We have talked in the course of this semester many times about

the Hellenization of Roman architecture,

about the impact that Greek architecture had on Roman

architecture.

And we've talked in particular about the two philhellenic

emperors, Augustus and also Hadrian,

and the kinds of monuments they commissioned during their reign

that were so clearly based on those in ancient Athens --

Athens, especially of the Classical period,

the cradle of civilization, and where scholars often speak

of as the birth of democracy.

I want to turn full circle, go full circle here and return

to the whole question of Athens, by looking at Athens itself,

because Athens also became a Roman colony.

And you won't be surprised to hear that it was built up under

primarily two Roman emperors, namely Augustus and Hadrian,

just as one would expect, the two major philhellenic

Roman emperors.

I show you a spectacular view of Athens as it looks today.

And you can see here that the city of Athens--

and some of its antiquities extremely well preserved--

is a city that is located -- it's actually a city that's

located in plains , surrounded by mountains.

And it also has three major hills, as I think you can see

from this extraordinary image.

One of those hills, of course, is the famous

Acropolis.

And I think, by the way, if one were to

make-- I don't how many of you have

been to Athens, but if one were to make a list

of the ten places that one really must see,

at some point during their lives, and experience,

Athens is certainly one of them, mainly for the Acropolis,

which you see in the center of this image here.

That's one of the major hills.

The other two are Mount Lycabettus, which you see in the

uppermost part; that's actually the highest

hill of Athens.

And then there's another one called the Mouseion Hill,

which we're going to actually talk about today,

because there's an important monument there --

the Mouseion Hill or the Hill of the Muses.

It's located off this image, right where I'm standing here.

And those three hills, as you can see,

rise up in the city of Athens.

And it's not surprising--and the rest of it surrounded

essentially by a city that was constructed primarily after

World War II, mainly residential houses of

six, five, six stories,

residences that are mostly white in color,

as I think you can see here.

But the Acropolis rising up in the center in an amazing way.

The city of Athens we know was founded in the Neolithic period;

it was founded in the Neolithic period.

So it goes way back, in the same way that Rome does.

And it's not surprising to see them founding the city of Athens

on one of those hills.

And which hill do they pick?

They pick the hill that's the flattest, which makes it easiest

to build on, and that is the rock of the Acropolis itself.

So they put their religious structures on the Acropolis,

and then over time the city begins to grow up around the

rock of the Acropolis.

Now this is very interesting because if you think back to

Rome and its beginnings, you'll recall that Rome too was

founded on a hill, because hills can be most

readily fortified.

So Rome was founded, you'll recall,

essentially on two hills, on the Palatine Hill,

by Romulus, where he established residences,

but also on the Capitoline Hill where they built the Temple of

Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus --

so that being the religious center of the city.

We see the same sort of thing happening here:

the city growing up on the Acropolis,

and then we'll see that the meeting and marketplace is down

below, in a valley,

below the Acropolis, in the same way that the Roman

Forum, or what became the Roman Forum,

was in the valley beneath the Palatine Hill,

and also the Capitoline Hill in Rome.

So very similar beginnings for Greece, as also for Rome.

As you all know, Athens thrived particularly,

Greece in general thrived particularly in the fifth

century B.C., under Pericles,

and continued to thrive into the Hellenistic period.

But it was in 86 B.C.

that Sulla, the Roman general Sulla, sacked Athens,

sacked Athens, made Athens a Roman colony,

and in fact destroyed the walls of the city of Athens.

So that obviously a very major point in the history of Athens.

When scholars talk about architecture that was put up by

the Romans in Athens, during Roman times,

they talk about it as being primarily uninspired and rather

derivative.

And you'll find this in your textbook.

Ward-Perkins talks about how derivative Roman architecture in

Greece is, of its earlier counterparts,

that is, from Classical and Hellenistic Athens.

And I think he has a point, and it's something that we

should all think about as a group,

whether we think that the buildings that we look at today

are, for the most part,

derivative from the Classical and Hellenistic past.

But I think to say only that is to miss the point in part,

because what we are also going to see,

as we look at these buildings today,

is that the extraordinary marbles that come from this part

of the world, Greek marbles--and we'll talk

about a number of them today-- the quality of those is so high

that it's hard to imagine any building made out of these,

not spectacular, just for the materials alone.

And also because the artists and the architects,

and the artisans who are responsible for carving this

marble, had been carving it for

centuries, and consequently they were particularly skilled at

carving marble.

And so what they produced has great beauty,

as I think you'll see today.

So those two, again a very important point,

I believe, about the quality of these works of art.

And we're also going to see works of architecture.

We're also going to see that at least two of them,

in my opinion, are really distinctive

structures; different than anything we've

seen before.

And I think that you'll find they're quite innovative in

their own way.

And we will look at, as I said, both of those today.

The city of Athens began to be excavated by archaeologists in

the 1930s , and those excavations,

which were scientific, very careful scientific

excavations, those excavations,

combined with information that we have from a writer of the

Greco-Roman past, a man by the name of Pausanias,

P-a-u-s-a-n-i-a-s, Pausanias, who was a Greek of

the second century A.D., who traveled around Greece and

described everything that he saw,

and he created, in essence, a guidebook to the

great Greek and Roman antiquities.

The combination of his descriptions,

from the second century, firsthand descriptions of the

monuments that stood in the second century,

along with the scientific excavations of the 1930s and

since, allow us to get an excellent

sense of what, not only what,

as we look at the remains today,

not only of what was there, is there now,

and was there once upon a time, but what these buildings

actually were; their identities and what their

function was in Athens, either in Greek or in Roman

times.

And we will use the information provided by both of those today

to allow us to reconstruct the city, the Roman city in

particular.

Now the building-- as you can see from the view of the

Acropolis, there are a number of Greek

structures on the top of the Acropolis,

and I'll show them to you later.

These include the great Greek entryway of the fifth century

B.C., the so-called Propylaia; the famous Parthenon of course;

the small Temple of Athena Nike; and also the Erechtheion,

which is the only building we've really discussed in any

detail in the course of this semester.

A fifth century B.C.

building--you see it here in an extraordinary view,

now on the screen--the Erechtheion,

which we believe was built sometime between about 421 and

406 B.C., And the reason that it's

important is not only because it's an incredible example of

fifth-century Greek architecture,

but also because of the buildings up on the Acropolis it

is the one that seems to have captured the imagination of

Augustus, and also Hadrian,

when both of them visited the city of Athens,

but also of the Romans as a whole.

And you'll remember the reason for that is essentially the

Porch of the Maidens, which you can see so well in

this view -- the Porch of the Maidens that

exerted a very strong impact on Augustus and Hadrian.

Before I talk a little bit more about the Porch of the Maidens

though, just something about the rest of the construction.

You can see as you look at the columns that they are of the

Ionic order, a particularly attractive and

elegant version of the Ionic order,

with the Ionic capitals, with their very attractive

volutes.

You can also see the materials that are used here.

What you can't see is what's used for the foundations.

That material is called poros, p-o-r-o-s,

poros, used for the foundations of the Erechtheion and also many

other of the buildings that we'll look at today.

And then most importantly, most of the building,

the walls and the columns, are made out of pentelic

marble, p-e-n-t-e-l-i-c,

pentelic marble, which is from Mount Pentelikon

in Greece and is the marble that is used most often for buildings

in Athens, both in Greek times and also in

Roman times, as we shall see today.

And it's characterized by being gleaming white,

really blindingly white, as one looks at it in the very

bright Greek sun against the blue sky.

With regard to the caryatid porch,

the Porch of the Maidens, the very famous Porch of the

Maidens, you'll recall that both

Augustus and Hadrian visited Athens.

They both saw this monument.

The Erechtheion had fallen into disrepair by the age of

Augustus, and Augustus was so admiring of

this porch that he made the decision to have his own

architects and artisans come to Athens to repair the porch.

And they not only repaired the maidens, themselves,

but also replaced one.

One was in such bad shape--I think it was the one in the back

right--it was in such bad shape that they restored that one

entirely.

When they were there, looking at those maidens,

restoring them, they were so taken by them that

they made plaster casts of those,

and they brought them back to Rome.

And you'll recall that they were used in Rome as the models

for maidens that were put up.

Here's a view, of course, of those on the

Acropolis, from the front.

They made reduced scale copies for the Forum of Augustus in

Rome, the second story of the Forum of Augustus,

as you'll recall.

And then down here you'll be reminded of the caryatids,

also based on those of the Erechtheion: in this case to

scale, same scale as those in Athens,

used to line the Canopus of Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli.

So both emperors, again Augustus and Hadrian,

very admiring of these works of art,

and wanted copies of them for, in Augustus' case a public

structure in Rome, in Hadrian's case a private

villa at Tivoli.

And we even believe that Herodes Atticus,