example, the Forum Romanum and later imperial fora.
1.4 Cloaca Maxima (Great Drain) outlet to the Tiber, Rome, c. 510 BCE.
Photo courtesy Steven L. Tuck.
CHRONOLOGY OF GREEK ART
800–700 BCE Geometric Period
700–600 BCE Orientalizing Period
600–480 BCE Archaic Period
480–323 BCE Classical Period
323–31 BCE Hellenistic Period
This also set the precedent for later Romans at all levels that the expectation was for them to commission public art and architecture for the entire community. Rome’s great early highway, the Via Appia, was named for the man who paid for it, Appius Claudius Caecus. There was a critical side‐effect to this expectation for Roman art. Statues of those who used their wealth on behalf of the community were created and placed in the community, extending their reputation and image.
ITALIC VERSUS CLASSICAL STYLES AND FORMS I: TEMPLES
It might first be helpful to point out that the Romans also differed from other ancient people in their art and architectural forms. Contrasting Greek and Roman temples makes a good visual case for that difference. This Roman style temple is often referred to as Etrusco‐Italic because of its use in many cultures and communities in central Italy.
Etrusco‐Italic
refers to architecture, especially temples, shared by cultures of central Italy. The temples generally featured tall podiums, deep front porches, wide roofs, small cellas, and rooftop sculptures.
1.5a and 1.5b Greek Temple of Hera, Paestum, c. 450 BCE, compared with Roman Temple of Portunus, Rome, c. 150 BCE.
Photos courtesy Steven L. Tuck.
Greek temples were generally very large buildings; this example is 197 ft (60 m) in length. Roman temples, based on the traditions of the Etruscans, were generally much smaller, here 85 ft 4 in (26 m) in length. The Greek temple is raised on a three‐step platform while the Roman one has a tall 7 ½ ft (2.3 m) podium. This changes the relationship of the temple to the viewer as the Greek temple is accessible from all sides while the Roman one is strictly frontal and forces anyone approaching to do so from one direction. It essentially channels anyone viewing or engaging with the temple into a single point of view. By contrast, the Greek temple is peripteral with a colonnade that extends to all four sides allowing approach from every direction and actually shielding the building within so that the front and rear are virtually indistinguishable. Probably as a result of their frontality Roman temples were more often found on hills projecting the religious and cultural identity of a community.
peripteral
refers to a building, usually a temple, with a single row of columns surrounding it.
ITALIC VERSUS CLASSICAL STYLES AND FORMS II: PORTRAITURE
Many art history texts which cover the Roman world use a terminology of plebeian, a term referring to the Roman lower class, art versus patrician, referring to the Roman upper class, art. The former is used to refer to art whose characteristics largely follow the style and conventions of the native Italic works while the latter, patrician, refers to Classical, Greek‐inspired, works. This concept and the associated terms plebeian and patrician are not used in this book. It applies a set of class distinctions to the art that is simply not accurate. When we note the Italic (the preferred term here rather than plebeian) style of a relief dedicated by a Roman emperor, to refer to it as plebeian is absurd. These are not classes of art or people, but choices of styles that in fact do not exist in an Italic versus Greek dichotomy, but as a range of options in which in many cases elements of the styles are blended to serve the needs of the artist and patron and to speak to the viewer in a new way. Some of the best examples of this deliberate use of Greek or Italic antecedents can be found in Roman portraiture, which demonstrate the meanings inherent in much of the art. Portraits as symbols of communication, especially under the principate (period of rule by a princeps, colloquially known as an emperor) represent a dialogue between the ruler and the ruled. This is particularly true when they are not set up by emperors but by others. In some cases this means that they reflect an acceptance of the cultural, political, and social premises of Roman artistic display.
Roman art can be seen, despite the style of a particular work, as a semantic system that conveys various meanings and values in a visual way. This makes sense in a society covering a vast geographical and cultural area with a very low literacy rate and no better means of mass communication than the visual. The arts helped to create and transmit a Roman cultural identity across the Roman world. The style may or may not be a component of this, but the work can also, through its elements of subject, form, and structure, convey a variety of meanings.
1.6 Victorious general from Tivoli, Italy, c. 75–50 BCE. Museo Nazionale Romano Palazzo Massimo, Rome. H 6 ft 1 in (186.5 cm).
Photo courtesy Steven L. Tuck.
To many modern viewers the image of a victorious general – the subject is confirmed by the use of a set of body armor as a strut supporting the left leg – might resemble the “after” photo for an exercise program. It seemingly incongruously combines an idealized, youthful, bulky, muscular body with a craggy, lined face with sagging skin and a wrinkled neck. To a Roman observer it indicates two separate sets of artistic conventions, and therefore cultural values, combined in a single work of art. The craggy portrait face is the Italic tradition conveying the qualities of dignity and maturity of the depicted man, while the muscular youthful body shows the Hellenistic Greek heroization of rulers from the Greek world after the death of Alexander the Great. Together, they merge into a new form of Roman portraiture in the first century BCE. The imagery of victory was important in the Roman world and their readiness to adopt Greek conventions demonstrates the fluidity of the Roman system and its basis on the personal choices of subjects, artists, and patrons.
While modeling the sort of analysis you will find later in the book, mention should be made of the importance of literary reference to our understanding of art. You might think this statue reflects only the personal preference of the person portrayed as a victorious general. In fact, it is only one in a long line of statues that demonstrates broader Roman cultural values as the Roman politician and author Cicero makes clear in his work De Officiis (Concerning Duties 1.61):
