Transcript Humanities 2020 Chapter 4

Ancient Rome:
The Spirit of Empire
The Drama of Roman History
The Rise of Republican Rome:
City founded in 753 B.C.E. (legend)
Republic: government of representatives
chosen to act for the people at large
Romans conquered Italian peninsula
Struggle between patricians and plebeians
After Italy, the Mediterranean: Punic Wars
In 146 B.C.E., Romans conquered
Corinth and the entire Hellenistic world
and culture.
Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.E.)
conquered Gaul (France), had himself
named dictator for life in 46 B.C.E.,
assassinated in 44 B.C.E.
Octavian (63 B.C.E. – 14 C.E.) defeated
Mark Antony in 31 B.C.E.
Imperial Rome
Romans rude farmers compared to
cultured Athenians
Culture began under Octavian’s (Caesar
Augustus) Pax Romana: “I found Rome a
city of bricks and left it a city of marble.”
Virgil: The Aeneid
Romans absorbed Greek culture and were
very practical
The Art of an Empire
Statues and buildings: political
advertisements
Augustus: Augustus of Primaporta (fig.
4.15), Ara Pacis (fig. 4.16)
Trajan: Forum, Column of Trajan (fig.4.17)
The Architecture of Rome
Buildings for practical purposes:
Basilicas, baths,, libraries
Innovations: concrete and the arch
Arch: flexible construction
Barrel vault, cross vault, dome
Concrete: quick and inexpensive allowed
for fast construction
Roman Buildings
Concentrated on interiors
Buildings for recreation: baths were
beauty salons, library, shopping mall
Basilica of Constantine
Baths of Caracalla
Colosseum (fig.4.12)
The Pantheon
Only building from antiquity entirely
preserved, dedicated to the seven
planetary gods (figs. 4.13 and 4.14)
Built by Hadrian in 120 C.E.
Interior is perfect hemisphere
30 ft. opening, oculus for light
Roman Art and Daily Life
Family: basis of social identity –
paterfamilia
Women had confined social roles, but
could own property, divorce their
husbands, and could inherit their
husband’s wealth.
Pompeii
Destroyed in 79 C.E. by eruption of Mt.
Vesuvius
First excavated in the 18th century, offers
glimpse of Roman household & decoration
Atrium, wall paintings, mosaic (figs. 4.25,
4.28)
Busts to commemorate family members:
realistic renditions, death masks
Roman Theater and Music
Entertainment: a birthright!
Theater: Comedies and tragedies
borrowed from Hellenistic empire
Plautus: comic playwright, farces, coarse
humor
Terence: fully developed characters,
mocked Greeks
Seneca: tragedian, exaggerated plots
Bear fighting and gladiator fights were
preferred to plays
Pantomime: elements of farce, improbable
situations, exaggeration, and horseplay
Often obscene spectacles
Theaters were large structures with multistoried stages which could hold up to
60,000 spectators
Men played all the roles
Actors were often slaves – not respected
Roman Music and Dance
Imitated Greek music and instruments
Orators had musicians play for effect
Tuba, horn, organ (hydraulis), aulos,
cythara (twelve-stringed lyre)
Roman Poets
Catullus: lyric poet who studied Sappho,
wrote love poems
Ovid: poet, wrote Metamorphoses, and
became a source for many other
European writers, such as Chaucer and
Shakespeare
Virgil: epic poet, his work The Aeneid
celebrated traditional Roman values. It
was propaganda for Roman imperialism.
Story of Aeneas, a Trojan warrior’s
adventures.
Unifying theme: destiny
Dido and Aeneas
Roman Satire
Superior over the Greeks
Satire – an artistic form that wittily ridicules
human folly or vice
Horace: fables
Juvenal: criticism of Roman life
Roman Philosophy
Lucretius: good is moderate and lasting
pleasure – Epicureanism
Stoicism: duty and world order, divine
reason controls the universe, happiness
can be found in social duty
Marcus Aurelius: Meditations (stoic Roman
character)
Rome’s Division and Decline
Diocletian: Empire had grown unwieldy,
so it was divided into East and West
In the third century, Constantine moved
the capital to the East, to Constantinople
(Istanbul), Turkey.