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From Republic to Empire: Reflections on the Early Provincial Architecture of the Roman West

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

J. B. Ward-Perkins
J. B. Ward-Perkins
Affiliation:
British School at Rome, Volle Giulia, Rome
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Extract

Nobody who has worked in the field of late Republican and early Imperial Rome can fail to be aware how remarkably little archaeological evidence we have of any specifically Roman presence in the provinces of which Rome was in political and military control during the last century of the Republic. In the east, where she was faced with a civilization older and richer than her own, this is intelligible enough. But for the student of the spread of Roman institutions and ideas in the west the gap is embarrassing. In Roman Britain we have no difficulty whatever in identifying the Gallic precedents for the settlement that followed the Roman conquest. But what lay behind the Caesarian and Augustan settlement in Gaul itself? In terms of the recent history of the area it would be reasonable to expect that in the south, at any rate, it should have been rooted in local Republican Roman practice; and yet there is remarkably little evidence of any such roots in the surviving remains. Much the same is true of Spain and Africa. Why is this? Is it that the impact of the early Imperial settlement was so strong that it swept away all trace of what had gone before? Or is it simply that the Republican Roman presence in these territories was not of a character to leave any substantial mark on the archaeological record?

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , November 1970 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright ©J. B. Ward-Perkins 1970. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

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21 More fully discussed by Balty, Ch. in Latomus XXI (1962), 279–319.Google Scholar The surviving remains of the basilica are those of the massive substructures needed to bring the floor-level within the basilica up to, or slightly above, that of the forum.

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42 e.g. at Sabratha, the Capitolium, the Antonine Temple, the South Forum Temple, the Temple of Hercules; and at Lepcis Magna, the Temple of Serapis, the anonymous temple midway between the Porta Oea and the Arch of Severus, and the Temple in the Severan Forum.

43 For the native tradition, see the discussion of the Temple of the Cereres at Thuburbo Maius in Lézine, A., Architecture romaine d'Afrique (Paris, 1961), 91–118.Google Scholar The not-uncommon African form in which the temple stands on a tall podium with frontal steps but with the cella projecting well beyond the rear wall of the precinct (e.g. the Capitolium at Thuburbo Maius; the Temple of Minerva at Thugga; the Temple of Venus Genetrix at Cuicul; the temple at Theveste) may well represent a convergence of the two traditions.

44 Not later than the paving of the adjacent forum area in 53.