Is the Ara Pacis Authentic?

The Facist-era reconstruction of the Ara Pacis drew largely on the 1902 work of German scholar Eugen Petersen, who had taken photographs of the various parts of the monument (dispersed among European museums) and created a theoretical photo montage. Fragments found by Italian archaeologist Antonio Pasqui in 1903 and by Giuseppe Moretti in 1937 and 1938 (along with precise measurements made by Moretti’s team) were also included in the final reconstruction, which gave the monument an immediacy and a sense of authenticity.

In the decades since, however, scholars have debated the accuracy of the reconstruction. Given the political passions associated with the rise and fall of fascism, a good deal of this debate has been ideological. But nonpartisans have also raised problems. So is the Ara Pacis Augustae really the Ara Pacis Augustae? The answer is “partly.”

It is now clear that some fragments from the 1903 and 1937–1938 excavations—including footwear, drapery and laureate heads—have not been incorporated into the monument. More damningly, the University of Colorado classics professor Diane Conlin, while studying 16th- and 17th-century drawings of the Ara Pacis in the Vatican (Codex Ursinianus) and in a drawing collection of the 17th-century antiquarian Cassiano dal Pozzo (now housed in the Museo Cartaceo and in Windsor Castle), noticed that a female relief figure identified as Antonia the Younger (holding a child’s hand in the photo) is now incorrectly joined to the back side of a male figure.