The Ara Pacis Augustae and the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman Imperial Art

Rating:
Summary: An invaluable book.
Review: There has been a good deal of scholarship in relation to this monument (The Ara Pacis Augustae), but few scholars have spent much time on the extensive vegetal friezes that are at eye-level on all four sides of the altar. Only a handful of scholars have written more extensively on this topic, and have put forth varying and interesting theories about their greater meaning in the context of the altar. David Castriota is one of the most thorough.
Castriota's major argument is that the friezes are an extremely important and integral part of the message of the monument as a whole. They represent through their vegetal imagery and the animals within this vegetal landscape the gods that best exemplified the pax Augustae and the restoration of the mos maiorum, the old Roman values and traditions on which Rome was thought to have been built.
In order for this message to convey the intended meaning to the majority of the Roman people, it had to be easily understandable. Both the educated and uneducated should have been able to quickly identify the basic concepts of the imagery it contained and understand what these images stood for without extensive study. Castriota looks first at the precedent for the vegetal friezes and what these earlier works meant to the people who commissioned them, and second, he discusses the widespread use of this type of decoration and how familiar the Roman people were with it.
Anyone who has an interest in Augustan history should read this book. The Ara Pacis was not just another piece of beautiful Augustan art. This monument stood as the epitome of the Augustan message of peace brought forth and solidified by Augustus; a peace that had never truly been seen in Roman history to that point.

Rating:
Summary: A truly fascinating and marvelously researched book
Review: This book provides the most exhaustive and conclusive research on the relationship of Dionysos and Apollo that I have come across. Many of the sources I examined on the subject are referenced here in Castriota's book, distilling their best elements and elaborating on them to bring out whole new dimensions. His examination of the friezes depicting Apollonian laurel and Dionysian ivy lends excellent evidence to the argument for the gods' complimentary relationship, rather than the foolish Nietzschian ideals of an antagonistic relationship between the two which had tainted so much modern scholarship. For those still stuck on Nietzsche's argument: read this book. I recommend it to anyone looking for a thorough examination of the Apollonian-Dionysian relationship. And all this, dear reader, is only one of the chapters. Pick this up now. Believe me, you won't regret it.