Principles of Monumental Form in Antiquity

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Physical Size ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Present Book ◽  
General Synthesis

Roman buildings are among the most impressive and conspicuous legacies of the ancient world. To the millions who visit their ruins and reconstructed forms every year they are an absorbing and fascinating sight, not only because of their physical size and beauty as works of art, but for their historical value as a suggestive reminder of the past. For Edward Gibbon, these architectural remains were evidence of cultural and economic prosperity and supported his conclusion that: ‘[i]f a man were called to fix the period during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian [AD 96] to the accession of Commodus [AD 180].’ Since Gibbon’s time, excavation and scholarly analysis have reinforced this impression. Most regions within the Roman Empire have produced archaeological evidence of imposing buildings from this period. Foundations, scattered finds of building materials and architectural decoration, and building inscriptions, together suggest that the volume of buildings erected at this time was substantially greater than the surviving structures might suggest. This book is about Roman monumental architecture erected under the Antonine emperors, particularly during the reigns of Antoninus Pius (AD 138–61) and Marcus Aurelius (AD 161–80). Although there have been many individual regional and site studies, there has never been a general synthesis which evaluates the architecture of the Antonine period as a whole in the light of the increasing quantity of evidence. The present book does not aim to provide that synthesis in the manner of a conventional art-historical analysis of forms and styles. Nor does it set out to analyse the technologies and materials of Roman buildings, the logistics or practicalities of their construction, or the processes of their design, aspects which have been well studied in recent years. It attempts, rather, to consider the significance of the architecture of this period for contemporaries. Its focus is the question of architectural meaning. In the ancient world, buildings were not only a backdrop and setting for social interaction but also a form of social language.

Introduction

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Physical Size ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Present Book ◽  
General Synthesis

Roman buildings are among the most impressive and conspicuous legacies of the ancient world. To the millions who visit their ruins and reconstructed forms every year they are an absorbing and fascinating sight, not only because of their physical size and beauty as works of art, but for their historical value as a suggestive reminder of the past. For Edward Gibbon, these architectural remains were evidence of cultural and economic prosperity and supported his conclusion that: ‘[i]f a man were called to fix the period during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian [AD 96] to the accession of Commodus [AD 180].’ Since Gibbon’s time, excavation and scholarly analysis have reinforced this impression. Most regions within the Roman Empire have produced archaeological evidence of imposing buildings from this period. Foundations, scattered finds of building materials and architectural decoration, and building inscriptions, together suggest that the volume of buildings erected at this time was substantially greater than the surviving structures might suggest. This book is about Roman monumental architecture erected under the Antonine emperors, particularly during the reigns of Antoninus Pius (AD 138–61) and Marcus Aurelius (AD 161–80). Although there have been many individual regional and site studies, there has never been a general synthesis which evaluates the architecture of the Antonine period as a whole in the light of the increasing quantity of evidence. The present book does not aim to provide that synthesis in the manner of a conventional art-historical analysis of forms and styles. Nor does it set out to analyse the technologies and materials of Roman buildings, the logistics or practicalities of their construction, or the processes of their design, aspects which have been well studied in recent years. It attempts, rather, to consider the significance of the architecture of this period for contemporaries. Its focus is the question of architectural meaning. In the ancient world, buildings were not only a backdrop and setting for social interaction but also a form of social language.

scholarly journals A New Examination of the Arch of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus at Oea

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Meyers
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Building Activity

AbstractThe arch dedicated to Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus at Oea was an important component in that town’s building activity. By situating the arch within its socio-historical context and acknowledging the political identity of Oea and nearby towns, this article shows that the arch at Oea far surpassed nearby contemporary arches in style, material, and execution. Further, this article demonstrates that the arch was a key element in Oea’s Roman identity. Finally, the article bridges disciplinary boundaries by bringing together art historical analysis with the concepts of euergetism, Roman civic status, and inter-city rivalry in the Roman Empire.

scholarly journals Ernest Renan and Marcus Aurelius: On the End of the Ancient World

2017 ◽  
pp. 409-422
Author(s):  
Maria Protopapas-Marneli
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
The Real ◽  
Ancient Civilization ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Good State ◽  
The World

According to Renan, the day of Marcus Aurelius’ death could be considered as the decisive moment in the downfall of the ancient civilization. He, thus, wonders: “If Marcus Aurelius, the unique emperor-philosopher, did not succeed in saving the world, who else, then, could have saved it?” He notes that the emperor’s death was followed by the succession to the throne of his corrupted son, Commodus, and his friends, who all were all ignorant. Renan observes that the emperor’s kindness could not have prevented the unfortunate fate that befell the Roman Empire after his death. What we have here is the perennial problem, already established in Plato, regarding the role of the philosopher-king in establishing a good state and educating good citizens. However, the case of Marcus Aurelius, as demonstrated by Renan in his book, shows the inability of philosophy to serve the real needs, which ultimately leads to disastrous and irreparable consequences. The present paper attempts to reconstruct the reasons for the unsuccessful application of philosophy, especially the philosophy of the Hellenistic era, to the administrative system of the Roman Empire. It is argued that the failure is mainly due to political, religious and cultural problems.

scholarly journals Ernest Renan and Marcus Aurelius: On the End of the Ancient World

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 409-422
Author(s):  
Maria Protopapas-Marneli
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
The Real ◽  
Ancient Civilization ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Good State ◽  
The World

According to Renan, the day of Marcus Aurelius’ death could be considered as the decisive moment in the downfall of the ancient civilization. He, thus, wonders: “If Marcus Aurelius, the unique emperor-philosopher, did not succeed in saving the world, who else, then, could have saved it?” He notes that the emperor’s death was followed by the succession to the throne of his corrupted son, Commodus, and his friends, who all were all ignorant. Renan observes that the emperor’s kindness could not have prevented the unfortunate fate that befell the Roman Empire after his death. What we have here is the perennial problem, already established in Plato, regarding the role of the philosopher-king in establishing a good state and educating good citizens. However, the case of Marcus Aurelius, as demonstrated by Renan in his book, shows the inability of philosophy to serve the real needs, which ultimately leads to disastrous and irreparable consequences. The present paper attempts to reconstruct the reasons for the unsuccessful application of philosophy, especially the philosophy of the Hellenistic era, to the administrative system of the Roman Empire. It is argued that the failure is mainly due to political, religious and cultural problems.

Impact of social media usage on performance of construction businesses (CBs) in Abuja, Nigeria

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luqman Oyekunle Oyewobi ◽  
Olufemi Seth Olorunyomi ◽  
Richard Ajayi Jimoh ◽  
James Olabode Bamidele Rotimi
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Business Interest ◽  
The Impact

Purpose Many construction businesses are currently building and keeping social media pages for their enterprises to be visible to the public to improve their social interaction, promote business interest, build trust and relationships with their targeted audience on social media. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of social mediausage on performance of construction businesses (CBs) in Abuja, Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach This study used a quantitative research approach by identifying constructs that reveal three aspects of organisation’s physiognomies that impact the process of espousing, implementing and using technological innovations in conducting businesses. Well-structured questionnaire was used to obtain data from 113 purposively sampled building materials’ merchant operating in Dei-Dei Market, Abuja, Nigeria. This study used partial least squares structural equation modelling technique to establish the relationship among the constructs. Findings The results of this study indicated that technology has significant relationship with social media adoption, whereas social media adoption has a very strong positive impact on organisation’s performance (P < 0.001) with respect to improved customer relations and services and enhanced information accessibility. Research limitations/implications This study has implications for CBs that wish to adopt social media to promote their businesses by presenting to them the opportunity to understand the impact of technology, environment and organisational potential in improving business performance. This study is cross-sectional in nature, and this calls for caution in interpreting the results. Originality/value This paper developed and tested a conceptual framework presented to understand the interrelationships amongst the constructs, which would be of great significance to business owners in developing their social interaction and promote business interest via social media. The outcome of this research is beneficial to researchers to further study how the different social media tools could help in influencing business decisions.

Fortresses of the Tur Abdin and the confrontation between Rome and Persia

2017 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 181-229
Author(s):  
Anthony Comfort
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Satellite Imagery ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Substantial Risk ◽  
Urgent Necessity ◽  
Late Roman

AbstractAlthough research is currently impossible on the ground, satellite photographs allow some further information to be gleaned concerning the region of the Tur Abdin, of crucial importance during the wars between the late Roman Empire and Sassanian Persia in the fourth to seventh century AD. This article examines the ancient sources and the reports of visitors to the area in the light of what is now visible to all via Google Earth and other suppliers of free satellite imagery. Apart from describing the remains of the fortresses and their role in defending an important redoubt against Persian attacks, it draws attention to the urgent necessity for proper ground surveys of what remains of the fortifications of various periods before these are completely destroyed by looting and reuse of building materials. Dams also present a substantial risk to some of the monuments discussed here.

scholarly journals The Role of Lucha Libre in the Construction of Mexican Male Identity

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Pereda ◽  
Patricia Murrieta-Flores
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Fast Growing ◽  
Mexican Cinema ◽  
Mexican Culture ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
Ordinary Person ◽  
Lucha Libre

Lucha Libre has played an important role in Mexican culture since the late 1950s. The sport became famous mainly due to its masked wrestlers, who incorporated their own family traditions, beliefs and fears into the design of their masks, transforming an ordinary person into a fearless character. After the introduction of the Monsters Cinema in the 1930s, Mexican audiences welcomed and adopted characters like Dracula, Nosferatu, Frankenstein and The Werewolf. The success of Monster Cinema in Mexican culture was based on the integration of national legends and beliefs, placing them in local and identifiable concepts in the Mexican popular imagination. Later, Lucha Libre Cinema mixed with Monster Cinema resulting in the birth of new heroes and myths. These emergent paladins of the Mexican metropolis set the cultural and moral standards of that time and how Mexicans wanted to be perceived. Through an anthropological and historical analysis of Mexican Cinema and Lucha Libre, this paper investigates the main social interaction of male wrestlers who perform as heroes inside the celluloid world and outside of it. We explore how masculinity and the male figure evolves in Lucha Libre Cinema, and the processes that wrestlers have to undergo in order to be able to portray themselves as superheroes of an evolving and fast growing Mexico.

Studies in the Campanian ‘Villae Rusticae.’

1931 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. Carrington
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scanty Information ◽  
Materials Used

The remains of 39 villas have been discovered, up to the present, in the region which was covered by lapilli and ash during the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Twelve of these were excavated between the years 1749 and 1782, in the vicinity of Castellammare di Stabia; the rest have been excavated during the last half-century, either in the immediate neighbourhood of Pompeii or in the territory of the modern comuni adjoining it (Boscoreale, Scafati, Gragnano). A list of 36 of the villas arranged in the chronological order of their excavation is given in Rostovtzeff's Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. Rostovtzeff concludes his note with the words ‘Useful work could be done by a scholar who would devote a little time and care to a study of the Campanian “villae rusticae,” and endeavour to investigate the history of the buildings.’ Unfortunately all of the villas were buried again after their excavation, and, in investigating the history of the buildings, we have only the scanty information furnished by the reports, which, often amounts to nothing at all. Inability to see the buildings, however, would not be such a great disadvantage if, at the time of the excavation, adequate records had been made of the building materials used, and the methods of their use.

Conclusions

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
And Function

This book began by stating that histories of religious architecture can be accounts of both buildings and people. This particular history, focused on the archaeological evidence for the development of cult buildings in early central Italy, has reconsidered traditional narratives about the form and function of Etrusco-Italic religious architecture and proposed an alternative reconstruction of how their architects and audiences may have interacted with one another in Rome, Latium, and Etruria between the ninth and the sixth centuries BC. Comparison with the construction of monumental temples elsewhere also indicated that settlements including Rome, Satricum, Pyrgi, and Tarquinia can perhaps be considered part of a network of Archaic Mediterranean settlements with material, commercial, and religious connections, and that monumental architecture may have been a mechanism for successful social interaction. This study has therefore supported the suggestion that the physical and social fabric of ancient communities were closely linked, and that regional studies of Latium and Etruria may furthermore benefit from being set in Italic and Mediterranean contexts. This concluding chapter briefly recapitulates the arguments made in the main body of the book and the significance of each of those arguments for studies of ancient architecture and society. It also assesses how these findings relate to broader debates about Archaic Italy. Finally, it acknowledges the limitations of this analysis and highlights opportunities for future research. Part I of this book demonstrated that ancient religious architecture was a protean phenomenon. Three chapters analysed the ambiguous evidence for Iron Age sacred huts, the range of different buildings types associated with ritual activities in the seventh century BC, and the emergence of a separate architectural language for religious buildings during the Archaic period. Detailed analyses of foundations and roofs revealed that as changes in technology and society led to the widespread use of more permanent building materials, the physical fabric of central Italic settlements was also increasingly marked by the use of particular architectural forms and decorations to differentiate cult buildings from other structures, setting them apart in a form of architectural consecration.

Decoration and Demon Traps: The Meanings of Geometric Borders in Roman Mosaics

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Manley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Wave Pattern ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Overall Design ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Small Stone

The thousands of mosaics that survive from the Greek and especially Roman worlds are taken by many to be one of the great surviving artistic hallmarks of these two classical civilizations. The decorative variety of the floors, made usually and mostly from small stone tesserae, strikes a chord with those who view them as works of art (Neal and Cosh 2002: 9). They appear testimony to the erudition of the patrons who commissioned them, to the skilled artists who composed and executed the designs, and to the knowledge of those ancients who walked over them and who were able to interpret knowingly what was beneath their feet. Viewing them in a museum context, many of us judge them as we would an eighteenth-century watercolour or an early Picasso—the end product of inspirational artistic endeavour. The near complete absence of written references from the ancient world regarding mosaics means that we are forced to generate meanings from the floors themselves. What I want to suggest in this chapter is an alternative way of looking at mosaics. I am going to draw on ethnographic and anthropological research to provide additional insights to the archaeological study of mosaics. I want to argue that there is something to be explained in the sheer constancy of some of the geometric borders on mosaics through the Hellenistic and Roman periods—a period of some seven centuries. This constancy is also apparent in overall design in large areas of the Roman Empire. For instance in the northwest provinces, including Britain, the enduring emphasis is on the pattern, and the picture-panels are fitted within this pattern, often in a series of more or less equally weighted panels. These kinds of stability need their explanations just as much as change does. I particularly want to focus on the abstract and geometric borders—for example the meander, the guilloche, the wave-pattern—and seek to understand why these motifs were utilized across the length and breadth of the Roman Empire. I want to take a different approach to that taken by scholarly interpreters who seek to find layers of meaning in figurative representations and then ascribe them to erudite ancient patrons (pace Perring 2003).

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