Now, Domitian was succeeded by John Kerry, no, well,
sort of, in the sense that he was succeeded
by a man by the name of Nerva who
looks very much like John Kerry, don't you think.
And that's the coin of Nerva on the left-hand side of the screen.
Domitian, by the way.
I think I may have forgotten to mention, but he,
he, he, he ended up just the way Nero did.
He was well in his case he was actually assassinated.
Nero was forced to commit suicide, but Domitian was assassinated.
He was issued a damnatio memoriae at his death.
And he was succeeded by Nerva.
Nerva, who was appointed by the senate.
The senate had had it with despots and they decided that
the time had come to choose one of their own, and
they selected Nerva, who was an elderly and very highly respected
member of the senate, and this was the first time the
senate did this.
Since Augustus founded the empire in his reign, the first emperor
of Rome, this is the first time that an emperor was appointed by the senate.
And Nerva was a highly respected and, and, and pretty level headed guy
and he was able to bring peace and prosperity back to the empire.
He did not last very long, however. He had a very brief reign,
and therefore very little time to have an impact on architecture.
But again, you see him represented on a coin on the left-hand side of the screen.
I'd like to show you one building, though, I'd like to end today with one building.
That was actually begun by Domitian and then completed by Nerva.
It began as the so-called Forum Transitorium, under Domitian, and became
the Forum of Nerva, under Nerva.
In order to do this I need to take you
to the general plan of the Imperial Fora in Rome.
We've looked at this before, you'll remember the location of of the Roman
Forum here and obviously down below, the forum of Julius Caesar that we've
already studied, the forum of Augustus built right next to that, that we've
also looked at in detail, and the Forum Pacis of the Templum Pacis
of Vespasian which we have looked at more
recently and which you'll recall was built in such
a way so that it faced the forum of
Augustus and the forum of Julius Caesar next door.
I mentioned to you I think already that there
was a very large piece of property over here.
That was, that was that, on, on which stood
essentially one of Rome's seven hills, the Quirinal hill,
Q-u-i-r-i-n-a-l.
The Quirinal hill of Rome occupied this area, but
it was an area that was being eyed by Domitian.
You can see from his palace that he had big
plans and once the palace was coming to you know, fruition.
He was thinking again about public architecture and
the fact that he would really like to build
a forum to rival that of his father, a
forum that was bigger than that of his father's.
And he'd like to put it over here,
facing his father's forum, across the forum
of Augustus and the forum of Julius Caesar.
He, he dreamt, he dreamed those big dreams but he was never able to realize them.
What he did instead was to take, this area that was located between the
forum of Vespasian and the forum of Augustus, the forum of Julius Caesar.
This area
that I mentioned to you was called
the Argiletum. That area was a, a, a street
that connected the Roman Forum with an area of Rome called the Subura.
The Subura which was a residential area that I
mentioned was, was, had in it mostly these wooden
apartment houses, large numbers of people lived In this Subura.
So there was the street, the Argiletum that that attached
the two or connected the two to one another and
Domitian decided to use that as a forum to himself
that would be placed next to that of his father.
And he placed in that forum, the temple of his patron goddess Minerva.
His patron goddess was Minerva and he, he built
a temple to honor her, in this location.
Because this forum was so, was like a street and was so narrow, that
had a, that had an effect on what could be built there; so that you
can see, for example, in plan, that while the forums of Julius Caesar and Augustus,
and the forum Pacis, all had colonnades,
covered colonnades in fact, there was no space
to build a covered colonnade here. So what they had to do was place the
columns very close to the wall and not put any ceiling on top of those columns.
You can see the same here.
This is a plan of the, of the original forum, of Domitian, or what was called the
forum transatorium, because it served as a point of transit between the Subura and
the Roman Forum.
The temple of Minerva over here consistent with temple
architecture as we've seen it thus far this semester,
a temple with a frontal orientation, single staircase facade
orientation, freestanding columns in the porch, and so on.
The entranceway over here.
The Forum Pacis would be here.
The Forum of Caesar and Augustus at the top.
And then you can see these bases for the columns
very close to the wall.
Not attached to it, but very close to the
wall on either side, because there's no space for colonnades.
Here's a Google Earth image showing the imperial
fora as it looks today, part of the later
forum of Trajan, the forum of Augustus, and what
is preserved of the so-called Forum Transitorium over here.
This is a model of what the Forum Transitorium would have looked
like in ancient Roman times and the time of Domitian,
with the temple of Minerva with these columns on either side,
and you can see from this model the difference that that
makes, when you don't have enough space to build covered collonades.
You've got columns that look like they are projecting out
of the wall with projecting entablatures on top of them.
We have not seen this before in built architecture.
This is a very important development. We have seen it
in painting, but we haven't seen it in built architecture.
Here's a detail of the Forum Transitorium with these
columns placed almost flush with the wall, although not quite.
They project a little bit in front of the
wall, with the projecting and tablatures of the building.
The walls made out of tufa blocks as you can see here.
The rest with marble and a panel at the top and we think
there would have been lots of such panels representing the goddess Minerva him,
herself. So, we, we see that here.
We have not seen it in built architecture before, but we have seen it in painting.
This is a detail of Cubiculum 16, in the Villa of the Mysteries and you can see
one such set of columns that project out
of the wall, with the projecting entablatures up above.
So it's something again that we think may
have been done in temporary wooden architecture for example.
But keep in mind how early that painting is.
You all know the date of it because you studied it for the exam.
It's mid BC.
So it's way be, be, before even the Augustan period
and yet we see that there and now we finally see
it in built architecture and it's going to have a real
history in Roman architecture in a different way than concrete does.
This whole idea of decorating a wall by placing a
series of columns than project in and out along that
wall, giving it a kind of, using the
traditional language of, of architecture columns, to create
a kind of undulating wall, or what we're
going to call later in this semester, a baroque wall.
Two details of the, some of the, one
of the surviving capitols with the frieze up above.
A frieze that represents scenes of women weaving.
I'm not going to get into the meaning of all of that here today.
But you
can see the way in which the columns project somewhat out of the wall.
Corinthian capitols, projecting entablature, very highly decorated,
just like all of Flavian architectural ornament
as you can see here, very deeply drilled and so on and so forth.
But this whole idea of decorating a wall in this way, and instilling
movement in that wall by this undulating in and out, scheme, is going to
again have a very important future in Roman architecture.
This is an interesting view because it shows
us just what we've looked at, some of
those remaining columns from the so called Forum
Transitorium which was renamed the forum of Nero,
after Domitian's death and damnatio memoriae and
Nero [correction: Nerva] just took it over and said, okay
it's my forum now and renamed it to
himself, but didn't add anything architecturally to it.
We see
it here.
And this is one of those great views in which you
can see the difference between modern ground level and ancient ground level.
In order to see the lower part of the forum, you've got to
go right up to the edge of the street and look down on it.
And this also a interesting engraving by the famous artist Piranesi, Piranesi
print of the 18th century. I do a, a lot of wonderful prints.
It's an event, if there's any interest in this class, by the way,
we have plenty of these at Yale.
And I know one of the teaching fellows, if not more than one
would be more than happy to, to to find a time to take
those of you who might be interested in looking at Piranesi, Prince of
Rome over to the British art center and so on to work elsewhere.
To take a look at these.
But whats interesting about this one is that it shows
where the ground level was at the time this was engraved
by Piranesi, that is in the eighteenth century,
it was pretty much where it is here.
It was much much higher.
Than it is now, and then when they excavated it in modern times, they
got us down to ancient ground level and to the bottoms of the columns.
I want to end up with this one last image, because we are very
different, [LAUGH] 'kay, Wendy, very different, but
it, it, it it allows us to continue
on with the, with a point that I made when we discussed
the Colosseum in Rome, which has already turned up in the online forum.
And that is the use of, of, of Roman
buildings as quarries for later architects and later patrons,
namely princes and popes, and the way in which
buildings like the Colosseum were pirated for later architecture.
In the case of the Forum Transitorium or the Forum of Nerva that we know
that the temple of Minerva that the material out of which
it's made, the reason it does not exist at all today.
The temple of Minerva is that it was taken
apart and re, reused by Pope Paul the Fifth.
For a fountain that he wanted to build on the Janiculum Hill in Rome, the so-called
Acqua Paola which you see here, and the Acqua Paola, the the temple
was torn down in 1606, it still stood in 1606,
it was torn down then and it was placed at, in
this fountain, used for the construction of this fountain that
was dedicated in 1612, and built by the architect, Giovanni Fontana.
And you see it here.
And it's not easy to determine exactly which is, you know which parts are
from the temple itself, but much of the building stone that you see here reused
in this fountain comes from the temple of Minerva in Rome.
So it shows you the way again the way in which these buildings
were used as quarries, but the way in which Roman buildings live on.
They either live on as themselves or they live on as other buildings and I
think that's a nice, a nice thought and a nice note on which to end today.
Thank you.
