The Palace of the Emperor Titus

The Palace of the Emperor Titus was completed in 81 AD by the architect Rabirius.[footnoteRef:2] Located on the greater part of Esquiline Hill, the Baths of Titus (named the Palace of Titus by Pliny) extended from the “based of the Esquiline Hill near the Coliseum to one of its summits at the Church of SS. Martino e Silvestro, and to another at S. Pietro in Vincoli.”[footnoteRef:3] It is believed that the Palace was built rather quickly by converting an existing structure into the Baths.[footnoteRef:4] The Palace used the house of Mecenas and the Golden House of Nero which had come across from Palatine Hill as part of the construction that existed to make the Palace. There were “nine long corridors, converging together like the radii of the segment of a circle, divided from each other by dead walls, covered at the top and closed at the end” according to one 19th century visitor of the Palace’s ruins.[footnoteRef:5] The Palace was used a baths house but its ornate style and size prompted Pliny to call it a Palace. Suetonius mentions that the Palace was quickly built to coincide with the opening of the Flavian amphitheatre.[footnoteRef:6] The Palace also housed murals by Fabulus. [2: Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, De Vita Caesarum Tit.6.1.3; Spivey, Nigel, Enduring Creation: Art, Pain, and Fortitude. Berkely, Univeristy of California Press, 2001, 26; Darwall-Smith, Robin Haydon. Emperors and Architecture: A Study of Flavian Rome. Brussels: Latomus Revue D'Etudes Latines, 1996; The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. XI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.] [3: Parker, John William, “Some Account of the City of Rome, Part VII,” Saturday Magazine, 363, p. 73; Pliny, The Natural History, John Bostock, ed., chapter 4.4.] [4: Sear, Frank, Roman Architecture, Cornell University Press, 1983, 145.] [5: Parker, 74.] [6: Suetonius, Divus Titus, Alexander Thomson, ed., Tit. 7.]

The Palace was destroyed in the 16th century long after being restored by Hadrian in 238 AD. The marble materials and other building parts were reused by architects of the Renaissance for building Christian churches. The Church of Gesu and the fountain of the Cortile del Belvedere in the Vatican, for example, each ended up with the some of the ancient materials used to construct the Palace.[footnoteRef:7] [7: Gibbon, Edward, Decline and Fall of Roman Empire, Little Brown & Company, 1854, 323.]

Titus used myth and symbolism to control his subjects by communicating stories that had moral elements that his subjects could apply to their own lives. For example, the Palace of Titus housed the Laocoon statue which depicts the story of Laocoon, a priest from Troy, who was killed along with his sons when they tried to show that the Greeks’ Trojan Horse was a trick by piercing the horse with a spear. They were attacked by snakes, and that is what is depicted in the statue. Throughout history, snakes have represented evil (such as in the Book of Genesis, in which Satan takes the form of a snake to seduce Eve). Here, the snakes represent the evil intent of the Trojan priest in his effort to thwart the will of the Gods. For that, snakes punish the priest by attacking him. The moral of this story is that punishment for offending the gods and goddesses would be delivered to any who dared to challenge them, as Laocoon did. The statue’s effect is particularly visceral, much like the Palace, and is created to give an intense feeling to the viewer. For the Palace, the desired feeling was awe; for the statue, the desired feeling was fear. Titus combined these two to create a feeling of awe and fear in his subjects. For the Lacoon sculpture, it was housed in the main room of the Palace and was paid for by Titus. The purpose of the sculpture’s building was to tell the story of the Laocoon.

The myth of Laocoon was one that had a strong impact on antiquity because it resonated with the religious themes of the times: the worshipping of gods and goddesses—and later of the Triune God of the Christians. The story of the Laocoon represented how men were still controlled more or less by the will of the gods and that when the gods determined for something to happen, nothing man could do could alter that course. Thus, there was an air of inevitability and destiny tied to the myths, and this was expressed in the myth of Laocoon especially since the priest and his sons tried to save the Trojans by exposing the deception of the Greeks, only to be struck down by snakes sent by the gods who were protecting the Grecian cause against the Trojan cause in the Trojan War.

The possible origin of the myth of Laocoon may have been Homer, who told the stories of the Greeks and Trojans in the epic poem The Iliad, though history is unclear on the matter and one can only speculate as to where the myth arose.[footnoteRef:8] Its focus on the intense suffering of the priest and his two sons for daring to thwart the aims of the gods against his own people, however, conveys a stark message and a fearful one at that. The fact that Titus would house the statue in his Palace amplifies this message and shows that it was deemed important to Titus and that he wanted to communicate a message of fear to his subjects that he might better be able to control them.[footnoteRef:9] [8: Sear, Frank, Roman Architecture, Cornell University Press, 1983, 150.] [9: Darwall-Smith, Robin Haydon. Emperors and Architecture: A Study of Flavian Rome. Brussels: Latomus Revue D'Etudes Latines, 1996, 84.]

In conclusion, the Palace of Titus was situated at the base of the Esquiline Hill and erected using structures already in existence there. It was made up to be ornate and there were murals and statues in it like the Laocoon, which told the story of the myth of the priest of Troy who attempted to show that the Greeks were trying to deceive the Trojans with their gift of the Trojan Horse. For his boldness, Laocoon and his sons were killed by snakes—and it is meaningful that Titus would want to communicate this message to the Roman subjects, because it indicates that Titus wanted to remind them of what happens when individuals attempt to challenge the divine: they are severely and agonizingly punished—just like the Laocoon were. Thus, in this sense, the Palace of Titus was a reminder to the Romans that they should be fearful of Titus’s power and not dare to challenge the Roman Emperor or else they would be destroyed—just like the Jews were in Jerusalem.

Bibliography

The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. XI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Darwall-Smith, Robin Haydon. Emperors and Architecture: A Study of Flavian Rome. Brussels: Latomus Revue D'Etudes Latines, 1996.

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. De Vita Caesarum Tit.6.1.3. http://latin.packhum.org/loc/1348/1/0#229

Gibbon, E. Decline and Fall of Roman Empire. Little Brown & Company, 1854.

Parker, John William, “Some Account of the City of Rome, Part VII,” Saturday Magazine, 363, p. 73.

Pliny the Elder. The Natural History, John Bostock, ed. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:phi,0978,001:36:4

Spivey, Nigel, Enduring Creation: Art, Pain, and Fortitude. Berkely, Univeristy of
California Press, 2001.

Sear, Frank. Roman Architecture, Cornell University Press, 1983.

Suetonius. Divus Titus, Alexander Thomson, ed., Tit. 7. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0132%3Alife%3Dtit.%3Achapter%3D7