Patrons and the Monumentality of Architecture

Abstract

Architectural symbolism explains monumentality for only a small number of religious or imperial buildings, in their representations of the divine and the cosmic, or their insinuation of the semi-divine nature of the emperor. But for the majority of patrons of public buildings under the Roman Empire monumentality was not tied to such concepts, but was expressed on a more human level. Architecture contributed to the public image of individual patrons in the same way as did other ‘status symbols’. A Roman aristocrat’s house was a public monument; by contrast, the house of a disgraced man was destroyed. In what follows, I shall argue that the forms of architecture used in public as well as private buildings played an important role in promoting an owner’s social identity, and that they did so because of the ideas they embodied. For Seneca, the squared stone construction of the villa of Scipio Africanus at Liternum, with ‘towers raised on all sides to defend it’, was a physical embodiment of the idea that ‘a man’s home is his castle’. In the same way, the frequent mosaic pattern in private houses at Pompeii and other Roman colonies, especially in southern Gaul and northern Italy, of a labyrinth set within a walled circuit (Fig. 72), had a metaphoric purpose: it signalled that the house was both exclusive and impregnable, the work of a Daedalus-like master architect, and, as the aedificatio of the owner, a statement of his social rank. Because such a mosaic pattern could only be fully comprehended from the top of the building, preferably a high one, it had an inherent association with monumental architecture. Cicero chose a portico on his estates for its ‘dignity’ and a vault for its honour, while the younger Pliny in his villas at Laurentum and Tusci relished forms that he had ‘begun [himself ] or, if already begun, brought to completion and thoroughly adorned’; they included a white marble stibadium, a ‘tetrastyle’ arbour of cipollino columns, and a topiary of box which, like a monumental inscription, spelled his name and that of his architect.