Trajan's Cupids
Antiquity is rather like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle - a fact which can be exemplified by the piles of carved stones to be seen out the back of the temples of Luxor and Karnak at Luxor. Most of these stones belong to one or more temples to the Aten, built by the heretical pharaoh Akhenaton and demolished by his pious successors. Recovered from their later reuse in other buildings, the hope is that eventually enough of them will have been found to enable us to reconstruct the vanished temple.
To this end the full range of modern technology has been employed: digital photographs are analysed by computers to try and match colours and shapes; laser scans are similarly compared to try and match contours and surfaces; even geology has been called into play in the hope that stones from the same quarry - or even the same part of the quarry - might reasonably fit together.
It now appears that the Italians are getting in on the act.
In the course of excavations in the various forums which once formed the commercial hub of Rome, more than 40,000 architectural fragments have been found - bits of marble entablature, marble slabs from facades, masks, heads, spouts, and pieces so small and plain that no one knows where they came from but which, like the last piece in a jigsaw, may one day prove to be vital.
Many of these pieces are quite strikingly beautiful, like the two-foot long frieze of cupids that once adorned the temple of Venus Genitrix in the Forum of Caesar. Any museum or collector would be delighted to have it on display in its galleries, yet because it is so small and meaningless it has languished in the storerooms of the excavators for many years.
Now the Italian authorities have found a home for the cupids and other similar pieces: the Market of Trajan. This enormous building was probably not a market at all, but an office complex for the imperial government. Set on the slope of the Viminal Hill, an enormous semi-circular arcade hid a series of buildings linked by lanes paved with black basalt. The whole complex became a castle in the mediaeval period and later a monastery. Like any such building, its various residents stripped it of its valuables such as marble cladding and decorations. The remaining shell was only identified and restored in the period between the two World Wars.
Unfortunately, the modern Italian authorities were as lax on maintenance as the mediaeval and Renaissance owners and in 2005 the complex was closed to tourists because water seeping into the huge main hall had made it unsafe. During the three years of restoration the building has been cleaned and strengthened and in addition the archaeological authorites have decided that it can be better used than just as an empty, echoing space through which tourists parade on their way to the next attraction on their list.
Re-opened in 2008 and now known as "The Museum of the Imperial Fora", the building has become the home for more than 500 of the various fragments found in the forums of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Vespasian, Nerva ad Trajan. Many of them have been raised on shelves and scaffolding to their original height above the pedestrians, so that we view them as their makers intended them to be viewed.
As work continues in the various forums, new discoveries will be added to the collection - but the ultimate aim is to reconstruct the original appearance of the grand buildings which stood in the heart of Rome. Whether, when enough fragments have been found to make that possible for any one building, they will be removed from the museum and restored to their original location, is not clear. Personally I hope not. It would be cruel to take the cupids, who have successfully survived the rigours of time, and expose them to the pollution of Rome's traffic-clogged streets.
Another building which has been re-opened after nearly a decade of work, is the house of Caesar Augustus, which dates from the period before he became emperor and was still plain Octavian. The building, which lies on the slopes of the Palatine Hill, has been opened and shut with depressing regularity ever since its discovery in the 1970s as new discoveries have necessitated an ever-increasing programme of restoration and consolidation.
At present the four rooms on display have restricted access for small groups by special arrangement, as work is still continuing in other parts of the "domus", but it is hoped that full access will be possible from the end of 2008.
On display is a wonderful series of frescoes, the original decoration of the rooms, which was almost completely destroyed when the weight of Domitian's palace - built over the by-now buried house - caused the vaulted roof to collapse. After lying on the floor of the rooms for nearly 2,000 years, the fragments of painted plaster were carefully collected by the excavators, conserved and pieced together to reveal the original decorative scheme.
Like many of the houses we saw in Pompeii on the recent tour of Greece and Italy, the decorations consist of mock achitectural elements - pillrs, doorways, windows and coffered ceilings - through whcih can be seen real or imaginary scenery in which tiny figures of humans and animals can be seen. Despite their long burial, the colours of the frescoes are still strong, with the reds, yellows and greens particularly vivid.
Quite apart from the intrinsic interest of the fact that we are walking where Rome's first emperor walked, there is the facdt that although Octavian was a wealthy and important man, his house was in no way special compared to the houses of other nobles, so the restored buildings give us an idea of what every upper class home must have looked like in the 1st century BC.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
