Peace and death

[jere7my]

Sunday, June 28 - Rome

The Ara Pacis ("altar of peace") was erected by the senate along the Via Flaminia to celebrate the Pax Augusta, the end of civil war as brought by Augustus (aka the end of the Republic and the start of the Empire). It's a remarkably persuasive piece of architecture — decorated with portraits of the imperial family, symbols of peace and prosperity, and other pro-imperial propaganda aimed at convincing the populace that this new Empire thing was what the gods really wanted anyway. And anybody coming to Rome from the north couldn't help but see it.

It was lost in the Tiber's flood plains for centuries, but eventually chunks started turning up, and archaeologists were able to do a fair job of reassembling it in the early 20th century. Mussolini had it moved next door to the Mausoleum of Augustus in 1938, which is where it stands today, though his fascist outer building was torn down and replaced in 2006 with a big, antiseptic-white, glassed-in gift-box designed by Richard Meier — very controversial!

adfamiliares hadn't seen the Ara Pacis before, and was suffused with girlish glee the entire time we were there. "It's a very significant monument," she says when I tease her.

One of the side panels, depicting the goddess Peace, or possibly Tellus, or maybe Italia, holding twins and surrounded by symbols of prosperity. The two breezy ladies are Winds, sitting on a swan and a sea dragon — and check out that dragon!


"Screw you, Peace! Grr!"


Part of the big procession depicting Augustus as the Pontifex Maximus. These fellows with the air hockey paddles on their heads are the flamines maiores, the sacrificial priests.


One of the winged lions on the altar itself.


A model of the northern stretch of the Campus Martius, from the Pantheon (closest to us) to the Mausoleum of Augustus. The Ara Pacis is the tiny building about halfway between them and off to the right. (Today, that's just about where the Column of Marcus Aurelius stands. Now the Ara Pacis is between the mausoleum and the Tiber.) The obelisk beside it is the Horologium, brought from Heliopolis to serve as the gnomon of a giant sundial:


It still stands on about the same spot, in the Piazza de Montecitorio, and it's still in use as a sundial.


Outside, the concentric cylinders of the Mausoleum of Augustus are still being excavated (and very difficult to photograph, due to the fencing). Big tomb, right? This entrance aligns precisely with the entrance of the Pantheon.

The rest of the set is here.