01-20-2005, 06:08 PM
I found this text and would like to read about your opinions about the matter.<br>
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Antonine Rome, 138-180<br>
<br>
"In the second century of the Christian era the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest portion of the earth and the most civilized portion of mankind." So Gibbon begins his epic, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, describing the apogee of Rome under Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.<br>
<br>
A Roman citizen lucky enough to be free and possessed of a little money lived a life that in many ways remains competitive with any to follow. If we wished to study history, he could read Thucydides, Herodotus, or Plutarch. If he wished to study philosophy, he had before him, in more complete form than we do, the works of Plato and Aristotle. If he wished for literature or drama, he had available to him The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Oreseia, the Oedipus plays, Antigone, Medea, Lysistrata, The Aeneid, and more.<br>
<br>
Our Roman citizne had easy access to these works. Rome under the Antonines boasted over 25 public libraries, with books that could be checked out for reading at home. The affluent bought rather than borrowed -- easy enough, since booksellers abounded -- and bought to profusion. No house of any pretensions, Seneca wrote, lacked "its library with shelves of rare cedar wood and ivory from floor to ceiling."<br>
<br>
The Roman connoisseur of painting and sculpture lived in a world that already possessed works that today are among the most prized items in Europe's greatest art musuems -- Nike of Samothrace, the Laocoon group, Venus de Milo, the Elgin marbles. As in the case of literature, the pieces that survive are only a fragment of the fine art that the Roman citizen of 2C could enjoy. Pausanias, a travel writer of that era, wrote a ten-volume tourist guide to Greece, which among other things contained the equivilant of today's "must see" lists of the best art. Of dozens of works he singles out, we have only a handful. Or consider the most famous Greek sculptor, Phidias. We have originals in the form of the Elgin marbles, copies of a few of his statues, and nothing at all of what the ancients considered to be his masterpiece, the statue of Zeus at Olympia. The Greek statuary that we still find so compelling today consists largely of what the ancient world considered its second tier work.<br>
<br>
We know even less about the paintings of antiquity. The mural painter Polygnotus was widely considered to be Phidas's equal in genius, but nothing survives to our day. Pliny the Elder, writing in 1C, tells us that the Greek painter Zeuxis depicted some grapes with such success that the birds flew up to them, and that Zeuxis's contemporary Parrhasius depicted a linen curtain with such truth that Zeuxis asked for it to be drawn aside. We have none of their work. Petronius writes in the Satyricon that ". . . when I came upon the work of Apelles [Alexander's court painter] . . . I actually worshiped it. For the outlines of the figures gave a rendering of natural appearances with such subtlety that you might believe even their souls had been painted." For Pliny, Apelles "surpassed all those who were born before him and all those who came later." Nothing of his work survives. We can only guess at how may copies existed in the time of the Antonines.<br>
<br>
Rome had not only access to great literature and art but to advanced technology. Our Roman citizen traveled beyond Rome on highways built on raised causeways and packed in layers of stones, gravel, and concrete. They were self-draining, wide enough for two of the largest wagons to pass without difficulty, with smooth surfaces (sometimes stone, sometimes metalled). Like today's interstate highways, they tunneled through hills, spanned marshes on viaducts, maintained an easy grade, and typically stretched for miles between curves. Posthouses with fresh horses were maintained all along the roads, enabling military and administrative communications to cover more than 100 miles per day. These highways crisscrossed the empire -- a distance, from the far northwest corner of England to the far southeast corner in Jerusalem, of more than 3,700 miles. Or, if our Roman citizen traveled by sea, he could sail from Ostia, conveniently located a mere 16 miles from downtown Rome -- not because there was a natural harbor in Ostia, but because Roman engineers had built an artificial one.<br>
<br>
The Romans built structures on a colossal scale. The Coliseum, seating 50,000 people, the largest amphiteatre built anywhere in the world until 20C, is the most famous but not the most spectacular. A canddiate for that time might be the Baths of Caracalla, built a few decades after the death of Marcus Aurelius, covering 270,000 square feet, about half again as large as the ground area of the U.S. Capitol building. The main block was about as high as the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. It was built of marble and decorated with gold, ivory and rare woods, containing not only baths and a calidarium, much like our modern sauna, but also gardens, libraries, gymnasia, and recreation centers. These lavish facilities were open to all free citizens, including women and children, for a trivial fee. <p></p><i></i>
<br>
Antonine Rome, 138-180<br>
<br>
"In the second century of the Christian era the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest portion of the earth and the most civilized portion of mankind." So Gibbon begins his epic, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, describing the apogee of Rome under Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.<br>
<br>
A Roman citizen lucky enough to be free and possessed of a little money lived a life that in many ways remains competitive with any to follow. If we wished to study history, he could read Thucydides, Herodotus, or Plutarch. If he wished to study philosophy, he had before him, in more complete form than we do, the works of Plato and Aristotle. If he wished for literature or drama, he had available to him The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Oreseia, the Oedipus plays, Antigone, Medea, Lysistrata, The Aeneid, and more.<br>
<br>
Our Roman citizne had easy access to these works. Rome under the Antonines boasted over 25 public libraries, with books that could be checked out for reading at home. The affluent bought rather than borrowed -- easy enough, since booksellers abounded -- and bought to profusion. No house of any pretensions, Seneca wrote, lacked "its library with shelves of rare cedar wood and ivory from floor to ceiling."<br>
<br>
The Roman connoisseur of painting and sculpture lived in a world that already possessed works that today are among the most prized items in Europe's greatest art musuems -- Nike of Samothrace, the Laocoon group, Venus de Milo, the Elgin marbles. As in the case of literature, the pieces that survive are only a fragment of the fine art that the Roman citizen of 2C could enjoy. Pausanias, a travel writer of that era, wrote a ten-volume tourist guide to Greece, which among other things contained the equivilant of today's "must see" lists of the best art. Of dozens of works he singles out, we have only a handful. Or consider the most famous Greek sculptor, Phidias. We have originals in the form of the Elgin marbles, copies of a few of his statues, and nothing at all of what the ancients considered to be his masterpiece, the statue of Zeus at Olympia. The Greek statuary that we still find so compelling today consists largely of what the ancient world considered its second tier work.<br>
<br>
We know even less about the paintings of antiquity. The mural painter Polygnotus was widely considered to be Phidas's equal in genius, but nothing survives to our day. Pliny the Elder, writing in 1C, tells us that the Greek painter Zeuxis depicted some grapes with such success that the birds flew up to them, and that Zeuxis's contemporary Parrhasius depicted a linen curtain with such truth that Zeuxis asked for it to be drawn aside. We have none of their work. Petronius writes in the Satyricon that ". . . when I came upon the work of Apelles [Alexander's court painter] . . . I actually worshiped it. For the outlines of the figures gave a rendering of natural appearances with such subtlety that you might believe even their souls had been painted." For Pliny, Apelles "surpassed all those who were born before him and all those who came later." Nothing of his work survives. We can only guess at how may copies existed in the time of the Antonines.<br>
<br>
Rome had not only access to great literature and art but to advanced technology. Our Roman citizen traveled beyond Rome on highways built on raised causeways and packed in layers of stones, gravel, and concrete. They were self-draining, wide enough for two of the largest wagons to pass without difficulty, with smooth surfaces (sometimes stone, sometimes metalled). Like today's interstate highways, they tunneled through hills, spanned marshes on viaducts, maintained an easy grade, and typically stretched for miles between curves. Posthouses with fresh horses were maintained all along the roads, enabling military and administrative communications to cover more than 100 miles per day. These highways crisscrossed the empire -- a distance, from the far northwest corner of England to the far southeast corner in Jerusalem, of more than 3,700 miles. Or, if our Roman citizen traveled by sea, he could sail from Ostia, conveniently located a mere 16 miles from downtown Rome -- not because there was a natural harbor in Ostia, but because Roman engineers had built an artificial one.<br>
<br>
The Romans built structures on a colossal scale. The Coliseum, seating 50,000 people, the largest amphiteatre built anywhere in the world until 20C, is the most famous but not the most spectacular. A canddiate for that time might be the Baths of Caracalla, built a few decades after the death of Marcus Aurelius, covering 270,000 square feet, about half again as large as the ground area of the U.S. Capitol building. The main block was about as high as the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. It was built of marble and decorated with gold, ivory and rare woods, containing not only baths and a calidarium, much like our modern sauna, but also gardens, libraries, gymnasia, and recreation centers. These lavish facilities were open to all free citizens, including women and children, for a trivial fee. <p></p><i></i>
![[Image: ebusitanus35sz.jpg]](http://img216.exs.cx/img216/8972/ebusitanus35sz.jpg)
Daniel
