Julian Barnett
Hidden Rome, Part 1: ‘Rome was not Built in a Day’: Obscure Corners Within Ancient Pagan Rome

Julian Barnett - Hidden Rome, Part 1: ‘Rome was not Built in a Day’: Obscure Corners Within Ancient Pagan Rome

- “Rome is the most glorious place in the universal world. A grandeur and tranquillity reigns in it. Everywhere noble and striking remains of antiquity appear in it, which are so many that one who has spent a dozen years in seeing is still surprised with something new.” Those are the words, ladies and gentlemen, of Robert Adam to his sister Peggy in 1755 and they really do encapsulate this incredible city Rome. This is of course a new series, a series of five lectures I’m going to be giving on that city and it follows on from a series of six lectures I gave on Jerusalem, a one-off on Oxford and maybe one day some on Istanbul and other cities. And of course we just finished a four-parter on Cairo and the wider Egypt. Where does my interest in Rome come from? And I think this is important to partly getting to grips with what Rome is all about. Well, I first visited Rome in 1987 inter-railing and like every inter-rail, I was exhausted when I got to the city ‘cause you’d spent the night sleeping on the train. You were doing it on the cheap. So I saw the beauty of it, but I wasn’t that old. I wasn’t really an experienced traveller and I certainly hadn’t done very much reading about it. It was another European capital to tick off on the list. I then returned in 1999 and I was really entranced by it. And then didn’t return for another 21 years, some of 2020 and then I was absolutely captivated by it. And what I did was because I was much more of an experienced traveller then, I applied all my previously learned skills about how to travel and how to explore, I applied it to Rome. And I’ve been going back for the last four years now to really explore this city.

Yes, read the guide books. Yes, read all there is about it. Yes, do the research before, but the key in my mind to really mastering a city, to really getting that city at your fingertips and to trying to work out what makes it tick is talking to the locals, where everyone is, where everyone is travelling. Ask the local people in every neighbourhood, “What is good to see here? What do you love about it?” People are really proud of their city in Rome. So the Rome I’m going to show you over these next five weeks, today, the 17th, we are looking at the first part of hidden Imperial and Republican Rome. Then it’s going to be on the 22nd of February, looking at further aspects, hidden aspects of those Imperial and Republican cities, the walls of the cities, the aqueducts of the city, the fountains of the city. 28th of February, Byzantine Rome, early Christian Rome 326 AD and onwards. 14th of March, Catholic Rome and then in April a wind up really encompassing what we’ve got from this five-part series. I’d like to say one other thing before we start on the pictures and that is that to me, Rome is one of those very rare things. It is a city that is also a concept. I don’t think there’s many cities like that in the world. I think Jerusalem is one of them. And I remember in my series on Jerusalem I talked about it being a concept as well as a living organic pulsating city. It is also an idea and that is the same with Rome.

What’s really remarking is we all know the famous words describing Rome in Latin Urbs Aeterna, the Eternal City. But what is less known about that famous description of Rome as the Eternal City is that it wasn’t coined now, in the 21st century, it wasn’t even coined in the Victorian or Mediaeval periods. It was actually coined by Tibullus 1st century BC and then used by Virgil and Ovid, men of 1st and 2nd century. In other words, Rome had such a strong sense of itself as an idea. It had such a strong belief in 100 BC that it was eternal. That to my mind really confirms that this is a city that had a sense of self and it had a sense of belief and of identity, even then. Indeed, even then at its height its population was a million plus. So that is going to be the framework for where I’m going to take you all over these next few weeks and I hope you’ll enjoy the pictures I’m going to show. The vast majority of which I took myself, about 90% of them I took myself, around 600 pictures over the next five lectures. So Emily, over to you. Thank you very much in advance for being the picture turner and we’re going to start off with that most famous of inscriptions. You see it everywhere in Rome. There it is, Senatus Populus Que Romanus, the Senate and the people of Rome. That itself is a powerful idea. Think about that. That this is such, it’s a very moving idea that the Senate, which I will look into later today, and the people, which I’ll discuss very, very shortly, they were seen as one.

This is a concept of a city as I mentioned. SPQR, although it’s 2,300 years old as an idea, the Senate and the people of Rome, it pops up all over Rome to this day. If we can go to the first picture, you see it in many guises. Here it is in a sort of imperial guise with the laurel leave SPQR, would’ve been on the walls, would it been on all types of decorations around Rome. To the next picture. You see it alongside that classic bird of ancient Rome, used by many empires since and indeed used in lots of American governmental architecture as the symbol, the return to classicism and so on. And now to some more modern day ones. Look at that. It’s a modern day drain in Rome SPQR. And the next one please, SPQR on a fountain. You can just see the water trickling in at the very top into a fountain, but used as a modern day fountain. Everywhere SPQR is there. And to the next one. On another drain, on a manhole cover. These, of course, are modern manifestations of Rome, the modern municipality of Rome, which is by the way, much divided by most Romans living in the city. We from the outside think, my goodness, this is the most beautiful city. I personally think it is the most beautiful capital in the world. I think, I’m sorry to upset people. I think it knocks spots off Paris. I think Paris is elegant and all very sophisticated and elegant, but for colour, for climate, for atmosphere, for sheer beauty, I give Rome the 10 out of 10 treatment. But it’s all in the eye of the beholder.

That’s my personal opinion. Let’s go to the next picture and you can see something that is quite familiar. Look at that. There we have on a modern day lamp post Romulus and Remus, as you can see, suckling from the she wolf with SPQR underneath it, Romulus and Remus. That is a legend that goes back all the way to 750 BC. The founding legend of Rome as we know it now, although there were settlements in the Sabine Hills and the Alban Hills way before then. But Romulus and Remus born in Alba Longa, the city, the settlement, very close to where Rome now is. Their mother was said to be a virgin, Rhea Sylvia, she was part priestess, part queen, semi goddess, gives birth to these two children, Romulus and Remus. The king at the time had heard that a king was going to come to take his throne. So he ordered the execution of all the first borns does this sound familiar? Born from a virgin, the execution and persecution of all first borns, 750 BC. But you can see where these ideas fed into the nascent Christianity that came some centuries later. Of course, she gave her children away. They were saved by the she wolf. They were suckled in the in the Lupercalia cave. And that cave is now said to be where the Palatine Hill is, one of the seven great hills of Rome. More on those seven hills in lecture four when I’m really going to get into about what those hills were all about. Let me just also put one further thing into perspective.

If we go on to the next picture, you can see SPQR there on the bottom of a lamppost. And I just want to put into context what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the periods of Rome. There are in effect three main periods of Ancient Rome. There’s the period of the kings of Ancient Rome. Now that predates what most people understand as Ancient Rome. So it’s the period of the kings from roundabout 625 to 510 BC. After that comes the Republican Period where Rome was ruled by two consuls and a senate, no empress. This is seen as the purest time of Rome as a concept. Citizenship, the idea of a government answerable to its people and so on. That runs from 510 BC to 31 AD. So quite, quite important. Then after that we have from 31 AD to 476 AD we have the period of Imperial Rome where Rome was ruled by an emperor, a central figure, solidifying his powers. Often those emperors ran in very bloody dynasties, some overthrown by the others. It’s seen as the beginning of the end, the slow wind down of that pure Roman idea of a Roman republic where Rome was answerable to the people of Rome. So that’s the key time periods. So Imperial Rome runs for, Republican Rome runs for about 500 years. Imperial Rome for about 500 years and the period of the kings of Rome for around about 110 years. After all of that, the decline and almost fall of the Roman Empire, we move into Byzantine Rome. All of this will become clear as we move ahead. Okay, if we can now move on to the next slide, now that we’ve put things in context. And we are looking at the Road to Rome, what is that all about? Well this is all about Via Appia.

It is literally a road, it’s 400 miles long, that runs from Rome to current day Brindisi. If you look at the first picture, you’ll see a map of what the route of that road was. Now Appia was a very interesting man. He was a consul, he was a magistrate, he was a historian, he was a military man and he started the building of that road. There it is running from Rome, just skirting current day Naples. Naples was an important city. Right, rising as an important city at that time. Moving all the way over to Brindisi on the Adriatic Coast. This was the main trade route of that early Roman Empire. It was, in effect, the first superhighway in the world. The first superhighway dedicated to one key thing, before military, dedicated to trade. And once trade routes have been established, it was important to protect those trade routes. Thus, the road became a military road to bring people, soldiers, goods back and forward from the centre of Rome. If I can emphasise, Rome was not an empire as we understand it. Now at that stage, Rome was simply a city state flexing its muscles, gaining territories, conquering the hills around it and the tribes around it. It had not even considered yet moving out towards the Mediterranean. Indeed, most of the movement was south towards the heel and the boot of Italy, as as we know it now. Really crucial to understanding that that became, I suppose, the prototype for all types of Roman travel. Long, more or less straight roads, well kept, well organised. Let’s move on and have a look at some pictures of the Appian Way, which is stunningly beautiful and hardly well, what would I say?

I suppose a good, good few tens of thousands people visit it per year. But when you consider how many people visit Rome, very few people actually get out to the Appian Way. The Appian Way starts at the edge of the centre of Rome. It is two kilometres from the Colosseum. Hire a bike or motorbike and the Appian Way is at your disposal. And you can cycle a good 30 miles of the Appian Way until it begins then to descend into a narrow way. But you can, if you wish, still follow it all the way to Brindisi. Something I would love to do eventually. Here are some pictures of the Appian Way and it really is very beautiful indeed. If we can just go through these pictures, it gives you a sense of the straightness of it. And there you can see an article from “The Guardian” newspaper. Sorry, just going back one picture, Emily, sorry. You can see a picture from “The Guardian” newspaper about the Appian Way. It ran an article just five years ago because so few people go it. That is what the Appian Way would’ve looked like in Roman times. Now I’m using that word Roman times, not ancient times, because the Romans didn’t see themselves as ancients. They saw the Greeks and the Egyptians as ancients and we have looked at some depth into Ancient Egypt, Ptolemaic Egypt, Coptic Egypt and so on and Egypt through the ages. That is the real ancient world. Egypt is three and a half thousand BC onwards. Rome is 500 BC onwards. So it’s a youngster in a sense from the point of view of the ancient world. What Rome contributed as a lasting contribution was that idea of civics, of citizenship, of the city-state, of the rights and duties of those citizens of that state.

That is why in the words of Mary Beard, the Cambridge classicist historian, probably the best known TV historian in the world today when it comes to Rome. And I cannot urge you strongly enough to watch all of her things on television. It’s all on YouTube. They’re fantastic documentaries about Rome. Mary Beard said there is something of the Roman in every single one of us in the western world. And that’s partly because once the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, 326 AD and onwards, that really cemented the part of Rome in all of us. More on that, in lectures two, three, and four. That’s what the Appian Way would’ve looked like. It would’ve been absolutely ram-packed full of monuments, graves, memorials, dedications, water fountains. And it was magnificent. The full 400 miles. By the way, also put to less beautiful and romantic use because after the rebellion of the slaves under Spartacus, 60,000 slaves were crucified along the Appian Way as a warning of what would happen if people turned against the authority of Rome. So it was put to good use as terror, as well as glory, depending on who you were. Let’s now move on and see the Appian Way today. It is stunningly beautiful. Any time of year is beautiful to go to it. Wintertime, you’ll sometimes get snow. I hate snow. So I can’t get through my absolute prejudice about snow. This is springtime. You can still see grass on the verges, those beautiful pine trees that are one of the emblems and one of the things that one thinks of when one goes to Rome. Gorgeous smelling pines.

Pines, umbrella pines and just these Arcadian ruins all the way along there you can see it’s tarmac hasn’t it. If we go to the next few pictures, you can see that many of the the original paving stones from the time of the construction are still there. Beautiful memorials there and buildings there all along. You can cycle miles of this. Now if you look at the ground, you can see some of those original flagstones from Ancient Rome. Look at that sun coming through. Nothing more beautiful on this earth then to cycle along the Appian Way, one late summer’s evening, get yourself a picnic, buy fine foods in Rome. Cycle out there. Lie on the verges, sit amongst the ruins. There’s about 3,000 ruins along the way. You’ve got plenty of choice. What more do you want in life? It’s a fantastic thing to do and you have it all to yourself. I took these pictures all to myself in a beautiful summer’s eve. Look at that mist coming down there, early summer mist coming down in the evening or haze I should say. Moving on to a couple more pictures of the Appian Way. More flagstones as you can see. There is the Appian Way crossing one of the aqueducts, a lot on the aqueducts next week. Do you know that it is estimated that Rome at the height of its time as a republic than an empire, so we’re talking about 100 BC to 100 AD, used more water then than it does now. Isn’t that remarkable? If you look very, very carefully at that aqueduct in the middle of the picture, you can see a black rectangle in the middle of the aqueduct, the upper apart, that’s where the water was carried.

How did they carry it? Use of concrete. More than that. More on that, very shortly. The Appian Way is crossing the aqueduct. Beautiful picture there. And to the next picture, please. Again, long stretches of it, just looking out to those broad horizons. These are not the original flagstones, these are mediaeval flagstones put down afterwards and heavily repaired. And to the next one, please, Emily. Ah, is it big? Yes, there we go. It really does look like this. Beautiful stones, beautiful trees, gorgeous buildings along the way. The building on the right hand side is Villa Marro. Now that villa is in fact Roman with mediaeval bits put on top. Many of these places have bits and pieces added on over the ages. It is somebody’s home. Lots of people live on the Appian Way, believe it or not, Via Appia is still a place where very wealthy Romans, I should add, live. The Roman Catholic Church owns a lot of grace and favour properties along the Appian Way, retired cardinals and other such type, all types of Italian patricians still live along that area. This was taken in . Look at the blossom there. To the next picture. That inside one of the tombs on the Appian Way and you will recall on one of my tours of some of the artefacts in my home, I showed you an ossuary, a bone box. This would’ve been used for assuaries. Romans would’ve died, their bones would’ve been put in a stone bone box, or their bones would’ve, their bodies would’ve been put into those sort of niches in the wall. And then afterwards the bodies would’ve been taken out, a year later the bones collected, 'cause the flesh had rotted and put in a bone box.

This would’ve been a family vault in effect for a wealthy Roman family. You can still see some of those lovely frescoes on the wall and a lot more on frescoes in lecture number three on this series. To the next one, I think there’s a couple more linked to the Appian Way. There is another tomb on the Appian Way. And the next one, please. And the next one, please. All monuments along this beautiful roadway. I can’t recommend strongly enough finding the Appian Way when you’re in Rome. All free. The next is the Pantheon. I’m dipping into things today. Now the Pantheon is arguably, but I think we could make a very strong argument, that this is simply put the best preserved building from antiquity. Still with it’s an original roof. I’m going to take you into the Pantheon. It means pan theo, the temple of all the gods. And it was called that, probably nicknamed that, because of the statues of many gods that were put into the original building of the Pantheon when it was first constructed in 27 BC, between 27 BC and 14 AD. Constructed by Marcus Agrippa and completed during the reign of Augustus, the greatest of all the Roman emperors. And by the way, the Mausoleum of Augustus has now been reopened in Rome. I haven’t yet got there, since the reopen. It’s been closed for quite a few decades. It’s now reopened. So maybe photos on that another time once I’ve taken photos of it. But Augustus will pop up from time to time in the various lectures I’m mentioning.

Let’s have a look at some of the pictures of the Pantheon. It is a tremendous structure. The key to appreciating this building is to get there early in the morning. It opens at 9:00 in the morning. Get there at 9:00. There it is. It’s nestled within the mediaeval parts of Rome. Everything you see there is original, a hole in the roof where the smoke used to come through from the burning of the sacrifice or the incense 2,000 years ago. Let’s go to the next picture, please. And you can see the entrance. So at that entrance you’ve got rows and rows of these beautiful Corinthian columns. An enormous porch. You can just see to the right a car just parked, which will give you an idea of the scale of this building. It is a tremendous structure and a massive space when you step in. It reminds me somewhat of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul from the monumental size of this brooding, huge, elegant place. And I will, in the third of our lectures, be taking you to Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to start off the talk on Byzantine Rome. And I’ll be mentioning quite a lot on that. Let’s have a look at this famous roof 'cause it’s probably the most famous feature of the Pantheon. If we go inside the Pantheon, to the next picture, there it is. You’d go through that entrance. Oh, I’m sorry, another picture just to give you a sense of the roundness, the ubiquitous pizza and ice cream van just parked outside there. There we have it. That glorious roof. It’s magnificent. Now what you have there in that roof is five concentric circles of 28 panels. 28 quite an important digit in ancient Rome. The calendar, the days in most of the months of the Rome, well they had 28, 30 or 31 days, as do we. The 28 figures very highly. But we don’t know for sure why they chose five rows of 28. Lots of theories about that. There are whole book’s written on the number patterns encases within the Pantheon.

The dome is enormous. And you can see there’s this round hole in the middle where you get these fantastic beams of light shining in and it’s brilliantly constructed because that dome is, it appears to be unsupported. There’s no columns in the middle of the Pantheon. It’s just this huge dome. What you’re looking at there is a concrete dome constructed 1,900 years ago, never fallen down yet. I’m going to say a bit about concrete very shortly. If we go to the next picture, the secret to the Pantheon is that there are pillars and columns hidden within the walls that pull out the roof so that the roof appears self-supporting, but it is in fact supported from the pillars and columns that run through the back of it and all types of hidden vaults and chambers that are able to add to that support. So now we’re looking straight up and you can see that each of those panels are getting smaller as they go up. This roof is constructed of concrete. Now concrete, as I’m sure we know, has three basic ingredients. You’ve got cement, water and then you’ve got the aggregates, whatever those aggregates are. They might be gravel, they might be rock, they might be sand and other such things. The key to Roman concrete, because the Romans invented concrete, is that they use pozzolanic material. In other words, they use material almost exclusively from down near Naples, volcanic rock. They somehow discovered that volcanic rock when used as an aggregate in the making of concrete, made for an incredibly strong concrete. I would posit the theory, the biggest single reason for the success and the endurance and the enormous size of the Roman Empire was not their armies, was not their organisation, was not their trade. Well it was all of those things.

But what en enabled all of those things to occur was one word, concrete. Their invention of concrete meant that they were able to build aqueducts, to build bridges, to build cultural temples that exported their culture around the world. And by doing that, aqueducts, bridges, roads, they were able to take their armies from place to place and move all over the world and also bring tremendous gains to many of the peoples that they ruled over. Concrete was the key to it. And the key to the particular type of Roman concrete was that pozzolanic material, linked more or less to pumice stones that lots of us have you, you don’t very much see it nowadays, but when I was brought up at home, you had pumice stones to clean your hands if you couldn’t get ink off your hands. Makes me sound ancient. But pumice stones were the key and that’s sort of linked. So the Romans understood, they failed in a lot of their buildings. Of course you only hear the success stories, but we know a lot of their buildings collapsed to begin with. But by the time we get to the height of Roman building, round about 150 BC or maybe a little earlier, they perfected the art of getting that ratio right. Now when they came across this massive dome to build in the Pantheon, how did they do it? Notice how the panels get smaller. What they did was they increased the amount of pozzolanic material as the dome got towards the middle because they had to use different weights of concrete in different parts of the dome. If you make the concrete too heavy at the top, it’s going to collapse. If you don’t make it heavy enough at the bottom of the dome, it won’t be able to hold up the top.

So they brilliantly got it right, they got it so right it’s lasted to this day. They changed the ratio of pumice and pozzolanic ash material in the concrete five times as the dome was coming up to the top. It’s absolutely brilliantly constructed. To the next picture, please, after I’ve now waxed lyrical about concrete. And a couple more pictures. There you get a sense, look at the size of this thing, look at the people there, look at that dome, tremendous structure. Get there early in the morning. If you get there anytime after 10:00, number one, you’ll have to queue quite a long time. And number two, you don’t get the magic of the place. It’s still worth it if the only time you can go is middle of the day, go in the middle of the day, better than not going at all. But my strong advice would be make it your first port call, first thing in the morning. And if you’re really lucky, you can get it to yourself. Go on a Sunday and you get a special treat because there’s church services going on because the Pantheon is now a church. That’s why they don’t charge to go in. So there are church services going on, incense, smells and bells, all over the Pantheon, which gives it that added magic of what it would’ve been like to have been in a service in Ancient Roman times. A magical, glorious building from antiquity, remarkably preserved. To the next picture. Another view of the Pantheon, as you can see. And to the next one, please. And a view from the the grand tall period. I date that to about 1780 to 1810. It’s unchanged. You can see the sky visible through the top and you can see the people just looking at it and being in awe. They’ve got the proportions wrong. It’s much, much larger than that. Okay, on we go, please, to the next one. And now we’re going to another great and key building of ancient Rome, the Senate.

This was one of the enduring institutions of Rome. It was one of the few institutions that lasted through both the Republican period and the Imperial periods. Pretty much 1,000 years, although its roles and its powers changed as time went on. So enduring was it that many countries in the world today have their own senates. Of course the Italian Senate, I think, has 400 members. There’s the House of Deputies and then there’s the Senate. Arguably the most famous senate in the world is the American Senate, 100 senators, two from each state irrespective of the size of the population of the state as opposed to the House of Representatives, which has 435 members dependent upon the size of the population of the state. My point here being that the Senate, this idea of the Senate as hallowed chamber, of the people, for the people, goes back to Roman times. Mary Beard’s line, “There’s a bit of Rome in us all.” The other thing I’d like to say about the Senate is the House of Lords in the United Kingdom is now coming up for much debate whether it is going to be finally abolished, stage one happened in 1997. There is much talk now if there is a change of government in the next election that the House of Lords will go. And the proposal is that the second chamber in the British House of the Parliament will be the Senate. So the echoes of Ancient Rome resonate all the way down and continue to resonate all the way down to modern democratic states to this day. And indeed non-democratic states, lots of them have second chambers or first chambers called the Senate. What was the Senate? It was the governing and advisory body of Rome. It was appointed and it was appointed by the two consuls. Remember in the Republican Periods there generally speaking was no, there weren’t Caesars. Caesars came later during the Imperial Period.

In the Republican period, Rome was ruled by two consuls. In effect, people that jointly ruled Rome each with his own army. Checks and balances. Very remarkable that that concept of checks and balances was coming into being, into the consciousness, of the Roman civic idea at that time. And the consuls would then appoint the senators and the senators would then have independence to decide on raising of taxes, which meant they had control over the consuls, the flow of money. They decided if Rome went to war, they decided on the size of the armies. They decided all areas of public life. So you had this inbuilt friction and inbuilt cooperation between the Senate and the two consuls that ran Rome in. Once you had Imperial Rome, the friction became greater because the Roman emperor wanted all that power and the Senate wanted to jealously guard its hard won powers. Let’s have a look at some pictures of the Senate because incredibly the Senate survives to this day. There it is, middle of the picture. The Senate is this peculiar shaped structure. Very few people get in. I’m rather proud to tell you I’ve actually been in it. It takes a lot of persuasion and I got there after many attempts. It has this very strange shape and there’s a reason for it. You can see that it’s more or less twice the height of its length and twice the height of its width. And the reason for that is that the centre was constructed to be perfectly, to have perfect acoustics so that the senators when debating would just talk in normal tones of voice, no need for shouting. They sat in a semi-circle, sometimes in a complete circle. The seating traditions changed over the thousand years of this institution. But because it was perfectly built for those acoustics, because of its peculiar shape, they simply spoke, it was conducive to civilised discussion and debates. And there it sits to this day in the middle of the Roman forum that most hallowed of Roman structures, the Senate.

Let’s have a look at a few more pictures of it, please. So you can see it, there it is again, a very strange looking structure. You can see the ancient nature of it. Very few windows. This is a, I don’t want to use the word primitive, but it’s not a refined structure because the Romans hadn’t yet mastered even more refined methods of building. It was a very simple structure, very few windows because they, again, they hadn’t mastered that idea of huge windows in big buildings. So the walls needed to support themselves. But that is attest to its enormous antiquity within ancient Rome. And they respected the fact that this was the hallowed side of the Senate. So even when Rome became greater and greater, more powerful, more powerful, they never changed the basic structure of the Senate. It almost ball witness to the birth of those Roman ideas of citizenship, of democracy, as we would understand it today, where a group of people check and balance so that nobody has too much power. Remarkable, remarkable for its time. To the next picture. And you can see there looking in at the entrance to the Senate itself. And to the next one, please. A side view of the Senate and the next one, please. What the Senate probably would’ve looked like in its time. And to the next one, please. The senator’s debating themselves. There they go, sitting there what looks like a semicircle. And if you go to the next one, you can see remarkably some of those original, sorry, more another picture of sentence to debating. And to the next one, you’ll see what it looks like today on the interior.

There it is. There’s the floor, very simple interior. Imagine the debates that that room would’ve seen. It’s just phenomenal the whole thought that what it would’ve seen. And to the next. Look at those wonderful seats of the centre, the benches, just remarkable. And to the next one. Now we are looking at something linked to the Senate, but far away, this is the Lateran Cathedral of Rome. More on that in the lecture on Catholic Rome a few lectures down the line. Many people think St. Peters is the cathedral of Rome. It’s not. St. Peters is the parish church of the Vatican. The cathedral of Rome is the Lateran Cathedral. The structure that you are looking at now is 17th century. But if we go to the next picture, you can see that it has two huge bronze doors. Those were the doors to the Senate and those doors stood in the Senate. Those doors are 2,102 years old because we know exactly when they were made. They were perfectly balanced despite the fact that they’re vast and they weigh tonnes, they can be pushed with one hand. So perfectly hung and so perfectly constructed, are they. They are the doors for the Lateran Cathedral. So Pope Alexander VII in 1660, instructed that the doors be taken from the Senate where they had hung on the Senate for 2,000, well, for 1,700 years at that stage, 1,800 years and to be moved to the Lateran Cathedral. If you look at the next picture, you can see a closeup of those doors, those beautiful, beautiful doors. There they are, bronze. The stars were added later during the period of the Roman Empire rather than the Republican Period. And if you look again at another closeup picture, you can see again the beauty of these bronze doors. Hundreds and hundreds of these six-pointed, or I think it’s eight-pointed stars, just really quite mind-boggling when you think about it that those doors that the senators walked through, that Augustus walked through, that the Roman Platos walked through, that the consuls walked through, that Caesar walked through.

Those are the doors that they walked through 2,000 years ago, really is quite some thought. Let’s move on to the next thing I’d like to talk about and that is the arches of Rome, Triumphal Arches. Triumphal arches were built to commemorate exactly that, triumphs of Ancient Rome. It is thought that there were 27 triumphal arches built around Rome over that 1,000 year period of Rome being the centre of the Roman Empire before the centre shifted to Constantinople. More on that later as well in a future lecture. There were only three triumphal arches left standing to this day. Now there are other arches in Rome, but they’re not triumphal arches. There were arches that served other purposes. Arguably, in fact, I think it probably is the most famous of them all is, let’s have a look at it, the Arch of Titus constructed in AD 81. And the Arch of Titus is this very sort of almost a visceral looking thing in its simplicity. A single arch in the middle, powerful, sturdy, quite beautiful. Look at how it’s set. This is late spring, what time to visit Rome, absolutely surrounded by greenery. You can get a sense of its size. It’s pretty impressive. Titus’s Arch was constructed to commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the hauling of all the jewels and all the vestments from the temple to Rome. Now Jerome’s destruction was 70 AD. The arch wasn’t completed until 81 AD. In fact, it was completed not by Titus but by his brother Domition, because Titus was gone by then. So the triumphal marches would’ve returned.

They did return from Jerusalem in 71 AD, but the arch itself wasn’t constructed till 10 years later. The purpose of these arches was simply to commemorate the triumphs. So every time a major triumph occurred, an arch was built. But the actual triumph or marches would’ve occurred long before the arches were built. But then there might have been commemorative days. So there was indeed, for the first 10 years, sorry, for the first century, after the fall of Jerusalem, every 10 years there was a commemorative march through Titus’s Arch to commemorate that conquering of Jerusalem. And indeed a lot of those things that were brought from Jerusalem were then pawned. And the monies raised from being pawned were used to pay for the building of the Colosseum, just a few hundred metres beyond the arch. Let’s move on and have a look at another picture of the arch because what it is most famous for? There it is marching up to the arch. There you can see how many tourists are there. A real honey pot for tourists. Understandably so. Look now at the next picture and you can see what it’s really famous for because what people go to Titus’ Arch for is to see where that red arrow is. Now on the next picture, please, you will see a close up of what that arrow is pointing to. And that arrow is pointing to this really astonishing detail. It’s the bringing back of the menorah, one of the many pieces of bounty brought back from the Second Temple in Jerusalem to Rome. We know that the menorah was brought to Rome. There is much discussion and debate and argument over what happened to it since. Some people say, well we know that for at least 100 years it was stored in the rather ironically called Temple of Peace, which was in the forum in Rome. The menorah was its pride, had its pride place there because that was the great piece of conquest from the destruction of Jerusalem. What happened to it then?

Many, many theories. Some people say it was just melted down as war booty, quite likely. Others say that it ended up in the Vatican. There were many reasons why I think that is unlikely because much intervened between 180 AD and Roman turning Christian in the 4th century. And what happened of course was the invasion of Rome by the Goths, the invasion of Rome by the Vandals or by the Vandals in particularly. And there were reports the menorah was taken off to Carthage, were then hauled back to Rome, was then taken to Istanbul or Constantinople as it was and then disappears from view. The honest answer is we have no idea what became of it. My personal theory is that I would think, it’s not a very romantic theory, it was melted down as booty. A valuable piece, good solid metal, would’ve been melted down. But who knows, it would be a fantastic discovery if, of course, it was found. Okay, let’s move on and have a look at a couple of other of those arches. The second one is the Arch of Constantine. There it is. This is three arches, As you can see this is a hop, skip and a jump from the Colosseum built to commemorate the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and the victory of the Romans under Constantine. And let’s look at the third triumphal arch in Rome, the Arch of Septimius Severus. This was built, again, it’s three arches, one in the centre and one on the other side. This was built, I think 203 to 205 AD and this arch again to commemorate a really important battle in that time. There are other arches in Rome that are often confused as being triumphal arches.

I’m just going to show you one example. Look at this next beautiful arch, as you’ll see, it is in fact older than any of the other arches I’ve shown you. It’s tucked away on a side street near the spectacular Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. I’m going to be looking at that in Byzantine Rome, but it’s tucked away there just up Via Carlo and there it is. You just walk down this street and there you see it. Wasn’t a triumphal arch, it was one of the arches in the walls of Rome, the Aurelian walls. And I’m going to be spending half of next week looking at those Aurelian walls. Let’s move on and let’s move on to the Colosseum. And I put Colosseums, I put Colosseum, but with an S because there were two Colosseums in Rome in a sense. Let’s have a look at the first, which we are I’m sure familiar with. This is considered one of the modern wonders of the ancient world. I said to you that the Romans are not strictly speaking considered part of the ancient world. The Seven Ancient Wonders of the World are things like the pyramids, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Library of Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Jupiter, the Colosseus of Rhodes, the Library in Alexandria, but the what are called the seven wonders of the, the New Seven Wonders of the World are things like the Colosseum in Rome because it’s only 2,000 years old as opposed to the 4,000 year old pyramids and so on. Everything’s relative, isn’t it? The Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal. I think Machu Picchu is considered one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. Christ the Redeemer in Rio is another. So this is considered one of the Seven New Wonders of the World, not of the ancient world. It is to this day, believe it or not, the largest standing amphitheatre ever constructed.

It’s seated between 70 and 90,000 people. It was used, as we know, for the killing of Christians. And it is a place considered a place of holy Christian martyrdom to this day. There’s a cross in the middle and it’s considered a site where one should behave in the right way ‘cause the amount of people that died there. But it was also a place of enormous entertainment, leaving aside the the cruelty of the games to animals and to humans. It was also a site where great battles were commemorated. There were these amazing water systems in the Colosseum whereby the Colosseum would be flooded and the central park would become a sea and then life size ships would be hauled in and floated onto this created lake in the middle of the Colosseum and 80,000 Romans would watch the reenactments of great battles of Ancient Rome. I mean it’s just phenomenal the uses that it was put for. But I’m not going to say much more on the Colosseum now because that most of us know about and it’s easy to find out about. Let’s look at the next picture and look at the less known Colosseum in Rome. And that is EUR because, sorry, an interior picture of the Colosseum. Let’s move on now to EUR. EUR was constructed by Mussolini in the 1930s and he used, you can see the influence of the Colosseum. Count down the amount of floors it has.

One, two, three, four, five, six floors, six rows of windows. And then count across. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. So six stands for Benito, B-E-N-I-T-O and nine stands for Mussolini, M-U-S-S-O-L-I-N-I. So there you have it, a rather narcissistic building built by Mussolini’s architects to commemorate the new Imperial Rome, modelled on the old. This actual thing is the centre point of EUR, and this is the Palace of Italian Civilization. If you go to the next picture, please, you can get an idea of this huge area just on the outskirts of Rome. There’s another picture, you can see how Colosseum likely looks. Go to the next picture and you can see I think an aerial view of what this area looks like. It’s an absolutely remarkable area full of these neo classicist lines built fascistic architecture of the 1930s. Let’s move on a little further now and we’ll look at another example of that fascistic architecture an obelisk, the last structure to be floated down the Tiber. That was it. Romans floated those things down the Tiber, Mussolini floated this huge obelisk. And what was this obelisk built for? Well, it was planned for the Olympic games that never occurred in Rome, the 1940 Olympic games. They were then moved to Japan but they never occurred in Japan because of the war. They were then moved, I think, to Helsinki, but it never occurred. So those 1940 Olympic games never happened. Let’s go into the stadium that was built for those Olympics. Again, a real reference to Ancient Rome. And you can see this beautiful pyramid with these art deco figures all around the stadium. And another picture, please, Emily. And now to the next slide. Pyramid, there’s one in Rome and I’ve referred to it before in my tour of Oxford and once linked into something to do with Jerusalem, the Pyramid of Gaius Cestius. He was a magistrate, he was a poet, he was a military man.

Let’s have a look at some of these beautiful, this beautiful structure of the pyramid, covered in limestone, built in 333 days in 18 BC, aerial view. And to the next picture, please. And to the next one. It’s now attached to the Aurelian Walls, which I mentioned, I’ll talk next week. You can get a size of it from the cars. I waited for a long time to get a car to pass till you get a sense of scale. Covered in limestone and marble, which is more or less what the pyramids in Giza would’ve looked like. You’ll recall last week I talked about the fact that they were beautifully smooth. Of course, this is much smaller than the Giza Pyramids and the angle of this pyramid I think is 53 degrees, whereas the pyramids in Giza are 51.5 degrees. So the angle is higher. Nevertheless, a pretty substantial structure and very beautiful. And look at the next one. It sits near here, the Protestant cemetery. And to the next picture. And to the next one, please. So it’s really surrounded by beautiful things. And there we have some English poets, Keats and others. And now our final section of the day, the obelisks of Rome. Obelisks are, as I’m sure we know, tapered, monumental monoliths and with a sort of pyramidical top. Really made famous by the Egyptians. Rome has more obelisks than any city in the world. It has 13 obelisks from the ancient world, eight from Ancient Egypt that were brought over, five from Ancient Rome. And 37 made during the Renaissance Period.

There were more standing obelisks in Rome, sorry, there were more Egyptians standing obelisks in Rome than in the whole of Egypt. Let’s have a look at a few of them. So the first one, as you can see there, this is an example of obelisk. This is the oldest known obelisk still standing in its original position in Heliopolis in Cairo. Just to give you an idea of obelisks and to the next one. We’re going to go through these quite quickly. There is how obelisks were made. They were made by being carved in the ground and then once they had been cut, they were then removed in one fell swoop. This obelisk cracked, it’s in Aswan in upper Egypt. So it was never used. But it was a godsend to us, the archaeologists, because we could then discover how they made obelisks. If you go to the next picture, you can see another view of that unfinished obelisk in Egypt. Now let’s move on quite fast to look at other examples of obelisks. There are two in Karnak in Upper Egypt. And moving on again, there’s one in Istanbul, the Obelisk of Theodosius in Istanbul. More on that next time. Obelisk in Axum in Ethiopia. And next comes Washington, if memory serves me correctly, the tallest obelisk in the world, 555 feet high. And that obelisk was constructed in the 1790s. The Washington Memorial, it’s a magnificent thing on the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC. And Place de la Concorde in France, taken from upper Egypt. And to the next one, Cleopatra’s Needle near the Savoy in London and its sister is actually in New York in Central Park. Both snatched from Egypt.

And now to the next one, the obelisk in Rome, St. Peter’s Square, this obelisk known as the Silent Witness. It was said to have witnessed the crucifixion of St. Peter in Rome where he was crucified upside down in 64 AD. There it stands in St. Peter’s Square surrounded by those outstretched arms of mother church. Really wonderful sights. Let’s go to the next picture. And you can see how it is inscribed or how it was raised. You can see this was it being raised under the commands of Poe Leo X. In the 1600s, the obelisk was moved from one part of Rome to another and then it was raised. Okay, so the next picture, you can see the closeup of it in front of St. Peter’s Basilica and in front of the Pontifical Palace. And to the next picture. You can see the words on the obelisk which talk about how those who are standing in front of this obelisk, I’ll read it in translation. “Behold the cross of the Lord, run away and conquer the opposing side like a lion. I will pay you at the right time.” So it’s an Egyptian obelisk, then inscribed in Latin by the Renaissance Period architects putting it to secondary use in Rome. Let’s move on and have a look at the last few pictures of obelisks in Rome. They’re everywhere and all over. This is the tallest freestanding obelisk from Ancient Egypt in the world. It’s the Lateran Obelisk brought from Egypt, right near the Lateran Cathedral and to the next. They go on and on, obelisks in Rome, they’re everywhere. Beautiful closeup of wonderfully preserved hieroglyphics on that Lateran, as it’s called, the Lateran Obelisk, this actually the obelisk of Thutmose III of Egypt, 1800 BC. And to the next one, the top topped off not with anything ancient Egyptian, but with the cross. We the Christians have arrived and we are now putting this to the use to the worship of one God and of Jesus. Okay, and moving on.

You can see other obelisks, there they are in Piazza in the Circus Maximus, in Rome, as it would’ve been. And to the next one, please. An aerial view of three key streets in Rome. They’re called the Trident. You can just see them, a satellite photo. Now if we go in closer to the next picture, you will see Piazza del Popolo designed by Michelangelo with an obelisk at its centre. This obelisk was brought, taken from Alexandria across the Mediterranean and brought by the Romans to Rome, was in various places but was finally placed here under the supervision and design of Michelangelo who put it in the middle of Popolo. There you can see the Trident streets reaching out down Rome, one in the centre, one on other side. It’s quite spectacular. Moving on to the next one. You can see going into Piazza del Popolo through a gate built in the Mediaeval Period. And to the next one, please. Some wonderful pictures of how these obelisks just sit in these squares. So now we can just go through these quite fast, Emily, just to these last pictures of various other obelisks around Rome. Beautiful Piazza Navona. Look at that fountain, the fountains by Bernini. And how obelisks would’ve sat in circuses in Rome and the obelisk would’ve been used for the chariot races to go round. And to the next one, Piazza Navona, the fountain by Bernini, the Fountain of the Four Rivers under the obelisk there. Absolutely stunning sculpture. The obelisk held high by these figures that Bernini sculpted. And just keep going through these ones. The obelisk in front of the Pantheon again. And this little obelisk, the Obelisk of Antinous. Antinous was the longtime lover of one of the most famous of all the Roman emperors. And when Antinous died, under suspicious circumstances, Hadrian dedicated a temple and a cult to Antinous, had this obelisk made in his honour.

So this obelisk, which sits on top of the Pincian Hill is hardly visited by anybody yet it goes back to such a beautiful story of love between Hadrian and Antinous. And there it sits on the Pincian Hill. Hardly ever a person around. If you look at the next picture you can see, I think it’s a very beautiful obelisk because it’s so small and so unvisited, there is the Antinous Obelisk again. And now this beautiful little thing, the Celimontana Obelisk within the Villa Celimontana, which is in a little area of Rome. Again, hardly anybody gets to see these things. It’s an exquisite little villa with a house and a garden and a three and a half thousand year old obelisk that goes almost entirely unnoticed. And now to the final one of them all. This wonderful obelisk which sits in the Piazza della Minerva behind the Pantheon. The reason I selected this as the last one is because Bernini chose to plunk this top part of an obelisk from Thutmose II’s time. So that obelisk dates it to about 1900 BC. And he plunked it on top of an elephant and there it sits in the square. It’s a fantastic thing. Behind it is the Church of Santa Sophia Minerva, which is named after the Temple of Minerva, which is underneath. And now we go to the next picture. You can see, get an idea of the square itself in which it sits. So there is the church behind it. Now are the buildings coming into view. This charming elephant beautifully made. Now look at that. The Pantheon is behind, the building to the right, just coming into the view is the building where Galileo Galilei was tried in 1633.

This building was the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Inquisition looking into people that were heretics. The building to the left is the Pontifical College for training Vatican diplomats. The building at the back is the Pantheon, the obelisk there is ancient Egyptian. And it’s standing upon an elephant carved by Benini. It’s just a classic example of a Roman square where every single side is dripping with history and events. To the final picture. It’s of the backside of the elephant because there are some theories that Bernini wanted to cock a snoop at the powers of the Roman Catholic Church who refused to pay his bills. He had to wait six years until he was paid for his commission. So he turned the backside of the elephant to face for time immemorial the offices of the Inquisition in Rome. It’s a wonderful way to end. And if we can just go to that last slide because the next time we meet, which will be next month, we are going to be looking at pleasure, commerce and warfare in Ancient Rome. Thank you. I’ll now go to the questions and thank you all very much indeed. Here we have them. I’m going to whiz through these.

Q&A and Comments:

When we first went to Rome, we were walking up to the Capitolini Museum in the Forum and we noticed a fountain with my name, Marcia. How lovely. Indeed it’s the name of all the aqueducts. We’re looking at that next time. And thank you for there’s many versions of what SPQR stands for. And indeed it’s been used in different ways over time. And that’s another good example.

And thank you, Elliot, for what you’ve said there. Thank you. And thank you very much, Elliot, for what you write. Please write down the name of Mary.

Denise, you’ve asked. I’m not sure what you are asking there. If you can throw me an email, I’ll try to answer your question.

Q: Carol, are the buildings in the old picture monuments to the to the dead or monuments?

A: If you are talking about the pictures on the Appian Way, some of them are monuments to the dead. Some of them are buildings where people lived. Some of them were little temples, some of them were burial chambers. So it was a whole mixture. There were all of those, Carol, in answer to your question. Types of temples as well.

Judith, I envy you. You went to only 1950 and you stayed with an Italian friend and every year for five years thereafter. How wonderful. I was besotted. So am I, Judith. So am I. And to my knowledge, I’m no relation to you, but who knows?

Susan Mogul, you’ve mentioned Mary Beard. Yes, indeed. Look her up on YouTube. She’s fantastic, fantastic communicator. Yet she doesn’t compromise her Cambridge classicist credentials. So she’s a popular historian, but she doesn’t compromise. Watch her series. There’s loads of her programmes up on YouTube. Wonderful stuff. A great BBC production.

Thank you, Salia. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it. And thank you, Rita, too.

Ed, as you enter the Pantheon every time the high open space takes your breath away. Oh yes, it does, Ed, doesn’t it? I go in there every day. There are some buildings I go in every single day when I’m in Rome just for two or three minutes. That’s one of them. The others I’ll tell you about next time.

Thank you, Sharon. My pleasure.

Adrian, the artificial port constructed by Heritage Caesarea used volcanic ash. Absolutely. Which set in underwater wooden cars. Yes. And the key and that’s was, goes back to what I was saying, that the Romans were using this non-leaking concrete. This is what built Rome, that they were able to make concrete that didn’t leak. Thus they were able to carry water.

And thank you, Susan, for the article you’ve sent. That is much appreciated. Quick climb, et cetera.

Q: What kind of labour built the Pantheon?

A: I do not know the answer to that question, Shelly. And you’ve got me wondering that now. I’ll look that it up myself.

The earlier Byzantine churches, Adrian, construction in the Holy land are based on a circular Roman Parthenon, indeed. And I mentioned this because of the earliest versions of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and other places. And I have almost a whole lecture dedicated to Byzantine Rome. But I start off in Constantinople and then I move over to Bethlehem. So, Adrian, that is to come and I think that is lecture three of my five on Rome. So that will come in February if memory serves me correctly. February the 22nd is the one on Byzantine Rome. Abigail, I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Thank you.

Q: How come the floor of the Pantheon didn’t get ruined by rain and weather.

A: They restore it. But actually the marble floor has been replaced quite a lot of times. But the walls and the roof are original. There was mentioned the BBC recently of lumps of chalk being the secret ingredient of Roman concrete. The theory being that it leeches into cracks as their repaired. Thank you for that, Jackie. Fascinating and fascinating stuff.

Q: Stuart, were they concerned that rain coming through the Pantheon’s door might damage the floor?

A: That’s already been asked and the floor is constantly being cared for and so on. They sometimes do put some tarpaulin on it, but I’ve been there in springtime and the rain has just come through.

And thank you, Cheryl. Yes, indeed. “The Times of Israel” article about understanding of Roman concrete, they’ve discovered at least some Roman concrete was self-healing. Isn’t it just incredible. Yeah, remarkable. Thank you for that.

Rochelle, thank you very much. That’s very kind. Do pass on that to the powers that be in Lockdown University, Rochelle, that’s much appreciated.

Yes, indeed. The US Senate has great acoustics too. I would completely agree, Arlene.

Yes, Helen, you talk about the people, I wonder who was included. Of course the slaves weren’t included, but what made Rome really unusual is that slaves could gain their freedom. This became a most unusual idea. The same with Greece, of course. The vast majority of people who lived in Athens weren’t citizens because they were women or because they were foreign workers or because they weren’t Greek born, Athenian born, I should say. So even in Athens that what is seen as the purest idea of citizenship, their citizenship was a very rarefied type of citizenship for the select few. But the key thing here is that you have to look at it in context and in retrospect, this was an enormous breakthrough in the power of human ideas. That idea, the citizenship of Rome. So I’m not measuring Rome by our understanding of citizenship, quite the opposite. I’m measuring Romans by how they gave us an idea of citizenship, which we later built upon and developed.

Q: How many senators were appointed, how long did the term each serve?

A: Each senator served a year. They were appointed when each new, no, sorry. Yes, they each served a year. They were appointed when each new consul was appointed and prelates were appointed. But it changed. With an institution 1,000 years going, all those walls of the Senate changed as it developed. And whenever we were there, we just walked into the Senate.

Marcia Zelev, you lucky people. That has changed. It’s now very difficult to get into the Senate as I mentioned.

Roseanne, Raphael’s tomb in the Pantheon, “Here lies Raphael, by whom nature feared to be outdone.” Beautiful. Yes. It could bring you to tears. I can see that. Absolutely.

And just whizzing through them, I am going to be doing fountains of Rome, Yoland. Yes, that’s coming as well.

Q: Where did the light come in the Senate?

A: Through certain windows. The few windows that they were were brilliantly positioned so the light would stream in. What happened to the semicircle in the Senate.

The, yes, the semicircle was changed because the concepts of how the Senate should debate was changed. It’s 1,000-year-old institution, so it changed its ways many times over. The repeat dates of my upcoming webinars. If you contact the office at Lockdown, they will give you those precise dates, Carol.

And thank you, Dennis, for what you’ve said there. I’m intrigued by, that I still use the term BC and AD. I’m easy either way. BCE, CE, they’re letters and they’re words, they don’t, I’m happy BC, AD, BC. I suppose it was just the way I was brought up. They’re what I’m used to. Thank you very much, Andrea.

Q: What is the earliest date found on a Roman building?

A: I don’t know that answer. That’s another question I don’t know. The earliest date found. Well I would think actually from the period of the Roman Kings. So there are some dates on some of the buildings in 600 BC, actually, BCE, there are some dates from 600 BC. So yes, pre-Republican Rome, yes.

Crosses would’ve been, certainly would’ve been added afterwards on the obelisks, Denise.

Q: Are the obelisks in Piazza Navona from Egypt?

A: Yes, they are. Or one of them is. The two on either the side are not. The central one is.

Q: How was the underside of an obelisk carved before its erection?

A: By massive use of water and massive steel sores. Remarkable thousands and thousands and thousands of tonnes of water because in the unfinished obelisk, we can see the cut marks, but then it cracked. So they just dumped it and didn’t use it. That’s how it was made.

Nanette, delighted you enjoyed it. Thank you to you, Sharon, and thank you, Erica, as well.

I think I better sign off here. So thank you, Emily, sorry to have kept you for 10 minutes later. Thank you all for joining. Look forward to seeing you next month. All the dates with Lockdown University office. Thank you.