Introduction: movement and ideology
In 2 bce, Augustus and his regime completed the culmination of their decades-long effort to transform the city of Rome with the Forum Augustum. Ovid describes in Fasti 5 how Mars observes this space as he descends towards it. Ovid emphasizes how the god's eyes move from one part of the complex to another: from the decoration of the temple's pediment and doors, to the images of Aeneas and Romulus in two rooms that adjoined the Forum's porticoes (the exedrae), to the figures represented in the porticoes themselves, and finally back to the temple.Footnote 1 Ovid's Mars takes the reader on a visual tour, as the god sees the Forum divided into different areas.
Ovid's treatment suggests a new way of looking at the Forum Augustum as a collection of interconnected spaces. A programme of statues depicting generals and politicians from throughout Roman history filled two parallel porticoes (see Figure 1). The four exedrae, large hemicycles attached to the top and bottom of each portico, housed additional statues. A central plaza between the porticoes boasted a bronze statue of Augustus on a quadriga and the temple of Mars Ultor.Footnote 2 In this paper, I assess how this complex of spaces operated, developing Ovid's contemporary vision of the space: just as Ovid's Mars looked from the temple, to the porticoes, to the exedrae, so too did the architectural relationships between the Forum's spaces structure the visitors’ experience of the complex. Moreover, just as Ovid presents one visitor's itinerary through the Forum, so too did the distribution of things to see lay the groundwork for different experiences of the complex.
Cassius Ahenobarbus, (n. 1): Plan of the Forum Augustum.
As Romans walked around the porticoes, exedrae, and central area, a series of contrasts between its spaces conditioned how they received its ideology. Visitors possessed a certain degree of choice about which ideological elements they could view in some spaces, while they were compelled to receive certain ideas in others. The porticoes were filled with hundreds of statues and inscriptions that recorded the deeds of the great men of Roman history. One could view many items, and there was a certain degree of choice, as far as we know, for how one could have moved through these spaces. As discussed below, the Forum's organization of statues into different groups did structure visitors’ experiences of the porticoes to a certain degree. However, there is no evidence that the porticoes deliberately led one down any particular path among the statues. The exedrae and central area were more spacious but contained fewer choices of things to see. The former were large rooms that boasted a few dozen statues, a relatively small number when compared with the hundreds situated in the porticoes, while the central area consisted of a massive open plaza dominated by the temple and Augustus’ statue.
This argument is based on recent advances in scholarship that discern the personal experiences of and patterns of movement through ancient monuments. This ‘spatial turn’ has explored how ancient spaces were ‘lived and experienced’, or how visitors moving through Roman spaces were limited by what was in that space and what activities political actors wanted to occur in that space.Footnote 3 These approaches have been only partially applied to the Forum Augustum. I argue that their full application reveals a new level of complexity in how the Forum's use of space impacted visitors’ experiences. The Forum's interconnectivity fundamentally structured movement through it and, by means of that movement, how the Forum's ideology was perceived and understood.Footnote 4
My paper, therefore, elucidates the relationship between the ideologies that the Augustan regime sought to articulate via the Forum and how those messages were received by visitors as they moved through the complex.Footnote 5 How did the path that one took through the complex affect how one received, understood, and responded to its messages? How did the presentation of individual features shape the reception of the Forum's ideologies?Footnote 6 I show how the Forum was a dynamic public monument, designed with its visitors’ multifaceted experiences in mind.
My approach moves away from the scholarly focus on the specifics of the Forum's messaging. Galinsky (1996), Geiger (2008), and others have studied the Forum's statues and epigraphy to elucidate the complex's messages. This has led to a consensus that the northwestern portico exemplified pietas (dutifulness), the southeastern portico, virtus (manly, martial virtue). This approach leaves unexplored how the porticoes, exedrae, and central area were interrelated and oversimplifies how individual spaces within the complex had multifaceted messages. Moreover, the focus on the Forum as a collection of statues and inscriptions ignores its architectural and spatial characteristics.Footnote 7
My argument is divided into five sections. First, I outline how spaces create and limit opportunities for movement and show how political actors can use these properties of space to design politically and ideologically charged areas. Second, I set the Forum Augustum in the topographic context of Rome's city centre. Third, I examine how a contrast between crowded and spacious areas presented the visitor with different choices about which features of the Forum he or she could examine. Fourth, I surmise how Augustus and Gaius Caesar activated the Forum's division of spaces during the inauguration ceremony of 2 bce. Finally, I suggest possibilities for how future work on ideology in public monuments can incorporate the study of movement.
I. Ideology, space, and movement: some theoretical notes
The Forum Augustum explicated an Augustan vision of Rome's history and its foreign and imperial policy. The complex grounded this vision in both normative Roman views of legitimate government and the logic behind its organization of space. To paraphrase Smith's definition of legitimacy, Augustus and his associates knew that visitors to the Forum had to be persuaded that its vision fell in line with established Roman political customs.Footnote 8 As Galinsky asserts, ‘[t]he essence of the Republican constitution lay not in its legalistic aspects. Rather, it was a system of values and of “traditional concepts and principles”’.Footnote 9 The Augustan regime always made concrete alterations to Rome's urban landscape with these ideas in mind and the Forum was no different.Footnote 10
The Forum disseminated its ideology using a certain division of spaces. By ‘ideology’, I adopt Smith's definition as ‘a programmatic presentation of the world…[that] promot[es] the legitimacy of an existing socio-political order’.Footnote 11 That is, the Forum promoted a particular vision of Rome's foreign and imperial policy as a reflection of the Principate's new organization of Roman government and society. Lefebvre argued that larger societal forces, especially political institutions, are the primary actors which create spaces. They thus assert a certain degree of control over the social relationships that spaces produce.Footnote 12 The Augustan regime, in designing the Forum, used its division and arrangement of space(s) to regulate relations between visitors and what they saw in the Forum.Footnote 13
But how did the Forum's spaces control social relations? The Forum's designers employed something akin to Foucault's conception of discipline. That is, they used the Forum's design to subtly reinforce and privilege certain routes and pathways through the Forum, implicitly regulating visitors’ movement and viewing habits.Footnote 14 Newsome similarly argues for architecture's ability to restrict or permit access to certain areas, thus communicating ‘the permissible forms of practice’ in a given space.Footnote 15 However, the Forum could not micromanage everyone's visit in the way that Foucault describes for modern states. Indeed, the Forum reflects Lefebvre's contention that space creates the potentialities for future action: it ‘permits fresh actions to occur’ within it, ‘while suggesting others and prohibiting yet others’.Footnote 16 Droge rightly cautions against assuming that Augustan ideology was formulated according to some ‘master plan’, just as the Augustan regime knew it could not present a singular vision for the Forum and force its visitors to receive that vision in a particular way.Footnote 17 Instead, the regime limited the number of potential itineraries one could take through the Forum and designed its spaces to direct people along certain pathways. The visitor then chose from among these options. While I agree with Spannagel that key differences of function subdivided the complex's spaces, my approach shows how the Forum was designed with the integration of and movement within or between its spaces in mind.Footnote 18
II. The Forum in Rome
The regime situated the new Forum east of the Forum Romanum and the Forum of Caesar. The Forum's location blocked views into the Forum while also inviting visitors to come inside and look at what was in the space. Probably the main ceremonial path of entry into the Forum, however, was through the Forum Caesaris, connecting Augustus to his adopted father through a path that regulated one's movement even before one entered the Forum Augustum itself.
The Forum was situated between two major thoroughfares: the Argiletum to the southeast and the Vicus Laci Fundani to the northwest.Footnote 19 Anyone wishing to pass into or through Rome's historic centre had to adjust their routes around or through Augustus’ Forum. In this way, the Forum developed from earlier monumental porticoes, where limited access to a space created ‘destinations’ that one could not cut through on the way to another location.Footnote 20 The separation of the Forum from the larger Roman road network marked it as a new ‘enclosed administrative and representational centre’ set aside for the Augustan regime's particular purposes. It thus promoted a similar sense of a closed, distinct space in the Roman urban landscape as seen in the earlier porticoes.Footnote 21
One of those purposes was looking at what was inside the Forum. Like many Augustan spaces, the Forum was an ‘islan[d] of order and directed propaganda’ cut off from the rest of the city by the porticoes and the thirty-three-metre-high wall behind the temple of Mars Ultor.Footnote 22 The Forum, given its central location, seems to fit Newsome's idea of a locus celeberrimus, or a well-trafficked space, a place whose prestige and notoriety correlated with the amount of traffic moving through or to it. Yet most traffic either moved around the Forum or through it via a few routes.Footnote 23 One could see that there was a major new space here, but one could not see into that space from the outside. Visitors had to enter and, once inside, their focus was cut off from the rest of the city and centred on what the Forum displayed.
This isolation marked the next stage in the development of architectural complexes controlled by individuals. Russell shows how different groups across the history of the Republic controlled the Forum Romanum ‘by extending the individual control associated with private space into the political domain’. Yet no single group could ever dominate this space, creating a sort of ‘neutral zone’, devoid of any one authority.Footnote 24 Monumental porticoes, by contrast, fashioned ‘an enclosed, defined space that a patron could construct and manipulate to suit his own goals’.Footnote 25 Much like these portico complexes, the Forum Augustum was a space where access was restricted and space was restructured to contemplate the vision of one man.Footnote 26
The main entryway into the Forum further structured how one encountered its ideologies. The southwestern end was linked to Caesar's Forum, though Mussolini's construction of the Via dei Fori Imperiali renders it impossible to determine exactly how the two spaces were related.Footnote 27 Fuchs provides some clarity in an important recent article. He argues that Augustus extended the portico in Caesar's Forum and changed the intercolumnar distances and other measurements to correspond to those in Augustus’ Forum.Footnote 28 These precise concordances imply that Augustus extended the portico to connect the monument of his adopted father to his own complex.Footnote 29 Moreover, Fuchs shows how an open portico joined the two spaces, not the solid partition wall with three small openings that is traditionally assumed. This portico thus allowed for visitors to pass between the two Fora freely.Footnote 30
Fuchs also proves that one could only enter Augustus’ Forum from the south or east via Caesar's Forum (aside from the much smaller entrances at the northern end, via the Subura neighbourhood). Two entrances – one along the Argiletum (on an axis with the temple of Venus Genetrix) and a second next to the Curia Julia – provided access to the Forum of Caesar and through it to the Forum of Augustus (see Figure 2). The Curia Julia was now situated at the corner where the two Fora met.Footnote 31 This change closed the gap between the edge of the Forum of Caesar and the end of the Basilica Pauli to only 7 metres, leaving the Argiletum an extremely narrow opening through which it could pass on its way into the Forum Romanum.Footnote 32 Fuch's assertions make the best sense of the archaeology. A road of seven metres is too small for major processions to enter the new complex. The area next to the Curia is the only other logical place for this entrance to go. These entrances created two new pathways: one from the temple of Mars Ultor through the portico between the two Fora to the Forum Romanum via some major entrance; and the other from the temple of Venus Genetrix to the Argiletum entrance into the Forum of Caesar.Footnote 33
Fuchs’ (n. 28) reconstruction of the connections between the Fora of Caesar and Augustus. Reproduced with the kind permission of W. Fuchs. Courtesy and Copyright W. Fuchs, 2021.
As Fuchs notes, Augustus could have angled his space to be parallel instead of perpendicular to the Forum of Caesar. This decision implies that Augustus wanted the two spaces to work in tandem with each other and for visitors to pass between them.Footnote 34 Anyone going to Augustus’ Forum first had to encounter the complex dedicated to his father, passing by the equestrian statue of Caesar, and looking towards the temple dedicated to the main deity behind the Julian family, Venus Genetrix.Footnote 35
III. Experiencing the Forum: choices, crowding, and ideology
Once inside the complex, visitors to the Forum Augustum navigated a series of spaces that structured their movement and thus their reception of its ideology. Ovid intimated this division in the passage from the Fasti noted at the start. As Ovid depicts it, Mars, descending to the Forum, takes note first of the temple, then of the main statues in the exedrae, then the rest of the statue programme before returning to the temple. The division of the Forum into exedrae, porticoes, and central area is further fleshed out by the material and architectural differences that differentiated these spaces.Footnote 36 One could see when one entered a new area. The floor of the central plaza, as well as the exterior walls of the temple of Mars, were finished in white Lunense marble. The opus sectile (multi-coloured marble) floors inside the porticoes and exedrae, by contrast, boasted square patterns outlined in different types of marble from across the empire, such as yellow giallo antico marble from Numidia, and black/red Africano marble from Asia Minor. Eleven green cipollino pillars from Euboea marked the entrances to the exedrae.Footnote 37 The colours, or lack thereof, in the floors thus communicated where in the Forum one was.
The Forum directed movement through and among these spaces via differences between crowded and spacious zones. Tuan defined a ‘spacious’ area as one where there was ‘the power and enough room in which to act, while lack of movement equated to lack of freedom within a space’.Footnote 38 Conversely, when more people or things clutter a space, spaciousness transforms into crowding, and this sense of freedom is disrupted. My argument shows how the Forum reversed Tuan's definitions.Footnote 39 The Forum contrasted areas that were physically constricted and crowded with objects to see with those that were physically spacious but contained only a few items. Areas that, by Tuan's definition, therefore, may have felt more physically ‘free’, were in fact those areas in which the ability of the visitor to choose what to observe were the most restricted. Similarly, those areas that may have felt most physically constrained were those in which the visitor had the most choice about what he or she could observe.
III.A: Crowding in the porticoes
The two porticoes were crowded, both spatially and with things to examine. Fragments for over 100 inscriptions related to statues in the porticoes survive.Footnote 40 The porticoes (on two storeys) and the exedrae (on three) were adorned with images of famous figures from the mythical origins of Roman history to the Augustan era. Members of Augustus’ Julian gens marked the northwest portico, while the summi viri – other famous Roman figures –stood opposite them. The statue programme represented in stone the concept of the mos maiorum, ‘the customs of the ancestors’, as it displayed all those ancestors who had established the prototypical values expected of all Roman politicians.Footnote 41
The temporal progression of these statues was linked to a geographic and imperialistic progression. Starting from Aeneas’ departure from Troy, the statues and inscriptions denote the kings of Alba Longa and Rome, the early conquest of Latium, Italy, and of various peoples across the Mediterranean. Probably, a series of names in large letters in the architraves detailed other conquered peoples.Footnote 42 References to the conquest of particular groups in the inscriptions would have been complemented by a catalogue of conquest above.Footnote 43 These names were complemented by caryatids and other potential symbols of conquest in the attic level.Footnote 44
The interiors of the porticoes were 14.6 metres wide, enclosed by a front colonnade, roof, and back wall (see Figure 3).Footnote 45 Each statue stood on a base that contained either a one- or two-part inscription. All the statues possessed a titulus, a short inscription that stated the individual's name and titles. The summi viri's elogium, or expanded inscription of praise, described in more detail the person's achievements and biography.Footnote 46
The interior of the southeastern portico. Photo by the author.
As one walked up and down the Forum or moved in and out of the porticoes, one witnessed a standardized recounting of Roman imperial history that the Augustan regime had prepared. As Geiger relates, one of the senses in which Augustus ‘restored’ the Republic was that he ended the cycle of civil violence that had plagued Rome. The ending of civil discord and the dawning of a new era were placed in relation to the rest of Roman history. The Forum was planned, in Geiger's view, to teach the Roman people ‘about the men and actions that had made the Republic great and then almost destroyed it, until it was saved by Augustus’, ‘an authorized version of Roman history’ that ‘standardized’ elite Roman values.Footnote 47 Augustus selected only those figures who could most explicitly demonstrate these values.
Droge argues that the amount of information contained in the elogia on the summi viri side of the Forum suggests that the structure was as concerned with representing the princeps as part of ‘the line of Romulus…as of Aeneas and Julius Caesar’. Augustus united Rome's first family with the political and military lineage of its founder. Stevenson makes the opposite argument, that the Julian-ness of the Forum was the key point of emphasis and the summi viri were shown as ‘Julian’ more than Roman.Footnote 48
One need not adhere to this rigid dichotomy. The Forum's statues showed Julian figures expanding the Roman Empire and adhering to pietas, virtus, and other aristocratic values. The summi viri, as Stevenson notes, were placed in a space dominated by Julian figures and a temple to the gens’ divine ancestry.Footnote 49 The two sides of the Forum were inextricably linked.Footnote 50 This interconnectivity was fundamental to the Forum's definition of Roman temporalities. Indeed, as seen in Vergil's description of Rome in Book 8 of the Aeneid and in other Augustan monuments, the new regime sought to promote Augustus as the nexus between ‘the primeval and inherently moral past with the new golden age’, and between that golden age and the future of Rome. Much like Vergil, the Forum ‘both compresses and emphasizes the distance between the past and the present’.Footnote 51
Visitors to the porticoes had several ways to approach these statues. They could go from statue to statue, processing the entire programme in detail. They would see how over time the Julii and summi viri enacted the values that made Rome a world empire. Alternatively, visitors could breeze through the collection, looking at figures that caught their eye.Footnote 52 With no prescribed path through the statue programme, every visit had the potential to fall towards either end of this spectrum.
Thus, visitors had, at one level, a large degree of choice about how they observed the Forum's statues. Indeed, Geiger rightly questions why so many statues were included and whether a smaller collection ‘would have been more…effective in making the viewer concentrate’ on a few specific things.Footnote 53
However, the statues’ physical arrangement within the porticoes created certain hierarchies of viewing that concentrated visitors’ attention. Russell discusses how architecture in the Forum Romanum and other public spaces used ‘languages of power’ to teach their visitors which activities were permissible or not in a given space.Footnote 54 The layout of the statues in the Forum Augustum similarly shaped practices of viewing.
There were two major groups of statues. First, situated in a liminal space between the porticoes’ interior and the central area, one line of statues was placed on bases ‘in front of each column of the porticoes’ façade’.Footnote 55 For those walking through the central area, these statues were prominent features, as one did not need to physically enter the porticoes to see them. Yet, since their podia were located next to the porticoes’ columns, their backs could still be seen by those walking through the interior of the porticoes, who could have been intrigued enough to take a closer look. These statues show how my division of the Forum into porticoes, exedrae, and central area was not absolute, as these statues blurred the lines between the porticoes and the central area.Footnote 56
Second, upon entering the porticoes, one faced groups of figures housed in niches along the back wall. The visibility of these statues varied. The back walls in both porticoes were interrupted for a considerable part of their length by the pillars that marked the entrances to the exedrae.Footnote 57 These pillars isolated the statues into smaller groups. On the one hand, viewers would have had fewer statues to observe at any given point along the Forum's length and could have paid more attention to individual figures. On the other hand, the isolation of these statues into several smaller groups may have minimized their importance, separated as they were between the exedrae entrances.Footnote 58 The porticoes’ relatively wide interior meant that one could move up and down the space without necessarily looking at the statues along the back wall. Over fourteen metres wide is considerably larger than the widths of the monumental porticoes studied by Macaulay-Lewis. As she argues for this type of portico, which dates from the late Republic to the Flavian period, these spaces were wider than the average Roman pavement, leaving plenty of room for leisurely walking. Similarly, the porticoes’ roomy interiors permitted one to stroll while only giving the statues on either side cursory attention.Footnote 59
Recent archaeology discovered a third exedra at the southwestern side of the northern portico, with a parallel southeastern hemicycle supposed. The poor remains of the southeastern space – just the foundations and some markings for the first course of blocks – caution against any major conclusions. La Rocca notes that the southern exedrae were about 10 metres smaller than the originals.Footnote 60 The only substantial remains were a ‘quadrilinear structure’ made from travertine, and an opus sectile floor.Footnote 61 Carnabuci has offered some intriguing theories about how these lower exedrae would have been used in connection with the Forum's legal functions.Footnote 62
For my purposes, the archaeological evidence, poor as it is, explicates the Forum's hierarchy of viewing. The lower exedrae would have added further disruptions to the flow of statue niches along the portico's back wall. Thus, a visitor moving from the end of the northern portico by the temple of Mars Ultor to its opposite end would have encountered, in order: the entrance to the upper exedra, a small line of niches, the entrance to the lower exedra, and either another smaller line of niches or whatever architectural device connected the exedra to the end of the portico and the edge of the Forum itself. The segmentation of the interior statues into groups rendered the statues placed along the front colonnade of the porticoes even more important. Whereas the statues inside were divided into several groups, those on the edge of the porticoes formed a single line along the length of the Forum.
Issues of light also impacted visibility. The statues along the façade were open to the elements, in particular those along the northwestern portico in the morning, and those along the southeastern portico at sunset. The interiors of the porticoes were shielded by a gabled roof and barrel-vaulted ceiling. Some archaeologists believe there were no windows in the attic storey, restricting any light in these spaces.Footnote 63 Ungaro's reconstruction of the inside of the northwestern exedra, however, does show light entering above a pillared screen. Coarelli asserts that the front wall of the exedrae was higher than the back wall of the porticoes and that windows were installed there. But even these reconstructions do not allow for much light to enter these interior spaces.Footnote 64
A spatial-visual hierarchy was at play with the statue programme that structured how visitors interacted with it. The division of spaces, the access to light, the position of a statue vis-à-vis the entrance to the exedrae, whether a statue was in one of the more prominent locations within the porticoes – all these factors determined how easily and/or frequently a given statue or group of statues would be seen. O'Sullivan describes how ‘[t]he new Augustan city offers a world tour of sorts for some visitors, but it is a strictly guided tour, open only to those who play the game’.Footnote 65 So it was with the Forum, where one was seemingly shown a comprehensive vision of Roman history and imperialism, but one's ability to understand that vision was limited.
I noted above how scholarship has focused on the ideas of pietas and virtus in the porticoes. Because of the prevalence of these ideas in the extant epigraphy, many visitors grasped their importance. Many inscriptions discuss how some figures triumphed over a foreign enemy and quashed civil discord at Rome.Footnote 66 But there was simply no guarantee that these would be the only messages that visitors received, given the number of things a visitor could observe, the countless possible paths he or she could take through the porticoes, and the ways in which the arrangement of the statues privileged the viewing of certain areas within the porticoes over others.
III.B Ideological spaciousness
By contrast, when one passed into more spacious areas, including the upper exedrae and the central area, choices of statues for the visitor to see were restricted, while these spaces offered more freedom of movement. In the exedrae, the statues were situated on two levels. Niches for fifteen statues on the lower and for as many as seventeen on the upper level have been found or are assumed. Two central figures, situated on the lower level of either northern exedra and in the centre of the room's arched back wall, depicted Aeneas and Romulus. Aeneas rescuing from Troy some combination of his father Anchises, his son, Ascanius, and/or the Penates was accompanied by the kings of Alba Longa, while Romulus winning the first spolia opima, arms which signified when a Roman general had defeated a foreign enemy in single combat, was flanked by the kings of Rome. These kings were set in groups of seven that flanked Romulus and Aeneas’ larger niches.Footnote 67
A viewer in the upper exedrae was limited to a much smaller set of statues when compared with the view in the porticoes: from at least 100 arranged in multiple different spaces, to a few dozen in one room. Excavations found no evidence of permanent structures in the exedrae's centre to obstruct one's view of the statues.Footnote 68 Spannagel noted how these statues were both part of the overall collection of statues in the porticoes, but also marked as special by their placement in their own space.Footnote 69 In the Forum's hierarchy of viewing, the regime sought to make Aeneas, Romulus, and the two groups of kings some of the most important (and easiest) things for visitors to observe. It is no wonder that Ovid mentions only these two figures by name.Footnote 70 The fact that the exedrae were set back from the rest of the porticoes further isolated them from the rest of the complex, perhaps to prevent noise from the central area from interrupting activities within these spaces.Footnote 71
The central area
In the Forum's central area, the regime radically reduced the range of choices of what visitors could see in the most spacious area in the complex. One could only see the central marble floor of the plaza, Augustus’ statue, and the temple of Mars Ultor (see Figure 4, below).
Figure 1 reproduced. Plan of the Forum Augustum.
The Lunense marble floor distinguished the central plaza from any other space in the Forum. This Carrara marble was famed for its ‘pure, white colour,’ and what little evidence there is for reactions to it emphasizes this ‘gleaming’ quality.Footnote 72 The advent of intensive quarrying at Carrara under Caesar transformed the city's colour palate from tufa, unglazed brick, and stucco, to marble that reflected Rome's superior status through ‘a superior materiality’.Footnote 73 The Forum emphasized Lunense marble's luminescence by exposing the space with the least amount of colour to the most light. Even under Augustus, large-scale uses of marble were focused on particular spots, and within ‘introverted Augustan enclosures’, such as the Forum. Thus, visitors passed from the rest of the still relatively colourless city into the shimmering white of the central area (see Figure 5, below).Footnote 74 This space communicated to visitors that they were entering a special space, one illuminated – figuratively and literally – by the material achievements of Augustus and his new golden age.Footnote 75
A view of the marble paving looking from the back of the Forum to the southwest. Photo by the author.
The white colour also functioned as a blank, material canvas, an empty ‘stage’ upon which the rest of the central area was set. One's focus was quickly directed to Augustus’ own quadriga statue in the centre of the space. Zanker notes how no features of this statue have been found thus far, meaning that it was located in the unexcavated portion of the Forum, and thus towards ‘the middle of the open area’. This position meant the statue confronted visitors very quickly after entering from Caesar's Forum: one entered Augustus’ space and immediately saw the princeps.Footnote 76
Augustus’ statue signified the most visible reference to the princeps’ himself in the Forum's artistic programme. Through the actions he undertook to vow to build the temple of Mars Ultor, Augustus had, as Luce points out, ‘surpassed the deeds of all great men of Roman history’. It was only fitting that he received his own statue, in its own space.Footnote 77 While the porticoes told the story of how previous Roman leaders conquered the world, Augustus’ statue marked the furthering of this mission through his actions as princeps. The fact that this statue was set aside in its own space marked the central area as one in which Augustus and his actions dominated.Footnote 78 Augustus’ statue signified the start of the Principate and established the princeps as ‘the model’ according to which political and military success would be measured.Footnote 79 The statue also united both sides of the Forum, showing the latest scion of the Julian house seated on a quadriga as the latest of Rome's triumphal summi viri.Footnote 80
It would have been impossible to ignore the Forum's central element, the temple of Mars Ultor. This massive structure stood on a 17.7-metre-tall podium, while the pycnostyle colonnade called for smaller intercolumniations that made the façade look even taller. The temple was the first to have a front colonnade of eight-by-eight columns. Even the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus did not have as many. The exterior columns matched the central plaza in white Luni marble.Footnote 81 Ovid emphasizes how the Forum was fundamentally Mars’ space, a sacred zone under his control. Ovid relates the god's descent into the Forum as, ‘bearing arms, he looks upon the pediment of [the temple] and approves that the undefeated gods hold the highest places’. The passage opens with multiple verbs of seeing (spectact, conspicienda, etc.) that stress how Ovid is looking at the Forum through Mars’ eyes. As Barchiesi points out, this focalization underscores Mars’ control over the space.Footnote 82 Again, Ovid reflects a divine itinerary through the Forum, but I think this passage reflects the central importance of the temple to any visit to the complex.
Indeed, it was impossible to enter the Forum from any angle and not at least see the temple in the background. It was the centrepiece of the complex, both in terms of size and ideology. The temple and the quadriga statue encouraged comparisons between the achievements of the Julians and summi viri and Augustus himself. No one included in the Forum was judged on his own merits; one was always presented in comparison to Augustus.Footnote 83
This connection was further strengthened by the reasons behind the epithet Ultor (the Avenger), for those who remembered Caesar's death and the return of the Parthian standards in 19 bce.Footnote 84 Spannagel maintains that Aeneas and Romulus in the exedrae tied the rest of the Forum to the temple, intimating the twin causes behind the cult of Mars, familial pietas and virtue-based revenge.Footnote 85 I think it is possible that Romans who knew about the reasons behind the cult's founding could have made those connections.Footnote 86
One did not have to remember those events, however, to understand the connections made between Augustus, his family's prime position in the Roman state, and their divine sanction from Mars. No matter which path one took through the complex, seeing or at least passing by Augustus on his quadriga and the temple of Mars Ultor were unavoidable actions. Even if one entered the complex from the Subura to the north and immediately turned into one of the porticoes (see Figure 3), he or she would still be lodged in the narrow passageway between the temple's base and the edge of the porticoes.Footnote 87
The contents of the temple's pedimental sculpture and dedicatory inscription explain Augustus’ relationship to Mars. Several slabs attributed to a Claudian monument appear to show Mars, Fortuna, Venus, Cupid, and Roma.Footnote 88 Assuming this scholarly consensus is correct, the inclusion of Venus, Mars, and Cupid referenced Augustus’ own divine ancestry and thus his genealogical relationship to the gods. It linked the divinity that oversaw the Forum with the princeps who had commissioned the space.
The temple's dedicatory inscription made the connection with Augustus explicit. Only a tiny fragment has survived: a piece of Carrara marble discovered on the steps of the temple during excavations in the 1920s, which Alföldy locates in the architrave.Footnote 89 Alföldy proposes that Augustus’ name, titles, and role as the temple's builder, would have been prominently featured in the text, probably at the start of the inscription.Footnote 90 Based on the original block and what is known of the architrave's design, there was no space for Mars’ name, which Alföldy locates above the architrave in the frieze in larger letters.Footnote 91 Alföldy concedes that his analysis does not produce an exact epigraphic reconstruction. Instead, he seeks ‘knowledge of the general structure’ of the inscription, and I think featuring Augustus’ name and titles prominently is a safe assumption.Footnote 92 The pediment promoted Mars and Augustus’ divine ancestry, while the inscription made it explicit who oversaw honouring the god with this temple.
Choices, access, and social position
In this analysis of movement through the Forum, I have assumed a neutral, standard visitor. Of course, a visitor's position within Roman society, their level of literacy, and their knowledge of Roman history affected their experience of its spaces.Footnote 93 The Forum addressed this problem by varying its use of epigraphy and by ensuring that every space contained visual material.
Mostly Rome's elites would have been able to read the Forum's inscriptions. This audience possessed the knowledge of Roman history required to fully understand the statue programme. The visuality of the exedrae and central area made them more accessible to the Roman public. Aeneas and Romulus are shown in forms that recall evocative examples of pietas and virtus that even the illiterate could comprehend. In the central area, the temple and its inscription dominated the space and emphatically linked Mars and his family with Augustus and his statue.Footnote 94 The Forum thus used a variety of architectural, spatial, and visual tools to ensure that its narrative of Roman history, conquest, and values ‘touched the senses through its material design’.Footnote 95
Questions of accessibility also impacted visitors’ experiences. The central area was presumably open to the public at most times, aside from the major events discussed in the next section. The two upper exedrae, in their function as court rooms, were also relatively easy to access, though their smaller size and specialized function limited capacity. Ironically, the most prominent and important structure in the Forum was also the least accessible to the average Roman. Despite its size and grandeur, there is no evidence to suggest that the interior of the temple of Mars Ultor was more open to public visits than other Roman temples. The function of the structure as a meeting place for the Senate also implies limited access. This lack of access cautions against Droge's argument that, since the podium in the temple's inner sanctuary (cella) could not have supported a large cult statue, Augustus himself standing on the podium acted as a living stand-in for a cult statue when he presided over meetings of the Senate in this space.Footnote 96 This is an intriguing proposition, but one must ask: how significant was Augustus’ presence in the apse if only the Senate could observe him and not the majority of visitors to the Forum, most of whom would not have had access to the interior of the temple in the first place? Perhaps the interior was a space designed strictly for the Senate. But it would seem odd that Augustus would commission an image of himself in an otherwise highly public monument that only a select few could see.
IV. Movement and space during the Forum's inauguration
A better understanding of how the Forum structured movement can be gleaned by considering how a Roman experienced the Forum during public events. Recent scholarship has analyzed the Forum from this angle, focusing on the legal functions of the complex.Footnote 97 But other uses have not received as much attention. I would like to focus on the inauguration ceremony for the Forum, conducted in 2 bce. The ceremony dispatched Augustus’ adopted son, Gaius, to reassert Roman control over Armenia.Footnote 98 The Forum's inauguration allowed Augustus to link the Forum's vision of Roman history, foreign policy, and imperialism to the next possible princeps.Footnote 99
While no direct evidence survives for what occurred in the Forum during this ceremony, a few events can be safely assumed. Gaius’ departure was a grand send-off, or profectio, for Gaius to the east, but it was also the dedication and inauguration of a templum, a space formally designated as religious and set aside for Mars’ worship. Thus, a sacrifice at the altar on the temple steps would have occurred, presided over by Augustus – as pontifex maximus or high priest – and Gaius. Situated in the centre of the steps and a little more than halfway up the podium, the altar was well positioned for visibility within the central plaza.Footnote 100 This event reoriented the attention of the Forum's visitors. On a normal day, some could observe the temple, while others would have ventured into the porticoes. At the inauguration, the freedom to follow one's own itinerary in the Forum was restricted to a certain extent, as the regime tried to focus everyone's attention on the temple and the altar. Spectators could have looked from the statue of Augustus in the centre of the square, to the dedicatory inscription bearing his name, to the person of Augustus himself. Augustus as a triumphant general, as pontifex maximus, and as the symbolic head of the new Roman state were visually connected in this ceremony.Footnote 101
It is also a safe assumption that Augustus made some sort of announcement that Gaius would be leading the expedition to Armenia. Here the statues at the edges of the porticoes may have been incorporated into the ceremony. Augustus could have referenced some of these figures, even pointing them out directly. Alternatively, he could have vaguely alluded to them as a group, leaving it up to his audience to locate individual figures themselves and connect them with the inauguration's symbolism. Attendees could, of course, have drawn their own comparisons, placing, as Sumi aptly put it, Gaius in the ‘continuum of commanders, the makers of Roman history’, while ‘his departure anticipated similar glory for himself’.Footnote 102 Droge similarly notes how Gaius ‘entered into the long continuum of Augustan history’ and demonstrated how that history was being extended into the future. His inclusion in the ceremony demonstrated Augustan control over Rome's past, present, and future.Footnote 103
While the bulk of the spectators present at the inauguration were clustered in the central area, some could have filtered or been forced for lack of space into the porticoes. The more confined, darker spaces underneath the porticoes’ roof restricted these spectators’ views of the temple steps, though they could hear some of what was said. These spaces also provided opportunities for some to step aside and ignore the events in the central area, undermining the regime's ability to control movement during the inauguration.
The porticoes’ ability to restrict who could see events occurring in the Forum's centre brings up another key feature of how its architecture impacted the politics of events like the inauguration.Footnote 104 The Forum Augustum's sharp internal delineations and isolation from the rest of Rome limited how many people could fit inside the complex.Footnote 105 Members of the imperial family, the Senate, and most other major political players could attend events like the inauguration, but beyond them, only a small portion of the Roman public could have fitted in.Footnote 106 Thus, while the Forum Augustum was a public space, its public nature and ability to serve large groups could vary.
V. Conclusions
In this paper, I have shown how a full understanding of the ideology of the Forum Augustum necessitates understanding how the Forum's collection of social spaces directed the movement of its visitors. Barchiesi called for scholars to ‘shift our emphasis from the result of the reception [of a monument's meaning] to the process of reception and its problems’.Footnote 107 Visitors to the Forum experienced its messages by looking at the statues, inscriptions, temple, and architecture as they passed by them and moved from the central area into the darkened corridors of the porticoes and exedrae and back. The Forum was designed with this movement in mind and promoted its values differently in each space.
The Forum did not require that these values be the only messages one received or that they be received in a particular way in all areas of the Forum. The design of the complex limited the potentialities for what a visitor could learn about Roman history and empire, but still allowed the viewer the chance to chart his or her own path and acquire other knowledge, including alternative or competing interpretations.
Uncovering the general ideological principles expressed by a given monument can only be the first stage of analysis. One must also be attentive to how particular spaces within a monument articulated those ideas. Where was a viewer's gaze directed to specific elements? How did considerations specific to certain sectors of society affect how visitors interacted with the ideological programme presented to them? Consideration of such issues will allow scholars to offer richer, more comprehensive accounts of major public spaces such as the Forum Augustum.
