Creating Form: Architects in the Antonine Age

At Miletus we saw a distinction between the workmen contracted to construct the arcades and the architect who designed them. Ancient building projects were usually dominated by architects, who directed a large number of subordinate workmen. Whereas the workmen sometimes challenged an instruction, the architect at the top identified more with the project, and his opportunity for social prestige was greater. Since Aristotle, architects were considered to be both ‘wiser’ and ‘more valued’ than manual workers, because they knew the ‘causes’ of a building project. At Patara it was not only the Velii Proculi as patrons who gained glory from new architectural forms. In the odeion stood a statue to the architect Dionysius of Sardis. He is described as ‘skilled in all works of Athena’, which recalls the mention of this goddess at Miletus; but the ‘future fame’ that his statue commemorated was for a work of architecture and engineering of which any Roman would have been proud: the great roof over the odeion itself. Another who made a professional reputation for himself beyond his home city was Marcus Aurelius Pericles of Mylasa, who was honoured at Rome for his success in architecture, described as ‘the greatest art of countless people’. To understand the monumentality of Roman architecture, then, we need to consider the views of architects. One should bear in mind, however, that the architectural profession in antiquity was very diverse. Indeed, there was no idea of a ‘profession’ at all in the modern sense of recognized qualifications and a relatively stable corporate identity. It is difficult to evaluate the social position of those architects whose names are recorded across the Roman Empire, as the mainly epigraphic evidence for their existence is both diffuse and varied, coming from areas as heterogeneous in social structure as imperial Rome, cities in Asia Minor, villages in late Roman Syria, and military settlements on the north-western frontier. In Greece and Asia Minor an individual called an architektōn might have been either a civic magistrate, with no professional activity in the design process, though sometimes involved with public building; a religious official, with responsibility for the buildings of a sanctuary; or a practising architect, either employed by a city or working independently.