Review: [untitled]

Author(s): R. H. Darwall-Smith
Reviewed work(s):
Roman Public Buildings by I. M. Barton
The Monuments of Ancient Rome as Coin Types by P. V. Hill
Julio-Claudian Building Programs: A Quantitative Study in Political Management by R. L.
Thornton;M. K. Thornton
Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 81 (1991), pp. 211-212
Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/300529
Accessed: 16/02/2009 19:34

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 III. THE EMPIRE 21I

The translation is readable, but would surely disappoint Mylonas (above, 233), who 'feels that a
certain grandiloquence of Latin can be better felt in a French translation than, say, in a German or
English translation, regardless of the accurancy [sic!] and style of either'.
Like earlier volumes, the commentary has an 'embarras de richesses' (cf. H. Plommer, CR 25
(I 975), 221). It includes thirteen figures, and four plates of the 'rose des vents' (a great improvement on
the drawings at the end of Granger's first Loeb volume), as well as an up-to-date bibliography including
the collection reviewed above. The two books together certainly aid our understanding of the principles
of Vitruvian architecture.
St John's College, Oxford E. V. THOMAS

I. M. BARTON (ED.), ROMANPUBLICBUILDINGS (Exeter Studies in History xx). Exeter: University, 1989. Pp. xii
+ 177, 40 pis, 51 figs, 3 maps.ISBN 0-85989-239-5. 4.30.
P. V. HILL, THEMONUMENTS OFANCIENTROMEAS COIN TYPES. London: Seaby, I989. Pp. I45, 238 illus. ISBN
I-85264-02I-9. ?i8.50.
M. K. and R. L. THORNTON, JULIO-CLAUDIAN BUILDING PROGRAMS: A QUANTITATIVE STUDY IN
POLITICALMANAGEMENT.Wauconda: Bolchazy-Carducci, I989. Pp. xvii + 56, I9 illus. ISBN o-865I6 (bound),
0-86516-202-6 (paper). $35.00 (bound), $20.00 (paper).
Roman Public Buildings contains a series of essays on Roman town planning (by E. J. Owens), civic
and other buildings (by J. M. Carter), religious building (by I. M. Barton), buildings for entertainment
(by A. J. Brothers), and aqueducts (by A. T. Hodge). A short afterword by T. P. Wiseman considers the
role of these buildings in public life. The book is designed for sixth formers and undergraduates as an
introduction to the study of Roman architecture, and as such succeeds admirably, but others too will find
this book an excellent point of departure. In addition, it is well illustrated and very reasonably priced.
The coin types of monuments and buildings in Rome seem not to have been the subject of any
previous monograph, and scholars wishing to examine them were obliged to work through RIC or
BMCRE. Therefore, P. V. Hill's book, which draws on his earlier articles, should be warmly welcomed.
He aims to discuss every building and monument in Rome depicted on a coin type, and provide possible
identifications in doubtful cases. Most types are illustrated, as are some of the buildings they purport to
depict. The buildings and monuments are divided up by type (e.g. temples, public buildings, equestrian
statues, etc.), and within each section by region. An unfortunate omission is a chronological list of coin
designs; any reader wishing to find the designs of a particular period will have to search laboriously
through the indices.
However, some features of the book reduce its value as a work of reference. The chief problem is
that H. tends to gloss over particularly contentious designs. Frequently the captions to the coin types
give H.'s chosen identification without any indication that there might be any dispute over it, and his
somewhat short discussions conceal from the unwary how problematic some types can be, as with a
denarius of A.D. 92/3, which he claims is a Domitianic reconstruction of the temple of Divus Augustus,
although no source credits Domitian with this. Furthermore, his ch. 7, on statues, includes several types
which may depict mere personifications. It is also regrettable that H. has not included some important
recent work. The study of Domitianic coin types, for example, has benefited greatly from the work of
I. A. Carradice, but H. does not mention it anywhere; otherwise his doubts about the authenticity of a
type of the Domus Flavia (I02-4) would have been stilled.
M. K. and R. L. Thornton, like H., have drawn on earlier articles in their book which attempts to
discover how the Julio-Claudian building programmes were managed. First, they discuss manpower
costs, with the use of 'work units', which are calculated to assess how much effort a building required to
erect. They then analyze the building policies of each emperor, including detailed studies of the draining
of the Fucine Lake and the building of Claudius' harbour at Ostia.
Some parts of the book are valuable, most notably the two detailed discussions; their examination of
how the manpower for these works could have been organized, based on comparative studies from other
periods, is stimulating. However, I disagree with its model of very careful imperial management. The
Thorntons' emperors are concerned only with the economic consequences of their buildings; they do not
seem to think that more irrational motives, like glory, may also have motivated them, nor do they
explore, as Zanker has, the ideological aspects of individual buildings. In addition they connect troughs
in building too closely with imperial management. Augustus had to be a builder to repair decades of
neglect, but Tiberius, inheriting a freshly renovated city, had less need to build.
The work units are, as they admit, merely approximate, and only serve to prove what was already
known, for example that Augustus built extensively early in his reign, and Tiberius built almost nothing.
They do remind us that simple lists of names conceal the different amounts of labour which different
buildings need, but the units are too detailed for the extent of our evidence. To be told that Augustus'
restoration of the aqueducts required 8,487 work units is meaningless, when we do not really know
exactly how much he did, as it is to be told that his restoration of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus took
174 units, when so little of the temple survives.
2I2 REVIEWS

More seriously, the book contains several historical errors (such as that Cato was censor in 179 B.C.
(3 I) ). A particularly damaging one is a tendency to attribute every building erected during these years to
the emperor. The theatre of Balbus, for example, was built by Cornelius Balbus out of the proceeds of
his triumph - Augustus contributed nothing towards it (cf. Suetonius, Divus Augustus 29.5). Yet the
Thorntons' list it indiscriminately with buildings for which Augustus was indisputably responsible (43).
They also claim (46) that Tiberius was responsible for the decline in building under Augustus from
4 B.C. to his death, and yet between 6 B.C. and A.D. 4 Tiberius was out of politics.
Therefore, although there are some useful things in this book, I cannot recommend it; whatever
one's views on their methodology, the detail of their work units is too great for credence, and the many
errors greatly weaken their conclusions.

University College, Oxford R. H. DARWALL-SMITH

S. SETTIS et al., LA COLONNA TRAIANA.Photographs by EUGENIO MONTI (Saggi 716). Turin: Einaudi, 1988.
Pp. xix + 597, 306 pls, 66 figs, 5 plans. ISBN 85-06-59889-9. L. 120.000.

This work forms an interesting contrast with Trajan's Column by Frank Lepper and Sheppard
Frere, reviewed inJRS 80 (I990), 227-8. The photographs are of the Column itself, not as in the case of
the other volume (henceforth L.-F.) a reproduction of Cichorius' plates taken from casts. The text is an
attempt to study the Column as an artistic composition. It is not a detailed running commentary, with
attempts to identify historical or geographical contexts, and comments on the arms, equipment and
structures of the Roman army, followed by special notes, the L.-F. pattern.
The photographic representation must be considered first. This takes up more than half the book,
and is essentially photography carried out during and made possible by the recent work on the Column.
The base is omitted. On a detailed comparison with L.-F., the present work gives more space,
approximately three times as many plates, and the plate area is twice the size of L.-F. There is no attempt
here, as there is in L.-F., to accommodate two scenes on one page. There is a considerable overlap
between scenes, which avoids the frustration in L.-F. where breaks can come at inconvenient points, and
allows for a new and better appreciation. On detail, there is no doubt that L.-F. is better overall, because
of erosion or other damage since the casts were taken. But the present work in a significant number of
places is clearer, particularly in facial expressions, and brings out the effect of marble as the medium.
Occasionally a slight change in angle gives vivid contrast on the overlaps. The two works need to be
consulted side by side, with the original Cichorius if available.
The text contains a discussion of Trajan's wars and Trajan's Rome, particularly Trajan's Forum
and the Column's relation to it, by A. La Regina. The major section is by Salvatore Settis, who considers
the motives of Trajan in commissioning the Column, and then, in the longest and most important study,
the composition of the Column by the artist and how it was intended to be 'read'. This tackles boldly the
major difficulty that to read the Column as a continuous story would require the spectator like a liberty
horse in a circus to circle around twenty-three spirals, mounting mysteriously upwards in the process. S.
sees the Column as so composed as to use most effectively the way in which it is seen. He discusses
'vertical correspondences', the occurrence of certain key scenes in the same vertical plane, and the
grouping of scenes horizontally and vertically. To this is added the repetition of certain themes, with the
occasional single significant incident, so that the spectator, already familiar with the basic story, sees
from whatever vantage point is chosen the persistent theme of victory, with odd scenes recalled to his
memory. There is even, facing the temple, a vertical epitome of the Column's story, centring on the great
figure of Victory that separates the two wars, with above it at some remove the suicide of Decebalus, and
below the strange scene of a man falling from a mule, interpreted as an incident seized upon as an omen,
with other scenes repeating major themes. There is a whole range of comment on vertical juxtapositions
and groupings of scenes, which can be picked up (by the cross-references) from the plates themselves.
This in total represents a considerable amount of comment on individual scenes. The running
commentary, based on Cichorius, is very brief, though as it is underneath the plates it does help the
narrative flow. There is a final section on the later artistic influence of the Column. There is no
bibliography, though there is an abundance of footnotes.
Perhaps inevitably there are slips on the military side. This applies to the running commentary
which retains the largely discredited notion of leather armour, accepts as masonry the camp defences
explained as turf blocks by Richmond, and describes men as legionaries in the presence of praetorian
standards.
Reading this work is a salutary experience, particularly for a Roman military archaeologist. We have
looked so long to the Column as a source of information on the Roman army we need to be reminded that
it is an artistic masterpiece, influenced by artistic precedents, composed to present to the beholder a
dramatic impression of labour and triumph, not a blow-by-blow account which could never be read.

University of Durham BRIAN DOBSON