The Symbolic Significance of Architectural Form

In the Roman Empire, where the vast majority of inhabitants were either illiterate or had only a very basic literacy, it was natural to communicate ideas and beliefs visually. For some groups, even the Christians, for whom religion had a strong textual basis, visual symbols played a large role in addition to more direct forms of expression, as they propagated hidden meanings which could be recognized by the faithful alone. Historians of ancient art have recently begun to study more closely the ways in which forms of art served to conceptualize the divine. There is still little investigation of architectural form itself as a field for symbolism in the same way as representative arts like painting and sculpture. As the late Richard Krautheimer wrote, over sixty years ago, ‘symbolic significance’ in architecture had ‘a more or less uncertain connotation which was only dimly visible and whose specific interpretation was not necessarily agreed upon’. Yet the visibility of the basic geometrical forms deployed by buildings offered considerable potential for symbolic meaning, as many written sources confirm. The Christian writer Clement of Alexandria exercised his ingenuity by keenly speculating on all kinds of symbolism, including that expressed by architecture. But not all architectural symbolism was the rarefied sport of intellectuals. It provided a means of imaginative thinking for the illiterate, and therefore gives access to the responses of those large sections of the population whose views and perceptions are least recorded. Because the impact of architectural forms was visual and spatial, the meanings they expressed were taken for granted and are not always documented in surviving literary sources. Where written accounts are lacking, the appearance of architectural forms themselves often demonstrates more than a purely practical convenience. It would, of course, be an oversimplification to conclude that all symbolic meanings were equally apparent to all viewers. But it is possible to outline some general directions in which buildings offered fields for deeper meaning. In this chapter I shall use both written and archaeological material to interpret the different levels of this symbolic framework underlying the perception of buildings in the Roman Empire.