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Adrift toward Empire Author(s): John R. Senseney Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 70, No. 4 (December 2011), pp. 421-441 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jsah.2011.70.4.421 . Accessed: 08/02/2012 16:20 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and Society of Architectural Historians are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. http://www.jstor.org Adrift toward Empire The Lost Porticus Octavia in Rome and the Origins of the Imperial Fora john r. senseney University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign he porticus, a Roman architectural type adapted in a recent essay Dell Upton presented the ruins of Roman from the Greek stoa, was a building block of Baalbek in Lebanon as a monument exemplifying new TRepublican and Imperial urbanism.1 An early and possibilities for a world history of architecture.3 By empha- especially significant example of this type is the Porticus sizing the variety of narratives projected upon ancient build- Octavia. It was built outside Rome’s sacred core (the ings since the eighteenth century, Upton identifies a problem pomerium) by Gnaeus Octavius, leader of the victorious naval endemic to architectural history: the reduction of monu- fleet at the battle of Pydna which ended the Third Macedo- ments to representatives of cultures or periods (Hellenistic, nian War in 168 BCE. The earliest colonnaded portico to be Roman Imperial, Islamic, etc.), rather than recognizing the built in Rome by a victorious commander as a monument to fluidity and improvisation inherent in historical processes. his triumph, the Porticus Octavia initiated the development The widely held notion that a building or complex possesses of an architectural type whose evolving form and meaning an authentic meaning fixed at its origin by the cultural and both reflected and shaped Rome’s transitions from the individual identity of its builders may be a fallacy. While the Middle Republic (264–133 BCE) to the height of the Empire material durability and monumentality of many historical in the second century CE. The building campaigns of this buildings creates an illusion of permanence, this permanence period transformed the city into a sequence of porticoed is belied by physical alterations and ever-changing uses. In enclosures, stretching from the periphery to the Imperial responding to Upton’s remarks by emphasizing historical fora of the urban center (Figure 1).2 process, however, it is not necessary to do away with ques- As a Middle Republican monument of Greek typologi- tions of beginnings. On the contrary, postulating the original cal origin that stood at the beginning of this sea change, the purposes, character, and appearance of buildings or architec- Porticus Octavia offers an opportunity to reflect on how sub- tural types in ways that avoid easy cultural reification may sequent architectural developments may affect readings of reveal the processes of their change, i.e., the flow or drift of intention and meaning in earlier, influential buildings. Writing their architectural histories.4 not as a classicist but as a historian of the built environment, As important as the Porticus Octavia was as a precedent for Rome’s subsequent urban changes, it defies the illusion of Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 70, no. 4 (December 2011), 421–441. permanence. With no surviving visible remains or visual rep- ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2011 by the Society of Architectural Histo- resentations, it is a building that is lost to us. Yet its material rians. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or repro- duce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions and formal inaccessibility is arguably the least consequential website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2011.70.4.421. sense in which it has vanished. Nor is the circumstance of its destruction by fire and rebuilding by Augustus in the architecture for the imperator.5 Octavius’s introduction of early Imperial period the most significant impediment to our this foreign architectural type released a flow of meanings in retrieval of its original state. Rather, what may separate us Republican and Imperial Roman architecture whose future most decisively from the Porticus Octavia is our ignorance course he could not have determined. of its patron’s intentions. As a result, one risks an anachronis- tic reading of these intentions as identical with those of the Urban Center and Periphery, Empire creators of later porticoed complexes, who built to com- and Republic memorate their conquests and to convey their military prow- Julius Caesar’s decision to build the Forum Iulium as a space ess, thereby threatening and eventually subsuming the open to the sky and enclosed by porticoes had far-reaching traditional powers of the Republican magistracies. In other consequences for the development of Rome’s city center words, the repetition of a building type does not ensure that during the Imperial period (Figure 2).6 Planned and con- earlier examples of the type anticipated, even in a nascent structed after his civil war victory over Pompey at the Battle way, the purposes and meanings with which it was later of Pharsalos in 48 BCE, and completed under Augustus, associated. Although the Porticus Octavia clearly was a kind Caesar’s forum established the model for the Imperial fora of triumphal architecture, the details of its symbolic function that followed (see Figure 1).7 From Caesar’s time to the were not fixed for all times at its origin. Later victorious height of Imperial power in the second century CE, this patrons could create new meanings for it, and even transfer sequence of enclosures gradually developed into a unified these new meanings to their own buildings and complexes, complex of marble-paved courts, temples, and gardens, all thereby reinventing the Porticus Octavia as an authoritative framed by colonnaded porticoes. The Imperial fora were precedent. In this way, later porticoed enclosures acquired among the most celebrated and highly visible spaces in signification in relation to one another as the architecture of Rome, dominating the cityscape and molding its architec- victorious commanders, transforming Rome visually and tural, social, and ideological fabric for centuries to come.8 ideologically into a city of porticoes built by a succession of While there is good reason to view the Forum Iulium as imperatores in whom power was centered. Integral to this an updated version of the old Forum Romanum, it would process were the monarchical Hellenistic antecedents of the be difficult to characterize it and its descendents, built by Porticus Octavia, which inspired a new kind of triumphal emperors from Augustus to Trajan, as a distinct architectural Figure 1 Imperial Fora, Rome, restored plan, left to right: Forum Traiani with Temple of Divine Trajan, Forum Iulium (below) with Temple of Venus Genetrix, Forum Augustum (above) with Temple of Mars Ultor, Forum Transitorium with Temple of Minerva, Templum Pacis with Temple of Pax (author’s drawing, modified from Silviana Rizzo, “Il progetto fori imperiali,” inCrypta Balbi—Fori Imperiali: Archeologia urbana a Roma e interventi di restauro nell’anno del Grande Giubileo, ed. Serena Baiani and Massimiliano Ghiraldi [Rome: Edizioni Kappa, 2000], pl. 1) 422 JSAH / 70:4, DECEMBER 2011 Figure 2 Forum Iulium, Rome, begun ca. 48 BCE, view toward restored remains of southwest portico fronting the tabernae (author’s photo) Perhaps more easily understood than the architectural origins of the Imperial fora was the identity of the institution that they embodied. As the new site of public business, the Forum Iulium took over the major administrative functions of the venerable Forum Romanum, offering its tabernae for gov- ernmental offices, its Curia Iulia for senatorial meetings, and a new open space for public assemblies in front of the rostrate Temple of Venus Genetrix (see Figure 1).11 As ceremonial spaces, furthermore, the Imperial fora reflected the roles of ritual and memory that had been and continued to be integral to the old forum. With the exception of the Forum Iulium, however, the later complexes were less conspicuously identi- fied as places of official business in the manner of the Forum Romanum.12 Nor were the Imperial fora connected with com- merce in the manner of the Forum Boarium or Forum Holi- torium, the cattle and vegetable markets, respectively.13 Figure 3 Forum Romanum, Rome, simplified plan showing locations It may be most accurate to consider the term “forum” in of major architectural monuments at the time of the construction of its basic sense as an outdoor place adaptable to a number of the Forum Iulium: (1) Temple of Concord; (2) Temple of Venus Genetrix; (3) Forum Iulium; (4) Curia Iulia;
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