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Nero's palace, the Domus Aurea (Golden House), is the most influential known building in the history of Roman architecture. It has been incompletely studied and poorly understood ever since its most important sections were excavated in the 1930s. In this book, Larry Ball provides systematic investigation of the Domus Aurea, including a comprehensive analysis of the masonry, the design, and the abundant ancient literary evidence. Highlighting the revolutionary innovations of the Domus Aurea, Ball also outlines their wide-ranging implications for the later development of Roman concrete architecture.
"Nero became Emperor in A.D 54. On the evening of July 18, 64 A. D., it seems that a lamp was left unextinguished in a stall still heaped with piles of combustible material. Whether this was accidental or deliberate we cannot now determine, and normally it would not have led to anything that would have attracted even local attention. But there was a gusty wind that night, and the flickering flame was fanned onto the flammable wares. The ensuing fire quickly spread. Before the onlookers could absorb what was happening one of the most catastrophic disasters ever to be endured by Rome was already underway. It was a disaster that brought death and misery to thousands. In Nero and the Great Fire of Rome, Anthony Barrett draws on new textual interpretations and the latest archaeological evidence, to tell the story of this pivotal moment in Rome's history and its lasting significance. Barrett argues that the Great Fire, which destroyed much of the city, changed the course of Roman History. The fire led to the collapse of Nero's regime, and his disorderly exit brought an end to Rome's first imperial dynasty, transforming from thereto, the way that emperors were selected. It also led to the first systematic persecution of the Christians, who were blamed for the blaze. Barrett provides the first comprehensive study of this dramatic event, which remains a fascination of the public imagination, and continues to be a persistent theme in the art and literature of popular culture today"--
This book examines the development of Roman temple architecture from its earliest history in the sixth century BC to the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines in the second century AD. John Stamper analyzes the temples' formal qualities, the public spaces in which they were located and, most importantly, the authority of precedent in their designs. He also traces Rome's temple architecture as it evolved over time and how it accommodated changing political and religious contexts, as well as the affects of new stylistic influences.
This volume explores the nature of power - the power of kings, emperors and popes - through the places that these rulers created or developed, including palaces, cities, landscapes, holy places, inauguration sites and burial places. Ranging across all of Europe from the 1st to the 16th centuries, David Rollason examines how these places conveyed messages of power and what those messages were.
The role of monuments in the Roman imperial cult. “Davies sets out to ask, How did the Romans bury Caesar? And with what monuments did they sing his praises? . . . The architectural elaboration of these structures, their siting in the capital, the lines of vision and approaches that exposed them to view, the paths their complex outworks formed for visitors to walk, are all picked out with skill and presented with care in Death and the Emperor.” Times Literary Supplement “This concise and lucidly written book is a very valuable new contribution to the studies of Roman imperial cult, political propaganda, and topography, and has the added benefit of discussing complex scholarly disputes in a manner that the non-specialist will probably follow with ease. . . . There is material in this volume that will be immensely useful to researchers in many areas: archaeology, history of architecture, iconography, history of religion, and Roman political propaganda, to name just a few. I strongly recommend it to scholars interested in any or all of the above topics.” Bryn Mawr Classical Review “Even though its focus is on only seven specimens of architecture, the book touches upon a broad array of aspects of Roman imperial culture. Elegantly written and generously illustrated . . . this book should be of great interest to the general public as well as to the scholarly community.” American Journal of Archaeology
An investigation of the America-Rome analogy that goes deeper than the facile comparisons made on talk shows and in glossy magazine articles. America's post–Cold War strategic dominance and its pre-recession affluence inspired pundits to make celebratory comparisons to ancient Rome at its most powerful. Now, with America no longer perceived as invulnerable, engaged in protracted fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and suffering the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, comparisons are to the bloated, decadent, ineffectual later Empire. In Why America Is Not a New Rome, Vaclav Smil looks at these comparisons in detail, going deeper than the facile analogy-making of talk shows and glossy magazine articles. He finds profound differences. Smil, a scientist and a lifelong student of Roman history, focuses on several fundamental concerns: the very meaning of empire; the actual extent and nature of Roman and American power; the role of knowledge and innovation; and demographic and economic basics—population dynamics, illness, death, wealth, and misery. America is not a latter-day Rome, Smil finds, and we need to understand this in order to look ahead without the burden of counterproductive analogies. Superficial similarities do not imply long-term political, demographic, or economic outcomes identical to Rome's.
Challenging the idea that heritage is a purely modern phenomenon, this volume addresses how historic buildings were treated in Imperial Rome, examining the way in which the ancients restored the monuments they inherited from earlier generations and developing our understanding of the Roman concept of built heritage.
Bringing together an international range of contributors from the fields of practice, theory and history, this book takes a fresh look at occupation. It argues that occupation is a prospect that begins with ruin--a residue from the past, an implied or even a resounding presence of something previous that holds the potential for transformation. This prospect invites us to repudiate, re-imagine and re-define lived space, thereby asserting occupation as an act of revolution. Authors drawn from the fields of architecture, urbanism, interior architecture, dance dramaturgy, art history, design and visual arts, cultural studies and media studies provide a unique, holistic view of occupation, examining topics such as: the authority of architecture; architecture as an act of revolution; women in hypersexual space; occupation as a serialized act of ruin; and the definition of space as repudiation. They discuss how acts that re-invent territory and/or shift boundaries--psychological, social and physical--affect identity and demonstrate possession. This theme of occupation is significant and topical at a time of radical flux, generated by the proliferation of hypermedia, and also by the dramatically shifting environmental, political and economic context of this era. The book concludes by asserting that it is through occupation (private and public: real, virtual, remembered, re-invented) that we appear or disappear as the individual or collective self, because the spaces we construct assert particular agendas which we may either contest or live in accord with.
The Plight of Rome in the Fifth Century AD argues that the fall of the western Roman Empire was rooted in a significant drop in war booty, agricultural productivity, and mineral resources. Merrony proposes that a dependency on the three economic components was established with the Principate, when a precedent was set for an unsustainable threshold on military spending. Drawing on literary and archaeological data, this volume establishes a correspondence between booty (in the form of slaves and precious metals) from foreign campaigns and public building programmes, and how this equilibrium was upset after the Empire reached its full expansion and began to contract in the third century. It is contended that this trend was exacerbated by the systematic loss of agricultural productivity (principally grain, but also livestock), as successive barbarian tribes were settled and wrested control from the imperial authorities in the fifth century. Merrony explores how Rome was weakened and divided, unable to pay its army, feed its people, or support the imperial bureaucracy – and how this contributed to its administrative collapse.