The Age of Anguish exhibition focuses on the profound changes that marked the XNUMXrd century AD, a century traditionally considered to be the "crisis" of the empire, but in reality containing in a nutshell some of the most fruitful shoots destined to change the subsequent ages forever and to open the doors to the late ancient society.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by a work by Eric Dodds entitled "Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anguish" , published in 1965, dedicated specifically to the third century AD Dodds was a friend of the Anglo-American poet WH Auden, who in '47 had published The Age of Anxiety, a poem capable of highlighting the emptiness of existence in the period of the second world, characterized by the conversion or return to Christianity and the desire to adhere to a religious belief, by a "leap of faith".
The exhibition opened from 28 January to 4 October 2015 recounts the widespread spiritual and religious crisis which in a climate of generalized anxiety led to an abandonment of traditional religions and to the increasingly massive adherence to the cult of divinities from the East: Isis, Cybele, Mithra, Sabazios. Besides them, of course, Christ. Anxiety derived from some concrete and material problems: civil wars, financial and economic crises, famines, epidemics (such as those during the principalities of Marcus Aurelius and Gallienus) and the perennial pressure of the barbarians on the borders. To astrologers, soothsayers and oracles, the men and women of the time frequently repeated the same questions: "Will I be reduced to begging?", "Will I get my wages?", "Will I be sold a slave?". The hope of a safer future was so widespread and pressing that it fueled in anyone what historians of antiquity call an expectation of salvation, linked primarily to the figure of the emperor, in theory the guarantor of justice, of the military security of the empire and also supreme religious authority.
The collapse of social and economic reference systems have always had the main effect of compromising the daily life of people, who progressively and rapidly find themselves facing the anguish of reality. In recent world history, two events had for the first time the capacity to change and unite human beings on a global scale: the First World War and the Wall Street Crash of '29 also called "la great depression”. In both cases, for the first time man witnessed phenomena whose effects were no longer exclusively linked to his own national borders, but had the capacity to compromise and modify economic and social geographies on a global scale. The perception that the economic, financial and social upheavals had global resonance incredibly amplified the anguish, compromising and modifying collective feeling.
Last but not least, the Argentine bond crises of 2001/2002 and the subprime mortgages in the United States in 2006, which then spread throughout the world of economics and finance, have led to unpredictable phenomena in which squares, streets and state buildings become places where people barricade themselves to exorcise, stem and fight the anguish of failure of inadequate cultural systems. The presence of the word crisis it becomes permanent. At the end of 2008, in the traditional end-of-year speech, President Napolitano evokes it 13 times, in 2010 in the Christmas speech to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict XVI, retracing the past year, highlights the disintegration of the legal systems and moral values current with an emblematic phrase "We live the crisis that was the Roman Empire".
In short, it has perhaps always been a time of crisis: if we look for the etymology Crisis, of Greek derivation, the term originally indicated "separation", coming from the Greek verb "to separate". The meaning was translated into "choice", "decision", "discernment". Today we could say that it necessarily binds to change and that the history of the Roman Empire is an excellent paradigm that develops the entire life cycle of a people from its birth to its extinction, through continuous crises or changes.
The exhibition The Age of Anguish intends to deepen the knowledge of the great changes that marked the age between the reigns of Commodus (180 - 192 AD) and Diocletian (284 - 305 AD): a phase already defined by the historians of the time as " the transition from the golden empire (that of Marcus Aurelius) to one of rusty iron”. In just under one hundred and fifty years, in fact, the Empire changed its appearance, leading to the establishment of the Tetrarchy and the loss of the role of capital of the city of Rome. In this period of time the chronicles highlight some elements that once again recall, albeit with the necessary differences, our current situation, such as: the increase in the pressure of peoples on the borders of the empire, the secessionist pushes (think of the of Gaul and the Kingdom of Palmyra), internal unrest (which involved structural reforms of the traditional Roman military unit, the legion), the crisis of the traditional economic system, inflation and the consequent need to continuously update the currency, and above all, serious political instability.
The end of the transmission of power on an exclusively dynastic basis was decisive and the consequent power that went to concentrate in the hands of the army, capable of imposing the emperors and eliminating them. It is a world that definitively changes its social structure, with the disintegration of institutions and the parallel emergence of new social forces. The gradual stages of these transformations are reflected in the figurative models and the formal language of the sculpture, which is charged with a new and strong pathetic accent.
Among the most significant works of this era are the "colossal portrait of Probus"Or the"bust of Decius” of the Capitoline Museums, the extraordinary “bronze statue of Treboniano Gallus” of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the statues of individuals such as philosophers from the Villa of Dionysus in Dion. The loan of three full-length male statues from the seventeenth century housed in the Casino del Bel Respiro of the Villa Doria Pamphilj in Rome ("Toga statue","Hunter statue"and "Naked statue"). In private portraiture, the fashion continues for the combination of portraits of private citizens or emperors with ideal bodies, which recall female divinities such as Venus, Demeter, Fortuna, as in the "statue of Omphale” or heroes like Hercules, who allow a clear exaltation of the qualities and deeds of the deceased thanks to the assimilation of their heroic virtues: see the “bust of Commodus as Hercules"Or the"private statue like Mars (so-called Decius)”. Demigods such as Hercules, the Beavers or Dionysus were particularly favored in this sense also by theimagery imperial, precisely because of their nature as mortals who became Gods thanks to the extraordinary qualities of the businesses they performed.
The Age of Anguish, fourth appointment of the project of five exhibitions "The Days of Rome" spanning a period of four hundred years, is an initiative promoted by Roma Capitale, Department of Culture, Creativity and Artistic Promotion - Capitoline Superintendence for Cultural Heritage and by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, organized by Zètema Progetto Cultura and MondoMostre, with care di Eugenio La Rocca, Claudio Parisi Presicce e Annalisa LoMonaco.
The project involves prestigious international museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Landesmuseum and the Zentralmuseum in Mainz, the Landesmuseum in Trier, the Glypthotek and the Museum of the University of Munich, the Louvre in Paris and the Archaeological Museum National and the Acropolis Museum of Athens, and museums that are lending their works for the first time such as the Archaeological Museum of Dion and the Archaeological Museum of Astros. In addition to the Capitoline Museums, important national museums such as the Archaeological Museum of Aquileia, the Civic Museums of Brescia and the Archaeological Museum of Bologna, the Archaeological Superintendence of Abruzzo, the Vatican Museums, the Museums belonging to the Special Superintendency participate in the exhibition with important loans of Rome and important private collections. The works exhibited together for the first time, of extraordinary artistic level, amount to about two hundred. Imposing life-size marble and bronze statues, in some cases of colossal size, busts and portraits, marble reliefs, sarcophagi and urns, floor mosaics and wall pictorial decorations, and still precious table silverware, figurative architectural elements and altars will allow to appreciate the taste of an entire era up close, to reflect on the formal changes and figurative themes presented by objects that decorated urban and private spaces (houses and tombs).
