Ara Pacis
THE ARA PACIS MONUMENT AND THE FRIEZE
The Ara Pacis represents one of the highest expressions of Augustan art and at the same time a work with profound symbolic references, which acquire meaning in the context of the historical transition from the Republic to the new imperial structure.
Its construction was voted by the Roman Senate in 13 BC to celebrate the victorious return of Augustus from the western provinces, as the princeps himself recalls in the story of his Res gestae. Since the dedication of the monument was celebrated on 30 January 9 BC, we know that the completion of the work required a total of three and a half years, necessary for the creation of the rich and complex decoration, most likely entrusted to neo-Attic sculptors active in Rome.
The Ara Pacis consists of an enclosure with two fronts of 11.63 m and two sides of 10.625 m. In the center of the shorter sides two openings give access to the altar itself, on which the sacrifices were performed.
The sculptural decoration runs on both the external and internal sides of the enclosure. The external one unfolds on two bands: the upper one bears a figurative frieze, the lower one a vegetal decoration with acanthus spirals. This bas-relief decoration represents one of the masterpieces of classical sculpture. The spires develop with rigorous symmetry around the axis drawn by the vertical stem of the acanthus and hide small animals (lizards, snakes, scorpions and frogs) in the foliage or are intertwined with branches of other plants (grapes, ivy and laurel). The entire composition is surmounted and punctuated by the presence of swans with spread wings in a heraldic position. The evident symbolic value of the entire design and of the individual elements alludes to the golden state of nature and the return of an age of rebirth and prosperity under the guidance of the princeps.
The upper external band of the enclosure represents, on the north and south sides, a procession. On the southern front, facing the city, Augustus appears with his head veiled and crowned with laurel, preceded and followed by members of the amplissima Dirittiia, the main priestly positions of the State. According to the current interpretation, the Pontifices precede him and surround him the Augures (to be identified rather as consules, according to a more recent critical reading) while following him are the three Flamines maiores, the priests of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, the greatest triad of divinities of archaic Rome.
The meaning of the procession is the subject of different interpretations. One hypothesis has Augustus portrayed in the act of proceeding with the inauguration, the ceremony celebrated by the Augures before starting the construction of a sacred building. The scene depicted would therefore be the inauguration of the Ara Pacis itself, celebrated in 13 BC. It is also possible, however, that what is represented here is instead the reditus of Augustus, his return to Rome from the victorious campaigns in Gaul and Spain, which took place on 4 July of the same year, 13 BC. In this case the consuls and the highest Roman priesthood would be represented in the act of welcoming the victorious prince, bringer of peace, prosperity and abundance.
On the same southern front is portrayed Agrippa, friend, main collaborator and son-in-law of Augustus, who died in 12 BC during the construction of the Ara Pacis. Agrippa opens the sequence of family members, conceived as a true dynastic program. The succession of relatives is so expertly calculated that, as has been noted, all Roman emperors, up to Nero, descend from the members of the Julian family depicted here.
Other members of the imperial family, generally of lesser prominence, appear on the northern side of the enclosure. Here the procession portrays the priestly orders of the Septemviri epulones, in charge of bloody sacrifices, of the Augures and of the Quindecemviri sacris faciundis, custodians of the Sibylline books, thus exhausting the representation of the most important religious positions of the Roman system.
The two fronts of the building, on the sides of the doors, are decorated in the upper band with four panels, two on each side. On the panels of the western front are represented Aeneas sacrificing a sow to the penates and Romulus and Remus suckled by the she-wolf. The first motif celebrates the Roman descent, and that of the gens Julia in particular, from Aeneas and his son Julo Ascanius, from whom Augustus' family takes its name. The left panel is very fragmentary. It depicted the she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus in the presence of the god Mars, father of the twins, and the shepherd Faustolo. In this way the Ara Pacis signified the double divine origin of the Romans and the prince: the former from the warrior god, through the twins, the latter from Venus, through the pius Aeneas.
On the eastern front, the left panel represents the so-called Tellus, according to the Hellenistic motif of the fertile land and its fruits, represented by the two cherubs sitting on her lap. The Tellus, certainly the best known and most studied representation of the entire Ara Pacis, is actually better interpreted as a polysemous divinity, with many symbolic values, summarizing the meanings of peace and prosperity and comparable, in other words, to the figures of Ghe, Venus and Rhea Silvia. On the sides two nymphs, one on a swan, the second on a sea dragon, perhaps symbolizing air and water. Of the right panel, only the fragment of a female figure sitting on a trophy of arms remains: in all probability the victorious goddess Roma, perhaps flanked, originally, by the figures of Honos and Virtus. Given these interpretations, the Ara Pacis welcomed those who entered from the Via Flaminia with the representation of the pax Romana established through the imperio terra marique.
Also along the internal walls of the enclosure are two superimposed friezes, the lower representing a wooden palisade and the upper a series of garlands of fruit and leaves, in which plants of symbolic value can be seen interspersed with bucrania supported by sacrificial bands. From an analysis conducted in 1937, the color of the vegetal figures and the gilding of the sacrificial pottery were assumed.
The internal altar is perhaps the least preserved part of the Altar. Few fragments of the frieze that ran along the plinth were recovered. At the height of the table, however, there remains a small-sized figuration, where the vestals, the apparitores who accompanied them and three sacrificial oxen can be distinguished, perhaps led by the victimarii to the annual sacrifice which every year, as the Res gestae recalls, was celebrated on the same cafeteria.
