Good morning, everybody. In the 100 years between AD 98 and AD 192, Rome had five emperors. Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus. Six, if we count Lucius Verus, who was co-emperor with Marcus Aurelius for several years. In the 50 years following the death of the last of the Severan emperors, a young man by the name Alexander Severus, who died in 235 AD, Rome had 20 acknowledged emperors and many more pretenders to imperial power. Rarely did any one hold on to power for more than a few years and some of them lasted only a matter of months. I like to think of the emperors is changing as quickly as the seasons in the third century AD. Any wrong move, led to assassination and replacement not by the senate but by the provincial armies, by the provincial armies. Civil wars were extremely common place, in the third century AD and it was a very bad time for the Roman emperors who could literally be stabbed in the back, at any moment. And many of them were. The Roman frontiers were in danger. The economy was in shambles and the vast bureaucracy was also suffering significantly in the third century AD largely because if a lack of central control. In view of this chaotic situation there was very little time to build buildings which is obviously what's significant to us in the context of this course. I-, I-, in many ways I think one can describe vis a vis architecture the third century AD as essentially a wasteland, an architectural wasteland. There were no forums in the third century AD, there were no basilicas, and there were no baths. We will see that the major project in the third century AD was not, not unexpectedly given this situation, a major defensive wall. That was the main architectural commission in the third century AD, and it's with that wall that I want to begin today, the so-called Aurelian Walls. Before I do, I just want to give you a glimpse of two of those 20 acknowledged emperors who made their way through the third century AD. The boy emperor Gordian the third on the left hand side of the screen. And the more mature emperor Pupienus, who was co-emperor with a man by Balbinus for a very short time. And in fact just to give you a sense of the flavor of the third century, both of them were dragged from the palace, not too long after they had ascended to imperial power, murdered and their bodies tossed in the Tiber River. If you look at these two portraits, one of the boy emperor and one of the more mature emperor, even though many, many years separate them, in chronological age, I think you will see if you look at the way in which these portraitists represented their eyes, in the likenesses of these two individuals. in these official portraits of Gordian and Pupienus. I think you'll see, if you look at those eyes, that those eyes reveal The concern that these emperors had for the state of the empire during the third century AD. A concern that was extremely warranted obviously. So again, I want to begin with the only significant architectural project in the third century AD in Rome and that is this great defensive wall system called the Aurelian walls. The Aurelian walls were built for two main reasons. One, because the earlier walls, the so called Servian walls which we studied at the very beginning of the semester which date to the Republic 378 BC, is when they were dedicated, so, you know, way, way back. In the beginning of our discussion of Roman architecture, you'll remember that those Servian Walls, and I can show it to you with this, this plan here of the walls during ancient Roman times. The Servian Walls encircled just the Seven Hills of Rome. So this central area here, where we see the Palatine. The Capitoline, the Caelian, the Quirinal Hill. That was the location of that original Servian Wall. As the city grew, as the population grew, as more people were brought back to Rome through the various wars, and through the enslavement of large numbers of people, the city grew significantly in size. And so by this time, by the third century the, the Servian wall was essentially useless to protect Rome from those barbarians that were literally at the gates at this particular point in Roman history. So they needed to build that wall to protect the city. And but the other reason was because of tho-, because of what was going on on the frontiers because Rome was more in danger than it had ever been before because of the kind of political and economic situation in Rome that I've just described. There was a need for further stability and the need to build this second set of walls, again, the so-called Aurelian Walls. And this plan shows you how much further out they went than the Servian walls, all the way to the Tiber River. Didn't encompass the area across the Tiber where Hadrian's tomb, Hadrian's mausoleum, the Castle San Angelo is located, but for the most part it did cover the main of the city. And you can see, it went far enough out, that it even encompassed some of the major city roads. The beginnings of some of those major city roads. A view of the Aurelian walls itself, very well preserved here on the right hand side of the screen. And a comparison of them with the Servian walls on the left. With regard to the Aurelian walls they are named for the Emperor Aurelian, who was Emperor of Rome between 270 and 275 AD. We believe that Aurelian began the walls either in 270 or 271. They were not finished by his death in 275 and they were completed by his successor, a man by the name of Probus. P-R-O-B-U-S. Probus, completed the Aurelian walls and dedicated them right after right after Aurelian's death in 275 AD. The Aurelian walls had a 12 mile circuit around the city of Rome. They were originally 25 and 1/2 feet tall and there were 18 major gateways in the Aurelian Walls, 18 major gateways. I think you can see from this view on the right-hand side of the screen that the that the building materials were concrete faced with brick, brick-faced concrete. You see that very clearly here and of course it's, it's important to keep in mind that that is different than what the original republican walls were made out of. Those were made out of cut-stone ashlar blocks. You see them here in this section of the Servian walls that I show you once again. Of the blocks that are laid in the scheme of headers and stretchers that we talked about at the very beginning of the semester when we discussed early Roman wall building, both in Rome and in the early colonies. And here again the Aurelian walls with their up to date concrete faced with brick. But it's a sign of the times that scholars who have examined these bricks have determined that they were not all new bricks, that many of them were reused bricks from earlier periods. From the, you know, from the previous century in particular, and the reason for that probably has to do with the fact that again, because there was so little architectural activity during this period, there was simply no need to make bricks in, in large numbers. And when they needed them for this particular project, they reached back and used some that had been laying around from ear-, of earlier manufacture. So I think again, that underscores the, incertitude of this particular period of time. Here's another very good view of the Aurelian Walls as they look today. Brick face concrete construction once again. And what's impressive about the Aurelian Walls is how much of them are preserved. When I showed you the Servian Walls we could only look at bits and pieces of those walls preserved in different parts of Rome especially near the, the Rome train station. But in the case of the Aurelian walls we have a very large extent of those walls still preserved today. Which is a tribute to how, how well they were built that they have stood the test of time. And in fact when one visits Rome, when you come into Rome from Leonardo da Vinci Airport. The first thing that you see of the city are the walls. You go through those walls, and it announces to you, of course, that you are in fact about to enter the city of Rome. I mentioned that the Aurelian Walls had 18 gateways. Some of them are still preserved, and I want to show you one of them here, just to give you a sense of what these gateways were like. This is the so-called Porta Appia. It also dates to the same time as the walls, 275 AD. Called the Porta Appia because it is at, the the exact location of the Via Appia, or the Appian Way in Rome. The the gate I'm going to show you how the gate looked in the ti-, in 275. And then how it was altered somewhat later. You can see from the monument list, that although it was built originally in 275, it was restored by two Byzantine emperors by the name of Honorius and Arcadius. So this is in the post Roman period of AD. And they did that in AD 401 to 402. And the gate, as you see it today, extremely well preserved, is the gate of the restoration of the fifth century AD. Whereas this view, this restored view from Ward Perkins shows you what the gate would have looked like in 275. In 275, it had two arcuated entrance ways, as you can see well here. It had rounded towers, rounded towers. It had small windows with, arcuations at the top as you can also see. Curve, curvature at the top and then Ward Perkins believes, and there's some controversy about this, but he believes it was already crenulated in the third century AD. If you compare that to the gate as restored by Honorius and Arcadius. You can see that they have removed one of the entrance ways. There's a single arcuated entrance way now in the center of the gate. And they have also encased the rounded towers in these square blocks, as you can see here. They've left the uppermost part rounded but not the bottom part. So they have changed it, somewhat. But I think it still gives you again, a very good sense, of what this gate and many of the other gates that were part of this very important, defensive wall system built in the third century, looked like.
