{"id":1923,"date":"2017-07-19T23:25:36","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T23:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-ncc-zeliart\/?post_type=chapter&p=1923"},"modified":"2018-08-22T20:11:11","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T20:11:11","slug":"middle-empire-the-pantheon","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-ncc-zeliart\/chapter\/middle-empire-the-pantheon\/","title":{"raw":"Middle Empire: The Pantheon","rendered":"Middle Empire: The Pantheon"},"content":{"raw":"
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The eighth wonder of the ancient world<\/h3>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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The Pantheon in Rome is a true architectural wonder. Described as the \u201csphinx of the Campus Martius\u201d\u2014referring to enigmas presented by its appearance and history, and to the location in Rome where it was built\u2014to visit it today is to be almost transported back to the Roman Empire itself. The Roman Pantheon probably doesn\u2019t make popular shortlists of the world\u2019s architectural icons, but it should: it is one of the most imitated buildings in history. For a good example, look at the\u00a0library Thomas Jefferson designed<\/a>\u00a0for the University of Virginia.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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The Pantheon, Rome, c. 125<\/h4>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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While the Pantheon\u2019s importance is undeniable, there is a lot that is unknown. With new evidence and fresh interpretations coming to light in recent years, questions once thought settled have been reopened. Most textbooks and websites confidently date the building to the Emperor Hadrian\u2019s reign and describe its purpose as a temple to all the gods (from the Greek, pan = all, theos = gods), but some scholars now argue that these details are wrong and that our knowledge of other aspects of the building\u2019s origin, construction, and meaning is less certain than we had thought.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Whose Pantheon?\u2014the problem of the inscription<\/h3>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Pantheon Elevation<\/h4>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Archaeologists and art historians value inscriptions on ancient monuments because these can provide information about patronage, dating, and purpose that is otherwise difficult to come by. In the case of the Pantheon, however, the inscription on the frieze\u2014in raised bronze letters (modern replacements)\u2014easily deceives, as it did for many centuries. It identifies, in abbreviated Latin, the Roman general and consul (the highest elected official of the Roman Republic) Marcus Agrippa (who lived in the first century B.C.E.) as the patron: \u201cM[arcus] Agrippa L[ucii] F[ilius] Co[n]s[ul] Tertium Fecit\u201d (\u201cMarcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, thrice Consul, built this\u201d). The inscription was taken at face value until 1892, when a well-documented interpretation of stamped bricks found in and around the building showed that the Pantheon standing today was a rebuilding of an earlier structure, and that it was a product of Emperor Hadrian\u2019s ( who ruled from 117-138 C.E.) patronage, built between about 118 and 128. Thus, Agrippa could not have been the patron of the present building. Why, then, is his name so prominent?<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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The conventional understanding of the Pantheon<\/h3>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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A traditional rectangular temple, first built by Agrippa<\/strong><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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The conventional understanding of the Pantheon\u2019s genesis, which held from 1892 until very recently, goes something like this. Agrippa built the original Pantheon in honor of his and Augustus\u2019 military victory at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C.E.\u2014one of the defining moments in the establishment of the Roman Empire (Augustus would go on to become the first Emperor of Rome). It was thought that Agrippa\u2019s Pantheon had been small and conventional: a Greek-style temple, rectangular in plan. Written sources suggest the building was damaged by fire around 80 C.E. and restored to some unknown extent under the orders of Emperor Domitian (who ruled 81-96 C.E.).<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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The Pantheon, Rome, c. 125<\/h4>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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When the building was more substantially damaged by fire again in 110 C.E., the Emperor Trajan decided to rebuild it, but only partial groundwork was carried out before his death. Trajan\u2019s successor, Hadrian\u2014a great patron of architecture and revered as one of the most effective Roman emperors\u2014conceived and possibly even designed the new building with the help of dedicated architects. It was to be a triumphant display of his will and beneficence. He was thought to have abandoned the idea of simply reconstructing Agrippa\u2019s temple, deciding instead to create a much larger and more impressive structure. And, in an act of pious humility meant to put him in the favor of the gods and to honor his illustrious predecessors, Hadrian installed the false inscription attributing the new building to the long-dead Agrippa.<\/div>\r\n
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New evidence\u2014Agrippa\u2019s temple was not rectangular at all<\/strong><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Today, we know that many parts of this story are either unlikely or demonstrably false. It is now clear from archaeological studies that Agrippa\u2019s original building was not a small rectangular temple, but contained the distinctive hallmarks of the current building: a portico with tall columns and pediment and a rotunda (circular hall) behind it, in similar dimensions to the current building.<\/div>\r\n
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And the temple may be Trajan\u2019s (not Hadrian\u2019s)<\/strong><\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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More startling, a reconsideration of the evidence of the bricks used in the building\u2019s construction\u2014some of which were stamped with identifying marks that can be used to establish the date of manufacture\u2014shows that almost all of them date from the 110s, during the time of Trajan. Instead of the great triumph of Hadrianic design, the Pantheon should more rightly be seen as the final architectural glory of the Emperor Trajan\u2019s reign: substantially designed and rebuilt beginning around 114, with some preparatory work on the building site perhaps starting right after the fire of 110, and finished under Hadrian sometime between 125 and 128.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Giovanni Paolo Panini,\u00a0Interior of the Pantheon<\/em>, Rome. c. 1734, oil on canvas, 128 x 99 cm (National Gallery of Art)<\/h4>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Lise Hetland, the archaeologist who first made this argument in 2007 (building on an earlier attribution to Trajan by Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer), writes that the long-standing effort to make the physical evidence fit a dating entirely within Hadrian\u2019s time shows \u201cthe illogicality of the sometimes almost surgically clear-cut presentation of Roman buildings according to the sequence of emperors.\u201d The case of the Pantheon confirms a general art-historical lesson: style categories and historical periodizations (in other words, our understanding of the style of architecture during a particular emperor\u2019s reign) should be seen as conveniences\u2014subordinate to the priority of evidence.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Pantheon Plan<\/h4>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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What was it\u2014a temple? A dynastic sanctuary?<\/h3>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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It is now an open question whether the building was ever a temple to all the gods, as its traditional name has long suggested to interpreters. Pantheon, or Pantheum in Latin, was more of a nickname than a formal title. One of the major written sources about the building\u2019s origin is the Roman History by Cassius Dio, a late second- to early third-century historian who was twice Roman consul. His account, written a century after the Pantheon was completed, must be taken skeptically. However, he provides important evidence about the building\u2019s purpose. He wrote,<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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He [Agrippa] completed the building called the Pantheon. It has this name, perhaps because it received among the images which decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus; but my own opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens. Agrippa, for his part, wished to place a statue of Augustus there also and to bestow upon him the honor of having the structure named after him; but when Augustus wouldn\u2019t accept either honor, he [Agrippa] placed in the temple itself a statue of the former [Julius] Caesar and in the ante-room statues of Augustus and himself. This was done not out of any rivalry or ambition on Agrippa\u2019s part to make himself equal to Augustus, but from his hearty loyalty to him and his constant zeal for the public good.<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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A number of scholars have now suggested that the original Pantheon was not a temple in the usual sense of a god\u2019s dwelling place. Instead, it may have been intended as a dynastic sanctuary, part of a ruler cult emerging around Augustus, with the original dedication being to Julius Caesar, the progenitor of the family line of Augustus and Agrippa and a revered ancestor who had been the first Roman deified by the Senate. Adding to the plausibility of this view is the fact that the site had sacred associations\u2014tradition stating that it was the location of the apotheosis, or raising up to the heavens, of Romulus, Rome\u2019s mythic founder. Even more, the Pantheon was also aligned on axis, across a long stretch of open fields called the Campus Martius, with Augustus\u2019 mausoleum, completed just a few years before the Pantheon. Agrippa\u2019s building, then, was redolent with suggestions of the alliance of the gods and the rulers of Rome during a time when new religious ideas about ruler cults were taking shape.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Reconstruction by the Institute for Digital Media Arts Lab at Ball State University, interior of the Pantheon, Rome, c. 125 C.E. (Project Director: John Filwalk, Project Advisors: Dr. Robert Hannah and Dr. Bernard Frischer)<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Reconstruction by the\u00a0Institute for Digital Media Arts Lab at Ball State University<\/a>, interior of the Pantheon, Rome, c. 125 C.E. (Project Director: John Filwalk, Project Advisors: Dr. Robert Hannah and Dr. Bernard Frischer)<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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The dome and the divine authority of the emperors<\/h3>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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By the fourth century C.E., when the historian Ammianus Marcellinus mentioned the Pantheon in his history of imperial Rome, statues of the Roman emperors occupied the rotunda\u2019s niches. In Agrippa\u2019s Pantheon these spaces had been filled by statues of the gods. We also know that Hadrian held court in the Pantheon. Whatever its original purposes, the Pantheon by the time of Trajan and Hadrian was primarily associated with the power of the emperors and their divine authority.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Pantheon dome<\/h4>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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The symbolism of the great dome adds weight to this interpretation. The dome\u2019s coffers (inset panels) are divided into 28 sections, equaling the number of large columns below. 28 is a \u201cperfect number,\u201d a whole number whose summed factors equal it (thus, 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28). Only four perfect numbers were known in antiquity (6, 28, 496, and 8128) and they were sometimes held\u2014for instance, by Pythagoras and his followers\u2014to have mystical, religious meaning in connection with the cosmos. Additionally, the oculus (open window) at the top of the dome was the interior\u2019s only source of direct light. The sunbeam streaming through the oculus traced an ever-changing daily path across the wall and floor of the rotunda. Perhaps, then, the sunbeam marked solar and lunar events, or simply time. The idea fits nicely with Dio\u2019s understanding of the dome as the canopy of the heavens and, by extension, of the rotunda itself as a microcosm of the Roman world beneath the starry heavens, with the emperor presiding over it all, ensuring the right order of the world.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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How was it designed and built?<\/h3>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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The Pantheon, Rome, c. 125<\/h4>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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The Pantheon\u2019s basic design is simple and powerful. A portico with free-standing columns is attached to a domed rotunda. In between, to help transition between the rectilinear portico and the round rotunda is an element generally described in English as the intermediate block. This piece is itself interesting for the fact that visible on its face above the portico\u2019s pediment is another shallow pediment. This may be evidence that the portico was intended to be taller than it is (50 Roman feet instead of the actual 40 feet). Perhaps the taller columns, presumably ordered from a quarry in Egypt, never made it to the building site (for reasons unknown), necessitating the substitution of smaller columns, thus reducing the height of the portico.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Pantheon, Rome, c. 125 C.E. (photo: Darren Puttock, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)<\/h4>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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The Pantheon\u2019s great interior spectacle\u2014its enormous scale, the geometric clarity of the circle-in-square pavement pattern and the dome\u2019s half-sphere, and the moving disc of light\u2014is all the more breathtaking for the way one moves from the bustling square (piazza, in Italian) outside into the grandeur inside.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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One approaches the Pantheon through the portico with its tall, monolithic Corinthian columns of Egyptian granite. Originally, the approach would have been framed and directed by the long walls of a courtyard or forecourt in front of the building, and a set of stairs, now submerged under the piazza, leading up to the portico. Walking beneath the giant columns, the outside light starts to dim. As you pass through the enormous portal with its bronze doors, you enter the rotunda, where your eyes are swept up toward the oculus.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Reconstruction by the\u00a0Institute for Digital Media Arts Lab at Ball State University<\/a>, exterior of the Pantheon, Rome, c. 125 C.E. (Project Director: John Filwalk, Project Advisors: Dr. Robert Hannah and Dr. Bernard Frischer)<\/h4>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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The structure itself is an important example of advanced Roman engineering. Its walls are made from brick-faced concrete\u2014an innovation widely used in Rome\u2019s major buildings and infrastructure, such as aqueducts\u2014and are lightened with relieving arches and vaults built into the wall mass. The concrete easily allowed for spaces to be carved out of the wall\u2019s thickness\u2014for instance, the alcoves around the rotunda\u2019s perimeter and the large apse directly across from the entrance (where Hadrian would have sat to hold court). Further, the concrete of the dome is graded into six layers with a mixture of scoria, a low-density, lightweight volcanic rock, at the top. From top to bottom, the structure of the Pantheon was fine-tuned to be structurally efficient and to allow flexibility of design.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Pantheon, Rome, c. 125 C.E. (photo:\u00a0Peter<\/a>, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)<\/h4>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Who designed the Pantheon?<\/h3>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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We do not know who designed the Pantheon, but Apollodorus of Damascus, Trajan\u2019s favorite builder, is a likely candidate\u2014or, perhaps, someone closely associated with Apollodorus. He had designed Trajan\u2019s Forum and at least two other major projects in Rome, probably making him the person in the capital city with the deepest knowledge about complex architecture and engineering in the 110s. On that basis, and with some stylistic and design similarities between the Pantheon and his known projects, Apollodorus\u2019 authorship of the building is a significant possibility.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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When it was believed that Hadrian had fully overseen the Pantheon\u2019s design, doubt was cast on the possibility of Apollodorus\u2019 role because, according to Dio, Hadrian had banished and then executed the architect for having spoken ill of the emperor\u2019s talents. Many historians now doubt Dio\u2019s account. Although the evidence is circumstantial, a number of obstacles to Apollodorus\u2019 authorship have been removed by the recent developments in our understanding of the Pantheon\u2019s genesis. In the end, however, we cannot say for certain who designed the Pantheon.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Why Has It Survived?<\/h3>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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We know very little about what happened to the Pantheon between the time of Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century and the early seventh century\u2014a period when the city of Rome\u2019s importance faded and the Roman Empire disintegrated. This was presumably the time when much of the Pantheon\u2019s surroundings\u2014the forecourt and all adjacent buildings\u2014fell into serious disrepair and were demolished and replaced. How and why the Pantheon emerged from those difficult centuries is hard to say. The Liber Pontificalis\u2014a medieval manuscript containing not-always-reliable biographies of the popes\u2014tells us that in the 7th century Pope Boniface IV \u201casked the [Byzantine] emperor Phocas for the temple called the Pantheon, and in it he made the church of the ever-virgin Holy Mary and all the martyrs.\u201d There is continuing debate about when the Christian consecration of the Pantheon happened; today, the balance of evidence points to May 13, 613. In later centuries, the building was known as Sanctae Mariae Rotundae (Saint Mary of the Rotunda). Whatever the precise date of its consecration, the fact that the Pantheon became a church\u2014specifically, a station church, where the pope would hold special masses during Lent, the period leading up to Easter\u2014meant that it was in continuous use, ensuring its survival.<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Altar, Pantheon<\/h4>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Yet, like other ancient remains in Rome, the Pantheon was for centuries a source of materials for new buildings and other purposes\u2014including the making of cannons and weapons. In addition to the loss of original finishings, sculpture, and all of its bronze elements, many other changes were made to the building from the fourth century to today. Among the most important: the three easternmost columns of the portico were replaced in the seventeenth century after having been damaged and braced by a brick wall centuries earlier; doors and steps leading down into the portico were erected after the grade of the surrounding piazza had risen over time; inside the rotunda, columns made from imperial red porphyry\u2014a rare, expensive stone from Egypt\u2014were replaced with granite versions; and roof tiles and other elements were periodically removed or replaced. Despite all the losses and alterations, and all the unanswered and difficult questions, the Pantheon is an unrivalled artifact of Roman antiquity.<\/div>\r\n
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Essay by Dr. Paul A. Ranogajec<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"
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The eighth wonder of the ancient world<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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The Pantheon in Rome is a true architectural wonder. Described as the \u201csphinx of the Campus Martius\u201d\u2014referring to enigmas presented by its appearance and history, and to the location in Rome where it was built\u2014to visit it today is to be almost transported back to the Roman Empire itself. The Roman Pantheon probably doesn\u2019t make popular shortlists of the world\u2019s architectural icons, but it should: it is one of the most imitated buildings in history. For a good example, look at the\u00a0library Thomas Jefferson designed<\/a>\u00a0for the University of Virginia.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Pantheon, Rome, c. 125<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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While the Pantheon\u2019s importance is undeniable, there is a lot that is unknown. With new evidence and fresh interpretations coming to light in recent years, questions once thought settled have been reopened. Most textbooks and websites confidently date the building to the Emperor Hadrian\u2019s reign and describe its purpose as a temple to all the gods (from the Greek, pan = all, theos = gods), but some scholars now argue that these details are wrong and that our knowledge of other aspects of the building\u2019s origin, construction, and meaning is less certain than we had thought.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Whose Pantheon?\u2014the problem of the inscription<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Pantheon Elevation<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Archaeologists and art historians value inscriptions on ancient monuments because these can provide information about patronage, dating, and purpose that is otherwise difficult to come by. In the case of the Pantheon, however, the inscription on the frieze\u2014in raised bronze letters (modern replacements)\u2014easily deceives, as it did for many centuries. It identifies, in abbreviated Latin, the Roman general and consul (the highest elected official of the Roman Republic) Marcus Agrippa (who lived in the first century B.C.E.) as the patron: \u201cM[arcus] Agrippa L[ucii] F[ilius] Co[n]s[ul] Tertium Fecit\u201d (\u201cMarcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, thrice Consul, built this\u201d). The inscription was taken at face value until 1892, when a well-documented interpretation of stamped bricks found in and around the building showed that the Pantheon standing today was a rebuilding of an earlier structure, and that it was a product of Emperor Hadrian\u2019s ( who ruled from 117-138 C.E.) patronage, built between about 118 and 128. Thus, Agrippa could not have been the patron of the present building. Why, then, is his name so prominent?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The conventional understanding of the Pantheon<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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A traditional rectangular temple, first built by Agrippa<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The conventional understanding of the Pantheon\u2019s genesis, which held from 1892 until very recently, goes something like this. Agrippa built the original Pantheon in honor of his and Augustus\u2019 military victory at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C.E.\u2014one of the defining moments in the establishment of the Roman Empire (Augustus would go on to become the first Emperor of Rome). It was thought that Agrippa\u2019s Pantheon had been small and conventional: a Greek-style temple, rectangular in plan. Written sources suggest the building was damaged by fire around 80 C.E. and restored to some unknown extent under the orders of Emperor Domitian (who ruled 81-96 C.E.).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Pantheon, Rome, c. 125<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When the building was more substantially damaged by fire again in 110 C.E., the Emperor Trajan decided to rebuild it, but only partial groundwork was carried out before his death. Trajan\u2019s successor, Hadrian\u2014a great patron of architecture and revered as one of the most effective Roman emperors\u2014conceived and possibly even designed the new building with the help of dedicated architects. It was to be a triumphant display of his will and beneficence. He was thought to have abandoned the idea of simply reconstructing Agrippa\u2019s temple, deciding instead to create a much larger and more impressive structure. And, in an act of pious humility meant to put him in the favor of the gods and to honor his illustrious predecessors, Hadrian installed the false inscription attributing the new building to the long-dead Agrippa.<\/div>\n
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New evidence\u2014Agrippa\u2019s temple was not rectangular at all<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Today, we know that many parts of this story are either unlikely or demonstrably false. It is now clear from archaeological studies that Agrippa\u2019s original building was not a small rectangular temple, but contained the distinctive hallmarks of the current building: a portico with tall columns and pediment and a rotunda (circular hall) behind it, in similar dimensions to the current building.<\/div>\n
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And the temple may be Trajan\u2019s (not Hadrian\u2019s)<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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More startling, a reconsideration of the evidence of the bricks used in the building\u2019s construction\u2014some of which were stamped with identifying marks that can be used to establish the date of manufacture\u2014shows that almost all of them date from the 110s, during the time of Trajan. Instead of the great triumph of Hadrianic design, the Pantheon should more rightly be seen as the final architectural glory of the Emperor Trajan\u2019s reign: substantially designed and rebuilt beginning around 114, with some preparatory work on the building site perhaps starting right after the fire of 110, and finished under Hadrian sometime between 125 and 128.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Giovanni Paolo Panini,\u00a0Interior of the Pantheon<\/em>, Rome. c. 1734, oil on canvas, 128 x 99 cm (National Gallery of Art)<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Lise Hetland, the archaeologist who first made this argument in 2007 (building on an earlier attribution to Trajan by Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer), writes that the long-standing effort to make the physical evidence fit a dating entirely within Hadrian\u2019s time shows \u201cthe illogicality of the sometimes almost surgically clear-cut presentation of Roman buildings according to the sequence of emperors.\u201d The case of the Pantheon confirms a general art-historical lesson: style categories and historical periodizations (in other words, our understanding of the style of architecture during a particular emperor\u2019s reign) should be seen as conveniences\u2014subordinate to the priority of evidence.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Pantheon Plan<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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What was it\u2014a temple? A dynastic sanctuary?<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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It is now an open question whether the building was ever a temple to all the gods, as its traditional name has long suggested to interpreters. Pantheon, or Pantheum in Latin, was more of a nickname than a formal title. One of the major written sources about the building\u2019s origin is the Roman History by Cassius Dio, a late second- to early third-century historian who was twice Roman consul. His account, written a century after the Pantheon was completed, must be taken skeptically. However, he provides important evidence about the building\u2019s purpose. He wrote,<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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He [Agrippa] completed the building called the Pantheon. It has this name, perhaps because it received among the images which decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus; but my own opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens. Agrippa, for his part, wished to place a statue of Augustus there also and to bestow upon him the honor of having the structure named after him; but when Augustus wouldn\u2019t accept either honor, he [Agrippa] placed in the temple itself a statue of the former [Julius] Caesar and in the ante-room statues of Augustus and himself. This was done not out of any rivalry or ambition on Agrippa\u2019s part to make himself equal to Augustus, but from his hearty loyalty to him and his constant zeal for the public good.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
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A number of scholars have now suggested that the original Pantheon was not a temple in the usual sense of a god\u2019s dwelling place. Instead, it may have been intended as a dynastic sanctuary, part of a ruler cult emerging around Augustus, with the original dedication being to Julius Caesar, the progenitor of the family line of Augustus and Agrippa and a revered ancestor who had been the first Roman deified by the Senate. Adding to the plausibility of this view is the fact that the site had sacred associations\u2014tradition stating that it was the location of the apotheosis, or raising up to the heavens, of Romulus, Rome\u2019s mythic founder. Even more, the Pantheon was also aligned on axis, across a long stretch of open fields called the Campus Martius, with Augustus\u2019 mausoleum, completed just a few years before the Pantheon. Agrippa\u2019s building, then, was redolent with suggestions of the alliance of the gods and the rulers of Rome during a time when new religious ideas about ruler cults were taking shape.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Reconstruction by the Institute for Digital Media Arts Lab at Ball State University, interior of the Pantheon, Rome, c. 125 C.E. (Project Director: John Filwalk, Project Advisors: Dr. Robert Hannah and Dr. Bernard Frischer)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Reconstruction by the\u00a0Institute for Digital Media Arts Lab at Ball State University<\/a>, interior of the Pantheon, Rome, c. 125 C.E. (Project Director: John Filwalk, Project Advisors: Dr. Robert Hannah and Dr. Bernard Frischer)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The dome and the divine authority of the emperors<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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By the fourth century C.E., when the historian Ammianus Marcellinus mentioned the Pantheon in his history of imperial Rome, statues of the Roman emperors occupied the rotunda\u2019s niches. In Agrippa\u2019s Pantheon these spaces had been filled by statues of the gods. We also know that Hadrian held court in the Pantheon. Whatever its original purposes, the Pantheon by the time of Trajan and Hadrian was primarily associated with the power of the emperors and their divine authority.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Pantheon dome<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The symbolism of the great dome adds weight to this interpretation. The dome\u2019s coffers (inset panels) are divided into 28 sections, equaling the number of large columns below. 28 is a \u201cperfect number,\u201d a whole number whose summed factors equal it (thus, 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28). Only four perfect numbers were known in antiquity (6, 28, 496, and 8128) and they were sometimes held\u2014for instance, by Pythagoras and his followers\u2014to have mystical, religious meaning in connection with the cosmos. Additionally, the oculus (open window) at the top of the dome was the interior\u2019s only source of direct light. The sunbeam streaming through the oculus traced an ever-changing daily path across the wall and floor of the rotunda. Perhaps, then, the sunbeam marked solar and lunar events, or simply time. The idea fits nicely with Dio\u2019s understanding of the dome as the canopy of the heavens and, by extension, of the rotunda itself as a microcosm of the Roman world beneath the starry heavens, with the emperor presiding over it all, ensuring the right order of the world.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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How was it designed and built?<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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The Pantheon, Rome, c. 125<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Pantheon\u2019s basic design is simple and powerful. A portico with free-standing columns is attached to a domed rotunda. In between, to help transition between the rectilinear portico and the round rotunda is an element generally described in English as the intermediate block. This piece is itself interesting for the fact that visible on its face above the portico\u2019s pediment is another shallow pediment. This may be evidence that the portico was intended to be taller than it is (50 Roman feet instead of the actual 40 feet). Perhaps the taller columns, presumably ordered from a quarry in Egypt, never made it to the building site (for reasons unknown), necessitating the substitution of smaller columns, thus reducing the height of the portico.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Pantheon, Rome, c. 125 C.E. (photo: Darren Puttock, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Pantheon\u2019s great interior spectacle\u2014its enormous scale, the geometric clarity of the circle-in-square pavement pattern and the dome\u2019s half-sphere, and the moving disc of light\u2014is all the more breathtaking for the way one moves from the bustling square (piazza, in Italian) outside into the grandeur inside.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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One approaches the Pantheon through the portico with its tall, monolithic Corinthian columns of Egyptian granite. Originally, the approach would have been framed and directed by the long walls of a courtyard or forecourt in front of the building, and a set of stairs, now submerged under the piazza, leading up to the portico. Walking beneath the giant columns, the outside light starts to dim. As you pass through the enormous portal with its bronze doors, you enter the rotunda, where your eyes are swept up toward the oculus.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Reconstruction by the\u00a0Institute for Digital Media Arts Lab at Ball State University<\/a>, exterior of the Pantheon, Rome, c. 125 C.E. (Project Director: John Filwalk, Project Advisors: Dr. Robert Hannah and Dr. Bernard Frischer)<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The structure itself is an important example of advanced Roman engineering. Its walls are made from brick-faced concrete\u2014an innovation widely used in Rome\u2019s major buildings and infrastructure, such as aqueducts\u2014and are lightened with relieving arches and vaults built into the wall mass. The concrete easily allowed for spaces to be carved out of the wall\u2019s thickness\u2014for instance, the alcoves around the rotunda\u2019s perimeter and the large apse directly across from the entrance (where Hadrian would have sat to hold court). Further, the concrete of the dome is graded into six layers with a mixture of scoria, a low-density, lightweight volcanic rock, at the top. From top to bottom, the structure of the Pantheon was fine-tuned to be structurally efficient and to allow flexibility of design.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Pantheon, Rome, c. 125 C.E. (photo:\u00a0Peter<\/a>, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Who designed the Pantheon?<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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We do not know who designed the Pantheon, but Apollodorus of Damascus, Trajan\u2019s favorite builder, is a likely candidate\u2014or, perhaps, someone closely associated with Apollodorus. He had designed Trajan\u2019s Forum and at least two other major projects in Rome, probably making him the person in the capital city with the deepest knowledge about complex architecture and engineering in the 110s. On that basis, and with some stylistic and design similarities between the Pantheon and his known projects, Apollodorus\u2019 authorship of the building is a significant possibility.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When it was believed that Hadrian had fully overseen the Pantheon\u2019s design, doubt was cast on the possibility of Apollodorus\u2019 role because, according to Dio, Hadrian had banished and then executed the architect for having spoken ill of the emperor\u2019s talents. Many historians now doubt Dio\u2019s account. Although the evidence is circumstantial, a number of obstacles to Apollodorus\u2019 authorship have been removed by the recent developments in our understanding of the Pantheon\u2019s genesis. In the end, however, we cannot say for certain who designed the Pantheon.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Why Has It Survived?<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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We know very little about what happened to the Pantheon between the time of Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century and the early seventh century\u2014a period when the city of Rome\u2019s importance faded and the Roman Empire disintegrated. This was presumably the time when much of the Pantheon\u2019s surroundings\u2014the forecourt and all adjacent buildings\u2014fell into serious disrepair and were demolished and replaced. How and why the Pantheon emerged from those difficult centuries is hard to say. The Liber Pontificalis\u2014a medieval manuscript containing not-always-reliable biographies of the popes\u2014tells us that in the 7th century Pope Boniface IV \u201casked the [Byzantine] emperor Phocas for the temple called the Pantheon, and in it he made the church of the ever-virgin Holy Mary and all the martyrs.\u201d There is continuing debate about when the Christian consecration of the Pantheon happened; today, the balance of evidence points to May 13, 613. In later centuries, the building was known as Sanctae Mariae Rotundae (Saint Mary of the Rotunda). Whatever the precise date of its consecration, the fact that the Pantheon became a church\u2014specifically, a station church, where the pope would hold special masses during Lent, the period leading up to Easter\u2014meant that it was in continuous use, ensuring its survival.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Altar, Pantheon<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Yet, like other ancient remains in Rome, the Pantheon was for centuries a source of materials for new buildings and other purposes\u2014including the making of cannons and weapons. In addition to the loss of original finishings, sculpture, and all of its bronze elements, many other changes were made to the building from the fourth century to today. Among the most important: the three easternmost columns of the portico were replaced in the seventeenth century after having been damaged and braced by a brick wall centuries earlier; doors and steps leading down into the portico were erected after the grade of the surrounding piazza had risen over time; inside the rotunda, columns made from imperial red porphyry\u2014a rare, expensive stone from Egypt\u2014were replaced with granite versions; and roof tiles and other elements were periodically removed or replaced. Despite all the losses and alterations, and all the unanswered and difficult questions, the Pantheon is an unrivalled artifact of Roman antiquity.<\/div>\n
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Essay by Dr. Paul A. Ranogajec<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t
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Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t
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CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div>