ROME OF CONSTANTINE AND A NEW ROME

TNDL: Professor Diana E.E. Kleiner: Good morning everybody. This is the last lecture in Roman Architecture, and I think it's appropriate that I deliver this last lecture, which I call "Rome of Constantine and a New Rome," on Rome's birthday. Indeed, this is Rome's birthday today, April 21st, 2009. Rome was born, as you'll recall, on the 21st of April in 753 B.C., which means that Rome is 2762 years old today. And since birthdays are often celebrated with cake and ice cream, I should make good today on the promise that I made to you at the very beginning of the semester, which is that sometime in the course of this semester I would recommend four ice cream places to you, four gelaterias in Rome, to you. And I've only recommended two. I recommended Tre Scalini in Piazza Navona, and I recommended the Della Palma that is located near the Pantheon. So I haven't--there are two more to go.

And it seemed on Rome's birthday, this was the perfect thing to begin the lecture with, and that is to round the circle and make you aware of the two other best ice cream places in Rome. And I show you here, on the left-hand side of the screen, Giolitti, and on the right-hand side of the screen San Crispino. And note the birthday balloons, and that I'm enjoying myself very much on Rome's birthday, today. But just so that you know where these are. You know Rome so well by now that I think I can give you directions that are going to make sense to you. So you are in the core of ancient Rome. You've just been to visit the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. Maybe you've been up on the Capitoline Hill. You're exploring the Victor Emmanuel Monument, and so with your back to the Victor Emmanuel Monument, look straight ahead and you see the Corso, the so-called Corso, the street of the racecourses, or the racecourse, where the popes, by the way, used to race their horses.

You stand facing the Corso. You walk down the Corso. You're on your way, in this regard, toward the Piazza di Spagna, the Spanish Steps. But before you get to the Spanish Steps, you're going to notice one, the only department store in Rome, Rinascente--that's why it's a good landmark--Rinascente, on the right. You take a left and you're going to see the Column of Marcus Aurelius, which is a column we didn't look at this semester, but is based on the Column of Trajan. You take a look at the Column of Marcus Aurelius. You continue into the next piazza, which is the Piazza Montecitorio, with a great obelisk in the center and a government building and a couple of hotels. You stay on the right and you go down that next small street and you hit Giolitti, which in my opinion is the single best ice cream place in Rome. So if you're in Rome, not to be missed. It has the best fruit flavors in the city of Rome; in fact, anywhere in Italy that I know of.

And the second one that I mention to you is San Crispino. San Crispino is near the Trevi Fountain in Rome. So you're going to go to the Trevi Fountain in any case, and all you need to do when you're facing the Trevi Fountain is to go about two blocks away from the Trevi Fountain and you will hit San Crispino. It has a smaller selection of flavors, but everything is very, very good there. In fact, they've been such a success that they have expanded and opened another one near the Pantheon. So again, back to the Pantheon, down that small street--I already gave you the directions to Della Palma. You go beyond Della Palma, you take a left and you'll hit the second San Crispino. So very important to share this with you, again before the term is up, and in honor of Rome's birthday.

Also, of course, when you're at San Crispino, don't forget the Trevi Fountain. And you probably all know the tradition that when you go and visit the Trevi Fountain, which is always very crowded--this is actually a small crowd compared to what's usually there--after you've looked at it, and enjoyed it for its own sake and for architecture, obviously, of a much later period but I think one you can see is very closely based on a lot of things that we've been looking at this semester. After you've looked at it--and people usually do this right before they leave Rome; you go up to the fountain, bring a coin--it can be an American coin or an Italian coin or any coin for that matter--you stand in front of the Trevi Fountain, with your back to the Trevi Fountain, you take a coin, you throw it over your shoulder--got to make sure it goes into the water and not on the side--but throw it into the water, and that will ensure that you will get to return to Rome someday. So don't forget to do that as well.

We spoke in the last lecture about the Tetrarchy, about Diocletian and his formation of the Tetrarchy, and his attempt to bring stability back to Rome and to the Empire, and how successful he was indeed. We also talked about the fact that Diocletian and the other Tetrarchs were responsible for some important building projects, in fact, bringing architecture back to Rome in a way that it had been missing in the third century A.D. And I mentioned in particular that Diocletian was interested both in public and in private architecture. And I remind you of an example of public architecture that we looked at last time, on the top left, the so-called Five Column Monument, or Decennial Monument, or Tetrachic Monument, that Diocletian erected in the Roman Forum to honor himself and to honor his formation of the Tetrarchy, and his relationship to Jupiter. You'll remember the five columns: four with the Tetrarchs imaged on the top in the front, the one of Jupiter behind, that this was located behind the Rostra or the speaker's platform in the Roman Forum.

We also talked about the fact that Diocletian was interested again in private architecture, that he built a palace for himself, a place that he hoped to retire to, on the Dalmatian Coast where he was born, at a place called Split. And I remind you of it here, a restored view showing you what it looked like; that it was essentially a fortified camp, designed like a Roman castrum, with walls and towers and a very distinctive octagonal mausoleum that was located across from the Temple of Jupiter. So again his connecting himself to Jupiter, honoring Jupiter as he honors himself.

And I also showed you an example of the portraiture of the Tetrarchs. We talked about the all-for-one-and-one-for-all philosophy, how they stuck together, not only in life but in their portraits, and they depicted themselves, or they had themselves depicted as this foursome, in large part again to underscore the fact that all four of them were co-equal emperors, that all four of them--or almost co-equal emperors: you'll remember that there were Augusti and Caesars, so some had the slight upper hand, but for the most part they worked together. They're represented as a whole, and they're represented in a very similar way to one another. And we talked about the use of geometric forms, the abstraction, the solidity of these portraits that I suggested mirrors this new stability that Diocletian and the Tetrarchy have brought to Rome and to the Empire. And we saw that those same qualities, that interest in geometry, in abstraction, in solidity, were characteristic also of Tetrarchic architecture. And we're going to see some of those features continuing on in the buildings that we're going to be looking at today.

Diocletian stepped down, retired voluntarily, on the first of May in 305 A.D. And Maximian, his co-Augustus, stepped down as well, and the two Caesars were elevated to Augusti, and two new Caesars were chosen. But without the strong presence of Diocletian the Tetrarchy fell apart, and Rome and the Empire were once again plunged into civil war. The two main claimants for imperial power that came out of this civil war were Maxentius--Maxentius who was the son of Maximian--and Constantine--Constantine who eventually became Constantine the Great--Constantine who was the son of Constantius Chlorus. And these two men, Constantine and Maxentius, warred with one another for imperial power, and they went against one another in one of the most famous battles of all time: in fact, a battle that is as well known, if not even more well known, than the Battle of Actium, and this is the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, the Battle of the Milvian Bridge which took place in 312 A.D.

And it was at that epic-making battle that Constantine was victorious over Maxentius, that Constantine became sole emperor of Rome -- so a move away from the Tetrarchy and the placement of power in the hands of one man. Once again, Constantine becomes sole emperor of Rome. And it was at that same battle, the Battle of the Milvian Bridge--and one of the reasons that it's such an important battle in historical terms is the fact that it was at that Battle of the Milvian Bridge that Constantine was said to have seen the vision of the cross; the vision of the cross that helped him to be victorious, the vision of the cross that eventually led him to convert to Christianity, which he did on his deathbed. He was baptized a Christian on his deathbed. One of the most interesting things that we'll talk about today, and about the architecture under Constantine the Great, is that we will see, because he began as a pagan emperor and ended his life as a Christian emperor, he has in a sense one foot in the pagan past and the other foot in the Christian future, and we're going to see that reflected in the architecture that he commissioned, as we look at that today.

A few coins of Constantine which I think will help set the stage for this one foot in the past and one foot in the future, that is going to be the leitmotif of today's lecture. I show you on the left-hand side of the screen a coin of Constantine, when he first began his rise to power. It was probably struck in around 306 A.D. And it's an interesting coin, because if you remember--I didn't bring it back to show you--but if you remember the coin of Diocletian that I showed you, you'll recall that he was represented in a very similar fashion. It's the sort of bearded blockhead style, as I call it, for the Tetrarchy; a very cubic image, a short, military hairstyle, closely cropped, and a short beard that adheres very closely to the shape of the face, and the face masked itself with cubic geometric forms. So we see Constantine in his very early portrait trying to look like a Tetrarch, trying to look like his father, Constantius Chlorus, trying to look like Diocletian, trying to fit in, before he figures out the way that's going to enable him, in fact, to become emperor, sole emperor of Rome.

After he defeats Maxentius, at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, we see the greatest transformation in the history of Roman portraiture, in the history of self-imaging by emperors, by people in power, and that is this transformation that I can show you from this early coin of 306, to a coin that dates after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, and that also represents Constantine. And what you see has happened here is Constantine has shaved off his beard, he has lost about twenty years of age, and he is shown with an entirely different hairstyle. Not the short military hairstyle that he wore because he wanted to liken himself to his father and to Diocletian, but an entirely new hairstyle, but one--for any of you who know your Roman portraiture or remember the portraits that I showed you fleetingly of Augustus and the Julio-Claudians--he is wearing a cap of hair that is very similar to--a fuller cap of hair, with comma-shaped locks over his forehead, growing long on the nape of his neck, that is characteristic of Augustus and also of Trajan.

He's in fact a neo-Augustus in this image, with a neo-Trajanic hairstyle. Why? Because he is--as sole emperor he has made the decision that he wants to now ally himself, not with the Tetrarchs, which are of the past at this point, but rather with the great emperors of the past: with Augustus, with Trajan, and as we'll see also with Hadrian and with Marcus Aurelius. And we can see that very important break here, and we'll see it also in architecture.

Another coin down here representing Constantine, with a bunch of pagan regalia. We see him, as so many of the earlier emperors of Rome, depicted along with a patron god, in this case the god Helios, the god of the sun. And you can see Constantine in the foreground, Helios in the background: Helios represented with a rayed crown--and that's why we know it's him--silhouetted right behind the emperor. The emperor is shown as warlike, with military costume, a spear, and then a shield over here. And if we look closely at the shield we'll see the depiction of someone in a chariot, led by four horses, coming--it's represented frontally; it's the solar chariot, the solar chariot of Helios. So a coin that is very much in the usual pagan tradition, where we see Constantine associating himself with