DECORATING THE TEMPLUM PACIS

Pliny the Elder completed his Naturalis Historia in AD 77, and his information on the Templum Pacis refers to the period in which the Vespasianic complex had just been inaugurated (AD 75). He called it opera Pacis (Nat. Hist. 36.27.58). Included among the Roman wonders attesting that “the world had been conquered” (Nat. Hist. 36.101), Pliny spoke of it, of the Basilica Aemilia, and of the Forum of Augustus, as the three most beautiful monuments in the world (Nat. Hist. 36.24.102):

The caryatids and shields that appeared in the attic story of the Forum of Augustus made plain the submission of foreign people to Rome and the emperor. The façade of the Basilica Paulli, restored after AD 14, had an attic story with imagines clipeatae flanked by monumental statues of Parthian dignitaries in colored marbles. Therefore, I argue that the Templum Pacis shared this characteristic with the Forum and the Basilica: the sculptural decoration of the attic story, which had a strong ideological meaning along with an impact on the spatial experience of Vespasian's monument. It appears that Pliny paid attention to sculpture and painting as well as to the building that contained them. He was certainly a man with traditional tastes, but the Templum Pacis, although not particularly original, was regarded also by later visitors – Constantius II in the fourth century and Procopius in the sixth century – among the outstanding monuments of Rome.