Show notes
It is not often that we are fortunate enough to get to chat to one of our amazing guests a second time, but sometimes the gods are just that kind. We sat down to speak to the one and only Dr Victoria Austen about Augustus’ mausoleum.Special Episode – Augustus' MausoleumDr Victoria Austen holds a MA and PhD from King’s College London. She has lectured in the Classics at the University of Winnipeg and is currently the Robert A. Oden, Jr. Postdoctoral Fellow for Innovation in the Humanities and Classics at Carleton College, Minnesota. Her monograph Analysing the Boundaries of the Roman Garden: (Re)Framing the Hortus’ was released in 2023 as part of the Bloomsbury Ancient Environments Series. Vicky has recently been speaking for the American Institute of Archaeology on gardens and commemoration.‘The Mausoleum of Augustus’ from Pietro Santi Bartoli, Gli antichi sepolcri ii, 1727. courtesy of Carleton College Special Collections. What is Augustus' mausoleum?Augustus did not rest on his laurels after winning the Battle of Actium against Cleopatra and Mark Antony. He set about consolidating his political position and figuring out exactly what that would entail.Augustus set about transforming the city itself as part of his political machinations. Some of his key monuments include the Ara Pacis, the Horologium Augusti (think giant sun dial), and the mausoleum.He started construction on this tomb in 28 BCE and positioned it on the Campus Martius (Field of Mars). This is much earlier than you might expect. Augustus’ position was not unchallenged and there was still much to be decided regarding his status in Rome. Nonetheless, Augustus set about building this large circular mausoleum, intending to use it not just for himself, but his family. Eventually the tomb would house the remains of numerous members of Augustus' family, as well as the princeps himself. Names you might recognise include Agrippa (his BFF and the husband of his daughter Julia), Marcellus (his nephew), Octavia (his sister), and Gaius and Lucius (his adopted sons).After Augustus’ death, his family continued to use the mausoleum. Livia (his wife), the emperors Tiberius and Claudius, Germanicus, Antonia Minor and Britannicus would all find their way to this monument. However, there was not an open-door policy for anyone with Julio-Claudian blood. The mausoleum became a sort of litmus test of who had fallen from grace and would be punished with exclusion… forever! You might already have spotted that Julia, Augustus’ only biological child, and her daughter Julia, did not make the cut. Ouch! Nor did the emperors Caligula and Nero. You had to earn your spot. Donati, A. (1584-1640) Roma vetus ac recens, courtesy of Carleton College Special Collections. What happened to the mausoleum?As with so many ancient monuments, the mausoleum has been repurposed many times. Tune in to hear about the Soderini family and their resurrection of the space, as well as good old Mussolini, who just loved to forge connections between himself and figures like Augustus.Things to Look Out For:Augustus getting BURNT by Dr Rad on numerous occasions.Good-natured tolerance from Drs A and G about afore-mentioned Augustan burns.Deep-seated longing to see inside the mausoleum.Discussion of the recent restoration project.The need to pay more attention to the plants and green spaces in the ancient world. Won’t someone think of the greenery???The importance of green spaces in urban environments in both ancient and modern timesSound CreditsOur music is by the highly talented Bettina Joy de Guzman.Automated TranscriptDr Rad 0:12Welcome to the partial historians.Dr G 0:15We explore all the details of ancient Rome.Dr Rad 0:20Everything from political scandals to love affairs, the battles waged and when citizens turn against each other. I'm Dr. Read. AndDr G 0:30I'm Dr. G. We consider Rome as the Roman saw it by reading different ancient authors and comparing their accounts.Dr Rad 0:41Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of the city.Dr G 1:01Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of the partial historians. Dr. Rad and myself, Dr. G are thrilled to welcome back Dr. Victoria Austen to the show. And you might remember her fantastic conversation with us a little while back now about Augustus and temporal space and representation. And today we're going to be looking at Augustus his mausoleum. So a quick bio. Dr. Victoria Austen holds an MA and a PhD from King's College London. She has lectured in the classics at the University of Winnipeg and is currently the Robert A Odin Junior Postdoctoral Fellow for innovation in the humanities and classics at Carleton College Minnesota. Her research interests span the Latin literature of the late Republic and early empire, ancient Roman gardens and landscapes race and ethnicity in the ancient world, the reception of classical myth and the integration of digital humanities into the classroom. Austen's monograph Analysing the Boundaries of the Roman Garden: Reframing the Hortus was released in 2023, as part of the Bloomsbury ancient environment series, and coming up, Vicky is currently partway through a series of talks for the American Institute of Archaeology on gardens and commemoration. Welcome back, Vicky.Dr Victoria Austen 2:34Yeah, it's so great to be back. I'm so so excited to talk more things, Augustus as we know, I'm a big fan.Dr G 2:41Me too. Dr. Rad is alreadyDr Victoria Austen 2:44Eye roll already.Dr Rad 2:46I was I was going to say, Look, I'm very happy to see you again, but less happy to see your friend. Look, you know what, I am going to embrace it because I have some fantastic dad jokes here. So Augustus is mausoleum, you might say that everyone in the Julio Claudian period is just dying to get in.Dr Victoria Austen 3:14I mean, IDr Rad 3:20so Look, let's start with the basics. Dr. Austen, or Vicky, if I may be so what is this thing? How did it come about?Dr Victoria Austen 3:30Yeah, so this is basically where Augustus wants to be buried. bold move in that, you know, he creates it when he's still living like this is very much his project. It's not like something that people put up for him. He's like, No, I'm gonna create my own team structure. And I'm gonna model it on potentially one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. Because, you know, he never He doesn't do anything small. So this is why it's called the mausoleum of Augustus, because it's based on we think maybe the Mausolus tomb, which was one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. So timewise it was finished in 28 BCE. So this is, you know, still kind of pretty early on actually, in his principle, you know, when you think he was there for you know, good, good more 30 years or so. So he was he was thinking about his afterlife, very concerned about his commemoration.Dr Rad 4:26Yeah. Like, yeah, like an Egyptian ruler. Yeah, thing. He's just very focused on that end goal.Dr Victoria Austen 4:34And kind of like structurally as well. It's obviously it's very impressive. It's like this huge kind of concrete structure, which and concrete in itself is a kind of Roman innovation, which was kind of relatively still new at this time period. You know, they're still experimenting with oh, we can use this new material. So we can do round things instead of like, oh, square things. So it's this big kind of dark, circular structure. domed and it's planted kind of all the way around, we think to kind of emulate what create a kind of monumental version of a traditional elektrischen type tomb, which is called a timless, which is, you know, in its most primitive form, that would be kind of like just a mound of earth. That was kind of your tomb spot. So August just kind of seems to have taken that idea, and then just done it, you know, huge, huge monumental scale as as he likes to do with everything.Dr Rad 5:29It sounds extremely presumptuous. Yeah. Within keeping of his character, yes.Dr G 5:36Very much. So. And I'm particularly thinking about the date of 28 BCE, because this is right before 27, which is usually considered a landmark for him in terms of like sealing the deal on his power. And he's already out there being like, oh, no, guys, I am a big deal. I know it, you guys know it, I've killed everybody who hates me by now.Dr Victoria Austen 5:57And I think particularly because there's this idea of it's such a big structure that clearly he was thinking of it in terms of it wasn't just going to be for him, it was going to be for other family members. So it's like, it's going to be like a dynastic kind of monument in itself. And I think, like you said, the fact that he's creating that so early in his principles that kind of speaks to, oh, he may have been doing all of his, I'm just restoring the Republic schtick. But, you know, I'm beside he's like, No, actually, I'm going to create this huge monument to the my family, or my heirs. So like that idea of like the family, dynastic structure, I think is very telling that he's already creating a very obvious building and structure like super early.Dr Rad 6:48Really to be fair, he wasn't a well man. Well, no,Dr Victoria Austen 6:52I think I think that's part of it. He had so much anxiety over death. And you know, then all of his heirs keep dying, as we know, along the way,Dr Rad 7:01it came in handy.Dr Victoria Austen 7:02He didn't die, you know. So I think I think it also the early day also represents a bit of that anxiety over you know, I've got to start thinking about my death and what happens when I die. Like, pretty early on. Really? Yeah,Dr Rad 7:18definitely. Yeah, Look, that'sDr G 7:20tough, isn't it that anxiety and and also that monumental ism, what a fascinating character. Yeah, I don't understand Dr. Rad while you're not so interested. IDr Rad 7:29am intrigued, but it's more of a fact that I'm like, Why can't people just see through him?Dr Victoria Austen 7:37This last time, like I like I love him to study. But doesn't mean I think he's a great guy. I also see through him.Dr Rad 7:47Yeah, I think it's well, I think it's more Dr. G. I'm talking to me, she she genuinely likes him.Dr G 7:56I think it's just because in the portraiture, he comes across as being relatively good looking. So I'm willing to forgive him from things. So, but that's just me being really basic. Yeah. But thinking about the mausoleum and its location, like To what extent is it sort of part of his broader sort of sense of building sort of like a topographical thing for himself in a Gustin sort of way of thinking about Rome? Yeah.Dr Victoria Austen 8:20And so I think I was actually talking about this very topic with my students, actually, last week, because we were, we were doing the Augustan period, and Roman Art and Archaeology. And I was, I was saying that one of his innovations really is, you know, late Republican building projects, like kind of Pompey's theatre complex, Julius Caesar had his forum. You know, it's this idea that you're kind of entering a bit of a zone that is, it's like the Pompey zone, or the Julius Caesar zone, and we're kind of entering those spaces, and it's framed by that individual power. But what Augustus does is he's like, all of Rome is now my zone. It's not just a small bar. It's like, I'm doing this everywhere. So again, like in terms of scale, that's what's kind of innovative and the mausoleum is part of the Campus Martius which he is one of his kind of three main areas in the city that he really focuses on for his redevelopment. So we have the mausoleum, but we also have the our pockets, which I spoke a lot about on the last time I was with you. And then there's also this monumental sundial as well the heartland and they're all very close together in this Campus Martius area and I think again, it speaks to this kind of projection of a new type of power, because you know, you have your mausoleum, which is thinking about kind of commemoration long term, but at a family kind of dynastic level, you've got the altar of peace, the our parkas eventually, which is, you know, commemorating I've bought peace to Rome for the first time. And then with the sundial, I think that's, that's particularly interesting because it kind of I think it's also symbolic that he is kind of not just In charge of space, but also his controlling time, as well as all these three monuments, kind of we're all working together kind of past, present, future, there's like this temporal element. And I think so you can't just think of the mausoleum, you know, as a static kind of isolated entity in itself, I think a lot of its meaning also comes from the fact that it's connected to these other very important Augusto monuments. And you have to imagine, if you're a Roman, you're walking through the Campus Martius, like, you're gonna be able to see all three of these things within a very short walk, you'll be able to see them from each other, like they're very, very close together,Dr G 10:40and this association with the Campus Martius, in particular, this idea that there is a whole Augustan precinct and there is a really long history of how the Campus Martius is used. And now it's being sort of it's evolving under Augustus is sort of building regime as well.Dr Victoria Austen 10:56Yeah, absolutely. And I think what, what I think is fascinating, and also just kind of very telling about the building project in the campus. Martius is it's very representative of so many things that will go sisters in that he's kind of seen kind of political figures kind of use art and architecture and space and these building projects, to project their own individual power, but they never had the opportunity to kind of extend that on mass scale. And so now he's in this position where he can start to do this, in a way he kind of takes all of the seeds that have been done at an individual level. And he's just putting it all together, doing it to a huge, huge scale, and just really hammering it home, like everywhere you go. There's this sense of Augustus kind of framing your experience of the city like you have to imagine that there's not many places like right in the core, where you're not far from an Augusten building project because if you're not in the Campus Martius you might be near the Palatine Hill, that's where his house is, or you're in the forum and he redevelop the forum. So there's like, everywhere you go, there's this kind of just presence of him. And kind of framing your experience of the whole city, I think, which is very, very innovative. IDr Rad 12:14think of him. It sounds like my waking nightmare.Dr G 12:19You're surrounded onDr Rad 12:21escape. But I do appreciate I do appreciate that long before Doc Brown and Marty McFly, Augustus was thinking about the space time continuum and how to disrupt it. Yes,Dr Victoria Austen 12:31he really was. And I think there's there's a famous that kind of famous theory, I suppose about these kinds of three, three monuments, or kind of like working together in the campus. Martius is it has been suggested that the shadow of the sundial would go directly through the entrance of the Ara Pacis on Augustus' birthday. So it's like, yeah, it's basically I have conquered time, like I am in charge. And I think, you know, Julius Caesar, his uncle had her redone the calendar. And so the sundial was now with the Julian calendar in mind. And so again, it's just this Yeah, it's the way…
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