Page 241 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

126 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

A sculpture of the Athenian owl, symbol
of Athena, the patron goddess of Athens,
in 2003.

architecture can be read as a constant and intentional
shifting—depending upon the specific purpose of the
monument—of the balance of native Italic elements and
those adopted from classical Greece. The Romans con-
tinue to build their temples according to their own tra-
ditional Tuscan plan (adopted from the Etruscans), but
they consistently monumentalize those temples by
veneering them with the materials and decorative orders
of the Greeks.
A century later the emperor Augustus (reigned 27
BCE–14 CE) claimed to have found Rome a city of brick
and left it a city of marble. Augustus’s statue at Prima
Porta illustrates well the early integration of Hellenic and
Italic forms and spirit in the service of the official message
of the state. It combines a recognizable portrait head of
Augustus with the body of the famous Doryphoros, the
“Spearbearer” of the fifth-century BCE Greek sculptor
Polykleitos.The Doryphoros is presented in the armor of
a Roman general, the commander in chief, and wears a
cuirass that carries the representation in relief of a his-
stylization monumental Greek art was intended to lift the torical event, a military accomplishment significant to the
viewer out of the everyday and into the consideration of official image of Augustus. A recognizable, individual
superhuman forms and forces; Roman republican por- human being and a specific historical event are magni-
traiture encouraged the contemplation of the thoughts fied, elevated to the realm of the superhuman through
and actions of specific, individual human beings through their association with fifth-century Greece, with Peri-
the reproduction of their most individualized, idiosyn- clean Athens and its own remarkable cultural and mili-
cratic physical attributes.A similar dichotomy is expressed tary accomplishments, the apex, in the Roman mind, of
in the contrast between the native tradition of Roman his- human achievement. The same mixture and purpose is
torical relief sculpture, which depicts the literal details of found in Augustus’s Altar of Peace (the Ara pacis), which
actual historical events, and the more generalized, presents a historical procession of individually recogniz-
emblematic references to history made in the monu- able Romans in the guise of the religious procession
ments of the Greeks. depicted on the Ionic frieze of the fifth-century Parthenon
in Athens.
An Evolving Balance Augustus and his Julio-Claudian successors (reigned
The most profound wave of Greek influence on the 14–68 CE) continued to present themselves in official
Romans came with the Roman sack of Corinth in 146 art and architecture in the guise of fifth-century Greece.
BCE. The city was stripped of its sculpture and painting Even their portrait heads, while recognizable as indi-
and almost any movable object of value, and it was all vidual emperors, were generalized and idealized in the
shipped to Rome, where it kindled a mighty taste for manner of classical Greek art. When, however, their
things Greek and antique and injected a permanent and grotesque excesses and abuses of power led to the
powerful strain of Hellenism into the art and architecture overthrow of Nero (reigned 54–68 CE) and the ruling
of Rome. From the second century BCE Roman art and dynasty, the first Flavian emperor, Vespasian (reigned