Hello everybody and welcome back. The last time we talked about the residences of the noble families of Rome on The Palatine. We also know that the man who was going to be the first emperor in Roman history was born on The Palatine. Today we will try to have a look at his first house on the Palatine. This is the man. His original name was Gaius Octavius. Then he was adopted and appointed heir of Gaius Julius Caesar. He had to change his name into Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. During the years 20 of the 1st century BC, when he'd already appointed the most powerful man in the Roman state. He joined to his name as a senate will the name Augustus. This is a very important Latin word, meaning something in between a grown man and a man blessed by God. The young Octavian was a very lucky guy. His mother was the daughter of the sister of Julius Caesar. His father, on the other hand, was not a noble man but a very rich one. He was born in a small town south of Rome. The relation with the highest rank of the political power and an enormous wealth were absolutely within reach of this young guy. He was born on The Palatine in this corner here and in the end, he moved and established a real mansion on the opposite corner of the hill. This is how the different residences of Octavian and of Augustus at last were placed on The Palatine. This is the place where he was born, the house of his father. The place was called Ad Capita Bubula, the ox head in Latin. We don't know this house from an archaeological point of view, but according to the topographical layout, we can envision in this area. We can imagine a house not much different from the ones we've already seen, like the house of the Griffins or the so-called House of Livia a regular or normal Roman house. During the years of unrest due to the civil wars, Octavian was sent away from Rome because it was too dangerous and he was still a boy. But when Julius Caesar became the most powerful man in Rome, he came back and lived in this place Supra Scholars Anularias. This was a monumental staircase where the shops of people selling rings anulie were placed. After that, he moved finally here, right in front of the place where Romulus was supposed to have lived and where the Romans believed that Romulus had founded Rome. Once again, the place where he was born, the place where he moved during the '40s and finally, the proper House of Octavian. We know quite a lot about this house. Thanks to the recent archaeological analysis compared with the information which we can read in the literary sources. At first, Octavian lived in a house which was placed here, not a very large one, with small rooms facing onto a peristyle and this house he bought from a nobleman, Hortensius Hortulus. After that, he decided to enlarge his residents and created a second peristyle as you can see here. The center of the house was this one where we have to imagine the atrium, the most important room in the Roman house. This is the part we can still see now. While this part is the one less known due to the fact that the imperial palace had been built upon that. We have one area here in the center, one peristyle and rooms here, the second peristyle, rooms here and here. This is the cliff looking onto the valley and here was a ramp, as you can see, leading from the downstairs up to the ground floor. Also in this case, what we see is just the underground floor as we've already seen last time. Let's have a quick tour of this residents. The colonnade was split in two orders in the peristyle and decorated with these wonderful slabs, they're called compana slabs. Around and inside the colonnade, we have wonderful rooms, dining rooms like this one. Wonderfully painted and decorated with four columns inside, you can see here another shot of this side of the wall. Near that was the ramp leading to the ground floor with the volt wonderfully decorated with plasters and paintings. On the other side of the peristyle. We have the bedroom, the cubicula, also in this case, decorated with wonderful frescoes like this one of pine festoons , of course, and this one with masks. Last but not least, one wonderful room here, very small but very beautiful, which is the so-called studiolo. This is how wonderful house would have looked like. Here you can see the cliff of the palatine. The stairs leading up to the place where Romulus should have found Rome. The peristyle on this side, the peristyle on the other side, the so-called House of Livia and the other house we already saw last time. The area with the atrium and the underground floor with terraces here and here stretching onto the valley. Let's have a closer look at this place here. This is around underground room. Thanks to drill cause, we've seen this wonderful painted round room. It was possibly a monumental fountain, a grotto-nymphaeum. We know that there should have been a spring down there and it was the spring when the Romans believed that Romulus and Remus had been suckled by the she-wolf. This was one more way of trying to connect himself with the legend of the Roman founder. We come to the year 36 BC, one night that here a lightning struck the atrium of Augustus's house. He was terribly afraid of lightning and thunder bolts. But nonetheless, in a very clever way, he decided to declare to the Roman people at the lightning was the sign that the the god Apollo was claiming his house. He decided to stop completing the building of the second peristyle and created an entirely new project. Not just the House of Octavian had been struck by lightning, because in a few years, the Republic of Rome would have come to an end. Thank you very much.
