Get Ready for Rome

Today we visit the Forum of Augustus, the second of the five Imperial Forums of Ancient Rome. Apart from providing a general overview, I hope to show another case in which Augustus used art and architecture to advance his political ends.

Mussolini represented a revolutionary change in Italian government, and he sought to transform the look of Rome as well. He did this partly by the structures added but also by what he stripped away. We consider today two of his main "eviscerations" of Rome, which added roads and made ancient monuments more visible but also displaced thousands of Romans.

We visit the Galleria Borghese and focus on two sensual statues sculpted by Gianlorenzo Bernini, both based on stories told by the old Latin poet Ovid. Both were commissioned by the Borghese family which then also held the papacy and was helping to build the new St. Peter's Basilica. How do Ovid and these two statues fit into the Catholic worldview that was then being expressed in the new basilica? Or don't they?

On this six-month anniversary of Get Ready for Rome, I review the goals of this podcast series. They are partly straightforward: to introduce Rome's main monuments, churches, and works of art. Beyond this, they are to show what might be gained from a study of Western Civilization rooted in Rome.

Today we discuss the Mausoleum of Augustus, the huge and once-beautiful funeral monument Augustus built for himself and his family. As the Altar of Peace was an apt symbol of Augustus's claim to have brought the blessings of peace to Rome, so the Mausoleum is a visual reminder that he became Rome's first Emperor and passed that power down in the Julio-Claudian Dynasty.

We saw that Mazzini believed that the spread of ideas was the first and most important step in starting the revolution he wanted to transform Italy. It is attractive to think that history moves by ideas, not mere force. But does it move by true ideas or, sometimes, merely meretricious ones? What does a society need to judge well the alternative ideas that are set before it?

Giuseppe Mazzini prepared the soil for the unification and eventual democratization of Italy by forty years of high-level writing urging Italians and other Europeans to support these goals. Since he also furthered them by revolutionary activity, he lived his life in exile and had to have his powerful words smuggled into Italy. Even after Cavour, the King, and Garibaldi had transformed Piedmont into Italy, Mazzini continued to attack the new country as insufficiently democratic. Eventually, his contributions were recognized, and in this episode we visit his statue, which is perched above the Circus Maximus on the Aventine Hill.

Our subject is the Villa Borghese, a sprawling park on the north side of Rome and home to Rome's most wonderful museum, the Galleria Borghese. Unscrupulously assembled by Scipione Borghese, nephew to Pope Paul V, the art collection in the Galleria includes several of Bernini's finest statues, as well as works by Caravaggio, Canova, and the greatest Renaissance artists. In moving from St. Peter's to the Borghese, we again move from halos to nudes and so have another chance to see the dramatic changes initiated in the Renaissance.

The Altar of the Peace of Augustus lay buried in the muck of Rome for over a thousand years, but it is now recognized as one of the best examples of classical relief sculpture. It is also important evidence of the way Augustus wanted to present his achievements to the people of Rome. But who was Augustus, and what can his altar tell us about him?

A glow surrounds leaders remembered by monuments, as it generally should, but it is still instructive to look closely at the hard choices they had to make to achieve what they did. Here is another peek at how Cavour enticed France into helping unify Italy.