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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Modern distinctions between architecture and engineering do not readily apply to the work of architects throughout Greek and Roman history. In the design of buildings, architects’ roles and approaches changed over time. In the Classical period, Greek architects’ design specifications may have determined the forms of individual elements. According to an alternative view, the on-site nature of architects’ work may have coincided with a design process that overlapped with construction, in which masons contributed to design in a collaborative way. Beyond architects’ traditional responsibility for supplying full-scale plastic and graphic models, design by way of reduced-scale drawing was well established by the Hellenistic period. The Imperial era exploitation of Roman concrete gave architects a greater ability to project volumes through reduced-scale drawing.

Alongside career architects, amateur architects from the social elite oversaw projects in service to their communities or for their own leisure or use. In the Archaic period, architects of monumental Greek temples were responsible for the building phases and machines used in the construction process, with an increasing focus on formal design during the Classical period. Architects travelling in pursuit of commissions spread architectural ideas and influences throughout antiquity. Architects of Ionian works may have arrived in Italy as early as the Archaic period. In the Middle Republic, the presence of Greek architects in Roman environs is reflected in textual sources as well as in the use of Greek marble, building types, and spatial layouts. Similarly, the Roman architect Cossutius worked in Hellenistic contexts during this same period.