humanities

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3 Empire : Urban Life and Imperial Majesty in Rome, China, and India

THINKING AHEAD

What was imperial Rome and what values did it r etain from its Etruscan and r epublican roots?

What is Confucianism and how did it contribute to the rise of the Chinese empir e?

How did religious values shape the Indian empir e?

Thamugadi, modern Timgad, Algeria, is one of the few totally excavated towns in the Roman Empire, and its ruins

tell us as much or more about Roman civilization as any other Roman city , including Rome itself. It was founded in

about 100 ce as a colony for retired soldiers of the Roman legions who had served the Empire as it constantly

expanded its borders in Africa. Whereas Rome had grown haphazardly over hundreds of years and many rulers,

Thamugadi [tham-uh-GAY-dee] was an entirely new city and a model, if not of Rome itself, then of the Roman sense

of order . It was based on the rigid grid of a Roman military camp and was divided into four quarters deﬁned by east–

west and north–south arteries, broad avenues lined with columns ( Fig. 3.1 ), with a forum, or public square, at their

crossing. The town had 1 11 insulae blocks, and all the amenities of Roman life were available: 14 public baths, a

library , a theater , and several markets, including one that sold only clothes ( Fig. 3.2 ).

Thamugadi is the product of the conscious Roman decision to “Romanize” the world, a symbol of empire itself. By

the middle of the third century bce , it had begun to seek control of the entire Mediterranean basin and its attendant

wealth. The Roman military campaigns led to the building of these cities, with their amphitheaters, temples, arches,

roads, fortresses, aqueducts, bridges, and monuments of every description. From Scotland in the north to the oases of

the Sahara Desert in the south, from the Iberian peninsula in the west to Asia Minor as far as the T igris River in the

east, local aristocrats took up Roman customs ( Map 3.1 ). Roman law governed each region. Rome remained the

center of culture all others at the periphery imitated.

Fig. 3.1 Colonnaded street in Thamugadi, North Africa. V iew toward the

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Thamugadi was established in about 100 ce as a colony for retired soldiers of the Roman Third Legion. It represents

the deep imprint Rome left upon its entire empire.

Listen to the chapter audio on myartslab.com

Fig. 3.2 City plan of Thamugadi. ca. 200 ce 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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The layout of Thamugadi is a symbol of Roman reason and planning—efﬁcient and highly or ganized.

Rome admired Greece for its cultural achievements, from its philosophy to its sculpture, and, as we have seen, its own

art developed from Greek-Hellenic models. But Rome admired its own achievements as well, and its art differed from

that of its Hellenic predecessors in certain key respects. Instead of depicting mythological events and heroes, Roman

artists depicted current events and real people, from generals and their military exploits to portraits of their leaders and

recently deceased citizens. They celebrated the achievements of a state that was their chief patron so that all the world

might stand in awe of the state’ s accomplishments.

This chapter traces the rise of Roman civilization from its Greek and Etruscan origins in the sixth century bce to about

313 ce , when the empire was Christianized. At roughly the same time, in China and in the river valleys of the Asian

subcontinent of India, other empires arose as well. In both China and India, national literatures arose, as did religious

and philosopical practices that continue to this day and are inﬂuential worldwide; but in the ancient world, East and

West had not yet met. The peoples of the Mediterranean world and those living in the Y ellow and Indus River valleys

were isolated from one another. As trade routes stretched across the Asian continent, these cultures would eventually

cross paths. Gradually, Indian thought, especially Buddhism, would ﬁnd its way into China, and Chinese goods would

ﬁnd their way to the W est. Even more gradually , intellectual developments in ancient China and India, from Daoism to

the teachings of Confucius [kun-FYOO-shus] and Buddha, would come to inﬂuence cultural practice in the W estern

world. But throughout the period studied in this chapter, up until roughly 200 ce , the cultures of China and India

developed independently of those in the West.

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By 180 ce the Roman Empire extended from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to Asia Minor , Syria, and Palestine in the

east, and from Scotland in the north to the Sahara Desert in North Africa.

ROME

The origins of Roman culture are twofold. On the one hand, there were the Greeks, who as early as the eighth century

bce colonized the southern coastal regions of the Italian peninsula and Sicily and whose Hellenic culture the Romans

adopted for their own. On the other hand, there were the Etruscans. Scholars continue to debate whether the Etruscans

were indigenous to Italy or whether they migrated from the Near East. In the ninth and eighth centuries bce , the

Etruscans became known to the outside world for their mineral resources, and by the seventh and sixth centuries they

were major exporters of ﬁne painted pottery, a black ceramic ware known as bucchero, bronze-work, jewelry , oil, and

wine. By the ﬁfth century bce , they were known throughout the Mediterranean for their skill as sculptors in both

bronze and terra cotta.

The Etruscan homeland, Etruria, occupied the part of the Italian peninsula that is roughly the same as modern-day

Tuscany . It was bordered by the Arno River to the north (which runs through Florence) and the T iber River to the

south (which runs through Rome). Rome itself developed geographically between two cultures—the Greek colonies to

the south of the Tiber and the Etruscan settlements to the north. Its situation, in fact, is geographically improbable.

Rome was built on a hilly site (on seven hills, to be precise) on the east bank of the T iber. Its low-lying areas were

swampy and subject to ﬂooding, while the higher elevations of the hillsides did not easily lend themselves to building.

The river T iber itself provides a sensible explanation for the city’ s original siting, since it gave the city a trade route to

the north and access to the sea at its port of Ostia to the south. And so does T iber Island, next to the Temple of

Portunus, which was one of the river ’s primary crossings from the earliest times. Thus, Rome was physically and

literally the crossing place of Etruscan and Greek cultures.

The city also had competing foundation myths. The ﬁrst is embodied in V irgil’ s Aeneid , in the story of its founding by

the T rojan warrior Aeneas, who at the end of the T rojan War sailed of f to found a new homeland for his people (see

Continuity & Change , Chapter 2 ). The other was Etruscan. Legend had it that twin infants named Romulus and

Remus were left to die on the banks of the T iber but were rescued by a she-wolf who suckled them ( Fig. 3.3 ). Raised

by a shepherd, the twins decided to build a city on the Palatine Hill above the spot where they had been saved

(accounting, in the manner of foundation myths, for the unlikely location of the city). Soon, the two boys feuded over

who would rule the new city. In his History of Rome, the Roman historian Livy (59 bce –17 ce ) brieﬂy describes the

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Then followed an angry altercation; heated passions led to bloodshed; in the tumult Remus was killed. The

more common report is that Remus contemptuously jumped over the newly raised walls and was forthwith

killed by the enraged Romulus, who exclaimed, “Shall it be hence-forth with every one who leaps over my

walls.” Romulus thus became sole ruler , and the city was called after him, its founder .

The date, legend has it, was 753 bce .

Republican Rome

By the time of Virgil, the Greek and Etruscan myths had mer ged. Thus, according to legend, Aeneas’s son founded the

city of Alba Longa, just to the south of Rome, which was ruled by a succession of kings until Romulus brought it

under Roman control.

Fig. 3.3 She-Wolf . ca. 500–480 bce

Bronze, with glass-paste eyes, height 33”. Museo Capitolino, Rome. The two suckling ﬁgures representing Romulus

and Remus are Renaissance additions. This Etruscan bronze, which became a symbol of Rome, combines a ferocious

realism with the stylized portrayal of, for instance, the wolf ’s geometrically regular mane.

Romulus, it was generally accepted, inaugurated the traditional Roman distinction between patricians , the

landowning aristocrats who served as priests, magistrates, lawyers, and judges, and plebeians , the poorer class who

were craftspeople, merchants, and laborers. When, in 510 bce , the Romans expelled the last of the Etruscan kings and

decided to rule themselves without a monarch, the patrician/plebeian distinction became very similar to the situation

in ﬁfth-century bce Athens. There, a small aristocracy who owned the good land and lar ge estates, shared citizenship

with a much larger working class.

In Rome, as in the Greek model, every free male was a citizen, but in the Etruscan manner , not every citizen enjoyed

equal privileges. The Senate, the political assembly in charge of creating law, was exclusively patrician. In reaction,

the plebeians formed their own legislative assembly , the Consilium Plebis (Council of Plebeians), to protect

themselves from the patricians, but the patricians were immune from any laws the plebeians passed, known as

plebiscites . Finally, in 287 bce , the plebiscites became binding law on all citizens, and something resembling equality

of citizenship was assured.

The expulsion of the Etruscan kings and the dedication of the T emple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill in 509 bce mark

the beginning of actual historical records documenting the development of Rome. They also mark the beginning of the

Roman Republic, a state whose political organization rested on the principle that the citizens were the ultimate source

of legitimacy and sovereignty. Many people believe that the Etruscan bronze head of a man ( Fig. 3.4 ) is a portrait of

Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder and ﬁrst consul of the Roman Republic. However , it dates from approximately 100–

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200 years after Brutus’ s life, and it more likely represents a noble “type,” an imaginary portrait of a Roman founding

father, or pater, the root of the word patrician. This role is conveyed through the ﬁgure’ s strong character and strength

of purpose.

In republican Rome, every plebian chose a patrician as his patron—and, indeed, most patricians were themselves

clients of some other patrician of higher status—whose duty it was to represent the plebian in any matter of law and

provide an assortment of assistance in matters, primarily economic. This paternalistic relationship—which we call

patronage —reﬂected the family’ s central role in Roman culture. The pater protected not only his wife and family but

also his clients, who submitted to his patronage. In return for the pater ’s protection, family and client equally owed the

pater their total obedience—which the Romans referred to as pietas, “dutifulness.” So embedded was this attitude that

when toward the end of the ﬁrst century bce the Republic declared itself an empire, the emperor was called pater

patriae, “father of the fatherland.”

Roman Rule

By the middle of the third century bce , the Republic had embarked on a series of military exploits known as the Punic

W ars that recall Alexander ’s imperial adventuring of the century before. Whenever Rome conquered a region, it

established permanent colonies of veteran soldiers who received allotments of land, virtually guaranteeing them a

certain level of wealth and status. These soldiers were citizens. If the conquered people proved loyal to Rome, they

could gain full Roman citizenship. Furthermore, when not involved in combat, the local Roman soldiery transformed

themselves into engineers—building roads, bridges, and civic projects of all types, signiﬁcantly improving the region

in the manner of Thamugadi in Algeria (see Figs. 3.1 and 3.2 ). In this way , the Republic diminished the adversarial

status of its colonies and gained their loyalty .

Fig. 3.4 Head of a Man (possibly a portrait of Lucius Junius Brutus). ca.

300 bce .

Bronze, height 27½″ . Museo Capitolino, Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome. The eyes, which look slightly past the

viewer, and the intensely furrowed brow , give the ﬁgure an almost visionary force and suggest the inﬂuence of

Lysippus (compare Fig. 2.36).

The prosperity brought about by Roman expansion soon created a new kind of citizen in Rome. They called

themselves equites (“equestrians”) to connect them to the cavalry , the elite part of the military, since only the wealthy

could afford the necessary horses. The equites were wealthy businessmen, but not often landowners and therefore not

patricians. The patricians considered the commercial exploits of the equites crass and their wealth ill-gotten. Soon the

two groups were in open conﬂict, the equites joining ranks with the plebeians.

The Senate was the patrician stronghold, and it feared any loss of power and authority . When the general Pompey the

Great (106–48 bce ), returned from a victorious campaign against rebels in Asia Minor in 62 bce , the Senate refused to

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Outraged, Pompey joined forces with two other successful military leaders. One had put down the slave revolt of

Spartacus in 71 bce . The other was Gaius Julius Caesar (100–44 bce ), a military leader from a prestigious patrician

family that claimed descent from Aeneas and V enus. The union of the three leaders became known as the First

Triumvirate.

A Divided Empir e

Wielding the threat of civil war , the First Triumvirate soon dominated the Republic’ s political life, but theirs was a

fragile relationship. Caesar accepted a ﬁve-year appointment as governor of Gaul, present-day France. By 49 bce , he

had brought all of Gaul under his control. He summed up this conquest in his Commentaries in the famous phrase

“Veni, vidi, vici”—“I came, I saw , I conquered”—a statement that captures, perhaps better than any other , the

militaristic nature of the Roman state as a whole. He was preparing to return home when Pompey joined forces with

the Senate. They reminded Caesar of a long-standing tradition that required a returning commander to leave his army

behind, in this case on the Gallic side of the Rubicon River, but Caesar refused. Pompey ﬂed to Greece, where Caesar

defeated him a year later. Again Pompey ﬂed, this time to Egypt, where he was murdered. The third member of the

Triumvirate had been captured and executed several years earlier .

Now unimpeded, Caesar assumed dictatorial control over Rome. Caesar treated the Senate with disdain, and most of

its membership counted themselves as his enemies. On March 15, 44 bce , the Ides of March, he was stabbed 23 times

by a group of 60 senators at the foot of a sculpture honoring Pompey on the ﬂoor of the Senate. This scene was

memorialized in English by Shakespeare’s great play Julius Caesar and Caesar’s famous line, as he sees his ally

Marcus Junius Brutus (85–42 bce ) among the assassins, “Et tu, Brute?”—“Y ou also, Brutus?” Brutus and the others

believed they had freed Rome of a tyrant, but the people were outraged, the Senate disgraced, and Caesar martyred.

Cicero and the Politics of Rhetoric

In times of such political upheaval, it is not surprising that one of the most powerful ﬁgures of the day would be

someone who specialized in the art of political persuasion. In pre-Augustan Rome, that person was the rhetorician

(writer and public speaker , or orator) Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 bce ). First and foremost, Cicero recognized the

power of the Latin language to communicate with the people. Although originally used almost exclusively as the

language of commerce, Latin, by the ﬁrst century ce , was understood to be potentially a more powerful tool of

persuasion than Greek, still the literary language of the upper classes. The clarity and eloquence of Cicero’ s style can

be quickly discerned, even in translation, as an excerpt ( Reading 3.1 ) from his essay On Duty demonstrates.

READING 3.1 Cicero, On Duty , 44 bce

That moral goodness which we look for in a lofty , high-minded spirit is secured, of course, by moral, not physical

strength. And yet the body must be trained and so disciplined that it can obey the dictates of judgment and reason in

attending to business and in enduring toil. But that moral goodness which is our theme depends wholly upon the

thought and attention given to it by the mind. And, in this way , the men who in a civil capacity direct the affairs of the

nation render no less important service than they who conduct its wars: by their statesmanship oftentimes wars are

either averted or terminated; sometimes also they are declared. . . . And so diplomacy in the friendly settlement of

controversies is more desirable than courage in settling them on the battleﬁeld; but we must be careful not to take that

course merely for the sake of avoiding war rather than for the sake of public expediency . War, however , should be

undertaken in such a way as to make it evident that it has no other object than to secure peace.

The dangers attending great af fairs of state fall sometimes on those who undertake them, sometimes upon the state. In

carrying out such enterprises, some run the risk of losing their lives, others their reputation and the good-will of their

fellow-citizens. It is our duty, then, to be more ready to endanger our own than the public welfare and to hazard honor

and glory more readily than other advantages. . . .

Philosophically, Cicero’s argument extends back to Plato and Aristotle, but rhetorically—that is, in the structure of its

argument—it is purely Roman. It is purposefully deliberative in tone—that is, its chief concern is to give sage advice

rather than to engage in a Socratic dialogue to elicit that advice.

Portrait Busts, Pietas , and Politics

This historical context helps us understand a major Roman art form of the second and ﬁrst centuries bce , the portrait

bust. These are generally portraits of patricians (and upper -middle-class citizens wishing to emulate them) rather than

equites. Roman portrait busts share with their Greek ancestors an afﬁnity for naturalistic representation, but they are

even more realistic, revealing their subjects’ every wrinkle and wart ( Fig. 3.5 ). This form of realism is known as

verism (from the Latin veritas, “truth”). Indeed, the high level of naturalism may have resulted from their original

form, wax ancestral masks, usually made at the peak of the subject’ s power, called imagines, which were then

transferred to stone.

Compared to the Greek Hellenistic portrait bust—recall L ysippus’s portrait of Alexander (see Fig. 2.36 ), copies of

which proliferated throughout the Mediterranean in the third century bce —the Roman portrait dif fers particularly in

the age of the sitter. Both the Greek and Roman busts are essentially propagandistic in intent, designed to extol the

virtues of the sitter, but where Alexander is portrayed as a young man at the height of his powers, the usual Roman

portrait bust depicts its subject at or near the end of life. The Greek portrait bust, in other words, signiﬁes youthful 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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possibility and ambition, while the Roman version claims for its subject the wisdom and experience of age. These

images celebrate pietas, the deep-seated Roman virtue of dutiful respect toward the gods, fatherland, and parents. T o

respect one’s parents was tantamount, for the Romans, to respecting one’ s moral obligations to the gods. The respect

one owed one’s parents was, in ef fect, a religious obligation.

Fig. 3.5 A Roman Man . ca. 80 bce

Marble, life-size. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1912 (12.233). Image © The Metropolitan Museum

of Art. His face creased by the wrinkles of age, this man is the very image of the pater, the man of gravitas (literally

“weight,” but also, “presence” or “inﬂuence”), dignitas (“dignity ,” “worth,” and “character”), and ﬁdes (“honesty” and

“conscientiousness”).

If the connection to Alexander—especially the emphasis in both on the power of the gaze—is worth considering, the

Roman portrait busts depict a class under attack, a class whose virtues and leadership were being threatened by up-

start generals and equites. They are, in other words, the very picture of conservative politics. Their furrowed brows

represent their wisdom, their wrinkles their experience, their extraordinarily naturalistic representation their character .

They represent the Senate itself, which should be honored, not disdained.

Imperial Rome

On January 13, 27 bce , Octavian came before the Senate and gave up all his powers and provinces. It was a rehearsed

event. The Senate begged him to reconsider and take Syria, Gaul, and the Iberian Peninsula for his own (these

provinces just happened to contain 20 of the 26 Roman legions, guaranteeing him military support). They also asked

him to retain his title as consul of Rome, with the supreme authority of imperium, the power to give orders and exact

obedience, over all of Italy and subsequently all Roman-controlled territory. He agreed “reluctantly” to these terms,

and the Senate, in gratitude, granted him the semidivine title Augustus, “the revered one.” Augustus (r . 27 bce –14 ce ) 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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thereafter portrayed himself as a near -deity. The Augustus of Primaporta (Fig. 3.6 ) is the slightly-lar ger-than-life-size

sculpture named for its location at the home of Augustus’ s wife, Livia, at Primaporta, on the outskirts of Rome.

Augustus is represented as the embodiment of the famous admonition given to Aeneas by his dead father ( Aeneid,

Book 6), “To rule the people under law , to establish / The way of peace.” Augustus, like Aeneas, is duty bound to

exhibit pietas, the obligation to his ancestor “to rule earth’ s peoples.”

Fig. 3.6 Augustus of Primaporta . ca. 20 bce

Marble, height 6′ 8 ″ . Vatican Museums, Rome. On the breastplate, a bearded Parthian from Asia Minor hands over

Roman standards that had been lost in a battle of 53 bce . By 20 bce , when the original version of this statue was

carved—most scholars believe this is actually a later copy—Augustus had won them back.

The sculpture, though recognizably Augustus, is nevertheless idealized. It adopts the pose and ideal proportions of

Polyclitus’ s Doryphoros (see Fig. 2.27 ). The gaze, reminiscent of the look of Alexander the Great, purposefully recalls

the visionary hero of Greece who died 300 years earlier . The right arm is extended in the gesture of ad locutio —he is

giving a (military) address. The military garb announces his role as commander -in-chief. Riding a dolphin at his feet

is a small Cupid, son of the goddess Venus, laying claim to the Julian family’ s divine descent from Venus and Aeneas.

Though Augustus was over 70 years old when he died, he was always depicted as young and vigorous, choosing to

portray himself, apparently , as the ideal leader rather than the wise, older pater.

Augustus was careful to maintain at least the trappings of the Republic. The Senate stayed in place, but Augustus soon

eliminated the distinction between patricians and equites and fostered the careers of all capable individuals, whatever

their origin. Some he made provincial governors, others administrators in the city , and he encouraged still others to

enter political life. Soon the Senate was populated with many men who had never dreamed of political power . All of

them—governors, administrators, and politicians—owed everything to Augustus. Their loyalty further solidiﬁed his

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Family Life

Augustus also quickly addressed what he considered to be another crisis in Roman society—the demise of family life.

Adultery and divorce were commonplace. There were more slaves and freed slaves in the city than citizens, let alone

aristocrats. And family size, given the cost of living in the city , was diminishing. He reacted by criminalizing adultery

and passed several other laws to promote family life. Men between the ages of 20 and 60 and women between the

ages of 20 and 50 were required to marry. A divorced woman was required to remarry within six months, a widow

within a year. Childless adults were punished with high taxes or deprived of inheritance. The lar ger an aristocrat’s

family, the greater his political advantage. It is no coincidence that when Augustus commissioned a lar ge monument

to commemorate his triumphal return after establishing Roman rule in Gaul and restoring peace to Rome, the Ara

Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace), he had its exterior walls on the south decorated with a retinue of his own

large family , a model for all Roman citizens, in a procession of lictors, priests, magistrates, senators, and other

representatives of the Roman people ( Fig. 3.7 ).

Art historians believe that the Ara Pacis Augustae represents a real event, perhaps a public rejoicing for Augustus’ s

reign (it was begun in 13 bce when he was 50), or the dedication of the altar itself, which occurred on Livia’ s ﬁftieth

birthday in 9 bce . The realism of the scene is typically Roman. A sense of spatial depth is created by depicting ﬁgures

farther away from us in low relief and those closest to us in high relief, so high in fact that the feet of the nearest

ﬁgures project over the architectural frame into our space. This technique would have encouraged viewers—the

Roman public—to feel that they were part of the same space as the ﬁgures in the sculpture itself. The Augustan peace

is the peace enjoyed by the average Roman citizen, the Augustan family a metaphor for the lar ger family of Roman

citizens.

Fig. 3.7 Ara Pacis Augustae , detail of Imperial Procession, south frieze,

Rome. 13–9 bce .

Marble, width approx. 35’. At the left is Marcus Agrippa, Augustus’ s son-in-law, married to his daughter Julia. The

identities of the other ﬁgures are not secure, but scholars speculate that clinging to Agrippa’ s robe is either a foreign

child belonging to Agrippa’s household or Augustus’s grandson, Gaius Caesar, who with his brother Lucius often

traveled with their grandfather and whom Augustus taught to imitate his own handwriting. The child looks backward

and up at Augustus’s wife, Livia, one of the most powerful people in Rome. Behind Livia is her son by an earlier

marriage, Tiberius, who would succeed Augustus as emperor .

The Ara Pacis Augustae is preeminently a celebration of family. Three generations of Augustus’s family are depicted

in the relief. It also demonstrates the growing prominence of women in Roman society . Augustus’s wife Livia is

depicted holding Augustus’ s family together, standing between her stepson-in-law , Marcus Agrippa, and her own

sons, Tiberius and Drusus.

Livia became a ﬁgure of idealized womanhood in Rome. She was the “female leader ,” of Augustus’s programs of

reform, a sponsor of architectural projects and a trusted advisor to both her husband and son. While Livia enjoyed

greater power and inﬂuence than most Roman women, all possessed the rights of citizenship, although they could not

vote or hold public ofﬁce. Still, married women retained their legal identity . They controlled their own property and

managed their own legal affairs. Elite women modeled themselves after Livia, wielding power through their husbands

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Literary Rome: V irgil, Horace, and Ovid

When Augustus took control of Rome, he arranged for all artistic patronage to pass through his ofﬁce. During the civil

wars, the two major poets of the day , Virgil and Horace, had lost all their property , but Augustus’s patronage allowed

them to keep on with their writings. Because the themes they pursued were subject to Augustus’ s approval, they

tended to glorify both the emperor and his causes. He was far less supportive of the poet Ovid, whom he permanently

banished from Rome.

Virgil and the Aeneid

After Augustus’ s triumph over Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium in 31 bce , Virgil retired to Naples, where

he began work on an epic poem designed to rival Homer ’s Iliad and to provide the Roman state—and Augustus in

particular—with a suitably grand founding myth. Previously he had been engaged with two series of pastoral idylls,

the Eclogues (or Bucolics ) and the Geor gics. The latter poems ( Reading 3.2 ) are modeled after Hesiod’ s Works and

Days (see Chapter 2 ). They extol the importance of hard work, the necessity of for ging order in the face of a hostile

natural world, and, perhaps above all, the virtues of agrarian life.

READING 3.2 from V irgil, Georgics

In early spring-tide, when the icy drip

Melts from the mountains hoar , and Zephyr’s breath

Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then ‘tis time;

Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox,

And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine.

That land the craving farmer ’s prayer fulﬁls,

Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt;

A y, that’ s the land whose boundless harvest-crops

Burst, see! the barns.

The political point of the Georgics was to celebrate Augustus’ s gift of farmlands to veterans of the civil wars, but in

its exaltation of the myths and traditions of Italy , it served as a precursor to the Aeneid. It was written in dactylic

hexameter , the verse form that Homer had used in the Iliad and Odyssey . (The metrical form of the translation above,

however, is iambic pentameter—ﬁve rhythmic units, each short long, as in dee-dum —a meter much more natural to

English than the Latin dactylic hexameter .) In dactylic hexameter each line consists of six rhythmic units, or feet , and

each foot is either a dactyl (long, short, short, as in dum-diddy ) or a spondee (long, long, as in dum-dum ). Virgil

reportedly wrote the Geor gics at a pace of less than one line a day , perfecting his understanding of the metrical

scheme in preparation for the longer poem.

The Aeneid opens in Carthage, where, after the T rojan War, Aeneas and his men have been driven by a storm, and

where they are hosted by the Phoenician queen Dido. During a rainstorm Aeneas and Dido take refuge in a cave,

where the queen, having fallen in love with the T rojan hero, gives herself willingly to him. She now assumes that she

is married, but Aeneas, reminded by his father’s ghost of his duty to accomplish what the gods have predetermined—a

classic instance of pietas —knows he must resume his destined journey . An angry and accusing Dido begs him to stay .

When Aeneas rejects her pleas, Dido vows to haunt him after her death and to bring enmity between Carthage and his

descendants forever (a direct reference on Virgil’ s part to the Punic W ars). As his boat sails away , she commits suicide

by climbing a funeral pyre and falling upon a sword. The goddesses of the underworld are surprised to see her . Her

death, in their eyes, is neither deserved nor destined, but simply tragic. Virgil’ s point is almost coldly hard-hearted: All

personal feelings and desires must be sacriﬁced to one’ s responsibilities to the state. Civic duty takes precedence over

private life.

The poem is, on one level, an account of Rome’s founding by Aeneas, but it is also a profoundly moving essay on

human destiny and the great cost involved in achieving and sustaining the values and principles upon which culture—

Roman culture in particular, but all cultures by extension—must be based. Augustus, as V irgil well knew , claimed

direct descent from Aeneas, and it is particularly important that the poem presents war , at which Augustus excelled, as

a moral tragedy, however necessary .

In Book 7, Venus gives Aeneas a shield made by the god V ulcan. The shield displays the important events in the

future history of Rome, including Augustus at the Battle of Actium. Aeneas is, V irgil writes, “without understanding .

. . proud and happy . . . [at] the fame and glory of his children’ s children.” But in the senseless slaughter that ends the

poem, as Aeneas and the Trojans battle Turnus and the Italians, V irgil demonstrates that the only thing worse than not

avenging tsuperﬁcially more a collectionhe death of one’ s friends and family is, perhaps, avenging them. In this sense

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The Horatian Odes

Quintus Horatius Flaccus [KWIN-tus hor -AY-she-us FLAK-us], known as Horace (65–8 bce ), was a close friend of

V irgil. Impressed by Augustus’ s reforms, and probably moved by his patronage, Horace was won over to the

emperor’s cause, which he celebrated directly in two of his many odes, lyric poems of elaborate and irregular meter .

Horace’s odes imitated Greek precedents. The following lines open the ﬁfth ode of Book 3 of the collected poems,

known simply as the Odes:

Jove [the Roman Zeus, also called Jupiter] rules in heaven, his thunder shows;

Henceforth Augustus earth shall own

Her present god, now Briton foes

And Persians bow before his throne.

The subject matter of the Odes ranges from these patriotic pronouncements to private incidents in the poet’ s own life,

the joys of the countryside ( Fig. 3.8 ), the pleasures of wine, and so on. His villa offered him an escape from the trials

of daily life in Rome itself. But no Roman poet more gracefully harmonized the Greek reverence for beauty with the

Roman concern with duty and obligation.

Ovid’s Art of Love and Metamorphoses

Augustus’ s support for poets did not extend to Publius Ovidius Naso [POO-ble-us ov-ID-ee-us NA Y-so], known as

Ovid (43 bce –17 ce ). Ovid’ s talent was for love songs designed to satisfy the notoriously loose sexual mores of the

Roman aristocrats, who lived in somewhat open disregard of Augustus and Livia’ s family-centered lifestyle. His Ars

Amatoria [ahrs ah-mah-TOR-ee-uh] ( Art of Love ) angered Augustus, as did some undisclosed indiscretion by Ovid.

As punishment—probably more for the indiscretion than the poem—Augustus permanently exiled him to the town of

Tomis [T OE-mus] on the Black Sea, the remotest part of the empire, famous for its wretched weather . The

Metamorphoses, composed in the years just before his exile, is a collection of stories describing or revolving around

one sort of supernatural change of shape or another, from the divine to the human, the animate to the inanimate, the

human to the vegetal.

In the Ars Amatoria, the poet describes his desire for the ﬁctional Corinna. Ovid outlines the kinds of places in Rome

where one can meet women, from porticoes to gaming houses, from horse races to parties, and especially anywhere

wine, that great banisher of inhibition, can be had. W omen, he says, love clandestine affairs as much as men; they

simply do not chase after men, “as a mousetrap does not chase after mice.” Become friends with the husband of a

woman you desire, he advises. Lie to her—tell her that you only want to be her friend. Nevertheless, he says, “If you

want a woman to love you, be a lovable man.”

Ovid probably aspired to Virgil’ s fame, though he could admit, “My life is respectable, but my Muse is full of

jesting.” His earliest major work, the Amor es [ah-MOHR-eez] ( Loves ), begins with many self-deprecating references

to Virgil’ s epic, which begins with the famous phrase, “Arms and the man I sing”:

Fig. 3.8 Idyllic Landscape , wall painting fr om a villa at Boscotr ecase, near

Pompeii. First century bce 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Museo Nazionale, Naples. This landscape depicts the love of country life and the idealizing of nature that is

characteristic of the Horatian Odes. It contrasts dramatically with urban life in Rome.

Arms, warfare, violence—I was winding up to produce

A regular epic, with verse-form to match—

Hexameters, naturally . But Cupid (they say) with a snicker

Lopped off one foot from each alternate line.

“Nasty young brat,” I told him, “who made you Inspector of Metres?”

Nevertheless, Ovid uses dactylic hexameter for the Metamorphoses and stakes out an epic scope for the poem in its

opening lines:

My intention is to tell of bodies changed

To dif ferent forms; the gods, who made the changes,

Will help me—or I hope so—with a poem

That runs from the world’ s beginning to our own days!

If the Metamorphoses is superﬁcially more a collection of stories than an epic, few poems in any language have

contributed so importantly to later literature. It is so complete in its survey of the best-known classical myths, plus

stories from Egypt, Persia, and Italy , that it remains a standard reference work. At the same time, it tells its stories in

an utterly moving and memorable way . The story of Actaeon, for instance, is a cautionary tale about the power of the

gods. Actaeon happens to see the virgin goddess Diana bathing one day when he is out hunting with his dogs. She

turns him into a stag to prevent him from ever telling what he has seen. As his own dogs turn on him and savagely tear

him apart, his friends call out for him, lamenting his absence from the kill. But he is all too present:

Well might he wish not to be there, but he was there, and well might he wish to see

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In the story of Narcissus, Echo falls in love with the beautiful youth Narcissus, but when Narcissus spurns her , she

fades away. He in turn is doomed to fall in love with his own image reﬂected in a pool, according to Ovid, the spring

at Clitumnus [clye-T OOM-nus]. So consumed, he ﬁnally dies beside the pool, his body transformed into the narcissus

ﬂower. In such stories, the duality of identity and change, Aristotle’ s deﬁnition of the essence of a thing, becomes

deeply problematic. Ovid seems to deny that any human characteristic is essential, asserting that all is susceptible to

change. To subsequent generations of readers, from Shakespeare to Freud, Ovid’ s versions of myths would raise the

fundamental questions that lie at the heart of human identity and psychology .

Augustus and the City of Marble

Of all the problems facing Augustus when he assumed power, the most overwhelming was the infrastructure of Rome.

The city was, quite simply, a mess. Seneca reacted by preaching Stoicism. He ar gued that Rome was what it was, and

one should move on as best one can. Augustus reacted by calling for a series of public works, which would serve the

people of Rome and, he well understood, himself. The grand civic improvements Augustus planned would be a kind

of imperial propaganda, underscoring not only his power but also his care for the people in his role as pater patriae.

Public works could—and indeed did—elicit the public’ s loyalty.

Rome had developed haphazardly , without any central plan, spilling down the seven hills it originally occupied into

the valleys along the Tiber. By contrast, all of the empire’ s provincial capitals were conceived on a strict grid plan,

with colonnaded main roads leading to an administrative center , and were adorned with public works like baths,

theaters, and triumphal arches. In comparison, Rome was pitiable. Housing conditions were dreadful, water was

scarce, food was in short supply. Because the city was conﬁned by geography to a small area, space was at a premium.

Fig. 3.9 Pont du Gard, near Nîmes, France. Late 1st century bce –early 1st

century ce

Height 180’. The Roman city of Nîmes received 8,000–12,000 gallons of water a day from this aqueduct.

Fig. 3.10 Arches.

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Augustus could not do much about the housing situation, although he did build aqueducts to bring more water into the

city. But most of all he implemented an ambitious building program designed to provide elegant public spaces where

city dwellers could escape from their cramped apartments. He once claimed that he had restored 82 temples in one

year . But if he could boast, “I found a city of brick, and left it a city of marble,” that was lar gely because he had put a

lot of marble veneer over brick walls. By the second century ce , the city would be one of the most beautiful in the

world, but the beauty was only skin-deep. The housing situation that Augustus inherited had barely improved.

Public Works: The Aqueduct and the Ar ch

Augustus inaugurated what amounted to an ongoing competition among the emperors to outdo their predecessors in

the construction of public works and monuments. His ambitions are reﬂected in the work of the architect V itruvius

(ﬂourished late ﬁrst century bce to early ﬁrst century ce ). A military engineer for Julius Caesar, under Augustus’s

patronage, Vitruvius wrote the ten-volume On Architectur e . The only work of its kind to have survived from antiquity ,

it would become extremely inﬂuential over 1,000 years later , when Renaissance artists became interested in classical

design. In its large scale, the work matches its patron’ s architectural ambitions, dealing with town planning, building

materials and construction methods, the construction of temples, the classical orders, and the rules of proportion.

Vitruvius also wrote extensively about one of Rome’ s most pressing problems—how to satisfy the city’s needs for

water. In fact, one of the most signiﬁcant contributions of the Julio-Claudian dynasty , which extends from Augustus

through Nero (r. 54–68 ce ), was an enormous aqueduct, the Aqua Claudia. These aqueducts depended on Roman

ingenuity in perfecting the arch and vault so that river gor ges could be successfully spanned to carry the pipes

bringing water to a city miles away. The Aqua Claudia delivered water from 40 miles away into the very heart of the

city, not so much for private use as for the fountains, pools, and public baths.

Aqueduct construction depended lar gely on the arch. While the arch was known to cultures such as the

Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks, it was the Romans who perfected it, evidently learning its principles

from the Etruscans but developing those principles further . The Pont du Gard, a beautiful Roman aqueduct in southern

France near the city of Nîmes ( Fig. 3.9 ), is a good example.

The Romans understood that much wider spans than the Etruscans had bridged could be achieved with the round

ar ch (Left, Fig. 3.10 ) than with post-and-lintel construction. The weight of the masonry above the arch is displaced to

the supporting upright elements ( piers or jambs ). The arch is constructed with a supporting scaf folding that is formed

with wedge-shaped blocks, called voussoirs [voo-swarrs], and capped with a large, wedge-shaped stone, called the

key-stone , the last element put in place. The space inside the arch is called a bay . And the wall areas between the

arches of an arcade (a succession of arches, such as seen on the Pont du Gard) are called spandr els .

When a round arch is extended, it forms a barrel vault (middle, Fig. 3.10 ). To ensure that the downward pressure

from the arches does not collapse the walls, a buttr ess support is often added. When two barrel vaults meet one

another at a right angle, they form a groin vault (right, Fig. 3.10 ).

The Colosseum

The interior corridors of the Colosseum in Rome make use of both barrel and groin vaulting. The Colosseum ( Fig.

3.1 1 ) was built by V espasian (r. 69–79 ce ), the former commander in Palestine, who succeeded Nero when the latter ’s

lavish lifestyle led to his ouster and subsequent suicide. V espasian built the Colosseum across from Nero’s

ostentatious palace, known as the Golden House. He named it after the Colossus, a 120-foot-high statue of Nero as

sun god that stood in front of it. A giant oval, 615 feet long, 510 feet wide, and 159 feet high, audiences, estimated at

50,000, entered and exited through its 76 vaulted arcades in a matter of a few minutes.

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The opening performance at the Colosseum in 80 ce lasted 100 days. During that time, 9,000 wild animals—lions,

bears, snakes, boars, even elephants, imported from all over the empire—were killed, and so were 2,000 gladiators.

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These vaults were made possible by the invention of concrete, which the Romans had increasingly used in their

buildings since the second century bce . Mixed with volcanic aggregate from nearby Naples and Pompeii, it set more

quickly and was stronger than any building material yet known. The Colosseum’ s wooden ﬂoor, the arena (Latin for

“sand,” which covered the ﬂoor), lay over a maze of rooms and tunnels that housed gladiators, athletes, and wild

animals that entertained the masses. The top story of the building housed an awning system that could be extended on

a system of pulleys and ropes to shield part of the audience from the hot Roman sun. Each level employed a dif ferent

architectural order: the Tuscan order on the ground ﬂoor , the Ionic on the second, and the Corinthian, the Romans’

favorite, on the third. All of the columns are engaged and purely decorative, serving no structural purpose. The facade

thus moves from the heaviest and sturdiest elements at the base to the lightest, most decorative at the top, a logic that

seems both structurally and visually satisfying.

The Imperial Roman Forum

The Colosseum stands at the eastern end of the Forum Romanum, or Roman Forum ( Fig. 3.12 ). This vast building

project was among the most ambitious undertaken in Rome by the Five Good Emperors, under whose rule Rome

thrived: Nerva (r. 96–98 ce ), Trajan (r . 98–117 ce ), Hadrian (r . 117–138 ce ), Antonius Pius (r . 138–161 ce ), and

Marcus Aurelius (r . 161–180 ce ). The Forum Romanum was the chief public square of Rome, the center of Roman

religious, ceremonial, political, and commercial life. Originally , a Roman forum was comparable to a Greek agora, a

meeting place in the heart of the city. Gradually, the forum took on a symbolic function as well, becoming a symbol of

imperial power that testiﬁed to the prosperity—and peace—that the emperor bestowed upon Rome’ s citizenry. Julius

Caesar was the ﬁrst to build a forum of his own in 46 bce , just to the north of the Forum Romanum . Augustus

subsequently paved it over , restored its Temple of Venus, and proceeded to build his own forum with its T emple of

Mars the Avenger. Thus began what amounted to a competition among successive emperors to outdo their

predecessors by creating their own more spectacular forums. These imperial forums lined up north of and parallel to

the great Roman Forum, which over the years was itself subjected to new construction. The result was an extremely

densely built city center .

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The last and largest of these forums was T rajan’s. It sheltered the Column of T rajan (see Fig. 3.16 ), Trajan’ s Market,

and the Basilica Ulpia ( Fig. 3.13 ) A basilica is a lar ge, rectangular building with a rounded extension, called an apse ,

at one or both ends, and easy access in and out. It was a general-purpose building that could be adapted to many uses.

and 400 feet long.

The stability and prosperity of the city was due, at least in part, to the fact that none of these emperors except Marcus

Aurelius had a son to whom he could pass on the empire. Thus, each was handpicked by his predecessor from among

the ablest men in the Senate. When, in 180 ce , Marcus Aurelius’ s decadent and probably insane son, Commodus (r .

180–192 ce ), took control, the empire quickly learned that the transfer of power from father to son was not necessarily

a good thing.

Fig. 3.13 Reconstruction drawing of the central hall, Basilica Ulpia,

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Relatively plain and massive on the outside, the basilica is distinguished by its vast interior space, which would later

serve as the model for some Christian churches.

Triumphal Ar ches and Columns

During Vespasian’s reign, his son T itus (r. 79–81 ce ) defeated the Jews in Palestine, who were rebelling against

Roman interference with their religious practices. T itus’s army sacked the Second T emple of Jerusalem in 70 ce . To

honor this victory and the death of T itus 11 years later , a memorial arch was constructed on the Sacred W ay.

Originally , the Arch of T itus was topped by a statue of a four -horse chariot and driver. Such arches, known as

triumphal arches because triumphant armies marched through them, were composed of a simple barrel vault enclosed

within a rectangle, and enlivened with sculpture and decorative engaged columns ( Fig. 3.14 ). They would deeply

inﬂuence later architecture, especially the facades of Renaissance cathedrals. Hundreds of arches of similar form were

built throughout the Roman Empire. Most were not technically triumphal, but like all Roman monumental

architecture, they were intended to symbolize Rome’ s political power and military might.

The Arch of Titus was constructed of concrete and faced with marble, its inside walls decorated with narrative reliefs.

One of them shows T itus’s soldiers marching with the treasures of the Second T emple in Jerusalem ( Fig. 3.15 ). In the

foreground, the soldiers carry what some speculate might be the golden Ark of the Covenant, and behind that a

menorah, the sacred Jewish candelabrum, also made of gold. They bend under the weight of the gold and stride

forward convincingly. The carving is extremely deep, with nearer ﬁgures and elements rendered with undercutting and

in higher relief than more distant ones. This creates a sense of real space and, when light and shadow play over the

sculptural relief, even a sense of real movement.

Fig. 3.14 Arch of T itus, Rome. ca. 81 ce . 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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The inscription at the top of the arch, which reads “The Senate and the Roman people to the Deiﬁed T itus Vespasian

Augustus, son of the the Deiﬁed V espasian,” was chiseled deeply into the stone, so that it might catch the light,

allowing it to be read from a great distance.

Fig. 3.15 Spoils from the T emple in Jerusalem , detail of the interior r elief

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Height of relief, approx. 7 ′ 10 ″ . The ﬁgures in the relief are nearly life-size. The relief has been badly damaged,

largely because in the Middle Ages, a Roman family used the arch as a fortress, constructing a second story in the

vault. Holes for the ﬂoor beams appear at the top of the relief.

Another type of monument favored by the Romans and with similar symbolic meaning—suggestive not only of power

but also of male virility—is the ceremonial column. Like the triumphal arch, it was a masonry and concrete platform

for narrative reliefs. T wo of the so-called Five Good Emperors who ruled Rome after the Flavian dynasty—T rajan and

Marcus Aurelius—built columns to celebrate their military victories. Trajan’s Column, perhaps the most complete

artistic statement of Rome’ s militaristic character, consists of a spiral of 150 separate scenes from his military

campaign in Dacia, across the Danube River in what is now Hungary and Romania. If laid out end to end, the

complete narrative would be 625 feet long ( Figs. 3.16 and 3.17 ). At the bottom of the column, the band is 36 inches

wide, at the top 50 inches, so that the higher elements might be more readily visible. In order to eliminate shadow and

increase the legibility of the whole, the carving is very low relief. At the bottom of the column, the story begins with

Roman troops crossing the Danube on a pontoon bridge. A river god looks on with some interest. Battle scenes

constitute less than a quarter of the entire narrative. Instead, we witness the Romans building fortiﬁcations, harvesting

crops, participating in religious rituals. All in all, the column’ s 2,500 ﬁgures are carrying out what Romans believed to

be their destiny—they are bringing the fruits of civilization to the world.

The Pantheon

Hadrian’s Pantheon ranks with the Forum of T rajan as one of the most ambitious building projects undertaken by the

Good Emperors. The Pantheon (from the Greek pan, “all,” and theoi, “gods”) is a temple to “all the gods,” and

sculptures representing all the Roman gods were set in recesses around its interior . The facade is a Roman temple,

originally set on a high podium, with its eight massive Corinthian columns and deep portico, behind which are

massive bronze doors ( Fig. 3.18 ). Photography presents little evidence of its monumental presence, elevated above its

long forecourt ( Fig. 3.19 ). Today , both the forecourt and the elevation have disappeared beneath the streets of modern

Rome. Figure 3.18 shows the Pantheon as it looks today .

Figs. 3.16 and 3.17 The Column of Trajan, above, and detail of the lower

portion, Forum of T rajan, Rome. 106–113 ce .

Marble, overall height with base 125’. T o the left of the second band, Trajan addresses his troops. To the right of that

scene, his troops build a fortiﬁcation. Photo above: Karlheinz Oster . Agency: Corbis Bridge. © Corbis Bridge /

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Fig. 3.18 The Pantheon, Rome. 1 18–125 ce .

The Pantheon is an impressive feat of architectural engineering, and it would inspire architects for centuries to come.

However, Hadrian humbly (and politically) refused to accept credit for it. He passed of f the building as a “restoration”

of a temple constructed on the same site by Augustus’s original heir, Marcus Agrippa, in 27–25 bce . Across the

architrave (the bottom element in an entablature above the columns) of the facade is an inscription that serves both

propagandistic and decorative purposes: “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, three times consul, made this.”

Fig. 3.19 The Pantheon, Rome. 1 18–125 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Schematic drawing showing original forecourt.

The facade gives no hint of what lies beyond the doors. The interior of the Pantheon consists of a cylindrical space

topped by a dome, the lar gest built in Europe before the twentieth century ( Fig. 3.20 ). The whole is a perfect

hemisphere—the diameter of the rotunda is 144 feet, as is the height from ﬂoor to ceiling. The weight of the dome

rests on eight massive supports, each more than 20 feet thick. The dome itself is 20 feet thick at the bottom but

narrows to only 6 feet thick at the oculus , the circular opening at the top. The oculus is 30 feet in diameter. Recessed

panels, called coffers , further lighten the weight of the roof. The oculus , or “eye,” admits light, which forms a round

spotlight that moves around the building during the course of a day (it admits rain as well, which is drained out by

small openings in the ﬂoor). For the Romans, this light may well have symbolized Jupiter ’s ever -watchful eye cast

over the af fairs of state, illuminating the way .

In the vast openness of its interior, the Pantheon mirrors the cosmos, the vault of the heavens. Mesopotamian and

Egyptian architecture had created monuments with exterior mass. Greek architecture was a kind of sculptural event,

built up of parts that harmonized. But the Romans concentrated on sheer size, including the vastness of interior space.

Like the Basilica Ulpia (see Fig. 3.13 ) in the Forum of Trajan, the Pantheon is concerned primarily with realizing a

single, whole, uninterrupted interior space.

In this sense, the Pantheon mirrors the empire. It too was a single, uninterrupted space, stretching from Hadrian’ s Wall

in the north of England to the Rock of Gibraltar in the south, across north Africa and Asia Minor , and encompassing

all of Europe except what is now northern Germany and Scandinavia (see Map 3.1 ). Like Roman architecture, the

empire was built up of parts that were meant to harmonize in a uniﬁed whole, governed by rules of proportion and

order. And if the monuments the empire built to celebrate itself were grand, the empire was grander still.

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Interior. The sun’ s rays entering through the oculus form a spotlight on the Pantheon’ s interior, moving and changing

intensity with the time of day .

Pompeii

In 79 ce , during the rule of the Emperor T itus, the volcano Vesuvius erupted southeast of Naples, burying the seaside

town of Pompeii in 13 feet of volcanic ash and rock. Its neighbor city Herculaneum was covered in 75 feet of a

ground-hugging avalanche of hot ash that later solidiﬁed. Living in retirement nearby was Pliny the Elder , a

commander in the Roman navy and the author of The Natural History , an encyclopedia of all contemporary

knowledge. At the time of the eruption, his nephew, Pliny the Younger (ca. 61–ca. 1 13 ce ), was staying with him. This

is his eyewitness account ( Reading 3.3 ):

READING 3.3 from Letters of Pliny the Y ounger

On 24 August, in the early afternoon, my mother drew his [Pliny the Elder ’s] attention to a cloud of unusual size and

appearance. He had been out in the sun, had taken a cold bath, and lunched while lying down, and was then working

at his books. He called for his shoes and climbed up to a place which would give him the best view of the

phenomenon. It was not clear at that distance from which mountain the cloud was rising (it was afterwards known to

be V esuvius); its general appearance can best be expressed as being like an umbrella pine, for it rose to a great height

on a sort of trunk and then split of f into branches, I imagine because it was thrust upwards by the ﬁrst blast and then

left unsupported as the pressure subsided, or else it was borne down by its own weight so that it spread out and

gradually dispersed. . . .

They debated whether to stay indoors or take their chance in the open, for the buildings were now shaking with

violent shocks, and seemed to be swaying to and fro as if they were torn from their foundations. Outside on the other

hand, there was the danger of falling pumice-stones, even though these were light and porous; however , after 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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comparing the risks they chose the latter . In my uncle’s case one reason outweighed the other , but for the others it was

a choice of fears. As a protection against falling objects they put pillows on their heads tied down with cloths. . . .

We also saw the sea sucked away and apparently forced back by the earthquake: at any rate it receded from the shore

so that quantities of sea creatures were left stranded on dry sand. On the landward side a fearful black cloud was rent

by forked and quivering bursts of ﬂame, and parted to reveal great tongues of ﬁre, like ﬂashes of lightning magniﬁed

in size. . . .

You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents,

others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of

their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods,

but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore.

. . .

Pliny’ s uncle, Pliny the Elder , interested in what was happening, made his way toward V esuvius, where he died,

suffocated by the poisonous fumes. Pliny the Y ounger, together with his mother , survived. Of the 20,000 inhabitants

of Pompeii, 2,000 died, mostly slaves and the poor left behind by the rich who escaped the city after early warning

shocks.

Much of what we know today about everyday Roman life is the direct result of the V esuvius eruption. Those who

survived left their homes in a hurry, and were unable to recover anything they left behind. Buried under the ashes were

not only homes and buildings but also food and paintings, furniture and garden statuary , even pornography and

grafﬁti. The latter include the expected—“Successus was here,” “Marcus loves Spendusa”—but also the unexpected

and perceptive—“I am amazed, O wall, that you have not collapsed and fallen, since you must bear the tedious

stupidities of so many scrawlers.” When Pompeii was excavated, beginning in the eighteenth century , many of the

homes and artifacts were found to be relatively well preserved. The hardened lava and ash had protected them from

the ravages of time. But eighteenth-century excavators also discovered something unexpected. By ﬁlling the hollows

where the bodies of those caught in the eruption had decomposed, they captured images of horriﬁc death.

Fig. 3.21 Atrium, House of the Silver Wedding, Pompeii. First century bce 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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This view looks through the atrium to the main reception area and the peristyle court. The house gets its name from

the silver wedding anniversary of Italy’ s King Humbert and his queen, Margaret of Savoy, in 1893, the year it was

excavated. They actively supported archeological ﬁeldwork at Pompeii, which began in the mid-eighteenth century .

Fig. 3.22 Plan of the House of the Silver Wedding, Pompeii. First century

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Domestic Ar chitecture: The Domus

Although by no means the most prosperous town in Roman Italy , Pompeii was something of a resort, and, together

with villas from other nearby towns, the surviving architecture gives us a good sense of the Roman domus —the

townhouse of the wealthier class of citizen. The domus was oriented to the street along a central axis that extended

from the front entrance to the rear of the house. The House of the Silver W edding at Pompeii is typical in its design

(Figs. 3.21 and 3.22 ). An atrium , a large space with a shallow pool for catching rainwater below its open roof,

extends directly behind the vestibule. The atrium was the symbolic heart of the house: the location for the imagines

(see Fig. 3.5 ) and the main reception area. Imagines were also housed in the reception rooms just of f the main one,

which in turn opens onto a central peristyle courtyard , surrounded by a colonnaded walkway. The dining room faces

into the courtyard, as do a number of cubicula, small general-purpose rooms often used for sleeping quarters. At the

back of the house, facing into the courtyard, is a hall furnished with seats for discussion. Servants probably lived

upstairs at the rear of the house.

The domus was a measure of a Roman’s social standing, as the vast majority lived in an apartment block or insulae.

The house itself was designed to underscore the owner ’s reputation. Each morning, the front door was opened and left

open. Gradually , the atrium would ﬁll with clients—remember , the head of a Roman household was patron to many—

who came to show their respect in a ritual known as the salutatio [sah-loo-TAH-tee-oh]. Passersby could look in to

see the crowded atrium, and the patron himself was generally seated in the in the open area between the atrium and the

peristyle courtyard, silhouetted by the light from the peristyle court behind. Surrounded by the busts of his ancestors,

the symbol of his social position and prestige, he watched over all who entrusted themselves to his patronage.

At the center of the Roman domus was the garden of the peristyle courtyard, with a fountain or pond in the middle.

Thanks to the long-term research of the archeologist W ilhelmina Jashemski, we know a great deal about these

courtyard gardens. At the House of G. Polybius [poe-LEEb-bee-us] in Pompeii, excavators carefully removed ash

down to the level of the soil on the summer day of the eruption in 79 ce , when the garden would have been in full

bloom. They were able to collect pollen, seeds, and other evidence, including root systems (obtained by pouring

plaster into the surviving cavities) and thus determine what plants and trees were cultivated in it. Polybius’ s garden

was lined, at one end, with lemon trees in pots, which were apparently trained and pruned to cover the wall in an

espalier —a geometric trellis. Cherry, pear, and ﬁg trees ﬁlled the rest of the space. Gardens at other homes suggest

that most were planted with nut- and fruit-bearing trees, including olive, which would provide the family with a

summer harvest. V egetable gardens are sometimes found at the rear of the domus, a source of more fresh produce.

The garden also provided visual pleasure for the family . In the relatively temperate Roman climate the garden was in

bloom for almost three-quarters of the year. It was the focus of many rooms in the domus, which opened onto the

garden. And it was evidently a symbol for the fertility , fecundity, and plenty of the household itself, for many a

Roman garden was decorated with statuary referencing the cult of Dionysus.

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Mosaics decorated many ﬂoors of the domus, and paintings adorned the walls of the atrium, the hall, the dining room,

and other reception rooms throughout the villa. Artists worked with pigments in a solution of lime and soap,

sometimes mixed with a little wax, polished with a special metal or glass, and then buf fed with a cloth. Even the

cubicula bedrooms were richly painted.

Writing in the second century ce , the satirist and rhetorician Lucian (ca. 120–after 180 ce ) describes what he takes to

be the perfect house—“lavish, but only in such degree as would sufﬁce a modest and beautiful woman to set of f her

beauty.” He continues, describing the wall paintings:

The . . . decoration—the frescoes on the walls, the beauty of their colors, and the beauty , exactitude and truth of

each detail—might well be compared with the face of spring and with a ﬂowery ﬁeld, except that those things

fade and wither and change and cast their beauty, while this is spring eternal, ﬁeld unfading, bloom undying.

Just outside Rome, at the villa of Livia at Primaporta, a wall painting depicting a garden full of fresh fruit, songbirds,

and ﬂowers reﬂects this sensibility ( Fig. 3.23 ). It is rendered as if it were an extension of the room itself, as if Livia

and Augustus and their visitors could, at any time, step through the wall into their “undying” garden. Thus, although

naturalistically rendered, it is an idealistic representation.

Fig. 3.23 Garden Scene , detail of a wall painting from the Villa of Livia at

Primaporta, near Rome. Late ﬁrst century bce

Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome. The artist created a sense of depth by setting a wall behind a fence with its open

gate.

CHINA

The North China plain lies in the lar ge, fertile valley of the Yellow River ( Map 3.2 ). Around 7000 bce , when the

valley’s climate was much milder and the land more forested than it is today , the peoples inhabiting this fertile region

began to cultivate the soil, growing primarily millet. Archeologists recognize at least three separate cultural groups in

this region during this period, distinguished by their different pottery styles and works in jade. As Neolithic tribal

people, they used stone tools, and although they domesticated animals very early on, they maintained the shamanistic

practices of their hunter-gatherer heritage. Later inhabitants of this region would call this area the “Central Plain”

because they believed it was the center of their country . During the ensuing millennia, Chinese culture in the Central

Plain coalesced in ways that parallel developments in the Middle East and Greece during the same period, as China

transformed itself from an agricultural society into a more urban-centered state.

Map 3.2 Map of China, 1000–200, bce 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Fig. 3.24 The Great Wall, near Beijing, China. Begun late third century

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Length approx. 4,100 miles, average height 25’. In the third century BCE , the Chinese Emperor Shihuangdi ordered his

army to reconstruct, link, and augment walls on the northern frontier of China in order to form a continuous barrier

protecting his young country from northern Mongol “barbarians.”

By the third century bce , at about the same time that Rome began establishing its imperial authority over the

Mediterranean world, the government of China was sufﬁciently uniﬁed that it could build a Great W all ( Fig. 3.24 )

across the hills north of the Central Plain to protect the realm from the intruding Central Asians who lived beyond its

northern borders. Some sections of the wall were already in place, built in previous centuries to protect local areas.

These were rebuilt and connected to deﬁne a frontier stretching some 1,500 miles from northeast to northwest China.

New roads and canal systems were built linking the entire nation, a large salaried bureaucracy was established, and a

new imperial government headed by an emperor collected taxes, codiﬁed the law , and exerted control over a domain

of formerly rival territories. Uniﬁcation—ﬁrst achieved here by the Qin dynasty—has remained a preeminent problem

throughout China’s long history.

Early Chinese Cultur e

Very few of the built ediﬁces of ancient Chinese civilization have been found. W e know that by the middle of the

second millennium bce , Chinese leaders ruled from large capitals, rivaling those in the W est in their size and splendor.

Beneath present-day Zhengzhou [juhng-joe], for instance, lies an early metropolitan center with massive earthen

walls. Stone was scarce in this area, but abundant forests made wood plentiful, so it was used to build cities. As

impressive as they were, cities built of wood were vulnerable to ﬁre and military attack, and no sign of them remains.

Nevertheless, we know a fair amount about early Chinese culture from the remains of its written language and the

tombs of its rulers. Even the most ancient Chinese writing—found on oracle bones and ceremonial bronze vessels—is

closely related to modern Chinese. And archeologists discovered that royal Chinese tombs, like Egyptian burial sites,

contain furnishings, implements, luxury goods, and clothing that—together with the written record—give us a

remarkably vivid picture of ancient China.

The Shang Dynasty (ca. 1700–1045 bce )

Chinese records say that King T ang established the Shang dynasty . The Shang state was a linked collection of villages,

stretching across the plains of the lower Y ellow River valley. But it was not a contiguous state with distinct borders;

other villages separated some of the Shang villages from one another , and were frequently at war with the Shang. The

royal family surrounded itself with shamans, who soon developed into a kind of nobility and, in time, walled urban

centers formed around the nobles’ palaces or temples. The proliferation of bronze vessels, ﬁnely carved jades, and

luxury goods produced for the Shang elite suggests that well-organized centers of craft production were located

nearby. The Shang nobility or ganized itself into armies—surviving inscriptions describe forces as lar ge as 13,000 men

—that controlled the countryside and protected the king.

The ﬁrst classic of Chinese literature, The Book of Changes , or Yi Jing , compiled later from ideas that developed in the

Shang era, is a guide to interpreting the workings of the universe. A person seeking to understand some aspect of his 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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or her life or situation poses a question and tosses a set of straws or coins. The arrangement they make when they fall

leads to one of 64 readings (or hexagrams) in the Yi Jing . (Fu Xi, the culture-hero who invented writing, is also said to

have invented the eight trigrams that combine in pairs to form the 64 hexagrams.) Each hexagram describes the

circumstances of the speciﬁc moment, which is, as the title suggests, always a moment of transition, a movement from

one set of circumstances to the next. The Yi Jing prescribes certain behaviors appropriate to the moment. Thus, it is a

book of wisdom.

This wisdom is based on a simple principle—that order derives from balance, a concept that the Chinese share with

the ancient Egyptians. The Chinese believe that over time, through a series of changes, all things work toward a

condition of balance. Thus, when things are out of balance, diviners might reliably predict the future by understanding

that the universe tends to right itself. For example the eleventh hexagram, entitled T’ai [tie], or “Peace,” indicated the

uniﬁcation of heaven and earth. The image reads:

Heaven and earth unite: the image of PEACE.

Thus the ruler

Divides and completes the course of heaven and earth,

And so aids the people.”

In fact, according to the Shang rulers, “the foundation of the universe” is based on the marriage of Qian [chee-an] (at

once heaven and the creative male principle) and Kun (the earth, or the receptive female principle), symbolized by the

Chinese symbol of yin -yang (Fig. 3.25 ). Yin is soft, dark, moist, and cool; yang is hard, bright, dry , and warm. The two

combine to create the endless cycles of change, from night to day , across the four seasons of the year. They balance

the ﬁve elements (wood, ﬁre, earth, metal, and water) and the ﬁve powers of creation (cold, heat, dryness, moisture,

and wind). The yin-yang sign, then, is a symbol of harmonious integration, the perpetual interplay and mutual relation

among all things. And note that each side contains a small circle of the same value as its opposite—neither side can

exist without the other.

Fig. 3.25 Yin-yang symbol.

The interlocking of opposites illustrated by the yin-yang motif is also present in the greatest artistic achievement of

the Shang, their bronze casting. In order to cast bronze, a negative shape must be perfected ﬁrst, into which the molten

metal is then poured to make a positive shape. Through the manufacture of ritual vessels, such as the guang , or wine

vessel illustrated here ( Fig. 3.26 ), the Shang developed an extremely sophisticated bronze-casting technology , as

advanced as any ever used. Made for offerings of food, water, and wine during ceremonies of ancestor worship, these

bronze vessels were kept in the ancestral hall and brought out for banquets. Like formal dinnerware, each type of

vessel had a speciﬁc shape and purpose.

Fig. 3.26 Spouted Ritual W ine Vessel (Guang). Shang dynasty , early

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Bronze, height 8½”. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Y ork. Rogers Fund, 1943. 43.25.4. Coiled serpents emerging

from the wings and roaring tiger-dragons decorate the sides. Serving as a handle is a the horned bird that is

transformed into a dragon-serpent.

The conduct of the ancestral rites was the most solemn duty of a family head, with explicit religious and political

signiﬁcance. While the vessel shapes originally derived from the shapes of Neolithic pottery , in bronze they gradually

became decorated with fantastic, supernatural creatures, especially dragons. For the Shang, the bronzes came to

symbolize political power and authority. Leaders made gifts of bronze as tokens of political patronage, and strict rules

governed the number of bronzes a family might possess according to rank.

The Zhou Dynasty (1027–256 bce )

The Shang believed that their leaders were the sole conduit to the heavenly ancestors. However , in 1027 bce , a rebel

tribe known as the Zhou [joe] overthrew the Shang dynasty, claiming that the Shang had lost the Mandate of Heaven

by not ruling virtuously. The Zhou asserted that the legitimacy of a ruler derived from divine approval, and that the

Shang had lost this favor because of their decadent extravagances. Even so, the Zhou took measures to intermarry

with the elite whom they had overthrown and took pains to conserve and restore what they admired of Shang culture.

In fact, both the Book of Changes and the yin-yang symbol were originated by the Shang but codiﬁed and written

down by the Zhou.

The Zhou ushered in an era of cultural reﬁnement and philosophical accomplishment. One example is the oldest

collection of Chinese poetry , the Book of Songs (Shi jing [she jee-ung]), still taught in Chinese schools today .

According to tradition, government ofﬁcials were sent into the countryside to record the lyrics of songs that expressed

the feelings of the people. The collection that survives, ﬁrst compiled by the Zhou, consists of 305 poems from

between the eleventh and seventh centuries bce . The poems address almost every aspect of life. There are love poems,

songs celebrating the king’s rule, sacriﬁcial hymns, and folk songs. Descriptions of nature abound—over 100 kinds of

plants are mentioned, as well as 90 kinds of animals and insects. Marriage practices, family life, clothing, and food,

are all subjects of poems. One of the oldest celebrates the harvest as an expression of the family’ s harmony with

nature, the symbol that the family’s ancestors are part of the same natural cycle of life and death, planting and harvest,

as the universe as a whole ( Reading 3.4 ):

READING 3.4 from the Book of Songs

Abundant is the year , with much millet, much rice;

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To hold myriads, many myriads and millions of grain.

W e make wine, make sweet liquor ,

We of fer it to ancestor , to ancestress,

We use it to fulﬁl all the rites,

To bring down blessings upon each and all.

The songs in the Shi jing are contemporary with the poems that make up the Tao T e Ching [dow duh jee-ung] ( The

Way of Life ), the primary philosophical treatise, written in verse, of Daoism, the Chinese mystical school of thought.

The Tao (“the way”) is deeply embedded in nature, and to attain it, the individual must accord by it by “not-doing.” (It

is said that those who speak about the Dao do not know of it, and those who know about the Dao do not speak of it.)

The book, probably composed in the third century bce , is traditionally ascribed to Lao Tzu [lou dzah] (“the Old One”)

who lived during the sixth century bce . In essence, it ar gues for a unifying principle in all nature, the

interchangeability of ener gy and matter, a principle the Chinese call qi [chee]. The qi can be understood only by those

who live in total simplicity , and to this end the Daoist engages in strict dietary practices, breathing exercises, and

meditation. In considering such images as the one expressed in the following poem, the ﬁrst in the volume, the Daoist

ﬁnds his or her way to enlightenment ( Reading 3.5 ):

READING 3.5 from the Tao T e Ching

There are ways but the W ay is uncharted;

There are names but not nature in words:

Nameless indeed is the source of creation

But things have a mother and she has a name.

The secret waits for the insight

Of eyes unclouded by longing;

Those who are bound by desire

See only the outward container .

These two come paired but distinct

By their names.

Of all things profound,

Say that their pairing is deepest,

The gate to the root of the world.

The ﬁnal stanza seems to be a direct reference to the principle of yin-yang, itself a symbol of the qi . But the chief

argument here, and the outlook of Daoism as a whole, is that enlightenment lies neither in the visible world nor in

language, although to ﬁnd the “way” one must, paradoxically , pass through or use both. Daoism thus represents a

spiritual desire to transcend the material world.

If Daoism sought to leave the world behind, another great canon of teachings developed during the Zhou dynasty

sought to deﬁne the proper way to behave in the world. For 550 years, from about 771 bce to the ﬁnal collapse of the

Zhou in 221 bce , China was subjected to ever greater political turmoil as warring political factions struggled for

power. Reacting to this state of af fairs was the man many consider China’ s greatest philosopher and teacher, Kong

Fuzi [kung-fu-zuh], or, as he is known in the W est, Confucius.

Confucius was born to aristocratic parents in the province of Shandong in 551 bce , the year before Peisistratus came

to power in Athens. By his early twenties, Confucius had begun to teach a way of life, now referred to as

Confucianism, based on self-discipline and proper relations among people. If each individual led a virtuous life, then

the family would live in harmony . If the family lived in harmony, then the village would follow its moral leadership. If

the village exercised proper behavior toward its neighbor villages, then the country would live in peace and thrive.

Traditional Chinese values—values that Confucius believed had once guided the Zhou, such as self-control, propriety ,

reverence for one’s elders, and virtuous behavior—lie at the core of this system. T radition has it that Confucius

compiled and edited The Book of Changes , The Book of Songs (which he edited down to 305 verses), and four other

“classic” Chinese texts: The Book of History , containing speeches and pronouncements of historical rulers; The Book

of Rites , which is essentially a code of conduct; The Spring and Autumn Annals , a history of China up to the ﬁfth

century bce ; and a lost treatise on music. 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Confucius particularly valued The Book of Songs . “My little ones,” he told his followers, “why don’ t you study the

Songs ? Poetry will exalt you, make you observant, enable you to mix with others, provide an outlet for your

vexations; you learn from it immediately to serve your parents and ultimately to serve your prince. It also provides

wide acquaintance with the names of birds, beasts, and plants.”

After his death, in 479 bce , Confucius’s followers transcribed their conversations with him in a book known in

English as the Analects. Where the Dao de jing is a spiritual work, the Analects is a practical one. At the heart of

Confucius’s teaching is the principle of li [lee]—propriety in the conduct of the rites of ancestor worship. The

courtesy and dignity required when performing the rites lead to the second principle, ren , or benevolent compassion

and fellow feeling, the ideal relationship that should exist among all people. Based on respect for oneself, ren extends

this respect to all others, manifesting itself as charity , courtesy, and above all, justice. De [duh], or virtue, is the power

of moral example that an individual, especially a ruler , can exert through a life dedicated to the exercise of li and ren .

Finally , wen , or culture, will result. Poetry , music, painting, and the other arts will all reveal an inherent order and

harmony reﬂecting the inherent order and harmony of the state. Like an excellent leader , brilliance in the arts

illuminates virtue. The Chinese moral order, like that of the Greeks (see Chapter 2 ), depended not upon divine decree

or authority, but instead upon the people’ s own right actions. Its emphasis on respect for age, authority , and morality

made Confucianism extremely popular among Chinese leaders and the artists they patronized. It embraced the

emperor, the state, and the family in a single ethical system with a hierarchy that was believed to mirror the structure

of the cosmos. As a result, the Han [hahn] dynasty (206 bce –220 ce ) adopted Confucianism as the Chinese state

religion, and a thorough knowledge of the Confucian classics was subsequently required of any politically ambitious

person.

Imperial China

Whereas Rome’ s empire derived from outward expansion, China’ s empire arose from consolidation at the center.

From about the time of Confucius onward, seven states vied for control. They mobilized armies to battle one another;

iron weapons replaced bronze; they organized bureaucracies and established legal systems; merchants gained political

power; and a “hundred schools of thought” ﬂowered.

The Qin Dynasty (221–206 bce ): Organization and Contr ol

This period of warring states culminated when the western state Qin [chin] (the origin of our name for China)

conquered the other states and uniﬁed them under the Qin empire in 221 bce . Under the leadership of Qin Shihuangdi

[chin shuh-hwang-dee] (r. 221–210 bce ), who declared himself “First Emperor ,” the Qin worked very quickly to

achieve a stable society. To discourage nomadic invaders from the north, they built the Great W all of China (see Fig.

3.24 ). The wall was constructed by soldiers, augmented by criminals, civil servants who found themselves in disfavor ,

and conscripts from across the countryside. Each family was required to provide one able-bodied adult male to work

on the wall each year. It was made of rammed earth, reinforced by continuous, horizontal courses of brushwood, and

faced with stone. Watch-towers were built at high points, and military barracks were built in the valleys below . At the

same time, the Chinese constructed nearly 4,350 miles of roads, linking even the farthest reaches of the country to the

Central Plain. By the end of the second century ce , China had some 22,000 miles of roads serving a country of nearly

1.5 million square miles.

Such massive undertakings could only have been accomplished by an administrative bureaucracy of extraordinary

organizational skill. Indeed, in the 15 years that the Qin ruled China, the written language was standardized, a uniform

coinage was introduced, all wagon axles were required to be the same width so that they would uniformly ﬁt in the

existing ruts on the Chinese roads (thus accommodating trade and travel), a system of weights and measures was

introduced, and the country was divided into the administrative and bureaucratic provinces much as they exist to the

present day .

Perhaps nothing tells us more about Qin or ganization and control than the tomb of its ﬁrst emperor , Qin Shihuangdi

(see Closer Look , pages 104 –105 ). When he died, battalions of life-size earthenware guards in military formation

were buried in pits beside his tomb. (More than 8,000 have been excavated so far .) Like the Great Wall, this

monumental undertaking required an enormous workforce, and we know that the Qin enlisted huge numbers of

workers in this and its other projects. But eventually , the Qin bureaucracy, coupled with an oppressive tax structure

imposed to pay for their massive civil projects, soon led to rebellion, and after only 15 years in power , the Qin

collapsed.

CLOSER LOOK The Tomb of Qin Shihuangdi

One day in 1974, peasants digging a well on the ﬂat plain 1,300 yards east of the huge Qin dynasty burial mound of

the Emperor Qin Shihuangdi in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi [shahn-shee] unearthed parts of a life-size

clay soldier—a head, hands, and body . Archeologists soon discovered an enormous subterranean pit beneath the ﬁelds

containing an estimated 6,000 infantrymen, most standing four abreast in 1 1 parallel trenches paved with bricks. In

1976 and 1977, two smaller but equally spectacular sites were discovered north of the ﬁrst one, containing another

1,400 individual warriors and horses, complete with metal weaponry.

Qin Shihuangdi’s actual tomb has never been excavated. It rises 140 feet above the plain. Historical records indicated

that below the mound is a subterranean palace estimated to be about 400 feet by 525 feet. According to the Shi Ji [she

jee] ( Historical Recor ds ) of Sima Qian [shee-mah chee-an], a scholar from the Han dynasty , the emperor was buried 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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there in a bronze casket surrounded by a river of mercury . Scientiﬁc tests conducted by Chinese archeologists conﬁrm

the presence of large quantities of mercury in the soil of the burial mound. Magnetic scans of the tomb have also

revealed large numbers of coins, suggesting the emperor was buried with his treasury .

Something to Think About . . .

Why do you suppose the ceramic army was deployed ouside the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi and not in it?

Soldiers and horses, from the pits near the tomb of Emper or Qin Shihuangdi, Lintong, Shaanxi, China. Qin

dynasty, ca. 210 bce . Terra-cotta, life-size. The practice of fashioning clay replicas of humans for burial at

mausoleum sites replaced an earlier practice of actual human sacriﬁce. Over 700,000 people were employed in

preparing the tomb.

Two terra-cotta soldiers fr om the burial mound of Qin Shihuangdi,

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Above, an infantryman poised for hand-to-hand combat, height 70”; to the right, a kneeling archer , height 48”. The

bodies of most of the soldiers in the tomb appear to have been mass-produced in molds. After each stylized body was

baked, head and hands were added. No two heads are alike. Many seem to possess unique, individual facial features

and they exhibit a variety of hairstyles. They were subsequently painted in vivid colors, and most carried actual

weapons. Knives, spears, swords, and arrowheads have been found at the site.

The Han Dynasty (206 bce –220 ce ): The Flowering of Culture

In place of the Qin, the Han dynasty came to power , inaugurating over 400 years of intellectual and cultural growth.

The Han emperors installed Confucianism as the ofﬁcial state philosophy and established an academy to train civil

servants. Where the Qin had disenfranchised scholars, the Han honored them, even going so far as to give them an

essential role in governing the country.

Under Emperor Wu, Chinese literary arts ﬂourished. In 120 bce , he established the Yue fu [yoo-eh foo], the so-called

Music Bureau, which would come to employ some 829 people char ged with collecting the songs of the common

people. The folk style of the yuefu songs was widely imitated by court poets during the Han and throughout the

history of Chinese poetry. The lines are of uneven length, although often of ﬁve characters, and emphasize the joys

and vicissitudes of daily life. A case in point is a poem by Liu Xijun [lee-ooh shee-june], a Chinese princess who,

around 110 bce , was married for political reasons to the chief of the W usun, a band of nomads who lived on the

steppes of northwest China. Her husband, as it turned out when she arrived, was old and decrepit, spoke almost no

Chinese, and by and large had nothing to do with her , seeing her every six months or so. This is her “Lament”

(Reading 3.6 ):

READING 3.6 Liu Xijun, “Lament”

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to the King of the W usun.

and I live in an alien land

a million miles from nowhere.

My house is a tent,

My walls are of felt.

Raw ﬂesh is all I eat,

with horse milk to drink.

I always think of home

and my heart strings,

O to be a yellow snow-goose

ﬂoating home again!

The poem’s last two lines—what might be called the ﬂight of Liu Xijun’ s imagination—are typical of Chinese poetry,

where time and again the tragic circumstances of life are overcome through an image of almost transcendent natural

beauty.

As Liu Xijun’ s poem suggests, women poets and scholars were common—and respected—during the Han dynasty .

But as the circumstances surrounding Liu Xijun’s poem also suggest, women did not enjoy great power in society . The

traditional Chinese family was organized around basic Confucian principles: Elder family members were wiser , and

therefore superior to the younger, and males were superior to females. Thus, while a grandmother might hold sway

over her grandson, a wife owed unquestioning obedience to her husband.

The unenviable plight of women is the subject of a poem by Fu Xuan [foo schwan], a male poet of the late Han

dynasty who apparently was one of the most proliﬁc poets of his day , although only 63 of his poems survive ( Reading

3.7 ):

READING 3.7 Fu Xuan, “To Be a Woman”

It is bitter to be a woman,

the cheapest thing on earth.

A boy stands commanding in the doorway

like a god descended from the sky .

His heart hazards the four seas,

thousands of miles of wind and dust,

but no one laughs when a girl is born.

The family doesn’t cherish her.

When she’s a woman she hides in back rooms,

scared to look a man in the face.

They cry when she leaves to marry—

a brief rain, then mere clouds.

Head bowed she tries to compose her face,

her white teeth stabbing red lips.

She bows and kneels endlessly ,

even before concubines and servants.

If their love is strong as two stars

she is like a sunﬂower in the sun,

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a hundred evils descend on her .

The years change her jade face

and her lord will ﬁnd new lovers.

[They] who were close like body and shadow

will be remote as Chinese and Mongols.

Sometimes even Chinese and Mongols meet

but they’ll be far as polar stars.

The poem is notable for the acuity and intensity of its imagery—her “white teeth stabbing red lips,” the description of

a close relationships as “like body and shadow ,” and, in the last lines, the estrangement of their relationship to a point

as far apart as “polar stars,” farther apart even than the Chinese and Mongols. (And who, one must ask, is more like

the barbarian hordes, the male or the female?)

What we know about the domestic setting of Han dynasty society we can gather mostly from surviving poetic images

describing everyday life in the home, but our understanding of domestic architecture derives from ceramic models. A

model of a house found in a tomb, presumably provided for the use of the departed in the afterlife, is four stories high

and topped by a watchtower ( Fig. 3.27 ). The family lived in the middle two stories, while livestock, probably pigs and

oxen, were kept in the gated lower level with its courtyard extending in front of the house.

Architecturally, the basic form of the house is commonly found across the world—rectangular halls with columns

supporting the roof or the ﬂoor above. The walls serve no weight-bearing function. Rather , they serve as screens

separating the inside from the outside, or one interior room from another. Distinctive to Chinese architecture are the

broad eaves of the roof, which would become a standard feature of East Asian construction. Adding playful charm is

the elaborate decoration of the facade, including painted trees ﬂanking the courtyard.

Fig. 3.27 Model of a Multi-Storied Tower, Chinese, 1st century ce , Eastern

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Earthenware with unﬁred pigments, 52 × 33½ 27 inches (132.1 × 85.1 × 68.6 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of

Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: W illiam Rockhill Nelson T rust, 33-521. Photo credit: John Lamberton. This is

one of the largest and most complete models of a han house known.

Aside from their military value, horses advanced the growth of trade along the Silk Road. Nearly 5,000 miles long,

this trade route led from the Y ellow River valley to the Mediterranean, and along it, the Chinese traded their most

exclusive commodity, silk. The quality of Han silk is evident in a silk banner from the tomb of the wife of the Marquis

of Dai, discovered on the outskirts of present-day Changsha [chahng-shah] in Hunan [hoo-nahn] ( Fig. 3.28 ). Painted

with scenes representing the underworld, the earthly realm, and the heavens, it represents the Han conception of the

cosmos. Long, sinuous lines representing dragons’ tails, coiling serpents, long-tailed birds, and ﬂowing draperies

unify the three realms. In the right corner of the heavenly realm, above the crossbar of the T , is an image of the sun

containing a crow, and in the other corner is a crescent moon supporting a toad. Between them is a deity entwined

within his own long, red serpent tail. The deceased noblewoman herself stands on the white platform in the middle

region of the banner . Three attendants stand behind her and two ﬁgures kneel before her , bearing gifts. On a white

platform in the lower realm, bronze vessels contain food and wine for the deceased.

Fig. 3.28 Painted banner from the tomb of the wife of the Mar quis of Dai,

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Colors on silk, height 6’ 8½”. Hunan Provincial Museum. The banner was found in the innermost of the nested cofﬁns

opened in 1972.

One of the important characteristics of Han poetry is that, as opposed to the poems in the Book of Songs , many poems

did not emerge out of oral traditions but originated as written works. In the W est, the limitations of papyrus as a

writing medium had led to the invention of parchment at Pergamon, but the Chinese invention of cellulose-based

paper in 105 ce by Cai Lun [tsai lwun], a eunuch and attendant to the Imperial Court who held a post responsible for

manufacturing instruments and weapons, enabled China to develop widespread literacy much more quickly than the

West. Paper made of hemp had already been produced by the Han for over 200 years, but Cai Lun improved both the

techniques used and its quality while using a variety of materials, such as tree bark, hemp, and rags. Although modern

technologies have simpliﬁed the process, his method remains basically unchanged—the suspension in water of

softened plant ﬁbers that are formed in molds into thin sheets, couched, drained, and then dried.

The Han were especially inventive. Motivated by trade, the Han began to make maps, becoming the world’ s ﬁrst

cartographers. They invented important agricultural technologies such as the wheelbarrow and horse collar. They

learned to measure the magnitude of earthquakes with a crude but functional seismograph. But persistent warring with

the Huns required money to support military and bureaucratic initiatives. Unable to keep up with increased taxes,

many peasants were forced off the land and popular rebellion ensued. By the third century ce , the Han dynasty had

collapsed. China reentered a period of political chaos lasting from 220 until 589 ce , when imperial rule ﬁnally

regained its strength.

Map 3.3 India around 1500 bce 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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Cut off from the rest of Asia by high mountains to the north, India was nevertheless a center of trade by virtue of its

prominent maritime presence.

ANCIENT INDIA

Indian civilization was born along the Indus [IN-duhs] River in the northwest corner of the Indian subcontinent in

present-day Pakistan somewhere around 2700 bce in an area known as Sind—from which the words India and Hindu

originate ( Map 3.3 ). The earliest Indian peoples lived in at least two great cities in the Indus valley , Mohenjo-Daro

[moh-HEN-joh-DAR-oh], on the banks of the Indus, and Harappa [huh-RAH-puh], on the river Ravi [RAH-vee],

downstream from modern Lahore [luh-HORE]. These great cities thrived until around 1900 bce and were roughly

contemporaneous with Sumerian Ur, the Old Kingdom of Egypt, and Minoan civilization in the Aegean.

Fig. 3.29 Large water tank, possibly a public or ritual bathing ar ea, from

Mohenjo-Dar o, Indus valley civilization. ca. 2600–1900 bce. 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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It measures approximately 12 meters north-south and 7 meters wide, with a maximum depth of 2.4 meters.

The cities were discovered by chance in the early 1920s and excavations have continued since. The best preserved of

the sites is Mohenjo-Daro. Built atop a citadel is a complex of buildings, presumably a governmental or religious

center, surrounded by a wall 50 feet high. Set among the buildings on the citadel is a giant pool ( Fig. 3.29 ). Perhaps a

public bath or a ritual space, its ﬁnely ﬁtted bricks, laid on edge and bound together with gypsum plaster , made it

watertight. The bricks on the side walls of the tank were covered with a thick layer of bitumen (natural tar) to keep

water from seeping through the walls and up into the superstructure. The pool was open to the air and surrounded by a

brick colonnade.

Outside the wall and below the citadel, a city of approximately 6 to 7 square miles, with broad avenues and narrow

side streets, was laid out in a rough grid. It appears to have been home to a population of between 20,000 and 50,000.

Most of the houses were two stories tall and built around a central courtyard. A network of covered drainage systems

ran through the streets, channeling waste and rain-water into the river. The houses were built with standard sizes of

baked brick, each measuring 2¾ × 5½ inches, a ratio of 1:2:4. A brick of identical ratio but lar ger—4 × 8 × 16 inches

—was used in the building of platforms and city walls. Unlike the sun-dried bricks used in other cultures at the time,

Mohenjo-Daro’s bricks were ﬁred, making them much more durable. All of this suggests a civilization of considerable

technological know-how and sophistication.

The arts of the Indus civilizations include human ﬁgurines and animal ﬁgurines made of stone, terra-cotta, bronze, and

other materials—including the so-called “priest-king” found at Mohenjo-Daro ( Fig. 3.30 )—terra-cotta pottery , and

various styles of decorative ornaments for human wear including beads and stoneware bangles. Over 2,000 small seals

have been unearthed. Carved from steatite stone, coated with alkali, and then ﬁred to produce a luminous white

surface, many depict animals with an extraordinary naturalism, especially considering that they are rendered in such

miniature detail ( Fig. 3.31 ). Depictions of warfare or conquered enemies are strikingly absent in representational art.

As the top of this seal shows, the peoples of the valley had a written language, although it remains undeciphered.

Sometime around 1500 bce the Aryans [AIR-ee-uhnz], nomads from the north, invaded the Indus River valley and

conquered its inhabitants, making them slaves. Thus began the longest-lasting set of rigid, class-based societal

divisions in world history , the Indian caste system. By the beginning of the ﬁrst millennium bce , these castes consisted

of ﬁve principal groups, based on occupation: At the bottom of the ladder was a group considered “untouchable,”

people so scorned by society that they were not even considered a caste. Next in line were the Shudras [SHOO-druhz],

unskilled workers. Then came the V aishyas [VYSH-yuhz], artisans and merchants. They were followed by the

Kshatriyas [kuh-SHAHT-ree-uhz], rulers and warriors. At the highest level were the Brahmins [BRAH-minz], priests

and scholars.

Fig. 3.30 Torso of a “priest-king” fr om Mohenjo-Daro, Indus valley

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Steatite, height 6⅞ ×”. National Museum of Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan. The look created by the ﬁgure’ s half-closed

eyes suggests that this might be a death mask of some sort. The trefoil , or three-lobed decorations on the garment that

crosses his chest, were originally ﬁlled with red paint.

Hinduism and the V edic Tradition

The social castes were sanctioned by the religion the Aryans brought with them, a religion based on a set of sacred

hymns to the Aryan gods. These hymns, called Vedas [V AY-duhz], were written in the Aryan language, Sanskrit, and

they gave their name to an entire period of Indian civilization, the V edic [VAY-dik] period (ca. 1500–322 bce ). From

the Vedas in turn came the Upanishads [oo-P AHN-ih-shadz], a book of mystical and philosophical texts that date from

sometime after 800 bce . Taken together , the Vedas and the Upanishads form the basis of the Hindu religion, with

Brahman, the universal soul, at its center . The religion has no single body of doctrine, nor any standard set of

practices. It is deﬁned above all by the diversity of its beliefs and deities. Indeed, several images of mother goddesses,

stones in the phallic form, as well as a seal with an image that resembles the Hindu god Shiva, have been excavated at

various Indus sites, leading scholars to believe that certain aspects and concepts of Hinduism survived from the Indus

civilizations and were incorporated into the V edic religion.

Fig. 3.31 Seal depicting a horned animal, Indus valley civilization. ca.

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Steatite, approx. 1¼ × 1¼” National Museum of Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan. The function of these seals remains

unknown.

The Upanishads argue that all existence is a fabric of false appearances. What appears to the senses is entirely

illusory . Only Brahman is real. Thus, in a famous story illustrating the point, a tiger , orphaned as a cub, is raised by

goats. It learns, as a matter of course, to eat grass and make goat sounds. But one day it meets another tiger , who takes

it to a pool to look at itself. There, in its reﬂection in the water, it discovers its true nature. The individual soul needs

to discover the same truth, a truth that will free it from the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth and unite it with

the Brahman in nirvana [nir-VAH-nuh], a place or state free from worry , pain, and the external world.

Brahman, Vishnu, and Shiva

As Hinduism [HIN-doo-iz-um] developed, the functions of Brahman, the divine source of all being, were split among

three gods: Brahma, the creator; V ishnu [VISH-noo], the preserver; and Shiva [SHEE-vuh], the destroyer . Vishnu was

one of the most popular of the Hindu deities. In his role as preserver , he is the god of benevolence, forgiveness, and

love, and like the other two main Hindu gods, he was believed capable of assuming human form, which he did more

often than the other gods due to his great love for humankind. Among V ishnu’s most famous incarnations is his

appearance as Rama [rah-mah] in the oldest of the Hindu epics, the Ramayana [rah-mah-yuh-nuh] ( Way of Rama ),

written by V almiki [vahl-MIH-kee] in about 550 bce . Like Homer in ancient Greece, V almiki gathered together many

existing legends and myths into a single story , in this case narrating the lives of Prince Rama and his queen, Sita

[SEE-tuh]. The two serve as models of Hindu life. Rama is the ideal son, brother , husband, warrior, and king, and Sita

loves, honors, and serves her husband with absolute and unquestioning ﬁdelity . These characters face moral dilemmas

to which they must react according to dharma [DAHR-muh], good and righteous conduct reﬂecting the cosmic moral

order that underlies all existence. For Hindus, correct actions can lead to cosmic harmony; and bad actions; violating

dharma, can trigger cosmic tragedies such as ﬂoods and earthquakes.

An equally important incarnation of Vishnu is as the charioteer Krishna [KRISH-nuh] in the later Indian epic the

Mahahbarata [muh-ha-BAHR-uh-tuh], composed between 400 bce and 400 ce . In the sixth book of the Mahahbarata ,

titled the Bhagavad Gita [BUH-guh-vud GHEE-tuh], Krishna comes to the aid of Arjuna [ahr -JOO-nuh], a warrior

who is tormented by the conﬂict between his duty to ﬁght and kill his kinsmen in battle and the Hindu prohibition

against killing. Krishna explains to Arjuna that as a member of the Kshatriya caste—that is, as a warrior—he is freed

from the Hindu sanction against killing. In fact, by ﬁghting well and doing his duty , he can free himself from the

endless cycle of birth, death, and reincarnation, and move toward spiritual union with the Brahman.

But Vishnu’ s popularity is probably most attributable to his celebration of erotic love, which to Hindus symbolizes the

mingling of the self and the absolute spirit of Brahman. In the Vishnu Puranas [poor -AH-nuhz] (the “old stories” of

Vishnu), collected about 500 ce , V ishnu, in his incarnation as Krishna, is depicted as seducing one after another of his

devotees. In one story of the Vishnu Puranas , he seduces an entire band of milkmaids: “They considered every instant

without him a myriad of years; and prohibited (in vain) by husbands, fathers, brothers, they went forth at night to sport

with Krishna, the object of their af fection.” Allowing themselves to be seduced does not suggest that the milkmaids

were immoral, but shows an almost inevitable manifestation of their souls’ quest for union with divinity .

If Brahma is the creator of the world, Shiva takes what Brahma has made and embodies the world’s cyclic rhythms.

Since in Hinduism, the destruction of the old world is followed by the creation of a new world, Shiva’ s role as

destroyer is required and a positive one. In this sense, he possesses reproductive powers, and in this manifestation of

his being, he is often represented as a linga [LING-uh] (phallus), often carved in stone on temple grounds or at

shrines.

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Goddess worship is fundamental to Hindu religion. V illages usually recognize goddesses as their protectors, and the

goddess Devi is worshipped in many forms throughout India. She is the female aspect without whom the male aspect,

which represents consciousness or discrimination, remains impotent and void. For instance, in the Devi Mahatmayam ,

another of the Puranas, composed like the Vishnu Puranas around 500 ce , V ishnu was asleep on the great cosmic

ocean, and due to his slumber , Brahma was unable to create. Devi intervenes, kills the demons responsible for

Vishnu’ s slumber , and helps wake up V ishnu. Thus continues the cycle of life.

Devi is synonymous with Shakti, the primordial cosmic ener gy, and represents the dynamic forces that move through

the entire universe. Shaktism, a particular brand of Hindu faith that regards Devi as the Supreme Brahman itself,

believes that all other forms of divinity , female or male, are themselves simply forms of Devi’ s diverse manifestations.

But she has a number of particular manifestations. In an extraordinary miniature carving from the twelfth century ,

Devi is seen in her manifestation as Durga ( Fig. 3.32 ), portrayed as the sixteen-armed slayer of a buf falo inhabited by

the ﬁerce demon Mahisha. Considered invincible, Mahisha threatens to destroy the world, but Dur ga comes to the

rescue. In this image, she has just severed the buffalo’s head and Mahisha, in the form of a tiny , chubby man, his hair

composed of snake heads, emerges from the buffalo’s decapitated body and looks up admiringly at Dur ga even as his

toes are being bitten by her lion. Durga smiles serenely as she hoists Mahisha by his hair and treads gracefully on the

buffalo’ s body .

Fig. 3.32 The Goddess Durga Killing the Buf falo Demon, Mahisha

(Mahishasuramardini). Bangladesh or India, Pala period, twelfth century

Argillite, height. . Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Y ork. Diana and Arthur G. Altschul Gift, 1993.

1993.7. Durga represents the warrior aspect of Devi.

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Because free thought and practice mark the Hindu religion, it is hardly surprising that other religious movements drew

on it and developed from it. Buddhism is one of those. Its founder , Shakyamuni [SHAHK-yuh-moo-nee] Buddha,

lived from about 563 to 483 bce . He was born Prince Siddhartha Gautama [sid-DAR-thuh gau-tah-muh], child of a

ruler of the Shakya [SHAK-yuh] clan—Shakyamuni means “sage of the Shakyas”—and was raised to be a ruler

himself. Troubled by what he perceived to be the suf fering of all human beings, he abandoned the luxurious lifestyle

of his father’s palace to live in the wilderness. For six years he meditated, ﬁnally attaining complete enlightenment

while sitting under a banyan tree at Bodh Gaya [bod GUY -ah]. Shortly thereafter he gave his ﬁrst teaching, at the Deer

Park at Sarnath, expounding the Four Noble Truths:

1. Life is suffering.

2. This suffering has a cause, which is ignorance.

3. Ignorance can be overcome and eliminated.

4. The way to overcome this ignorance is by following the Eightfold Path of right view , right resolve, right

speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mind-fulness, and right concentration.

Living with these truths in mind, one might overcome what Buddha believed to be the source of all human suf fering—

the desire for material things, which is the primary form of ignorance. In doing so, one would ﬁnd release from the

illusions of the world, from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, and ultimately reach nirvana. These principles are

summed up in the Dhammapada [dah-muh-PAH-duh], the most popular canonical text of Buddhism, which consists

of 423 aphorisms, or sayings, attributed to Buddha and arranged by subject into 26 chapters. Its name is a compound

consisting of dhamma , the vernacular form of the formal Sanskit word dharma , mortal truth, and pada , meaning

“foot” or “step”—hence it is “the path of truth.” The aphorisms are widely admired for their wisdom and their

sometimes stunning beauty of expression.

The Buddha (which means “Enlightened One”) taught for 40 years until his death at age 80. His followers preached

that anyone could achieve buddhahood, the ability to see the ultimate nature of the world. Persons of very near total

enlightenment, but who have vowed to help others achieve buddhahood before crossing over to nirvana, came to be

known as bodhisattvas [boh-dih-SUT -vuhz], meaning “those whose essence is wisdom.” In art, bodhisattvas wear the

princely garb of India, while Buddhas wear a monk’ s robe.

The Maurya Empire

Buddhism would become the ofﬁcial state religion of the Maurya Empire, which ruled India from 321 to 185 bce . The

Empire was founded by Chandragupta Maurya [chan-druh-GOOP-tuh MA-ur -ya] (r. ca. 321–297 bce ) in eastern

India. Its capital was Pataliputra (modern Patna) on the Ganges River , but Chandragupta rapidly expanded the empire

westward, taking advantage of the vacuum of power in the Indus valley that followed in the wake of Alexander the

Great’s invasion of 326 bce . In 305 bce , the Hellenistic Greek ruler Suleucus I, ruler of the one of the three states that

succeeded Alexander ’s empire, the kingdom of the Suleucids, tried to reconquer India once again. He and

Chandragupta eventually signed a peace treaty , and diplomatic relations between Suleicid Greece and the Maurya

Empire were established. Several Greeks ambassadors were soon residing in the Mauryan court, the beginning of

substantial relations between East and West. Chandragupta was succeeded by his son Bindu-sara [BIN-doo-sah-rah]

(r. ca. 297–273 bce ), who also had a Greek ambassador at his court, and who extended the empire southward,

conquering almost all the Indian peninsula and establishing the Maurya Empire as the lar gest empire of its time. He

was in turn succeeded by his son Ashoka [uh-SHOH-kuh] (r. ca. 273–232 bce ).

It was Ashoka who established Buddhism as the ofﬁcial state religion. On a battleﬁeld in 261 bce , Ashoka was

appalled by the carnage he had inﬂicted in his role as a warrior king. As he watched a monk walking slowly among

the dead, Ashoka was moved to decry violence and force of arms and to spread the teachings of Buddha. From that

point, Ashoka, who had been described as “the cruel Ashoka,” began to be known as “the pious Ashoka.” At a time

when Rome was engaged in the Punic Wars, Ashoka pursued an ofﬁcial policy of nonviolence. The unnecessary

slaughter or mutilation of animals was forbidden. Sport hunting was banned, and although the limited hunting of game

for the purpose of consumption was tolerated, Ashoka promoted vegetarianism. He built hospitals for people and

animals alike, preached the humane treatment of all living things, and regarded all his subjects as equals, regardless of

politics, religion, or caste. He also embarked on a massive Buddhist architectural campaign, erecting as many as 8,400

shrines and monuments to Buddha throughout the empire. Soon, Buddhism would spread beyond India, and Buddhist

monks from China traveled to India to observe Buddhist practices.

Buddhist Monuments: The Gr eat Stupa

Among the most famous of the Buddhist monuments that Ashoka erected is the Great Stupa [ST OO-puh] at Sanchi

[SAHN-chee] ( Fig. 3.33 ), which was enlarged in the second century bce . A stupa is a kind of burial mound. The

earliest eight of them were built around 483 bce as reliquaries for Buddha’ s remains, which were themselves divided

into eight parts. In the third century , Ashoka opened the original eight stupas and further divided Buddha’ s relics,

scattering them among a great many other stupas, probably including Sanchi.

Fig. 3.33 The Great Stupa, Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh, India, view of the

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Shrine height 50’, diameter 105’. In India, the stupa is the principal monument to Buddha. The stupa symbolizes, at

once, the World Mountain, the Dome of Heaven, and the W omb of the Universe.

Explore an architectural panorama of the Great Stupa at Sanchi on myartslab.com

The stupa as a form is deeply symbolic, consisting ﬁrst and foremost of a hemispheric dome, built of rubble and dirt

and faced with stone, evoking the Dome of Heaven (see the plan, Fig. 3.34 ). Perched on top of the dome is a small

square platform, in the center of which is a mast supporting three circular discs or “umbrellas,” called chatras

[CHAH-truz]. These signify both the banyan tree beneath which Buddha achieved enlightenment and the three levels

of Buddhist consciousness—desire, form, formlessness—through which the soul ascends to enlightenment. The dome

is set on a raised base, around the top of which is a circumambulatory walkway . As pilgrims to the stupa circle the

walkway, they symbolically follow Buddha’ s path, awakening to enlightenment. The whole is a mandala [MUN-duh-

luh] (literally “circle”), the Buddhist diagram of the cosmos.

Fig. 3.34 Elevation and plan of the Gr eat Stupa.

One of the most curious aspects of the Great Stupa is that its four gates are not aligned on an axis with the four

openings in the railing. Some scholars believe that this arrangement is derived from gates on farms, which were

designed to keep cattle out of the ﬁelds.

Buddhist Monuments: The Pillar

Ashoka also erected a series of pillars across the empire, primarily at sites related to Buddha’ s life. These pillars, made

of sandstone, usually rested on a stone foundation sunk more than 10 feet into the ground. They rose to a height of

about 50 feet. They were inscribed with inscriptions relating to dharma, the rules of good conduct that V edic kings

such as Rama were required to uphold in the Ramayana . But Buddhists quickly interpreted the writings as referring to

Buddhist teachings. At the top of each pillar was a capital carved in the shape of an animal.

The pillar at Sarnath, the site of Buddha’s ﬁrst sermon, was crowned with a sculpture of four lions facing in the

cardinal directions and standing back-to-back on a slab decorated with four low-relief sculptures of wheels and,

between each wheel, four different animals—lion, horse, bull, and elephant ( Fig. 3.35 ). Beneath these features are the

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symbolized the presence of divine purity (which is to say , Buddha and his teachings) in an imperfect world. All of the

other elements on the capital have similar symbolic signiﬁcance. The lions probably refer to Buddha himself, who was

known “the lion of the Shakya,” the clan into which he was born as prince, and whose teachings spread in all

directions like the roar of the lions. The wheels, too, are a universal symbol of Buddha’ s teachings at Sarnath, where,

it is said, “he set the wheel of the law [ dharma ] in motion.” In fact, the lions originally supported a large copper

wheel, now lost.

Fig. 3.35 Lion capital, Ashokan pillar at Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Maurya period, ca. 250 bce

Polished sandstone, height, 7’. Archeological Museum, Sarnath. Some scholars speculate that the pillars upon which

such capitals rested represent the axis mundi, or “axis of the world,” joining the earth with the heavens.

Ashoka’s missionary ambition matched his father ’s and grandfather ’s military zeal, and he sent Buddhist emissaries as

far as west as Syria, Egypt, and Greece. No W estern historical record of these missions survives, and their impact on

Western thought remains a matter of speculation.

THINKING BACK

What was imperial Rome and what values did it r etain from its Etruscan

and republican r oots?

Roman culture developed out of both Greek and indigenous Etruscan roots. The Etruscans also provided the Romans

with one of their founding myths, the legend of Romulus and Remus; V irgil’ s Aeneid was the other . According to 1/13/2017 Discovering the Humanities, 2/e VitalSource for DeVry University

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legend, it was Romulus who inaugurated the traditional Roman distinction between patricians and plebians with its

system of patronage and pietas. Describe this system.

During the era of the Roman republic in the ﬁrst century , the powerfully eloquent and persuasive writing of the

rhetorician Cicero helped to make Latin the chief language of the empire. His essay On Duty helped to deﬁne pietas as

a Roman value. How is this value evidenced in the portrait busts of the era?

In 27 bce , the Senate granted Octavian the imperial name Augustus and the authority of imperium over all the empire.

In what way did Augustus idealize himself in the monumental statues dedicated to him? How did he present his wife,

Livian and his family to the public and what values did he wish his family to embody?

Under Augustus Roman literature also thrived. But Augustus’ s greatest achievement, and that of the emperors to

follow him, was the transformation of Rome into, in Augustus’ s words, “a city of marble.” Why did the Roman

emperors build so many public works? What did they symbolized or represent? In the private sphere, how does the

architecture of the domus reﬂect Roman values?

What is Confucianism and how did it contribute to the rise of the Chinese

empire?

During the Shang (ca. 1700-1045 bce ) and Chou (1045-221 bce ) dynasties the two great strains of Chinese philosophy

—Daoism, a mystical quietism based on harmony with Nature, and Confucianism, a pragmatic political philosophy

based on personal cultivation—came into full ﬂower at this time as well. The philosophical symbol of the yin-yang

was devised during this early period, too. Can you detect the workings of the yin-yang philosophy in the poetry of the

Book of Songs and in the later philosophy of Confucius? How did Confucianism contribute to the workings of the

Chinese state? Why is Daoism less suited as a political philosophy?

Under the leadership of the Emperor Qin Shihuangdi, the Qin dynasty (221–206 bce ) uniﬁed China and undertook

massive building projects, including the 4,000-mile-long Great W all, enormous networks of roads, and the emperor’s

own tomb, guarded by nearly 8,000 life-size ceramic soldiers. How does Imperial China compare to the Roman

Empire in the W est?

During the Han dynasty (206 bce –220 ce ) the scholars and writers disenfrachised by the Qin were restored to

respectability. How does Han culture reﬂect Confucian values?

How did r eligious values shape the Indian empir e?

Before 2000 bce , in the Indus valley, sophisticated cultures arose at cities such as Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. But

after the invasion of the Aryans in about 1500 bce , the