In this masterful and comprehensive survey of Roman architecture and urbanism, Fikret Yegül and Diane Favro (Y. & F.) present us with their shared magnum opus – a major reference book for students and scholars for the decades to come. The authors offer a chronological assessment of the architecture and urbanism of Rome and Italy, with questions of technology and residential practices treated in distinct chapters, and a geographical examination of the regions in Rome's empire. This truly impressive book surpasses the existing surveys in English, A. Boëthius's Etruscan and Early Roman Architecture and J. Ward-Perkins's Roman Imperial Architecture, first published together as Etruscan and Roman Architecture, Frank Sear's Roman Architecture, and Roger Ulrich and Caroline Quenemoen's Companion to Roman Architecture, with its thorough treatment of the subject.Footnote 1 It will be complemented by William MacDonald's two volumes on The Architecture of the Roman Empire and Mark Wilson Jones's Principles of Roman Architecture, which tackle more comprehensively questions of architectural and urban design values and hierarchies.Footnote 2 With such an all-encompassing book, it is natural that some researchers might disagree on individual arguments and assessments. But the authors have taken good care to include the scholarly discourse on which they base their judgments, so the reader can consult the bibliography at the end of each chapter. The book is lavishly illustrated throughout with newly drawn plans and evocative reconstructions, often by Diane Favro, and exceptional and in some cases unique photos, often taken by Fikret Yegül. These illustrations greatly facilitate the book's use for teaching and research.
The introductory chapter deals with the question of Romanization and tackles the extent to which this discussion can be fruitful for understanding Roman architecture and urbanism. In addressing the shortcomings of the word and introducing the discourse around it, Y. & F. adopt a balanced view of Romanization as “a two-way street, in which the conqueror and the conquered influenced each other in a broad fluid (and often unequal) process” (3). Chapter 1 then moves on to stress the ways in which indigenous and foreign urban and architectural influences intermingled hybrid forms to create designs italicae consuetudinis; that is, in what Vitruvius described as the “Italic custom” (Vitr. De Arch. 5.11.1, 6.3.10) in Rome and Italy during the Republic and the Early Empire. Y. & F. examine the ways in which urban forms emerged in Etruria and Latium as well as in the Greek settlements of southern Italy and Sicily by the 7th c. BCE, and how Rome established a creative synthesis of Greek and Italian architectural forms during the Republic. Here, the authors evaluate the distinct design approaches to planning in Roman cities and colonies of Italy that present a range of site conditions, culminating with Pompeii and its development over time.
The following chapter presents temple architecture of Republican Rome and Italy. The discussion begins with the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome, denoting Italic or Tuscan characteristics like its tall podium, frontal steps, deep porch, and widely spaced columns. It then proceeds to tackle the examples of the Capitolium of Cosa, the Republican temples in the Area Sacra at St. Omobono, the Largo di Torre Argentina, the Forum Holitorium, and the Forum Boarium in Rome, and the temple of Vesta at Tivoli. The authors highlight the ways in which these cases on the one hand crystalized Italic traditions and on the other, amalgamated Greek elements. The rest of the chapter analyzes Late Republican sanctuaries with monumental terraces and theater-temples – the Temple of Jupiter Anxur at Terracina, the Temple of Hercules Victor at Tivoli, and the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste – to challenge the importance of Hellenistic schemes in the creation of their compositional principles. We may add that the outward-looking character of archaic Latium, and in particular Rome, led to the creation of monumental religious architecture as a means of attracting and managing beneficial encounters in Mediterranean-wide trade networks, as Charlotte Potts has shown.Footnote 3 It has been widely recognized in studies of sanctuaries across the Mediterranean (e.g., the Samian Heraion) that the monumentalization of religious buildings took place in locations associated with trade, as the required religious rituals fostered cross-cultural interaction. In this context, the adoption of Greek orders and proportions in Tuscan temple designs may be seen as the creation of a lingua franca in the temples’ architectural idiom, presenting recognizable traits to visitors to Latium's international market.
Chapter 3 moves on to address the technological advances in the building industry that ultimately enabled the creation of novel architectural designs and enhanced the quality of urban life. Y. & F. gauge the position of an architect in Roman society, the process of designing a building, and the construction process based on textual and material evidence, and they contextualize Vitruvius and his De Architectura within the cultural milieu of the Late Republican period. They tackle the subject of the distinct building materials available in Italy that dictated and enabled the technological developments of the period, as well as dealing with regional aesthetic expressions in the provinces. Road and water supply systems, harbor infrastructures, and terracing are employed to highlight Roman engineering mastery and the type of constructions concrete technology enabled. Y. and F.'s discussion weaves in examples from the previous and following chapters, flagging important construction projects, and concludes with an evaluation of projects that were not successful. Y. and F. point out that errare humanum est and examine textual and archaeological evidence that shows mistakes in planning or workmanship, and inexperience or incompetence in construction; for instance, the Baths of Caracalla in Rome suffered from errors in the alignments of their walls and irregularities of their foundations, as Janet DeLaine has shown.Footnote 4 These failures led to corrections and later improvements.
Chapter 4 focuses on the city of Rome to examine the Julio-Claudian architectural projects of the 1st c. BCE and CE in the context of the historical changes of the period. Y. & F. present Caesar's most notable civic showpiece, the Forum Julium, to focus on Augustus's extensive building activities, which created a new capital by completing Caesarian projects, such as the Basilica Julia; renovating or rebuilding old buildings, such as the Temple of Castor and Pollux; and starting new projects, such as his Forum and Mausoleum – projects that shaped what Favro has called “the urban image of Augustan Rome.”Footnote 5 The authors highlight the building projects undertaken by Agrippa, including the Pantheon, before following the architectural activity of the rest of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. They underline that the creation of major commercial and harbor infrastructures at Portus under Claudian and later Trajan provided safer and easier access from the sea to Rome, and they present recent excavations and scholarship on this important site. The chapter concludes by evaluating Nero's building activity and contextualizing the so-called architectural revolution, the Great Fire of 64 CE, and the creation of the ambitious Domus Aurea project, which spread from Tiberius's imperial residence on the Palatine across the saddle of the Oppian to the Esquiline Hill. They assess new evidence on the Esquiline wing and the cenatio rotunda, or rotating dining room, in the area called Vigna Barberini, while luscious drawings and reconstructions complement their discussion. Y. & F. explain that decades of experiments in concrete technology led from engineering concerns of harbors and warehouses to the imposing spatial arrangements that we see in the Domus Aurea and its octagonal room. They propose this should not be conceptualized as an “architectural revolution,” which suggests that what preceded was overthrown or superseded, but as an evolution – a development where technological advances followed much experimentation, some of it unsuccessful, to reach a creative moment.
A distinct design idiom was developed in residential architecture during the 1st c. BCE and CE, and the following chapter interjects into the chronological assessment of Rome to discuss this subject. Y. & F. tackle pre-Roman traditions and Hellenistic influences in the formulation of the atrium house and the villa, and they point out that the crowded urban environments of Rome and Ostia necessitated the creation of multistoried buildings, which provided housing for middle- and working-class residents. The urban domus, luxurious villas, farmhouses, and imperial estates are presented from the Italian peninsula and the provinces. Ensuing chapters address a wider array of examples. Here and later in the volume, the authors evaluate social, economic, and cultural factors as well as regional contexts in residential architecture across the empire.
The substantial Chapter 6 examines Rome following the end of Julio-Claudian rule, from the Flavians through the Antonines. The authors begin by stressing the distinct Italian qualities of Vespasian's quadriporticus Templum Pacis – such as axiality and emphasis on one side of the enclosure – over Hellenistic colonnaded enclosures, which could be seen as the origins of this type. We may add that another distinct Italian element is the incorporation of what could be described as “colonial” botanical gardens within the enclosure. Adorned with Greek art and resplendent with exotic flora that Romans acquired through conquests in the East and long-distance trade with India, the gardens were a horticultural frontispiece that made a powerful statement about Rome's ideological and economic power within the Indo-Mediterranean network of exchange.Footnote 6 As a form of mass entertainment, the amphitheater was also a vehicle for political propaganda. Y. & F. explain the steps towards the creation of a permanent structure in Rome, the Colosseum, and elucidate its structural system. They address the ways in which Rome was transformed through the revamping of the Domus Palatina in the Flavian period, the Forum Transitorium, and Trajan's Forum and Markets, the latter exemplifying the cutting edge of Roman structural engineering. They tackle Hadrian as an architect and his involvement in the design of the Temple of Venus and Roma, propose that construction on the “Late Trajanic/Hadrianic” Pantheon began during the last years of Trajan's reign and continued into the early years of Hadrian, under Apollodorus's guidance, and systematically discuss the structural and aesthetic qualities of the building. Hadrian's villa at Tivoli – with its waterworks and baths, the virtuoso curve-countercurve play of its colonnades, its vaulted substructures, and synthesis of column and arch – is highlighted as an exemplar of Roman architectural mannerisms of this period and is analyzed thoroughly. The authors point out that the Temples of Deified Hadrian and of Faustina and Antoninus Pius showcase the new trend of deification and the Imperial cult, and that the columns of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius call attention to a larger urban context that has unfortunately not survived. Their discussion ends with an assessment of the Temple on the western slopes of the Quirinal, which they associate with Serapis. Its extraordinary size and unusual plan – pseudo-dipteral, sine postico, and with a front porch that imitates the porch of the Pantheon – is for Y. & F. more powerful testimony to the design mannerisms of the High Empire.
Chapter 7 marks the beginning of a survey beyond the chronological appraisal of Rome to Italy and the western provinces from the Republic to the Empire. It focuses first on the forum and the basilica, as political symbols and physical manifestations of civic assembly, to gauge the ways in which architectural and planning idioms were adopted in the formation of Roman cities and colonies. The authors appraise the powerful siting of the forum-temple-basilica complexes of the western provinces (e.g., in Augusta Raurica and Tarraco) and relate them to the design of the elaborate compositions of Late Republican sanctuaries in Italy, such as the ones at Gabii, Terracina, Tivoli, and Palestrina. They analyze the adoption of the dominant model of the podium temple in the Maison Carrée in the veteran colony of Nemausus (Nîmes, France), the “Temple of Diana” in Ebora (Évora, Portugal), the “Temple of Diana” in Augusta Emerita (Merida, Spain), and the Trajaneum in Italica (northwest of Seville, Spain), and they assess the continuity of Celtic temples in the Albechtal Sanctuary in Augusta Treverorum (Trier, Germany), the Temple of Janus to the northwest of Augustodunum (Autun, France), and the thermal spa and sanctuary at Aquae Sulis (Bath, England). They continue this typological assessment by addressing commemorative monuments and tombs, honorific arches and gate structures, theaters and amphitheaters, and public baths and thermae, to conclude with the defensive system and border in northern Britain: Hadrian's Wall and Antoninus Pius's wall, known as Vallum Antonini.
Moving on to examine North Africa in Chapter 8, Y. & F. tackle the controversial question of Romanization for the distinct Punic-Phoenician and Greek/Hellenistic/Ptolemaic contexts of the region, as well as the traditions of the seminomadic, pastoral, and tribal populations settled on the fringes of the desert. The regional diversity of this area leads them to conduct a selective survey of Roman cities: Colonia Marciana Ulpia Traiana Thamugadi (Timgad, Algeria), Cuicul (Djémila, Algeria), Thugga (Dougga, Tunisia), Volubilis (near Meknès, Morocco), and Lepcis Magna (east of Al-Khums, Libya). The cities are analyzed for the adoption of an orthogonal plan, with Timgad as a textbook example, and the creative adjustment of Roman principles of urban design to suit the natural terrain: for example, at Djémila, described as “stretched out on a ridge; with terraces of housing thrown like a mantle over the slopes, its edges snuggling into deep valleys and blending into hills” (507). The authors next appraise individual buildings from different regions they believe to be unusual, such as the Capitolium at Thuburbo Majus (southwest of Carthage, Tunisia) as a typical example of the widely accepted Italic temple in North Africa, the colossal amphitheater at Thysdrus (El Djem, Tunisia), which appears to have taken the Colosseum as its primary source of inspiration, the Baths of Pompeianus at Oued Athmenia (southwest of Constantine, Algeria), as related to the design mannerisms of the Island Villa of Hadrian in Tivoli, and the nymphaeum at Zaghouan (Tunisia), as representative of the general apsidal and colonnaded scheme in North African nymphaea.
Y. & F. dedicate the next chapter to Greece, which held a complex and nuanced relationship to Rome, as described by Horace (“Captive Greece conquered its fierce conqueror,” Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, Epist. 2.1.156). The authors note that Roman construction in Greece followed Italian or Western practice more closely than it did in Asia Minor – for example, brick was more common here – which is explained by the military presence in the region leading to the creation of Roman colonies and roads, bridges, waterworks, and baths that served the accustomed needs of the troops. They focus on four cities: Corinth, the capital of the Roman province of Greece that was rebuilt and ordered, together with its countryside, into a vast grid; Nikopolis, the “city of Victory,” commemorating Augustus's great sea victory at Actium in 31 BCE; Philippi, or Colonia Augusta Philippensis, which settled Italian military veterans and businessmen as well as Greek settlers and presents with typically Roman orderly terracing, colonnaded streets, vaulted shops, podium-style temples, and arched gateways; and Athens, where Roman interventions negotiated Classical precedents and traditions. While Corinth, Nikopolis, and Philippi provide textbook adoptions of Roman designs, Athens, with the Arch and Library of Hadrian and the tomb of J. Antiochus Philopappos (a philanthropist and exiled prince of Commagene), presents more eclectic design solutions. The cases of Dion and Messene would have added more insight here into the variegated ways in which Roman forms were adopted in Hellenistic architectural, urban, and religious contexts, an issue explored more thoroughly in the following chapter.
Chapter 10 provides an overview of Asia Minor and is prefaced with historical, political, and cultural overviews as well as an evaluation of construction techniques. Y. & F. emphasized in Chapter 3 that local natural resources determine construction choices, and they explain here that the availability of tufas, marbles, and granites led to the continuity of the Hellenistic ashlar masonry tradition in Anatolia. Opus caementicium was used in areas with ready resources of volcanic material, a lack of strong Hellenistic building traditions, and close contact with a Roman military and administrative presence, such as Elaiussa Sebaste, Augusta Ciliciae, Korykos, and Anazarvus in Cilicia – these factors advanced incentives to employ the technical knowhow of this building technique. Brick is less common and is almost always used in combination with ashlar or mortared rubble, the exception being the Temple of the Egyptian Gods (“Serapeum”) in Pergamon. A mixed system was therefore the most common construction style. Asia Minor was home to Hippodamus, the Milesian designer and theorist credited with the creation of a regular grid of rectangular blocks or insulae, and Miletus and Priene are textbook cases of this urban planning system. Here, the authors survey cities that showcase what they call the “distorted and scrambled derivatives” of the grid (618), reflecting organic and piecemeal growth. Among others, they analyze Side, with the changing directions and width of its throughfares, Ephesus, with its 2-km-long thoroughfare that established focal points in the Hellenistic-era grid of the city that was extended in the Roman period, and Sagalassos, with an urban fabric choreographed to its mountain topography. What follows is an analysis of building types in Anatolia: temples and sanctuaries, agoras and basilicas, arches and gates, theaters and stadiums, baths and bath-gymnasia, and houses. Y. & F.'s survey of Anatolia is all-embracing, the fruit of their many years of research in this region, and perhaps worthy of a standalone publication.
The next chapter deals with the Roman Near East, a large and varied region extending from the Seleucid metropolis of Antioch-on-the-Orontes (Antakya, Turkey) and Petra (southern Jordan), the capital of the Nabatean kingdom, to Dura-Europos (near Salhiyah, Syria), the last military bastion of the Roman Empire on the Eastern Desert frontier. The authors here raise questions of identity and Romanization in this diverse area, with an assessment of political and cultural conditions. They discuss the Babatha archives – documents handling issues of ownership, property transfer, irrigation rights, and litigation dating from 93 to 106 CE that were discovered in a cave of the Dead Sea – to tackle the concept of Romanization. They point out that these documents show the striking Roman character of the law applied to this frontier region of Hellenic and Semitic traditions and suggest that Rome's impact in the East was through the imposition of administrative and legal standards. The adoption of well-rehearsed Roman architectural types and urban repertoires is another way of gauging Rome's presence in the Near East. Here Y. & F. focus on theaters, amphitheaters, hippodromes, and public baths, as well as the privileged moments of urban passage, what William MacDonald has termed “passage architecture” (e.g., colonnaded streets, gates, and triumphal arches).Footnote 7 They underscore that although the building program of Herod the Great in Judea, including his palaces in Jericho, Caesarea, Masada, and south of Jerusalem, was anchored in Hellenistic architectural and cultural traditions, it was cross-pollinated by Roman architectural trends. The authors conduct architectural analyses of building projects (the Sanctuary of Jupiter Heliopolitanus and the Temple of Venus at Ba'albek, the rock-carved façades of Petra and the Khazne, and the Sanctuary and Temple of Bel in Palmyra) and urban contexts (Petra, Bostra, Gerasa, and Palmyra) to point to the ways in which long-lasting regional traditions were creatively adopted to Roman architectural and urban schemes. The chapter concludes with an evaluation of residential architecture in Syria, which showcases superb local craftmanship in stone.
The final chapter (Chapter 12) discusses architectural developments in Rome and the provinces from the Severans to Constantine. The authors evaluate the creative developments in the architecture of this period; for instance, in bathing structures (e.g., the thermae of Caracalla and Diocletian in Rome), residential and palace architecture (e.g., Diocletian's palace at Split), provincial capitals (e.g., Galerius's capital in Thessaloniki), basilicas (e.g., Basilica of Maxentius in Rome), tombs and rotundas (e.g., Mausoleum of Santa Costanza in Rome and the “Temple of Minerva Medica”). With this selective assessment, Y. & F. emphasize that despite the economic and political hardships of the period, architectural evolutions and creative moments persisted. They signal that these Late Roman monuments inspired generations of architects: “to echo an idea expressed by the late master architect, Louis Kahn, these buildings and others like them from other times and cultures, were good because they were immeasurable beyond their own time and narrow, particular purpose; they provided the inspiration for dreams and served needs unknown when they were built” (858). I would add that this book will do the same.
In sorting out Roman architecture and urbanism, the authors have preferred not to follow a typological classification of buildings, which is the path taken by Pierre Gros in French in his monumental treatment of the subject (L'architecture romaine) and by Henner von Hesberg in German (Römische Baukunst), the latter framing his typological treatment with questions of technology and decoration as well as socio-political and cultural discussions.Footnote 8 The typological study of buildings in the history of architecture is a project of the Enlightenment, for instance, in the collection and comparison of buildings by Durand, whose legacy has been tackled over the course of the past century in discussions on early modern, modern, and contemporary architecture.Footnote 9 A typological approach, however, can be a useful analytical tool for the study of ancient architecture. Responding to this challenge, Y. & F. choose a chronological sequence to present the genesis of architectural and urban mannerisms in Rome and Italy first, and then an appraisal of these mannerisms in the provinces. In so doing, the authors deliver a survey that strikes a balance between chronology, typology, and cultural factors, while providing historical, economic, and socio-political contexts for the development of designs and technologies. Congratulations are in order. This is a monumental book that is written with love and care for the subject. The authors have indeed offered us a celebration of their four-decades-long commitment to Roman architecture and urbanism.
