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Nero's Golden House

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

J. Ward Perkins
J. Ward Perkins*
Affiliation:
British School at Rome
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Extract

Domus Aurea, the Golden House. The name conjures up a vision of splendour, which even a visit to the gloomy vaults beneath the southern slopes of the EsquiIine cannot altogether dispel. All too little has survived ; and unless there are surprises in store for us still below ground, it seems unlikely that we shall ever know very much more about it from the actual remains than we do at present. But with each year that passes fresh knowledge accumulates in other, related fields. Vision shifts and perspectives change, and every now and then it becomes worth while once again to take stock, to ask which of the old problems still matter, and to see what are the new ones that have now to be considered. The present article, which lays no claim to originality, is an attempt to present and assess the present state of scholarly opinion about what must, by any computation, be held to be one of the most important buildings in the whole long history of classical architecture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 30 , Issue 120 , December 1956 , pp. 209 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1956

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References

1 The ‘atrium’ here probably refers specifically to the vestibule, whose substructures were later partly incorporated in the podium of Hadrian’s gigantic temple of Venus and Rome. The Baths of Titus (for the speed of their construction, cf. Suet. Tit., 7) lay immediately to the north of the Colosseum.

2 H. P. L’Orange, Domus Aurea : der Sonnenpalast., Symbolae Osloenses, 1942 (Serta Eitremiana), pp. 68-100 ; id., The Iconography of Cosmic Kingship, Oslo, 1953, pp. 28-31.

3 The hall is described by the Byzantine writer, Kedrenos (ed. Bekker, 412, Corpus Script. Hist. Byz., Bonn, 1838, p. 721 f.). It is discussed by E. Herzfeld, ‘Der Thron des Khosro’, Jahrbuch der preuss. Kunstsammlungen, XLI, 1920, pp. 1-24 and 103-47.

4 Axel Boethius, ‘Nero’s Golden House’, Eranos, XLIV, 1946, pp. 442-59 ; J. M. C. Toynbee, JRS, XXXVIII, 1948, pp. 160-1 ; M. P. Charlesworth, JRS., XI, 1950, pp. 71-2.

5 Varro, RR IV, 5, 9. For its significance see pp. 19-20 of Karl Lehmann’s fundamental article, ‘The Dome of Heaven’, in Art Bulletin, XXVII, 1945, pp. 1-27.

6 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 1, 25.

7 Lehmann, art cit., fig. 28 (after Bartoli).

8 Lehmann, art. cit., passim.

9 As Professor Van Buren points out to me, the term, though in common archaeological use, is of doubtful ancient authority.

10 C. C. Van Essen, ‘La topographie de la Domus Aurea Neronis’, Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, n.s. XVII, 12, 1954, pp. 371-98.

11 A. M. Colini, Topografia e Storia del Celio nell’antichità, 1944, p. 32, accepts Säflund’s suggestion that by this date the actual wall had already been demolished.

12 Ibid., pp. 137-8, 143-7. The water from this fountain may have served to feed a cascade falling to the lake below.

13 M. Barosso, ‘Edificio romano sotto il tempio di Venere e Roma’. Atti del III Congresso Nazionale di Storia dell’Architettura (Roma, 1938), Rome, 1941, pp. 75-8.

14 G. Carettoni, ‘Costruzioni sotto l’angolo sud-occidentale della Domus Flavia’, Notizie degli Scavi, n.s. III, 1949, pp. 48-65, 76-9.

15 Ibid., pp. 66-73.

16 Listed and discussed by Van Essen, op. cit. For the records of earlier discoveries see pp. 137-40 of F. Weege’s ‘Das Goldene Haus von Nero’, Jahrb. deutsch. arch. Inst., XIX, 1904, pp. 127-244.

17 For the Neronian Sacra Via, see E. B. van Deman, Mem. Am. Acad. Rome, V, 1925, pp. 115-26.

18 M. Rostowzew, ‘Pompeianische Landschaften und römische Villen’, Jahrb. deutsch. arch. Inst., XIX, 1904, pp. 103-26. Most recently discussed by Phyllis Williams Lehmann, Roman Wall Paintings from Boscoreale, Cambridge (Mass.), 1953.

19 Weege, op. cit. For a brief account of the subsequent excavations, see A. M. Colini, Bull. Arch. Com., 1939, Notiziario, pp. 191-2.

20 Weege, op. cit., pp. 165-82. It was from the character of these paintings, first seen and studied in the ‘grottoes’ of the Esquilme, that the word ‘grotesque’ passed into the language.

21 Pliny, HN, XXXV, 20.

22 Weege, op. cit., pp. 165-82.

23 For the octagon, G. Giovannoni, ‘La cupola della Domus Aurea Neroniana in Roma’, Atti del I Congresso Nazionale dell’ Architettura (1936), Firenze, 1938, pp. 3-11.

24 Rostowzew, op. cit., pl. VII, 2.