Understanding Rome Podcast

The closest point of the Aurelian Wall to my apartment is also one of my absolute favourite parts. It is the Porta Maggiore, literally “the great gate” which is, in fact a misleading name. In fact the Porta Maggiore predates the walls by over two centuries: it was never intended to be a gate at all. It is instead a triumphal arch of Roman engineering, built to straddle two of the ancient consular roads, the vie Labicana (now Casilina) and Prenestina.

Even after twenty-three years in Rome this remains, to my English eyes, an improbable and grubbily exotic tangle of ancient and modern. Tram-tracks and traffic knot themselves around and through aqueducts, a grand tomb, and ancient fortifications with an inescapable Roman insouciance that I still find so relentlessly appealing.

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The third of Rome’s emperors was Caligula: famously “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. Among the many extravagances of his short but indubitably extravagant reign were the floating palaces he had built on Lake Nemi, a crater of the quiescent volcanoes to the south-east of Rome.

A project to raise these ships was first mooted in the fifteenth century, and was finally completed in the twentieth century barely a decade before the ships were destroyed in their museum during the Second World War.

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The Ara Pacis is arguably the finest surviving visual representation of the multiple iconographic motifs employed by Augustus to express his political programme of reconciliation and rebirth after the decades of civil war which had plagued Rome. It is an extraordinary monument, profoundly modern but inextricably rooted in the archaic: an expression in stone of the multi-faceted and wildly sophisticated propagandistic programme which characterises Augustus’ forty year reign, and would echo for centuries after his death.

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As I’ve mentioned here, at pretty much every opportunity, Rome has long been obsessed by her own origins. Those legendary origins go back far beyond the story of Romulus, Remus, and the she-wolf to the tale of the fall of Troy.

The Laocoön Group is a sculpture of Cycladic marble, carved by artists from Rhodes and, though uncertain in date, plausibly datable to the reign of Augustus. Whatever its date it is certainly in keeping with the programme which saw history, geography, religion, legend, the visual arts, and poetry all knitted together to form a spectacularly sophisticated propagandistic programme to emphasise Augustus’s ancestry, and his divine mandate and that of his immediate successors. Today the Laocoön is found in the Vatican Museums, where it has been for over five hundred years.

Next time I will talk of a triumph of Augustan art, the Ara Pacis in the Campus Martius, also deeply rooted in ancient origin legends but with a fabulously clever monumental and modern twist.

Please let me know what you think, or if there’s something you’d like mentioned in future episodes!

Many thanks, Agnes

PS corrigendum: in the audio I mention Antonio da Sangallo, it was in fact Giuliano da Sangallo who identified the statue in 1506.

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First of all apologies for the delay, expect a flurry of podcasts to get back on schedule. The next will be about Augustus and the Ara Pacis.

But today I’m talking about Sulla and the fall of the Republic precipitated by those Optimates who purported to hold its values most dear. Make any parallels you see fit. The largest physical manifestation of Sulla’s dictatorship is the Tabularium, today home to Rome’s town hall and to the oldest public museum in the world, the Capitoline Museums.

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Last time I spoke of the Republican “Servian” Walls of Rome, today we will look at how those walls became redundant following the hard-fought victory Rome eventually won over Carthage in the Punic Wars.

This victory was fundamental to the growth of the city and its territories. Beneath the grandeur of Imperial structures, glimpses of Republican structures often lurk.

Such as the temples of Spes and Janus both first built during the First Punic War and now embedded in the walls of the church of San Nicola in Carcere.

The triumph over Hannibal would also see a growth in the urban area, and a move of the river port from the Forum Boarium to Testaccio.

Apologies for the delay in this episode, I can only blame the enervating and interminable heat of a Roman summer which this year is unusual, even for Rome. The next episode will appear shortly and I’ll be back on schedule!

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Rome began with a wall. According to legend, on the 21 April 753 BCE Remus stepped over the wall of the Roma Quadrata (literally “the Square Rome”) that his twin Romulus had built on the corner of the Palatine Hill above the Tiber. This breach of his fortification so angered Romulus that according to the most common version of the story he killed his brother, and his settlement was named Roma in his honour.

The settlement within that initial wall would grow, and according to tradition new walls were begun during the reign of Rome’s fifth king, Tarquinius Priscus. They were, we are told strengthened by his successor Servius Tullius.

This, then, was a fortification of the sixth century BCE. However that which we today call the Servian Wall, and of which tantalising traces survive here and there, are rather later.

Those sections of wall we see, for example, by Termini railway station, and popping up in improbable roundabouts and lobbies of palazzi postdate the kingdom. The construction of the wall was a response to invasion; their gradual abandonment testament to a new and (for a time) unassailable strength.

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In the first two episodes of this podcast I spoke of hazy legends, and the tangible legacies built upon them. Today we begin to emerge from the mists of legend into the realm of history. Specifically the year 509 BCE, as we now think of it. The Romans were of course unaware that something momentous would happen 509 (or so) years later.

In that year the last king of the Rome, Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud) was overthrown. He was the last of the Tarquins, the final three of those seven kings which Livy tells us were Etruscans.

What then was happening just north of Rome as the Tarquins were sent packing and the Republic founded? From the Tiber to the Arno, Etruria was a league of cities of a civilisation which called themselves Rasna (the people). The closest to Rome, and the richest, was Veii. As Rome was emerging from legend into history, and the Republic was being founded, Veii was building a grand temple dedicated to Apollo.

Meanwhile at Pyrgi, one of the ports of the Etruscan city of Caere, another temple was being dedicated. This was a sign of alliance between Etruria and Carthage and bilingual dedications incised on three gold tablets discovered here in 1964 provided an important tool for the understanding of the anomalous Etruscan language.

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Welcome to Part 2 of my podcast which seeks to follow a thread of Rome’s history through individual buildings, works of art, and artefacts.

Last month in Episode 1 I spoke of the Temple of Hercules Victor in the Forum Boarium. I spoke of a temple built around the time of the birth of Julius Caesar but rooted in the profound Roman belief in some of the most ancient legends concerning the origins of the city. That eminently solid temple is built upon those quicksands of legend, and so it is with our subject today: the Lapis Niger, the “black stone”.

It marks a place of very ancient religious significance. That which lies beneath sees our story begin to emerge from the hazy realm of legend into the nuts and bolts of history in a sacred space which is home to (possibly) the oldest Latin inscription in existence.

Buon ascolto, let me know what you think!

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Many, many years ago I had a thought of tracing Rome’s history through places, buildings, and artefacts. A prism through which to view just one of the infinite threads that make up what I think is the most enthralling city on earth. This podcast seemed like a good place to finally do that. As the King of Hearts advised the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, when telling a story “one should begin at the beginning and go on until you come the end. Then stop.” So that it what I shall try to do.

To this end my first episode is about the Temple of Hercules Victor in the Forum Boarium, and the rich interweaving of legend and history it represents: Evander king of Arcadia; Aeneas; Romulus, Remus and the She-Wolf; a merchant giving thanks for protection against pirates. The history of Rome, tangible in its matter, is built on the shifting quicksands of legend; the two are inextricably connected.

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