Yet the monument is most renowned for its large, richly decorated marble precinct enclosure (lgth. The frieze on the altar’s crowning element represents a sacred procession, including the vestal virgins and sacrificial animals led by their attendants, that probably depicts the sacrifice ordered by the senate to be held every year on 30 January, the anniversary of the altar’s dedication. The altar’s mensa, where the animal sacrifice was actually made, is a parallelepiped block of Luna marble flanked by couchant lions supporting scrolling vegetal tendrils. 2 The altar was aligned with a huge sundial that used an Egyptian obelisk as a gnomon. Here, nearly 15 years earlier, Octavian (the adopted son and great-nephew of Julius Caesar)-before being named Augustus in 27 B.C.E.-had erected his monumental mausoleum. Its main entrance, accessed by a short flight of steps, faced the large, open public space of the Campus Martius. 1 The monument was originally located along the urban stretch of the Via Flaminia (the so-called Via Lata, now the Via del Corso). to honor the emperor Augustus upon his return from negotiating peace in Spain and Gaul, was completed in 9 B.C.E. The altar, decreed by the Roman Senate in 13 B.C.E. The opening in 2006 of a new museum to house the Ara Pacis invites reconsideration of the altar in its original Roman context and relays the history of the altar’s modern recovery and display. Museo dell ’ Ara Pacis, Rome, designed by Richard Meier, curated by Eugenio La Rocca and Orietta RossiniĪlong with the classical Athenian Parthenon and the Great Altar of Pergamon, Rome’s Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace) is one of the most famous monuments of the Graeco-Roman world.
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