The Pantheon: From Antiquity to the Present Page 10

  Connections with the Mausoleum of Augustus

  It is in this context that the relationship between the axis of the Pantheon and that of the Mausoleum of Augustus becomes significant (Plate XVI and Fig. 2.11).90 Because the two monuments were constructed at the same time – the Mausoleum was almost finished in 23 BC, at which time it received the ashes of Marcellus, while the Pantheon was dedicated by Agrippa in 27 or 25 BC – this axial correspondence cannot be accidental. It composes a unified urbanistic project whose functions may have incorporated a proportional relationship, too: The diameter of the Mausoleum is 300 feet at the base, while that of the Pantheon is 150 feet measured around a ring passing through the center of the columns.91 Previously, Augustus had built the Ara Pacis, the huge sundial (horologium), and the imperial altars. The empty space between the Mausoleum and the Pantheon must have further reinforced the link between them. Though restricted by later constructions, this axis seems to have remained as a kind of avenue.

  2.11. Axial alignment of the Pantheon and the Mausoleum of Augustus. (Archivio della Sovraintendenza dei Beni Culturali di Roma Capitale)

  The ideological and visual relationship with his family’s mausoleum would have complemented a monument celebrating Augustus the ruler and his divine associations after the fashion of Hellenistic precedents. Initially, the dynastic intent was expressed somewhat ambiguously, since Augustus’s power at this stage was still not entirely consolidated. These circumstances may explain why only faint traces of this function survive in literary sources,92 and why, by the Severan period, the precise sense of its name was no longer generally understood. According to Dio Cassius, as we have seen, it was called Pantheon “probably” because it held the images of many gods, but for him “the main reason” for the name lay in the fact that the dome fully represented the heavens.93 More than a century afterward, in a visit to Rome in AD 357, Constantius II could still admire the Pantheon as a lofty vaulted space.94 Ammianus Marcellinus, in recounting Constantius II’s visit, does not mention statues of the gods, but only those of the emperors that had come to populate the rotunda. Presumably they occupied the aedicules and the niches, perhaps at the expense of some of the original, divine occupants. The Pantheon had evidently become definitively connected with the Roman emperors, its capacious vault symbolic of their dominion over a vast tract of the earth’s surface.

  I would like to thank Karen Lloyd for her translation and Mark Wilson Jones for editorial suggestions. This research was completed in the summer of 2008. Since it has not been possible to review the text and notes on the basis of more recent references, I refer the reader to my article “Augustus’ Solar Meridian and the Augustan Program in the Northern Campus Martius: Attempt at a Holistic View,” Journal of Roman Archaeology, supplementary ser. 99, 2014, for updates, revisions, and bibliographic additions.

  1 J. M. Roddaz, “Marcus Agrippa,” Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 253, Rome 1984, pp. 252–277; Dio Cassius (LIII, 27) (trans. as Dio Cassius: Roman History, by Earnest Cary and Herbert Foster, Cambridge 1917). The dedicatory inscription dates the completion of the building to 27 BC (CIL [Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, ed. Matthaeus della Corte, Berlin 1970], vol. 6, 896), while Dio’s passage suggests 25 BC.

  2 The fire of AD 80 was said to have burned the Serapeum and the Iseum, the Saepta, the Poseidonion, the Baths of Agrippa, the Pantheon, the Diribitorium, the Theatre of Balbus, the stage of the Theatre of Pompey, the Portico of Octavia, and the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus with the surrounding buildings (Dio Cassius, 66.24, 2). Domitian assumed power in AD 81 and a reconstruction of the Pantheon is commonly attributed to him (Eusebius of Caesarea, Chronicon, 3d century BC, ed. Alfred Schoene, Berlin 1866, a. 354, 146; Hieronymus, Chronicum Eusebii ab Hieronymo retractatum ad annum Abrahae 2395, 2105 (Malcolm Drew Donalson, A Translation of Jerome’s Chronicon with Historical Commentary, Lewiston 1996), but this is doubtful, as we shall see.

  3 Paulus Orosius, “Pantheum Romae fulmine concrematum,” Historiae adversum paganos, 5th century AD, ed. Zangemeister, Leipzig 1889, vol. 7, p. 12; Hieronymus, Chronicum Eusebii ab Hieronymo retractatum ad annum Abrahae 2395, 2127 (Donalson 1996). Hadrian’s restoration: Historia Augusta, Hadrianus, 19. Elsewhere in the Historia Augusta, however, the dedication is attributed to Antoninus Pius (Historia Augusta, Antonius Pius, 8). In this venue I will not go into the question of the paternity of the “new” Pantheon, namely, whether it was begun in the time of Trajan and designed by Apollodorus of Damascus, but according to custom will refer only to a “Hadrianic” Pantheon. For this debate, see Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer, “Apollodorus von Damaskus – der Architekt des Pantheon,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 90, 1975, pp. 316–347; Mark Wilson Jones, Principles of Roman Architecture, New Haven 2000, pp. 192 ff.; A. Viscogliosi, “Il Pantheon e Apollodoro di Damasco,” Tra Damasco e Roma: L’architettura di Apollodoro nella cultura classica, ed. Festa Farina et al., Rome 2001, pp. 156–161; Hetland’s chapter in this volume.

  4 Translation by Cary and Foster 1917. On terminology: Hugo Hepding, “Die Arbeiten zu Pergamum 1904–1905, Die Inschriften 2,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Römische Abteilung 32, 1907, pp. 241–414; Adolf Engeli, Die Oratio Variata bei Pausanias, Berlin 1907; A. D. Nock, “Synnaos Theos,”Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 41, 1930, p. 3, note 5, p. 23; Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, vol. 1, ed. Zeph Stewert, Cambridge 1972, p. 204, note 5; p. 218 ff.; L. Robert, “Recherches épigraphiques, VII: Décret de la Confédération lycienne à Corinthe,” Revue des études anciennes 62, 1960, pp. 324–342; p. 317; L. Robert, Opera minora selecta. Epigraphie et antiquités grecques, Amsterdam 1969, vol. 2, p. 833, note 1.

  5 They are also interpreted as such by Thomas Pekáry, Das römische Kaiserbildnis im Staat, Kult, und Gesellschaft, dargestellt anhand den Schriftquellen, Berlin 1985, p. 57.

  6 Nock 1930; Nock 1972.

  7 Lacking sons, the dictator had, in his will, adopted Gaius Octavius, son of his niece Atia and of Gaius Octavius, a figure of equestrian rank.

  8 Adam Ziolkowski (“Was Agrippa’s Pantheon the Temple of Mars in Campo?” Papers of the British School at Rome 62, 1994, pp. 267–282) considers the term Pantheon to be a nickname, and that the building was originally a temple dedicated to Mars. This does not seem convincing, however, since his theories presume that Agrippa’s building was T-shaped and faced south, an idea now discredited. It is also unclear by what mechanism a temple dedicated to Mars was then rededicated to all the gods in the space of a few decades. The most reliable proof of the use of the name Pantheum comes from the Acta fratrum Arvalium of AD January 58 and January 59 (CIL, vol. VI, 2041, l. 50; John Scheid, Paola Tassini, and Jörg Rüpke, Recherches archéologiques à la Magliana. Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium qui supersunt. Les copies épigraphiques des protocoles annuels de la confrérie arvale (21 av.–304 ap. J.-C.), Rome 1998, p. 63, n. 26, line 23 (AD January 11, 58); p. 67, n. 27, line 50 (AD January 12, 59). See also the commentary of Wilhelm Henzen, Nuovi frammenti degli atti dei fratelli arvali, Rome 1867, p. 258; Henzen, “Eine Neue Arvaltafel,” Hermes 2, 1867, pp. 37–55. The same name also appears in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia (trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge 1952), 9, 121; 34, 13; 36, 38, at a date which preceded the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, when Pliny met his death.

  9 Varro, Rerum rusticarum, III, 2; Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum, I, 33; Livy, Ab Urbe Condita XXVI, 22, 11. See also Kjeld De Fine Licht, The Rotunda in Rome: A Study of Hadrian’s Pantheon, Copenhagen 1968, pp.191 ff.; Filippo Coarelli, “Il Pantheon, l’apoteosi di Augusto e l’apoteosi di Romolo,” Città e architettura nella Roma imperiale, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici 10, 1983, pp. 41–46 (updated in Coarelli, Il Campo Marzio: dalle origini alla fine della reppublica, Rome 1997, 195); Ferdinando Castagnoli, Topografia antica, Rome 1993, p. 251.

  10 Luca Beltrami, Il Pantheon: La struttura organica della cupola e del sottostante tamburo, le fondazioni della rotonda, dell’ avancorpo
, e del portico, avanzi degli edifici anteriori alle costruzioni adrianee. Relazione delle indagini eseguite dal R. Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione negli anni 1892–93, coi rilievi e disegni dell’ architetto Pier Olinto Armanini, Milan 1898; Luca Beltrami, Il Pantheon rivendicato ad Adriano 117–138 d.C., Milan 1929. For Chedanne, see William C. Loerke, “Georges Chedanne and the Pantheon: A Beaux Arts Contribution to the History of Roman Architecture,” Modulus, 1982, pp. 40–55, some of whose plans are published in Roma Antiqua: “Envois” degli architetti francesi (1786–1901). Grandi edifici pubblici, exhib. cat., Rome 1992, pp. 124 ff., nos. 71–76.

  11 Pier Olinto Armanini’s plan, published in Beltrami 1898, Fig. XXV, formed the basis for later reconstructions that erroneously give the building a south-facing facade: Rodolfo Lanciani, Rovine e scavi di Roma, Rome 1897, Fig. 185; Armin von Gerkan, “Das Pantheon im Rom,” Von antiker Architektur und Topographie 60, 1959, pp. 273–277, Fig. 1; Heinz Kähler, Der Römische Tempel, Berlin 1970, Fig. 9; Doris Gruben and Gottfried Gruben, “Die Türe des Pantheon,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 104, 1997, pp. 3–74, Fig. 29.

  12 Antonio Maria Colini and Italo Gismondi, “Contributo allo studio del Pantheon: La parte frontale dell’avancorpo e la data del portico,” Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 44, 1926, pp. 67–92. See specifically pp. 87 ff.

  13 Beltrami 1898, p. 45, Figs. X–XIII; Lanciani 1897, p. 482.

  14 Beltrami 1898, pp. 38 ff., Figs. VIII, XXXIV; Beltrami 1929, pp. 52–53, Plate XVI; Licht 1968, pp. 172 ff., Fig. 193; Paola Virgili and Paola Battistelli, “Indagini in piazza della Rotonda e sulla fronte del Pantheon,” Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 100, 1999, pp. 137–154, note 33. Lanciani also mentions slabs of giallo antico, without citing evidence.

  15 Beltrami 1898, p. 39. In the gallery toward the south, he states, “the impressions are present at a distance greater to those already noted (namely, in the eastern arm of the tunnel),” while in that toward the north was “found another fragment of marble still in place”; finally, in the western gallery were “discovered impressions of seams of a marble pavement at a greater distance.” Cf. Licht 1968, p. 175, Fig. 193; Virgili and Battistelli 1999, p. 140, Fig. 2.

  16 The bed was made up of “stratifications of fluvial clay, of which the deepest was very compact and bluish-grey”: Beltrami 1898, pp. 37 ff., Fig. XXXIV (our Plate XX); Beltrami 1929, p. 62, Plate XVI; Gruben and Gruben 1997, p. 59, Fig. 30 a; Virgili and Battistelli 1999, Fig. 4, H–I.

  17 Beltrami 1898, pp. 38, 54 note 1, 72 ff.; Lanciani 1897, p. 482. Edmund Thomas, “The Architectural History of the Pantheon in Rome from Agrippa to Septimius Severus via Hadrian,” Hephaistos 15, 1997, p. 169.

  18 Lanciani 1897, pp. 482 ff., Fig. 185; Beltrami 1898, pp. 64 ff., Figs. XXV, XXVI (where the wall is marked with the letter c), XXIX, XXX (where the same wall is marked with the letter D); Beltrami 1929, pp. 62 ff., Plate XVI; Loerke 1982, p. 47, Fig. 8; E. Tortorici, “L’attività edilizia di Agrippa a Roma,” Il bimillenario di Agrippa, Genoa 1990, pp. 38, 40, Fig. 10; Gruben and Gruben 1997, pp. 60 ff., Figs. 29, 30; Thomas 1997, pp. 168 ff. For doubts about dating this wall solely on the building technique, and in the absence of photographic documentation and stratigraphical data, see Virgili and Battistelli 1999, p. 148, note 42. It may also be noted that reticulate masonry was still used in several walls of Hadrian’s Villa. It is also true, however, that the rounded top of the wall appears in many funerary enclosures of the late-Republican and Julio-Claudian periods, but is virtually unknown later, which makes an earlier, Agrippan, date more likely.

  19 G. Lugli, La tecnica edilizia romana, Rome 1957, pp. 13 ff.; William C. Loerke, “A Rereading of the Interior Elevation of Hadrian’s Rotunda,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 49, 1990, pp. 22–43; Loerke 1982; Tortorici 1990, pp. 28 ff.; Thomas 1997; Gruben and Gruben 1997; Wilson Jones 2000, pp. 180–182; Gerd Heene, Baustelle Pantheon: Planung, Konstruktion, Logistik, Düsseldorf 2004.

  20 Lanciani 1897, pp. 480 ff., Fig. 185. Cf. Licht 1968, p. 177, note 32, Fig. 194; Coarelli 1983, pp. 41 ff.; Castagnoli 1993, pp. 248 ff.; Gruben and Gruben 1997, 59 ff., Fig. 29. Partially flawed interpretations also appear in Thomas 1997, p. 169; Andreas Grüner, “Das Pantheon und seine Vorbilder,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 111, 2004, pp. 495–512. Lanciani’s hypothesis of a circular forecourt was amended as a horseshoe-shaped plan by Doris and Gottfried Gruben (1997).

  21 Eugenio La Rocca, s.v. “Pantheon (fase pre-adrianea),” in E. M. Steinby., ed., Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, Rome 1995–1999, vol. 5, 1999, pp. 280–283; Paola Virgili, s.v. “Pantheon: età adrianea,” in Steinby 1995–1999, 5, Rome 1999, pp. 284–285; Virgili and Battistelli 1999. I wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Giovanni Joppolo in the service of archaeology in the city of Rome, and his drawings of exemplary precision and expertise.

  22 Virgili and Battistelli 1999, pp. 149 ff., Figs. 1, 3, 4, 6 C and D, 8.

  23 Virgili and Battistelli 1999, pp. 142 ff., Figs. 1, 3, 4, 6 A and B, 7.

  24 H. Nissen, Orientation. Studien zur Geschichte der Religion, vol. 3, 1910, p. 339. Even if only partially correct in his reading of the work of Chedanne and Armanini, Lugli (1957, pp. 13 ff.) also believed that the Agrippan building faced toward the north and that it had a circular covered cella. For partly similar conclusions reached by other means, see Loerke 1982, pp. 47 ff.; Tortorici 1990, pp. 28 ff.; Thomas 1997, pp. 167 ff.; Wilson Jones 2000, p. 182; Heene 2004, pp. 16 ff. Gruben and Gruben (1997, p. 72, note 217) have on the contrary rejected Loerke’s hypothesis, arguing among other things that the excavations at the end of the nineteenth century had not turned up traces of older stairs to the north. However, the 1996–1997 excavations in effect vitiated this objection.

  25 Loerke 1982, pp. 48 ff. Loerke’s reading was based on drawings. Beltrami 1898, Figs. XII, XIV, XV, and XXXIV, aspects of which have been incorporated in the figures here Cf. Tortorici 1990, pp. 36, 38.

  26 Loerke (1982, p. 49) proposes a decastyle portico on the basis of an elevation by Chedanne, unfortunately lost, but described by R. Phené Spiers (“Monsieur Chedanne’s Drawings of the Pantheon,” Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects 2, 1895, p. 180), on the occasion of an exhibition held in London (on which see Loerke 1982, pp. 47, 55). Cf. Thomas 1997, p. 168; Virgili and Battistelli 1999, p. 148 and note 46. The octastyle solution with antae would be the best option according to mathematical coincidences between the pre-Hadrianic and Hadrianic Pantheon intuited by Heene (2004, pp. 17 ff., Figs. 7, 9).

  27 Beltrami 1898, p. 54. The difference in level is shown in Ioppolo’s north–south section (Virgili and Battistelli 1999, 145 ff., Fig. 4), which partially revises the elevations by Armanini (Fig. 19 b, b’, b’’). The original podium related to a datum around 9 meters above sea level, which constituted the ground level for the building activity of Agrippa and Augustus in the Campus Martius generally.

  28 Thus, there was no change in level to justify a hypothetical set of steps leading up to an imagined south-facing temple. See Lanciani 1897, p. 482; Beltrami 1898, p. 45, Figs. X–XIII.

  29 Gruben and Gruben 1997, p. 59.

  30 Gruben and Gruben 1997 passim (for the threshold, pp. 31, 54 ff.).

  31 For Gruben and Gruben (1997, p. 59) the fire of AD 80 produced only limited damage, giving rise to a reconstruction that entailed an embellishment of the preexisting building: a marble podium and a pavement in precious colored marbles, approximately 1 meter above the Agrippan pavement. Cf. a note by Pier Olinto Armanini (Beltrami 1898, Plate XV), associating a possible raising of the podium with the “level of Domitian.”

  32 As underlined by Gruben and Gruben (1997, p. 53): “Das stehende Bauwerk ist ohne Zweifel im engsten Sinne der Nachfolger des von Agrippa 27 v. Chr. geweihten Pantheon.” They also note (p. 55) that the symbolic ties between the two structures were not confined to the
portal.

  33 Loerke 1982; Loerke 1990. Cf. D. M. Jacobson, “Hadrianic Architecture and Geometry,” American Journal of Archaeology 90, no. 1, 1986, p. 84. For a schematic reconstructive drawing based on Loerke’s hypothesis, see Heene 2004, p. 16, Fig. 6.

  34 Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, 36.38. Cf. Gruben and Gruben 1997, pp. 58 ff. and note 155.

  35 Similar observations were put forward by Lugli 1957, p. 14, and by Wilson Jones 2000, p. 182.

  36 Tortorici 1990, pp. 38, 40.

  37 Such walls tend to have a double-sloped or curved top. For those of the tombs of the necropolis of Porta Nocera at Pompeii, see Antonio D’Ambrosio and Stefano De Caro, Un impegno per Pompeii: Fotopiano e documentazione della necropoli di Porta Nocera, Milan 1983.

  38 Heene 2004, p. 18, Fig. 9; p. 20, Fig. 10. For the mathematical scheme of the Hadrianic Pantheon, along with associated formal and conceptual implications, see Mark Wilson Jones 1989b (“Principles of Design in Roman Architecture: The Setting Out of Centralised Buildings,” Papers of the British School at Rome 57, 1989, pp. 108, 118, 127, Fig. 5, Table 1); Wilson Jones 2000, pp. 184 ff., Fig. 9.11.