greek&romanb

8/12/2019 Greek&RomanB

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GREEK & ROMAN

URBANISM



Classical Greece



The Greek World

http://www.uoregon.edu/~atlas/europe/maps.html



The Greek urban system



Site and Culture(enabling factors, not determining)

No floods

Abundant and diverse

resources

Fish, grain, grapes, olives,chestnuts, figs

Many isolated valleys and

islands (natural barriers)

Sea ≈ moat

Isolation meant greatersecurity, so power took a less

aggressive form both

externally and internally

Alphabet derived fromPhoenician consonant system,

promoted democracy andpublic life

Money (local)

Decentralized political power

Ritual blended withcompetition to produce a fairlyrelaxing life

Tremendously creative society:drama, poetry, sculpture,painting, logic, mathematics,geometry



The Greek Polis



The Greek Polis

A self-governing city-state

Not large cities

Plato thought ideal cityshould have 5,000

citizens

Athens at its peak had a

bit over 100,000 citizens -

- about the size of Waco

Questions:

What are the odds of Waco

producing a great thinker

like Plato or Aristotle? A great dramatist like

Sophocles, Euripides, or

Aeschylus?

Need I continue?

How were the Greeks

able to do what they did

with such small cities?



Source of Greek Creativity

Each citizen was expected to participate in the

polis in regard to its:

Political life Economic relations

Spiritual worship

Social events (e.g. dramatic performances)

Was this asking too much of people?

Would we appreciate these duties?



Greek Democracy

Decentralization ofpower was a throwback

to village governance Separation of church

and state was indicatedby distance betweenthe agora and the

acropolis Imperfect democracy:

citizens constitutedonly about 10% of thetotal urban population

Approximate mix of citizens & non-citizens

citizens

citizens' wives

citizens' children

slaves

foreigners &merchants



Agora and Acropolis

Agora

Gathering place andmarket

On the road from theharbor

Bordered by temples,workshops, vendors’stalls, statues

Place for public event

Acropolis

Elevated temple district

Contained various

temples Architectural “vocabulary”

used well into the 20th c.for banks, courthouses,town halls, etc.

Periodic processions to Acropolis also celebratedthe polis



Cities of the Roman

Empire



Forum--Pompei



Roman versus Greeks

Not as playful or moderate as

the Greeks

Inclined toward violence,

exploitation and grossexcesses of consumption

Their greatest achievements

often bear the mark of excess

but also considerable

engineering skill Rome was basically supported

by forced tribute & taxes

Conquered Greek islesby 133 BC and clonedmany of their urban

design concepts Theater

Amphitheater

Temples built on the Greekmodel, with prominent

colonnades Agora was appropriated

and became the forum



The Empire’s high-water mark



Cities as instruments of empire

Rome expanded beyond Italian peninsula in133BC

Romans played their enemies off each other,

then planted colonial cities to administerconquered lands

The “castra” or army camp was walled and laid

out in a grid → planned cities (< 5,000 pop.)

Empire’s maximum extent by 211 AD, collapsedafter 250 AD



The Roman urban system

around 200 AD



The Romans were very practical

but they also carried remnants ofan older, mystical view of the city

Augury (an animal was cut open in order to

examine its entrails for signs that it was a goodor bad place for a city)

At founding of a city, a priest would plow theoutline of the city to ritually mark it off from thesurrounding wilderness

The city was divided into quarters by thecreation of two perpendicular streets: the Cardo and the Decumanus



A Roman “castra” or military camp

and a typical Roman town



Grid (or gridiron) plan served

practical purposes, as well Easy to lay out

Easy to administer

Breezes could flow through for natural

ventilation

Easy to defend if walled



Pompeii shows that this was an

ideal, not a rule

Source: http://www.pompeii.co.uk/cd/map.htm



The Forum was their

version of

the agora

(this one is in Pompeii,

a city preserved in

volcanic ash of Mt.Vesuvius from the 1st

century BC)



The Forum

Bordered by everything important:

temples, offices, jails, butcher shops

Public processions and ceremonies tookplace there

For a mainly pedestrian population, the

surrounding colonnade was a veryimportant urban design feature



temples law courts

senate

chamberspublic records

Main forum in Rome



Roman Forum (artist’s conception)

Source: A.E.J. Morris, History of Urban Form



• Amphitheater

• Theater

• Baths

Important

“furnishings” for a

Roman city

Amphitheater, Pompeii



Large Theater, Pompeii



Small theater, Pompeii



What do these artifacts “tell” us?

Found inPompeii

Suggests theattention andcare given tohandicrafts in

cities Shows

importanceof food

storage



Roads

When it came to roads, the Romans understoodthe highway better than the city street (like us)

The intersection of the cardo and thedecumanus created a terrible traffic jam in themiddle of the city

Wheel rims on stone streets made a terrible

racket (1

st

known traffic law was a ban onwheeled traffic during daylight hours imposed byJulius Ceasar)

Night-time noise was reported to be deafening



Cities thrive as part of an

urban system



How civilized were the Romans?

For a few hundred years their aggressive,exploitative culture appeared to be eternal

“Pax Romana” (the Roman peace) was a form of

civilization The core of the empire, the city of Rome

Roman “insula” (apartment bldgs.) often burned or felldown, had no air conditioning, plumbing or heating

Sewers were often open-air, and were not connectedto housing above the 1st floor; dismal for a city of 1million

Depraved entertainment

Stagnant economy



Colosseum, RomeThe grandaddy of all Roman public places



The Colosseum Colosseum < colosseus < colossus (something

extremely huge)

Altered in English to “coliseum”

Held between 60,000 and 90,000

Dwarfed by the “Circus Maximus” (lost)

Over a mile of plumbing pipes supplied publicdrinking fountains and lavatories

Was used by the Romans for everything fromnaval competitions to gladiatorial competitions

Was used in the Middle Ages as a living space,grazing space, and fortress



Colosseum, Rome: X-section



The Colosseum today: a grotesque

skeleton



Bread and circuses

“Now that no one buys our votes, the public has

long since cast off its cares; the people that

once bestowed commands, consulships, legions

and all else, now meddles no more and longseagerly for just two things -- bread and circuses”

Decimus Junius Juvenalis (ca. 60 A.D. - 140 A.D.) a Roman satirical

poet

200,000 residents of the city of Rome depended

on bread handouts! (perhaps 1/5 of the

population)



Roman entertainment

Mass slaughter as entertainment Up to thousands of human an animal lives taken in

one “game” day

“Performers” included Christians & lions, gladiators,exotic wild animals, captives & prisoners

Bodies dumped unceremoniously in enormousstinking pits at edge of town

175 game days a year by end of the empire

People left the colosseum by the “vomitorium,”named after the special-purpose room in ahouse dedicated to purging (after typical Romanbingeing)



Subterranean level

Held persons and

animals prior to

their use in

“contests” andspectacles

Many oil lamps

have been found:what do you think it

was like waiting in

these passages?



Still, something

appeals to us…



Practicality

seems to be embodied in a cleverly constructed

environment

Their aqueducts may remind us of our ownreservoirs and pipelines

Their carefully-designed streets and roads may

remind us of our paved roads, freeways, and

sidewalks

Their use of a street grid may remind us of our

own regularly laid out urban landscape



Typical Roman street, Pompeii



Pont du Gard, France(brought water to city of Nimes)



Odd (but familiar) mix of practicality

and impracticality Their passion for size and excess pushed

them to unsustainable levels of

consumption and territorial expansion They aqueducts were not strictly needed;

they were as much about demonstratingimperial power as about gaining access to

water City of Rome had 1352 fountains and 967

free baths



Public baths,

Pompeii

Romans took

public bathing to anextreme: hot, cold,

and lukewarm

pools, places to geta massage or work

out, even reading

rooms



Baths of Diocletian today



What they may have looked like in

300 AD



Love of luxury and comfort (for

themselves)



A courtyard surrounded by a

colonnade or portico (peristyle)



Residential frescoes in Pompeii



Residential

fountain inPompeii

Outside the city of Rome

the empire probably

seemed very good,

because its fundamentalunsustainability and

unjust behavior was less

visible there



If the Romans could visit America I

suspect they would love:1. “Supersize” food

& drinks

2. SUVs

3. Big pickuptrucks

4. Water parks

5. Minivans

6. Football

7. Harley Davidsonmotorcycles

8. The HooverDam

9. Big-screen TVs



Lessons

“Power tends to corrupt, and

absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop MandellCreighton, 1887

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