Browsing by Subject "Roman Forum"
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Item The figural frieze of the Basilica Aemilia : a new perspective in building context and pentelic marble(1996) Arya, Darius Andre; Galinsky, Karl, 1942-The purpose of this Master's Report is to examine the figural frieze from the Basilica Aemilia in the Roman Forum. Despite the fact that scholars have studied the frieze for over sixty years, many issues remain, particularly its date. Therefore, I have reviewed the bulk of the previous scholarly discussions, summarized the material of this fragmentary frieze, and emphasized the concrete details. Subsequently, I have analysed the frieze in the context of its building and its material, Pentelic marble, in order to argue for the date of 55-34 BC.Item Paving the past: Late Republican recollections in the Forum Romanum(2009-05) Bartels, Aaron David; Davies, Penelope J. E.; Clarke, John R.; Riggsby, Andrew M.The Forum was the center of Roman life. It witnessed a barrage of building, destruction and reuse from the seventh century BCE onwards. By around 80 BCE, patrons chose to renovate the Senate House and Comitium with a fresh paving of tufa blocks. Masons leveled many ruined altars and memorials beneath the flooring. Yet paving also provided a means of saving some of Rome’s past. They isolated the Lapis Niger with black blocks, to keep the city’s sinking history in their present. Paving therefore became a technology of memory for recording past events and people. Yet how effective was the Lapis Niger as a memorial? Many modern scholars have romanced the site’s cultural continuity. However, in fifty years and after two Lapis Nigers, the Comitium had borne a disparity of monuments and functions. Rome’s historians could not agree on what lay beneath. Verrius Flaccus reports that the Lapis Niger ‘according to others’ might mark the site of Romulus’s apotheosis, his burial, the burial of his foster father Faustulus, or even his soldier, Hostius Hostilius (50.177). Nevertheless, modern archaeologists have found no tombs. Instead of trying to comprehend these legends, most scholars use them selectively to isolate a dictator, deity or date. We must instead understand why so many views of the Lapis Niger emerged in antiquity. Otherwise, like ancient antiquarians, we will re- identify sites without end. Recreating how these material and mental landscapes interacted and spawned new pasts tells us more about the Lapis Niger than any new attribution.Item The topographical transformation of archaic Rome : a new interpretation of architecture and geography in the early city(2010-05) Hopkins, John North; Davies, Penelope J. E., 1964-; Clarke, John R., 1945-; Ammerman, Albert J; Edlund-Berry, Ingrid E; Papalexandrou, Nassos; Riggsby, Andrew MMost studies of Roman architecture cover the third century BCE to the fourth century CE, a period of luxurious building projects like the Colosseum and Pantheon that remain relatively well documented in the archaeological and literary record. Yet Rome did not spring fully formed from the ground in the third century, its architecture relying entirely on precursors and precedents in buildings from far away times and places. In this study I fit remains of architecture from early Rome (ca. 650 to 450 BCE) into the cultural framework of the contemporaneous Mediterranean and try to assess how the changing cityscape effected both archaic Romans and later Roman architecture and topography. Because many studies of archaic Rome have attempted to fit archaeological remains with the literary record, and because this has created much controversy, I put the literary record to one side and focus on material remains in an attempt to see what they can reveal on their own.