Imperial Architecture

From ancient Egypt to the present day, the colossal size of buildings has been considered to reflect political power. For Herodotus, architecture was an expression of dominion; the Periclean monuments of Athens seemed visibly to encourage the Athenians to reclaim their Aegeanwide political ascendancy, since, as Isocrates remarked, ‘democracy had so adorned the city with temples and sacred images that even today visitors think it is worthy to rule not only the Greeks, but also all other peoples’. The Circus Maximus, rebuilt by Trajan, was ‘a seat worthy of the nation that conquered the world’. The correspondence between Trajan and the younger Pliny, his appointed legate in Bithynia, reveals the ideological purpose of provincial architecture. Pliny pointed out such meanings, although Trajan himself modestly affected to address only practicalities. For instance, Pliny remarks that a proposed canal near Nicomedia was ‘worthy of your greatness and your concern’. Architecture was as important in constructing imperial ideology as an emperor’s portraits or the legends and images on his coins; it legitimated his regime by promoting a particular ideal that commanded respect. It is generally agreed that buildings continued to play this role under Hadrian. The preceding discussion of Antonine buildings in the province of Asia now provides grounds to modify the view that, during the middle of the century, festivals or shows replaced public buildings as the major indicator of imperial ideology. One should, of course, be wary of using modern labels like ‘message’, ‘persuasion’, ‘propaganda’, or ‘ideology’ to describe the purpose of ancient forms. But in the present context the term ‘ideology’ seems particularly appropriate. As J. B. Thompson defines the concept, it highlights: . . . the ways in which meaning is mobilized in the service of individuals and groups, that is, the ways in which the meaning constructed and conveyed by symbolic forms serves, in particular circumstances, to establish and sustain structured social relations from which some individuals and groups benefit more than others, and which some individuals and groups have an interest in preserving while others may seek to contest. . . .

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.

Patrons and the Monumentality of Architecture

Architectural symbolism explains monumentality for only a small number of religious or imperial buildings, in their representations of the divine and the cosmic, or their insinuation of the semi-divine nature of the emperor. But for the majority of patrons of public buildings under the Roman Empire monumentality was not tied to such concepts, but was expressed on a more human level. Architecture contributed to the public image of individual patrons in the same way as did other ‘status symbols’. A Roman aristocrat’s house was a public monument; by contrast, the house of a disgraced man was destroyed. In what follows, I shall argue that the forms of architecture used in public as well as private buildings played an important role in promoting an owner’s social identity, and that they did so because of the ideas they embodied. For Seneca, the squared stone construction of the villa of Scipio Africanus at Liternum, with ‘towers raised on all sides to defend it’, was a physical embodiment of the idea that ‘a man’s home is his castle’. In the same way, the frequent mosaic pattern in private houses at Pompeii and other Roman colonies, especially in southern Gaul and northern Italy, of a labyrinth set within a walled circuit (Fig. 72), had a metaphoric purpose: it signalled that the house was both exclusive and impregnable, the work of a Daedalus-like master architect, and, as the aedificatio of the owner, a statement of his social rank. Because such a mosaic pattern could only be fully comprehended from the top of the building, preferably a high one, it had an inherent association with monumental architecture. Cicero chose a portico on his estates for its ‘dignity’ and a vault for its honour, while the younger Pliny in his villas at Laurentum and Tusci relished forms that he had ‘begun [himself ] or, if already begun, brought to completion and thoroughly adorned’; they included a white marble stibadium, a ‘tetrastyle’ arbour of cipollino columns, and a topiary of box which, like a monumental inscription, spelled his name and that of his architect.

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.

General Conclusion

Lucian’s architectural descriptions reveal the moral and cultural pressures that were exerted on new building in the age of the Antonines. Legendary archetypes such as the Persian king’s golden plane tree and the palaces of Homeric epic offered a yardstick by which the monumentality of future buildings could be measured. But they also warned builders of the limits to be avoided. On the one hand, to make its mark in history, monumental architecture needed to exhibit a grandeur, exuberance, and brilliance that would inspire spectators with awe; on the other hand, there was perceived to be something ‘uncivilized’ about buildings which set out only to impress and which reduced viewers to irrational beings. Antonine architecture wanted to be seen as more ‘cultivated’ than that, and to appeal to viewers’ humanity and culture. There was a real dilemma here, one which has preoccupied many subsequent periods of architectural history: if the architecture of the past set the standard of monumentality, how truly ‘monumental’ could the buildings of the modern age be? Older works seemed ‘larger’ than new ones because they inspired more noteworthy memories. To Marcus Piso in the late Republic, the new Sullan senate-house seemed, despite its greater height, ‘smaller’ than its ancient predecessor, the Curia Hostilia, which, when he looked at it, brought him visions of famous senators of the past. Modern buildings, which, by definition, lacked associations, could, it seemed, only make an impression by being more imposing and on a scale too large to invite direct comparison; but, in that, they ran the risk of appearing inhuman. For example, the very first work of Antoninus Pius’ reign, the Tomb of Hadrian, produced a clear impression of monumental scale. The bronze chariot on the summit was said to be ‘so large . . . that a very fat man would be able to pass through the eye of each horse, but, to men on the ground, the horses and statue of Hadrian still look very small, because of the extreme height of the construction’.

Building the Monuments of the Future

The preservation of ancient structures like the house of Alexander at Thebes not only reinforced Romans’ sense of the passing of time, but also encouraged them to aspire to make their monuments last as long or even longer as legendary examples of the past. But the primary influence of historical archetypes was not on monuments’ precise architectural design, but on their identification as monuments by name and the implication of this for their memorializing function. This can be seen most clearly through those buildings that preserved the remains of human beings for future generations, in other words, tomb structures. It has often been argued that the purest form of building is funerary architecture, intended to commemorate and to endure, and not distracted by any social functions. This was the view of the early twentieth-century Moravian architect Adolf Loos, who wrote in his 1910 essay ‘Architektur’ that: ‘Nur ein ganz kleiner Teil der Architektur gehört der Kunst an: das Grabmal und das Denkmal. Alles andere, alles, was einem Zweck dient, ist aus dem Reiche der Kunst auszuschliessen.’ In the Roman world, tomb monuments had more complex functions for the living as well as the dead: they were not only a setting for ritual funerary processions and banquets in commemoration of the deceased, but also a backdrop to a wide range of economic and social activities in the suburbia of Roman cities, such as trade, market-gardening, and new construction. Yet the Antonine age also shows an interest in funerary buildings as a pure form of architecture in their own right. As Loos commented later in the same essay: ‘Wenn wir im Walde einen Hügel finden, sechs Schuh lang und drei Schuh breit, mit der Schaufel pyramidenförmig aufgerichtet, dann werden wir ernst, und es sagt etwas in uns: Hier liegt jemand begraben. Das ist Architektur.’ Potentially cut off from the functions of everyday life, the tomb monument expresses an ideal architecture. Tomb buildings had always been conspicuous monuments in the ancient world, and the biggest and most famous ones inspired others to follow their example.

Preserving the Monuments of the Past

As old as the human instinct to build is the desire to preserve a building as one’s own memorial. The intention of passing on something of oneself to posterity as a memory makes a building a ‘monument’, an artefact which can endure into the potentially infinite future. But, as Alois Riegl observed, much greater social importance is attached to buildings that are ‘monuments’ in a second sense, those valued by subsequent generations as traces of the past. Although Riegl believed that the ancient world recognized only ‘intentional monuments’, interest in ‘unintentional monuments’ is also widely attested in antiquity. But the two conceptions are clearly interdependent. Different cultures have varied considerably in their commemorative ambitions and their acceptance of the potential of buildings to commemorate. This chapter will examine some of these differences and the contribution made in the age of the Antonines towards attitudes to monuments. Monuments commemorate many things. Most obviously, they perpetuate the memory of individuals. Mortal human beings can be given a form of immortality by establishing a link between them and posterity, either on a private level, as family ancestors, or on a public level, as models for a nation or community. Such monuments serve as moral examples for the future: what is commemorated is both the personal memory of the deceased and the abstract ideal or virtue that they symbolize. Linked to this kind of commemoration of persons is a second object of commemoration, the record of an event, especially a military encounter or a decisive political occurrence; here too, the monuments present a connection between the present and the past. However, these human meanings with which one associates monuments today have not always been the only or most important object of monumentality. In classical antiquity the most impressive and ‘monumental’ structures were those situated in the dimension furthest removed from the world of human experience, the realm of the divine. The great temples of the prehistoric Aegean, regarded as the gods’ permanent, terrestrial homes, reflected not simply the religious loyalty of their builders and worshippers, but a profound sense of the monumental.

The Cities and the Emperor

Monumental architecture, then, strengthened a sense of public or civic identity in Antonine cities. But, because a public building could assert the political power of a city and, in so doing, challenge the aspirations of a rival city, it was potentially destabilizing in the context of the Empire as a whole. A balance had to be struck between the development of urban forms that reinvigorated a city’s urban identity and promoted the power of local elites loyal to Rome, and the consolidation of the unity of the Empire. Public buildings were the symbols of their city’s separate identity, but they could also represent the power of Rome and its ruling dynasty. Although provincial public buildings were mainly funded by the largesse of local elites, they could also be the result of imperial initiatives or a combination of local funding and imperial support. How far was this involvement of the emperor and his staff motivated by the attempt to control or ‘harmonize’ the architectural appearance of provincial cities? The following two chapters address the question of how, under the Antonines, supposedly civic buildings became, in effect, ‘imperial architecture’. This chapter examines the role of Antoninus Pius and his successors in two instances, the cities of Ionia in the East and the reconstruction of Carthage in the West; and considers the extent to which new buildings there promoted an imperial, rather than a local, ideology. Chapter 8 explores the characteristics of such ‘imperial architecture’ more generally. Local civic pride was a strong factor in the architecture of cities in the Roman East. Public buildings were a marriage of civic loyalty and personal desire for fame. Benefactors competed to advance their own architectural projects as of particular importance to a city in her rivalry with her neighbours. When Dio ‘Chrysostom’ Cocceianus paid for the construction of a stoa in Prusa at the beginning of the second century, he was attacked by others for ‘digging up the city’ and creating a desert. Later, when he planned to erect another public building for the city, opponents urged that he had brought down ‘monuments and sacred buildings’.

Principles of Monumental Form in Antiquity

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.

The Architectural Descriptions of Lucian of Samosata

In addition to public speeches, rhetors of the second century also composed shorter, less formal exercises, ‘introductions’, prolaliai, or, more generally, dialexeis, ‘discourses’, as initial remarks on a topic or substitutes for longer orations. One writer who favoured this medium was the sophist Lucian, who flourished during the 160s and 170s. But his examples of the genre are not straightforward, since, as John Dryden observed, ‘[n]o man is so great a master of irony as our author’. Even that may be an oversimplification. Perhaps more accurate is the recent claim, about one of Lucian’s works, that it ‘treads along a knife-edge line between sincerity and irony’. Because of the satirical position he adopts, Lucian’s works provide a valuable source of contemporary social attitudes. On repeated occasions in his dialogues and stories, this Hellenized Syrian, sufficiently detached from the assumptions of Greek and Roman sophistic culture to be able to offer an independent perspective, observes how individuals regarded as innately superior could provoke speechless awe (thauma) in their ignorant audiences, whether at wonderful objects, like the possessions of the rich, or at abstract concepts and admirable philosophical principles, like the prize of happiness, political proposals, poetic fictions, or intellectual ideas. The amazement often rests on the achievement of a paradox. Architecture too was an object of wonder. The science of geometry, on which architects like Nicon prided themselves, seemed ‘miraculous’ to the ignorant. Nicon’s model Socrates was the archetype of these shaman-like characters, who, after creating aporia as a result of an impressive paradox, left their companions expressing disbelief. In matters of philosophy, science, religion, or higher culture, the layman could only address the expert as ‘O wondrous one’ (ō thaumasie). The satirical Lucian sees through such conventions, which are invariably betrayed by hypocritical behaviour, but this did not prevent their being taken seriously by contemporary audiences. In short, the picture that Lucian paints of these performances by sophists and sensationalists is one of an elite group or culture using their superior education or supposed access to hidden secrets to pull the wool over the eyes of those outside their group.