Scholars who believe and we, we all believe in fact that the that again, Augustus was a Philhellene that he had a particular penchant for things Greek. So you look at something like this and you ask yourselves, well what's Greek about this? I mean why didn't he, when he came, when he came to make the decision about his last resting place, why did he not want to be be laid to rest in the manner of the Greeks? Why doesn't this, why wasn't this tomb made in the form, for example, of a Greek temple or something like that? Why did he choose this particular form? So scholars have debated for quite some time whether there are any tombs like this in Greece, whether whether or in Asia Minor. Whether Alexan-, what, what kind of tomb was Alexander the Great buried in, for example? Well, we don't know exactly for sure but that's one possibility that it might have something to do with Alexander's tomb. Others, because Aeneas came from burning Troy, others have suggested perhaps, and that's in Asia Minor, perhaps the, the way the Trojans were buried might have something to do with this selection. But I think the model is much closer at hand. I think the model, myself, I believe that the model comes from Italy, and, and that it's a very interesting choice on the part of Augustus, because I think what it tells us is that Augustus may have wanted to build public buildings in Rome that conjured up ancient Athens. But when it came to deciding about he, how he wanted to be buried, he wanted to be buried in the manner of his Italian ancestors. Let me show you what I think is a really important comparison. We're looking on the left-hand side of the screen, once again, at the mausoleum of Augustus as it looks today. Here you see the central entrance-way. You see what remains of the concentric concrete rings. You see some of the travertine facing for the outer ring of the structure and you see of course, that the uppermost part, namely the earthen mound, is no longer there. But if I compare the mausoleum of Augustus to what you see here on the right hand side of the screen, which is an Etruscan tomb, an Etruscan tomb from the so called, and I put this on the monument list for you, the Banditaccia cemetery, which is in, at a site called Cerveteri. Cerveteri, a very important Etruscan site and this tomb, we believe, dates to the 6th, 6th Century B.C.. Cerveteri is an extraordinary place to visit now, because there is one tomb after another of this type. You go into the site and you feel like you've, you're on a, you know, on another planet or some such, as you wander among these extremely well-preserved tombs at Cerveteri. And Cerveteri, by the way is right off the highway between Rome and Florence, so it's a very easy site to get, get to and very we-, well worthwhile. There's nothing quite like it anywhere in Italy, anywhere indeed in the world. And you see these series and I've just chosen one here to show you. You see these series of tombs, and I think that if you look at it, you'll see the similarity of this to the Mausoleum of Augustus. These round Etruscan tombs have central burial chambers. They have stone stone facing around the outermost part of the structure. And you can see that piled on top of that is an earthen mound. And if you expand the size, the Cerveteri tomb is much smaller, actually the individual Cerveteri tombs are small than the Mausoleum of Augustus. The Mausoleum of Augustus is 290 feet in diameter; it's a very large building. But if you expand the size of one of these what we call tumulus, tumulus, tumulus tombs at Cerveteri, if you expand the size, If you plant this with trees, because we know that the Mausoleum of Augustus was planted with trees on the earthen mound. There's been quite a bit of controversy about what kind of trees. For a long time, people said Cyprus trees, now, people seem to favor Juniper trees, but whatever trees of some sort, decorating that earthen mound. So if you if you, if you enlarge this, if you put some Junipers on top of it, and if you stick a gleaming, bronze statue of Augustus at the apex, you will have essentially the mausoleum of Augustus. So I'd like to suggest to you today that the mausoleum of Augustus indicates to us that when it came to his tomb, Augustus wanted to be buried like his Italian ancestors, like the Etruscans. And that is why he chose this particular type of tomb in Rome. The mausoleum of Augustus like so many other monuments that we've been looking at this semester, survives in large part because it was reused over the centuries in a wide variety of ways. You can see in this engraving that it was used at one point as a garden, a very nicely manicured garden, as you can see inside the remains inside those concentric circles, very nice garden. It was also used as a fortress at one point by the well known Colonna family of Italy. It was used, believe it or not, as a bull ring, a little touch of Spain in the midst of Rome as a bull ring. And it was used most recently as a music hall. It was a music hall before it was turned back into the mausoleum of Augustus. So again, this very, a very similar saga, to this building, and to its post-antique history, as to so many others that we've talked about. Another important point to make about the mausoleum of Augustus is that although Augustus intended it as his own la-, last resting place, he didn't intend for him to be the only person who was laid to rest there. He wanted this to serve as a family tomb for him, his wife, his, well turned out his daughter didn't end up there, but that may have been the intention originally that she would. She was Discredited because of all the adulterous affairs she had, and Augustus eventually banished her in 2 B.C. from Rome, razed her house to the ground, and did not allow her to be buried into the mausoleum of Augustus. But for his wife, for his nephew and son-in-law, Marcelus and others, he wanted to create this family tomb where he, his family, and presumably, since his objective was to create a dynasty, presumably where his successors of the dynasty that he founded would also be laid to rest. And there are inscription plaques that have come to light from the Mausoleum of Augustus, and I can show you a couple of them here, that do indicate that is exactly, was exactly the case. We see this plaque over here, which actually has the name Marcellus inscribed there. This is the Marcellus of the Theater of Marcellus, the nephew and son-in-law of, of Augustus, who was laid to rest in this mausoleum. His sister, Soror Octavia, also laid to rest, That is, Augustus's sister, Octavia, also laid to rest here. And it continued to be used as a burial place, again After Augustus, after Augustus's death and through the so-called Julio-Claudian emperors, who we'll look at next week: Tiberius and Caligula and Claudius. And we see in fact, an inscription plaque over here, that honors Agrippina the Elder, Agrippina the Elder, the mother of Caligula, the 3rd emperor of Rome. And it was Caligula who laid his mother to rest in this tomb. So very much a family tomb, created by the Emperor Augustus. And I should also mention, with regard to burial practice at this time, that everybody was imperial, imperial individuals and those lower on the social pyramid as well, were all cremated at this particular time. So you have to imagine that there were urns, for each of these inside the tomb somewhere as well.
