From Babylon to Berlin: ANES Museum Tour of Europe: Arrival in Rome

In front of the Pantheon in Rome.

We needed to start early this morning, very early to get to the airport in Athens in time to meet our flight. The hotel prepared a light breakfast at 5:30 a.m., and our trust driver Yannis picked us up right at 6:00 a.m.

There were a couple of glitches checking in but nothing of Munich magnitude (where, regular readers may recall, difficulty paying bag fees for the students meant that I almost did not make the flight). I cannot tell you much about our trip from Athens to Rome because I was asleep for almost all of it. I do not even have a picture from the plane to share.

A coach picked us up at the airport in Rome and took us to our hotel, where we were able to check in soon after we arrived at noon. Some went out to get something to eat; many napped.

We finally got going at 3:00 so that we could use the late afternoon and early evening not so much for a city orientation as I have done before but rather for a collection of quick sites that were conveniently together in north-of-central Rome.

The Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus

Our students "casually" gathering for a photo in front of the Ara Pacis

We took a bus across the Ponte Cavour to two monument—one reconstructed and one only roughly excavated and now being renovated—that were both closely connected with the emperor Augustus. This was exciting for me, because one of the focuses of my ancient history graduate degrees was Roman imperial history and I taught Classics at BYU from 1994-2003 before I transferred to Ancient Scripture.

Augustus, his family, and his associates did a lot of building in this part of Rome, in a region that anciently was called the Campus Martius. The first of two that we saw today was the Ara Pacis, an altar to personified Peace, who here was closely associated with the emperor himself. The idea is that Augustus' rule had restored peace after generations of civil war, and that, in turn, had restored fertility and prosperity to Roman and the empire.

The altar's original location in the Campus Martius was next to the Horologium, a massive sundial, and on Augustus 23, Augustus' birthday, the shadow of the Egyptian obelisk that served as the sundial pointed at the altar, indicating that the birth of the future emperor brought the promise of peace back to the world.

Bucrania, garlands with leaves, flowers, and fruit strung between the skulls of sacrificial oxen, are an important symbol of fertility.

It was inaugurated in 9 B.C. on January 30, the birthday of Augustus' wife Livia. Indeed, the altar celebrated not only Augustus' contributions to Rome but connected his wife and his extended family to the well-being and prosperity of the empire. This was done by portraying the family in the sculptural program of the screens that surrounded the altar, that linked them with the mythical past and current public celebrations.


A relief of Aeneas, legendary founder of the Julian family and and ancestor of Rome's founders, sacrifices as did Augustus, the second founder of Rome. This panel appears over a lower panel representing the prosperity of the Augustan Peace.

With Rachel under the Tellus Relief. The "Tellus" figure, representing fertility, could be Mother Earth, Ceres (Demeter), a personification of Italy, or the empress Livia.

I spent years of my life studying this lady.

One of the side panels that depicts members of the imperial family, including its children, in a procession of public officials and religious figures.

[Livia, some of you may recall, was the subject of my doctoral dissertation].

There are probably not many study abroad groups that need to humor their director by posing in front of Augustus' Res Gestae!

Outside of the modern museum housing the reconstructed altar is a wall of modern carvings containing the text of the Res Gestae, Augustus' own account of his achievements that he had placed on two panels outside of his mausoleum.

The remains of the Mausoleum of Augustus

The remains of this very mausoleum lie due east of the modern museum. In antiquity it was a massive artificial mound that had burial chambers within and cypress trees and statues on top. Many members of the imperial family and some later emperors up to the time of Nerva were buried here. I was pleased to see that some new excavation and renovation seem to be going on.

Possible reconstruction of the Mausoleum of Augustus. See http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/47110

Other side viewed through the window of the Ara Pacis Museum.

The Pantheon

While my students were subjected to perhaps some involved Roman historical lectures with the first two sites, the rest of the evening was largely fun, walking from site to site with my giving just a little background.

I managed to get in this picture.

Well sometimes a bit more background, at least in the case of the iconic Pantheon. This temple to multiple (later thought to be "all" the gods) gods was an originally a private religious structure (Latin, sacrata privata) built by Marcus Agrippa, Augustus' best friend and later son-in-law. It was later renovated and perhaps expanded by Domitian and was built in its stunning current form by the emperor Hadrian, who nonetheless kept the attribution to Agrippa.

Other quick stops

Rome is such a wonderful city to walk through. In addition to iconic sites such as the Trevi Fountain or the Spanish Steps, monuments from Roman antiquity might appear around the next corner. If not, just the scenes the streets present are amazing. And of course, there is the food . . .