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 greater security, so power took a less aggressive form both externally and internally

Alphabet derived from Phoenician consonant system, promoted democracy and public life Money (local) Decentralized political power Ritual blended with competition to produce a fairly relaxing 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 city should 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 of power was a throwback to village governance Separation of church and state was indicated by distance between the agora and the acropolis Imperfect democracy: citizens constituted only about 10% of the total urban population

Approximate mix of citizens & non-citizens

citizens citizens' wives citizens' children slaves foreigners & merchants

Agora and Acropolis

Agora Gathering place and market On the road from the harbor 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 celebrated the polis

Cities of the Roman Empire

Forum--Pompei

Roman versus Greeks

Not as playful or moderate as the Greeks Inclined toward violence, exploitation and gross excesses 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 isles by 133 BC and cloned many of their urban design concepts

Theater Amphitheater Temples built on the Greek model, with prominent colonnades Agora was appropriated and became the forum

The Empires high-water mark

Cities as instruments of empire

Rome expanded beyond Italian peninsula in 133BC Romans played their enemies off each other, then planted colonial cities to administer conquered lands The castra or army camp was walled and laid out in a grid planned cities (< 5,000 pop.) Empires maximum extent by 211AD, collapsed after 250AD

The Roman urban system around 200 AD

The Romans were very practical but they also carried remnants of an older, mystical view of the city

Augury (an animal was cut open in order to examine its entrails for signs that it was a good or bad place for a city) At founding of a city, a priest would plow the outline of the city to ritually mark it off from the surrounding wilderness The city was divided into quarters by the creation 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 took place there For a mainly pedestrian population, the surrounding colonnade was a very important urban design feature

Main forum in Rome

public records

senate chambers

temples

law courts

Roman Forum (artists conception)

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

Amphitheater, Pompeii

Important furnishings for a Roman city

Amphitheater Theater Baths

Large Theater, Pompeii

Small theater, Pompeii

What do these artifacts tell us?

Found in Pompeii Suggests the attention and care given to handicrafts in cities Shows importance of food storage

Roads

When it came to roads, the Romans understood the highway better than the city street (like us) The intersection of the cardo and the decumanus created a terrible traffic jam in the middle of the city Wheel rims on stone streets made a terrible racket (1st known traffic law was a ban on wheeled traffic during daylight hours imposed by Julius 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 fell down, had no air conditioning, plumbing or heating Sewers were often open-air, and were not connected to housing above the 1st floor; dismal for a city of 1 million Depraved entertainment Stagnant economy

Colosseum, Rome
The 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 public drinking fountains and lavatories Was used by the Romans for everything from naval 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 longs eagerly 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 enormous stinking 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 a house dedicated to purging (after typical Roman bingeing)

Subterranean level
Held persons and animals prior to their use in contests and spectacles 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 own reservoirs 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 demonstrating imperial 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 an extreme: hot, cold, and lukewarm pools, places to get a 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 in Pompeii

Outside the city of Rome the empire probably seemed very good, because its fundamental unsustainability and unjust behavior was less visible there

If the Romans could visit America I suspect they would love:

1.
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Supersize food & drinks SUVs Big pickup trucks Water parks Minivans Football Harley Davidson motorcycles The Hoover Dam Big-screen TVs

Lessons
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887