Roman Architecture. - Hardcover

Brown, Frank E.

4

6 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080760156X ISBN 13: 9780807601563

Publisher: Braziller, 1961

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Roman architecture occupies a unique place in the history of the architecture of the last fifteen hundred years. It was the parent of all the major architecture of the West and of much of the Near and Middle East up to the 19th century. The technical and formal achievements of Rome were the models to which, time after time, later ages turned for inspiration. "The architecture of the Romans was, from first to last, an art of shaping space around ritual", writes Professor Brown. "It stemmed directly from the roman propensity to transform the raw stuff of experience and behavior into rituals, formal patters of action and reaction. From the dawn of their history we find the Romans feeling, thinking, and acting ritually. Together or singly, they sought identity and fulfillment in the performance and creation of fixed, habitual forms of conduct. This was the inherently Roman way of reducing the chaos of experience to manageable, human measures. It was the root of Roman custom, Roman tradition, Roman discipline, and Roman law. It was in the form of ritual that the specifically Roman values manifested themselves." The Romans were uniquely sensitive to the kinds of space in which these rituals were practiced and in which the significant, recurring rhythms of life found their place. Their concern was to endow such spaces with forms as significantly human and unchanging as the rhythms themselves. This has been the chief preoccupation of the great architects of our culture ever since. Roman architecture spans a thousand years from ancient Britain to the Valley of the Euphrates. This book seeks to discover its fundamental unity through its progressive unfolding. Frank E. Brown was a Professor in the Classics Department at Yale University and the American Academy in Rome. Includes over 100 illustrations including photographs, plans and drawings.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Frank E. Brown (1908-1988) was a professor at Yale University and an active archaeologist, leading key excavations in the Latin Colony of Cosa, at Dura Europos, and at the Regia in the Roman Forum. He was also director of the American Academy in Rome.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.