked the great
groan rising from the depths of his heart and the helpless
tears streamed from his eyes. Then father Jupiter spoke
these loving words to his son. ‘Each man has his allotted day.
All life is brief and time once past can never be restored.
But the task of the brave man is to enlarge his fame by his
actions. So many sons of gods fell under the high walls of
Troy, and with them fell also my son Sarpedon. Turnus too
is called by his own destiny and has reached the limits of the
time he has been given.’ Aen.10.477-70
Sarpedon
 Women
• ‘the shaft struck home beneath her naked breast and lodged there
drinking deep of her virgin blood ... Camilla was dying. She tried to
pull out the spear, but its steel point stood deep in the wound
between the bones of her ribs. She was swooning from loss of
blood, her eyes dimming in the chill of death, and the flush had
faded from her cheeks. With her dying breath she spoke to
Acca...Even as she was speaking she was losing her hold on her reins
and in spite of all her efforts she slid to the ground. Then, growing
cold, she little by little freed herself from her body. Her neck
drooped and she laid down her head, yielding to death and letting
go her weapons, as her life left her with a groan and fled in anger
down to the shades.’ (11.801-833)
•  
• ‘The death of a ‘dangerous’ woman – Dido,
Cleopatra, Camilla – authorises the epic hero’s
establishment of a normative order imperilled
by her deviance.’ Keith (2000, 130)
Aeneid 4: Dido
 Dido
that Cupid, changed
in form and feature, come instead of sweet
Ascanius and, with his gifts, inflame
the queen to madness and insinuate
a fire in Dido’s very bones. (I.658-60, tr. Mandelbaum)

Dido’s burning with passion, and she’s drawn the madness

into her very bones. (IV.101-102, tr. Kline)

What use are prayers

or shrines to the [furentem]? Meanwhile her tender marrow
is aflame, and a silent wound is alive in her breast.
Wretched Dido burns, and wanders [furens] through the city...
(IV.65-69, tr. Mandelbaum)
Stoic view of emotions
• ‘perturbations of the spirit’ (from turba, ‘storm’)
—furor, madness
—‘emotion’ from emovere (‘to shift or displace’)
—‘passion’ from pati (‘to suffer’)
• true happiness, a calm state, comes only from virtue
• all passions (grief, fear, desire, etc.) are result of mistaken
opinion, desiring false goods or fearing false evils
• ideal is apatheia—absence of all passion
 Heroes and the Savage
• ‘There, looking around him and moving
among the leaders, was Turnus himself, in full
armour, the fairest of them all, and taller by a
head than the others. On the towering top of
his triple-plumed helmet there stood a
Chimaera breathing from its throat a fire like
Etna’s, and the fiercer and bloodier the battle,
the more savagely she roared and belched the
deadly flames.’ (7.783-8)
 Furor
• ‘Hercules blazed up in anger. The black bile of fury rose
in him...There was Hercules in a passion, trying every
approach, turning his head this way and that and
grinding his teeth. ... Hercules was past all patience... he
caught him in a grip and held him, forcing his eyes out of
their sockets and squeezing his throat till the blood was
dry in it. Then, tearing out the doors and opening up
the dark house of Cacus, he brought into the light of
heaven the stolen cattle whose theft Cacus had denied,
and dragged the foul corpse out by the feet....
 Private Emotion vs. Public Duty in Aeneid
Aeneas gives way to furor when first alerted to Fall of Troy by
Hector’s ghost:

Frantically I seize weapons: not because there is much use

for weapons, but my spirit burns to gather men for battle
and race to the citadel with my friends: madness [furor] and anger
hurl my mind headlong, and I think it beautiful to die fighting (II.314 ff tr. Kline)

Venus rebukes him:

‘My son, what bitterness has kindled this fanatic anger?

Why this madness [furor]?’ (II.594-5, tr. Mandelbaum)

‘...remember your courage and chase away gloomy fears:

perhaps one day you’ll even delight in remembering this...’
So his voice utters, and sick with the weight of care, he pretends
hope, in his look, and stifles the pain deep in his heart. (I.202-3, 208-9 tr. Kline)
• ‘They say that when Daedalus was fleeing from the kingdom of Minos, he dared to trust his life to the
sky, floating off on swiftly driving wings towards the cold stars of the north, the Greater and Lesser
Bears, by a route no man had ever gone before, until at last he was hovering lightly in the air above
the grove of Chalcidian Cumae. Here he first returned to earth, dedicating to Phoebus Apollo the
wings that had oared him through the sky, and founding a huge temple. On its doors were depicted
the death of Androgeos, son of Minos, and then the Athenians, the descendants of Cecrops, ordered
to pay a cruel penalty and yield up each year the living bodies of seven of their sons. The lots are
drawn and there stands the urn. Answering this on the other door are Cnossos and the land of Crete
rising from the sea. Here can be seen the loving of the savage bull and Pasiphae laid out to receive it
and deceive her husband Minos. Here too is the hybrid offspring, the Minotaur, half-man and half-
animal, the memorial to a perverted love, and here is its home, built with such great labour, the
inextricable Labyrinth. But Daedalus takes pity on the great love of the princess Ariadne and unravels
the winding paths of his own baffling maze, guiding the blind steps of Theseus with a thread. You too,
Icarus, would have taken no small place in this great work had the grief of Daedalus allowed it. Twice
your father tried to shape your fall in gold and twice his hands fell helpless. The Trojans would have
gone on gazing and read the whole story through, but Achates, who had been sent ahead, now
returned bringing with him Deiphobe, the daughter of Glaucus, priestess of Phoebus and Trivia, who
spoke these words to the king: ‘This is no time for you to be looking at sights like these...’ Aen.6.214-
37
 Katabasis
• Homer’s Odyssey
• Virgil’s Aeneid
• Dante’s Inferno