The Ara Pacis is the finest Roman monument to survive from the time of Augustus.  Its marble reliefs were produced by the finest craftsmen of the Roman Empire, which by the end of the 1st century BC extended from Spain to Arabia.  The altar stood in a prominent place outside the city in the Campus Martius next to an Egyptian obelisk. The shadow of the obelisk pointed directly at the altar during the summer solstice.  The tomb of Augustus was located close by.

The altar and obelisk must have slowly disappeared sometime after the collapse of the Roman empire.  It is hard to imagine what this process actually looked like.  There must have been a time when just portions of the altar were visible, grown over by trees and shrubs.  Eventually, sediment carried by the flood waters of the Tiber River would cover the altar completely while Rome itself was reduced to a mere shadow of its former glory.   It wasn’t until the 16th century, when Rome began to rise again to prominence, that pieces of the altar were discovered. In the early 1900’s a trial excavation was attempted in order to recover the rest of the pieces but it proved too difficult due to the high water level and the risk of undermining the foundations of nearby buildings.  The buried altar would have to await Mussolini, who sponsored renewed excavations in the 1930’s. Large portions of the altar were recovered from the excavations and carefully reassembled in a new building specially built for it in the “rationalist” style then in vogue in Rome. The altar was made the centerpiece of Mussolini’s vision for a resurgent Italian empire.

The Return of Augustus

When Augustus returned victorious from Gaul in 13 BC, he was hailed a god by the poet Horace:

Augustus sought to consolidate the power once yielded by the elected consuls and the senate into his own hands.  The altar, like Horace’s poem, presented Augustus to the public as the embodiment or the Republic. Weary of civil war, the public was ready to accept an emperor just so long as he was not too obvious about it, as Julius Caesar had been.  But it was a delicate situation that called for careful diplomacy and effective propaganda.  The Ara Pacis shows Augustus to have been a master of both.

In keeping with traditional Roman modesty, the altar is not very large.  But it maintains pleasing proportions and the carving is incredibly ornate.  Its quality far excels the skill of local Roman craftsmen who were still unaccustomed to carving marble and is certainly the work of Greek sculptors.

Three major themes may be discerned:

1. Depictions of vegetation representing abundance and the taming of nature.
2. Rome’s founding myths and the gods and goddesses who protected the city.
3. A religious procession comprised of the family of Caesar Augustus and the city’s senators and magistrates walking in procession to the altar to make a sacrifice.

The Founding Legends

Two episodes from the founding of Rome are depicted on the altar.  The first depicts Aeneas, the Trojan hero, escaping from the city with his father on his back and his young son beside him.  He and his men embark in ships on a mission to found a new city.  Through many storms and adventures, they finally arrived on the shores of Italy.  Aeneas lies down on the banks of the Tiber and dreams of a white sow with thirty piglets. Awaking from his dream, he finds the sow and sacrifices it to Juno, and builds Rome on the spot.  Although there is some debate, the Ara Pacis likely depicts Aeneas in the act of sacrificing the sow.  Two young men attend him, one of them carrying a plate of food. 

Also visible are the household gods, the Penates, which Aeneas is supposed to have carried with him when he fled from Troy.  Dionysus of Halicarnassus relates that the Trojan images took the form of two seated youths (Greek kouroi) holding spears and that they were placed in a temple near the Roman Forum.¹Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 1.61.1 In light of this description, it is interesting to note that the Penates depicted on the Ara Pacis bear the same description.  

The Procession

The solemn procession of Roman nobles, dressed in their traditional toga’s, heads shrouded as a sign of their piety, walk slowly along the Via Flamina to a rustic altar erected in the Campus Martius.  Here go priests carrying boxes of incense, and flamens wearing special pointy caps. They are responsible for offering the sacrifice of a white cow.   Young lictors, carrying their bundle of rods, called fasces, walk in the front of the procession.  They are the enforcers, the visible arm of the magistrate.  One of the lictors carries an axe, a symbol of the power wielded by the senate to take a life. This power was traditionally wielded by the senate but in times of unrest, the senate could elect one of their member to assume absolute authority as dictator. He was allowed 24 lictors instead of the customary 12, and his lictors were allowed to carry the axe bundled with the fasces, even within the boundaries of the city, the pomerium.  The axe joined with the fasces symbolized the power of the dictator to execute the enemies of Rome and restore order. 

The family of Augustus are also present.   Livia, the wife of Augustus, is shown walking with her son Tiberius by a previous marriage.  And Julia, the only daughter of Augustus, with her husband Agrippa, heir apparent to the throne.  Agrippa stands out from the rest, his firm jaw and thoughtful gaze project power and authority.  After the death of Agrippa, Julia would remarry Livia’s son, Tiberius, all but cementing Tiberius’ claim to the throne.

And there is Antonia the Younger, one of Augustus’ nieces, with her husband Drusus.  Their young son Germanicus clings to Antonia’s garment.  He is only two years old but is nevertheless dressed in a toga like a miniature Roman. Antonia and Drusus have fallen to chatting when the face of a woman emerges from the background, a finger to her lips.  Silence!  This is a sacred ceremony! 

Who could this woman be who dares to shush one of Augustus’ nieces? Perhaps she was the mother of Antonia, the revered Octavia the Younger, the elder sister of Augustus.  Her life had been a difficult one, caught between a wish to be true to her husband, Mark Antony, and her brother Augustus. The two men were sworn enemies. It hadn’t always been that way, of course.  Mark Antony was an ally until he began to style himself an Egyptian pharaoh and openly engaged in an affair with Cleopatra!   It was an insult to Octavia and to her brother, Augustus!  Ultimately, Augustus would defeat Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium. Octavia would live out the remainder of her years in Rome where she raised Marcellus, the son she had by her first husband, and the two girls she had with Mark Antony. Remarkably, she would also raise three other children which Mark Antony had by another woman.

But where is Augustus?  He is there, dressed like the other senators, wearing the traditional toga, his head shrouded, and a laurel wreath on his head.  Augustus is dressed like the other senators.  The message is clear: Rome will continue to function as a republic under Augustus.  It was a fiction, but the Ara Pacis represents an old republican ideal which Augustus wished to retain.

The Goddess

The outer marble perimeter wall imitates the original wooden panels that surrounded the rustic altar in the Campus Martius.  The wooden wall, decorated with garlands of flowers and fruit, was captured in marble by the master strokes of sculptors. Apples and acorns, grapes and olives, ivy, laurel and pine, may be found in the scroll of vegetation that rings the lower panels of the altar wall.   Look closely and you will even see worms and insects nestled in the leaves.

The Fourth Eclogue and the Ara Pacis

It may be possible to go a layer deeper with our interpretation but we need some outside help from Virgil, the court poet of Augustus. In his Fourth Eclogue the poet foretells the birth of a child who will restore a golden age, when men will live happily under the reign of Saturn.

These lines explain the appearance of swans on several different panels of the altar. The swans are Apollo’s birds and Apollo was the patron deity of Augustus.  Virgil identifies the birth of the child with Apollo but who is he exactly?  This is one of the frustrating aspects of the poem. The child cannot be Augustus since Virgil says that the child was born in the time of Pollio’s consulship in 40 BC.  Was it one of Augustus’ children?  This seems the most likely case, but which one?  Was it a forgotten child of Augustus?  There are many theories, but none really satisfactory.

The language shares so much in common with the prophet Isaiah that one is inclined to believe that the Roman poet was familiar with him.  And why shouldn’t an aspiring poet be familiar with portions of Isaiah’s scroll?   Speaking from a purely literary point of view, the Judeans produced the greatest literary works of their age.  And Isaiah is the most skilled of the ancient Hebrew poets. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Virgil became acquainted with Jews living in Sicily or Italy, and with their holy books. 

Consider the following passage in Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue:

There are definite similarities between this passage and Isaiah 11:6-10. However, as we noted above, the connection between it and the reign of Augustus is not clear at all.  Not so with the Ara Pacis which clearly shows Augustus presiding over a new golden era.  This is seen particularly clearly in the most famous of the altar reliefs which shows a goddess seated with two babes on her lap.  She is Italia, bursting with life, with Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome.  An ox lays contentedly at her feet while a lamb grazes nearby.   The rocky crag upon which the goddess is seated are mountains.   The swan on her left is the river Po, Italy’s largest river.  The serpent on her right represents the sea while the two women on either side of the seated goddess, their cloaks billowing in the wind, are the refreshing Aurae winds.  The entire scene represents the bounty and of peace made possible by the rule of Augustus.

On the other side of the altar, the goddess Roma is seated on a pile of weapons.  A reminder that Pax Romana (“Roman Peace”) was built on Roman military might.

Augustus the Pious?

Saint Augustine thought that there was something unique about the Romans. “Glory they most ardently loved: for it they wished to live for it they did not hesitate to die. Every other desire was repressed by the strength of their passion for that one thing.” (Augustine, City of God, 5:12)  The Romans looked with scorn upon the vices of other men: their avarice, profligacy, and love of luxury. The Ara Pacis is a fine representation of this Roman ideal; there are no scenes of baccanalia, no drunken satyrs, or half-naked maenads; and yet we are also struck by how untrue all of this was to reality.

The altar represents the ideals of the republic in the very moment when it was overthrown by Augustus. The only way he could usurp the power of the republic was by pretending to belong to it.  Thus while Augustus appears alongside the other senators as though he were one of them, Augustus had already accrued all the power of the senatorial offices into his own hands. The Julio-Claudian dynasty founded by Augustus became one of the most cruel and decadent to rule from Rome. Crowned emperor, Tiberius—who is depicted on the altar— was renown for his sexual depravity.  His villa on the island of Capri had such a bad reputation that the Roman historian Seutonius says that one does not even wish to know what happens there.  Augustus’ daughter Julia—also depicted on the altar— was exiled from Rome for sleeping with the chamberlain.  Several of her children were poisoned, with Livia—also depicted on the altar—being the prime suspect.   A generation later, Juvenal observed that no one wears the toga anymore—everyone on the altar is wearing a toga. Romans were spending beyond their means with rapidly depreciating currency, lamented Juvenal, and there were no honest jobs to be had.  One had either to be in the employ of the super rich or starve.   In many respects the Ara Pacis is not the crowning jewel of the Roman Republic, but its tombstone.