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Article

annales maximi  

Tim Cornell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture
Annales maximi, a chronicle kept by the *pontifex maximus. Under the Roman republic the pontifex maximus used to keep an annual record, and to publish a version of it outside the *Regia on a whitened board which was probably repainted every year. The chronicle contained the names of magistrates, and apparently registered all kinds of public events (Schol. Dan. Aen. 1. 373). Although *Cato (Censorius) (Orig. 4. 1 Chassignet) was irritated by its frequent references to food shortages and eclipses, it was an important source for the earliest Roman historians, who also adopted its plain style and perhaps also its chronicle form (Cic. De or. 2. 52). The annales maximi, as the annual records were called, continued to be compiled until the time of P. *Mucius Scaevola, who was pontifex maximus in the time of the *Gracchi. By then the chronicle had no doubt become an anachronism; but enough material had already been amassed to fill 80 books (Schol.

Article

Antinoöpolis  

Walter Eric Harold Cockle

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Roman Material Culture

A nome capital (see nomos (1)) of Middle Egypt east of the Nile, founded in ce 130 by Hadrian in memory of *Antinous (2) on a necropolis containing a temple of Rameses II. The via Hadriana linked it to the Red Sea. Its Greek constitution, modelled on that of *Naucratis, gave exemption from *liturgies elsewhere. Veterans and Hellenes from *Ptolemais (2) were enrolled. *Diocletian made it capital of the Thebaid. Considerable remains of public buildings survived in 1800. See alimenta.

Article

Antioch(2), Roman Colonia Caesareia  

Stephen Mitchell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Near East
  2. Roman Material Culture
(Pisidian, or more correctly ‘near Pisidia’), a city in Phrygia Paroreius north of *Pisidia, to be distinguished from the other Phrygian Antioch on the Maeander. It was a Seleucid; Fraser, GET, 328 f. foundation, peopled by colonists from *Magnesia (1) on the Maeander, occupying a strong site in the foothills of Sultan Dağ close to modern Yalvaç. Its fertile territory extended east to Lake Eğridir. The principal Hellenistic remains are at the nearby hill-top sanctuary of *Mēn Askaēnos, where there is an Ionic peripteral temple of the 2nd cent. bce. The temple estates were used to provide land for Roman *veterans of Legions V and VII when the city was refounded as Colonia Caesareia after the creation of the province of *Galatia in 25 bce. It was linked with the other Augustan colonies of the region and with the south coast by a military road, the *via Sebaste.

Article

Antium  

Edward Togo Salmon and T. W. Potter

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Roman History and Historiography
  3. Roman Material Culture
Antium (mod. Anzio), in *Latium. It was occupied from at least the 8th cent. bce by people with a material culture resembling that of Rome itself. It was certainly Latin in the 6th cent. bce (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1. 72; Polyb. 3. 22), but shortly thereafter *Volsci captured it, and for 200 years Antium was apparently the principal Volscian city. In the 4th cent. bce it was the centre of Volscian resistance to Rome, that ended only when C. *Maenius captured the Antiate fleet and made possible the establishment of a citizen colony (see colonization, roman), 338 bce (Livy, bks. 2–8; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. bks. 4–10). Antiate pirates, however, continued active even after 338 (Strabo 5. 232). After being sacked by C. *Marius (1), Antium became a fashionable resort (Augustus had a villa here), with celebrated temples (App. Bciv. 1. 69, 5. 26; Hor. Carm.

Article

Apennine culture  

D. W. R. Ridgway

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture
Apennine culture is the term used to describe the material aspects (mainly ceramic) of the mixed economy attested along the Apennine chain between the Bolognese and the south-east tip of peninsular Italy from the middle (16th cent. bce: ‘proto-Apennine’) to the recent bronze age (13th cent.: ‘sub-Apennine’). Particularly significant concentrations have been recovered in south-east Emilia, the Marche, Etruria and *Latium Vetus, Campania, Apulia, and on Lipari (where the Apennine material finds its closest stylistic affinities with that from the northern rather than the southern sites of the mainland). The chronological range, established by associations with imported Mycenaean pottery, sees an early preference for semi-nomadic pastoralism succeeded by stock-raising and settled agriculture; this development is accompanied by the abandonment (particularly notable in Apulia and Etruria) of coastal areas in favour of the interior, by the disappearance of decoration on the pottery, and by the spread of the cremation rite, adopted with varying degrees of alacrity. In its closing stages, the story of the Apennine culture is closely linked with that of the terremare (see terramara).

Article

Aphrodisias, school of  

Andrew F. Stewart

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture

The existence of an Aphrodisian sculptural school was first proposed in 1943, on the basis of numerous statues in Roman and other museums signed by sculptors bearing the ethnic ‘Aphrodisieus’; examples include two centaurs from Hadrian's villa at *Tibur by Aristeias and Papias, now in the Capitoline Museum at Rome, and an *Antinous relief by Antonianus. Excavations at *Aphrodisias, begun in 1961, have confirmed a rich sculptural tradition beginning in the 1st cent. bce and lasting into the 5th cent. ce. Production on a large scale was facilitated by the existence of quarries of fine white *marble two kilometres (just over a mile) away. Portraits, architectural marbles (both narrative and decorative), *sarcophagi, copies, and small-scale versions of classical originals constitute the school's main output. Eclectic in style and highly proficient technically, the sculpture makes much use of polish and drill, and also of coloured marble for pictorial effect. Not only were the finished products widely exported, but Aphrodisian sculptors were much in demand in the cities of the eastern Mediterranean.

Article

Apicius  

Nicholas Purcell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Latin Literature
  2. Roman Material Culture
Apicius, proverbial cognomen of several Roman connoisseurs of luxury, especially in food, in particular M. Gavius Apicius (PIR2 G 91), notorious resident of the resort of *Minturnae in the Tiberian period, i.e. early 1st cent. ce (he wrote on sauces and claimed to have created a scientia popinae (‘eating-house cuisine’): Sen.

Article

Apollodorus (7), of Damascus, Greek architect for Trajan, 2nd cent. CE  

Nicholas Purcell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture

Apollodorus (7), of *Damascus, building-expert (architektōn) to whom are attributed the *forum Traiani and baths of *Trajan (Cass. Dio 69. 4: he may therefore be responsible for *Trajan's Column) and Trajan's bridge over the *Danuvius (Procop. Aed. 4. 6. 13). He is said to have disagreed with *Hadrian, having mocked his innovative architectural interest in ‘pumpkins’—the complex vaulted structures that were to be so characteristic of the imperial villa at *Tibur—and to have been banished and later killed for criticizing the emperor's temple of Venus and Rome. His is one of the few names associated with imperial building-projects, but the scope of his expertise in design, engineering, management, and planning is not precisely recoverable, and like *Vitruvius he seems to have had a background in military machinery, on which he wrote a treatise.

Article

Aquae Mattiacae  

John Frederick Drinkwater

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture
Aquae Mattiacae (mod. Wiesbaden), developed in the 1st cent. ce as an auxiliary-fort (see auxilia), first as a Rhine-bridgehead and then as part of the *limes. From the early 2nd to the mid-3rd cent., following the removal of the garrison, the site continued to flourish as the civitas-capital of the local tribe, the Mattiaci, and, thanks to its thermal springs (cf.

Article

Aquae Sextiae  

John Frederick Drinkwater

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture
Aquae Sextiae (mod. Aix-en-Provence), the first Roman foundation in *Transalpine Gaul, was established as a fort by C. *Sextius Calvinus in 123 bce after his defeat of the Salluvii and in 102 bce was the scene of C. *Marius (1)'s great victory over the *Teutones.

Article

Aquae Sulis  

Martin Millett

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture

Aquae Sulis (mod. Bath), attributed by *Ptolemy (4) to the civitas Belgarum (see belgae). The hot springs, perhaps used in the iron age, were developed from the Neronian period and attained great elaboration, rivalling the largest Gallic establishments. The hot spring was enclosed in a polygonal reservoir in the SE corner of a colonnaded precinct within which stood the prostyle temple with its altar axially in front. The temple carried the famous Gorgon pediment. South of the precinct the spring connected with the principal suite of baths. The defences (constructed in the late 2nd cent.) enclosed other less well-known structures within their 9.3 ha. (23 acres). Outside was an extensive extra-mural settlement. Many inscriptions record visitors from Britain and abroad (RIB 138–78), whilst excavation of the sacred spring has produced 130 curse-tablets (see curses), the most important such archive for Romano-Celtic religion yet published. The site was deserted in Saxon times, the ruins being described in an 8th-cent. poem.

Article

aqueducts  

Richard Allan Tomlinson and Nicholas Purcell

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
06 July 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture
In a Mediterranean climate, correcting the accidents of rainfall distribution through the management of water sources transforms *agriculture by extending the growing season through the dry summer by means of *irrigation, allows agglomerations of population beyond the resources of local springs or wells, eases waterlogging through drainage in the wetter zones, and protects against floods caused by violent winter rainfall. The societies of the semi-arid peripheries had long depended on water strategies such as irrigation drawn from perennial rivers, or the qanat (a tunnel for tapping groundwater resources).Hydraulic engineering was therefore both useful and prestigious. It was quickly adopted by the nascent cities of the Greek world and their leaders: ground-level aqueducts bringing water from extra-mural springs into Greek cities were at least as old as the 6th century bce: notable late Archaic examples are at Athens, using clay piping (see athens, topography), and on *Samos, where the water was channelled by rock-hewn tunnel through the acropolis—a remarkable engineering feat on which Herodotus (3.

Article

Arae Flaviae  

John Frederick Drinkwater

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Roman Material Culture
Arae Flaviae (mod. Rottweil), on the Neckar. In ce 74 the Roman Rhine–Danube frontier was shortened by carrying a road south-eastwards from Strasburg (*Argentorate) to the *Danube. A fort was built at the point where another road coming up from Vindonissa joined it. At the same time a civilian settlement, ‘The Flavian Altars’, was developed as a centre of the imperial cult devoted to the ruling dynasty (see ruler-cult).

Article

Ara Pacis  

Diane Atnally Conlin

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture
A marble monument commissioned by the Roman Senate consisting of a sculpted precinct wall and a stepped altar, the Ara Pacis was consecrated to the political and military peace established by Augustus following his recent, successful diplomatic campaigns in the western provinces. Originally located on the Via Flaminia to serve as one component of a grand Augustan topographical program in the northern Campus Martius, the monument’s Carrara precinct walls and the surfaces of the altar proper are carved with an interconnected thematic display of mythological panels, architectural motifs, historical friezes, and allegorical reliefs. The sculptures decorating the Ara Pacis are famous examples of the preponderance of the classicized style in Augustan art.The Ara Pacis (Ara Pacis Augustae) is a monumental marble altar (11.6 × 10.6 m) originally located on the western side of the via Flaminia in the northern Campus Martius region of Rome and decreed by the senate (.

Article

archaeology, classical  

A. M. Snodgrass

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
  2. Roman Material Culture

Classical archaeology properly the study of the whole material culture of ancient Greece and Rome, is often understood in a somewhat narrower sense. *Epigraphy, the study of inscriptions on permanent materials, is today more widely seen as a branch of historical rather than of archaeological enquiry; while numismatics, the study of coins (see coinage), has become a largely independent discipline. The chronological limits are also open to debate. In the case of the Greek world, it has become common to distinguish ‘ancient’ from ‘prehistoric’, and to treat the archaeology of early Greece—at any rate down to the late bronze age—as lying outside the scope of classical archaeology. For Italy, the same is true down to a later date, after the beginning of the iron age. There is wider agreement in treating the collapse of pagan civilization as the terminus at the lower end.

No less important than these explicit divisions are the unwritten, yet widely accepted constraints on the range of material culture accepted as appropriate for study. These constraints, which have helped to maintain an intellectual distance between classical and other archaeologies, have privileged the study of works of representational art and monumental architecture as the core, sometimes almost the entirety, of the subject. A second prominent attitude, one which indeed inspired the study of the material remains of antiquity in the first place, has been attention to the surviving ancient texts, with the aim of matching them with material discoveries. These assumptions can be traced back to the earliest stages of the history of the discipline; topographical exploration, which also began very early, understandably shared the same deference to the texts. The collection of works of art, a prerogative of wealth rather than of learning, helped to confer on the subject in its early years a social prestige at least as prominent as its intellectual. From Renaissance times in Italy and France, from the early 17th cent. in England, and from somewhat later in other parts of northern Europe and North America, these forces propelled the subject forward. Such excavation as took place before the mid-19th cent. was usually explicitly directed towards the recovery of works of art, with the textual evidence serving as a guide or, where it was not directly applicable, as a kind of arbiter. Once the volume of available finds reached a certain critical mass, a further motive came into play: that of providing models for the better training of artists and architects.

Article

archaeology, underwater  

A. J. Parker

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture: Bronze Age
  2. Greek Material Culture
  3. Roman Material Culture
The potential richness of the sea for salvage or accidental finding of sunken valuables was recognized from earliest times, but the possibility of defining meaningful groups of wrecked material or of interpreting submerged sites scarcely predates the widespread adoption of underwater breathing-apparatus in the 20th cent. Standard apparatus, supplied with compressed air from the surface, as used by sponge divers, enabled the discovery and partial excavation of rich 1st-cent. bce cargoes at Antikythera (1900–1) and Mahdia (1908–13), but the unwieldy equipment, reliance on untrained working divers, and exclusion of archaeological direction from involvement under water remained serious limitations on progress. Self-contained breathing-apparatus (the aqualung) came into widespread use after 1945, and resulted in the growth of diving for sport and pleasure; many ancient wrecks were discovered, especially in southern France, and the importance of this resource was recognized by F. Benoit. However, he did not direct operations under water, and his main underwater project, the excavation at the islet of Le Grand Congloué (1952–7), has subsequently been shown to have confused two superimposed Roman wrecks.

Article

arches  

Richard Allan Tomlinson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture
In Greek architecture openings are normally covered by horizontal lintels or beams. The first description of arched construction using voussoirs locked into place by a keystone is attributed to *Democritus by the younger *Seneca, referring to *Posidonius (2). The earliest attested vaults in Greek architecture are those of the Macedonian tombs, from the mid-4th cent. bce onwards; earlier dating is improbable. Arched gateways occur (but infrequently) thereafter, particularly in the Hellenistic period.Arches (and vaults) have been attributed to the *Etruscans in Italy, though again early dates are unprovable, and a borrowing from 4th-cent. and Hellenistic Greece seems more likely. Apart from the free-standing *triumphal arch (and the architecturally similar arched gateways in city walls) the most significant Roman use of the arch is in continuous arcading, combined with engaged half-columns supporting an overall entablature, first attested in the *Tabularium (1) at Rome, and later used as the normal system for external walls of *amphitheatres and theatre auditoria.

Article

architects  

Richard Allan Tomlinson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
  2. Roman Material Culture
The names of architects are preserved in literary sources as well as inscriptions. Theodorus, architect of the temple of Asclepius at *Epidaurus, is paid at only double the level of the ordinary craftsmen, suggesting a similar status, but this may be misleading, representing expenses rather than a living wage. *Vitruvius records treatises written by architects, such as Chersiphon and Metagenes, who built the Archaic temple of Artemis at Ephesus, *Ictinus and Carpion on the Parthenon, and the man whose writings profoundly influenced him, *Hermogenes (1); this suggests comparability with other educated men (as indeed, the De architectura requires). Roman architects are mostly anonymous; an exception is *Apollodorus (7).From the inscriptions, in particular, their role is extensive. In Classical Greece they have to prepare the design (probably not detailed, scale plans, but possibly including full-size paradeigmata, examples to be copied) and to draw up specifications to be submitted to the appropriate commissioning bodies (in Athens, ultimately, the assembly), as well as calculating the quantities of material to be ordered, including stone, and the exact dimensions of blocks to be delivered from the *quarries.

Article

architecture, Roman  

Janet DeLaine

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture
Roman architecture represents the fusion of traditional Greek elements, notably the trabeated orders, with an innovative approach to structural problems resulting in the extensive exploitation of the arch and vault, the evolution of a new building material, concrete, and, probably, the development of the roof truss. While the *orders remained synonymous with the Greek-inspired architecture of temples and porticoes, it was the structural experiments which facilitated the creation of new building types in response to the different political, social, and economic conditions of Rome's expanding empire.The importance of the orders reflects the early pre-eminence of temple architecture in central Italy, where the Tuscan order evolved probably under the inspiration of Archaic Greek Doric. By the 2nd cent. bce distinctive Italian forms of Ionic and Corinthian were also in widespread use beside more purely Hellenistic Greek forms. The fully Roman form of Corinthian, distinguished by the scroll-shaped modillions of the cornice, probably of Alexandrian origin, emerged as a concomitant to the growing use of marble in public building during the Augustan age. Among the numerous variants on the Corinthian capital, the most successful was the Composite, combining the acanthus-clad bell of the Corinthian with the diagonal volutes of the Italic Ionic. A purely decorative use of the orders, incorporating many features later to be associated with the Italian ‘baroque’, was particularly common in the 2nd and 3rd cents. ce, gaining impetus from the increasing availability of various precious marbles.

Article

archives, Roman  

Rosalind Thomas

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture
Roman archives (tabularia, from tabulae as ‘records’). Rome's early records were rudimentary: lists of magistrates (*fasti), copies of treaties, and priestly records, which were not systematically organized till the late 4th cent. (see annales maximi; annals, annalists). The main archive was the *aerarium, in the temple of Saturn, established in the early republic and supervised by urban *quaestors. It contained copies of laws (see lex (1)) and *senatus consulta, which were not valid until properly deposited (Suet. Aug. 94; Plut. Cat. Min. 16–18); also *actasenatus (later), public contracts, records of official oaths, lists of public debtors, and Marcus *Aurelius' new register of Roman births. It is unclear how strictly the archives were separated from the aerarium's financial functions; the closely associated monumental complex nearby on the slopes of the Capitol certainly contained a *tabularium (CIL 12.