10 - On Architecture’s Agency in Fourth-Century Rome

Summary

When assessing the evolution of the early Roman Republic, scholars typically designate a break between the fifth/fourth centuries and the end of the fourth century BCE/beginning of the third, based on political, legal, and military milestones. Archaeologists detect a similar break, as members of the new nobilitas turned to architecture as a vehicle for self-representation. Where most scholarship characterizes buildings and the broader cityscape as a reflection of political change, this chapter deploys theories of object agency and object-scapes to argue for their agency in effecting such change. Questioning whether Romans were conscious, at the time, of a new era dawning, I suggest that circumstantial evidence supports a hypothesis that, at least in the later Republic, they were.