Белешке из литературе

1. Fred S. Kleiner A History of Roman Art

211 bce. In that year, Marcellus conqueror of the fabulously wealthy Sicilian Greek city of
Syracuse broke with precedent and brought back to Rome not only the usual
spoils of war—captured arms and armor, gold and silver coins, and the like—but
also the city’s artistic patrimony.Thus began, in the words of the historian Livy,“the craze for
works of Greek art”

According to both Livy and Plutarch, Marcus Claudius Marcellus’s triumph (Latin triumphus;
the celebratory procession through Rome that the Senate awarded to victorious generals) in 211
bce after his victory over Syracuse marked the beginning of the influx of Greek statues and
paintings into Rome and of the Romans’ fascination with Greek art. Livy acknowledged that
Marcellus acted legally, but observed that his action was unprecedented.

REPUBLICAN VERISM These and other surviving portraits of the Late Republic, like the
imagines upon which they appear to be modeled, give the impression—whether true or
not—of being literal reproductions of individual faces, without any hint of an attempt on the part
of the sculptor to beautify the appearance of those portrayed. The subjects of these
so-called veristic (superrealistic) portraits were almost exclusively men (and to a lesser extent
women) of advanced age, for generally only elders held power in the Republic

Unlike the earlier forum, which developed gradually over the centuries without any master plan,
Caesar’s forum has the symmetry and regularity of Republican fora outside the capital

The Forum Iulium therefore reveals the same arrogance and penchant for self-glorification as do
Caesar’s coins. The dictator perpetuo paved the way for all the Roman emperors to follow in his
calculated use of art and architecture as instruments of personal propaganda.

SON OF A GOD More than a decade before he became Augustus, Octavian had assumed a
different title. The Senate had proclaimed his father Julius Caesar a divus (deified mortal) in 42
bce, and the young man who now bore his name began to refer to himself as the son of a god
(divi filius)—although he was always careful not to claim in Rome, where it would have been
unacceptable, to be a god himself

Unlike Caesar’s forum, the Republican forum had no framing porticos and no focus of attention.

Augustus placed the standards recovered from the Parthians in the Temple of Mars that the
emperor had vowed to build in 42 bce when he sought the war god’s aid in pursuing Caesar’s
assassins.
The Mars temple itself, however, had Corinthian columns and a facing for its podium and walls
of gleaming white marble from Luna, modern Carrara, in northwestern Italy. The recently
opened quarries at Luna made possible Augustus’s famous boast, recorded by Suetonius, that the
emperor had “found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble.”2 Prior to Augustus, Italian
builders had to ship marble blocks at great expense from Athens or the Greek islands, and it was
used sparingly.