20. Roman Wine in Greek Bottles: The Rebirth of Athens

Roman Architecture (HSAR 252)

Professor Kleiner discusses the rebirth of Athens under the Romans especially during the reigns of the two philhellenic emperors, Augustus and Hadrian. While some have dismissed the architecture of Roman Athens as derivative of its Classical and Hellenistic Greek past, Professor Kleiner demonstrates that the high quality of Greek marble and Greek stone carvers made these buildings consequential. In addition some structures provide evidence for the frequent and creative exchange of architectural ideas and motifs between Greece and Rome in Roman times. After a brief introduction to the history of the city of Athens, Professor Kleiner presents the monuments erected by Augustus and Agrippa on the Acropolis and in the Greek and Roman Agoras, for example the Odeion of Agrippa. Following with Hadrian's building program, she features an aqueduct and reservoir façade, the Library of Hadrian, and the vast Temple of Olympian Zeus, a project begun over six hundred years earlier. Professor Kleiner concludes the lecture with the Monument of Philopappos, a Trajanic tomb on the Mouseion Hill built for a man deprived of the kingship of Commagene by the Romans, but who made the best of the situation by becoming a suffect consul in Rome and then moving to Athens, where he died and was memorialized by his sister Balbilla.

00:00 - Chapter 1. Introduction to Greek and Roman Athens
13:09 - Chapter 2. Augustus and the Athenian Acropolis
24:56 - Chapter 3. Agrippas Building Program in Athens
41:13 - Chapter 4. The Roman Agora and the Tower of the Winds
50:58 - Chapter 5. Architecture in Athens under Hadrian
01:03:52 - Chapter 6. The Monument of Philopappos on the Mouseion Hill

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://open.yale.edu/courses

This course was recorded in Spring 2009.