And tradition had it that when the doors, because it had double doors,
one had two sides because he was a two-headed God, so two sides,
both with doors, both with double doors, and when those double doors were closed,
it signaled that peace reigned throughout the empire.
And we know in the Res Gestae Augustus tells us that he closed At the doors of
the shrine of Janus he brags 3 times during his reign.
So it is very likely that the double doors on the shrine of Janus
are referred to not surprisingly in an altar that was put up to peace,
to the peace that Augustus brought to Rome through his various military victories and
also through his diplomatic conquests his diplomatic treaties like the one that
he signed in Spain and Gaul.
I want to take you quickly through the monument,
and keep in mind always that it's made out of Luna or
Carrera marble to show you some of the, this is not a course in sculpture.
So I'm not going to go into the sculpture in any detail,
but I want you to be aware of it
because some of the motifs are important in our understanding also of architecture.
We see here two views of the altar.
You see these winged lion griffins that are very popular motifs
in the Augustine period as well as the spiral and
acanthus plant that was also popular in Augustine times.
A figural frieze that represents the vestal virgins that were referred to
As those who are to which all brings,
the sacrifice is taking place in part in honor of them.
But we see here a sacrifice itself where the animal victims are being brought in
for slaughter.
[COUGH] We also see if we look at we're now inside the monument.
We've looked at the altar proper.
If we look at the precinct wall,
the inside of the precinct wall we see that it's very well preserved.
And we see it is essentially two zones with slats all done in Carrara marble,
slats down below.
That look like either a wooden wall or perhaps a fence of some sort.
Then above, also depicted in Carrara marble, these great garlanded swags
that you see hanging from pilasters but also from the skulls of bulls.
I'll show you a detail in a moment where you'll see those skulls better.
The skulls of the bulls that have been sacrificed on this altar and
then above the swags you an see these libation dishes.
And what has been speculated and I think it's ingenious on the part of
the scholars who first came up with this that what they think is being
represented here is actually a copy or a rendition of the wooden,
the temporary wooden altar that would have stood on this site.
Because remember they're consecrating it already in 13 BC but the structure
itself isn't built until 9 and they have to keep offering this annual sacrifice.
So they have to offer it somewhere.
So the suggestion is they made a makeshift wooden altar that looked like this
with actual wooden slats, wooden poles, real garments and so on and
what they've done on the alter is to create a rendition of that in
an interior precinct wall of the Ara Pacis.
A detail of these garlands, here you can see the bull skulls or
bull crania extremely well.
And I thought you'd be interested to see and perhaps
not surprised that we can see very close renditions also in painting of the time.
This painting on the left comes from the house of Livia in Rome.
We didn't look at it,
we looked at the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta and we looked at August's house.
But when we did that,
I told you Livia had her own house across the street from August's.
And this painting is from that it's clearly a second style wall,
residual first style, done in paint,
projecting columns, garlands hanging from those columns, garlands.
Interlaced with ribbons just as you see here.
And when this was painted, which it was in antiquity,
it would have looked very similar to what you see on the other side of the screen.
So interesting inter-relationships between decoration and
sculpture and architecture and decoration and paint.
