Assignment 10- Ancient Mediterranean Works

Assignment 10- Ancient works

The section of our text book that I felt most drawn to in the ancient Mediterranean worlds section was the section on Rome.  I took Latin as my language in high school, and we looked at a lot of the architectural work and art that was done by the ancient romans.  One thing that my Latin teacher always said was, “the Romans were lazy, they did nothing but copy the Greeks.”  He cited examples like the Gods and the buildings.  The one thing that he always asserted was that the Romans improved upon what the Greeks did. When I was looking at the text book, the first image that I instantly recognized what the Colosseum.  Everyone has heard of the Colloseum.  It is one of the most amazing ancient structures still standing today.  The building was planned based on Greek architecture, but the Romans built it better.  They built it to last and on a much larger scale. 

Colosseum, Rome, 72-80 C.E.

A good example of a comparison between the architectural work of the Greeks versus the Romans is looking at the similarities between the Greek Parthenon and the Roman Temple of Portunus. 

Parthenon, Athens, Greece, 438 B.C.

Temple of Portunus, Rome, Italy, first century B.C.

The similarities between these two are very telling.  The Parthenon was built approximately three centuries prior to the Temple of Portunus.  These were both holy places for the people.  The Parthenon was dedicated to the goddess Athena, and the Temple of Portunus was built for the God Portunus.  The thing that I noticed first about both temples is the columns.  Both temples have tall columns supporting the top of the building, which look very similar as well.  The roof of the Parthenon is degraded, but I can see from the structure that it probably looked very similar to the Temple of Portunus.  By the time that the Romans were building with columns, technology had become more advanced.  They had other ways to hold up the roof, which is shown in the side walls in the Temple of Portunus. The columns in the Parthenon were for the purpose of holding the building upright, whereas the columns in the Temple of Portunus was a style choice.  I think it is interesting that even though they did not have to, the Romans architects made a conscious choice to use the same design styles as the Greeks.