Only Illusions and Nothing to Hide

Only Illusions and Nothing to Hide Insiders and Outsiders in Ancient Rome’s Colour Scheme M. McCormick for Saturated Space, Resource Advising from Heather Elomaa

Imperial Rome is often considered the first real metropolis of western culture: a cross section of global influences under the gaze of seemingly homogenous governance and custom. Indeed Rome’s relationship to trade, immigration and citizenship set the precedent for all western cities to follow, forming the notion of the indigenous and alien at the urban scale. Yet rather than a hard­line of us vs them, Rome was a complex notion of interior and exterior that evolved over time. An amorphous form of cultures and expectations, the differences of which were mostly in policy and perception. Though this relationship was not just a collection of laws (as was implied in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer1 ), but one of material culture as well. Wider influence bred thin lines, strained so far between provincial tradition and cosmopolitan availability that they did not remain, save for the crease that grew ever flatter.

Nevertheless, a transition from brick backwater town with pretensions of conquest to the most powerful city on the continent is not something that exists without physical resonance. So just how did Rome, that is the Rome that we imagine 2000 years later, happen? When did the aesthetics change from the Etruscan ceramic state to the glossy, reflective center of western civilization. In short: marble. But not just any marble, coloured marble.

The “grandeur that was Rome”2 was not easily won. For years, conservative senators and their allies fought a battle against colour and its metamorphic embodiments. Theirs was not just a battle of aesthetics, but of morality. While the city’s ancient ruins show just who wound up winning the battle of the boulders, what it doesn’t show is how. In the end, coloured marble required an introduction by fashion, a massive image overhaul and the weight of Imperial majesty to solidify its place as the covering of the Caput Mundi.

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1

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998 Arthur Quiller­Couch, The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900. (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 1919 Poem 694 “To Helen”, Edgar Allen Poe 3 “Reconstruction of the Curia Iulia Interior from “Rome Reborn” project from UCLA” Accessed June 1st, 2014, <http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Forum/reconstructions/CuriaIulia_1> 2

Vanity, Thy Name is Highlights

Cracking open a copy of Ovid is a journey into an eerily familiar world: lying politicians, seemingly endless military missions, faked satisfaction, rejected love and enough open disdain for public figures and women to make an internet troll blush. Though deep in the pages of the Ars Amatoria is an often overlooked reference to something much wider, much darker and much more relevant to transitory spatial experience: natural colour and unnatural colour.

According to the poet, natural colour is what comes from the inside and reflects to the exterior, things like blushing, blanching, bleeding. 4 5 Conversely, anything unnatural is what the outside world puts on to a person: cosmetics, wigs, dyed hair.

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Beyond sounding like an almost pre­Freudian interest in what goes into or out of people7 , this expression has subtle political implications on the social and material environment that was changing for Ovid. The Empire was expanding and a massive change in cultural standards was underway, emerging first in arguably flippant ways. For example in poem 1.14 from the Ars 4

Bradley, Mark Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 2009 Pages 128­187 A belief shared by others at the time as well. Bradley, Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) introduction 1­35 6 Image: Women at Toilet, 3’X5’ The Carthage Museum, On loan from the Bardo Museum, Accessed June 1, 2014 http://www.bardomuseum.tn/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64&Itemid=73&lang=en 7 Freud, Sigmund Three Case Studies (New York: Simon and Schuster) 2008 5

Amatoria, he mocks a woman over the loss of her hair after an attempt to dye it, replacing her “natural” looks for an “unnatural” one and receiving the consequences:

Your tresses were not sable, they were not golden; But in each hair colours blended; Like the hue of a tall cedar’s skin trapped of bark; in the steep dewy vales of Ida. Not to mention its manageability; Have you ever winced as you arranged it in a hundred styles?

Did Hairpins or the teeth of your comb ever tear a single strand?

Your hairdresser was safe.

I often watched her fixing your hair and not once; saw you grab a brooch to stab her arm.” 8

Beyond scolding, Ovid implies she was far lovelier, and less violent, when she was brunette.

That is, when she was Roman. By bleaching her hair to appear more like the Gauls, she has become a barbarian. Throughout the Ars Amatoria and moreover in his Medicamina Faciei Femineae, Ovid notes the unnaturalness of colour that is taking over all of Rome, particularly in regards to their frail and easily­swayed women. Implying that good Roman women were not drawn into such vanities, as it indicated a preference for foreign traditions and customs.9

Other poets were not as subtle: Juvenal stated that lotions and dyes were akin to witchcraft10 and Seneca remarked that the use of blush showed the decay of morality. In a letter to his mother, (41 A.D.) he writes:

“You never polluted yourself with make­up, and you never wore a dress that covered about as much on as it did off. Your only ornament, the kind of beauty that time does not tarnish, is the great honour of modesty.” 11

as if to say “Ladies pinch. Whores wear rouge”. 12

Aside from a kind of ancient misogynist “10 Fashion Trends That Guys Hate”13 , this open disdain for colourful decoration was spawned by historical precedent. Almost a century before Seneca writes his letter to Mom, if not the first, then certainly the most dramatic entrance of exotic colour entered Rome, lavishly, and by boat.

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Ovid, (translated by Roy E. Gibson) Ars Amatoria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 2003, poem 1.14 Edwards, Catherine The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome ( Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) 1993, page 69 10 ibid, page 11 11 Lucius Annaeus Seneca, (translated by Charles Favez) De Consolatione ad Helviam Matrem (South Carolina, BiblioBazaar Publishing) 2011 page 261 12 Al Jean, Mike Reiss, and Sam Simon (writers) , & David Silverman (Director). (1991). The Way We Was [Television series episode]. In J. L. Brooks, M. Groening, & S. Simon (Executive Producers), The Simpsons. New York, NY: Twentieth Century Fox. 13 See Buzzfeed.com 9

In 45/46 BC, Cleopatra VII came down the Tiber to present Julius Ceasar with their son in an attempt to secure him as the legitimate heir. Her plan was unite the twin Empires of Rome and Egypt, though presumably with Alexandria as the capital of the joined lands.14 At this time, Rome was, as the famous quote implies, “a city of bricks”: earth­toned, red, short and steeped in Etruscan tradition with just enough Greek thrown in to be respectable. To the citizens of Rome, the barges of Egypt might as well have been a space­ship from Mars. Even more bizarre than the gold, pearls and coloured gauze clothes was that a woman was commanding the vessel: a woman who wore intense make­up, had dyed wigs, and carried with her jewelry of the most exotic of all shades, blue.

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The desired effect of this craft was to impress the city’s populace with the goddess Isis made flesh, and impress them, it did. For a time after her arrival, it became fashionable to take out massive amounts of debt to buy luxury items similar to hers.16 Unsurprisingly this met with 14

Edwards, Catherine The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome ( Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993), introduction Image : Cleopatra’s arrival as imagined by various works: Lawrence Alma Tadema (1883), “Antony and Cleopatra” private collection; HBO (2007) Screenshot from Season 2 of Rome; 20th Century Fox (1963) Screenshot from Cleopatra. All images collected from wikimedia commons.

16 The History Chicks podcast ­ “Cleopatra” Narrated by Beckett Graham and Susan Vollenweider: The Histry Chicks, April 7th, 2014, http://thehistorychicks.com/ 15

disapproval from several Roman senators. If the propaganda from conservative Roman poets of the era are to be believed, then all that is moral and good is what is available in the “natural” environment. Anything coming from foreign lands, particularly with such arrogance as to float right through the city, is deceitful, dangerous and akin to entrapment. Better red than dead. The intention of this xenophobia perhaps had less to do with aesthetics as much as making Cleopatra seem an adversary worth conquering.

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Afterall, defeating a woman in battle is easy, but defeating a seductive, powerful witch whose appearance is made of lies is another matter entirely. Even the most noble of Romans can fall prey to these unnatural charms. It was Julius Ceasar himself whose likeness Cleopatra had immortalized in green marble (perhaps to make him an Osiris to her Isis)18 . Therefore to reject foreign luxury, foreign colours and by implication, foreign power is to become more moral even than the great generals of Rome.

17 18

Image: At The Bath of Isis and Io. Rieger, Wolfgang (translation by Filippo Coarelli) : Pompeii. (Munich: Hirmer Publishing) 2002

Kleiner, Diana. “Roman Architecture Class ­ Lecture 9 ­ From Brick to marble: Augustus Assembles Rome” Lecture, Yale University, 2014 <http://oyc.yale.edu/history­art/hsar­252/lecture­9>

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Though after the defeat of Egypt’s forces and the beginning of the Pax Romana (BC 30 AD) a change in rhetoric begins to appear regarding what is natural and unnatural in colour. Material culture starts to become something more complex, more expansive. Though this change in taste was so contradictory to the previous notion of right and wrong that it needed a loophole to be brought into the fold. A loophole that came with a change in casting.

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Julius Ceasar Bust ­ Altes Museum Berlin, On loan to the British Museum, Accessed June 1, 2014 https://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/online_tours/egypt/cleopatra_history_to_myth/basanite_bust_of_julius_caesar.aspx

A Setting Sun, The Rising Star And The Hues In Between

In 8 AD, Ovid was exiled by the Emperor Augustus to what is now Romania due to “a poem and a mistake”20 . With this forced exit, Ovid took with him his coy and arguably sarcastic criticism of the powers that be. Now that he was out of the way, the Emperor had free reign to solidify the new ideals of good Romans, which meant an image overhaul. According to a new series of laws, good Romans could keep whatever Gods they wanted and be from wherever in the Empire, rich, poor or in between. A good Roman could be anything, as long as they held the Emperor as the highest divinity. As a divinity, he was entitled to use the material that had been hereto encouraged only in the building of temples: marble. So much so that rumor stands Augustus’ final boast was that he had turned Rome into “a city of marble”. Almost certainly that marble was not just from the local province. Perhaps white from Greece or purple from Egypt.

Even black from North Africa or the smoky yellow of Gaul. 21

Unfortunately for Augustus, and the Emperors that immediately followed, the wartime rhetoric of natural and unnatural culture had set a trap that they now needed to wiggle out of. The propaganda from the Julian age could not be rejected entirely, as so much of what Augustus and his inheritors claimed rested on his status as Julius Caesar's rightful heir. Then how to justify its use to convince the populace and conservative critics? If Rome should use only natural things, than what was “natural” would need to be redefined.

Enter Pliny the Elder.

Pliny the Elder had all the makings of what the Julio­Claudian Emperors needed: his hometown had only been brought into the Empire 80 or so years before his birth but his father had been an Equestrian soldier from a long­known family, mixing old and new traditions. Pliny himself had served in the army in a similar capacity as his father, writing an account of Roman conquest in De Jaculatione Equestri ( An epistolary work about Javelin­throwing Equestrian Soldiers, now lost). He was exactly what the Emperors needed: just foreign enough to be pliable, but Roman through and through. True to form, Pliny created a loophole that allowed the use of foreign colours and materials without even the most conservative reader opposing it.

In Natural History, Pliny dedicates two books to mineralogy and another to marbles, starting off by calling their use as “the vice of the day”22 and making sure to note that the first Roman who possessed pillars of foreign marble was the rich and least popular of the first Triumvirate: Marcus Licinius Crassus. Earning the nickname “The Palatine Venus” for this indulgence.

Though after describing the pillars, he states the greatest affront to decency was not the use of these columns, but the lack of punitive response: 20

Everitt, Anthony, Augustus: The Life of Rome’s First Emperor (London: UK: Random House Publishing) 2006 Edwards, Catherine The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome ( Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) 1993, page 167 22 Tufts University “Pliny The Elder, The Natural History” Tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D36%3Achapter%3D3 (accessed June 1, 2014) 21

“Universally contaminated; and, seeing that things which had been interdicted had been forbidden in vain, they preferred the absence of laws to laws that were no better than a dead letter.” 23

According to Pliny, the Senate was so corrupt that they did not take action against this clearly immoral waste of money. Which is a linear reference to Augustus’ infamous treatment of a decadent house owned by the Scauri family of the author’s time. Apparently the “Lucullan”24 marble had originally been brought in by the family for a temporary theater construction.

Afterwards, the family had used them for their personal residence. To avoid setting a bad example, the Emperor had the home demolished, taking the marble columns to use in the permanent (and still standing) theater of Marcellus. 25

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Though almost as quickly as this point is made, it is abandoned for a long, dry explanation of great sculptures. When read from start to finish, Pliny’s survey of great sculptures seems less like an art history catalogue and more like a biblical lineage of the rightful claim to the materials’ decorative use. Explaining that while the traditions started in Greece, they were perfected in Rome. After setting this groundwork for white marble in Natural History, Pliny begins listing

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Tufts University “Pliny The Elder, The Natural History” Tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D36%3Achapter%3D3 (accessed June 1, 2014) 24 Tufts University “Pliny The Elder, The Natural History” Tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D36%3Achapter%3D3 (accessed June 1, 2014) 25 Edwards, Catherine The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome ( Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993), page 164 26 Image: Wikimedia Commons “Rome ­ Theatre di Marcello” Wikimedia.org, Accessed June 1, 2014 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roma­teatro_di_marcello.jpg

various kinds of coloured marble. With the first example sounding more like an excuse than an explanation:

“The poet Menander, in fact, who was a very careful enquirer into all matters of luxury, is the first who has spoken, and that but rarely, of variegated [coloured] marbles, and, indeed, of the employment of marble in general. Columns of this material were at first employed in temples, not on grounds of superior elegance, (for that was not thought of, as yet), but because no material could be found of a more substantial nature.” 27

Pliny is seeking to legitimize colored marble’s use, first as a structural requirement and secondarily as decoration. To use it purely as decoration would be luxurious and thereby decadent and immoral, at least now. But Menander (a respectable Greek dramatist) saw that since the stone was heavier, it could hold more weight, and if it happened to be beautiful, then so be it. Fittingly, only a chapter later Pliny flips the notion that foreign coloured marble could be considered a luxury at all.

“Still, however, there had been a distinction drawn between ordinary stone and marble, in the days of Homer even... Variegated marbles, in my opinion, were first discovered in the quarries of Chios, when the inhabitants were building the walls of their city; a circumstance which gave rise to a facetious repartee on the part of M. Cicero... "I should admire them much more," said he, "if you had built them of the stone used at Tibur." And, by Hercules! the art of painting never would have been held in such esteem, or, indeed, in any esteem at all, if variegated marbles had been held in admiration.” 28

In a flippant, backhanded, almost 20th century modernist argument, Cicero’s quoted jibe argues that colour is inherent in the material and is hence a natural force. So regardless of origin, it is not deceptive at all. It seems appropriate then, right after inferring that the colour is natural to the element, and should be classified as such, that the immediate next chapter is about the first use of coloured marble in Rome.

“The first person at Rome who covered the whole of the walls of his house with marble, according to Cornelius Nepos, was Mamurra, who dwelt upon the Cælian Hill, a member of the equestrian order, and a native of Formiæ, who had been præfect of the engineers under C. Cæsar in Gaul.”

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The first person to use this coloured material in Rome then, was not an exotic and detestable Egyptian Queen, but a good and noble Roman soldier. However what Pliny leaves out was 27

Tufts University “Pliny The Elder, The Natural History” Tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D36%3Achapter%3D3 (accessed June 1, 2014) 28 Tufts University “Pliny The Elder, The Natural History” Tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D36%3Achapter%3D3 (accessed June 1, 2014) 29

ibid.

Mamurra’s reputation among his contemporaries. The poet Catullus had identified him as everything “un­Roman” by saying:

“Mamurra and Caesar, both of pathic fame.

No wonder! Both are fouled with foulest blight, One urban being, Formian t'other wight, And deeply printed with indelible stain:” 30

and

“Who is able to see this [Mamurra’s marble], who is able to endure it Except someone who is shameless and a glutton and a gambler, Mamurra has what the province of Gaul Used to have in value as well as that of farthest Britain?”31

Finally calling Mamurra a greedy, lecherous, disgusting grasper of power and the devourer of “an oily inheritance”.32

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Tufts University “Pliny The Elder, The Natural History” Tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0005:poem=57(accessed June 1, 2014) 31 Du Quesnay, Ian M. le M., and Tony Woodman, eds. Catullus. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.Cambridge Books Online. Web. 16 June 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511733154 32 Du Quesnay, Ian M. le M., and Tony Woodman, eds. Catullus. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.Cambridge Books Online. Web. 16 June 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511733154 33 Image: Christie’s Auction House “Cipolino marble Columns” christies.com. http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/furniture­lighting/a­pair­of­italian­cipollino­marble­columns­5194061­details.aspx (accessed June 1, 2014)

Pliny avoids this notion entirely, speaking only of his noble goals in expanding the Empire for the great conqueror. Though he does take great care to note the manufacturing of marble slabs was changed when it arrived to Rome, because using foreign techniques would simply be too luxurious34 . Yet it is in Chapter 11, Pliny finally gets to the meat of this foreign influence and discusses the many different kinds of coloured marble coming from Alexandria. Going so far as to explain that there are too many to name each one individually. Adding the editorial remark of:

“For what place is there, in fact, that has not a marble of its own? In addition to which, in our description of the earth and its various peoples,1we have already made it our care to mention the more celebrated kinds of marble.”

And one of those celebrated kinds of marble?

“The Augustan also; and, more recently, the Tiberian; which were first discovered, in the reigns respectively of Augustus and Tiberius, in Egypt”. 35

As long as coloured marble is discovered, altered or installed by Romans, then it becomes Roman by extension. Going so far as to seem divinely Roman.

“A larger block of [Roman Discovered basanite marble] has never been known than the one forming the group which has been dedicated by the Emperor Vespasianus Augustus in the Temple of Peace...it is said, for emitting a sound each morning when first touched by the rays of the rising sun.”36

34

Tufts University “Pliny The Elder, The Natural History” Tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0005:poem=57(accessed June 1, 2014) 35 Tufts University “Pliny The Elder, The Natural History” Tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0005:poem=57(accessed June 1, 2014) 36 Tufts University “Pliny The Elder, The Natural History” Tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0005:poem=57(accessed June 1, 2014)

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In a few chapters alone, Pliny the Elder attempts to change the reader’s perceptions of what are foreign materials entirely. Making what had been deemed unnatural by origin seem natural by nature: the foreign becoming simply provincial. Singlehandedly and elegantly he provides excuses and encouragement to expand what is considered foreign and domestic in coloured materiality. But what were the motivations that made his writing popular? Surely the Julio­Claudian Emperors had more to gain than knowing the history of the natural world.

Since the beginning of its territorial expansion, Rome’s economy relied heavily on a constant state of war and a complex network of trade roots. The point then was to redefine what could be acceptable to a conservative Roman. A PR campaign that allowed the populace the enjoyment of previously labeled “luxury goods” without the guilt their grandparents may have felt. Not to mention that if Imperial power relies on popularity, Pliny is arguing “If the Emperor enjoys it, it can’t possibly be bad. Go on, enjoy yourself.”

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Image: Hercules Statue from Capitoline Museum, Rome in Basanite marble (image by Author)

It seems strangely appropriate then that Pliny the Elder died attempting to observe the natural and horrific explosions of Pompeii. Where now the perfectly preserved elaborate marble remains as a testament to the changing attitude of acceptable materialities.

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Though this shift in attitude is merely speculation without standing example in the city of Rome: fortunately one exists, to this day, which shows just how much changes in attitudes regarding the “foreignness” of materials had come. It also happens to be one of the most famous buildings in all of western architecture.

Monochrome Ashes to the Flashy Phoenix

In 25 BC, a structure was completed in the center of Rome, just a 10 minute walk away from the Forum. Nominally under the influence of Marcus Agrippa, counsel of Rome, this building was known as the first Pantheon. No images remain of what this building may have looked like originally , and debate rages on in classicist forums as to its shape, size and material. Previous assumptions have been that the building was wooden, most likely painted with a t­shaped base.

Though a paper written by Adam Ziolkowski from the University of Warsaw (published 2009) suspects otherwise:

"The structure's main north­south axis coincided exactly with that of the present building, its width was identical with the inner diameter of the rotunda, and its southside was practically tangent with the rotunda's outer curve.” 40

Further noting that the archaeological team was able to determine the materiality of the original building by finding stamped red bricks deep in the foundations of the current structure. Though 38

Image: Paul Roberts , Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (London: British Museum Press) 2013 page 122 fig 226 Cut marble panel with geometric panels House of the Ephebe 39 Image: Paul Roberts , Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (London: British Museum Press) 2013 page 122 fig 227 Cut marble panel with geometric panels House of the relief of Telephus, Herculaneum 40 Ziolkowski, Adam, What did Agrippa’s Pantheon Look Like? New Answers to An Old Question, Digital Pantheon.org, http://www.digitalpantheon.ch/Ziolkowski2009/Ziolkowski2009.pdf (accessed June 1st, 2014)

there is also evidence of travertine blocks in the previous piazza. Meaning that, if Ziolkowski is correct, the building was a mixtures of materialities, even if the evidence suggest they were all southern European in origin. Though after the first fire which destroyed the building in 80 AD, there is evidence suggesting when the structure was first re­built, the coloured marble became not only decorative, but part of the structural base.

“The coloured marbles imply a pavement of covered space ; and the fact that a continuation of this pavement at some time constituted the floor of the rectangular structure certainly suggests that the said space made a whole with the superstructure erected on the latter.”41

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As is known the building burned down a second time in 110 AD and was replaced by the Emperor Hadrian to become the structure it is known as today. Using coloured marble slabs as a metaphor for all the corners of the earth that the Romans had conquered: deep red­purple from egypt, peacock marble from asia minor and green from northern europe to name a few. 43 The foreign had become the very embodiment of what it meant to be Rome. 155 years after Cleopatra’s arrival , the unnatural had become natural.

41

Ziolkowski, Adam, What did Agrippa’s Pantheon Look Like? New Answers to An Old Question, Digital Pantheon.org, http://www.digitalpantheon.ch/Ziolkowski2009/Ziolkowski2009.pdf (accessed June 1st, 2014) 42 Image: Macdonald, William Lloyd The Pantheon: Design, Meaning and Progeny (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) 2002, page 28 43 Macdonald, William Lloyd The Pantheon: Design, Meaning and Progeny (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) 2002, page 34­37, 78­86

In one structure, the Empire’s knowledge and expectations of what was Roman changed three times from xenophobic, to Imperial, to dependence and, at the fall of the Empire, the stripped grandeur of overbloated power. Though based in brick, the marble became structural, which mean the colour, that is the previous unnatural foreign colour, became indispensable for the building, the building that was Rome. 44

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A simple read of the evolution in colour from cosmetics to construction in ancient Rome would indicate that the saturation of the city was directly linked to territory consumed. Though if this is an accurate assumption, the perceived decadence was always going to have detractors. Each one hoping to keep “Rome for the Romans”. Whatever that meant. National, or even local identity only really starts to exist as a tangible subject when confronted by something in opposition.

“Rome” did not exist without Carthage or later without Egypt. In the lull between those conflicts, arguments regarding foreign influence seemed to be a relatively inessential: oscillations between liberal trade or separatist ideals firing back at one another without real gusto.

However as the Empire grew larger and more complex, allowances had to be made between impossible nostalgia and a demanding market. If nothing else, for economic stability. Though not wanting to change too quickly, Pliny introduced an acceptable middle ground as to what this newer Rome could look like. Cleverly choosing something as innocuous as building material to alter perceptions of inclusion and immigration, perhaps even accidentally. Centuries later, the coloured marble of the Pantheon silently indicates that the only way Rome could have survived was as a conceptual idea made manifest.

A contemporary example to Rome’s coloured marble might be glass. Ironically coming to a full circle argument when it came the construction of the Ara Pacis Museum in 2006. Several critics besmirched the mostly translucent work as the “Californication” of Rome, starting a feverish backlash against a bewildered Richard Meier (who is actually from New Jersey, about 3000 miles east of the accusation). But is that aesthetic Californian or even American? Arguably the glass facade is a remnant of the German Bauhaus or another take on the Japanese Shoji screen. Therefore what is “natural” , “local” or “authentic” in architecture is a vague concept, but one that does not exist without prompting. Even almost 2000 years later, that prompt is one of influence and money, not the actual material. Maybe the best and worst thing about how coloured marble was introduced into Rome is that it set the precedent for all the western cities to follow. The play stays the same, only the set changes. 45

44

Jones, Mark Wilson Principles of Roman Architecture (New Jersey: Yale University Press) 2003 Kleiner, Diana. “Roman Architecture Class ­ Lecture 9 ­ From Brick to marble: Augustus Assembles Rome” Lecture, Yale University, 2014 <http://oyc.yale.edu/history­art/hsar­252/lecture­9> 45

Bibliography

Books:

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998

Arthur Quiller­Couch, The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900. (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 1919 Poem 694 “To Helen”, Edgar Allen Poe

Bradley, Mark Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 2009

Edwards, Catherine The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome ( Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) 1993

Everitt, Anthony, Augustus: The Life of Rome’s First Emperor (London: UK: Random House Publishing) 2006

Freud, Sigmund Three Case Studies (New York: Simon and Schuster) 2008

Jones, Mark Wilson “Principles of Roman Architecture” (New Jersey: Yale University Press) 2003

Ovid, (translated by Roy E. Gibson) Ars Amatoria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 2003

Macdonald, William Lloyd “The Pantheon: Design, Meaning and Progeny” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) 2002, page 28

Roberts, Paul, Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (London: British Museum Press) 2013

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (translated by Charles Favez) De Consolatione ad Helviam Matrem (South Carolina, BiblioBazaar Publishing) 2011 page 261

Media:

Al Jean, Mike Reiss, and Sam Simon (writers) , & David Silverman (Director). (1991). The Way We Was [Television series episode]. In J. L. Brooks, M. Groening, & S. Simon (Executive Producers), The Simpsons. New York, NY: Twentieth Century Fox.

Kleiner, Diana. “Roman Architecture Class ­ Lecture 9 ­ From Brick to marble: Augustus Assembles Rome” Lecture, Yale University, 2014, http://oyc.yale.edu/history­art/hsar­252/lecture­9

The History Chicks Podcast ­ “Cleopatra” Narrated by Beckett Graham and Susan Vollenweider: The Histry Chicks, April 7th, 2014, http://thehistorychicks.com/

Online Databases/Resources:

Du Quesnay, Ian M. le M., and Tony Woodman, eds. Catullus. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.Cambridge Books Online. Web. 16 June 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511733154

Tufts University “Pliny The Elder, The Natural History” Tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D36%3Achapter%3D3 (accessed June 1, 2014)

Ziolkowski, Adam, What did Agrippa’s Pantheon Look Like? New Answers to An Old Question, Digital Pantheon.org, http://www.digitalpantheon.ch/Ziolkowski2009/Ziolkowski2009.pdf (accessed June 1st, 2014)

Images (In order as shown in text):

“Reconstruction of the Curia Iulia Interior from “Rome Reborn” project from UCLA” UCLA.edu, Accessed June 1st, 2014, http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Forum/reconstructions/CuriaIulia_1

“Women at Toilet”, 3’X5’ The Carthage Museum, On loan from the Bardo Museum, Bardomuseum.com Accessed June 1, 2014 http://www.bardomuseum.tn/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64&Itemid=73&lang=en

Cleopatra’s arrival as imagined by various works: Lawrence Alma Tadema (1883), “Antony and Cleopatra” private collection; HBO (2007) Screenshot from Season 2 of Rome; 20th Century Fox (1963) Screenshot from Cleopatra. All images collected from wikimedia commons.

“At The Bath of Isis and Io”, reproduced by: Rieger, Wolfgang (translation by Filippo Coarelli) : Pompeii. (Munich: Hirmer Publishing) 2002

“Julius Ceasar Bust” Altes Museum Berlin, On loan to the British Museum, British Museum.com, Accessed June 1, 2014 https://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/online_tours/egypt/cleopatra_history_to_myth/basanite_bust_of_julius_caesar.aspx

“Rome ­ Theatre di Marcello” Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia.org, Accessed June 1, 2014 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roma­teatro_di_marcello.jpg

“Christie’s Auction House ­ Cipolino marble Columns” christies.com. http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/furniture­lighting/a­pair­of­italian­cipollino­marble­columns­5194061­details.aspx (accessed June 1, 2014)

“Basanite marble Hercules Statue from Capitaloine Museum, Rome, 2007” Image owned by Author

“Cut marble panel with geometric panels House of the Ephebe” Reproduced by: Paul Roberts , Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (London: British Museum Press) 2013

“Cut marble panel with geometric panels House of the relief of Telephus, Herculaneum” Reproduced by: Paul Roberts , Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (London: British Museum Press) 2013

“Pantheon Floor” Reproduced by: Macdonald, William Lloyd The Pantheon: Design, Meaning and Progeny (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) 2002