From the time of Julius Caesar, we have seen the rulers of Rome

brag about building buildings that were bigger than any others

in the world.

You'll remember Caesar referred to his Temple of Mars in that

way, that he was building the largest Temple of Mars in the

world.

And we also saw the same for Domitian, with his palace on the

Palatine Hill; for Trajan with his enormous

forum; for Hadrian,

building the greatest-- largest dome that had been

built up until that time and, as we discussed,

still the largest diameter dome in the city of Rome today;

and Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, just as a selection of

examples.

We are going to see today that if bigger was better,

biggest is best, and in the case of the emperor

Caracalla, an emperor who was a

megalomaniac, in the tradition of Nero and

Domitian, that he built the largest

imperial bath structure to date.

And we're going to be looking at that bath structure today,

and we're going to see it as really a colossal and

fascinating building, in all kinds of ways.

But before I get to that--in fact,

we'll end with that bath structure today--

before I get to that, I would like to look with you

at architecture in Rome, in the second and third

centuries A.D., and we'll see that architecture

is quite varied in terms of whether it's private,

it's civic, it's also funerary.

I want to begin though by just reminding you of what we talked

about last time.

We looked at the city of Ostia, and we looked at the city of

Ostia, the port of Rome, in its entirety;

once again, its public buildings, its civic structures,

its commercial enterprises.

And we also went, at the very end of the lecture,

out to Isola Sacra, where the tombs of those who

lived in Ostia were located.

And I show you a couple of those again now on the screen;

these brick-faced tombs, these tombs that are made of

concrete, at Isola Sacra,

that were put up for the professionals,

for the traders, the commercial merchants and so

on that lived in the city of Ostia.

They were made of brick-faced concrete construction.

They had barrel vaults or groin vaults inside.

And you can see also that they were faced with brick,

and they were faced with brick, as we discussed,

that was exposed; the idea of brick being

attractive in its own right, a fabulously beautiful facing,

that they take advantage of in the second century A.D.,

and decide not to stucco it over, as you can see so well

here.

The doorways into those tombs, surrounded by travertine jambs

and lintels, the inscription in the center,

the small slit windows, and then a pediment at the top.

We saw, when we looked at funerary architecture in the age

of Augustus, for example, that is was very varied;

very varied.

Tombs in the shape of pyramids, in the shape of circular tombs.

Tombs that made reference to bakeries, like the Tomb of the

Baker Eurysaces.

There is still a certain amount of variety in tomb architecture

in the second century A.D., but they tend to hone in on one

type in particular, and that type is the so-called

house tomb type; which is exactly what we see

here, a tomb that is rectangular in shape, for the most part,

boxlike, and does resemble, very closely,

a house; this close relationship that

we've talked about so many times this semester between houses of

the living and houses of the dead.

So we looked at those last time.

And where I want to begin today is just to demonstrate to you

that these same kinds of house tombs that we see in Ostia and

Isola Sacra, in the second century A.D.,

we also see in Rome.

And in some cases they are commissioned by individuals of

comparable social status, to those in Ostia,

but sometimes they are commissioned by the most elite.

And I'd like to begin with an example of a similar tomb

commissioned by the most elite.

This is the so-called Tomb of Annia Regilla,

in Rome.

It was put up on the famous via Appia, or the Appian Way.

It dates to around A.D. 161.

In this case we know who the commissioner was,

and I can show you what he looked like as well.

You see him here, on the right-hand side of the

screen.

He was a man by the name of Herodes Atticus;

I've put his name on the Monument List for you,

Herodes Atticus.

Herodes Atticus was actually a Greek.

He was Athenian, from the Greek part of the

Empire.

He lived in Athens, for the most part,

and he commissioned a very famous music hall,

an odeon, which still survives.

You can see it over here.

It's without its roof today, but it was originally one of

these roofed music halls, an odeon.

It is located on the slope of the Acropolis in Athens;

the Acropolis that of course we know primarily for its great

architectural feats of the fifth century B.C.

in Greece.

This is the Roman building, put up by Herodes in the second

century, and we see it on the slope of the Acropolis,

very well preserved.

In modern times its greatest fame is the fact that Yanni

performed his "Live at the Acropolis"

concert at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus.

And even if you don't like Yanni, it's actually quite an

interesting concert to view-- and one can view it in video

and so on-- because it does take such

wonderful advantage of this extraordinary ancient structure,

as Yanni presents his music.

At any rate, at one point Herodes Atticus,

who had a lot of connections, not only in Athens but around

the Empire, at one point,

through those connections, he gets himself appointed a

senator in Rome, and in order to take up that

position he needs to leave Athens behind and go spend some

time in Rome, and he and his wife,

Annia Regilla, set up house in Rome.

Annia Regilla, unfortunately,

dies in Rome, and he needs to bury her,

and he decides to bury her in Rome,

instead of in Athens, and he builds for her a tomb on

the Appian Way, on the Via Appia,

in around 161 A.D.; that's the date that we believe

she died.

And we see a view of that tomb here.

What we're looking at--and you probably recognize this already

because we've looked at a number of models from this museum of

casts in Rome, the Museo della Civiltà

Romana, in EUR in Rome.

And I show you two views of this model of the Tomb of Annia

Regilla; one that we see from the front

and another that we see from, if we're facing the monument,

the left side of the tomb.

And these are extremely helpful, because they give us a

very good sense of what we are dealing with here.

It is clear that we are dealing with a tomb type that is not

that different from what we saw in Ostia;

although this looks more like a temple than it looks like a

house.

And you can see that right off.

It looks exactly like a typical Roman temple.

We see that it is on a high podium;

it has a deep porch; it has freestanding columns in

that porch; it has a single staircase on

the front of the structure; has a façade orientation;

then an entranceway into the structure.

It also has freestanding columns that support a pediment.

So if I were to show you this, and not identify it and say to

you: "What kind of a building is this?"

I'm sure you would have said it was a temple;

and you would've been right in the sense that it looks most

like a temple.

But it is a tomb in the form of a temple, as you can well see

here.

Looking on the side of the monument, you can also see those

same features that I've just described.

And while we are looking at this view--

because I'm not going to bring it back--

I want to point out one detail that will loom large as we look

further at this structure.

You will see on the left side of the tomb that the architect

has created, has kind of scalloped out the

side on either side, creating niches,

tall niches on the side, and placed columns into that

space; which is a very unusual thing

to do.

It's not true on the other side of the monument,

only on this side of the structure.

Why has the architect done that?

I think it might have something to do with the siting,

perhaps how you viewed it from the street.

Maybe it was skewed in such a way that you would see not only

the façade but also the side,

and he wanted to emphasize the columns on that particular side

of the structure.

But it may also have just had to do with a quirk,

with a particular interest that the architect or the patron had

in doing something different than any other tomb,

and I want to return to that point in a moment.

But most significant of all is that in terms of the building

technique, the use of concrete faced with

exposed brick, this is exactly what we saw in

Ostia.

And you can see that just as in Ostia,

they have taken that brick as far as it can go,

in terms of its aesthetic value, by respecting the texture

of the brick, playing that texture off,

playing color, different colored bricks,

a reddish brick against a more yellowish colored brick,

playing those off against one another,

and then adding certain very highly decorative details like a

meander pattern, that we're going to see in a

moment, and decoration around the

windows of the tomb, done in stucco.

The columns, however, are marble;

the columns are marble, and in that sense again

something somewhat different than what we saw at Ostia.

This is a view of the tomb as it looks today.

The porch is not well preserved, and I can't show you

any of that.

But I can show you the rest of the structure,

and you can see it quite well in this particular view.

And again, you see that it is indeed well preserved.

Concrete construction, faced with brick,

the brick left exposed, respected and enjoyed,

in its own right.

What I've already described: the playing off of one color of

brick against another; this meander pattern done in

stucco; the stucco decoration,

very elaborate decoration, as we're going to see,

around the windows; tall podium,

we see that here as well.

An extraordinary structure.

And what's interesting I think to note,

at least culturally and in terms of social status,

is the fact that although this structure was put up for one of

the most wealthy men in-- or the wife of one of the most

wealthy men in Rome at this particular time,

the general aesthetic is very similar to what we saw for

professional people in the city of Ostia: that is,

a concrete tomb, in the form of a house,

or a temple in this case, that has as its facing brick,

and a respect for that brick in its own right.

Here are a couple of details.

I show you once again a detail of the warehouse or the Horrea

Epagathiana at Ostia that we looked at,

and also a detail of the Tomb of Annia Regilla in Rome.