Architecture

Oxford Handbooks Online

Architecture  
Edmund Thomas
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies
Edited by Alessandro Barchiesi and Walter Scheidel

Print Publication Date: Jun 2010

Subject: Classical Studies, Classical Art and Architecture, Greek and Roman Archaeology
Online Publication Date: Sep 2012 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199211524.013.0054

Abstract and Keywords

Perhaps more than other aspect of Roman culture, the study of architecture is affected by
two preconceptions, the first resulting from its durability, the second from later attitudes.
First, because buildings appear as a solid and visible legacy of Roman culture, it is
assumed that Romans themselves clearly recognised the meaning of architecture. Yet,
within a short time-span, two ancient writers, Varro and Vitruvius, presented different
views. Vitruvius, the more fortunate in transmission, was ambivalent about the definition
of ‘architecture’, calling it first a compound of aesthetic concepts – organisation, layout,
good rhythm, symmetry, correctness, and allocation; but, a chapter later, a combination of
scientific domains – building, mechanics, and orology. For Varro, architecture was one of
nine ‘disciplines’; his lost treatise can hardly have contained such technicalities or
defined ‘architecture’ so comfortably within the parameters of the modern academic
subject. This article explores past debates on Roman architecture, including one
concerning archaeology and architectural history; form and function as well as utility and
ornament of Roman buildings; public architecture and private building; and centre and
periphery.

Keywords: Rome, architecture, buildings, Varro, Vitruvius, archaeology, form, function, centre, periphery

I. Studying Roman Buildings

The buildings of savages, considered on their own merit, have no place in this
book. We are concerned with architecture, that is the ‘monumental building’ of
craftsmen conscious of the beauty of certain forms and eager to heighten and
perpetuate them.

(Plommer 1956: 1)

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Architecture

THE opening to the first volume of Simpson's History of Architectural Development exposes the
fundamental place commonly given to Roman buildings in the civilizing process of European
culture. Behind this view, so alien to today's postcolonial world, lies a more lasting problem.
Perhaps more than other aspect of Roman culture, the study of architecture is affected by two
preconceptions, the first resulting from its durability, the second from later attitudes. First,
because buildings appear as a solid and visible legacy of Roman culture, it is assumed that
Romans themselves clearly recognized the meaning of ‘architecture’. Yet, within a short time-
span two ancient writers, Varro and Vitruvius, presented different views. Vitruvius, the more
fortunate in transmission, was ambivalent about the definition of ‘architecture’, calling it first a
compound of aesthetic concepts—organization, layout, good rhythm, symmetry, correctness, and
allocation (De Arch. 1.2.1), but, a chapter later (1.3.1), a combination of scientific domains—
building, mechanics, and orology. As he treats these unevenly, his original conception of
‘architecture’ plausibly embraced only (p. 839) ‘building’, in six books—specifically, planning,
materials, columnar design, and public and private structures—and was revised to include the
other two sciences in the final ten (Pellati 1947–9). For Varro, architecture was one of nine
‘disciplines’; his lost treatise can hardly have contained such technicalities or defined
‘architecture’ so comfortably within the parameters of the modern academic subject. Roman
architecture defies typologies and taxonomies (Gros 1996–2001: 1. 17). It is unsettling that we
do not know more clearly the boundaries of the science practised by the architecti of Rome.
As the themes of Vitruvius' first six books proved more compelling to the text's
Renaissance interpreters and their patrons, and skills in his other two sciences declined,
‘building’ naturally came to dominate modern conceptions of ‘architecture’. But there are
other, less narrow ways of defining the field. The areas of concern to ancient architects
also included the design of siege-engines, military arsenals, and bridges; the building
activities of emperors and senators embraced roadworks, temporary theatres and
amphitheatres, even ships; the triumphal arches, amphitheatre, and funerary structure
shown on the contractor Haterius' tomb and the villas and painted stage-like structures
on Campanian murals are omitted or peremptorily dismissed by Vitruvius, as are the
geometrical and cosmological interests of the mathematician Archimedes and the
philosopher Thales, whom Lucian ranks alongside the architect Hippias; and Daedalus,
designer of the Minoan labyrinth and symbolic precursor of ancient architects, reportedly
extended his work, like Leonardo, to flying-machines. The gap between the shifting
reality of the ancient discipline and our own limited conception of ‘Roman architecture’ is
remarkable.

The second preconception is more serious. Unlike other varieties of their art, the Romans'
architecture is held to show ‘excellence and originality’ (Kampen 2003: 375). Despite
modern technological advances, scholars still highlight its ‘staggering difficulty, great
expense, and organizational intricacy’ (Taylor 2003: 5), inviting students to contemplate
how such awe-inspiring buildings were completed and specialists to provide answers to
these seemingly unanswerable questions or to evaluate Roman buildings as the highest
achievements of the science. To many engaged in the discipline, questions of language,
meaning, and ideas appear otiose, as if it were impossible today to fathom the minds that
conceived these ‘superhuman’ projects. The priority of most researchers is to understand
‘how it was done’, rather than why. Comparison of architecture with any of the other
realms of the Roman imagination explored in this book highlights the conceptual gap

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Architecture

today between students of those areas and those who study the architecture of the
Romans. It is as if our understanding of Roman epic were limited to metrical analysis or
lexical computation, or studies of political theory addressed only constitutional issues.

Certainly, several scholars of the last twenty years have emphasized not the unequalled
achievement of Roman builders, but the imperfections of their works. The Pantheon is
now regarded as a botched compromise (Davies, Hemsoll, and Wilson Jones 1987) and for
all the romantic associations with Hadrian may have been rebuilt under Trajan instead
(Hetland 2007; Grasshoff et al 2009); the Baths of Caracalla are seen as flawed in the
execution of their design (DeLaine 1997: 64–5); the Oppian wing of Nero's Golden House
is noted for its awkward planning, the main hall of the Trajan's Markets derided as
‘grossly clumsy’ (Ball 2003: 56–61, 272); even the Colosseum is studied not only for its
‘technical perfection’ (Gros 1996–2001: 1. 328), but also for its experimentation
(Lancaster 2005a). Now it is not only classicists who study such buildings; a wide range
of other specialists bring fresh perspectives, including architects, engineers, geologists,
and art historians

Yet, for all the varied skills applied to Roman buildings and the sophistication of the tools
and techniques used to study them, the basic aims of the discipline have changed little
since the days of the Italians Giuseppe Lugli and Luigi Crema or the Germans Richard
Delbrück and Hans Kähler. True, we know more about several important areas: the
modular design of the columnar orders (Wilson Jones 2000); the practicalities and real
costs of large-scale construction projects in terms of materials and manpower (DeLaine
1997); the techniques used to assemble structures of ambitious conception (Giuliani
1990; Lancaster 2005a); the planning in the workshop (Haselberger 1994); and the
sources of materials or logistics of their transportation (Herz and Waelkens 1988). The
depth and variety of these investigations, added to the modern techniques of digital
photography and computer-aided design, mean that the student of ancient Roman
architecture in the early twenty-first century is immeasurably better equipped than her
predecessor fifty years ago. But in overall scope these studies echo the concerns of Lugli,
Crema, and others in foregrounding matters of process and leaving unexplored what
these structures meant to those who conceived or used them.

This focus of modern scholars on pragmatic issues is partly a response to the excesses of
some of their forebears. Those studying Roman buildings in today's post-ironic world feel
liberated from the desire for overarching explanations, which marked the responses of
earlier scholars to the question of meaning in Roman architecture. Grand theories are
now unfashionable. The arguments of the symbolists—Hans Peter LʼOrange (1953), Earl
Baldwin Smith (1956), and Karl Lehmann (1945), who saw domes, arched lintels, and
ornamental column displays as reflecting ideas of political or cosmic hierarchy, associated
with the imperial cult (Yegül 1982)—have been discredited. Considerations of the
symbolic or metaphorical role of architecture (Drerup 1966; Demandt 1982) occupy a
marginal place within the discipline; scepticism is expressed about the occurrence and
significance of such forms (Joyce 1990). Following Richard Krautheimer's warning that
‘symbolic significance … merely accompanied the particular form… chosen for the

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Architecture

structure… as a more or less uncertain connotation which was only dimly visible and
whose specific interpretation was not necessarily agreed upon’ (1942: 9), attempts to
decipher that significance have waned. Down-to-earth motives for urban design are
preferred (Burrell 2006). But, if (p. 841) earlier post festum interpretations of architectural
symbolism are distrusted, one may still seek in Roman buildings, as in medieval
cathedrals, ‘truths ramified, disruptive and multi-layered’ (Crossley 1988: 121).

The triumph of the pragmatists began in Germany, where Delbrück (1907–12) challenged
a prevailing tendency to stereotype Roman architecture as, typically, a thought-world of
arches and vaults presented in self-conscious opposition to the rectilinear buildings of
‘the Greeks’. His insistence on archaeological realities and avoidance of theorizing was
followed by others such as Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer (1970), for whom techniques of Roman
construction or formal variations in ornament were positivistic data indicating relative
chronology rather than visual expression. If Heilmeyer retained something of the older,
romantic search for the genius architect in attributing Hadrian's Pantheon to the Syrian
Apollodorus (Heilmeyer 1975), that hypothesis was rooted in formalistic analysis, if also
retaining something of the Hegelian impulse to see conceptions of space as reflections of
the spirit. In Italy Lugli (1957) emphasized materials and techniques, focusing on Rome,
while Crema (1959) highlighted type and typology, providing for the first time a global
and historically nuanced view of Roman architecture. John Ward-Perkins refashioned the
subject for British students, revising older works (Anderson and Spiers 1907; Robertson
1943) to stress ‘the essentially practical nature’ of Roman approaches to ‘problems of
construction’ (Ward-Perkins 1973: 51). By contrast with his predecessors, Ward-Perkins
emphasized the architecture of the provinces, albeit without the chronological nuances
applied to the capital. His general account with Axel Boëthius (1970), later revised and
published separately (1981), remains the most authoritative overall treatment of the
subject in English today. Yet a reader of Ward-Perkins's book might be forgiven for
thinking that there were no patrons of provincial Roman buildings and that few ideas
were communicated by these agglomerations of materials spread across the different
European regions.

The sheer range and complexity of Roman architecture create special problems for its
historians, who must decide how to divide their topic: whether chronologically to
emphasize general formal or stylistic developments (Anderson and Spiers 1907); by
geographical area to highlight regional difference (Ward-Perkins 1981); or by building
type to stress the architectural changes that accompanied specific social uses (Gros
1996–2001: 1. 18–21). None of these arrangements is without prejudice. Chronological
approaches overlook not just regional or functional variations, but similarities in meaning
between buildings distant in date, and are vulnerable to the fallacy of linear progression
from the simple to the complex; a regionalist focus cannot easily account for
developments across the whole empire; and typological divisions seem too crude to
explain buildings whose forms were only loosely linked to functions, with labels like
‘atria’ and ‘porticoes’ applied to very different functional realities; for more diversified

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Architecture

buildings like tomb monuments, typologies have little value at all (Gros 1996–2001: 2.
380).

Against the mainstream accent on the application of form to function, some voices
(p. 842)

have attempted to renegotiate the boundaries of the discipline. In France Gilles Sauron
has emphasized the ‘constant relation between decoration and its patrons’, interpreting
the late Republic through an ‘archaeology of looking’ (1994: 13–15). In England John
Onians (1988) explains ancient architecture in terms of rhetoric and psychology rather
than structure and design. Such re-branding of buildings as objects of experience or
media for ideas, rather than solutions to practical problems, has opened challenging new
vistas for students of Roman architecture, which may mirror more closely the ways in
which contemporaries perceived their built environment. But, because their hypotheses
are rejected on empirical grounds and their approaches perceived as detached from
traditional methods, few so far have followed their examples.

On the continent, by contrast, more speculative approaches to meaning in architecture

are securely anchored in formalistic presumptions and procedures. Prominent here are
the German archaeologists Paul Zanker and Henner von Hesberg, and, in France,
especially Pierre Gros (1996–2001). For Hesberg (1990), architectural ornament is not
only a means of dating archaeological monuments, but a ‘leading cultural
form’ (kulturelles Leitform) expressive of its time. The argument has obvious circularity
and some common ground with earlier searches for a Zeitgeist in ancient architecture.
But more concerning is that Hesberg's argument depends on detailed, perhaps
subjective, stylistic analysis of architectural fragments and takes little account of ancient
views on architecture or its decoration. Gros recognizes rhetorical and symbolic uses of
architecture, presenting Roman buildings in a historically nuanced social context. But one
seeks in vain an approach like that of the philosopher Robert Hahn (2001) to archaic
Greek temples, who highlights their relation to pre-Socratic thought, showing how
architecture acted as a dynamic idea in ancient culture, not merely an adjunct or
reflection of it.

In the land of Frank Lloyd Wright, for whom architecture was ‘the scientific art of making
structure express ideas’ (Wright 1941: 141), the search for architectural meaning has
sometimes taken a more abstract direction. Frank Brown revitalized the discipline with
his uniquely penetrating interpretations of meaning. If his analyses of the basic spatial
notions of Roman temples or fora (Brown 1961) may seem as dated today as modernist
skyscrapers in our cities, his brilliant lateral reasoning in recognizing the ‘pumpkins’ of
Hadrian despised by Apollodorus in the gored domes of Tivoli and Baiae (Brown 1964)
will long stand as a model for how architectural remains may be imaginatively and
constructively related to ancient literary sources. Brown's disciple William MacDonald, in
his first book on Roman architecture, highlighted the conceptual implications of the
Roman architectural ‘revolution’ between Nero and Hadrian. Although he stressed that
his emphasis was on direct evidence of standing remains, MacDonald's originality was to
consider them in terms of (p. 843) communication of ideas and human personalities.
‘Masterpieces such as the Pantheon’, he wrote, with barely a hint of Hegelianism, ‘were

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Architecture

above all expressions of immanent cultural forces, and technology, though important, was
a secondary factor in their creation’ (MacDonald 1982: 5).

In his even more innovative second volume (1986), MacDonald discussed characteristics
of urban architecture across the Roman Empire with a fresh vision, replacing dry
typology with evaluations of aesthetic or social meaning. His identification of ‘urban
armatures’ and analysis of ‘cardinal themes’ are so far removed from the historical
context of Roman buildings that this book remains today an art-historical essay, rather
than a true cultural analysis, but his suggestions of common formal properties and modes
of design across the empire need serious contextualization. Others have focused on
mathematical or cosmological aspects of design, especially for the Pantheon itself (Loerke
1990; Sperling 1997; Martines 2000), or analysed the geometry of individual buildings or
even whole cities (Watts and Watts 1992); yet MacDonald's general proposition (1986:
246) that a shift from geometric to arithmetic conceptions informed the use of un-
classical and proto-baroque forms in urban space, invites further investigation. The
contribution of ancient mathematics to reconceptualizing architectural space and its role
in wider cultural change are still to be addressed.

Nevertheless, the last twenty-five years have seen more growth in the study of Roman
architecture than any other similar period, whether measured in terms of empirical
additions to knowledge, expansion into new fields, or adoption of new methodologies. The
material evidence has increased through excavation and topographical research at cities
such as Verona (Frova and Cavalieri Manasse 2005), Carthage (Hurst, Fulford, and
Peacock 1994), and Caesarea Maritima (Holum and Raban 1996). Aided by new,
computer-based techniques, students of architecture attempt serious answers to
questions similar to those asked by other cultural historians: Geographic Information
Systems show how the social character of towns like Pompeii (Laurence 1994) or
Empúries in Spain (Kaiser 2000) is mapped by changes in urban space (Jones and Bon
1997); artefactual analysis highlights how the decoration and use of individual rooms in
Roman houses reflected social realities (Allison 2004); scholars are sensitive to the role of
ideologies (Trillmich and Zanker 1990) in shaping the built environment of antiquity, from
the Augustan transformation of the Athenian Agora ‘down to the wheel-ruts in the paving
stones’ at Pompeii (Wallace-Hadrill 1995). Regional and chronological variations of civic
assembly buildings are not only considered matters of style or typology, but related to
larger, political issues of urban layout (Balty 1991). The architecture of whole regions
from the Levant to Spain is now better understood. The analysis of architectural
ornament has advanced so far in methodology that it is studied no longer only for stylistic
change or variation (Strong 1953; Léon 1970), but in terms of ideal planning (Wilson
Jones 2000) or visual ‘semantics’ (Gros 1989). Ancient (p. 844) architectural terminology is
no longer straightforwardly applied to archaeological remains, but scrutinized and
questioned (Callebat 1995; Leach 1997).

Changes in approach to Vitruvius are symptomatic of the shift in method in Roman

architectural history in general. Many past shortcomings of the subject can be attributed
to the peculiarity of what one might call ‘the Vitruvius problem’. In a field extending

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Architecture

geographically from Britain to Arabia and from the Caucasus to the Atlas Mountains, and
chronologically from the putative Palatine wall of Romulus to Justinian's Santa Sophia, an
anomaly is that the observations and concerns of this military engineer have remained
central to modern constructions of the idea of Roman architecture. Vitruvius grew up in
northern Italy, served in the Roman state service under Julius Caesar in North Africa, and
was probably an example of that parochial, professional middle-class grouping, the
apparitores (Purcell 1983). His only known public commission is the colonial basilica he
describes at Fanum. Modern scholars stress the narrowness and conservatism of his
treatise, its essentially rhetorical purpose, and its omissions or limitations (Le Projet de
Vitruve, 1994). The absence of amphitheatres from his treatise and minimal discussion of
bath-buildings illustrate the work's limited value for explaining archaeological data. The
De Architectura is no longer naively invoked as an authority for constructions of all
historical periods and in all areas of the empire, but examined for its methods and
sources within the narrow cultural context of the late Hellenistic age. Considered more
relevant to second-century BCE Asia Minor than first-century Rome (Ciotta 2003), its
precepts are studied as ideological statements (McEwen 2003). If the ‘Vitruvian’ triad of
beauty, stability, and utility reappears in later contexts (Lucian, Hippias 4) and Vitruvius'
own reputation lasted into the fourth century (Wilson Jones 2000: 35), this may be merely
evidence of the proliferation and resilience of architectural cliché in contemporary
culture rather than a confirmation of his influence on design.

Although modern scholars are not as tied to Vitruvius' words as their predecessors, it will
always be tempting, while his work remains the sole surviving ancient treatise on
architecture, to highlight his precepts, from methods of making Roman concrete (Oleson
et al. 2006: 30–41) to designs of surviving structures (Ros 1997). But the text
overshadows the conception and scope of the discipline more generally. Questions asked
of construction or technique, the privileged status of the columnar orders, the critical
analysis of buildings as diverse as public baths, private houses, and civic basilicas, and
the very labelling of archaeological remains—all owe their conception to the weight given
to such topics in Vitruvius' own treatise. For all the discrepancies between the work's
insularity and modern methodologies, or between its ideas and most extant material
culture, the De Architectura is still heralded as ‘an essential companion’ for enquiries
about Roman design (Wilson Jones 2000: 33).

Yet the questions that architectural writers ask today are different. Thomas Markus
(1993), for example, discusses sociological rather than aesthetic or technological (p. 845)
issues. He sees buildings primarily as social objects, not structural achievements, their
forms as evidence of human identity, power relations, and cultural order, not simply
processes of construction or design. Buildings have social meaning, from their materials
and ornamentation to their functions, uses, and spatial structure. The design and
imagination of the built environment can liberate or confine human lives. In comparison
with such wider socio-cultural issues, many studies of Roman architectural history look
rather limited.

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Architecture

To understand Roman architecture properly as a cultural system, we must rethink the

questions traditionally asked of the subject and ask new ones. The second part of this
chapter therefore reflects on the framing of scholarly debates on Roman architecture in
recent decades. The discipline is dominated by several conceptual oppositions. Ten of
these are presented below. Many are modern, some subject to long-standing controversy,
causing issues to be sharply polarized; all must be redefined to explain subtleties and
nuances in the evidence. Then five alternative oppositions drawn from ancient thinking
are presented which can help shape future research, not to re-polarize debate, but to
introduce new fields of enquiry. Their dialectic reflects the equivocal status of
architecture in Roman culture and throws light on that essential, overriding duality in any
period or style of architecture, the relation between form and meaning. There is no space
here to discuss all fully; but they offer valid thematic paradigms for seeing Roman
architecture in its cultural context and assessing past studies or planning future ones.

II. Rethinking Polarities

A. Past Debates on Roman Architecture

1. Archaeology or Architectural History

Just as the subject area of Roman architecture is diverse and elusive, so the nature of the
modern discipline is hard to pin down, contested on one side by classical archaeologists
and on the other by art or architectural historians (Kampen 2003: 373). For the former,
Roman buildings are one aspect of a variegated material culture requiring interpretation
or explanation; for the latter, what demands attention is the process of design itself. The
methodologies of the two approaches are reconcilable. Without drawings, logbooks,
financial records, or, usually, even architects' names, Roman architectural history is
necessarily focused on archaeological evidence; architects are considered of (p. 846) little
interest when few are known to be connected with more than one building (Lyttelton
1974: 16). Processes of design or construction are inferred from material remains
(DeLaine 1997).

Yet the ultimate goals of archaeologists and architectural historians seem opposed. While
the former explain extraneous processes through architectural evidence, the latter invoke
evidence from beyond the material world to understand structural remains in their
proper historical and social context. The relation between the two disciplines becomes
fluid when scholars shift their focus between the buildings and the cultures or societies
that conceived them. Architectural meaning, both a matter of physical form and a feature
of society, lies inevitably in the nexus between these two domains. Neither archaeologists
nor architectural historians see their principal aim as understanding the meaning or
symbolic significance of Roman buildings for contemporaries. Those with such interests
must adapt methodologically like chameleons, acting now in one role and now in the
other. Without constant disciplinary adjustment and interaction with literary or
epigraphic sources, the traditional focus of philologists or historians, the question of

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meaning may disappear. At present, it is often buried in the fertile borderland between
archaeology and architectural history.

2. Form and Function

Roman buildings hardly it the modernist ideal of a perfect match between form and
function. Notions of decor corresponded not to this, but to the expected correlation
between architecture and social rank or religious status: according to this moral
criterion, buildings were approved for suiting the status and image of their owners or
communities; for propriety or moderation in materials, rather than excess. Even Cicero's
famous explanation of the overhanging eaves of the Capitoline Temple (Cic. De Or. 3.18o)
reflects rhetorical special pleading and cannot be taken seriously as a design principle.
Because architectural terminology failed to keep pace with physical changes,
understanding building types from archaeological remains is constantly challenging. The
semicircular blocks of seating found across the Eastern Empire served multiple functions:
as not only theatres, but performance halls, council chambers, and meeeting-places for
other assemblies; in the West, the seats of local government, curiae, are hard to identify
by form alone without their once-typical feature, banks of wooden seats (Balty 1991); and
the many porticoes throughout the empire are not reducible to typologies, but form an ill-
defined category loosely grouped by a common label, which, since its origin from Greek
stoas, had varied applications, from temple porches to street-side colonnades, not easily
reconcilable with a single concept. The modernist ideal is a dubious basis for the
questions asked of Roman architecture.

(p. 847) 3. Utility and Ornament

That principle is often justified by citing the Romans' own concerns: Vitruvius preached
the virtues of stability, attractiveness, and utility; Cato saw orientation towards practical
needs as preventing moral degeneration. The Roman aptitude for utilitarian structures is
interpreted as a reaction against ornate ‘Greek’ architecture. But distinctions between
the ornamental and functional significance of buildings are more rhetorical than real.
With Roman aqueducts, for example: ‘the opposition … has been drawn too starkly;
aqueducts served both purposes, and the symbolic value of public fountains … was
derived both from their appearance and from their value as fountains that people actually
used’ (Wilson 1998: 93).

The temple of Hadrian at Cyzicus was not only ‘the biggest and most beautiful of all
temples’ (Cassius Dio 70.3.4), but had invented ‘devices and supports, which… did not
previously exist in human society’ (Aelius Aristides 26.21). Dio Chrysostom insisted on the
utility of his new public building project at Prusa, despite opponents' claims that it failed
to meet popular needs (47.13-15).

Just as the rhetorician ‘pseudo-Longinus’ advocated a literary grandeur that ‘no longer
falls outside utility and benefit’, public buildings surpassed the monumentality of Nature
by their practical value. Structures of daily use were celebrated as visual adornments and
for their potential durability. Even non-structural columns were not purely decorative: as

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Architecture

ornamenta they had a semantic function, to communicate social distinctions (discrimina)

(Gros 1989).

4. Public Architecture and Private Building

The division of the most recent and thorough handbook on Roman architecture into
separate volumes on public and private architecture (Gros 1996–2001)reflects a long-
standing demarcation of the subject, if one hardly stressed by Vitruvius. But it overlooks
the close links that existed since Republican times between the design of public temples
and that of private domestic buildings. The identification (Boyancé 1940) of ‘Catulus's
temple’ with the round ‘Temple B’ of the Largo Argentina in Rome—the temple of Fortuna
huiusce Diei founded by Q. Lutatius Catulus (consul 102 BCE)—suggests its influence on
the aviary of Varro's villa at Casinum (Coarelli 1983: 201–11; Sauron 1994: 135–67). More
generally, when ‘public buildings’ were almost always results of private patronage, built
on private land, financed with private money, and designed, surely, to the wishes of
private individuals, how valid is the conventional distinction between ‘public buildings’
and ‘private’ ones? The interests of Roman patrons are recognized in notable cases like
Pompey's Theatre or the Forum Augustum, yet virtually ignored in discussions of
provincial architecture. If Cicero and Pliny's letters attest to personal taste in domestic
architecture, why are we less ready to explain similarly the forms of ‘public buildings’?
Where literature or inscriptions illuminate the process of establishing municipal
buildings, the influence of individual patrons on public (p. 848) decision-making is loudly
attested. Archaeological evidence of uncompleted projects, typically explained in
economic or societal terms, may sometimes be the residue of personal conflicts.

5. West and East/Greek and Roman

The division of the architecture of the Roman Empire into ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ factors
is one of the most long-standing oppositions applied to the subject. It overshadows the
analysis of theatres (Sear 2006: 24–5), civic squares (Balty 1991), even domestic
buildings. Geographically based distinctions have some validity. But one might think of a
cultural ‘regionalism’ underlying architectural patronage, rather than purely formal
distinctions. Regional, social, religious, and cultural differences were all reflected in
architecture. Medieval and later buildings are seen in such terms (Clarke and Crossley
2000; Lefaivre and Tzonis 2003).

The assumed contrast between ‘West’ and ‘East’ is rooted in an older polarization
between ‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’ architecture. Airy Greek temples are often implicitly
contrasted with bulky Roman structures. For Franz Wickhoff (1900), the architecture of
the Roman East derived from western designers; conversely, Josef Strzygowski (1901)
observed the insidious influence of ‘eastern’ style on the ‘purity’ of ‘western’ forms. Later
scholars disputed the direction of influence between ‘East’ and ‘West’ (Ward-Perkins
1965), identifying competition between ‘traditional’, eastern architects and Roman
builders seeking to break the mould. Within this polarity lurks the phantom of originality.
The arch and vault, once hailed as Etruscan or Roman ‘inventions’, are now attributed
either to Macedonian architects learning from the ‘East’ (Boyd 1978; Gossel 1980) or

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Architecture

inventive Greek designers, even the philosopher Democritus (Dornisch 1992: 233).
Conversely, eastern churches are believed to originate in Roman civic basilicas. But
obsessions with retrospective aetiologies can obfuscate the contemporary significance of
such forms. In other areas of ancient cultural studies, scholars now think more
constructively of ‘Hellenization’ and ‘Romanization’ not as absolute formal shifts, but as
varieties of ‘code switching’ within Roman culture itself (Wallace-Hadrill 1998).

6. Centre and Periphery

The opposition between ‘metropolitan’ and ‘provincial’ architecture remains prominent
within the agenda of Roman architectural studies. It has especially dogged discussions of
architectural ornament. Donald Strong (1953) saw the influence of ‘provincial’ workshops
on the architectural decoration of the capital, but Volker Strocka (1988) argued that such
influence was in the reverse direction. Distinctions between ‘metropolitan’ and ‘regional’
styles still dominate work on materials and design. Ward-Perkins established the
orthodoxy that provincial (p. 849) buildings were poorer versions of those in Rome, with
inferior materials or artists and a ‘time lag’ following the introduction of similar forms at
Rome. That is now questionable. If vaulted buildings appear later in Asia Minor and Syria
than Rome, and with inferior materials to Roman concrete (Dodge 1990), the long urban
traditions of these regions ensured that other innovations in design such as the ‘arcuated
lintel’ arrived here soonest. An offshoot of the revelations that the Porticus Aemilia at
Rome is not the barrel-vaulted structure formerly assumed to bear that name (Cozza and
Tucci 2006) is that Rome actually lagged behind other Italian cities in the development of
concrete architecture (Lancaster 2005a: 5). Even during the Empire, it was often Italy
that learned from other regions, rather than the reverse.

Provincial buildings were no mere ‘replications’ of Roman archetypes (MacMullen 2000:

126), like the American embassies that President Truman wanted built across the world
as exact reproductions of the White House (Crossley 1988: 116). Architectural form was a
blend of ‘Roman’ and ‘provincial’ elements. The duality of centre and periphery was not a
polar opposition, but an area of interchange (Champion 1995).

7. Republic and Empire

For provincial architecture the Augustan period is commonly regarded as one of decisive
change. Ward-Perkins saw ‘very little that was Roman, in the narrower, Italian sense of
the word’, in earlier western municipal architecture (1970: 18). The existence of
Vitruvius' treatise and his omission of many forms of Imperial architecture have
encouraged the recognition of a dichotomy between Republican buildings and those of
the Empire. But there is no simple contrast in Roman concrete construction between
‘experimental’ forms in the late Republic and structurally more ‘advanced’ works of the
early Empire, nor any linear development in architectural technology. The early terraced
sanctuaries of Latium are more ‘developed’ in their uses of concrete and spatial forms
than most buildings in first-century Italy. If the ‘standardization’ of the Corinthian order
under Augustus established a model for later temples (Gros 1996–2001: 2. 470–503), it
relied on substantial development of the form during the previous century (Wilson Jones

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