Roman Empire Religion in the Volume 7, no. 2, An Urban Archaeology of Ancient Religion (original) (raw)
2021, The Wood Comes to the City; Ancient Trees, Sacred Groves, and the 'Greening' of Early Augustan Rome
The first program of urban renewal carried out by Caesar Divi Filius and his followers began in 33 BCE, when Caesar was consul for the second time and M. Agrippa was aedile. Agrippa eventually drained parts of the Campus Martius and dramatically expanded Rome’s water supply, enabling him to build Rome’s first imperial baths. One aspect of this earlier, programmatic transformation of the city that has up to now received little attention is the planting of a huge number of trees: in porticoes, in sanctuaries, beside temples, and laid out in large groves and wooded walks in the Campus Martius – especially around Augustus’ gigantic Mausoleum. This ‘greening’ of Rome in the late 30s and 20s BCE was an important part of Augustus’ revival of Archaic Roman religion, prompted by the writings of the antiquarians of the previous generation. Our best evidence for this comes from the poetry of Vergil, and from the genre of ‘sacro-idyllic’ painting – invented at Rome in these very years.
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Most of the ancient cities link their initial fortune to the uniqueness of their geographical position: rivers, hills, islands and natural resources are playing a fundamental role in the game of shaping a powerful future for any urban settlement. However, very few cities share the astonishing destiny of the City of Rome, where all those factors, together with the powerful boost of its citizen’s determination and their primitive but effective technologies, have contributed to design the fate of that urban area, establishing the basis of western civilization and giving a fundamental contribution of all humankind.
The first extensive study of an Imperial Roman Garden in the city of Rome: the Horti Lamiani
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 2023
This paper presents the first systematic results of integrated plant macrofossil and pollen analyses from the Horti Lamiani (1st-3rd century ce), an aristocratic residence with a luxury garden which was established on the Esquilino (Esquiline Hill) in Rome during the time of the first Emperor, Caesar Augustus (27 bce-14 ce) and later became one of the most famous Imperial gardens around the ancient city. Different types of plant remains such as charcoal, seeds and fruits and pollen were recovered from pits and pots in the garden and reflect the presence of plants there. There seem to have been ornamental shrubs which were probably grown as decorative modelled hedges and/or isolated bushes, as well as cultivated trees. Several ornamental flowering plants grew in pots. Although this archaeobotanical assemblage could represent some patches of wild vegetation still growing in the study area at the time of the Imperial garden, it is likely that most of the identified plants were intentionally planted and organised to create a glimpse of the past wild landscape of Rome. They have special characteristics, such as bearing coloured flowers or fruits and offering shade, that made them suitable for embellishing a magnificent garden. Moreover this reflects the Roman desire to control nature, testified by the expansion of luxury gardens during the Imperial period and the spread of decorative horticultural techniques, like the miniaturisation of trees and shaping of trees and shrubs by topiary.
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IN: Baker, P., Forcey, C., Jundi, S., and Witcher, R. (eds) 1999. TRAC 98: Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Leicester 1998. Oxford: Oxbow Books., 1999