Category: Adult Education

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Welcome to a new year and the festival of Janus

Dr. Birgitta Hoffmann

A Nero Coin in the American Academy in Rome (RIC I ,2/ Nero #306; BMC 227) show the temple has a small rectangular building with a large door and little architectural decoration. No columns, no pediment.

The reverse of a Bronze coin of Nero showing the temple of Janus with its gate shut. A Row of small windows is visible on the side. The temple may have been flat-roofed. (foto: American Academy of Rome)

Ianus as a good of beginnings and endings (and thus of doorways – Ianua in Latin) was on of the oldest temples in Rome. According to Livy (book 1,19,2) the temple at the bottom of the Argiletum had been established by Numa the legendary ‘good king or Rome and creator of most of the religious traditions within the city.

Identifying the Ianus temple on the ground is fraught with difficulties. We know it was situated along the Argiletum (the main road that left the Forum Romanum heading north and into the Subura), but at least from the reign of Domitian onwards, much of this space was taken up with the Forum Transitorium.  Traditionally, it has been assumed that the Ianus Temple was to be found at its southern end, but the recent excavations failed to identify a temple structure similar to the temple of Minerva on the North end, so the temple of Janus Geminus (Janus with the two heads) remains elusive. We know from Procopius (BG (1)25 (2f) and Pliny the Elder (NH34,33) that the statue was one of the oldest in Rome and apart from the double head carried a staff and a key (the attributes of a doorkeeper in Rome). We know it was an archaic bronze statue that was nearly 2 meters tall, and dated to before the 2nd c. BCE.

The lower end of the Argiletum with Senate House on the Left and the excavation of the Southern end of the Forum Transitorium in the centre to the North of the Basilica Aemilia. (source: Google Maps 2024)

So why would such a small temple be so important? Mainly because of its age and of the associated rites.
At a time when more people were studying Latin, Ovid’s ‘interview with Janus’ at the beginning of Book I of the Fasti was something that a lot of Classics/Roman Archaeology students would remember from school. Here Janus defines himself as a god of Chaos and Order and thus of the natural rhythm in nature, but also as a guardian of Rome in peace and war.

As a god of beginnings, his is the first sacrifice of the new year and Ovid also tells us about the gifts that are given as part of the celebrations after the sacrifice people exchange dates, figs and honey, and most importantly, small coins.  After that, you made a (token) start at your work to ensure good luck for the year. Just a ‘token start’, the Kalends of January are a day off in Rome same as for us. But these rites appear to have taken part in the Roman home, rather than at his temple. And the only other public impression he would have made to the people of Rome was at the Nones of January (the 7 January) when the first ludi (Games) were dedicated to him.

There are very few private dedications to Janus, he was not a god that inspired a large following outside the New Year.

Beyond being the glorified gatekeeper of the year – and remember, the gatekeeper is one of the lowliest jobs available in a Roman household, Ianus is also the guardian of war and peace, with the doors open as long as Rome remained at war.

When you look for public commemoration of this God in Rome, there is a dedication to him on the Janiculum (where he is believed to have originally lived as the first king of Latium, before even the God Saturn arrived) and two old temples, one on the Forum Holitorium (near the circus of Marcellus), which was promised and dedicated after the Battle of Mylae (260BCE) and the small temple at the Argiletum.

The doors of this temple did not move very much, Rome remained at War for much of its War and our (admittedly incomplete records) show that the temple was closed in 235 BCE by T Manlius and by Augustus. The third time was under Nero in 64 or 66AD i.e. after the conclusion of the war with Parthia and the conclusion of the peace deal, regulating the situation of Armenia vis-à-vis both Rome and Parthia.

Ianus remains one of these gods we would like to know more about – did the doors really not close after Nero? Where was the temple exactly and how big was it? But like with much of Roman religion our records are far from complete and we are reconstructing as best as we can.

If you want to know more about Roman Religion or the results of the excavations of the last 25 years in Rome, please check out my online courses on Thursday night (Rome) and Friday afternoon (Temples). I look forward to continuing the discussion with you there.

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Mornings with a Masterpiece: Comparing Notes

Rosemary Broadbent

Tracing the relationship between two composers through their compositions is an
interesting study. Sometimes it is a sign of respect and gratitude, such as Britten’s tribute to his
teacher, Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. In the case of William Byrd and his teacher, the
tribute was posthumous: the beautiful song Mourn all ye Muses ends with the words Tallis is dead,
and Music dies. Brahms made a practice of sending his compositions for comment to his life-long
friend Clara Schumann, although he did not necessarily accept her advice! Other suggestions were
more interventionist, such as the violinist Joseph Joachim’s restructuring of Bruch’s Violin Concerto,
and Rimsky-Korsakov’s radical changes to Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain, which he
judged, perhaps mistakenly, to be unfinished at the composer’s death.

The relationship between Haydn and Mozart is particularly fascinating as it was reciprocal,
and it can best be exemplified in their string quartets: a selection of Haydn’s quartets is the subject
of my ‘Mornings with a Masterpiece’ course later this term. At first glance theirs was an unlikely
friendship. Haydn, a generation older, came of country stock and was neither a prodigy nor a
virtuoso. He learned his trade laboriously. An inadequate training as a choirboy was followed by
eight years of poverty and self-study before he gained a settled appointment. Mozart was a child
genius, raised at an archbishop’s court and celebrated all over Europe as a composer and performer.
On the other hand, both combined a deep personal faith with a wicked sense of humour. It
was Haydn who presented his orchestra with a puzzling Minuet, which could only be completed by
being played backwards. It was Mozart who took over the off-stage glockenspiel when his friend
Schikaneder was playing ‘magic bells’ on stage – with unexpected and embarrassing results for the
actor. Both experienced the life of a liveried servant at the beck and call of an aristocrat. Typically,
Haydn gained the respect of a sympathetic Prince and remained with the same family for the rest of
his life. Mozart walked out after an explosive interview with his master’s steward, and left to seek
his fortune at the age of twenty-five.
In the forthcoming course on Haydn’s string quartets, we shall begin with the six works
published as Opus 20 in 1772. They are remarkable (among other things) for venturing more than
usual into the minor mode, and for the fugues which conclude three of them. A year later came
Mozart’s first set of six quartets among which K173 in D minor ends with a fugue: a clear response to
Haydn’s Opus 20 from the seventeen-year-old composer.
It was ten years before Mozart returned to the string quartet. By then he was resident in
Vienna, newly married, and was welcoming Haydn into his house as a guest whenever the older man
was allowed to spend time in the city. This set of quartets, published as Opus 10, was explicitly
dedicated to Haydn and there are documents describing two occasions when they were played
through with the composer on the viola and the dedicatee taking a violin part. One can only imagine
the lively conversation and the delight enjoyed on those evenings.

The minor key quartet in this set (K421) is again in D minor, and this key seems to have had a
deeply expressive meaning for Mozart. It is the key of a stormy piano concerto (1785), of the opera
Don Giovanni (1787) and of the Requiem which the composer left unfinished at his death in 1791.
Haydn was deeply affected by his young friend’s death. He was visiting London at the time
and was reluctant to believe the news until he returned to Vienna and found it to be all too true. It is
impossible to escape the inference that when Haydn resumed string quartet composition later in the
1790s he had Mozart’s tribute to him in mind. The D minor quartet of Opus 76, which we shall study
in our second session, has particularly close connections with Mozart’s K421, and it seems that the
older master was taking up the challenge of Mozart’s depth of emotion and driving it further.
It says much for Haydn’s generosity of spirit that he continued to learn from other
composers throughout his life. His meeting with Handel’s music in London spurred him to write two
great oratorios, and his very personal friendship with Mozart gave us Opus 76 – perhaps the
crowning glory of his quartet compositions.
Haydn also left a work unfinished at his death: we have just two movements of another
string quartet – in D minor.

If you are interested in learning more about Haydn and his string Quartets, you can book your place on Rosemary Broadbent’s courses by following this link. 

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Roman villas in Gaul and Germany: the homes of the invaders and fashion victims?

Birgitta Hoffmann

After spending a year looking at the amazing estate centres in the Mediterranean, 10 weeks talking about the villas in Gaul and Germany might seem somewhat of a letdown. So why do it? For starters,  they are by far the most common Roman site type in the area and the closest parallels to the villas we find in Roman Britain. The rural farm with its yard and little bath house is for much of Gaul the definition of what it means to be living in the Roman NW provinces.
And like the farms in the American Midwest, there is at times a certain repetitiveness in their design and aspirations. But they also document, how Rome transformed and frankly reconstructed the Iron Age landscapes after the wars of Julius Caesar and later the Civil War of the 69/70 CE. The result are thriving landscapes in the hinterland of Gall0-Roman Towns and later Roman forts.

The joy of these is, however, the diversity and the variety of research that has been conducted on them. Every region has their own idea of what a villa estate should look like, which might reflect the type of agriculture that was practised and perhaps even more interesting is the question how fast you see the development of different levels of wealth. The picture is the reconstruction of the Roman villa of Borg in Germany. It is without a doubt the villa of a member of the financial elite, but it comes from the area of the Treveri, where you see these large villas quite early, so where does the money come from? And who are the owners? In the territory of the Helvetii (in modern Switzerland), you have a landscape that was evacuated in the late Iron Age and then resettled leading to some villas that are best described as palaces or the centre of a small town, rather than a rural site, but there are plenty of pointers that suggest that in many cases these large villas were in the hands of the local elite and increasingly we find that these sites continue  Iron Age settlements.

But we also find areas like Cologne where many of the villas may have been in the hands of retired Roman soldiers (who at this point are likely to have been born in Northern Italy and the South of France). How does this differ from the ‘Romanised villas’ in Switzerland? And are there local people who refuse to live with underfloor heating and mosaics and why?

It is not surprising that these 200-year-long traditions of rural living come in many areas to an abrupt halt during the third century. The surviving sites change, but how do you continue to farm in the face of an unpredictable military and political situation and if you are one of the lucky rich ones, who may be working closely with the court at Trier, how do you adapt your villa to document this in the face of your neighbours?

As you can see, a lot of material and questions to cover and as to mosaics and the art – let’s just say, it is amazing what can survive a long way from Rome.

If you are interested, you can find further details about the course here.

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Handel the dramatist – two oratorios

Rosemary Broadbent

Handel’s Messiah is so widely known and loved that it is easy to forget that it is just one of a
long series of dramatic oratorios, composed at the height of the composer’s powers.
We owe this great series of oratorios to increasing problems with Handel’s opera
enterprises, which had been the talk of London for many years. The establishment of a second opera
company in London – one supported by the King and one by the Prince of Wales, who were at
loggerheads – resulted within a few years in bankruptcy for both. Handel was also exercised by the
problem of securing work and income for his company during Lent, when dramatic performances
were forbidden. His inspired solution was to create works based on Biblical stories, performed in the
theatre but without acting or costume. How could the church object to that?

Naturally, the composer sought out the most dramatic stories from the Old Testament, so
we find battles and plagues and dramatic confrontations equal to anything in the Greek and Roman
history favoured by opera librettists. In place of acting and costume, the drama transfers into the
music, not only in solo arias but in magnificent choruses on a scale never attempted in opera at this
period. We have to look ahead at least fifty years to find such choruses on the stage.

We shall consider one early and one late oratorio, giving us the chance to appreciate the
development of Handel’s style over more than thirty years. Acis and Galatea (1718) is variously
described as a serenata, a ‘little opera’ and an oratorio, and it went through various revisions. It
became one of Handel’s most frequently performed works in his lifetime, although it is less often
heard today. In some ways it is a simple pastoral story derived from Dryden’s translation of Ovid, but
it is made extraordinary by the dramatic rôle of the chorus and the passion they convey. It is hard to
listen to the chorus Mourn, all ye Muses without catching your breath.

Jephtha was Handel’s last oratorio and dates from 1752. Here there is a whole family of
individual characters and the range of emotion depicted is wide and extraordinarily vivid. The
choruses and ensembles have a depth and complexity which strain at the limits of accepted Baroque
style. Throughout our discussions it will be interesting to reflect on the comparison of these works
with Messiah, and this all-too-familiar work will no doubt merge freshly illuminated.

One final sobering thought. Last Autumn the Cambridge University Opera Society cancelled a
planned production of a Handel’s oratorio Saul because its narrative of war, victory and celebration
was out-of-tune with the contemporary world situation. Should we then step back from Jephtha,
which also celebrates a victory in battle? No! because that is only half the story. The apparent victor
is emotionally destroyed by what he has done, his family is torn apart, and the greatest suffering is
visited upon the innocent. It bears a moral for our troubled times.

To sign up to the course please go to: https://mancent.org.uk/?page_id=5517