This chapter analyses architectural terracottas as proxies for buildings and thus as valuable signs of construction in the city of Rome during the fifth and fourth centuries BC. In doing so, it challenges the neglect of these centuries in many histories of Roman architecture and argues that this was far from a period of architectural stagnation. Here terracottas function as temporal connectors, linking buildings across centuries in the eyes of their builders and users, and as evidence that Rome remained in touch with wider trends in building and decoration in a time that has too often been read as a rupture between a highly networked archaic world and one increasingly in thrall to Greece. Promoting the study of this era supports the view of Etrusco-Italic and Roman architecture as closely related fields of study and encourages broader recognition of terracottas as evidence not just for roofs but for buildings now lost from the archaeological record.

This chapter serves as an introduction for what follows by placing the volume’s approach into the wider context of the past and current study of central Italic architecture. It points out some of the issues that underlie and join the subsequent analyses, including why so many major building projects were undertaken in Etruria, Rome, and Latium in this period, who and what was moving to create them, and how the results blur the boundaries of what has traditionally been considered ‘Roman’. Fundamentally, it argues not only for the value of central Italic architecture as a source for regional social and economic histories, but also for its potential contribution to the study of ancient architecture as a whole.

One of the defining aspects of an idol was its positioning in the focal point of a temple. Roman temples were homes in which the gods, as idols, lived and were encountered by the community.The podium temples of the Mediterranean only rarely leave traces their interior arrangements, but the Romano-Celtic temple, a standard form of a temple for most of the western provinces, has often left evidence for the placement of idols and their bases, as well as the placement of other cult images. This chapter explores the staging of idols in these temples. In some Romano-Celtic temples, idols were positioned in the centre of a square cella, perhaps to accommodate rites of circumambulation. Other cult images were given less prominent positions in the temple and sanctuary site. Some idol bases were constructed before the floors of temples, indicating that the temple was built with a specific idol in mind. A few bases incorporated older statue fragments and spolia, stressing continuity with past forms of the temple and idol. The arrangements of Mithraic sanctuaries allow for much more intimate interactions with the Mithraic idol, or tauroctony.

The reigns of Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian are notable both for the technical and aesthetic developments in architecture, as well as the significant amount of building work undertaken in Rome and across the empire. However, as far as can be determined, this activity was not accompanied by a surge of interest in architectural writing among Latin authors of the second century CE, who give little attention to such matters. This chapter aims to demonstrate that while there were shared frameworks for how Roman writers received and commented on buildings, the most important connection between them is what they do not say. This argument is developed through considering the apparent difference with Greek literature of the period, which includes conspicuously more complex discussions of buildings and attention to architectural detail. The case is made that this contrast is not due to a lack of interaction, but is rather a deliberate opposition between how Latin and Greek authors handle the subject. Arguably, this disconnection that is observable in literature also reflects the differing perceptions of architecture in the respective societies more widely.