The Roman World [antikvár]

Introduction The achievement of Rome, from its modest beginnings on the bank of the Tiber around 800 BC to the domination of the Mediterranean and western Europe during the first centuries of the Christian era, is one of the most impressive success stories in history. Although the main outlines of the story are well enough known from ancient writers, archaeology can help to fill in the gaps and give us invaluable information about the material culture of, for example, the earliest inhabitants of the city of Rome or their Etruscan neighbors. It can illustrate the transition of Rome from provincial status to the political and artistic hegemony of the Mediterranean and it can show how Rome served as a conductor of the mainly Greek culture of the eastern Mediterranean to the west. Archaeology can also give us an insight into how the peoples of the Roman Empire with their different local traditions assimilated the Greco-Roman message. Thus the remains of primitive Iron Age huts on the Palatine serve to remind us of Rome's humble origins; the restrained pomp of the reliefs of the Ara Pads, carved by immigrant Greek sculptors in the closing years of the ist century BC, reveals how Roman political ideas could be expressed in visual terms that had been developed in Athens five centuries earher; and the neariy demolished legionary fortress at Inchtuthil in Perthshire, Scotland, impresses us with the organizational skill of the Roman military machine even in retreat. The means employed by archaeologists to extract information concerning Roman civilization are varied, but the common factor is always an interest in the material remains, whether the research be conducted in the field or in a museum, in the library or in the laboratory. One archaeologist may be interested in Roman antiquity from the point of view of an art historian; another from the standpoint of the environmental historian. The one may perhaps prepare a catalog of Roman emperor portraits; the other produce dramatic evidence of our rude forefathers' uncomfortable environment with the discovery of a Roman bedbug from Warwick. Most of the raw material on which archaeologists work comes from out of the ground - either carefully (or sometimes carelessly) excavated, or found by chance. The undertaking of an archaeological excavation is an attempt to satisfy curiosity about the past; to answer questions about man's history. The same spirit moved Cardinal Prospero Colonna when he investigated the sunken Roman ships in Lake Nemi in the 15th century as spurred on General Pitt Rivers when he explored the remains of Cranbourne Chase in the 19th. Techniques of excavation have developed and improved over the centuries, especially in the 20th, and scientific aids abound (too much, perhaps, for the curse of metal detectors has led to the destruction by vandals of several important sites). We shall be concerned as much as anything in this book with tracing the history of medieval. Renaissance and modern man's interest in the Roman past and the various ways it has been studied and interpreted. The history of archaeology reflects very closely the history of ideas. We shall also consider some of the ways in which an awareness of antiquity affected the arts at different periods ; how an artist like Andrea Mantegna in 15th-century Mantua might obtain sketches of rather pedestrian Classical reliefs from Rome and translate them into some of the finest products of Renaissance art; and how the discovery of ornate frescoes at Pompeii has influenced interior decoration in Europe and America from the i8th century to the present day. Roman antiquity is extremely accessible to the tourist. Practically anywhere within the frontiers of what was the Roman Empire Roman remains are plentiful, though sometimes they may be hard to detect : tracing the course of a Roman road can make for an interesting country walk in Britain. And many sites in Britain, once excavated, are entrusted to the Department of the Environment who conceal them again with lovingly tended lawns. More spectacular ruins can be seen in the Rhineland (e.g. Trier), the south of France (Aries, Nîmes, Orange), Spain (Mérida, Segovia, Itahca), Yugoslavia (Pola, Spht), and of course Italy. Most ancient sites in Greece have more Roman buildings than anything else, and Turkey, the Near East and North Africa have some of the best-preserved Roman antiquities of all: Ephesus in Turkey, Baalbek in Lebanon, Masada in Israel, Salamis and Paphos in Cyprus, Lepcis Magna and Sabratha in Libya, Dougga and Sbeitla in Tunisia, Djemila and Timgad in Algeria, and Volubihs in Morocco. But go and see for yourself, dear reader.