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10 - On Architecture’s Agency in Fourth-Century Rome

from Part III - Architecture and Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2023

Seth Bernard
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Lisa Marie Mignone
Affiliation:
New York University
Dan-el Padilla Peralta
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

When assessing the evolution of the early Roman Republic, scholars typically designate a break between the fifth/fourth centuries and the end of the fourth century BCE/beginning of the third, based on political, legal, and military milestones. Archaeologists detect a similar break, as members of the new nobilitas turned to architecture as a vehicle for self-representation. Where most scholarship characterizes buildings and the broader cityscape as a reflection of political change, this chapter deploys theories of object agency and object-scapes to argue for their agency in effecting such change. Questioning whether Romans were conscious, at the time, of a new era dawning, I suggest that circumstantial evidence supports a hypothesis that, at least in the later Republic, they were.

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Chapter
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Making the Middle Republic
New Approaches to Rome and Italy, c.400-200 BCE
, pp. 210 - 229
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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