When in Rome... Part 2

Good morning! What a charming face to wake up to... 

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This is the head of Augustus. In my time, he is in the Getty museum. This statue is larger than life, had glass eyes, and has proportions based on the Greeks' ideal human form.

 

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Here's another gorgeous statue, this one is of Constantine the Great. The statue is also called Colossus of Constantine. He was the first one to legalize Christianity in Rome, so many loved him and believed he had a great soul. To show this, they made his eyes very large, since Romans believe that the eyes are mirrors to the soul. Although the proportions do not look correct at this angle, he is placed very high up so that from the ground he looks more proportional. The original statue was a larger-than-life Constantine sitting down, but in my time we only have chunks of this statue. 

Oh look! A horse!

(Image from here.)

(Image from here.)

This is the equestrian bronze of Marcus Aurelius. Equestrian statues were very popular in Rome. It is one of the only surviving equestrian bronzes in my time. The rest had been pilfered, melted down to make coins or a new statue, or they had been destroyed by medieval Christians who thought the statues were all of pagan gods.


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What in the world is this, a lighthouse? Oh wait, no, this is the Column of Trajan. The professor told me about this one- it has Trajan's ashes inside. It also has a spiral staircase that leads to the lookout at the top like a lighthouse. See the little statues carved into the column? The entire column recorded Trajan's great adventures, conquests, and victories in those little statues. And 98 feet of his victories too! It's kind of like a very narcissistic comic book artist who makes himself Superman. 
 
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Oh look an art vender selling Frescos!
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Fresco is the Italian word for Fresh, these paintings were painted on wet plaster, and commonly in houses in Pompeii. Speaking of which, let's visit Pompeii before it goes up in flames, shall we?


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Rome is far from Pompeii on foot, but by time machine it's just a blink away!

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 This is what the ruins of the town look like in my time. It's famous for being destroyed by Mount Vesuvius erupting which had followed a great earthquake that had ruined most of the city. It was excavated before my time, around 1748. It had just been a heap of ashes before they dug up the entire city underneath it. Pompeii was a Roman colony, one with lots of art and luxury that often depicted very crass and erotic images. The entire culture was very disgusting and sinful in their sexuality, and lived hedonistic lives of luxury. Some say that through Mount Vesuvius it was wiped out by God like Sodom and Gomorrah were. 

Now onto something a little more savory.

 

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(Image from here.)

This is a Roman mosaic. The Greeks made mosaics first, but the Romans excelled at it. Each piece was only 1-2 centimeters squared, and there were 150 tiles, called tesserae, per square centimeter. There were many different mosaics made from many different artisans, they ranged in size, quality, and color. Some were small and cheap and could be placed in a middle-class home while others were grand and made up of minute tiles, these were worth a lot of money.

 

(Image from here.)

This is the mosaic of Young Women Exercising, which is in the Roman Baths. Another place with mosaics is a Villa in Sicily that had 7,000 feet of mosaics.

And that concludes our Roman art and architecture tour. Time to head back to the time machine and get out of here. Stay classy, Rome.

When in Rome... Part 1

Sometimes I wonder why I stick with you, I mean you can be a lot of work. Do you even know how hard it is to drag you through time and space against your will like this? Forcing you to learn about artistic historical feats all over the ancient world for my crazy professor you've never met and think doesn't exist? I mean really, this is exhausting! 

Yup, I'm just a saint, a martyr even. Well maybe not that last one, but still, you're so lucky I do so much for you. Now come on, the professor needs us to go take a detailed record of the unique architecture of Rome. Why are you resisting like that? Am I going to have to drag you into the time machine again? Wow, you're hard to drag, you should have laid off on the gyros!

Welcome to 8th century B.C. Rome! As you will soon see, the Romans excelled in art and architecture, they stole ideas and methods from many cultures and perfected them. They assimilated all other cultures, quite a feat if you ask me! Did you know the Romans were also the inventors of concrete? Yup, but after they fell the recipe for concrete was lost until the Renaissance era. 

Romans used arches and vaults in architecture. An arch is a cured architectural element used to span an opening, and it had a keystone on the top to support the entire arch. Arches may look simple, but the architecture is a bit complicated:

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There are many different kinds of arches besides that simple one. 

A vault is an arched roof of covering made of brick, stone, or concrete. There are many different kinds of vaults, here are a few that are often seen in Roman architecture:

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Let's go see the Colosseum now, it has an archade! Nope, not those kinds of games, but many arches supported by pillars

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The Colosseum is 16-stories high, 144 feet tall. It can fit 50,000 people. Three emperors were involved in its construction: Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. The Colosseum is made of concrete, the outside was decorated with plaster and marble. The Colosseum is built with the Standard Roman Sequence of architecture, which went from Doric at the bottom, then Ionic, then Corinthian at the top. This sequence was used often in Roman architecture, hence the word "standard." Statues filled the niches in the walls, and the statues were very ornate, painted, and had glass eyes. They were mostly Greek copies. When it rains, there is a giant tarp of canvas called the velarium which was so big and heavy it took 1,000 men to lift it over the top. The Colosseum was the ultimate entertainment center, and Romans were all about entertainment. A few of the "shows" commonly held here were gladiator battles and mock naval battles since the Colosseum could actually be filled with water!

People had tickets to get in, and they sat at different labeled sections, most likely separated by class. The ruins of the Colosseum still stand in even my time! However, the whole thing would probably still be standing if the Romans hadn't pilfered so much of it. They took most of the materials to use for other building projects- they called it resourceful, we call it ruining history.

Next stop on our Roman tour: the Pantheon.

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The Pantheon was made to worship all gods. The general belief at the time was to worship any god you want, any of them will bring you closer to the real god or gods. The wall of the Pantheon are 20 feet thick to support the giant dome. The floors were 144 feet in diameter and the dome is 144 feet from the floor. The dome walls were coffered, which are inlaid boxes. The dome is thicker at the base and gets thinner towards the oculus. The oculus is the 30-foot-wide hole at the top of the dome that allows light in, symbolically it was meant to be god's eye watching over everyone.

 

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 Because there is a hole in the roof, rain comes into the Pantheon. It doesn't flood, however, because there is a drainage system in the ground. The doors and the dome were originally covered in gold until all the gold was pilfered, like much of the Colosseum was. In the front of the Pantheon is the portico, the porch which is supported by Corinthian-style columns. 

I'm tired of these busy streets and the dusty Colosseum, let's go take a bath!

Yeah, you heard me, we're gonna go check out the Roman baths!

...Don't look at me like that, they're separated by gender! Well... most of them are.

Anyways, let's just go check it out.

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The baths are a big social gathering for Romans, most people will go at least once a week, the rich people sometimes even go twice a day! Romans are so hygienic! The baths are separated by class, see those sad little ugly puddles over there? Those are the servant baths. And that giant one that looks like a Tahitian resort's pool is the rich peoples' bath. They have three temperatures of water: the coldest, the fridgidarium, the tepidarium which is room tempurature, and the caldarium which is hot. Usually they would go to the tepidarium, then the caldarium, then back to the tepidarium, then into the fridgidarium. The Romans believed that going in these different extreme temperatures was healthy.

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These baths had changing rooms which had niches in the walls to hold clothing. Special sandals with thick soles were needed for the baths because the floor was heated (except in the fridgidarium) to keep the baths warm. Walls and floors were heated by a furnace system called a hypocaust, where the baths were above a raised floor, underneath which was an air channel for the warm air to circulate.

 

(Image and above information found here.)

Okay, now that we're nice and clean it's time to go do some more sight-seeing! 

 

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This is the Arch of Constantine. It's a triumphal arch that commemorates his assumption to power. It's covered in sculpture carvings about how great he is. He must have been quite narcissistic to want to be remembered for all time in such a giant arch. 

 

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 This is our next stop, the Forum Romano. It was a meeting place for Romans to discuss. It was the town square, and the political and religious center. It was also a very large market.

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I'm sure that you're starting to notice that Roman is very advanced for it's time. It's clean, the people are hygienic, and the city is planned out instead. Romans made paved roads, and were the only ones to pave roads at this time, so all roads truly did lead to Rome! They also had a sewer system, a fresh water system, and plotted out "zones," like in my time, where certain land is set aside for certain purpose, like industrial land and residential land. The wealthy homes were often two-stories, had different rooms for different purposes (to worship, to entertain, to eat, ect.) and most had a garden or atrium of some sort. Romans even learned how to make pressurized fountains without electricity!
So many architectural advancements we have in my time were based off ancient Rome.


(Artistic blueprint of a Roman house found here.)

As I said, the Romans have a fresh water system, or aqueducts. These aqueducts were composed of arches and vaults, and went from the mountains where the fresh water was all the way to the city. The water in the aqueducts flowed into the city by the force of gravity; the aqueducts had a grade of only half an inch per mile to achieve this! They were made out of concrete, which is heavy, durable, and cheap. Romans would repair the aqueducts during the summer when it was warm because the concrete had expanded, exposing all the cracks. Rome had 77 aqueducts that supplied Rome with 350 gallons of water per day! This was the most advanced water system of the ancient world.

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We'd better find a hotel for the night, it's getting late. Tomorrow, in Part 2 we'll go see some actual art!