Thomas Ashby “Ara Pacis Augustae,” THE BUILDER 5 Mar. 1904, 242

Thomas Ashby "Ara Pacis Augustae," THE BUILDER 5 Mar. 1904, 242

https://books.google.com/books?id=5rQDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA242&lpg=PA242&dq=Ara+Pacis+Stuart+Jones&source=bl&ots=JoCfl5omCk&sig=j8Py6_jccBGDig6N1zF4pGYGZVI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwivmcfmiqDRAhXsz1QKHe4tDMwQ6AEIKTAE#v=onepage&q=Ara%20Pacis%20Stuart%20Jones&f=false

ARA PACIS AUGUSTAE
APART from the excavations of the Forum the topic the hour in archaeological circles is the Ara Pacis Augustae. It formed the subject of an admirable lecture delivered by Mr H Stuart Jones of the British School at Rome to the British and American Archaeological Society and an abstract of his remarks may be of some interest.
The erection of the altar was decided upon by the Senate in 13 BC on the occasion of Augustus's return to Rome, after the restoration of peace and order in the western half of the empire, and it was completed or at any rate, dedicated on July 4 in 9 BC.
The altar itself was surrounded by a wall of blocks of white marble about 2½ ft in thickness which reached a height of about 13 ft. This enclosure measured some 34 ft. by 38 ft., and had two openings each 12 ft. in width, in the longer sides one of which the east (the east) opened upon the Via Flaminia (the modern Corso), while the western opening, which appears to have been the principal one, led to the Campus Martius and was approached by a flight of five low steps with 5 in. rise and 9 in. tread intended no doubt for the animals be led up to sacrifice. It is with the remains of this enclosure wall that the main interest of the monument is connected, for the blocks of which it is composed are carved upon both sides and bear reliefs which are probably the finest effort of the art of the Augustan period. On the outside above is a frieze with figures, which is the most important part of all, while the lower half of the wall is occupied by extremely fine decorative foliage; on the inside the upper half of the wall has a frieze of festoons of fruit and flowers suspended from ox skulls, while the lower half seems intended to represent an enclosure of planks – perhaps the temporary fence that was built round the altar at the time when the first sacrifice was offered at it.
The outer frieze of the upper half of the wall is, as has been said, by far most interesting. Upon the north south sides are two processions, going towards the main (western) entrance to the enclosure.
In the northern procession we recognise the personification of the magistrates, senate, and the people of Rome; in the southern, Augustus and his family and chief dignitaries of the state.
The spaces available upon each side of the doors on the east and west walls are, naturally, smaller than those provided by the unbroken north and south walls. On each side of the principal entrance were reliefs, one representing Tellus, the Earth, with personified representations of the breezes on each side of her, the other a sacrifice of a sow to the deity. On the east side the reliefs representing the sacrifice of oxen are probably to be placed.
The history of the monument has a curious one. Portions of its reliefs were found on three separate occasions in the XVIth century and have been dispersed, so that they must be sought in the Louvre, at Vienna, at Florence, in the Villa Medici at Rome, and in the Vatican. Another group of fragments was brought to light in 1859 and remained in the palace which is built over the site of the altar, the Palazzo Fiano, until 1898 when the Italian Government bought them and placed them in the Museo delle Terme.
But it was not until 1879 that a German archaeologist, Professor von Duhn, succeeded in determining that all these scattered fragments belonged to one and the same monument, with the help of drawings of the reliefs which had been made before their dispersal (the most important of which drawings are in the British Museum, to which they came only two or three years ago after the death of Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks). Since that date they have been the subject of study by Professor Petersen, the head of the German Archaeological Institute of Rome, who published in 1902 a detailed monograph on the subject. The appearance of this work, with its appeal for a further and final excavation of the remains, has impelled the Italian Government to undertake the task of bringing to light the rest of the reliefs and of investigating more carefully than had been done hitherto the site itself. The work began last summer and has already led to the discovery of several important fragments, and more than all of the base of the wall itself, at the level of the doorways, from which archaeologists can at last derive a secure basis for reconstruction. Professor Petersen's theoretical arrangement of the reliefs and reconstruction of the monument, though it does him the greatest credit as an archaeologist, has had perforce to be modified in certain points (cf. his article in Römische Mitteilungen 1903 p. 164). The core of the altar itself has also been found
The work is carried on under considerable difficulties as the Roman level of the Campus Martius is now some 5 ft. below the modern water level; but is to be hoped that the task of what remains will be carried through, expensive though it will undoubtedly be, owing to the necessity of keeping pumps constantly going and of carefully underpinning the foundations of the above. If those fragments of the reliefs which are in other hands can be obtained by the Italian Government, it will possible, after the present excavations are completed, to reconstruct the whole monument (not on the spot, but in more suitable site above the ground level) with a fair degree of certainty; and friends of Italy would a coincidence of good omen for the in the re erection in the capital of Italy of the Altar of Peace erected by first Roman Emperor in the capital of dominions.
Thomas Ashby, Jun.

(Gaius Stern: the lecture itself is at https://books.google.com/books?id=k_NAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251&dq=Ara+Pacis+Stuart+Jones&source=bl&ots=8JPpb69rcr&sig=AipHa6fpO1j04jZ5tqbpz2nAW1c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwivmcfmiqDRAhXsz1QKHe4tDMwQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=Ara%20Pacis%20Stuart%20Jones&f=false )
THE BUILDER 4 June 1904 page 608
Illustrations
SCULPTURE FROM THE ARA PACIS AUGUSTAE ROME

THE reliefs, photographs of which are reproduced in the plate, belong to the wall of blocks of marble which surrounded the Ara Pacis Augustae in the Campus Martius at Rome. Figs. 1, 4, and 5 belong to the lower portion of the exterior, Fig 4 having been one of the angle pilasters on the left, while Fig 5 is precisely similar to the mass of acanthus leaves at the bottom of Fig. 1 but photographed on a larger scale. Figs. 3 and 6 belong to the upper portion, in which were shown two processions advancing to sacrifice; the bearded figure in Fig. 3 probably a symbolical representation of the Roman senate, while the olive-crowned men in Fig. 6 are some of the immediate attendants of the Emperor – possibly members of the family.
All these fragments have been brought to light by the recent excavations, the first official report of which appeared not long ago in the last number of the Notizie degli Scavi (nominally for November 1903). An account of a lecture on the subject by Mr Stuart Jones appeared the Builder for March 5 of this year.


Until the recent excavations it had been supposed that there was but one doorway on the east.
Miscellania Capitolina (Rome 1879), p 11, Annali del' Instituto (1881), p. 802.
Ara Pacis Augustae Sonderschriften des Öster. Inst. In Wien Bd II (1902).