Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

 

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

The Colosseum in Rome, Italy; the classical orders are used, but purely for aesthetic effect.

The Maison Carrée at Nîmes in France, one of the best preserved Roman temples. A mid-sized Augustanprovincial temple of the Imperial cult.

The Alcántara Bridge, Spain, a masterpiece of ancient bridge building

The Baths of Diocletian, Rome

The Severan Basilica in Leptis Magna

An area at the Ostia Anticaarchaeological site: at one time, shops were located here

« Roman baroque », Leptis Magna, Arch of Septimus Severus

Ancient Roman architecture adopted the external language of classical Greek architecture for the purposes of the ancient Romans,^{[citation needed]} but was different from Greek buildings, becoming a new architectural style. The two styles are often considered one body of classical architecture. Roman architecture flourished in the Roman Republic and even more so under the Empire, when the great majority of surviving buildings were constructed. It used new materials, particularly concrete, and newer technologies such as the archand the dome to make buildings that were typically strong and well-engineered. Large numbers remain in some form across the empire, sometimes complete and still in use to this day.

Roman Architecture covers the period from the establishment of the Roman Republic in 509 BC to about the 4th century AD, after which it becomes reclassified as Late Antique or Byzantine architecture. Almost no substantial examples survive from before about 100 BC, and most of the major survivals are from the later empire, after about 100 AD. Roman architectural style continued to influence building in the former empire for many centuries, and the style used in Western Europe beginning about 1000 is called Romanesque architecture to reflect this dependence on basic Roman forms.

The Romans only began to achieve significant originality in architecture around the beginning of the Imperial period, after they had combined aspects of their original Etruscan architecture with others taken from Greece,^{[citation needed]}including most elements of the style we now call classical architecture. They moved from trabeated construction mostly based on columns and lintels to one based on massive walls, punctuated by arches, and later domes, both of which greatly developed under the Romans. The classical orders now became largely decorative rather than structural, except in colonnades. Stylistic developments included the Tuscan and Compositeorders; the first being a shortened, simplified variant on the Doric order and the Composite being a tall order with the floral decoration of the Corinthian and the scrolls of the Ionic.^{[citation needed]} The period from roughly 40 BC to about 230 AD saw most of the greatest achievements, before the Crisis of the Third Century and later troubles reduced the wealth and organizing power of the central government.

The Romans produced massive public buildings and works of civil engineering, and were responsible for significant developments in housing and public hygiene, for example their public and private baths and latrines, under-floor heating in the form of the hypocaust, micaglazing (examples in Ostia Antica), and piped hot and cold water (examples in Pompeii and Ostia).

Overview

Despite the technical developments of the Romans, which took their buildings far away from the basic Greek conception where columns were needed to support heavy beams and roofs, they were very reluctant to abandon the classical orders in formal public buildings, even though these had become essentially decorative^{[citation needed]}. However, they did not feel entirely restricted by Greek aestheticconcerns, and treated the orders with considerable freedom.^{[citation needed]}

Innovation started in the 3rd or 2nd century BC with the development of Roman concrete as a readily available adjunct to, or substitute for, stone and brick. More daring buildings soon followed, with great pillars supporting broad arches and domes. The freedom of concrete also inspired the colonnade screen, a row of purely decorative columns in front of a load-bearing wall. In smaller-scale architecture, concrete’s strength freed the floor plan from rectangular cells to a more free-flowing environment.

Factors such as wealth and high population densities in cities forced the ancient Romans to discover new architectural solutions of their own. The use of vaults and arches, together with a sound knowledge of building materials, enabled them to achieve unprecedented successes in the construction of imposing infrastructure for public use. Examples include the aqueducts of Rome, the Baths of Diocletian and the Baths of Caracalla, the basilicas and Colosseum. These were reproduced at a smaller scale in most important towns and cities in the Empire. Some surviving structures are almost complete, such as the town walls of Lugo in Hispania Tarraconensis, now northern Spain. The administrative structure and wealth of the empire made possible very large projects even in locations remote from the main centres,^[1]as did the use of slave labour, both skilled and unskilled.

Especially under the empire, architecture often served a political function, demonstrating the power of the Roman state in general, and of specific individuals responsible for building. Roman architecture perhaps reached its peak in the reign of Hadrian, whose many achievements include rebuilding the Pantheon in its current form and leaving his mark on the landscape of northern Britain with Hadrian’s Wall.

Origins

While borrowing much from the preceding Etruscan architecture, such as the use of hydraulics and the construction of arches, Roman prestige architecture remained firmly under the spell of Ancient Greek architecture and the classical orders.^[2] This came initially from Magna Graecia, the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and indirectly from Greek influence on the Etruscans, but after the Roman conquest of Greece directly from the best classical and Hellenistic examples in the Greek world.^{[citation needed]} The influence is evident in many ways; for example, in the introduction and use of the Triclinium in Roman villas as a place and manner of dining. Roman builders employed Greeks in many capacities, especially in the great boom in construction in the early Empire.^{[citation needed]}

Roman Architectural Revolution

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

The Roman Pantheon was the largest dome in the world for more than a millennium.^[3] It is the largest unreinforced solid concrete dome to this day^[4]

The Roman Architectural Revolution, also known as the Concrete Revolution,^[5][6][7]was the widespread use in Roman architecture of the previously little-used architectural forms of the arch, vault, and dome. For the first time in history, their potential was fully exploited in the construction of a wide range of civil engineering structures, public buildings, and military facilities. These included amphitheatres, aqueducts, baths, bridges, circuses, dams, domes, harbours, temples, and theatres.

A crucial factor in this development, which saw a trend toward monumental architecture, was the invention of Roman concrete (opus caementicium), which led to the liberation of shapes from the dictates of the traditional materials of stone and brick.^[8]

These enabled the building of the many aqueducts throughout the empire, such as the Aqueduct of Segovia, the Pont du Gard, and the eleven aqueducts of Rome. The same concepts produced numerous bridges, some of which are still in daily use, for example the Puente Romano at Mérida in Spain, and the Pont Julien and the bridge at Vaison-la-Romaine, both in Provence, France.^{[citation needed]}

The dome permitted construction of vaulted ceilings without crossbeams and made possible large covered public space such as public baths and basilicas, such as Hadrian’s Pantheon, the Baths of Diocletian and the Baths of Caracalla, all in Rome.^{[citation needed]}

The Romans first adopted the arch from the Etruscans, and implemented it in their own building. The use of arches that spring directly from the tops of columns was a Roman development, seen from the 1st century AD, that was very widely adopted in medieval Western, Byzantine and Islamic architecture.^{[citation needed]}

Domes

 History of Roman and Byzantine domes

 List of Roman domes

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

Dome of the Pantheon, inner view

The Romans were the first builders in the history of architecture to realize the potential of domes for the creation of large and well-defined interior spaces.^[9]Domes were introduced in a number of Roman building types such as temples, thermae, palaces, mausoleaand later also churches. Half-domes also became a favoured architectural element and were adopted as apses in Christian sacred architecture.

Monumental domes began to appear in the 1st century BC in Romeand the provinces around the Mediterranean Sea. Along with vaults, they gradually replaced the traditional post and lintel construction which makes use of the column and architrave. The construction of domes was greatly facilitated by the invention of concrete, a process which has been termed the Roman Architectural Revolution.^[10] Their enormous dimensions remained unsurpassed until the introduction of structural steel frames in the late 19th century (see List of the world’s largest domes).^[9][11][12]

Influence on later architecture

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

Palladian Stowe House, by William Kent

Roman architecture supplied the basic vocabulary of Pre-Romanesque and Romanesque architecture, and spread across Christian Europe well beyond the old frontiers of the empire, to Irelandand Scandinavia for example. In the East, Byzantine architecturedeveloped new styles of churches, but most other buildings remained very close to Late Roman forms. The same can be said in turn of Islamic architecture, where Roman forms long continued, especially in private buildings such as houses and the Turkish bath, and civil engineering such as fortifications and bridges.

In Europe the Italian Renaissance saw a conscious revival of correct classical styles, initially purely based on Roman examples. Vitruviuswas respectfully reinterpreted by a series of architectural writers, and the Tuscan and Composite orders formalized for the first time, to give five rather than three orders. After the flamboyance of Baroque architecture, the Neoclassical architecture of the 18th century revived purer versions of classical style, and for the first time added direct influence from the Greek world.

Numerous local classical styles developed, such as Palladian architecture, Georgian architecture and Regency architecture in the English-speaking world, Federal architecture in the United States, and later Stripped Classicism and PWA Moderne.

Roman influences may be found around us today, in banks, government buildings, great houses, and even small houses, perhaps in the form of a porch with Doric columns and a pediment or in a fireplace or a mosaic shower floor derived from a Roman original, often from Pompeii or Herculaneum. The mighty pillars, domes and arches of Rome echo in the New World too, where in Washington, D.C. stand the Capitol building, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, and other government buildings. All across the US the seats of regional government were normally built in the grand traditions of Rome, with vast flights of stone steps sweeping up to towering pillared porticoes, with huge domes gilded or decorated inside with the same or similar themes that were popular in Rome.

In Britain, a similar enthusiasm has seen the construction of thousands of neo-Classical buildings over the last five centuries, both civic and domestic, and many of the grandest country houses and mansions are purely Classical in style, an obvious example being Buckingham Palace.

Materials

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

Frigidarium of Baths of Diocletian, today Santa Maria degli Angeli

Stone

Marble is not found especially close to Rome, and was only rarely used there before Augustus, who famously boasted that he had found Rome made of brick and left it made of marble, though this was mainly as a facing for brick or concrete. The Temple of Hercules Victor of the late 2nd century BC is the earliest surviving exception in Rome. From Augustus’ reign the quarries at Carrara were extensively developed for the capital, and other sources around the empire exploited,^[13]especially the prestigious Greek marbles like Parian. Travertinelimestone was found much closer, around Tivoli, and was used from the end of the Republic; the Colosseum is mainly built of this stone, which has good load-bearing capacity, with a brick core.^[14] Other more or less local stones were used around the empire.^[15]

The Romans were extremely fond of luxury imported coloured marbles with fancy veining, and the interiors of the most important buildings were very often faced with slabs of these, which have usually now been removed even where the building survives. Imports from Greece for this purpose began in the 2nd century BC.^[16]

Roman brick

 Roman brick

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

Close-up view of the wall of the Roman shore fort at Burgh Castle, Norfolk, showing alternating courses of flint and brickwork.

The Romans made fired clay bricks from about the beginning of the Empire, replacing earlier sun-dried mud-brick. Roman brick was almost invariably of a lesser height than modern brick, but was made in a variety of different shapes and sizes.^[17]Shapes included square, rectangular, triangular and round, and the largest bricks found have measured over three feet in length.^[18] Ancient Roman bricks had a general size of 1½ Roman feet by 1 Roman foot, but common variations up to 15 inchesexisted. Other brick sizes in ancient Rome included 24″ x 12″ x 4″, and 15″ x 8″ x 10″. Ancient Roman bricks found in France measured 8″ x 8″ x 3″. The Constantine Basilica in Trier is constructed from Roman bricks 15″ square by 1½ » thick.^[19] There is often little obvious difference (particularly when only fragments survive) between Roman bricks used for walls on the one hand, and tiles used for roofing or flooring on the other, so archaeologists sometimes prefer to employ the generic term ceramic building material (or CBM).

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

The St. George Rotunda (4th century) and some remains of Serdicacan be seen in the foreground

The Romans perfected brick-making during the first century of their empire and used it ubiquitously, in public and private construction alike. The Romans took their brickmaking skills everywhere they went, introducing the craft to the local populations.^[19] The Roman legions, which operated their own kilns, introduced bricks to many parts of the empire; bricks are often stamped with the mark of the legion that supervised their production. The use of bricks in southern and western Germany, for example, can be traced back to traditions already described by the Roman architect Vitruvius. In the British Isles, the introduction of Roman brick by the ancient Romans was followed by a 600–700 year gap in major brick production.

Roman concrete

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

Example of opus caementicium on a tomb on the ancient Appian Way in Rome. The original covering has been removed.

Main article: Roman concrete

Concrete quickly supplanted brick as the primary building material,^{[citation needed]} and more daring buildings soon followed, with great pillars supporting broad arches and domes rather than dense lines of columns suspending flat architraves. The freedom of concrete also inspired the colonnade screen, a row of purely decorative columns in front of a load-bearing wall. In smaller-scale architecture, concrete’s strength freed the floor plan from rectangular cells to a more free-flowing environment.^{[citation needed]}Most of these developments are described by Vitruvius, writing in the first century AD in his work De Architectura.

Although concrete had been used on a minor scale in Mesopotamia, Roman architects perfected Roman concrete and used it in buildings where it could stand on its own and support a great deal of weight. The first use of concrete by the Romans was in the town of Cosasometime after 273 BC. Ancient Roman concrete was a mixture of lime mortar, aggregate, pozzolana, water, and stones, and was stronger than previously-used concretes. The ancient builders placed these ingredients in wooden frames where they hardened and bonded to a facing of stones or (more frequently) bricks. The aggregates used were often much larger than in modern concrete, amounting to rubble.

When the framework was removed, the new wall was very strong, with a rough surface of bricks or stones. This surface could be smoothed and faced with an attractive stucco or thin panels of marble or other coloured stones called revetment. Concrete construction proved to be more flexible and less costly than building solid stone buildings. The materials were readily available and not difficult to transport. The wooden frames could be used more than once, allowing builders to work quickly and efficiently. Concrete is arguably the Roman contribution most relevant to modern architecture.

City design

Giacobbe Giusti, Ancient Roman architecture

The Temple of Claudius to the south (left) of the Colosseum (model of Imperial Rome at the Museo della civiltà romana in Rome)

Further information: Centuriation, Decumanus Maximus, and Cardo

The ancient Romans employed regular orthogonal structures on which they molded their colonies.^{[20][21] [22]}They probably were inspired by Greek and Hellenic examples, as well as by regularly planned cities that were built by the Etruscans in Italy.^[23] (see Marzabotto)

The Romans used a consolidated scheme for city planning, developed for military defense and civil convenience. The basic plan consisted of a central forum with city services, surrounded by a compact, rectilinear grid of streets, and wrapped in a wall for defense. To reduce travel times, two diagonal streets crossed the square grid, passing through the central square. A river usually flowed through the city, providing water, transport, and sewage disposal.^[24] Hundreds of towns and cities were built by the Romans throughout their empire. Many European towns, such as Turin, preserve the remains of these schemes, which show the very logical way the Romans designed their cities. They would lay out the streets at right angles, in the form of a square grid. All roads were equal in width and length, except for two, which were slightly wider than the others. One of these ran east–west, the other, north–south, and they intersected in the middle to form the center of the grid. All roads were made of carefully fitted flag stones and filled in with smaller, hard-packed rocks and pebbles. Bridges were constructed where needed. Each square marked off by four roads was called an insula, the Roman equivalent of a modern city block.

Model of the 1st century Philippopolis(Plovdiv) in the Roman period created by arch. Matey Mateev

Each insula was 80 yards (73 m) square, with the land within it divided. As the city developed, each insula would eventually be filled with buildings of various shapes and sizes and crisscrossed with back roads and alleys. Most insulae were given to the first settlers of a Roman city, but each person had to pay to construct his own house.

The city was surrounded by a wall to protect it from invaders and to mark the city limits. Areas outside city limits were left open as farmland. At the end of each main road was a large gateway with watchtowers. A portcullis covered the opening when the city was under siege, and additional watchtowers were constructed along the city walls. An aqueduct was built outside the city walls.

The development of Greek and Roman urbanization is relatively well-known, as there are relatively many written sources, and there has been much attention to the subject, since the Romans and Greeks are generally regarded as the main ancestors of modern Western culture. It should not be forgotten, though, that the Etruscans had many considerable towns and there were also other cultures with more or less urban settlements in Europe, primarily of Celtic origin.^[25]

Amphitheatre

 Roman amphitheatre

 List of Roman amphitheatres

The amphitheatre was, with the triumphal arch and basilica, the only major new type of building developed by the Romans.^[26] Some of the most impressive secular buildings are the amphitheatres, over 200 being known and many of which are well preserved, such as that at Arles, as well as its progenitor, the Colosseum in Rome. They were used for gladiatorial contests, public displays, public meetings and bullfights, the tradition of which still survives in Spain. Their typical shape, functions and name distinguish them from Roman theatres, which are more or less semicircular in shape; from the circuses (akin to hippodromes) whose much longer circuits were designed mainly for horse or chariot racing events; and from the smaller stadia, which were primarily designed for athletics and footraces.^[27]

The Amphitheatre of Pompeii, built around 70 BC and buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 79 AD, once hosted spectacles with gladiators

The earliest Roman amphitheatres date from the middle of the first century BC, but most were built under Imperial rule, from the Augustan period (27 BC–14 AD) onwards.^[28] Imperial amphitheatres were built throughout the Roman empire; the largest could accommodate 40,000–60,000 spectators, and the most elaborate featured multi-storeyed, arcaded façades and were elaborately decorated with marble, stucco and statuary.^[29] After the end of gladiatorial games in the 5th century and of animal killings in the 6th, most amphitheatres fell into disrepair, and their materials were mined or recycled. Some were razed, and others converted into fortifications. A few continued as convenient open meeting places; in some of these, churches were sited.^[30]

Architecturally, they are typically an example of the Roman use of the classical orders to decorate large concrete walls pierced at intervals, where the columns have nothing to support. Aesthetically, however, the formula is successful.

Basilica

Northern aisle of the Basilica of Maxentius in Rome

The Aula Palatina of Trier, Germany(then part of the Roman province of Gallia Belgica), built during the reign of Constantine I (r. 306-337 AD)

The Roman basilica was a large public building where business or legal matters could be transacted. They were normally where the magistrates held court, and used for other official ceremonies, having many of the functions of the modern town hall. The first basilicas had no religious function at all. As early as the time of Augustus, a public basilica for transacting business had been part of any settlement that considered itself a city, used in the same way as the late medieval covered market houses of northern Europe, where the meeting room, for lack of urban space, was set above the arcades, however. Although their form was variable, basilicas often contained interior colonnades that divided the space, giving aisles or arcaded spaces on one or both sides, with an apse at one end (or less often at each end), where the magistrates sat, often on a slightly raised dais. The central aisle tended to be wide and was higher than the flanking aisles, so that light could penetrate through the clerestory windows.

The oldest known basilica, the Basilica Porcia, was built in Rome in 184 BC by Cato the Elder during the time he was Censor. Other early examples include the basilica at Pompeii (late 2nd century BC). After Christianity became the official religion, the basilica shape was found appropriate for the first large public churches, with the attraction of avoiding reminiscences of the Greco-Roman temple form.

Circus

The Roman circus was a large open-air venue used for public events in the ancient Roman Empire. The circuses were similar to the ancient Greek hippodromes, although circuses served varying purposes and differed in design and construction. Along with theatres and amphitheatres, Circuses were one of the main entertainment sites of the time. Circuses were venues for chariot races, horse races, and performances that commemorated important events of the empire were performed there. For events that involved re-enactments of naval battles, the circus was flooded with water.

The performance space of the Roman circus was normally, despite its name, an oblong rectangle of two linear sections of race track, separated by a median strip running along the length of about two thirds the track, joined at one end with a semicircular section and at the other end with an undivided section of track closed (in most cases) by a distinctive starting gate known as the carceres, thereby creating a circuit for the races.

Forum

 Roman Forum and List of monuments of the Roman Forum

The Roman Forum

A forum was a central public open space in a Romanmunicipium, or any civitas, primarily used as a marketplace, along with the buildings used for shops and the stoas used for open stalls. Other large public buildings were often sited at the edges or close by. Many forums were constructed at remote locations along a road by the magistrate responsible for the road, in which case the forum was the only settlement at the site and had its own name, such as Forum Popili or Forum Livi.^[31]

During the years of the Republic, Augustus claimed he « found the city in brick and left it in marble ».^[32] While chances are high that this was an exaggeration, there is something to be said for the influx of marble use in Roman Forum from 63 BC onwards. During Augustus reign, the Forum was described to have been « a larger, freer space than was the Forum of imperial times. »^[33] The Forum began to take on even more changes upon the arrival of Julius Casear who drew out extensive plans for the market hub. While Casear’s death came prematurely, the ideas himself, as well as Augustus had in regards to the Forum proved to be the most influential for years to come. According to Walter Dennison’s The Roman Forum As Cicero Saw It, the author writes that « the diverting of public business to the larger and splendid imperial fora erected in the vicinity resulted in leaving the general design of the Forum Romanum ».^[33]

Every city had at least one forum of varying size. In addition to its standard function as a marketplace, a forum was a gathering place of great social significance, and often the scene of diverse activities, including political discussions and debates, rendezvous, meetings, etc. Much the best known example is the Roman Forum, the earliest of several in Rome.

In new Roman towns the forum was usually located at, or just off, the intersection of the main north-south and east-west streets (the cardoand decumanus). All forums would have a Temple of Jupiter at the north end, and would also contain other temples, as well as the basilica; a public weights and measures table, so customers at the market could ensure they were not being sold short measures; and would often have the baths nearby.

A panoramic view of the Forum Trajanum, with the Trajan’s Column on the far left.

Horreum

The Horrea Epagathiana et Epaphroditiana, a horreum in Ostia (Rome), Italy, built c. 145-150 AD

A horreum was a type of public warehouse used during the ancient Roman period. Although the Latin term is often used to refer to granaries, Roman horrea were used to store many other types of consumables; the giant Horrea Galbae in Rome were used not only to store grain but also olive oil, wine, foodstuffs, clothing and even marble.^[34] By the end of the imperial period, the city of Rome had nearly 300 horrea to supply its demands.^[35] The biggest were enormous, even by modern standards; the Horrea Galbae contained 140 rooms on the ground floor alone, covering an area of some 225,000 square feet (21,000 m²).^[36]

The first horrea were built in Rome towards the end of the 2nd century BC,^[37] with the first known public horreum being constructed by the ill-fated tribune, Gaius Gracchus in 123 BC.^[38] The word came to be applied to any place designated for the preservation of goods; thus it was often used refer to cellars (horrea subterranea), but it could also be applied to a place where artworks were stored,^[39] or even to a library.^[40] Some public horrea functioned somewhat like banks, where valuables could be stored, but the most important class of horrea were those where foodstuffs such as grain and olive oil were stored and distributed by the state.^[41]

The word itself is thought to have linguist roots tied to the word hordeum which in Latin means ‘barley’.^[42] In the John’s Hopkin’s University Press, The Classical Weekly states that « Pliny the Elder does indeed make a distinction between the two words. He describes the horreum as a structure made of brick, the walls of which were not less than three feet thick; it had no windows or openings for ventilation ».^[43] Furthermore, the storehouses would also host oil and wine and also utilize large jars that could serve as cache’s for large amounts of products.These storehouses were also used to house keep large sums of money and were used much like personal storage units today are. Romans were « These horrea were divided and subdivided, so that one could hire only so much space as one wanted, a whole room (cella), a closet (armarium), or only a chest or strong box (arca, arcula, locus, loculus). »^[43]

Insula

 Insula (building)

Insula in Ostia Antica

Multi-story apartment blocks called insulae catered to a range of residential needs. The cheapest rooms were at the top owing to the inability to escape in the event of a fire and the lack of piped water. Windows were mostly small, facing the street, with iron security bars. Insulae were often dangerous, unhealthy, and prone to fires because of overcrowding and haphazard cooking arrangements.^{[citation needed]} There are examples in the Roman port town of Ostia, that date back to the reign of Trajan, but they seem to have been found only in Rome and a few other places. Elsewhere writers report them as something remarkable, but Livy and Vituvius refer to them in Rome.^[44] External walls were in « Opus Reticulatum » and interiors in « Opus Incertum », which would then be plastered and sometimes painted.

To lighten up the small dark rooms, tenants able to afford a degree of painted colourful murals on the walls. Examples have been found of jungle scenes with wild animals and exotic plants. Imitation windows (trompe l’oeil) were sometimes painted to make the rooms seem less confined.

Ancient Rome had elaborate and luxurious houses owned by the elite. The average house, or in cities apartment, of a commoner or plebe did not contain many luxuries. The domus, or single-family residence, was only for the well-off in Rome, with most having a layout of the closed unit, consisting of one or two rooms. Between 312 and 315 A.D. Rome had 1781 domus and 44,850 of insulae.^[45]

Insulae have been the subject of great debate for historians of Roman culture, defining the various meanings of the word.^[46] Insula was a word used to describe apartment buildings, or the apartments themselves,^[47] meaning apartment, or inhabitable room, demonstrating just how small apartments for Plebes were. Urban divisions were originally street blocks, and later began to divide into smaller divisions, the word insula referring to both blocks and smaller divisions. The insula contained cenacula, tabernae, storage rooms under the stairs, and lower floor shops. Another type of housing unit for Plebes was a cenaculum, an apartment, divided into three individual rooms: cubiculum, exedra, and medianum. Common Roman apartments were mainly masses of smaller and larger structures, many with narrow balconies that present mysteries as to their use, having no doors to access them, and they lacked the excessive decoration and display of wealth that aristocrats’ houses contained. Luxury in houses was not common, as the life of the average person did not consist of being in their houses, as they instead would go to public baths, and engage in other communal activities.

Lighthouses

Roman lighthouse

The Tower of Hercules, a Roman lighthouse in Spain

Many lighthouses were built around the Mediterranean and the coasts of the empire, including the Tower of Herculesat A Coruña in northern Spain, a structure which survives to this day. A smaller lighthouse at Dover, England also exists as a ruin about half the height of the original. The light would have been provided by a fire at the top of the structure.

Ruins of the Roman Thermae in Varna, Bulgaria

Thermae

 Thermae

 List of Roman public baths

All Roman cities had at least one thermae, a popular facility for public bathing, exercising and socializing. Exercise might include wrestling and weight-lifting, as well as swimming. Bathing was an important part of the Roman day, where some hours might be spent, at a very low cost subsidized by the government. Wealthier Romans were often accompanied by one or more slaves, who performed any required tasks such as fetching refreshment, guarding valuables, providing towels, and at the end of the session, applying olive oil to their masters’ bodies which was then scraped off with a strigil, a scraper made of wood or bone. Romans did not wash with soap and water as we do now.

Roman bath-houses were also provided for private villas, town housesand forts. They were normally supplied with water from an adjacent river or stream, or by aqueduct. The design of thermae is discussed by Vitruvius in De Architectura.

Temples

 Roman temple

« Roman Baroque » Temple of Bacchus at Baalbek, Lebanon

Roman temples were among the most important and richest buildings in Roman culture, though only a few survive in any sort of complete state. Their construction and maintenance was a major part of ancient Roman religion, and all towns of any importance had at least one main temple, as well as smaller shrines. The main room (cella) housed the cult image of the deity to whom the temple was dedicated, and often a small altar for incense or libations. Behind the cella was a room or rooms used by temple attendants for storage of equipment and offerings.

Some remains of many Roman temples survive, above all in Rome itself, but the relatively few near-complete examples were nearly all converted to Christian churches (and sometimes subsequently to mosques), usually a considerable time after the initial triumph of Christianity under Constantine. The decline of Roman religion was relatively slow, and the temples themselves were not appropriated by the government until a decree of the Emperor Honorius in 415. Some of the oldest surviving temples include the Temple of Hercules Victor(mid 2nd century BC) and Temple of Portunus (120-80 BC), both standing within the Forum Boarium.

The Temple of Hercules Victor, Rome, built in the mid-2nd century BC, most likely by Lucius Mummius Achaicus, who won the Achaean War.

The form of the Roman temple was mainly derived from the Etruscan model, but using Greek styles^{[citation needed]}. Roman temples emphasised the front of the building, which followed Greek temple models and typically consisted of wide steps leading to a portico with columns, a pronaos, and usually a triangular pedimentabove, which was filled with statuary in the most grand examples; this was as often in terracotta as stone, and no examples have survived except as fragments. However, unlike the Greek models, which generally gave equal treatment to all sides of the temple, which could be viewed and approached from all directions, the sides and rear of Roman temples might be largely undecorated (as in the Pantheon, Rome and Vic), inaccessible by steps (as in the Maison Carrée and Vic), and even back on to other buildings. As in the Maison Carrée, columns at the side might be half-columns, emerging from (« engaged with » in architectural terminology) the wall.^[48] The platform on which the temple sat was typically raised higher in Roman examples than Greek, with up ten or twelve or more steps rather than the three typical in Greek temples; the Temple of Claudius was raised twenty steps. These steps were normally only at the front, and typically not the whole width of that.

The Temple of Portunus, god of grain storage, keys, livestock and ports.^[49] Rome, built between 120–80 BC

The Greek classical orders in all their details were closely followed in the façades of temples, as in other prestigious buildings. However the idealized proportions between the different elements set out by the only significant Roman writer on architecture to survive, Vitruvius, and subsequent Italian Renaissance writers, do not reflect actual Roman practice, which could be very variable, though always aiming at balance and harmony. Following a Hellenistic trend, the Corinthian order and its variant the Composite order were most common in surviving Roman temples, but for small temples like that at Alcántara, a simple Tuscan order could be used.^[50]

There was considerable local variation in style, as Roman architects often tried to incorporate elements the population expected in its sacred architecture. This was especially the case in Egypt and the Near East, where different traditions of large stone temples were already millennia old. The Romano-Celtic temple was a simple style for small temples found in the Western Empire, and by far the most common type in Roman Britain. It often lacked any of the distinctive classical features, and may have had considerable continuity with pre-Roman temples of the Celtic religion.

Theatres

Roman Theatre (Mérida), Spain

Plovdiv Roman theatre, Bulgaria

Roman theatres were built in all areas of the empire from Spain, to the Middle East. Because of the Romans’ ability to influence local architecture, we see numerous theatres around the world with uniquely Roman attributes.^[51]

These buildings were semi-circular and possessed certain inherent architectural structures, with minor differences depending on the region in which they were constructed. The scaenae frons was a high back wall of the stage floor, supported by columns. The proscaeniumwas a wall that supported the front edge of the stage with ornately decorated niches off to the sides. The Hellenistic influence is seen through the use of the proscaenium. The Roman theatre also had a podium, which sometimes supported the columns of the scaenae frons. The scaenae was originally not part of the building itself, constructed only to provide sufficient background for the actors. Eventually, it became a part of the edifice itself, made out of concrete. The theatre itself was divided into the stage (orchestra) and the seating section (auditorium). Vomitoria or entrances and exits were made available to the audience.^[52]

Villa

Villa of the Mysteries just outside Pompeii, seen from above

Main article: Roman villa

See also: Villa rustica, List of Roman villas in England, and List of Roman villas in Belgium

A Roman villa was a country house built for the upper class, while a domus was a wealthy family’s house in a town. The Empire contained many kinds of villas, not all of them lavishly appointed with mosaic floors and frescoes. In the provinces, any country house with some decorative features in the Roman style may be called a « villa » by modern scholars.^[53] Some were pleasure palaces such as those— like Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli— that were situated in the cool hills within easy reach of Rome or— like the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum— on picturesque sites overlooking the Bay of Naples. Some villas were more like the country houses of England or Poland, the visible seat of power of a local magnate, such as the famous palace rediscovered at Fishbourne in Sussex.

Suburban villas on the edge of cities were also known, such as the Middle and Late Republican villas that encroached on the Campus Martius, at that time on the edge of Rome, and which can be also seen outside the city walls of Pompeii, including the Villa of the Mysteries, famous for its frescos. These early suburban villas, such as the one at Rome’s Auditorium site^[54] or at Grottarossa in Rome, demonstrate the antiquity and heritage of the villa suburbana in Central Italy. It is possible that these early, suburban villas were also in fact the seats of power (maybe even palaces) of regional strongmen or heads of important families (gentes).

A third type of villa provided the organizational center of the large farming estates called latifundia; such villas might be lacking in luxuries. By the 4th century, villa could simply mean an agricultural estate or holding: Jerome translated the Gospel of Mark (xiv, 32) chorion, describing the olive grove of Gethsemane, with villa, without an inference that there were any dwellings there at all (Catholic Encyclopedia « Gethsemane »).

With the colossal Diocletian’s Palace, built in the countryside but later turned into a fortified city, a form of residential castle emerges, that anticipates the Middle Ages.

Watermills

List of ancient watermills

The initial invention of the watermill appears to have occurred in the hellenized eastern Mediterranean in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great and the rise of Hellenistic science and technology.^[55][56][57] In the subsequent Roman era, the use of water-power was diversified and different types of watermills were introduced. These include all three variants of the vertical water wheelas well as the horizontal water wheel.^[58][59] Apart from its main use in grinding flour, water-power was also applied to pounding grain,^[60][61][62] crushing ore,^[63] sawing stones^[64] and possibly fulling and bellows for iron furnaces.^[65]

Decorative structures

Monoliths

 List of ancient Greek and Roman monoliths

‘

The capital of Trajan’s Column, Rome

In architecture, a monolith is a structure which has been excavated as a unit from a surrounding matrix or outcropping of rock.^[66] Monoliths are found in all types of Roman buildings. They were either: quarried without being moved; or quarried and moved; or quarried, moved and lifted clear off the ground into their position (e.g. architraves); or quarried, moved and erected in an upright position (e.g. columns).

Transporting was done by land or water (or a combination of both), in the later case often by special-built ships such as obelisk carriers.^[67]For lifting operations, ancient cranes were employed since ca. 515 BC,^[68] such as in the construction of Trajan’s Column.^[69]

Obelisks

 List of obelisks in Rome

Obelisco Sallustiano in front of the church of Trinità dei Monti in Rome

An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top. These were originally called « tekhenu » by the builders, the ancient Egyptians. The Greeks who saw them used the Greek ‘obeliskos’ to describe them, and this word passed into Latin and then English.^[70] The Romans commissioned obelisks in an ancient Egyptian style. Examples include:

• Arles, France – the Arles Obelisk, in Place de la République, a 4th-century obelisk of Romanorigin
• Benevento, Italy – three Roman obelisks^[71][72]
• Munich – obelisk of Titus Sextius Africanus, Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, Kunstareal, 1st century AD, 5.80 m
• Rome – there are five ancient Roman obelisks in Rome.

Roman gardens

Gardens in Conimbriga, Portugal

Roman gardens were influenced by Egyptian, Persian, and Greek gardening techniques^{[citation needed]}. In Ancient Latium, a garden was part of every farm. According to Cato the Elder, every garden should be close to the house and should have flower beds and ornamental trees.^[73] Horace wrote that during his time flower gardens became a national indulgence.^[74]

Gardens were not reserved for the extremely wealthy. Excavations in Pompeii show that gardens attaching to residences were scaled down to meet the space constraints of the home of the average Roman. Modified versions of Roman garden designs were adopted in Roman settlements in Africa, Gaul, and Britannia. As town houses were replaced by tall insula (apartment buildings), these urban gardens were replaced by window boxes or roof gardens.^{[citation needed]}

Triumphal arch

List of Roman triumphal arches

The Arch of Titus in Rome, an early Roman imperial triumphal arch with a single archway

Titus‘ triumphal procession depicted on the Arch of Titus, showing the loot captured from Jerusalem in 81 AD

A triumphal arch is a monumental structure in the shape of an archwaywith one or more arched passageways, often designed to span a road. The origins of the Roman triumphal arch are unclear. There were precursors to the triumphal arch within the Roman world; in Italy, the Etruscans used elaborately decorated single bay arches as gates or portals to their cities. Surviving examples of Etruscan arches can still be seen at Perugia and Volterra.^[75] The two key elements of the triumphal arch – a round-topped arch and a square entablature – had long been in use as separate architectural elements in ancient Greece.

The innovation of the Romans was to use these elements in a single free-standing structure. The columns became purely decorative elements on the outer face of arch, while the entablature, liberated from its role as a building support, became the frame for the civic and religious messages that the arch builders wished to convey.^[76] Little is known about how the Romans viewed triumphal arches. Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century AD, was the only ancient author to discuss them.^[77] He wrote that they were intended to « elevate above the ordinary world » an image of an honoured person usually depicted in the form of a statue with a quadriga.^[77]

The first recorded Roman triumphal arches were set up in the time of the Roman Republic.^[78] Generals who were granted a triumph were termed triumphators and would erect fornices or honorific arches bearing statues to commemorate their victories.^[79] Roman triumphal practices changed significantly at the start of the imperial period when the first Roman Emperor Augustus decreed that only emperors would be granted triumphs. The triumphal arch changed from being a personal monument to being an essentially propagandistic one, serving to announce and promote the presence of the ruler and the laws of the state.^[75] Arches were not necessarily built as entrances, but – unlike many modern triumphal arches – they were often erected across roads and were intended to be passed through, not round.^[80]

Most Roman triumphal arches were built during the imperial period. By the fourth century AD there were 36 such arches in Rome, of which three have survived – the Arch of Titus (AD 81), the Arch of Septimius Severus (203-205) and the Arch of Constantine (312). Numerous arches were built elsewhere in the Roman Empire.^[78] The single arch was the most common, but many triple arches were also built, of which the Triumphal Arch of Orange (circa AD 21) is the earliest surviving example. From the 2nd century AD, many examples of the arcus quadrifrons – a square triumphal arch erected over a crossroads, with arched openings on all four sides – were built, especially in North Africa. Arch-building in Rome and Italy diminished after the time of Trajan (AD 98-117) but remained widespread in the provinces during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD; they were often erected to commemorate imperial visits.^[79]

The Arch of Augustus in Rimini(Ariminum), dedicated to Augustus by the Roman Senate in 27 BC, the oldest surviving Roman triumphal arch

The ornamentation of an arch was intended to serve as a constant visual reminder of the triumph and triumphator. The façade was ornamented with marble columns, and the piers and attics with decorative cornices. Sculpted panels depicted victories and achievements, the deeds of the triumphator, the captured weapons of the enemy or the triumphal procession itself. The spandrels usually depicted flying Victories, while the attic was often inscribed with a dedicatory inscription naming and praising the triumphator. The piers and internal passageways were also decorated with reliefs and free-standing sculptures. The vault was ornamented with coffers. Some triumphal arches were surmounted by a statue or a currus triumphalis, a group of statues depicting the emperor or general in a quadriga.^[75][79]

Inscriptions on Roman triumphal arches were works of art in themselves, with very finely cut, sometimes gilded letters. The form of each letter and the spacing between them was carefully designed for maximum clarity and simplicity, without any decorative flourishes, emphasizing the Roman taste for restraint and order. This conception of what later became the art of typography remains of fundamental importance down to the present day.^[80]

Victory columns

 List of Roman victory columns

Infrastructure

A Roman street in Pompeii

Roads

Roman roads were vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, and were built from about 500 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire.^[81] They provided efficient means for the overland movement of armies, officials and civilians, and the inland carriage of official communications andtrade goods.^[82] At the peak of Rome’s development, no fewer than 29 great military highways radiated from the capital, and the Late Empire’s 113 provinces were interconnected by 372 great road links.^[83][84] Roman road builders aimed at a regulation width (see Laws and standards above), but actual widths have been measured at between 3.6 ft (1.1 m) and more than 23 ft (7.0 m). Today, the concrete has worn from the spaces around the stones, giving the impression of a very bumpy road, but the original practice was to produce a surface that was no doubt much closer to being flat.

Aqueduct

Roman aqueduct

 List of aqueducts in the Roman Empire

The Aqueduct of Segovia, Spain

The Pont du Gard, near Vers-Pont-du-Gard, France

The Romans constructed numerous aqueducts in order to bring water from distant sources into their cities and towns, supplying public baths, latrines, fountains and private households. Waste water was removed by complex sewage systems and released into nearby bodies of water, keeping the towns clean and free from effluent. Aqueducts also provided water for mining operations, milling, farms and gardens.

Aqueducts moved water through gravity alone, being constructed along a slight downward gradient within conduits of stone, brick or concrete. Most were buried beneath the ground, and followed its contours; obstructing peaks were circumvented or, less often, tunnelled through. Where valleys or lowlands intervened, the conduit was carried on bridgework, or its contents fed into high-pressure lead, ceramic or stone pipes and siphoned across. Most aqueduct systems included sedimentation tanks, sluices and distribution tanks to regulate the supply at need.

Rome‘s first aqueduct supplied a water-fountain sited at the city’s cattle market. By the third century AD, the city had eleven aqueducts, sustaining a population of over a million in a water-extravagant economy; most of the water supplied the city’s many public baths. Cities and municipalities throughout the Roman Empire emulated this model, and funded aqueducts as objects of public interest and civic pride, « an expensive yet necessary luxury to which all could, and did, aspire. »^[85]

Most Roman aqueducts proved reliable, and durable; some were maintained into the early modern era, and a few are still partly in use. Methods of aqueduct surveying and construction are noted by Vitruvius in his work De Architectura (1st century BC). The general Frontinus gives more detail in his official report on the problems, uses and abuses of Imperial Rome’s public water supply. Notable examples of aqueduct architecture include the supporting piers of the Aqueduct of Segovia, and the aqueduct-fed cisterns of Constantinople.

Bridges

The Alcántara Bridge, Spain, a masterpiece of ancient bridge building

Main article: Roman bridge

Further information: List of Roman bridges

Roman bridges, built by ancient Romans, were the first large and lasting bridges built.^[86] Roman bridges were built with stone and had the arch as the basic structure (see arch bridge). Most utilized concrete as well, which the Romans were the first to use for bridges.

Roman arch bridges were usually semicircular, although a few were segmental (such as Alconétar Bridge). A segmental arch is an arch that is less than a semicircle.^[87] The advantages of the segmentalarch bridge were that it allowed great amounts of flood water to pass under it, which would prevent the bridge from being swept away during floods and the bridge itself could be more lightweight. Generally, Roman bridges featured wedge-shaped primary arch stones (voussoirs) of the same in size and shape. The Romans built both single spans and lengthy multiple arch aqueducts, such as the Pont du Gard and Segovia Aqueduct. Their bridges featured from an early time onwards flood openings in the piers, e.g. in the Pons Fabricius in Rome (62 BC), one of the world’s oldest major bridges still standing. Roman engineers were the first and until the industrial revolution the only ones to construct bridges with concrete, which they called Opus caementicium. The outside was usually covered with brick or ashlar, as in the Alcántara bridge.

The Romans also introduced segmental arch bridges into bridge construction. The 330 m long Limyra Bridge in southwestern Turkeyfeatures 26 segmental arches with an average span-to-rise ratio of 5.3:1,^[88] giving the bridge an unusually flat profile unsurpassed for more than a millennium. Trajan’s bridge over the Danube featured open-spandrel segmental arches made of wood (standing on 40 m high concrete piers). This was to be the longest arch bridge for a thousand years both in terms of overall and individual span length, while the longest extant Roman bridge is the 790 m long Puente Romano at Mérida.

Canals

 List of Roman canals

Roman canals were typically multi-purpose structures, intended for irrigation, drainage, land reclamation, flood control and navigationwhere feasible. Some navigational canals were recorded by ancient geographers and are still traceable by modern archaeology. Channels which served the needs of urban water supply are covered at the List of aqueducts in the Roman Empire.

Cisterns[edit]

 List of Roman cisterns

The Basilica Cistern in Constantinople provided water for the Imperial Palace.

Freshwater reservoirs were commonly set up at the termini of aqueducts and their branch lines, supplying urban households, agricultural estates, imperial palaces, thermae or naval bases of the Roman navy.^[89]

Dams

Further information: List of Roman dams and reservoirs

Roman dam construction began in earnest in the early imperial period.^[90] For the most part, it concentrated on the semi-arid fringe of the empire, namely the provinces of North Africa, the Near East, and Hispania.^{[91] [92][93]} The relative abundance of Spanish dams below is due partly to more intensive field work there; for Italy only the Subiaco Dams, created by emperor Nero (54–68 AD) for recreational purposes, are attested.^[94][90] These dams are noteworthy, though, for their extraordinary height, which remained unsurpassed anywhere in the world until the Late Middle Ages.^[90]

The most frequent dam types were earth- or rock-filled embankment dams and masonry gravity dams.^[95] These served a wide array of purposes, such as irrigation, flood control, river diversion, soil-retention, or a combination of these functions.^[96] The impermeability of Roman dams was increased by the introduction of waterproof hydraulic mortar and especially opus caementicium in the Concrete Revolution. These materials also allowed for bigger structures to be built,^[97] like the Lake Homs Dam, possibly the largest water barrier today,^[98] and the sturdy Harbaqa Dam, both of which consist of a concrete core.

Roman builders were the first to realize the stabilizing effect of archesand buttresses, which they integrated into their dam designs. Previously unknown dam types introduced by the Romans include arch-gravity dams,^[93][99] arch dams,;^{[100][101][102] [103][104]} buttress dams,^[105] and multiple-arch buttress dams.^{[106][107][99][108]}

Defensive walls

Roman walls of Lugo, Spain

The Porta Nigra of Trier, Germany, capital of the Roman province of Gallia Belgica, constructed between 186 and 200 AD

The South gate of Hisarya’s Late Roman fortifications, the largest preserved in Bulgaria

 Ancient Roman defensive walls

The Romans generally fortified cities, rather than fortresses, but there are some fortified camps, such as the Saxon Shore forts like Porchester Castle in England. City walls were already significant in Etruscan architecture, and in the struggle for control of Italy under the early Republic many more were built, using different techniques. These included tightly-fitting massive irregular polygonal blocks, shaped to fit exactly in a way reminiscent of later Inca work. The Romans called a simple rampart wall an agger; at this date great height was not necessary. The Servian Wallaround Rome was an ambitious project of the early 4th century BC. The wall was up to 10 metres (32.8 ft) in height in places, 3.6 metres (12 ft) wide at its base, 11 km (7 mi) long,^[109] and is believed to have had 16 main gates, though many of these are mentioned only from writings, with no other known remains. Some of it had a fossa or ditch in front, and an agger behind, and it was enough to deter Hannibal. Later the Aurelian Wall replaced it, enclosing an expanded city, and using more sophisticated designs, with small forts at intervals.

The Romans walled major cities and towns in areas they saw as vulnerable, and parts of many walls remain incorporated in later defensive fortifications, as at Córdoba (2nd century BC), Chester(earth and wood in the 70s AD, stone from c. 100), and York (from 70s AD). Strategic walls across open country were far rarer, and Hadrian’s Wall (from 122) and the Antonine Wall (from 142, abandoned only 8 years after completion) are the most significant examples, both on the Pictish frontier of Roman Britain…

Architectural features

Mosaics

 Roman mosaic

On his return from campaigns in Greece, the general Sulla brought back what is probably the most well-known element of the early imperial period, the mosaic, a decoration made of colourful chips of stone inserted into cement. This tiling method took the empire by storm in the late first century and the second century and in the Roman home joined the well known mural in decorating floors, walls, and grottoes with geometric and pictorial designs.

Interior view with mosaics of Villa Armira in Bulgaria

There were two main techniques in Greco-Roman mosaic: opus vermiculatumused tiny tesserae, typically cubes of 4 millimeters or less, and was produced in workshops in relatively small panels which were transported to the site glued to some temporary support. The tiny tesserae allowed very fine detail, and an approach to the illusionism of painting. Often small panels called emblemata were inserted into walls or as the highlights of larger floor-mosaics in coarser work. The normal technique, however, was opus tessellatum, using larger tesserae, which were laid on site.^[110] There was a distinct native Italian style using black on a white background, which was no doubt cheaper than fully coloured work.^[111]

A specific genre of Roman mosaic obtained the name asaroton (Greek « unswept floor »). It represented an optical illusion of the leftovers from a feast on the floor of rich houses.^[112]

Hypocaust

Part-excavated hypocaust under the floor in a Roman villa in Vieux-la-Romaine, near Caen, France

A hypocaust was an ancient Roman system of underfloor heating, used to heat houses with hot air. The Roman architect Vitruvius, writing about the end of the 1st century B.C., attributes their invention to Sergius Orata. Many remains of Roman hypocausts have survived throughout Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. The hypocaust was an invention which improved the hygiene and living conditions of citizens, and was a forerunner of modern central heating.

Hypocausts were used for heating hot baths (thermae), houses and other buildings, whether public or private. The floor was raised above the ground by pillars, called pilae stacks, with a layer of tiles, then a layer of concrete, then another of tiles on top; and spaces were left inside the walls so that hot air and smoke from the furnace would pass through these enclosed areas and out of flues in the roof, thereby heating but not polluting the interior of the room.

Roman roofs

Further information: List of ancient Greek and Roman roofs

In Sicily truss roofs presumably appeared as early as 550 BC.^[113]Their potential was fully realized in the Roman period, which saw trussed roofs over 30 wide spanning the rectangular spaces of monumental public buildings such as temples, basilicas, and later churches. Such spans were three times as wide as the widest prop-and-lintel roofs and only surpassed by the largest Roman domes.^[114]

The largest truss roof by span of ancient Rome covered the Aula Regia (throne room) built for emperor Domitian (81–96 AD) on the Palatine Hill, Rome. The timber truss roof had a width of 31.67 m, slightly surpassing the postulated limit of 30 m for Roman roof constructions. Tie-beam trusses allowed for much larger spans than the older prop-and-lintel system and even concrete vaulting. Nine out of the ten largest rectangular spaces in Roman architecture were bridged this way, the only exception being the groin vaulted Basilica of Maxentius.^[114]

Spiral stairs

 List of ancient spiral stairs

The spiral stair is a type of stairway which, due to its complex helicalstructure, was introduced relatively late into architecture. Although the oldest example dates back to the 5th century BC,^[115] it was only in the wake of the influential design of Trajan’s Column that this space-saving new type permanently caught hold in Roman architecture.^[116]

Apart from the triumphal columns in the imperial cities of Rome and Constantinople, other types of buildings such as temples, thermae, basilicas and tombs were also fitted with spiral stairways.^[116] Their notable absence in the towers of the Aurelian Wall indicates that although used in medieval castles, they did not yet figure prominently in Roman military engineering.^[116] By late antiquity, separate stair towers were constructed adjacent to the main buildings, as in the Basilica of San Vitale.

The construction of spiral stairs passed on both to Christian and Islamic architecture.

Significant buildings and areas

Hadrian’s Wall, built in 122 AD in Roman Britain, in what is now Northern England

Public buildings

• Baths of Trajan – these were a massive thermae, a bathing and leisure complex, built in ancient Rome starting from 104 AD and dedicated during the Kalends of July in 109.
• Baths of Diocletian – in ancient Rome, these were the grandest of the public baths (thermae), built by successive emperors
• Baths of Caracalla
• Colosseum
• Trajan’s Column, in Rome
• Circus Maximus, in Rome
• Curia Hostilia (Senate House), in Rome
• Domus Aurea (former building)
• Pantheon
• Tower of Hercules
• Tropaeum Traiani
• Hadrian’s Villa
• Verona Arena, in Verona
• Serdica and the Church of St. George, Sofia
• Philippopolis and the Roman theatre, Plovdiv
• Baths of Odessos, Varna

Private architecture

• Alyscamps – a necropolis in Arles, France, one of the most famous necropolises of the ancient world
• Domus
• Catacombs of Rome
• Roman villa
• Pompeii and Herculaneum

Civil engineering

• Roman engineering – Romans are famous for their advanced engineering accomplishments, although some of their own inventions were improvements on older ideas, concepts and inventions.
• Roman watermill

Military engineering

• Antonine Wall, in Scotland
• Hadrian’s Wall
• Limes Germanicus

• Outline of ancient Rome
• Outline of architecture
• Architecture of Mesopotamia
• Persian architecture

• Ancient Rome portal
• Italy portal
• History portal
• Architecture portal

Footnotes

1. ^ Henig, 26
2. ^ Henig, 27
3. ^ « BUILDING BIG: Pantheon ». PBS. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
4. ^ « The Roman Pantheon: The Triumph of Concrete ». Roman Concrete. Retrieved 16 September 2014.
5. ^ DeLaine 1990, p. 407.
6. ^ Rook 1992, pp. 18f..
7. ^ Gardner 2005, p. 170.
8. ^ Ward-Perkins 1956.
9. ^ Jump up to:^a b Rasch 1985, p. 117.
10. ^ Lechtman & Hobbs 1986.
11. ^ Mark & Hutchinson 1986, p. 24.
12. ^ Heinle & Schlaich 1996, p. 27.
13. ^ Henig, 28
14. ^ Henig, 32
15. ^ Favro, (ii) Materials and construction techniques
16. ^ Henig, 22; Favro, (ii) Materials and construction techniques, which lists major quarries
17. ^ Juracek 1996, p. 310.
18. ^ Peet 1911, p. 35–36.
19. ^ Jump up to:^a b Walters & Birch 1905, p. 330–40.
20. ^ Morris 1972, pp. 39-41, 51-60.
21. ^ Kolb 1984, pp. 169-238.
22. ^ Benevolo 1993, pp. 256-267.
23. ^ Harris 1989, pp. 375–392: « The Etruscans were, in their turn, probably also influenced in this respect by Greek and Hellenic culture. »
24. ^ Vitrivius 1914.
25. ^ Demandt 1998: « In fact, many sites where the Romans created towns, such as Paris, Vienna and Bratislava, had previously been Celtic settlements of more or less urban character. »
26. ^ Henig, 26. Blagg also mentions baths, granaries, insulae and large villas.
27. ^ Bomgardner 2000, p. 37.
28. ^ Bomgardner 2000, p. 59.
29. ^ Bomgardner 2000, p. 62.
30. ^ Bomgardner 2000, p. 201–223.
31. ^ Abbott & Johnson 1926, p. 12.
32. ^ « A Page from Latin Notes Supplement XV, Entitled SOME STORIES ABOUT THE ROMAN FORUM ». Latin Notes. 3 (6). 1926. JSTOR 43943460.
33. ^ Jump up to:^a b Dennison, Walter (June 1908). « The Roman Forum as Cicero Saw It ». The Classical Journal. 3 (8): 318–326. JSTOR 3287491.
34. ^ Richardson 1992, p. 193.
35. ^ Lampe 2006, p. 61.
36. ^ Potter & Mattingly 1999, p. 180.
37. ^ Patrich 1996, p. 149.
38. ^ Métreaux 1998, p. 14-15.
39. ^ Pliny, Epist. VIII.18
40. ^ Seneca, Epist. 45
41. ^ Schmitz 1875, p. 618.
42. ^ Kaufman, David (2 December 1929). « Horrea Romana: Roman Storehouses ». The John’s Hopkin’s University Press. 7 (7): 49–54. doi:10.2307/4389377. JSTOR 4389377.
43. ^ Jump up to:^a b Kaufman, David (2 December 1929). « Horrea Romana: Roman Storehouses ». The John’s Hopkin’s University Press. no. 7 (7): 49. doi:10.2307/4389377. JSTOR 4389377.
44. ^ EERA, 134
45. ^ Hermansen 1970.
46. ^ Storey 2002.
47. ^ Storey 2004.
48. ^ Wheeler, 89
49. ^ Fowler, W. Warde (1899). Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press. pp. 202–204.
50. ^ Summerson, 8-13
51. ^ Wilson Jones 2000.
52. ^ Ros 1996.
53. ^ Ward-Perkins 2000, p. 333.
54. ^ La Villa Romana dell’Auditorium
55. ^ Wikander 2000a, pp. 396f..
56. ^ Donners, Waelkens & Deckers 2002, p. 11.
57. ^ Wilson 2002, pp. 7f..
58. ^ Wikander 2000a, pp. 373–378.
59. ^ Donners, Waelkens & Deckers 2002, pp. 12–15.
60. ^ Wikander 1985, p. 158.
61. ^ Wikander 2000b, p. 403.
62. ^ Wilson 2002, p. 16.
63. ^ Wikander 2000b, p. 407.
64. ^ Ritti, Grewe & Kessener 2007.
65. ^ Wikander 2000b, pp. 406f..
66. ^ Michael D. Gunther. « Glossary and Index of (mostly) Asian Art ». Old Stones: The Monuments of Art History. Archived from the original on 5 April 2007. Retrieved 24 September2014.^{[self-published source]}
67. ^ Wirsching 2000.
68. ^ Coulton 1974, pp. 7, 16.
69. ^ Lancaster 1999, pp. 419–439.
70. ^ Baker & Baker 2001, p. 69.
71. ^ « Museo del Sannio ». Retrieved 4 October 2014.
72. ^ « Three Obelisks in Benevento ». Retrieved 4 October 2014.
73. ^ Semple 1929, pp. 435.
74. ^ Semple 1929, pp. 436.
75. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Zaho 2004, p. 18–25.
76. ^ Sullivan 2006, p. 133–134.
77. ^ Jump up to:^a b Fürst & Grundmann 1998, p. 43.
78. ^ Jump up to:^a b Triumphal Arch at Encyclopædia Britannica
79. ^ Jump up to:^a b c F. B. Sear and Richard John. « Triumphal arch. » Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 30 Jul. 2010
80. ^ Jump up to:^a b Honour & Fleming 2005.
81. ^ Forbes 1993, p. 146.
82. ^ Kaszynski 2000, p. 9.
83. ^ Bunson 2009, p. 195.
84. ^ O’Flaherty 2002, p. 2.
85. ^ Gagarin & Fantham 2010, p. 145.
86. ^ O’Connor 1993, p. 1.
87. ^ Beall, Christine (1988). « Designing the segmental arch » (PDF). ebuild.com. Retrieved 8 May 2010.^{[permanent dead link]}
88. ^ O’Connor 1993, p. 126.
89. ^ Döring 2002, pp. 310–319.
90. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Hodge 1992, p. 87.
91. ^ Schnitter 1978, p. 28, fig. 7.
92. ^ Hodge 1992, p. 80.
93. ^ Jump up to:^a b Hodge 2000, p. 332.
94. ^ Smith 1970, pp. 60f..
95. ^ Hodge 2000, pp. 331f..
96. ^ Hodge 1992, pp. 86f..
97. ^ Smith 1971, p. 49.
98. ^ Smith 1971, p. 42.
99. ^ Jump up to:^a b James & Chanson 2002.
100. ^ Smith 1971, pp. 33–35.
101. ^ Schnitter 1978, pp. 31f..
102. ^ Schnitter 1987a, p. 12.
103. ^ Schnitter 1987c, p. 80.
104. ^ Hodge 2000, p. 332, fn. 2.
105. ^ Schnitter 1987b, pp. 59–62.
106. ^ Schnitter 1978, p. 29.
107. ^ Schnitter 1987b, pp. 60, table 1, 62.
108. ^ Arenillas & Castillo 2003.
109. ^ Fields, Nic; Peter Dennis The Walls of Rome Osprey Publishing; 10 Mar 2008 ISBN 978-1-84603-198-4 p.10 [1]
110. ^ Smith 1983, pp. 116–119.
111. ^ Smith 1983, pp. 121–123.
112. ^ Miller 1972.
113. ^ Hodge 1960, p. 38–44.
114. ^ Jump up to:^a b Ulrich 2007, pp. 148f.
115. ^ Beckmann 2002.
116. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Beckmann 2002, p. 353–356.

Works cited

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• Arenillas, Miguel; Castillo, Juan C. (2003), « Dams from the Roman Era in Spain. Analysis of Design Forms (with Appendix) », 1st International Congress on Construction History [20th–24th January], Madrid
• Baker, Rosalie F.; Baker, Charles F. (2001). Ancient Egyptians: People of the Pyramids. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-512221-3.
• Beckmann, Martin (2002), « The ‘Columnae Coc(h)lides’ of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius », Phoenix, 56 (3/4): 348–357, doi:10.2307/1192605, JSTOR 1192605
• Benevolo, Leonardo (1993). Die Geschichte der Stadt. Frankfurt/Main New York: Campus-Verl. ISBN 978-3-593-34906-0.
• Bunson, Matthew (2009). « Engineering ». Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-1027-1.
• Bomgardner, David Lee (October 2000). The Story of the Roman Amphitheatre. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-16593-8.
• Coulton, J. J. (1974), « Lifting in Early Greek Architecture », The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 94: 1–19, doi:10.2307/630416, JSTOR 630416
• DeLaine, Janet (1990), « Structural Experimentation: The Lintel Arch, Corbel and Tie in Western Roman Architecture », World Archaeology, 21(3): 407–424 (407), doi:10.1080/00438243.1990.9980116
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• Demandt, Alexander (1998). Die Kelten (in German). München: Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-43301-6.
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• Döring, Mathias (2002), « Wasser für den ‘Sinus Baianus’: Römische Ingenieur- und Wasserbauten der Phlegraeischen Felder », Antike Welt, 33(3), pp. 305–319
• Forbes, Robert James (1993). Studies in ancient technology. 2. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-00622-5.
• Fürst, Ulrich; Grundmann, Stefan (1998). The architecture of Rome: an architectural history in 400 presentations. Edition Axel Menges. ISBN 978-3-930698-60-8.
• Gagarin, Michael; Fantham, Elaine, eds. (2010). « Aqueducts ». The Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Greece and Rome. 1. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517072-6.
• Gardner, Helen (2005), Gardner’s Art Through The Ages: The Western Perspective, Wadsworth Publishing, p. 170, ISBN 978-0-495-00479-0
• Harris, W. (1989). « Invisible Cities: the Beginning of Etruscan Urbanization ». Atti del Secondo Congresso Internazionale Etrusco. Roma, 1989. pp. 375–392.
• Heinle, Erwin; Schlaich, Jörg (1996), Kuppeln aller Zeiten, aller Kulturen, Stuttgart, ISBN 978-3-421-03062-7
• Henig, Martin (ed), A Handbook of Roman Art, Chapter 2 « Architecture » by Thomas Blagg, Phaidon, 1983, ISBN 0714822140
• Hermansen, G. (1970). « The Medianum and the Roman Apartment ». Phoenix. 24 (4): 342–347. doi:10.2307/1087740. ISSN 0031-8299. JSTOR 1087740.
• Hodge, A. Trevor (1992), Roman Aqueducts & Water Supply, London: Duckworth, ISBN 978-0-7156-2194-3
• Hodge, A. Trevor (2000), « Reservoirs and Dams », in Wikander, Örjan, Handbook of Ancient Water Technology, Technology and Change in History, 2, Leiden: Brill, pp. 331–339, ISBN 978-90-04-11123-3
• Honour, Hugh; Fleming, John (2005). A world history of art. Laurence King Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85669-451-3.
• James, Patrick; Chanson, Hubert (2002), « Historical Development of Arch Dams. From Roman Arch Dams to Modern Concrete Designs », Australian Civil Engineering Transactions, CE43: 39–56
• Juracek, Judy A. (1996). Surfaces: Visual Research for Artists, Architects, and Designers. W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-73007-4.
• Kaszynski, William (2000). The American Highway: The History and Culture of Roads in the United States. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-0822-1.
• Kolb, Frank (1984). Die Stadt im Altertum. München: C.H. Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-03172-4.
• Lampe, Peter (2006). Christians at Rome in the first two centuries : from Paul to Valentinus. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-8102-3.
• Lancaster, Lynne (1999), « Building Trajan’s Column », American Journal of Archaeology, 103 (3): 419–439, doi:10.2307/506969, JSTOR 506969
• Lechtman, Heather; Hobbs, Linn (1986), « Roman Concrete and the Roman Architectural Revolution. Ceramics and Civilization », in Kingery, W. D., High Technology Ceramics: Past, Present, Future, 3, American Ceramics Society
• Hodge, A. Trevor (1960), The Woodwork of Greek Roofs, Cambridge University Press, pp. 38–44
• Mark, Robert; Hutchinson, Paul (1986), « On the Structure of the Roman Pantheon », Art Bulletin, 68 (1), pp. 24–34, doi:10.2307/3050861, JSTOR 3050861
• Métreaux, Guy P.R. (1998). « Villa rustica alimentaria et annonaria ». In Frazer, Alfred. The Roman villa : villa urbana. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. ISBN 978-0-924171-59-8.
• Miller, Stella Grobel (1972). « A Mosaic Floor from a Roman Villa at Anaploga » (PDF). Hesperia. 41 (3): 332–354. doi:10.2307/147437. ISSN 0018-098X. JSTOR 147437.
• Morris, Anthony E. (1972). History of Urban Form: Prehistory to the Renaissance. London: George Godwin Limited. ISBN 978-0711438019.
• O’Connor, Colin (1993), Roman Bridges, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-39326-3
• O’Flaherty, C.A. (2002). « Introduction: A historical overview of the development of the road ». Highways (PDF). pp. 1–5. doi:10.1016/B978-075065090-8/50002-8. ISBN 978-0-7506-5090-8.
• Patrich, Joseph (1996). « Warehouses and Granaries in Caesarea Maritima ». In Raban, Avner. Caesarea Maritima : a retrospective after two millennia. Leiden New York: E.J. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-10378-8.
• Peet, Stephen Denison (1911). The American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal. Jameson & Morse.
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• Rasch, Jürgen (1985), « Die Kuppel in der römischen Architektur. Entwicklung, Formgebung, Konstruktion », Architectura, 15, pp. 117–139
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• Zaho, Margaret Ann (2004). Imago triumphalis: the function and significance of triumphal imagery for Italian Renaissance rulers. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0-8204-6235-6.

Further reading

• Adam, Jean Pierre. Roman Building: Materials and Techniques. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
• Anderson, James C. Roman Architecture and Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
• Boëthius, Axel. Etruscan and Early Roman Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
• Fant, J. Clayton. « Quarrying and Stoneworking. » In The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World, edited by John P. Oleson, 121–135. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Hopkins, John North. The Genesis of Roman Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
• Lancaster, Lynne C. Concrete Vaulted Construction In Imperial Rome: Innovations In Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• –. « Roman Engineering and Construction. » In The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World, edited by John P. Oleson, 256–284. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008.
• MacDonald, William Lloyd. The Architecture of the Roman Empire. Rev. ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.
• Macready, Sarah, and F. H. Thompson. Roman architecture in the Greek world. London: Society of Antiquaries, 1987.
• Sear, Frank. Roman Architecture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
• Thomas, Edmund V. Monumentality and the Roman Empire: Architecture in the Antonine age. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Ulrich, Roger B. Roman Woodworking. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
• Ulrich, Roger B., and Caroline K Quenemoen. A Companion to Roman Architecture. Somerset: Wiley, 2013.

Library resources about Ancient Roman architecture

Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries

• Traianus – Technical investigation of Roman public works
• Housing and apartments in Rome – A look at various aspects of housing in ancient Rome, apartments and villas.
• Rome Reborn − A Video Tour through Ancient Rome based on a digital model

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_architecture

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

 

Giacobbe Giusti, AURELIAN, Emperor of the Roman Empire

Giacobbe Giusti, AURELIAN, Emperor of the Roman Empire

 

 

 

Giacobbe Giusti, AURELIAN, Emperor of the Roman Empire

 

Giacobbe Giusti, AURELIAN, Emperor of the Roman Empire

 

Giacobbe Giusti, AURELIAN, Emperor of the Roman Empire

 

 

Giacobbe Giusti, AURELIAN, Emperor of the Roman Empire

 

Aurelian
Augustus Giacobbe Giusti, AURELIAN, Emperor of the Roman Empire
Emperor of the Roman Empire
Reign	September 270 – September or October 275
Predecessor	Quintillus
Successor	Tacitus
Born	9 September 214 or 215 Sirmium, (present-day Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia)
Died	September 25 275 Caenophrurium, Thrace (present-day Turkey)
Spouse	Ulpia Severina
Full name Lucius Domitius Aurelianus Regnal name Imperator Caesar Lucius Domitius Aurelianus Augustus
Mother	Freedwoman of the clan Aurelius and Priestess of Sol Invictus in her native village.

Giacobbe Giusti, AURELIAN, Emperor of the Roman Empire

^[1] Bust of a Roman Emperor usually thought of as a bust of Claudius II, however there is a possibility that this bust is actually the bust of Aurelian, since the Roman who buried this would have probably buried a statue of Aurelian along with Claudius II and the other busts found in the Brescia temple. Features of the statue do match the face of Aurelian depicted on coins.

Aurelian (Latin: Lucius Domitius Aurelianus Augustus;^[a] 9 September 214 or 215 – September or October 275) was Roman Emperor from 270 to 275. Born in humble circumstances, he rose through the military ranks to become emperor. During his reign, he defeated the Alamanni after a devastating war. He also defeated the Goths, Vandals, Juthungi, Sarmatians, and Carpi. Aurelian restored the Empire’s eastern provinces after his conquest of the Palmyrene Empire in 273. The following year he conquered the Gallic Empire in the west, reuniting the Empire in its entirety. He was also responsible for the construction of the Aurelian Walls in Rome, and the abandonment of the province of Dacia.

His successes were instrumental in ending the Roman Empire’s Crisis of the Third Century, earning him the title Restitutor Orbis or « Restorer of the World ». Although Domitian was the first emperor who had demanded to be officially hailed as dominus et deus(master and god), these titles never occurred in written form on official documents until the reign of Aurelian.^[2]

Early life

Aurelian was born on 9 September, most likely in 214 AD, although 215 AD is also possible.^[3] The ancient sources do not agree on his place of birth, although he was generally accepted as being a native of Illyricum but, another common belief was that he was born in Greece. Sirmium in Pannonia Inferior (now Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia) is the preferred location,^[4] which was created by Aurelian as Emperor when he abandoned the old trans-Danubian territory of Dacia. The academic consensus is that he was of humble birth and that his father was a peasant-farmer who took his Roman nomen from his landlord, a senator of the clan Aurelius.^[5] Saunders suggests that his family might in fact have been of Roman settler origin and of much higher social status; however, his suggestion has not been taken up by his more recent academic colleagues such as Southern and Watson.

Using the evidence of the ancient sources, it was at one time suggested that Aurelian’s mother was a freedwoman of a member of the clan Aurelius and that she herself was a priestess of the Sun-Godin her native village. These two propositions, together with the tradition that the clan Aurelius had been entrusted with the maintenance of that deity’s cult in Rome, inspired the notion that this could explain the devotion to the sun-god that Aurelian was to manifest as Emperor – see below. However, it seems that this pleasant extrapolation of dubious facts is now generally accepted as being no more than just that.^[6]

Military career

It is commonly accepted that Aurelian probably joined the army in 235 AD at around age twenty.^[5] It is also generally assumed that, as a member of the lowest rank of society—albeit a citizen^[b]—he would have enlisted in the ranks of the legions. Saunders suggests that his career is more easily understood if it is assumed that his family was of Roman settler origins with a tradition of military service and that he enlisted as an equestrian.^[7] This would have opened up for him the tres militia—the three steps of the equestrian military career—one of the routes to higher equestrian office in the Imperial Service.^[c] This could be a more expeditious route to senior military and procuratorialoffices than that pursued by ex-rankers, although not necessarily less laborious.^[d] However, Saunders’s conjecture as to Aurelian’s early career is not supported by any evidence other than his nomen which could indicate Italian settler ancestry – although even this is contested – and his rise to the highest ranks which is more easily understood if he did not have to start from the bottom. His suggestion has not been taken up by other academic authorities.

Whatever his origins, Aurelian certainly must have built up a very solid reputation for military competence during the tumultuous mid-decades of the century. To be sure, the exploits detailed in the Historia Augustavita Divi Aureliani, while not always impossible, are not supported by any independent evidence and one at least is demonstrably an invention typical of that author.^[8] However, he was probably associated with Gallienus’s cavalry army and shone as an officer of that corps d’élite because, when he finally emerged in a historically reliable context in the early part of the reign of Claudius II, he seems to have been its commander.^[9]

Service under Gallienus

His successes as a cavalry commander ultimately made him a member of emperor Gallienus‘ entourage. In 268, Aurelian and his cavalry participated in general Claudius‘ victory over the Goths at the Battle of Naissus.^[10] Later that year Gallienus traveled to Italy and fought Aureolus, his former general and now usurper for the throne. Driving Aureolus back into Mediolanum, Gallienus promptly besieged his adversary in the city. However, while the siege was ongoing the Emperor was assassinated. One source says Aurelian, who was present at the siege, participated and supported general Claudius for the purple – which is plausible.^[11]

Aurelian was married to Ulpia Severina, about whom little is known. Like Aurelian she was from Dacia.^[12] They are known to have had a daughter together.^[13]

Service under Claudius

Claudius was acclaimed Emperor by the soldiers outside Mediolanum. The new Emperor immediately ordered the senate to deify Gallienus. Next, he began to distance himself from those responsible for his predecessor’s assassination, ordering the execution of those directly involved.^[14] Aureolus was still besieged in Mediolanum and sought reconciliation with the new emperor, but Claudius had no sympathy for a potential rival. The emperor had Aureolus killed and one source implicates Aurelian in the deed, perhaps even signing the warrant for his death himself.^[14]

During the reign of Claudius, Aurelian was promoted rapidly: he was given command of the elite Dalmatian cavalry, and was soon promoted to overall Magister equitum, effectively the head of the army after the Emperor – and the Emperor Claudius’ own position before his acclamation.^[14] The war against Aureolus and the concentration of forces in Italy allowed the Alamanni to break through the Rhaetian limes along the upper Danube. Marching through Raetia and the Alpsunhindered, they entered northern Italy and began pillaging the area. In early 269, emperor Claudius and Aurelian marched north to meet the Alamanni, defeating them decisively at the Battle of Lake Benacus.^[15]

While still dealing with the defeated enemy, news came from the Balkans reporting large-scale attacks from the Heruli, Goths, Gepids, and Bastarnae.^[15] Claudius immediately dispatched Aurelian to the Balkans to contain the invasion as best he could until Claudius could arrive with his main army.^[16] The Goths were besieging Thessalonicawhen they heard of emperor Claudius’ approach, causing them to abandon the siege and pillage north-eastern Macedonia. Aurelian intercepted the Goths with his Dalmatian cavalry and defeated them in a series of minor skirmishes, killing as many as three thousand of the enemy. Aurelian continued to harass the enemy, driving them northward into Upper Moesia where emperor Claudius had assembled his main army. The ensuing battle was indecisive: the northward advance of the Goths was halted but Roman losses were heavy.^[16]

Claudius could not afford another pitched battle, so he instead laid a successful ambush, killing thousands. However, the majority of the Goths escaped and began retreating south the way they had come. For the rest of year, Aurelian harassed the enemy with his Dalmatian cavalry.^[17]

Now stranded in Roman territory, the Goths’ lack of provisions began to take its toll. Aurelian, sensing his enemies’ desperation, attacked them with the full force of his cavalry, killing many and driving the remainder westward into Thrace.^[17] As winter set in, the Goths retreated into the Haemus Mountains, only to find themselves trapped and surrounded. The harsh conditions now exacerbated their shortage of food. However, the Romans underestimated the Goths and let their guard down, allowing the enemy to break through their lines and escape. Apparently emperor Claudius ignored advice, perhaps from Aurelian, and withheld the cavalry and sent in only the infantry to stop their break-out.

The determined Goths killed many of the oncoming infantry and were only prevented from slaughtering them all when Aurelian finally charged in with his Dalmatian cavalry. The Goths still managed to escape and continued their march through Thrace.^[17] The Roman army continued to follow the Goths during the spring and summer of 270. Meanwhile, a devastating plague swept through the Balkans, killing many soldiers in both armies.

Emperor Claudius fell ill on the march to the battle and returned to his regional headquarters in Sirmium, leaving Aurelian in charge of operations against the Goths.^[17] Aurelian used his cavalry to great effect, breaking the Goths into smaller groups which were easier to deal with. By late summer the Goths were defeated: any survivors were stripped of their animals and booty and were levied into the army or settled as farmers in frontier regions.^[17] Aurelian had no time to relish his victories; in late August news arrived from Sirmium that emperor Claudius was dead.^[18]

Opposition to Quintillus

When Claudius died, his brother Quintillus seized power with support of the Senate. With an act typical of the Crisis of the Third Century, the army refused to recognize the new Emperor, preferring to support one of its own commanders: Aurelian was proclaimed emperor in September 270 by the legions in Sirmium. Aurelian defeated Quintillus’ troops, and was recognized as Emperor by the Senate after Quintillus’ death. The claim that Aurelian was chosen by Claudius on his death bed^[19] can be dismissed as propaganda; later, probably in 272, Aurelian put his own dies imperii the day of Claudius’ death, thus implicitly considering Quintillus a usurper.^[20]

With his base of power secure, he now turned his attention to Rome’s greatest problems — recovering the vast territories lost over the previous two decades, and reforming the res publica.

Emperor

The Roman Empire in the 270s

Aurelian was a military commander, and during his reign he tried to keep legions’ fidelity; this coin celebrated the CONCORDIA MILITVM, « concord of the soldiers » – in other words, « harmony between the emperor and the military ».

In 248, Emperor Philip the Arab had celebrated the millennium of the city of Rome with great and expensive ceremonies and games, and the Empire had given a tremendous proof of self-confidence. In the following years, however, the Empire had to face a huge pressure from external enemies, while, at the same time, dangerous civil wars threatened the empire from within, with usurpers weakening the strength of the state. Also, the economic substrate of the state, agriculture and commerce, suffered from the disruption caused by the instability. On top of this an epidemic swept through the Empire around 250, greatly diminishing manpower both for the army and for agriculture.

The end result was that the Empire could not endure the blow of the capture of Emperor Valerian in 260 by the Sassanids. The eastern provinces found their protectors in the rulers of the city of Palmyra, in Syria, whose autonomy grew until the formation of the Palmyrene Empire, which was successful in defending against the Sassanidthreat. The western provinces, those facing the limes of the Rhine, seceded to form a third, autonomous state within the territories of the Roman Empire, which is now known as the Gallic Empire.

In Rome, the Emperor was occupied with internal menaces to his power and with the defense of Italia and the Balkans.

Reunification of the empire

The first actions of the new Emperor were aimed at strengthening his own position in his territories. Late in 270, Aurelian campaigned in northern Italia against the Vandals, Juthungi, and Sarmatians, expelling them from Roman territory. To celebrate these victories, Aurelian was granted the title of Germanicus Maximus.^[21] The authority of the Emperor was challenged by several usurpers — Septimius, Urbanus, Domitianus, and the rebellion of Felicissimus — who tried to exploit the sense of insecurity of the empire and the overwhelming influence of the armies in Roman politics. Aurelian, being an experienced commander, was aware of the importance of the army, and his propaganda, known through his coinage, shows he wanted the support of the legions.^[20]

Defending Italy against the Iuthungi

The Porta Asinara, a gate in the Aurelian Walls.

The burden of the northern barbarians was not yet over, however. In 271, the Alamannimoved towards Italia, entering the Po plain and sacking the villages; they passed the Po River, occupied Placentia and moved towards Fano. Aurelian, who was in Pannonia to control the Vandals‘ withdrawal, quickly entered Italia, but his army was defeated in an ambush near Placentia(January 271). When the news of the defeat arrived in Rome, it caused great fear for the arrival of the barbarians. But Aurelian attacked the Alamanni camping near the Metaurus River, defeating them in the Battle of Fano, and forcing them to re-cross the Po river; Aurelian finally routed them at Pavia. For this, he received the title Germanicus Maximus. However, the menace of the Germanic people and a Germanic invasion was still perceived by the Romans as likely, so Aurelian resolved to build a new system of walls around Rome that became known as the Aurelian Walls.^[22]

Defeat of the Goths and abandonment of Dacia[edit]

The emperor led his legions to the Balkans, where he defeated and routed the Goths beyond the Danube, killing the Gothic leader Cannabaudes, and assuming the title of Gothicus Maximus. However, he decided to abandon the province of Dacia, on the exposed north bank of the Danube, as too difficult and expensive to defend. He reorganized a new province of Dacia south of the Danube, inside the former Moesia, called Dacia Aureliana, with Serdica as the capital.^[23]

Conquest of the Palmyrene Empire[edit]

The Roman Empire by 271 A.D before the reconquest of the Palmyrene Empire and the Gallic Empire by Aurelian

Aurelian, personification of Sol, defeats the Palmyrene Empire, and celebrates ORIENS AVG – oriens Augusti: the rising sun/star of Augustus.

The route of Aurelian’s campaign against Palmyra.

In 272, Aurelian turned his attention to the lost eastern provinces of the empire, the so-called « Palmyrene Empire » ruled by Queen Zenobia from the city of Palmyra.^[24]Zenobia had carved out her own empire, encompassing Syria, Palestine, Egypt and large parts of Asia Minor. The Syrian queen cut off Rome’s shipments of grain, and in a matter of weeks, the Romans started running low on bread. In the beginning, Aurelian had been recognized as Emperor, while Vaballathus, the son of Zenobia, held the title of rexand imperator (« king » and « supreme military commander »), but Aurelian decided to invade the eastern provinces as soon as he felt his army to be strong enough.

Asia Minor was recovered easily; every city but Byzantium and Tyanasurrendered to him with little resistance. The fall of Tyana lent itself to a legend: Aurelian to that point had destroyed every city that resisted him, but he spared Tyana after having a vision of the great 1st-century philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, whom he respected greatly, in a dream.

Apollonius implored him, stating, « Aurelian, if you desire to rule, abstain from the blood of the innocent! Aurelian, if you will conquer, be merciful! » Whatever the reason, Aurelian spared Tyana. It paid off; many more cities submitted to him upon seeing that the Emperor would not exact revenge upon them. Within six months, his armies stood at the gates of Palmyra, which surrendered when Zenobia tried to flee to the Sassanid Empire. The « Palmyrene Empire » was no more.

Eventually Zenobia and her son were captured and made to walk on the streets of Rome in his triumph, the woman in golden chains. With the grain stores once again shipped to Rome, Aurelian’s soldiers handed out free bread to the citizens of the city, and the Emperor was hailed a hero by his subjects. After a brief clash with the Persians and another in Egypt against the usurper Firmus, Aurelian was obliged to return to Palmyra in 273 when that city rebelled once more. This time, Aurelian allowed his soldiers to sack the city, and Palmyra never recovered. More honors came his way; he was now known as Parthicus Maximus and Restitutor Orientis (« Restorer of the East »).^[20]

The rich province of Egypt was also recovered by Aurelian. The Brucheion (Royal Quarter) in Alexandria was burned to the ground. This section of the city once contained the Library of Alexandria, although the extent of the surviving Library in Aurelian’s time is uncertain.

Conquest of the Gallic Empire

In 274, the victorious emperor turned his attention to the west, and the « Gallic Empire » which had already been reduced in size by Claudius II. Aurelian won this campaign largely through diplomacy; the « Gallic Emperor » Tetricus was willing to abandon his throne and allow Gaul and Britain to return to the Empire, but could not openly submit to Aurelian. Instead, the two seem to have conspired so that when the armies met at Châlons-en-Champagne that autumn, Tetricus simply deserted to the Roman camp and Aurelian easily defeated the Gallic army facing him.^{[citation needed]} Tetricus was rewarded for his part in the conspiracy with a high-ranking position in Italy itself.

A Radiate of Aurelian

A Radiate of Aurelian

Aurelian returned to Rome and won his last honorific from the Senate – Restitutor Orbis (« Restorer of the World »). This title was first assumed by Aurelian in late summer of 272, and had been carried previously by both Valerian and Gallienus.^[12] In four years, Aurelian had secured the frontiers of the Empire and reunified it, effectively giving the Empire a new lease on life that lasted 200 years.

Reforms

Aurelian was a reformer, and settled many important functions of the imperial apparatus, dealing with the economy and religion. He restored many public buildings, re-organized the management of the food reserves, set fixed prices for the most important goods, and prosecuted misconduct by the public officers.^[25]

Religious reform

Aurelian strengthened the position of the Sun god Sol Invictus as the main divinity of the Roman pantheon. His intention was to give to all the peoples of the Empire, civilian or soldiers, easterners or westerners, a single god they could believe in without betraying their own gods. The center of the cult was a new temple, built in 274 and dedicated on December 25^[26] of that year in the Campus Agrippae in Rome, with great decorations financed by the spoils of the Palmyrene Empire.

During his short rule, Aurelian seemed to follow the principle of « one faith, one empire », which would not be made official until the Edict of Thessalonica. He appears with the title deus et dominus natus (« God and born ruler ») on some of his coins, a style also later adopted by Diocletian. Lactantius argued that Aurelian would have outlawed all the other gods if he had had enough time. He was recorded by Christian historians as having organized persecutions.^[27]

Felicissimus’ rebellion and coinage reform

Aurelian’s reign records the only uprising of mint workers. The rationalis Felicissimus, a senior public financial official whose responsibilities included supervision of the mint at Rome, revolted against Aurelian. The revolt seems to have been caused by the fact that the mint workers, and Felicissimus first, were accustomed to stealing the silver for the coins and producing coins of inferior quality. Aurelian wanted to eliminate this, and put Felicissimus on trial. The rationalis incited the mintworkers to revolt: the rebellion spread in the streets, even if it seems that Felicissimus was killed immediately, presumably executed.

The Palmyrene rebellion in Egypt had probably reduced the grain supply to Rome, thus disaffecting the population to the emperor. This rebellion also had the support of some senators, probably those who had supported the election of Quintillus, and thus had something to fear from Aurelian.

Aurelian ordered the urban cohorts, reinforced by some regular troops of the imperial army, to attack the rebelling mob: the resulting battle, fought on the Caelian hill, marked the end of the revolt, even if at a high price (some sources give the figure, probably exaggerated, of 7,000 casualties).^[25] Many of the rebels were executed; also some of the supporting senators were put to death. The mint of Rome was closed temporarily, and the institution of several other mints caused the main mint of the empire to lose its hegemony.^[28]

His monetary reformation included the introduction of antoninianicontaining 5% silver. They bore the mark XXI (or its Greek numerals form KA), which meant that twenty of such coins would contain the same silver quantity of an old silver denarius.^[29][e] Considering that this was an improvement over the previous situation gives an idea of the severity of the economic situation Aurelian faced. The Emperor struggled to introduce the new « good » coin by recalling all the old « bad » coins prior to their introduction.^[20]

A very large number of rare gold coins of Aurelian have been discovered as part of the Lava Treasure in Corsica, France, in the 1980s.^[30]

Death

In 275, Aurelian marched towards Asia Minor, preparing another campaign against the Sassanids: the deaths of Kings Shapur I (272) and Hormizd I (273) in quick succession, and the rise to power of a weakened ruler (Bahram I), presented the opportunity to attack the Sassanid Empire.

On his way, the Emperor suppressed a revolt in Gaul — possibly against Faustinus, an officer or usurper of Tetricus — and defeated barbarian marauders in Vindelicia (Germany).

However, Aurelian never reached Persia, as he was murdered while waiting in Thrace to cross into Asia Minor. As an administrator, Aurelian had been very strict and handed out severe punishments to corrupt officials or soldiers. A secretary of Aurelian (called Eros by Zosimus) had told a lie on a minor issue. In fear of what the Emperor might do, he forged a document listing the names of high officials marked by the emperor for execution and showed it to collaborators. The notarius Mucapor and other high-ranking officers of the Praetorian Guard, fearing punishment from the Emperor, murdered him in September 275, in Caenophrurium, Thrace (modern Turkey).

Aurelian’s enemies in the Senate briefly succeeded in passing damnatio memoriae on the Emperor, but this was reversed before the end of the year and Aurelian, like his predecessor Claudius II, was deified as Divus Aurelianus.

There is substantial evidence that Aurelian’s wife Ulpia Severina, who had been declared Augusta in 274, may have ruled the Empire by her own power for some time after his death.^[12][13] The sources indicate that there was an interregnum between Aurelian’s death and the election of Marcus Claudius Tacitus as his successor. Additionally, some of Ulpia’s coins appear to have been minted after Aurelian’s death.^[13]

Legacy

Aurelian’s short reign reunited a fragmented Empire while saving Rome from barbarian invasions that had reached Italy itself. His death prevented a full restoration of political stability and a lasting dynasty that could end the cycle of assassination of emperors and civil war that marked this period. Even so, he brought the Empire through a very critical period in its history and, without Aurelian, it may never have survived the invasions and fragmentation of the decade in which he reigned. Moreover, the Western half of the Empire would survive another two hundred years, while the East would last another millennium, and for that Aurelian must be allowed much of the credit.^{[citation needed]}

The city of Orléans in France is named after Aurelian. Originally named Cenabum, Aurelian rebuilt and renamed it Aurelianum or Aureliana Civitas (« city of Aurelian », cité d’Aurélien), which evolved into Orléans. The city of New Orleans (in French, La Nouvelle-Orléans), in Louisiana, United States is named after the commune of Orléans, and therefore by extension, Aurelian.^[31]

Notes

1. ^ In Classical Latin, Aurelian’s name would be inscribed as LVCIVS DOMITIVS AVRELIANVS AVGVSTVS. His full name, with honorific and victory titles, was Imperator Caesar Lucius Domitius Aurelianus Augustus, Germanicus Maximus, Gothicus Maximus, Parthicus Maximus, Restitutor Orientis, Restitutor Orbis.
2. ^ Had Aurelian’s family been enfranchised by virtue of the Constitutio Antoniniana (212 AD) his nomen would have been « Aurelius ».
3. ^ The tres militia were: (i) prefecture of a cohort of auxiliary infantry; (ii) tribunate of a legionary cohort; and (iii) prefecture of an ala of auxiliary cavalry.
4. ^ Compare the career of Pertinax who pursued the Tres Militia with those of Publius Aelius Aelianus, Lucius Aurelius Marcianus (both probably) and Traianus Mucianus (certainly) who rose e caliga, i.e. through the ranks.
5. ^ Later emperors Tacitus and Carus would mint coins with the legends XI or IA, signalling a 10% of silver in the alloy.

References

1. ^ White 2015, p. 139.
2. ^ Halsberghe, G.H. (1972). The Cult of Sol Invictus. Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’Empire romain. Brill. p. 152. Retrieved 2018-04-13.
3. ^ Saunders 1992, pp. 104-6.
4. ^ Milošević(2010:pp 106-7)^{[incomplete short citation]}
5. ^ Jump up to:^a b Watson 1999, p. 1.
6. ^ Saunders 1992, p. 107.
7. ^ Saunders 1992, p. 109.
8. ^ For instance, vita Divi Aureliani paras 5.5-6, 6.3-5, and 7.1-2. If he ever was a tribune of a legion as suggested in 7.1-2 it could not have been with Legio VII Gallicana as that unit never existed.
9. ^ Saunders 1992, pp. 129-130.
10. ^ Watson 1999, p. 41.
11. ^ Aurelius Victor, xxxiii,21. Other sources do not cite Aurelian among those who conspired against Gallienus, though different sources have claimed that he was the one who called Gallienus out of his tent under a proposed « conspiracy » at that point Gallienus was stabbbed.
12. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Watson 1999.
13. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Körner, Christian (23 December 2008). « Aurelian (A.D. 270–275) ». De Imperatoribus Romanis: An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Rulers and Their Families. Archived from the original on 2 December 2010. Retrieved 6 January 2011.
14. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Watson 1999, p. 42.
15. ^ Jump up to:^a b Watson 1999, p. 43.
16. ^ Jump up to:^a b Watson 1999, p. 44.
17. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e} Watson 1999, p. 45.
18. ^ Watson 1999, p. 46.
19. ^ Zonaras.
20. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Korner.
21. ^ Zosimus, 1,48f.; Eutropius; Dexippus, FGrH IIA 460 F7; Historia Augusta – Aurelianus xxi,1–3 and xviii,2.
22. ^ Watson 1999, pp. 51–54, 217.
23. ^ Watson 1999, pp. 54–55.
24. ^ The war against the Palmyrene Empire is described in Zosimus, 1,50,1–1,61,1, and Historia Augusta, Aurelianus, 22–31.
25. ^ Jump up to:^a b  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). « Aurelian » . Encyclopædia Britannica. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 923–924.
26. ^ Clauss, Manfred (2001). Die römischen Kaiser : 55 historische Portraits von Caesar bis Iustinian (in German). München: Beck. p. 250. ISBN 978-3-406-47288-6.
27. ^ For example, in the Annales Cambriae, B & C Texts.
28. ^ Watson 1999, pp. 52–53.
29. ^ Watson 1999, p. 130.
30. ^ Sylvianne Estiot, The Lava Treasure of Roman Gold. Also in Trésors monétaires, volume XXIV, BNF, 2011 ISBN 9782717724929
31. ^ For an exact etymology, see Debal, Jacques (1996). Cenabum, Aurelianis, Orléans. Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon. ISBN 978-2-7297-0554-1.

Primary sources

• Aurelius Victor Epitome de Caesaribus, xxxv « Epitome de Caesaribus » (4th century)
• Eutropius, Breviarium historiae Romanae, IX. 13–15 (4th century)
• Historia Augusta Aurelianus Life of Aurelian Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
• Zosimus, Historia Nova Translation of the Historia Nova (published in 1814), book 1, (5th–6th century)
• Joannes Zonaras, Compendium of History Compendium excerpt: Claudius to Diocletian 268–284 (12th century)

Secondary sources

• Körner, Christian (2001-07-20). « Aurelian ». De Imperatoribus Romanis. Archived from the original on 20 October 2006. Retrieved 2006-11-04. (Korner:2001)
• Saunders, Randall Titus (1992). A biography of the Emperor Aurelian (AD 270-275). Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services.
• Southern, Pat (2001). The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine. Routledge. p. 125. ISBN 0-415-23944-3.(Southern:2001);
• Watson, Alaric (1999). Aurelian and the Third Century. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-07248-4.

Further reading

• White, John (2015). The Roman Emperor Aurelian : Restorer of the World. Casemate Publishers and Book Distributors, LLC. ISBN 978-1-4738-4569-5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelian

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

Situation du théâtre sur le plan de Rome d’Italo Gismondi.

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

Fragment d’un masque de théâtre sculpté.

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

Fragment d’un chapiteau corinthien.

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

Palazzo Savelli prenant appui sur des passages du théâtre.

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

Fenêtres du Palazzo Savelli-Orsini au-dessus du deuxième étage.

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

Détail de l’arcade et des deux ordres superposés : premier étage dorique et deuxième étage ionique.

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

Voûte de l’ambulacre.

Theatre of Marcellus Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus
Theatre of Marcellus (above)
Location	Regione IX Circus Flaminius
Built in	13 BC
Built by/for	Julius Caesar Augustus Caesar / Marcus Marcellus
Type of structure	Roman theatre (structure)
Related	List of ancient monuments in Rome
Theatre of Marcellus

The Theatre of Marcellus (Latin: Theatrum Marcelli, Italian: Teatro di Marcello) is an ancient open-air theatre in Rome, Italy, built in the closing years of the Roman Republic. At the theatre, locals and visitors alike were able to watch performances of drama and song. Today its ancient edifice in the rione of Sant’Angelo, Rome, once again provides one of the city’s many popular spectacles or tourist sites. Space for the theatre was cleared by Julius Caesar, who was murdered before its construction could begin; the theatre was advanced enough by 17 BC that part of the celebration of the ludi saeculares took place within the theatre; it was completed in 13 BC and formally inaugurated in 12 BC by Augustus.^[1]

The theatre was 111 m in diameter and was the largest and most important theatre in Ancient Rome;^[2] it could originally hold between 11,000 and 20,000 spectators.^[1][2]It was an impressive example of what was to become one of the most pervasive urban architectural forms of the Roman world. The theatre was built mainly of tuff, and concrete faced with stones in the pattern known as opus reticulatum, completely sheathed in white travertine. However, it is also the earliest dateable building in Rome to make use of fired Roman brick, then a new introduction from the Greek world.^[3]

The network of arches, corridors, tunnels and ramps that gave access to the interiors of such Roman theatres were normally ornamented with a screen of engaged columns in Greek orders: Doric at the base, Ionic in the middle. It is believed that Corinthian columns were used for the upper level but this is uncertain as the theatre was reconstructed in the Middle Ages, removing the top tier of seating and the columns.^[1]

Like other Roman theatres in suitable locations, it had openings through which the natural setting could be seen, in this case the Tiber Island to the southwest. The permanent setting, the scaena, also rose to the top of the cavea as in other Roman theatres.

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

End section, showing later redevelopment

The theatre fell out of use in the early 4th century and the structure served as a quarry for e.g. the Pons Cestius in 370 AD. However, the statues located inside the building were restored by Petronius Maximus in 421 and the remaining structure still housed small residential buildings. In the Early Middle Ages the theatre was used as a fortress of the Fabii and then at the end of the 11th century (when it was known as templum Marcelli), by Pier Leoni and later his heirs (the Pierleoni). This saved the complex from further destruction. The Savelli held it in the 13th century. Later, in the 16th century, the residence of the Orsini, designed by Baldassare Peruzzi, was built atop the ruins of the ancient theatre. By the 19th century, rises in the street level meant that almost half the ground floor was below it.

Now the upper floors are divided into multiple apartments, and its surroundings are used as a venue for small summer concerts; the Portico d’Ottavia lies to the north west leading to the Roman Ghetto and the Tiber to the south west.

In the 17th century, the English architect Sir Christopher Wren explicitly acknowledged that his design for the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford was influenced by Serlio‘s engraving of the Theatre of Marcellus.

Copies

A 1:100 scale model of the theatre is found in Room IX of the Museo della Civiltà Romana in Rome.^[4]

Giacobbe Giusti, Theatre of Marcellus

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  The arcade wall exposed

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  Along the arcades

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  Appearance in 1575

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  G.B. Piranesi‘s etching of a Doric bay]]

References

Theatre of Marcellus (Rome).

1. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Leland M. Roth 1993 Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History and Meaning (Westview Press: Boulder, CO ISBN 0-06-430158-3 and Cassius Dio 53.30.5., pp 230-31
2. ^ Jump up to:^a b Cartwright, Mark. « Theatre of Marcellus ». Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia Limited. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
3. Jump up^ Blagg, T.F.C., « Brick and tile » section, in « Architecture, 1, a) Religious », section in Diane Favro, et al. « Rome, ancient. » Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed March 26, 2016, subscription required
4. Jump up^ « Room XI: Augustus », Museo della Civiltà Romana [1]

• High-resolution 360° Panoramas and Images of Theater of Marcellus | Art Atlas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_Marcellus

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

Venice, Museo Storico Navale (navy museum), wooden model of galley with rowers.

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

Galère de l’Ordre de Malte, reconstitution du Musée d’histoire navale de Venise.

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

Battle between Venetian and Holy Roman fleets; detail of fresco by Spinello Aretino 1407–1408.

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

Triumph of Poseidon and Amphitrite showing the couple in procession, detail of a vast mosaic from Cirta, Roman Africa (ca. 315–325 AD, now at the Louvre)

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

Byzantine ship attacking with Greek fire. Madrid Skylitzes manuscript, 11th century.

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

Odysseus and the Sirens, Ulixes mosaic at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, Tunisia, 2nd century AD

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

A Roman naval bireme depicted in a relief from the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste(Palastrina),^[29] which was built c. 120 BC;^[30] exhibited in the Pius-Clementine Museum (Museo Pio-Clementino) in the Vatican Museums.

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

Venetian great galley with three sails taking pilgrims to Jerusalem (Conrad Grünenberg 1486/7).

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

The Byzantine fleet repels the Rus’ attack on Constantinople in 941. The Byzantine dromons are rolling over the Rus’ vessels and smashing their oars with their spurs.

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

Contemporary depiction of the battle of Lepanto in 1571 that shows the strict formations of the opposing fleets. Fresco in the Gallery of Maps in Vatican Museum.

Giacobbe Giusti, Galley

A model of a Maltese design typical of the 16th century, the last great era of the war galley

A galley is a type of ship that is propelled mainly by rowing. The galley is characterized by its long, slender hull, shallow draft and low freeboard (clearance between sea and railing). Virtually all types of galleys had sails that could be used in favorable winds, but human strength was always the primary method of propulsion. This allowed galleys to navigate independently of winds and currents. The galley originated among the seafaring civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea in the late second millennium BC and remained in use in various forms until the early 19th century in warfare, trade and piracy.

Galleys were the warships used by the early Mediterranean naval powers, including the Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans. They remained the dominant types of vessels used for war and piracy in the Mediterranean Sea until the last decades of the 16th century. As warships, galleys carried various types of weapons throughout their long existence, including rams, catapults and cannons, but also relied on their large crews to overpower enemy vessels in boarding actions. They were the first ships to effectively use heavy cannons as anti-ship weapons. As highly efficient gun platforms they forced changes in the design of medieval seaside fortresses as well as refinement of sailing warships.

The zenith of galley usage in warfare came in the late 16th century with battles like that at Lepanto in 1571, one of the largest naval battles ever fought. By the 17th century, however, sailing ships and hybrid ships like the xebec displaced galleys in naval warfare. They were the most common warships in the Atlantic Ocean during the Middle Ages, and later saw limited use in the Caribbean, the Philippines and the Indian Ocean in the early modern period, mostly as patrol craft to combat pirates. From the mid-16th century galleys were in intermittent use in the Baltic Sea, with its short distances and extensive archipelagoes. There was a minor revival of galley warfare in the 18th century in the wars among Russia, Sweden and Denmark.

Definition and terminology

The term « galley » derives from the medieval Greek galea, a smaller version of the dromon, the prime warship of the Byzantine navy.^[1] The origin of the Greek word is unclear but could possibly be related to galeos, dogfish shark.^[2] The word « galley » has been attested in English from c. 1300^[3] and has been used in most European languages from around 1500 both as a general term for oared warships, and from the Middle Ages and onwards more specifically for the Mediterranean-style vessel.^[4] It was only from the 16th century that a unified galley concept came in use. Before that, particularly in antiquity, there was a wide variety of terms used for different types of galleys. In modern historical literature, « galley » is occasionally used as a general term for various types of oared vessels larger than boats, though the « true » galley is defined as the ships belonging to the Mediterranean tradition.^[5]

The English-built Charles Galley, a « galley frigate » built in the 1670s. It was not a « true » galley, but the term still became part of its name due to its oars.

Ancient galleys were named according to the number of oars, the number of banks of oars or lines of rowers. The terms are based on contemporary language use combined with more recent compounds of Greek and Latin words. The earliest Greek single-banked galleys are called triaconters (from triakontoroi, « thirty-oars ») and penteconters(pentēkontoroi, « fifty-oars »).^[6] For later galleys with more than one row of oars, the terminology is based on Latin numerals with the suffix -reme from rēmus, « oar ». A monoreme has one bank of oars, a biremetwo and a trireme three. Since the maximum banks of oars was three, any expansion above that did not refer to additional banks of oars, but of additional rowers for every oar. Quinquereme (quintus + rēmus) was literally a « five-oar », but actually meant that there were several rowers to certain banks of oars which made up five lines of oar handlers. For simplicity, they have by many modern scholars been referred to as « fives », « sixes », « eights », « elevens », etc. Anything above six or seven rows of rowers was not common, though even a very exceptional « forty » is attested in contemporary source. Any galley with more than three or four lines of rowers is often referred to as a « polyreme ».^[7]

Archaeologist Lionel Casson has used the term « galley » to describe all North European shipping in the early and high Middle Ages, including Viking merchants and even their famous longships, though this is rare.^[8] Oared military vessels built on the British Isles in the 11th to 13th centuries were based on Scandinavian designs, but were nevertheless referred to as « galleys ». Many of them were similar to birlinns, close relatives of longship types like the snekkja. By the 14th century, they were replaced with balingers in southern Britain while longship-type « Irish galleys » remained in use throughout the Middle Ages in northern Britain.^[9]

Watercolor of United States ships at the battle of Valcour Island, depicting several « row galleys« ; similar function, but based on very different designs than Mediterranean galleys.

Medieval and early modern galleys used a different terminology than their ancient predecessors. Names were based on the changing designs that evolved after the ancient rowing schemes were forgotten. Among the most important is the Byzantine dromon, the predecessor to the Italian galea sottila. This was the first step toward the final form of the Mediterranean war galley. As galleys became an integral part of an advanced, early modern system of warfare and state administration, they were divided into a number of ranked grades based on the size of the vessel and the number of its crew. The most basic types were the following: large commander « lantern galleys », half-galleys, galiots, fustas, brigantinesand fregatas. Naval historian Jan Glete has described as a sort of predecessor of the later rating system of the Royal Navy and other sailing fleets in Northern Europe.^[10]

The French navy and the British Royal Navy built a series of « galley frigates » from c. 1670–1690 that were small two-decked sailing cruisers with a set of oarports on the lower deck. The three British galley frigates also had distinctive names – James Galley, Charles Galley and Mary Galley.^[11] In the late 18th century, the term « galley » was in some contexts used to describe minor oared gun-armed vessels which did not fit into the category of the classic Mediterranean type. In North America, during American Revolutionary War, and other wars with France and Britain, the early US Navy and other navies built vessels that were called « galleys » or « row galleys« , though they were actually brigantines or Baltic gunboats.^[12] This type of description was more a characterization of their military role, and was in part due to technicalities in administration and naval financing.^[13]

History

Among the earliest known watercraft were canoes made from hollowed-out logs, the earliest ancestors of galleys. Their narrow hulls required them to be paddled in a fixed sitting position facing forwards, a less efficient form of propulsion than rowing with proper oars, facing backwards. Seagoing paddled craft have been attested by finds of terracotta sculptures and lead models in the region of the Aegean Sea from the 3rd millennium BC. However, archaeologists believe that the Stone Agecolonization of islands in the Mediterranean around 8,000 BC required fairly large, seaworthy vessels that were paddled and possibly even equipped with sails.^[14] The first evidence of more complex craft that are considered to prototypes for later galleys comes from Ancient Egypt during the Old Kingdom (c. 2700–2200 BC). Under the rule of pharaoh Pepi I (2332–2283 BC) these vessels were used to transport troops to raid settlements along the Levantine coast and to ship back slaves and timber.^[15]During the reign of Hatshepsut (c. 1479–57 BC), Egyptian galleys traded in luxuries on the Red Sea with the enigmatic Land of Punt, as recorded on wall paintings at the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari.^[16]

Assyrian warship, a bireme with pointed bow. 700 BC

Shipbuilders, probably Phoenician, a seafaring people who lived on the southern and eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, were the first to create the two-level galley that would be widely known under its Greek name, diērēs, or bireme.^[17] Even though the Phoenicians were among the most important naval civilizations in early Antiquity, little detailed evidence have been found concerning the types of ships they used. The best depictions found so far have been small, highly stylized images on seals which depict crescent-shape vessels equipped with one mast and banks of oars. Colorful frescoes on the Minoan settlement on Santorini (c. 1600 BC) show more detailed pictures of vessels with ceremonial tents on deck in a procession. Some of these are rowed, but others are paddled with men laboriously bent over the railings. This has been interpreted as a possible ritual reenactment of more ancient types of vessels, alluding to a time before rowing was invented, but little is otherwise known about the use and design of Minoan ships.^[18]

In the earliest days of the galley, there was no clear distinction between ships of trade and war other than their actual usage. River boats plied the waterways of ancient Egypt during the Old Kingdom (2700–2200 BC) and seagoing galley-like vessels were recorded bringing back luxuries from across the Red Sea in the reign of pharaoh Hatshepsut. Fitting rams to the bows of vessels sometime around the 8th century BC resulted in a distinct split in the design of warships, and set trade vessels apart, at least when it came to use in naval warfare. The Phoenicians used galleys for transports that were less elongated, carried fewer oars and relied more on sails. Carthaginian galley wrecks found off Sicily that date to the 3rd or 2nd century BC had a length to breadth ratio of 6:1, proportions that fell between the 4:1 of sailing merchant ships and the 8:1 or 10:1 of war galleys. Merchant galleys in the ancient Mediterranean were intended as carriers of valuable cargo or perishable goods that needed to be moved as safely and quickly as possible.^[19]

Dionysus riding on a small galley-like craft in a painting from the Dionysus cup by Exekias, from c. 530 BC^[20]

The first Greek galleys appeared around the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. In the epic poem, the Iliad, set in the 12th century BC, galleys with a single row of oarsmen were used primarily to transport soldiers to and from various land battles.^[21] The first recorded naval battle, the battle of the Deltabetween Egyptian forces under Ramesses IIIand the enigmatic alliance known as the Sea Peoples, occurred as early as 1175 BC. It is the first known engagement between organized armed forces, using sea vessels as weapons of war, though primarily as fighting platforms. It was distinguished by being fought against an anchored fleet close to shore with land-based archer support.^[22]

The first true Mediterranean galleys usually had between 15 and 25 pairs of oars and were called triaconters or penteconters, literally « thirty- » and « fifty-oared », respectively. Not long after they appeared, a third row of oars was added by the addition to a bireme of an outrigger, a projecting construction that gave more room for the projecting oars. These new galleys were called triērēs (« three-fitted ») in Greek. The Romans later called this design the triremis, trireme, the name it is today best known under. It has been hypothesized that early types of triremes existed as early as 700 BC, but the earliest conclusive literary reference dates to 542 BC.^[23] With the development of triremes, penteconters disappeared altogether. Triaconters were still used, but only for scouting and express dispatches.^[24]

The first warships

A reconstruction of an ancient Greek galley squadron based on images of modern replica Olympias

The earliest use for galleys in warfare was to ferry fighters from one place to another, and until the middle of the 2nd millennium BC had no real distinction from merchant freighters. Around the 14th century BC, the first dedicated fighting ships were developed, sleeker and with cleaner lines than the bulkier merchants. They were used for raiding, capturing merchants and for dispatches.^[25] During this early period, raiding became the most important form of organized violence in the Mediterranean region. Maritime classicist historian Lionel Casson used the example of Homer‘s works to show that seaborne raiding was considered a common and legitimate occupation among ancient maritime peoples. The later Athenian historian Thucydidesdescribed it as having been « without stigma » before his time.^[26]

The development of the ram sometime before the 8th century BC changed the nature of naval warfare, which had until then been a matter of boarding and hand-to-hand fighting. With a heavy projection at the foot of the bow, sheathed with metal, usually bronze, a ship could incapacitate an enemy ship by punching a hole in its planking. The relative speed and nimbleness of ships became important, since a slower ship could be outmaneuvered and disabled by a faster one. The earliest designs had only one row of rowers that sat in undecked hulls, rowing against tholes, or oarports, that were placed directly along the railings. The practical upper limit for wooden constructions fast and maneuverable enough for warfare was around 25-30 oars per side. By adding another level of oars, a development that occurred no later than c. 750 BC, the galley could be made shorter with as many rowers, while making them strong enough to be effective ramming weapons.^[27]

The emergence of more advanced states and intensified competition between them spurred on the development of advanced galleys with multiple banks of rowers. During the middle of the first millennium BC, the Mediterranean powers developed successively larger and more complex vessels, the most advanced being the classical trireme with up to 170 rowers. Triremes fought several important engagements in the naval battles of the Greco-Persian Wars (502–449 BC) and the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), including the battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC, which sealed the defeat of Athens by Sparta and its allies. The trireme was an advanced ship that was expensive to build and to maintain due its large crew. By the 5th century, advanced war galleys had been developed that required sizable states with an advanced economy to build and maintain. It was associated with the latest in warship technology around the 4th century BC and could only be employed by an advanced state with an advanced economy and administration. They required considerable skill to row and oarsmen were mostly free citizens who had years of experience at the oar.^[28]

Hellenistic era and rise of the Republic

 Hellenistic-era warships

A Roman naval bireme depicted in a relief from the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste(Palastrina),^[29] which was built c. 120 BC;^[30] exhibited in the Pius-Clementine Museum (Museo Pio-Clementino) in the Vatican Museums.

Odysseus and the Sirens, Ulixes mosaic at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, Tunisia, 2nd century AD

As civilizations around the Mediterranean grew in size and complexity, both their navies and the galleys that made up their numbers became successively larger. The basic design of two or three rows of oars remained the same, but more rowers were added to each oar. The exact reasons are not known, but are believed to have been caused by addition of more troops and the use of more advanced ranged weapons on ships, such as catapults. The size of the new naval forces also made it difficult to find enough skilled rowers for the one-man-per-oar system of the earliest triremes. With more than one man per oar, a single rower could set the pace for the others to follow, meaning that more unskilled rowers could be employed.^[31]

The successor states of Alexander the Great‘s empire built galleys that were like triremes or biremes in oar layout, but manned with additional rowers for each oar. The ruler Dionysius I of Syracuse (ca. 432–367 BC) is credited with pioneering the « five » and « six », meaning five or six rows of rowers plying two or three rows of oars. Ptolemy II (283-46 BC) is known to have built a large fleet of very large galleys with several experimental designs rowed by everything from 12 up to 40 rows of rowers, though most of these are considered to have been quite impractical. Fleets with large galleys were put in action in conflicts such as the Punic Wars (246-146) between the Roman republic and Carthage, which included massive naval battles with hundreds of vessels and tens of thousands of soldiers, seamen and rowers.^[32]

Most of the surviving documentary evidence comes from Greek and Roman shipping, though it is likely that merchant galleys all over the Mediterranean were highly similar. In Greek they were referred to as histiokopos (« sail-oar-er ») to reflect that they relied on both types of propulsion. In Latin they were called actuaria (navis) (« ship that moves ») in Latin, stressing that they were capable of making progress regardless of weather conditions. As an example of the speed and reliability, during an instance of the famous « Carthago delenda est« -speech, Cato the Elder demonstrated the close proximity of the Roman arch enemy Carthage by displaying a fresh fig to his audience that he claimed had been picked in North Africa only three days past. Other cargoes carried by galleys were honey, cheese, meat and live animals intended for gladiator combat. The Romans had several types of merchant galleys that specialized in various tasks, out of which the actuaria with up to 50 rowers was the most versatile, including the phaselus (lit. « bean pod ») for passenger transport and the lembus, a small-scale express carrier. Many of these designs continued to be used until the Middle Ages.^[33]

Roman Imperial era

Depictions of two compact liburnians used by the Romans in their campaigns against the Dacians in the early 2nd century AD; reliefs from Trajan’s Column, c. 113 AD.

The Battle of Actium in 31 BC between the forces of Augustus and Mark Antony marked the peak of the Roman fleet arm. After Augustus’ victory at Actium, most of the Roman fleet was dismantled and burned. The Roman civil wars were fought mostly by land forces, and from the 160s until the 4th century AD, no major fleet actions were recorded. During this time, most of the galley crews were disbanded or employed for entertainment purposes in mock battles or in handling the sail-like sun-screens in the larger Roman arenas. What fleets remained were treated as auxiliaries of the land forces, and galley crewmen themselves called themselves milites, « soldiers », rather than nautae, « sailors ».^[34]

The Roman galley fleets were turned into provincial patrol forces that were smaller and relied largely on liburnians, compact biremes with 25 pairs of oars. These were named after an Illyrian tribe known by Romans for their sea roving practices, and these smaller craft were based on, or inspired by, their vessels of choice. The liburnians and other small galleys patrolled the rivers of continental Europe and reached as far as the Baltic, where they were used to fight local uprisings and assist in checking foreign invasions. The Romans maintained numerous bases around the empire: along the rivers of Central Europe, chains of forts along the northern European coasts and the British Isles, Mesopotamia and North Africa, including Trabzon, Vienna, Belgrade, Dover, Seleucia and Alexandria. Few actual galley battles in the provinces are found in records. One action in 70 AD at the unspecified location of the « Island of the Batavians » during the Batavian Rebellion was recorded, and included a trireme as the Roman flagship.^[35] The last provincial fleet, the classis Britannica, was reduced by the late 200s, though there was a minor upswing under the rule of Constantine (272–337). His rule also saw the last major naval battle of the unified Roman Empire (before the permanent split into Western and Eastern [later « Byzantine »] Empires), the battle of Hellespont of 324. Some time after Hellespont, the classical trireme fell out of use, and its design was forgotten.^[36]

Triumph of Poseidon and Amphitriteshowing the couple in procession, detail of a vast mosaic from Cirta, Roman Africa (ca. 315–325 AD, now at the Louvre)

Middle Ages

A transition from galley to sailing vessels as the most common types of warships began in the high Middle Ages (c. 11th century). Large high-sided sailing ships had always been formidable obstacles for galleys. To low-freeboard oared vessels, the bulkier sailing ships, the cog and the carrack, were almost like floating fortresses, being difficult to board and even harder to capture. Galleys remained useful as warships throughout the entire Middle Ages because of their maneuverability. Sailing ships of the time had only one mast, usually with just a single, large square sail. This made them cumbersome to steer and it was virtually impossible to sail into the wind direction. Galleys therefore were still the only ship type capable of coastal raiding and amphibious landings, both key elements of medieval warfare.^[37]

Eastern Mediterranean

In the eastern Mediterranean, the Byzantine Empire struggled with the incursion from invading Muslim Arabs from the 7th century, leading to fierce competition, a buildup of fleet, and war galleys of increasing size. Soon after conquering Egypt and the Levant, the Arab rulers built ships highly similar to Byzantine dromons with the help of local Coptic shipwrights from former Byzantine naval bases.^[38] By the 9th century, the struggle between the Byzantines and Arabs had turned the Eastern Mediterranean into a no man’s land for merchant activity. In the 820s Crete was captured by Andalusian Muslims displaced by a failed revolt against the Emirate of Cordoba, turning the island into a base for (galley) attacks on Christian shipping until the island was recaptured by the Byzantines in 960.^[39]

Western Mediterranean

In the western Mediterranean and Atlantic, the division of the Carolingian Empire in the late 9th century brought on a period of instability, meaning increased piracy and raiding in the Mediterranean, particularly by newly arrived Muslim invaders. The situation was worsened by raiding Scandinavian Vikings who used longships, vessels that in many ways were very close to galleys in design and functionality and also employed similar tactics. To counter the threat, local rulers began to build large oared vessels, some with up to 30 pairs of oars, that were larger, faster and with higher sides than Viking ships.^[40] Scandinavian expansion, including incursions into the Mediterranean and attacks on both Muslim Iberia and even Constantinople itself, subsided by the mid-11th century. By this time, greater stability in merchant traffic was achieved by the emergence of Christian kingdoms such as those of France, Hungary and Poland. Around the same time, Italian port towns and city states, like Venice, Pisa and Amalfi, rose on the fringes of the Byzantine Empire as it struggled with eastern threats.^[41]

After the advent of Islam and Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th century, the old Mediterranean economy collapsed and the volume of trade went down drastically.^[42]The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, neglected to revive overland trade routes but was dependent on keeping the sea lanes open to keep the empire together. Bulk trade fell around 600-750 while the luxury trade increased. Galleys remained in service, but were profitable mainly in the luxury trade, which set off their high maintenance cost.^[43] In the 10th century, there was a sharp increase in piracy which resulted in larger ships with more numerous crews. These were mostly built by the growing city-states of Italy which were emerging as the dominant sea powers, including Venice, Genoa and Pisa. Inheriting the Byzantine ship designs, the new merchant galleys were similar dromons, but without any heavy weapons and both faster and wider. They could be manned by crews of up to 1,000 men and were employed in both trade and warfare. A further boost to the development of the large merchant galleys was the upswing in Western European pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land.^[44]

Venetian great galley with three sails taking pilgrims to Jerusalem (Conrad Grünenberg 1486/7).

In Northern Europe, Viking longships and their derivations, knarrs, dominated trading and shipping, though developed separately from the Mediterranean galley tradition. In the South galleys continued to be useful for trade even as sailing vessels evolved more efficient hulls and rigging; since they could hug the shoreline and make steady progress when winds failed, they were highly reliable. The zenith in the design of merchant galleys came with the state-owned great galleys of the Venetian Republic, first built in the 1290s. These were used to carry the lucrative trade in luxuries from the east such as spices, silks and gems. They were in all respects larger than contemporary war galleys (up to 46 m) and had a deeper draft, with more room for cargo (140-250 t). With a full complement of rowers ranging from 150 to 180 men, all available to defend the ship from attack, they were also very safe modes of travel. This attracted a business of carrying affluent pilgrims to the Holy Land, a trip that could be accomplished in as little 29 days on the route Venice-Jaffa, despite landfalls for rest and watering or for respite from rough weather.^[45]

Development of the true galley

Late medieval maritime warfare was divided in two distinct regions. In the Mediterranean galleys were used for raiding along coasts, and in the constant fighting for naval bases. In the Atlantic and Baltic there was greater focus on sailing ships that were used mostly for troop transport, with galleys providing fighting support.^[46] Galleys were still widely used in the north and were the most numerous warships used by Mediterranean powers with interests in the north, especially the French and Iberian kingdoms.^[47]

During the 13th and 14th century, the galley evolved into the design that was to remain essentially the same until it was phased out in the early 19th century. The new type descended from the ships used by Byzantine and Muslim fleets in the early Middle Ages. These were the mainstay of all Christian powers until the 14th century, including the great maritime republics of Genoa and Venice, the Papacy, the Hospitallers, Aragon and Castile, as well as by various pirates and corsairs. The overall term used for these types of vessels was gallee sottili (« slender galleys »). The later Ottoman navy used similar designs, but they were generally faster under sail, and smaller, but slower under oars.^[48] Galley designs were intended solely for close action with hand-held weapons and projectile weapons like bows and crossbows. In the 13th century the Iberian Crown of Aragon built several fleet of galleys with high castles, manned with Catalan crossbowman, and regularly defeated numerically superior Angevin forces.^[49]

From the first half of the 14th century the Venetian galere da mercato (« merchantman galleys ») were being built in the shipyards of the state-run Arsenal as « a combination of state enterprise and private association, the latter being a kind of consortium of export merchants », as Fernand Braudel described them.^[50] The ships sailed in convoy, defended by archers and slingsmen (ballestieri) aboard, and later carrying cannons. In Genoa, the other major maritime power of the time, galleys and ships in general were more produced by smaller private ventures.

A 3D model of the basic hull structure of a Venetian « galley of Flanders », a large trading vessel of the 15th century. The reconstruction by archaeologist Courtney Higgins is based on measurements given in contemporary ship treatises.^[51]

Illustration of a 15th-century trade galley from a manuscript by Michael of Rhodes (1401–1445) written in 1434.

In the 14th and 15th centuries merchant galleys traded high-value goods and carried passengers. Major routes in the time of the early Crusades carried the pilgrim traffic to the Holy Land. Later routes linked ports around the Mediterranean, between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (a grain trade soon squeezed off by the Turkish capture of Constantinople, 1453) and between the Mediterranean and Bruges— where the first Genoese galley arrived at Sluys in 1277, the first Venetian galere in 1314— and Southampton. Although primarily sailing vessels, they used oars to enter and leave many trading ports of call, the most effective way of entering and leaving the Lagoon of Venice. The Venetian galera, beginning at 100 tons and built as large as 300, was not the largest merchantman of its day, when the Genoese carrack of the 15th century might exceed 1000 tons.^[52] In 1447, for instance, Florentine galleys planned to call at 14 ports on their way to and from Alexandria.^[53] The availability of oars enabled these ships to navigate close to the shore where they could exploit land and sea breezes and coastal currents, to work reliable and comparatively fast passages against the prevailing wind. The large crews also provided protection against piracy. These ships were very seaworthy; a Florentine great galley left Southampton on 23 February 1430 and returned to its port at Pisa in 32 days. They were so safe that merchandise was often not insured.^[54] These ships increased in size during this period, and were the template from which the galleass developed.

Transition to sailing ships

As early as 1304 the type of ship required by the Danish defence organization changed from galley to cog, a flat-bottomed sailing ship.^[55]

During the early 15th century, sailing ships began to dominate naval warfare in northern waters. While the galley still remained the primary warship in southern waters, a similar transition had begun also among the Mediterranean powers. A Castilian naval raid on the island of Jersey in 1405 became the first recorded battle where a Mediterranean power employed a naval force consisting mostly of cogs or nefs, rather than the oared-powered galleys. The battle of Gibraltar between Castile and Portugal in 1476 was another important sign of change; it was the first recorded battle where the primary combatants were full-rigged ships armed with wrought-iron guns on the upper decks and in the waists, foretelling of the slow decline of the war galley.^[56]

The transition from the Mediterranean war galley to the sailing vessel as the preferred method of vessel in the Mediterranean is tied directly to technological developments and the inherent handling characteristics of each vessel types. The primary factors were changing sail design, the introduction of cannons aboard vessels, and the handling characteristics of the vessels.

The sailing vessel was always at the mercy of the wind for propulsion, and those that did carry oars were placed at a disadvantage because they were not optimized for oar use. The galley did have disadvantages compared to the sailing vessel though. Their smaller hulls were not able to hold as much cargo and this limited their range as the crews were required to replenish food stuffs more frequently.^[57] The low freeboard of the galley meant that in close action with a sailing vessel, the sailing vessel would usually maintain a height advantage. The sailing vessel could also fight more effectively farther out at sea and in rougher wind conditions because of the height of their freeboard.^[58]

Under sail, an oared warship was placed at much greater risk as a result of the piercings for the oars which were required to be near the waterline and would allow water to ingress into the galley if the vessel heeled too far to one side. These advantages and disadvantages led the galley to be and remain a primarily coastal vessel. The shift to sailing vessels in the Mediterranean was the result of the negation of some of the galley’s advantages as well as the adoption of gunpowder weapons on a much larger institutional scale. The sailing vessel was propelled in a different manner than the galley but the tactics were often the same until the 16th century. The real-estate afforded to the sailing vessel to place larger cannons and other armament mattered little because early gunpowder weapons had limited range and were expensive to produce. The eventual creation of cast iron cannons allowed vessels and armies to be outfitted much more cheaply. The cost of gunpowder also fell in this period.^[59]

The armament of both vessel types varied between larger weapons such as bombards and the smaller swivel guns. For logistical purposes it became convenient for those with larger shore establishments to standardize upon a given size of cannon. Traditionally the English in the North and the Venetians in the Mediterranean are seen as some the earliest to move in this direction. The improving sail rigs of northern vessels also allowed them to navigate in the coastal waters of the Mediterranean to a much larger degree than before.^[60] Aside from warships the decrease in the cost of gunpowder weapons also led to the arming of merchants. The larger vessels of the north continued to mature while the galley retained its defining characteristics. Attempts were made to stave this off such as the addition of fighting castles in the bow, but such additions to counter the threats brought by larger sailing vessels often offset the advantages of galley.^[61]

Introduction of guns

Painting of the battle of Haarlemmermeer of 1573 by Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom. Note the use of small sailing vessels and galleys on both sides.

From around 1450, three major naval powers established a dominance over different parts of the Mediterranean using galleys as their primary weapons at sea: the Ottomans in the east, Venice in the center and Habsburg Spain in the west.^[62] The core of their fleets were concentrated in the three major, wholly dependable naval bases in the Mediterranean: Constantinople, Venice and Barcelona.^[63] Naval warfare in the 16th century Mediterranean was fought mostly on a smaller scale, with raiding and minor actions dominating. Only three truly major fleet engagements were actually fought in the 16th century: the battles of Preveza in 1538, Djerba in 1560 and Lepanto in 1571. Lepanto became the last large all-galley battle ever, and was also one of the largest battle in terms of participants anywhere in early modern Europe before the Napoleonic Wars.^[64]

Occasionally the Mediterranean powers employed galley forces for conflicts outside the Mediterranean. Spain sent galley squadrons to the Netherlands during the later stages of the Eighty Years’ War which successfully operated against Dutch forces in the enclosed, shallow coastal waters. From the late 1560s, galleys were also used to transport silver to Genoese bankers to finance Spanish troops against the Dutch uprising.^[65] Galleasses and galleys were part of an invasion force of over 16,000 men that conquered the Azores in 1583. Around 2,000 galley rowers were on board ships of the famous 1588 Spanish Armada, though few of these actually made it to the battle itself.^[66] Outside European and Middle Eastern waters, Spain built galleys to deal with pirates and privateers in both the Caribbean and the Philippines.^[67]Ottoman galleys contested the Portuguese intrusion in the Indian Ocean in the 16th century, but failed against the high-sided, massive Portuguese carracks in open waters.^[68]

Despite the huge loss of men and material after the loss of the Spanish Armada in 1588 Spain maintained four permanent galley squadrons. Together they formed the largest galley navy in the Mediterranean in the early 17th century. They formed the backbone of the Spanish war fleet and were used for ferrying troops, supplies, horses and munitions to Spain’s Italian and African possessions.^[69] The Ottoman Turks attempted to contest the Portuguese rise to power in the Indian Ocean in the 16th century with Mediterranean-style galleys, but were foiled by the formidable Portuguese carracks. Even though the carracks themselves were soon surpassed by other types of sailing vessels, their greater range, great size and high superstructures, armed with numerous wrought iron guns easily outmatched the short-ranged, low-freeboard Turkish galleys.^[68] The Spanish used galleys to more success in their colonial possessions in the Caribbean and the Philippines to hunt pirates^[70] and were used sporadically in the Netherlands and the Bay of Biscay.^[71]

Ottoman galleys in battle with raiding boats in the Black Sea; Sloane 3584 manuscript, c. 1636

Galleys had been synonymous with warships in the Mediterranean for at least 2,000 years, and continued to fulfill that role with the invention of gunpowder and heavy artillery. Though early 20th-century historians often dismissed the galleys as hopelessly outclassed with the first introduction of naval artillery on sailing ships,^[72] it was the galley that was favored by the introduction of heavy naval guns. Galleys were a more « mature » technology with long-established tactics and traditions of supporting social institutions and naval organizations. In combination with the intensified conflicts this led to a substantial increase in the size of galley fleets from c. 1520–80, above all in the Mediterranean, but also in other European theatres.^[73] Galleys and similar oared vessels remained uncontested as the most effective gun-armed warships in theory until the 1560s, and in practice for a few decades more, and were actually considered a grave risk to sailing warships.^[74] They could effectively fight other galleys, attack sailing ships in calm weather or in unfavorable winds (or deny them action if needed) and act as floating siege batteries. They were also unequaled in their amphibious capabilities, even at extended ranges, as exemplified by French interventions as far north as Scotland in the mid-16th century.^[75]

Heavy artillery on galleys was mounted in the bow, which aligned easily with the long-standing tactical tradition of attacking head on, bow first. The ordnance on galleys was heavy from its introduction in the 1480s, and capable of quickly demolishing the high, thin medieval stone walls that still prevailed in the 16th century. This temporarily upended the strength of older seaside fortresses, which had to be rebuilt to cope with gunpowder weapons. The addition of guns also improved the amphibious abilities of galleys as they could make assaults supported with heavy firepower, and were even more effectively defended when beached stern-first.^[76] An accumulation and generalizing of bronze cannons and small firearms in the Mediterranean during the 16th century increased the cost of warfare, but also made those dependent on them more resilient to manpower losses. Older ranged weapons, like bows or even crossbows, required considerable skill to handle, sometimes a lifetime of practice, while gunpowder weapons required considerably less training to use successfully.^[77] According to a highly influential study by military historian John F. Guilmartin, this transition in warfare, along with the introduction of much cheaper cast iron guns in the 1580s, proved the « death knell » for the war galley as a significant military vessel.^[78] Gunpowder weapons began to displace men as the fighting power of armed forces, making individual soldiers more deadly and effective. As offensive weapons, firearms could be stored for years with minimal maintenance and did not require the expenses associated with soldiers. Manpower could thus be exchanged for capital investments, something which benefited sailing vessels that were already far more economical in their use of manpower. It also served to increase their strategic range and to out-compete galleys as fighting ships.^[79]

Mediterranean decline[edit]

The Battle of Lepanto in 1571, naval engagement between allied Christian forces and the Ottoman Turks.

Atlantic-style warfare based on heavily armed sailing ships began to change the nature of naval warfare in the Mediterranean in the 17th century. In 1616, a small Spanish squadron of five galleons and a patache was used to cruise the eastern Mediterranean and defeated a fleet of 55 galleys at the battle of Cape Celidonia. By 1650, war galleys were used primarily in the wars between Venice and the Ottoman Empire in their struggle for strategic island and coastal trading bases and until the 1720s by both France and Spain but for largely amphibious and cruising operations or in combination with heavy sailing ships in a major battle, where they played specialized roles. An example of this was when a Spanish fleet used its galleys in a mixed naval/amphibious battle in the second 1641 battle of Tarragona, to break a French naval blockade and land troops and supplies.^[80] Even a purely Mediterranean power like Venice began to construct sail only warships in the latter part of the century. Christian and Muslim corsairs had been using galleys in sea roving and in support of the major powers in times of war, but largely replaced them with xebecs, various sail/oar hybrids, and a few remaining light galleys in the early 17th century.^[81]

No large all galley battles were fought after the gigantic clash at Lepanto in 1571, and galleys were mostly used as cruisers or for supporting sailing warships as a rearguard in fleet actions, similar to the duties performed by frigates outside the Mediterranean.^[81] They could assist damaged ships out of the line, but generally only in very calm weather, as was the case at the Battle of Málaga in 1704.^[82] For small states and principalities as well as groups of private merchants, galleys were more affordable than large and complex sailing warships, and were used as defense against piracy. Galleys required less timber to build, the design was relatively simple and they carried fewer guns. They were tactically flexible and could be used for naval ambushes as well amphibious operations. They also required few skilled seamen and were difficult for sailing ships to catch, but vital in hunting down catching other galleys and oared raiders.^[83]

The largest galley fleets in the 17th century were operated by the two major Mediterranean powers, France and Spain. France had by the 1650s become the most powerful state in Europe, and expanded its galley forces under the rule of the absolutist « Sun King » Louis XIV. In the 1690s the French galley corps (Corps des galères) reached its all-time peak with more than 50 vessels manned by over 15,000 men and officers, becoming the largest galley fleet in the world at the time.^[84]Though there was intense rivalry between France and Spain, not a single galley battle occurred between the two great powers after, and virtually no battles between other nations either.^[85] During the War of the Spanish Succession, French galleys were involved in actions against Antwerp and Harwich,^[86] but due to the intricacies of alliance politics there were never any Franco-Spanish galley clashes. In the first half of the 18th century, the other major naval powers in the Mediterranean Sea, the Order of Saint John based in Malta and of the Papal States in central Italy, cut down drastically on their galley forces.^[87] Despite the lack of action, the galley corps received vast resources (25-50% of the French naval expenditures) during the 1660s centuries.^[88] It was maintained as a functional fighting force right up until its abolishment in 1748, though its primary function was more of a symbol of Louis XIV’s absolutist ambitions.^[89]

The last recorded battle in the Mediterranean where galleys played a significant part was at Matapan in 1717, between the Ottomans and Venice and its allies, though they had little influence on the final outcome. Few large-scale naval battles were fought in the Mediterranean throughout most of the remainder of the 18th century. The Tuscan galley fleet was dismantled around 1718, Naples had only four old vessels by 1734 and the French Galley Corps had ceased to exist as an independent arm in 1748. Venice, the Papal States and the Knights of Malta were the only state fleets that maintained galleys, though in nothing like their previous quantities.^[90] By 1790, there were less than 50 galleys in service among all the Mediterranean powers, half of which belonged to Venice.^[91]

Use in northern Europe

Dutch ships ramming Spanish galleys in the Battle of the Narrow Seas, October 1602.

Oared vessels remained in use in northern waters for a long time, though in subordinate role and in particular circumstances. In the Italian Wars, French galleys brought up from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic posed a serious threat to the early English Tudor navy during coastal operations. The response came in the building of a considerable fleet of oared vessels, including hybrids with a complete three-masted rig, as well as a Mediterranean-style galleys (that were even attempted to be manned with convicts and slaves).^[92] Under King Henry VIII, the English navy used several kinds of vessels that were adapted to local needs. English galliasses (very different from the Mediterranean vessel of the same name) were employed to cover the flanks of larger naval forces while pinnaces and rowbarges were used for scouting or even as a backup for the longboats and tenders for the larger sailing ships.^[93] During the Dutch Revolt (1566–1609) both the Dutch and Spanish found galleys useful for amphibious operations in the many shallow waters around the Low Countries where deep-draft sailing vessels could not enter.^[86]

While galleys were too vulnerable to be used in large numbers in the open waters of the Atlantic, they were well-suited for use in much of the Baltic Sea by Denmark, Sweden, Russia and some of the Central European powers with ports on the southern coast. There were two types of naval battlegrounds in the Baltic. One was the open sea, suitable for large sailing fleets; the other was the coastal areas and especially the chain of small islands and archipelagos that ran almost uninterrupted from Stockholm to the Gulf of Finland. In these areas, conditions were often too calm, cramped and shallow for sailing ships, but they were excellent for galleys and other oared vessels.^[94] Galleys of the Mediterranean type were first introduced in the Baltic Sea around the mid-16th century as competition between the Scandinavian states of Denmark and Sweden intensified. The Swedish galley fleet was the largest outside the Mediterranean, and served as an auxiliary branch of the army. Very little is known about the design of Baltic Sea galleys, except that they were overall smaller than in the Mediterranean and they were rowed by army soldiers rather than convicts or slaves.^[95]

Baltic revival and decline

A painting of the Battle of Grengamin 1720 by Ferdinand Perrot (1808–41) showing a large Russian galley engaging Swedish frigates at close range. Note the crowded fighting platform (rambade) in the bow.

Galleys were introduced to the Baltic Sea in the 16th century but the details of their designs are lacking due to the absence of records. They might have been built in a more regional style, but the only known depiction from the time shows a typical Mediterranean vessel. There is conclusive evidence that Denmark became the first Baltic power to build classic Mediterranean-style galleys in the 1660s, though they proved to be generally too large to be useful in the shallow waters of the Baltic archipelagos. Sweden and especially Russia began to launch galleys and various rowed vessels in great numbers during the Great Northern War in the first two decades of the 18th century.^[96] Sweden was late in the game when it came to building an effective oared fighting fleet, while the Russian galley forces under Tsar Peter I developed into a supporting arm for the sailing navy and a well-functioning auxiliary of the army which infiltrated and conducted numerous raids on the eastern Swedish coast in the 1710s.^[97]

Sweden and Russia became the two main competitors for Baltic dominance in the 18th century, and built the largest galley fleets in the world at the time. They were used for amphibious operations in Russo-Swedish wars of 1741–43 and 1788–90. The last galleys ever constructed were built in 1796 by Russia, and remained in service well into the 19th century, but saw little action.^[98] The last time galleys were deployed in action was when the Russian navy was attacked in Åbo (Turku) in 1854 as part of the Crimean War.^[99] In the second half of the 18th century, the role of Baltic galleys in coastal fleets was replaced first with hybrid « archipelago frigates » (like the turuma or pojama) and xebecs, and after the 1790s with various types of gunboats.^[100]

Both the Russian and Swedish navies were based on a form of conscription, and both navies used conscripts as galley rowers. This had several advantages over convicts or slaves: the rowers could be armed to fight as marines, they could be also used as land soldiers and invasion force, and they could be taught better and more skilled than convicts or slaves. Since most naval conscripts came from coastal parishes and towns, most were already experienced seafarers when they entered the service.

Southeast Asia

Galley from Banten, 1598

Various types of indigenous galley-like vessels are used in Southeast Asia, namely: lancaran, penjajap, kelulus, lanong, garay, kora-kora, and karakoa. During the turn of the 16th century, mediterranean influence came, mainly by Ottoman influences of sultanates in Nusantaran archipelago. A royal galley (ghali kenaikan raja) of Malacca sultanate built approximately in 1453 is called Mendam Berahi (Malay for Suppressed Passion). It is 60 gaz (67 m) in length and 6 depa (11 m) in width. This ghali had 3 masts and able to carry 400 men, 200 of them were rowers in 50 rowing line. It is armed with 5 bow-mounted rentaka and ramming beam.^[101]

Acehnese in 1568 siege of Portuguese Malacca used 4 large galley 40-50 meter long each with 190 rowers and 3 masts. They were armed with 12 large camelos (3 at each bow side, 4 at stern), 1 basilisk (bow-mounted), 12 falcons, and 40 swivel guns. By then cannons, firearms, and other war material had come annually from Jeddah, and the Turks also sent military expert, master of galleys, and technicians.^[102] In 1575 siege, Aceh used 40 two-masted galleys with Turkish captains carrying 200-300 soldier of Turk, Arab, Decanis, and Aceh origins. The state galleys of Aceh, Daya, and Pedir is said to carry 10 meriam, 50 lela, and 120 cecorong (not counting the ispinggar). Smaller galley carry 5 meriam, 20 lela, and 50 cecorong.^[103] Western and native sources mention that Aceh had 100-120 galleys at any time (not counting the smaller fusta and galiot), spread from Daya (west coast) to Pedir (east coast). One galley captured by Portuguese in 1629 is very large, and it was reported there were total 47 of them. She reached 100 m in length and 17 m in breadth, had 3 masts with square sails and topsails, propelled by 35 oars on each side and able to carry 700 men. It is armed with 18 large cannon (five 55-pounders at the bow, one 25-pounder at the stern, the rest were 17 and 18-pounders), 80 falcons and many swivel guns. The ship is called « Espanto do Mundo » (terror of the universe), which probably a free translation from « Cakra Dunia« .^[101]

Two Dutch engravings from 1598 and 1601 depicted galley from Banten and Madura. They had 2 and 1 mast(s), respectively. Major difference from mediterranean galleys, Nusantaran galley had raised fighting platform called « balai » in which the soldier stood, a feature common in warships of the region.^[104] Sultanate of Goa of mid 17th century had « Galle » 40 m long and 6 m breadth, carrying 200-400 men. Other galle of the kingdom varied between 23-35 m in length.^[101]

Construction

Illustration of an Egyptian rowed ship of c. 1250 BC. Due to a lack of a proper keel, the vessel has a truss, a thick cable along its length, to prevent it from losing its shape.

Galleys have since their first appearance in ancient times been intended as highly maneuverable vessels, independent of winds by being rowed, and usually with a focus on speed under oars. The profile has therefore been that of a markedly elongated hull with a ratio of breadth to length at the waterline of at least 1:5, and in the case of ancient Mediterranean galleys as much as 1:10 with a small draught, the measurement of how much of a ship’s structure that is submerged under water. To make it possible to efficiently row the vessels, the freeboard, the height of the railing to the surface of the water, was by necessity kept low. This gave oarsmen enough leverage to row efficiently, but at the expense of seaworthiness. These design characteristics made the galley fast and maneuverable, but more vulnerable to rough weather.

The documentary evidence for the construction of ancient galleys is fragmentary, particularly in pre-Roman times. Plans and schematics in the modern sense did not exist until the 17th century and nothing like them has survived from ancient times. How galleys were constructed has therefore been a matter of looking at circumstantial evidence in literature, art, coinage and monuments that include ships, some of them actually in natural size. Since the war galleys floated even with a ruptured hull and virtually never had any ballast or heavy cargo that could sink them, not a single wreckage of one has so far been found. The only exception has been a partial wreckage of a small Punic liburnian from the Roman era, the Marsala Ship.^[105]

On the funerary monument of the Egyptian king Sahure (2487–2475 BC) in Abusir, there are relief images of vessels with a marked sheer (the upward curvature at each end of the hull) and seven pairs of oars along its side, a number that was likely to have been merely symbolical, and steering oars in the stern. They have one mast, all lowered and vertical posts at stem and stern, with the front decorated with an Eye of Horus, the first example of such a decoration. It was later used by other Mediterranean cultures to decorate seagoing craft in the belief that it helped to guide the ship safely to its destination. These early galleys apparently lacked a keelmeaning they lacked stiffness along their length. Therefore, they had large cables connecting stem and stern resting on massive crutches on deck. They were held in tension to avoid hogging, or bending the ship’s construction upwards in the middle, while at sea.^[15] In the 15th century BC, Egyptian galleys were still depicted with the distinctive extreme sheer, but had by then developed the distinctive forward-curving stern decorations with ornaments in the shape of lotus flowers.^[106] They had possibly developed a primitive type of keel, but still retained the large cables intended to prevent hogging.^[16]

A schematic view of the mortise and tenon technique for shipbuilding that dominated the Mediterranean until the 7th century AD.^[107]

The design of the earliest oared vessels is mostly unknown and highly conjectural. They likely used a mortise construction, but were sewn together rather than pinned together with nails and dowels. Being completely open, they were rowed (or even paddled) from the open deck, and likely had « ram entries », projections from the bow lowered the resistance of moving through water, making them slightly more hydrodynamic. The first true galleys, the triaconters (literally « thirty-oarers ») and penteconters (« fifty-oarers ») were developed from these early designs and set the standard for the larger designs that would come later. They were rowed on only one level, which made them fairly slow, likely only 5-5.5 knots. By the 8th century BC the first galleys rowed at two levels had been developed, among the earliest being the two-level penteconters which were considerably shorter than the one-level equivalents, and therefore more maneuverable. They were an estimated 25 m in length and displaced 15 tonnes with 25 pairs of oars. These could have reached an estimated top speed of up to 7.5 knots, making them the first genuine warships when fitted with bow rams. They were equipped with a single square sail on mast set roughly halfway along the length of the hull.^[108]

Trireme

 trireme

The stern of the modern trireme replica Olympias with twin side rudders

By the 5th century BC, the first triremes were in use by various powers in the eastern Mediterranean. It had now become a fully developed, highly specialized vessel of war that was capable of high speeds and complex maneuvers. At nearly 40 m in length, displacing almost 50 tonnes, it was more than three times as expensive as a two-level penteconter. A trireme also had an additional mast with a smaller square sail placed near the bow.^[109] Up to 170 oarsmen sat on three levels with one oar each that varied slightly in length. To accommodate three levels of oars, rowers sat staggered on three levels. Arrangements of the three levels are believed to have varied, but the most well-documented design made use of a projecting structure, or outrigger, where the oarlock in the form of a thole pin was placed. This allowed the outermost row of oarsmen enough leverage for full strokes that made efficient use of their oars.^[110]

The Athlit ram, a preserved original warship ram from around 530–270 BC. It weighs nearly half a tonne and was probably fitted to a « five » or a « four ».^[111]

The first dedicated war galleys fitted with rams were built with a mortise and tenontechnique, a so-called shell-first method. In this, the planking of the hull was strong enough to hold the ship together structurally, and was also watertight without the need for caulking. Hulls had sharp bottoms without keelsons in order to support the structure and were reinforced by transverse framing secured with dowels with nails driven through them. To prevent the hull from hogging there was a hypozoma, a thick cable that connected bow with stern. It was kept taut to add strength to the construction along its length, but its exact design or the method of tightening is not known.^[112] The ram, the primary weapon of ancient galleys from around the 8th to the 4th century, was not attached directly on the hull but to a structure extending from it. This way the ram could twist off if got stuck after ramming rather than breaking the integrity of the hull. The ram fitting consisted of a massive, projecting timber and the ram itself was a thick bronze casting with horizontal blades that could weigh from 400 kg up to 2 tonnes.^[109]

Roman era

Galleys from 4th century BC up to the time of the early Roman Empire in the 1st century AD became successively larger. Three levels of oars was the practical upper limit, but it was improved on by making ships longer, broader and heavier and placing more than one rower per oar. Naval conflict grew more intense and extensive, and by 100 BC galleys with four, five or six rows of oarsmen were commonplace and carried large complements of soldiers and catapults. With high freeboard (up to 3 m) and additional tower structures from which missiles could be shot down onto enemy decks, they were intended to be like floating fortresses.^[113] Designs with everything from eight rows of oarsmen and upwards were built, but most of them are believed to have been impractical show pieces never used in actual warfare.^[114] Ptolemy IV, the Greek pharaoh of Egypt 221–205 BC, is recorded as building a gigantic ship with forty rows of oarsmen, though no specification of its design remains. One suggested design was that of a huge trireme catamaran with up to 14 men per oar and it is assumed that it was intended as a showpiece rather than a practical warship.^[115]

With the consolidation of Roman imperial power, the size of both fleets and galleys decreased considerably. The huge polyremes disappeared and the fleet were equipped primarily with triremes and liburnians, compact biremes with 25 pairs of oars that were well suited for patrol duty and chasing down raiders and pirates.^[116] In the northern provinces oared patrol boats were employed to keep local tribes in check along the shores of rivers like the Rhine and the Danube.^[117] As the need for large warships disappeared, the design of the trireme, the pinnacle of ancient war ship design, fell into obscurity and was eventually forgotten. The last known reference to triremes in battle is dated to 324 at the battle of the Hellespont. In the late 5th century the Byzantine historian Zosimus declared the knowledge of how to build them to have been long since forgotten.^[118]

Middle Ages

The earliest medieval galley specification comes from an order of Charles I of Sicily, in 1275 AD.^[119] Overall length 39.30 m, keel length 28.03 m, depth 2.08 m. Hull width 3.67 m. Width between outriggers 4.45 m. 108 oars, most 6.81 m long, some 7.86 m, 2 steering oars 6.03 m long. Foremast and middle mast respectively heights 16.08 m, 11.00 m; circumference both 0.79 m, yard lengths 26.72 m, 17.29 m. Overall deadweight tonnage approximately 80 metric tons. This type of vessel had two, later three, men on a bench, each working his own oar. This vessel had much longer oars than the Athenian trireme which were 4.41 m & 4.66 m long.^[120] This type of warship was called galia sottil.^[121]

The dromon and the galea

14th-century painting of a light galley, from an icon now at the Byzantine and Christian Museum at Athens

The primary warship of the Byzantine navy until the 12th century was the dromon and other similar ship types. Considered an evolution of the Roman liburnian, the term first appeared in the late 5th century, and was commonly used for a specific kind of war-galley by the 6th century.^[122] The term dromōn (literally « runner ») itself comes from the Greek root drom-(áō), « to run », and 6th-century authors like Procopius are explicit in their references to the speed of these vessels.^[123] During the next few centuries, as the naval struggle with the Arabs intensified, heavier versions with two or possibly even three banks of oars evolved.^[124]

The accepted view is that the main developments which differentiated the early dromons from the liburnians, and that henceforth characterized Mediterranean galleys, were the adoption of a full deck, the abandonment of rams on the bow in favor of an above-water spur, and the gradual introduction of lateen sails.^[125] The exact reasons for the abandonment of the ram are unclear. Depictions of upward-pointing beaks in the 4th-century Vatican Vergil manuscript may well illustrate that the ram had already been replaced by a spur in late Roman galleys.^[126] One possibility is that the change occurred because of the gradual evolution of the ancient shell-first construction method, against which rams had been designed, into the skeleton-first method, which produced a stronger and more flexible hull, less susceptible to ram attacks.^[127] At least by the early 7th century, the ram’s original function had been forgotten.^[128]

The dromons that Procopius described were single-banked ships of probably 25 oars per side. Unlike ancient vessels, which used an outrigger, these extended directly from the hull.^[129] In the later bireme dromons of the 9th and 10th centuries, the two oar banks were divided by the deck, with the first oar bank was situated below, whilst the second oar bank was situated above deck; these rowers were expected to fight alongside the marines in boarding operations.^[130] The overall length of these ships was probably about 32 meters.^[131] The stern (prymnē) had a tent that covered the captain’s berth;^[132] the prow featured an elevated forecastle that acted as a fighting platform and could house one or more siphons for the discharge of Greek fire;^[133]and on the largest dromons, there were wooden castles on either side between the masts, providing archers with elevated firing platforms.^[134] The bow spur was intended to ride over an enemy ship’s oars, breaking them and rendering it helpless against missile fire and boarding actions.^[135]

Standardization

From the 12th century, the design of war galleys evolved into the form that would remain largely the same until the building of the last war galleys in the late 18th century. The length to breadth-ratio was a minimum of 8:1. A rectangular telaro, an outrigger, was added to support the oars and the rowers’ benches were laid out in a diagonal herringbone pattern angled aft on either side of a central gangway, or corsia.^[136] It was based on the form of the galea, the smaller Byzantine galleys, and would be known mostly by the Italian term gallia sottila (literally « slender galley »). A second, smaller mast was added sometime in the 13th century and the number of rowers was rose from two to three rowers per bench as a standard from the late 13th to the early 14th century.^[137] The gallee sottili would make up the bulk the main war fleets of every major naval power in the Mediterranean, assisted by the smaller single-masted galiotte, as well as the Christian and Muslim corsairs fleets. Ottoman galleys were very similar in design, though in general smaller, faster under sail, but slower under oars.^[138] The standard size of the galley remained stable from the 14th until the early 16th century, when the introduction of naval artillery began to have effects on design and tactics.^[139]

A Venetian galea sottila from the late 15th century from Vittore Carpaccio‘s Return of the Ambassadors in the series Legend of Saint Ursula (1497–1498). Note the oars arranged in groups of three according to the alla sensile rowing method.

The traditional two side rudders were complemented with a stern rudder sometime after c. 1400 and eventually the side rudders disappeared altogether.^[140] It was also during the 15th century that large artillery pieces were first mounted on galleys. Burgundian records from the mid-15th century describe galleys with some form of guns, but do not specify the size. The first conclusive evidence of a large cannon mounted on a galley comes from a woodcut of a Venetian galley in 1486.^[141] The first guns were fixed directly on timbers in the bow and aimed directly forwards, a placement that would remain largely unchanged until the galley disappeared from active service in the 19th century.^[142]

The ubiquitous bow fighting platform (rambade) of early modern galleys. This model is of a 1715 Swedish galley, somewhat smaller than the standard Mediterranean war galley, but still based on the same design.

With the introduction of guns in the bows of galleys, a permanent wooden structure called rambade (French: rambade; Italian: rambata; Spanish: arrumbada) was introduced. The rambade became standard on virtually all galleys in the early 16th century. There were some variations in the navies of different Mediterranean powers, but the overall layout was the same. The forward-aiming battery was covered by a wooden platform which gave gunners a minimum of protection, and functioned as both a staging area for boarding attacks and as a firing platform for on-board soldiers.^[143]After its introduction, the rambade became a standard detail on every fighting galley until the very end of galley era in the early 19th century.^[144]

In the mid-17th century, galleys reached what has been described as their « final form ».^[145] Galleys had looked more or less the same for over four centuries and a fairly standardized classification system for different sizes of galleys had been developed by the Mediterranean bureaucracies, based mostly on the number of benches in a vessel.^[10] A Mediterranean galley would have 25-26 pairs of oars with five men per oar (c. 250 rowers), 50-100 sailors and 50-100 soldiers for a total of about 500 men. The exceptions were the significantly larger « flagships » (often called lanternas, « lantern galleys ») that had 30 pairs of oars and up to seven rowers per oar. The armament consisted of one heavy 24- or 36-pounder gun in the bows flanked by two to four 4- to 12-pounders. Rows of light swivel guns were often placed along the entire length of the galley on the railings for close-quarter defense. The length-to-width ratio of the ships was about 8:1, with two main masts carrying one large lateensail each. In the Baltic, galleys were generally shorter with a length-to-width ratio from 5:1 to 7:1, an adaptation to the cramped conditions of the Baltic archipelagos.^[146]

A single mainmast was standard on most war galleys until c. 1600. A second, shorter mast could be raised temporarily in the bows, but became permanent by the early 17th century. It was stepped slightly to the side to allow for the recoil of the heavy guns; the other was placed roughly in the center of the ship. A third smaller mast further astern, akin to a mizzen mast, was also introduced on large galleys, possibly in the early 17th century, but was standard at least by the early 18th century.^[147]Galleys had little room for provisions and depended on frequent resupplying and were often beached at night to rest the crew and cook meals. Where cooking areaswere actually present, they consisted of a clay-lined box with a hearth or similar cooking equipment fitted on the vessel in place of a rowing bench, usually on the port (left) side.^[148]

Model of the French Dauphine

Side view. Dauphine was built in 1736 and survived until the French Revolution.

Front view. Contemporary model on display at Toulon naval museum.

Propulsion

Throughout their long history, galleys relied on rowing as the most important means of propulsion. The arrangement of rowers during the 1st millennium BC developed gradually from a single row up to three rows arranged in a complex, staggered seating arrangement. Anything above three levels, however, proved to be physically impracticable. Initially, there was only one rower per oar, but the number steadily increased, with a number of different combinations of rowers per oar and rows of oars. The ancient terms for galleys was based on the numbers of rows or rowers plying the oars, not the number of rows of oars. Today it is best known by a modernized Latin terminology based on numerals with the ending « -reme » from rēmus, « oar ». A trireme was a ship with three rows of oarsmen, a quadrireme four, a hexareme six, and so forth. There were warships that ran up to ten or even eleven rows, but anything above six was rare. A huge forty-rowed ship was built during the reign of Ptolemy IV in Egypt. Little is known about its design, but it is assumed to have been an impractical prestige vessel.

Rowing

Modern reconstruction of a cross-section of an ancient Greek trireme, showing the three levels of rowers.

Ancient rowing was done in a fixed seated position, the most effective rowing position, with rowers facing the stern. A sliding stroke, which provided the strength from both legs as well as the arms, was suggested by earlier historians, but no conclusive evidence has supported it. Practical experiments with the full-scale reconstruction Olympias has shown that there was insufficient space, while moving or rolling seats would have been highly impractical to construct with ancient methods.^[149] Rowers in ancient war galleys sat below the upper deck with little view of their surroundings. The rowing was therefore managed by supervisors, and coordinated with pipes or rhythmic chanting.^[150] Galleys were highly maneuverable, able to turn on their axis or even to row backwards, though it required a skilled and experienced crew.^[151] In galleys with an arrangement of three men per oar, all would be seated, but the rower furthest inboard would perform a stand-and-sit stroke, getting up on his feet to push the oar forwards and then sitting down again to pull it back.^[151]

The faster a vessel travels, the more energy it uses. Reaching high speed requires energy which a human-powered vessel is incapable of producing. Oar system generate very low amounts of energy for propulsion (only about 70 W per rower) and the upper limit for rowing in a fixed position is around 10 knots.^[152] Ancient war galleys of the kind used in Classical Greece are by modern historians considered to be the most energy efficient and fastest of galley designs throughout history. A full-scale replica of a 5th-century BC trireme, the Olympias was built 1985–87 and was put through a series of trials to test its performance. It proved that a cruising speed of 7-8 knots could be maintained for an entire day. Sprinting speeds of up to 10 knots were possible, but only for a few minutes and would tire the crew quickly.^[153] Ancient galleys were built very light and the original triremes are assumed to never have been surpassed in speed.^[154] Medieval galleys are believed to have been considerably slower, especially since they were not built with ramming tactics in mind. A cruising speed of no more than 2-3 knots has been estimated. A sprint speed of up to 7 knots was possible for 20–30 minutes, but risked exhausting the rowers completely.^[155]

Rowing in headwinds or even moderately rough weather was difficult as well as exhausting.^[156] In high seas, ancient galleys would set sail to run before the wind. They were highly susceptible to high waves, and could become unmanageable if the rowing frame (apostis) came awash. Ancient and medieval galleys are assumed to have sailed only with the wind more or less astern with a top speed of 8-9 knots in fair conditions.^[157]

Galley slaves

: Galley slave

Model of a Venetian three-banked galley rowed alla sensile, with three rowers sharing a bench but handling one oar each

Contrary to the popular image of rowers chained to the oars, conveyed by movies such as Ben Hur, there is no evidence that ancient navies ever made use of condemned criminals or slaves as oarsmen, with the possible exception of Ptolemaic Egypt.^[158]Literary evidence indicates that Greek and Roman navies relied on paid labor or ordinary soldiers to man their galleys.^[159][160] Slaves were put at the oars only in times of extreme crisis. In some cases, these people were given freedom thereafter, while in others they began their service aboard as free men. Roman merchant vessels (usually sailing vessels) were manned by slaves, sometimes even with slaves as ship’s master, but this was seldom the case in merchant galleys.^[161]

It was only in the early 16th century that the modern idea of the galley slave became commonplace. Galley fleets as well as the size of individual vessels increase in size, which required more rowers. The number of benches could not be increased without lengthening hulls beyond their structural limits, and more than three oars per bench was not practicable. The demand for more rowers also meant that the relatively limited number of skilled oarsmen could not keep up with the demand of large galley fleets. It became increasingly common to man galleys with convicts or slaves, which required a simpler method of rowing. The older method of employing professional rowers using the alla sensile method (one oar per man, with two to three sharing the same bench) was gradually phased out in favor of rowing a scaloccio, which required less skill.^[162] A single large oar was used for each bench, with several rowers working it together and the number of oarsmen per oar rose from three up to five. In some very large command galleys, there could be as many as seven to an oar.^[163]

An illustration from 1643 showing the layout of rowing benches as well and placement of rowers on a galley with 16 pairs of oars. It also shows a rower at the top of the stroke using the standing rowing technique typical of a scaloccio rowing.

All major Mediterranean powers sentenced criminals to galley service, but initially only in time of war. Christian naval powers like Spain frequently employed Muslim captives and prisoners of war. The Ottoman navy and its North African corsair allies often put Christian prisoners to the oars, but also mixed volunteers. Spain relied on mostly servile rowers, in great part because its organizational structure was geared toward employing slaves and convicts.^[164] Venice was one of few major naval powers that used almost only free rowers, a result of their reliance on alla sensilerowing which required skilled professional rowers. The Knights of Saint John used slaves extensively, as did the Papal States, Florence and Genoa. North African ghazicorsairs relied almost entirely on Christian slaves for rowers.^[165]

Sails

 

In ancient galleys under sail, most of the moving power came from a single square sail. It was rigged on a mast somewhat forwards of the center of the ship with a smaller mast carrying a head sail in the bow. Triangular lateen sails are attested as early as the 2nd century AD, and gradually became the sail of choice for galleys. By the 9th century lateens were firmly established as part of the standard galley rig. The lateen rig was more complicated and required a larger crew to handle than a square sail rig, but this was not a problem in the heavily manned galleys.^[166] Belisarius’ Byzantine invasion fleet of 533 was at least partly fitted with lateen sails, making it probable that by the time the lateen had become the standard rig for the dromon,^[167]with the traditional square sail gradually falling from use in medieval navigation in the Mediterranean.^[168] Unlike a square sail rig, the spar of a lateen sail did not pivot around the mast. To change tacks, the entire spar had to be lifted over the mast and to the other side. Since the spar was often much longer than the mast itself, and not much shorter than the ship itself, it was a complex and time-consuming maneuver.^[169]

Armament and tactics

Main article: Galley tactics

In the earliest times of naval warfare boarding was the only means of deciding a naval engagement, but little to nothing is known about the tactics involved. In the first recorded naval battle in history, the battle of the Delta, the forces of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses III won a decisive victory over a force made up of the enigmatic group known as the Sea Peoples. As shown in commemorative reliefs of the battle, Egyptian archers on ships and the nearby shores of the Nile rain down arrows on the enemy ships. At the same time Egyptian galleys engage in boarding action and capsize the ships of the Sea Peoples with ropes attached to grappling hooks thrown into the rigging.^[170]

Introduction of the ram

The ram bow of the triremeOlympias, a modern full-scale reconstruction of a classical Greek trireme.

Around the 8th century BC, ramming began to be employed as war galleys were equipped with heavy bronze rams. Records of the Persian Wars in the early 5th century BC by the Ancient historian Herodotus (c. 484-25 BC) show that by this time ramming tactics had evolved among the Greeks. The formations adapted for ramming warfare could either be in columns in line ahead, one ship following the next, or in a line abreast, with the ships side by side, depending on the tactical situation and the surrounding geography. The primary methods for attack was either to break through the enemy formation or to outflank it.^[171] Ramming itself was done by smashing into the rear or side of an enemy ship, punching a hole in the planking. This did not actually sink an ancient galley unless it was heavily laden with cargo and stores. With a normal load, it was buoyant enough to float even with a breached hull. Breaking the enemy’s oars was another way of rendering ships immobile, rendering them easier targets. If ramming was not possible or successful, the on-board complement of soldiers would attempt to board and capture the enemy vessel by securing it with grappling irons, accompanied by missile fire with arrows or javelins. Trying to set the enemy ship on fire by hurling incendiary missiles or by pouring the content of fire pots attached to long handles is thought to have been used, especially since smoke below decks would easily disable rowers.^[172] Rhodes was the first naval power to employ this weapon, sometime in the 3rd century, and used it to fight off head-on attacks or to frighten enemies into exposing their sides for a ramming attack.^[173]

A successful ramming was difficult to achieve; just the right amount of speed and precise maneuvering were required. Fleets that did not have well-drilled, experienced oarsmen and skilled commanders relied more on boarding with superior infantry (such as increasing the complement to 40 soldiers). Ramming attempts were countered by keeping the bow towards the enemy until the enemy crew tired, and then attempting to board as quickly as possible. A double-line formation could be used to achieve a breakthrough by engaging the first line and then rushing the rearguard in to take advantage of weak spots in the enemy’s defense. This required superiority in numbers, though, since a shorter front risked being flanked or surrounded.^[174]

Boarding prevails

The Byzantine fleet repels the Rus’ attack on Constantinople in 941. The Byzantine dromons are rolling over the Rus’ vessels and smashing their oars with their spurs.

Despite the attempts to counter increasingly heavy ships, ramming tactics were gradually superseded in the last centuries BC by the Macedonians and Romans, both primarily land-based powers. Hand-to-hand fighting with large complements of heavy infantry supported by ship-borne catapults dominated the fighting style during the Roman era, a move that was accompanied by the conversion to heavier ships with larger rowing complements and more men per oar. Though effectively lowering mobility, it meant that less skill was required from individual oarsmen. Fleets thereby became less dependent on rowers with a lifetime of experience at the oar.^[31]

By late antiquity, in the 1st centuries AD, ramming tactics had completely disappeared along with the knowledge of the design of the ancient trireme. Medieval galleys instead developed a projection, or « spur », in the bow that was designed to break oars and to act as a boarding platform for storming enemy ships. The only remaining examples of ramming tactics were passing references to attempts to collide with ships in order to destabilize or capsize them.^[175]

Byzantine ship attacking with Greek fire. Madrid Skylitzes manuscript, 11th century.

The Byzantine navy, the largest Mediterranean war fleet throughout most of the early Middle Ages, employed crescent formations with the flagship in the center and the heavier ships at the horns of the formation, in order to turn the enemy’s flanks. Similar tactics are believed to have been employed by the Arab fleets they frequently fought from the 7th century onwards. The Byzantines were the first to employ Greek fire, a highly effective incendiary liquid, as a naval weapon. It could be fired through a metal tube, or siphon mounted in the bows, similar to a modern flame thrower. The properties of Greek fire were close to that of napalm and was a key to several major Byzantine victories. By 835, the weapon had spread to the Arabs, who equipped harraqas, « fireships », with it. The initial stages in naval battles was an exchanges of missiles, ranging from combustible projectiles to arrows, caltrops and javelins. The aim was not to sink ships, but to deplete the ranks of the enemy crews before the boarding commenced, which decided the outcome. Once the enemy strength was judged to have been reduced sufficiently, the fleets closed in, the ships grappled each other, and the marines and upper bank oarsmen boarded the enemy vessel and engaged in hand-to-hand combat.^[175] Byzantine dromons had pavesades, racks along the railings, on which marines could hang their shields, providing protection to the deck crew.^[176] Larger ships also had wooden castles on either side between the masts, which allowed archers to shoot from an elevated firing position.^[134]

Battle between Venetian and Holy Roman fleets; detail of fresco by Spinello Aretino 1407–1408.

Later medieval navies continued to use similar tactics, with the line abreast formation as standard. As galleys were intended to be fought from the bows, and were at their weakest along the sides, especially in the middle. The crescent formation employed by the Byzantines continued to be used throughout the Middle Ages. It would allow the wings of the fleet to crash their bows straight into the sides of the enemy ships at the edge of the formation.^[177]

Roger of Lauria (c. 1245–1305) was a successful medieval naval tactician who fought for the Aragon navy against French Angevin fleets in the War of the Sicilian Vespers. At the Battle of Malta in July 1283, he lured out Angevin galleys that were beached stern-first by openly challenging them. Attacking them in a strong defensive position head-on would have been very dangerous since it offered good cohesion, allowed rowers to escape ashore and made it possible to reinforce weak positions by transferring infantry along the shore. He also employed skilled crossbowmen and almogavars, light infantry, that were more nimbler in ship-to-ship actions than heavily armed and armored French soldiers.^[178] At the battle of the Gulf of Naples in 1284, his forces launched clay cooking pots filled with soap before attacking; when the pots broke against the enemy decks, they became perilously slippery and difficult for heavy infantry to keep their feet on.^[179]

Gun galleys

The earliest guns were of large calibers, and were initially of wrought iron, which made them weak compared to cast bronze guns that would become standard in the 16th century. They were at first fixed directly on timbers in the bow, aiming directly forwards. This placement would remain largely unchanged until the galley disappeared from active service in the 19th century.^[142] The introduction of heavy guns and small arms did not change tactics considerably. If anything, it accentuated the bow as the offensive weapon, being both a staging area for boarders and the given position for small arms and cannons. The galley was capable of outperforming sailing vessel in early battles. It retained a distinct tactical advantage even after the initial introduction of naval artillery because of the ease with which it could be brought to bear upon an opposing vessel.^[180]

Contemporary depiction of the battle of Lepanto in 1571 that shows the strict formations of the opposing fleets. Fresco in the Gallery of Maps in Vatican Museum.

In large-scale galley-to-galley engagements, tactics remained essentially the same until the end of the 16th century. Cannons and small firearms were introduced around the 14th century, but did not have immediate effects on tactics; the same basic crescent formation in line abreast that was employed at the battle of Lepanto in 1571 was used by the Byzantine fleet almost a millennium earlier.^[181] Artillery on early gun galleys was not used as a long-range standoff weapon against other gun-armed ships. The maximum distance at which contemporary cannons were effective, c. 500 m (1600 ft), could be covered by a galley in about two minutes, much faster than the reload time of any heavy artillery. Gun crews would therefore hold their fire until the last possible moment, somewhat similar to infantry tactics in the pre-industrial era of short range firearms.^[182] The weak points of a galley remained the sides and especially the rear, the command center. Unless one side managed to outmaneuver the other, battle would be met with ships crashing into each other head on. Once fighting began with ships locking on to one another bow to bow, the fighting would be fought over the front line ships. Unless a galley was completely overrun by an enemy boarding party, fresh troops could be fed into the fight from reserve vessels in the rear.^[183]

Ceremonial symbolism

The Galley Subtle, one of the very few Mediterranean-style galleys employed by the English. This illustration is from the Anthony Roll (c. 1546) and was intended as its centerpiece.

Galleys were used for purely ceremonial purposes by many rulers and states. In early modern Europe, galleys enjoyed a level of prestige that sailing vessels did not enjoy. Galleys had from an early stage been commanded by the leaders of land forces, and fought with tactics adapted from land warfare. As such, they enjoyed the prestige associated with land battles, the ultimate achievement of a high-standing noble or king. In the Baltic, the Swedish king Gustav I, the founder of the modern Swedish state, showed particular interest in galleys, as was befitting a Renaissance prince. Whenever traveling by sea, Gustav, the court, royal bureaucrats and the royal bodyguard would travel by galley.^[184] Around the same time, English king Henry VIII had high ambitions to live up to the reputation of the omnipotent Renaissance ruler and also had a few Mediterranean-style galleys built (and even manned them with slaves), though the English navy relied mostly on sailing ships at the time.^[93]

Despite the rising importance of sailing warships, galleys were more closely associated with land warfare, and the prestige associated with it. British naval historian Nicholas Rodger has described this as display of « the supreme symbol of royal power … derived from its intimate association with armies, and consequently with princes ».^[185] This was put to perhaps its greatest effect by the French « Sun King », Louis XIV, in the form of a dedicated galley corps. Louis and the French state created a tool and symbol of royal authority that did little fighting, but was a potent extension of absolutist ambitions. Galleys were built to scale for the royal flotilla at the Grand Canal at Versailles for the amusement of the court.^[186] The royal galleys patrolled the Mediterranean, forcing ships of other states to salute the King’s banner, convoyed ambassadors and cardinals, and obediently participating in naval parades and royal pageantry. Historian Paul Bamford described the galleys as vessels that « must have appealed to military men and to aristocratic officers … accustomed to being obeyed and served ».^[187]

Gouache of a late 17th-century French royal galley. The vessel is richly decorated with red and blue damask, brocade and velvet for the stern canopy and flags, and carved gilded ornaments on railings, outrigger and hull.

Sentencing criminals, political dissenters and religious deviants as galley rowers also turned the galley corps into a large, feared, and cost-effective prison system.^[188] French Protestants were particularly ill-treated at the oar and though they were only a small minority, their experiences came to dominate the legacy of the king’s galleys. In 1909, French author Albert Savine (1859–1927) wrote that « [a]fter the Bastille, the galleys were the greatest horror of the old regime ».^[189] Long after convicts stopped serving in the galleys, and even after the reign of Napoleon, the term galérien (« galley rower ») remained a symbolic general term for forced labor and convicts serving harsh sentences.^[190]

Being a galley rower did not carry such stigma at Baltic, where galley rowers were conscripts: rather they considered themselves as marine soldiers. The main building of the Finnish Naval Academy at Suomenlinna, Helsinki bears the nickname Kivikaleeri (« Stone Galley ») as a legacy of the era.

Surviving examples

La Liberté, a full-scale replica of a 17th-century galley in Switzerland, though without any rowing benches

Original vessels

The naval museum in Istanbul contains the galley Kadırga (Turkish for « galley », ultimately from Byzantine Greek katergon), dating from the reign of Mehmed IV (1648–1687). She was the personal galley of the sultan, and remained in service until 1839. She is presumably the only surviving galley in the world, albeit without its masts. It is 37 m long, 5.7 m wide, has a draught of about 2 m, weighs about 140 tons, and has 48 oars powered by 144 oarsmen.

Reconstructions

A 1971 reconstruction of the Real, the flagship of John of Austria in the Battle of Lepanto (1571), is in the Museu Marítim in Barcelona. The ship was 60 m long and 6.2 m wide, had a draught of 2.1 m, weighing 239 tons empty, was propelled by 290 rowers, and carried about 400 crew and fighting soldiers at Lepanto. She was substantially larger than the typical galleys of her time.

A group called « The Trireme Trust » operates, in conjunction with the Greek Navy, a reconstruction of an ancient Greek Trireme, the Olympias.^[191]

Ivlia is a replica Greek bireme built at Sochi on the Black Sea in 1989 which spent six seasons touring round Europe with volunteer crews.

Archaeological finds

In 1965, the remains of a small Venetian galley (fusta) sunk in 1509 were found in Lake Garda, Italy. The vessel had been burned and only the lower hull remained.^[192]

In the mid 1990s, a sunken medieval galley was found close to the island of San Marco in Boccalama, in the Venice Lagoon.^[193] The hull has been dated, for the context and the C14 analysis, between the end of the XIII and the beginning of the XIV century.

The excavation and the photogrammetric survey (photogrammetry) and 3D laser scanner of this important testimony of medieval nautical archaeology has started in 2001 through two complex executive phases.^[194] The stratigraphic excavation of the wreck was in fact performed entirely underwater, according to the archaeological methodologies. The survey of the hull was instead realized after the setting in dry the entire medieval perimeter of the submerged island. This operation took place through the infixation of a continuous barrier consisting of sheet piles and the use of water pumps. This long excavation and documentation campaign was directed by underwater archaeologist Marco D’Agostino and, as deputy director, by his colleague Stefano Medas.

The lower hull is mostly intact and it was not recovered due to high costs.

References

1. Jump up^ Pryor (2002), pp. 86–87; Anderson (1962), pp. 37–39
2. Jump up^ Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott Galeos, A Greek-English Lexicon
3. Jump up^ Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition, 1989), « galley »
4. Jump up^ See for example Svenska Akademiens ordbok, « galeja » or « galär  » and Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, « galeye« 
5. Jump up^ Anderson (1962), pp. 1, 42; Lehmann (1984), p. 12
6. Jump up^ Casson (1971), pp. 53—56
7. Jump up^ Murray (2012), p. 3
8. Jump up^ Casson (1995), p. 123
9. Jump up^ Rodger (1997), pp. 66—68
10. ^ Jump up to:^ab Glete (1993), p. 81
11. Jump up^ Winfield (2009), pp. 116—118
12. Jump up^ Karl Heinz Marquardt, « The Fore and Aft Rigged Warship » in Gardiner & Lavery (1992), p. 64
13. Jump up^ Mooney (1969), p. 516
14. Jump up^ Wachsmann (1995), p. 10
15. ^ Jump up to:^ab Wachsmann (1995), p. 11–12
16. ^ Jump up to:^ab Wachsmann (1995), pp. 21–23
17. Jump up^ Casson (1995), pp. 57–58
18. Jump up^ Wachsmann (1995), pp. 13–18
19. Jump up^ Casson (1995), pp. 117–21
20. Jump up^ Casson (1971), pp. 68–69
21. Jump up^ Morrison, Coates & Rankov (2000), p. 25
22. Jump up^ Wachsmann (1995), pp. 28–34
23. Jump up^ Morrison, Coates & Rankov, pp. 32–35
24. Jump up^ Casson (1991), p. 87
25. Jump up^ Casson (1991), pp. 30–31
26. Jump up^ Casson (1991), pp. 44–46
27. Jump up^ Morrison, Coates & Rankov, (2000), pp. 27–32
28. Jump up^ Morrison, Coates & Rankov (2000), pp. 38–41
29. Jump up^ D.B. Saddington (2011) [2007]. « the Evolution of the Roman Imperial Fleets, » in Paul Erdkamp (ed), A Companion to the Roman Army, 201-217. Malden, Oxford, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN978-1-4051-2153-8. Plate 12.2 on p. 204.
30. Jump up^ Coarelli, Filippo (1987), I Santuari del Lazio in età repubblicana. NIS, Rome, pp 35-84.
31. ^ Jump up to:^ab Morrison, Coates & Rankov (2000), pp. 48–49
32. Jump up^ Morrison (1995), pp. 66–67
33. Jump up^ Casson (1995), pp. 119–23
34. Jump up^ Rankov (1995), pp. 78–80
35. Jump up^ Rankov (1995), pp. 80–81
36. Jump up^ Rankov (1995), pp. 82–85
37. Jump up^ Rodger, (1997), pp. 64–65
38. Jump up^ Unger (1980), pp. 53–55.
39. Jump up^ Unger (1980), pp. 96–97
40. Jump up^ Unger (1980), p. 80
41. Jump up^ Unger (1980), pp. 75–76
42. Jump up^ Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne; the thesis appears in chapters 1–2 of Medieval Cities (1925)
43. Jump up^ Unger (1980), pp. 40, 47
44. Jump up^ Unger (1980), p. 102–4
45. Jump up^ Casson (1995), pp. 123–126
46. Jump up^ Glete (2000), p. 2
47. Jump up^ Mott (2003), pp. 105–6
48. Jump up^ Pryor (1992), pp. 64–69
49. Jump up^ Mott (2003), p. 107
50. Jump up^ Braudel, The Perspective of the World, vol. III of Civilization and Capitalism (1979) 1984:126
51. Jump up^ Higgins, Courtney Rosali (2012) The Venetian Galley of Flanders: From Medieval (2-Dimensional) Treatises to 21st Century (3-Dimensional) Model. Master’s thesis, Texas A&M University [1]
52. Jump up^ Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II I, 302.
53. Jump up^ Pryor (1992), p. 57
54. Jump up^ Mallett (1967)
55. Jump up^ Bass, p. 191
56. Jump up^ Mott (2003), pp. 109–111
57. Jump up^ Hattendorf and Unger (2003) pp, 70
58. Jump up^ Glete (2000) pp 18
59. Jump up^ Glete, (2000) pp. 23
60. Jump up^ Glete, (2000) pp. 28
61. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974) pp. 252
62. Jump up^ Glete (1993), p. 114
63. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), p. 101
64. Jump up^ Glete (1993), pp. 114–15
65. Jump up^ Glete (2000), pp. 154, 163
66. Jump up^ Glete (2000), pp., 156, 158-59
67. Jump up^ Bamford (1973), p. 12; Mott, 113-14
68. ^ Jump up to:^ab Mott (2003), p. 112
69. Jump up^ Goodman (1997), pp. 11–13
70. Jump up^ Bamford (1973), p. 12
71. Jump up^ Mott (2003), pp. 113–14
72. Jump up^ See especially Rodger (1996)
73. Jump up^ Glete (2003), p. 27
74. Jump up^ The British naval historian Nicholas Rodger describes this as a « crisis in naval warfare » which eventually led to the development of the galleon, which combined ahead-firing capabilities, heavy broadside guns and a considerable increase in maneuverability by introduction of more advanced sailing rigs; Rodger (2003), p. 245. For more detailed arguments concerning the development of broadside armament, see Rodger (1996).
75. Jump up^ Glete (2003), p. 144
76. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), pp. 264–66
77. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), p. 254
78. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), p. 57
79. Jump up^ Glete (2003), pp. 32–33
80. Jump up^ Glete (2000), p. 183
81. ^ Jump up to:^ab Jan Glete, « The Oared Warship » in Gardiner & Lavery (1992), p. 99
82. Jump up^ Rodger (2003), p. 170
83. Jump up^ Bamford (1974), pp. 14–18
84. Jump up^ Bamford (1974), p. 52
85. Jump up^ Bamford (1974), p. 45
86. ^ Jump up to:^ab Lehmann (1984), p. 12
87. Jump up^ Bamford (1974), pp. 272–73
88. Jump up^ Bamford (1974), pp. 23–25
89. Jump up^ Bamford (1974), pp. 277–278
90. Jump up^ Bamford, (1974), pp. 272–73; Anderson, (1962), pp. 71–73
91. Jump up^ Glete (1992), p. 99
92. Jump up^ Rodger (1997), p. 208–12
93. ^ Jump up to:^ab John Bennel, « The Oared Vessels » in Knighton & Loades (2000), pp. 35–37.
94. Jump up^ Rodger (2003), pp. 230–30; see also R. C. Anderson, Naval Wars in the Baltic, pp. 177–78
95. Jump up^ Glete (2003), pp. 224–25
96. Jump up^ Anderson (1962), pp. 91–93; Berg, « Skärgårdsflottans fartyg » in Norman (2000) pp. 51
97. Jump up^ Glete, « Den ryska skärgårdsflottan » in Norman (2000), p. 81
98. Jump up^ Anderson (1962), p. 95
99. Jump up^ Bondioli, Burlet & Zysberg (1995), p. 205
100. Jump up^ Jan Glete, « Den ryska skärgårdsflottan: Myt och verklighet » in Norman (2000), pp. 86–88
101. ^ Jump up to:^abc Reid, Anthony (2012). Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. ISBN978-981-4311-96-0.
102. Jump up^ Boxer. The Acehnese attack on Malacca in 1629. pp. 119–121.
103. Jump up^ Iskandar, Teuku (1958). De Hikajat Atjeh. Gravenhage: KITLV. p. 175.
104. Jump up^ Lode (1601). Tweede Boek. Amsterdam. p. 17.
105. Jump up^ Coates (1995), p. 127
106. Jump up^ This flower-inspired stern detail would later be widely used by both Greek and Roman ships.
107. Jump up^ Unger (1980), pp. 41–42
108. Jump up^ Coates (1995), p. 136–37
109. ^ Jump up to:^ab Coates (1995), pp. 133–34; Morrison, Coates & Rankov (2000), pp. 165–67
110. Jump up^ Coates (1995), pp. 137–38
111. Jump up^ Casson (1991), pp. 135–36
112. Jump up^ Coates (1995), pp. 131–32
113. Jump up^ Coates (1995), pp. 138–40
114. Jump up^ Morrison, Coates & Rankov (2000), p. 77
115. Jump up^ Shaw(1995), pp. 164–65
116. Jump up^ Hocker (1995), p. 88
117. Jump up^ Rankov (1995), pp. 80–83
118. Jump up^ Rankov (1995), p. 85
119. Jump up^ See both Bass and Pryor
120. Jump up^ Morrison p. 269
121. Jump up^ Landström
122. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), pp. 123–125
123. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), pp. 125–126
124. Jump up^ Pryor (1995), p. 102
125. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), p. 127
126. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), pp. 138–140
127. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), pp. 145–147, 152
128. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), pp. 134–135
129. Jump up^ Pryor (1995), pp. 103–104
130. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), pp. 232, 255, 276
131. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), pp. 205, 291
132. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), p. 215
133. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), p. 203
134. ^ Jump up to:^ab Pryor (1995), p. 104
135. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), pp. 143–144
136. Jump up^ Anderson (1962), pp. 52, 54–55
137. Jump up^ Pryor (1992), p. 64
138. Jump up^ Pryor (1992), pp. 66–69
139. Jump up^ Anderson (1962), pp. 55–56
140. Jump up^ Pryor refers to claims that stern rudders evolved by the Byzantines and Arabs as early as the 9th century, but refutes it due to lack of evidence. Anderson (1962), pp. 59–60; Pryor (1992), p. 61.
141. Jump up^ Lehmann (1984), p. 31
142. ^ Jump up to:^ab Guilmartin (1974), p. 216
143. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), p. 200
144. Jump up^ Lehmann (1984), pp. 32–33
145. Jump up^ Jan Glete, « The Oared Warship » in Gardiner & Lavery (1992), p. 98
146. Jump up^ Jan Glete, « The Oared Warship » in Gardiner & Lavery (1992), pp. 98–100
147. Jump up^ Anderson (1962), p. 17
148. Jump up^ Lehmann (1984), p. 22
149. Jump up^ Morrison, Coates & Rankov, The Athenian Trireme, pp. 246–47; Shaw (1995), pp. 168–169
150. Jump up^ Morrison, Coates & Rankov, The Athenian Trireme, pp. 249–52
151. ^ Jump up to:^ab Morrison, Coates & Rankov, The Athenian Trireme, pp. 246–47
152. Jump up^ Coates 1995, pp. 127–28
153. Jump up^ Shaw (1995), p. 169
154. Jump up^ Shaw (1995), p. 163
155. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), pp. 210–211
156. Jump up^ Morrison, Coates & Rankov, The Athenian Trireme, p. 248
157. Jump up^ Pryor (1992), pp. 71–75
158. Jump up^ Casson (1995), pp. 325–26
159. Jump up^ Rachel L. Sargent, « The Use of Slaves by the Athenians in Warfare », Classical Philology, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Jul., 1927), pp. 264–279
160. Jump up^ Lionel Casson, « Galley Slaves », Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 35–44
161. Jump up^ Unger (1980), p. 36
162. Jump up^ From Italian remo di scaloccio from scala, « ladder; staircase »; Anderson (1962), p. 69
163. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), pp. 226–227
164. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), pp. 109–112
165. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), pp. 114–119
166. Jump up^ Unger (1980), pp. 47–49.
167. Jump up^ Basch (2001), p. 64
168. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), pp. 153–159
169. Jump up^ Pryor (1992), p. 42
170. Jump up^ Wachsmann (1995), pp. 28–34, 72
171. Jump up^ Morrison, Coates & Rankov (2000), pp. 42–43, 92–93
172. Jump up^ John Coates (1995), pp. 133–135
173. Jump up^ Casson (1991), p. 139
174. Jump up^ Casson (1991), pp. 90–91
175. ^ Jump up to:^ab Hocker (1995), pp. 95, 98–99.
176. Jump up^ Pryor & Jeffreys (2006), p. 282
177. Jump up^ Pryor (1983), pp. 193–194
178. Jump up^ Pryor (1983), pp. 184–188
179. Jump up^ Pryor (1983), p. 194
180. Jump up^ Rose (2002), pp. 133
181. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), pp. 157–158
182. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), pp. 199–200
183. Jump up^ Guilmartin (1974), pp. 248–249
184. Jump up^ Jan Glete, « Vasatidens galärflottor » in Norman (2000), pp. 39, 42
185. Jump up^ Rodger (2003), p. 237
186. Jump up^ For more information on the royal flotilla of Louis XIV, see Amélie Halna du Fretay, « La flottille du Grand Canal de Versailles à l’époque de Louis XIV : diversité, technicité et prestige » (in French)
187. Jump up^ Bamford (1974), pp. 24–25
188. Jump up^ Bamford (1974), pp. 275–278
189. Jump up^ Bamford (1973), pp. 11–12
190. Jump up^ Bamford (1973), p. 282
191. Jump up^ The Trireme Trust
192. Jump up^ Scandurra, Enrico (1972), pp 209–10
193. Jump up^ AA.VV., 2003, La galea di San Marco in Boccalama. Valutazioni scientifiche per un progetto di recupero (ADA – Saggi 1), Venice
194. Jump up^ D’Agostino – Medas, (2003), Excavation and Recording of the medieval Hulls at San Marco in Boccalama (Venice), the INA Quarterly (Institute of Nautical Archaeology), 30, 1, Spring 2003, pp. 22–28

Further reading

• Anderson, Roger Charles, Oared fighting ships: From classical times to the coming of steam. London. 1962.
• Bamford, Paul W., Fighting ships and prisons: the Mediterranean Galleys of France in the Age of Louis XIV. Cambridge University Press, London. 1974. ISBN 0-8166-0655-2
• Basch, L. & Frost, H. « Another Punic wreck off Sicily: its ram » in International journal of Nautical Archaeology vol 4.2, 1975. pp. 201–228
• Bass, George F. (editor), A History of Seafaring, Thames & Hudson, 1972
  • Scandurro, Enrico, Chapter 9 The Maritime Republics: Medieval and Renaissance ships in Italy pp. 205–224
• (in Italian) Bragadin, Marc’Antonio, Le repubbliche marinare (I grandi libri d’oro), Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1974. ISBN 2560007802093 Parameter error in {{isbn}}: Invalid ISBN.
• Capulli, Massimo, Le Navi della Serenissima – La Galea Veneziana di Lazise.Marsilio Editore, Venezia, 2003.
• Gardiner, Robert & Lavery, Brian (editors), The Line of Battle: Sailing Warships 1650–1840. Conway Maritime Press, London. 1992. ISBN 0-85177-561-6
• Casson, Lionel, « Galley Slaves » in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 35–44
• Casson, Lionel, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, Princeton University Press, 1971
• Casson, Lionel, The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 1991. ISBN 0-691-06836-4
• Casson, Lionel, « The Age of the Supergalleys » in Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times, University of Texas Press, 1994. ISBN 0-292-71162-X [2], pp. 78–95
• D’Agostino, Marco – Medas, Stefano, Excavation and Recording of the medieval Hulls at San Marco in Boccalama (Venice), the INA Quarterly (Institute of Nautical Archaeology), 30, 1, Spring 2003, pp. 22–28
• Glete, Jan, Navies and nations: Warships, navies and state building in Europe and America, 1500–1860. Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm. 1993. ISBN 91-22-01565-5
• Glete, Jan, Warfare at Sea, 1500–1650: Maritime Conflicts and the Transformation of Europe. Routledge, London. 2000. ISBN 0-415-21455-6
• Guilmartin, John Francis, Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, London. 1974. ISBN 0-521-20272-8
• Guilmartin, John Francis, »Galleons and Galleys », Cassell & Co., London, 2002 ISBN 0-304-35263-2
• Hattendorf, John B. & Unger, Richard W. (editors), War at Sea in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Woodbridge, Suffolk. 2003. ISBN 0-85115-903-6 [3]
  • Balard, Michel, « Genoese Naval Forces in the Mediterranean During the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries », pp. 137–49
  • Bill, Jan, « Scandinavian Warships and Naval Power in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries », pp. 35–51
  • Doumerc, Bernard, « An Exemplary Maritime Republic: Venice at the End of the Middle Ages », pp. 151–65
  • Friel, Ian, « Oars, Sails and Guns: the English and War at Sea c. 1200-c. 1500 », pp. 69–79
  • Glete, Jan, « Naval Power and Control of the Sea in the Baltic in the Sixteenth Century », pp. 215–32
  • Hattendorf, John B., « Theories of Naval Power: A. T. Mahan and the Naval History of Medieval and Renaissance Europe », pp. 1–22
  • Hattendorf, John B.and Richard W. Unger, eds. War At Sea In The Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge. 2003.
  • Mott, Lawrence V., « Iberian Naval Power, 1000–1650 », pp. 103–118
  • Pryor, John H., « Byzantium and the Sea: Byzantine Fleets and the History of the Empire in the Age of the Macedonian Emperors, c. 900-1025 CE », pp. 83–104
  • Rodger, Nicholas A. M., « The New Atlantic: Naval Warfare in the Sixteenth Century », pp. 231–47
  • Runyan, Timothy J., « Naval Power and Maritime Technology During the Hundred Years’ War », pp. 53–67
• Hutchinson, Gillian, Medieval Ships and Shipping. Leicester University Press, London. 1997. ISBN 0-7185-0117-9
• Knighton, C. S. and Loades, David M., The Anthony Roll of Henry VIII’s Navy: Pepys Library 2991 and British Library Additional MS 22047 with related documents. Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot. 2000. ISBN 0-7546-0094-7
• Lehmann, L. Th., Galleys in the Netherlands. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam. 1984. ISBN 90-290-1854-2
• Morrison, John S. & Gardiner, Robert (editors), The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since Pre-Classical Times. Conway Maritime, London, 1995. ISBN 0-85177-554-3
  • Alertz, Ulrich, « The Naval Architecture and Oar Systems of Medieval and Later Galleys », pp. 142–62
  • Bondioli, Mauro, Burlet, René & Zysberg, André, « Oar Mechanics and Oar Power in Medieval and Later Galleys », pp. 142–63
  • Casson, Lionel, « Merchant Galleys », pp. 117–26
  • Coates, John, « The Naval Architecture and Oar Systems of Ancient Galleys », pp. 127–41
  • Dotson, John E, « Economics and Logistics of Galley Warfare », pp. 217–23
  • Hocker, Frederick M., « Late Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic Galleys and Fleets », pp. 86–100
  • Morrison, John, « Hellenistic Oared Warships 399-31 BC », pp. 66–77
  • Pryor, John H. »From dromon to galea: Mediterranean bireme galleys AD 500-1300″, pp. 101–116.
  • Rankov, Boris, « Fleets of the Early Roman Empire, 31 BC-AD 324 », pp. 78–85
  • Shaw, J. T., « Oar Mechanics and Oar Power in Ancient Galleys », pp. 163–71
  • Wachsmann, Shelley, « Paddled and Oared Ships Before the Iron Age », pp. 10–25
• Mallett, Michael E. (1967) The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth Century with the Diary of Luca di Maso degli Albizzi, Captain of the Galleys 1429–1430. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1967
• Mooney, James L. (editor), Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships: Volume 4. Naval Historical Center, Washington. 1969.
• Morrison, John S., Coates, John F. & Rankov, Boris,The Athenian Trireme: the History and Reconstruction of An Ancient Greek Warship. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2000. ISBN 0-521-56456-5
• Murray, William (2012) The Age of Titans: The Rise and Fall of the Great Hellenistic Navies. Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-538864-0
• (in Swedish) Norman, Hans (editor), Skärgårdsflottan: uppbyggnad, militär användning och förankring i det svenska samhället 1700–1824. Historiska media, Lund. 2000. ISBN 91-88930-50-5
• Pryor, John H., « The naval battles of Roger of Lauria » in Journal of Medieval History 9. Amsterdam. 1983; pp. 179–216
• Pryor, John H., Geography, technology and war: Studies in the maritime history of the Mediterranean 649-1571. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1992. 0-521-42892-0 [4]
• Rodger, Nicholas A. M., « The Development of Broadside Gunnery, 1450–1650. » Mariner’s Mirror 82 (1996), pp. 301–24.
• Rodger, Nicholas A. M., The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain 660–1649. W.W. Norton & Company, New York. 1997. ISBN 0-393-04579-X
• Rose, Susan, Medieval Naval Warfare, 1000–1500.Routledge. London. 2002.
• Rodgers, William Ledyard, Naval Warfare Under Oars: 4th to 16th Centuries, Naval Institute Press, 1940.
• Tenenti, Alberto Piracy and the Decline of Venice 1580–1615 (English translation). 1967
• Unger, Richard W. The Ship in Medieval Economy 600-1600 Croom Helm, London. 1980. ISBN 0-85664-949-X
• Winfield, Rif (2009) British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1603–1714: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth, Barnsley. ISBN 978-1-84832-040-6

Look up galley in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Galleys.

•  « Galley« . Encyclopædia Britannica(11th ed.). 1911.
• John F. Guilmartin, « The Tactics of the Battle of Lepanto Clarified: The Impact of Social, Economic, and Political Factors on Sixteenth Century Galley Warfare ». A very detailed discussion of galley warfare at the Battle of Lepanto
• (in Spanish) Rafael Rebolo Gómez – « The Carthaginian navy »., 2005, Treballs del Museu Arqueologic d’Eivissa e Formentera.
• « Some Engineering Concepts applied to Ancient Greek Trireme Warships », John Coates, University of Oxford, The 18th Jenkin Lecture, 1 October 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, ZISA, Palermo

Giacobbe Giusti, ZISA, Palermo

Giacobbe Giusti, ZISA, Palermo

Giacobbe Giusti, ZISA, Palermo

Abside della Cappella Palatina della Santissima Trinità

Giacobbe Giusti, ZISA, Palermo

 

La Zisa: détail de l’arc de portique, dans le hall principa

Giacobbe Giusti, ZISA, Palermo

The Zisa of Palermo.
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Official name	Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalú and Monreale
Location	Palermo, Italy
Reference	1487-006
Inscription	2015 (39th Session)

The Zisa is a castle in the western part of Palermo in Sicily, southern Italy. It is included in the UNESCO Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalù and Monreale World Heritage Site.

The construction was begun in the 12th century by Arabian craftsmen for king William I of Sicily, and completed by his son William II. The edifice had been conceived as summer residence for the Norman kings, as a part of the large hunting resort known as Genoardo(Arabic: Jannat al-arḍ, literally « Paradise on Earth ») that included also the Cuba Sottana, the Cuba Soprana and the Uscibene palace.

The Zisa is clearly inspired by Moorish architecture. The name Zisa itself derives from the Arab term al-Azīz, meaning « dear » or « splendid ». The same word, in Naskh script, is impressed in the entrance, according to the usual habit for the main Islamic edifices of the time.

Niche with fountain in the main hall.

In the 14th century merlons were added, by partly destroying the Arab inscription (in Kufic characters) which embellished the upper part of the edifice. More substantial modifications were introduced in the 17th century, when the Zisa, reduced to very poor conditions, was purchased by Giovanni di Sandoval e Platamone, Marquis of S. Giovanni la Mendola, Prince of Castelreale, Lord of the Mezzagrana and the Zisa. The latter’s marble coat of arms with two lions can be seen over the entrance fornix. Several rooms of the interior were modified and others added on the ceiling, a great stair was built, as well as new external windows.

From 1808 to the 1950s the building was used a residence by the princes Notarbartolodi Sciara. Acquired by the Region of Siciliaand restored in the 1970s and 1980s (the Northern part had crumbled down in 1971 and has been rebuilt along the original lines), the Zisa today is opened to tourists. Some rooms houses Islamic art pieces, tools and artifacts from the Mediterranean area. The most notable room is the central hall, with a mosaic decoration; once it had a fountain too, from which the water flowed outside. On 3 July 2015 it became UNESCO World Heritage Site.

La Zisa

 Giacobbe Giusti, ZISA, Palermo

La Zisa, Palermo

La Zisa, auch Castello della Zisa oder einfach kurz nur Zisa genannt, ist ein Palast im Westen von Palermo, das den normannischen Königen von Sizilien als Sommerresidenz diente. Es liegt im ehemaligen „Parco Nuovo“, dem im Westen der Stadt gelegene Teil des königlichen Parks. Neben La Cuba, einem weiteren Palast in diesem ehemaligen Park, ist La Zisa eines der besterhaltenen normannischen Paläste Siziliens. Im Inneren des Palastes ist das Museum für Islamische Kunstuntergebracht.

Geschichte

La Zisa, Druck von 1830

La Zisa, Fotografie (Albumin) von Giorgio Sommer, ca. 1865–70

La Zisa wurde 1165 unter Wilhelm I. begonnen und 1167 unter dessen Sohn Wilhelm II. fertiggestellt. Deutlich zu erkennen sind normannische und arabische Einflüsse. Dies ist darauf zurückzuführen, dass die Mehrzahl der mitwirkenden Handwerker und Bauarbeiter Araber waren, die zu dieser Zeit noch einen großen Anteil an der Bevölkerung Siziliens stellten. Auch der Name des Schlosses hat seinen Ursprung im Arabischen er leitet sich von al-ʿazīz (mächtig, stark) ab. Das Schloss lag im königlichen Park, und vor seiner Hauptfassade, die in etwa nach Osten zur Stadt hin ausgerichtet ist, befand sich ein großes Wasserbecken.

Im 14. Jahrhundert wurde die Zisa zur Festung ausgebaut. Später kam sie in privaten Besitz. Während einer Pestepidemie 1624 wurde die Zisa als Lager für Gegenstände verwendet, die augenscheinlich mit Pesterregern in Kontakt waren. Welcher Art diese Gegenstände waren, lässt sich heute nicht mehr feststellen. 1635 wurde der Palast von der Adelsfamilie de Sandoval erworben und in einen Barockpalast umgebaut. 1806 gelangte er im Erbwege an die Familie Notarbartolo, die ihn teilweise restaurierte. 1951 kam die Zisa in staatlichen Besitz. Bereits in den 50er Jahren wurden die barocken Umbauten rückgängig gemacht. Nach einem teilweisen Einsturz von Decken und Wandverkleidungen im Oktober 1971 begannen 1972 umfangreiche Restaurierungsarbeiten.

Nach Abschluss der Restaurierungen wurde die Zisa wieder der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht. Heute beherbergt sie Palermos Museum für Islamische Kunst.

Das Äußere

Luftschacht

Außenansicht

La Zisa ist ein kubusförmiger Bau mit drei Stockwerken und einer Höhe von 25,70 m. In der Mitte der beiden Schmalseiten springen Risaliten vor, die als Lüftungsschächte für eine Klimatisierung der Innenräume sorgten. Diese Risaliten tragen kleine Turmaufsätze, die die Gebäudeoberkante überragen.

An der Hauptfassade führen drei spitzbogige Eingänge in den Bau. Der mittlere ist größer und prachtvoller ausgestaltet als die seitlichen und reicht bis in das erste Obergeschoss. Sein Spitzbogen ruht auf beiden Seiten auf je einem Paar Säulen.

Die Fassade ist nur durch flache Blendbögen gegliedert. Ein schmaler, gerader Sims verläuft zwischen dem ersten und zweiten Obergeschoss rund um das gesamte Gebäude und betont so die horizontale Ausrichtung.

Ursprünglich bildete ein Fries mit einer arabischen Inschrift, wie er heute noch bei der Cuba zu sehen ist, einen geraden oberen Abschluss des Gebäudes. Bei einem Umbau im Mittelalter wurde dieser Fries durch den heute noch vorhandenen Zinnenkranz ersetzt.

Die barocken Dachaufbauten, die beim Umbau der Zisa durch die Familie de Sandoval hinzugefügt worden, sind von der Gebäudekante zurückgesetzt und daher nur aus der Ferne zu sehen.

Das Innere

Vestibül

Die spitzbogigen Durchgänge der Hauptfassade führen in ein Vestibül, das sich als langer Gang entlang der Hauptfassade quer durch das ganze Gebäude erstreckt und auch zu den Seitenfassaden hin einen bogenförmigen Durchgang aufweist. Von diesem Vestibül aus sind die weiteren Räume des Erdgeschosses und die Treppenhäuser, über die man in die Obergeschosse gelangt, erreichbar.

Nische mit Muqarna im Audienzsaal

Direkt gegenüber dem mittleren Spitzbogen führt ein Durchgang mit einem großen, auf Doppelsäulen ruhenden Bogen von dem Vestibül aus in den großen zweistöckigen Audienzsaal im Zentrum des Baus. Dieser Saal hat gegenüber dem Eingang und auf beiden Seiten jeweils eine Nische, die oben durch Muqarnas abgeschlossen ist. Von den Mosaikarbeiten, die die Wände zierten, ist nur ein Teil erhalten. In der Nische gegenüber dem Eingang befindet sich ein Paradiesbrunnen, von dem aus das Wasser über eine Schräge Platte in einen in den Boden eingelassenen Kanal floss, der durch die Mitte des Saals floss und sich zu mehreren kleinen Becken erweiterte. Draußen führte der Kanal in der Mittelachse des Baus zu einem Wasserbecken vor dem Schloss.

Großer Saal im zweiten Obergeschoss

Die weiteren Räume im Erdgeschoss und im ersten Obergeschoss sind auf beiden Seiten dieses Saals angeordnet. Im ersten Obergeschoss sind die beiden Seiten über einen schmalen Gang an der Rückseite des Gebäudes miteinander verbunden. Im zweiten Obergeschoss befindet sich in der Mitte, also über dem Audienzsaal, ebenfalls ein großer Saal. Da dessen Fußboden zur Mitte hin geneigt ist, wird angenommen, dass es sich dabei um ein Atrium mit Impluvium gehandelt hat, das vermutlich erst bei dem Umbau im 17. Jahrhundert durch die Familie de Sandoval überdacht wurde.

Park

Kanal in der Mittelachse des Parks

Vor dem Schloss befindet sich noch das Wasserbecken, in den das Wasser aus dem Paradiesbrunnen floss. In der Mitte ist noch die Basis des Pavillons zu erkennen, der ursprünglich in dem Becken stand und über einen Steg zugänglich war.

In Verlängerung des Wasserkanals, der in dieses Becken führte, wurde 2005 ein Park mit Grünflächen und einem Wasserkanal angelegt, der über Kaskaden und rechteckige Becken durch die Grünanlage fließt.

Nördlich des Palastes wurden 1972 Reste einer römischen Wasserleitung und einer Thermenanlage entdeckt. Ebenfalls nördlich der Zisa befindet sich die Cappella della Santissima Trinità alla Zisa.

Literatur

• Brigit Carnabuci: Sizilien. Griechische Tempel, römische Villen, normannische Dome und barocke Städte im Zentrum des Mittelmeeres (= DuMont Kunst-Reiseführer). 6., aktualisierte Auflage. DuMont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern 2011, ISBN 978-3-7701-4385-6.
• Museum ohne Grenzen (Hrsg.): Arabisch-normannische Kunst – Siziliens Kultur im Mittelalter. Internationaler Ausstellungsstraßen-Zyklus Die Islamische Kunst im Mittelmeerraum, Ernst Wasmuth Verlag Tübingen Berlin, 2004, ISBN 3-8030-4102-3
• Chris Gravett: Atlas der Burgen. Die schönsten Burgen und Schlösser. Tosa, Wien 2001, S. 122, ISBN 3-85492-470-4.
• Hans-Rudolf Meier: Die normannischen Königspaläste in Palermo. Studien zur hochmittelalterlichen Residenzbaukunst. Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1994, S. 68–79, 122–126, ISBN 3-88462-941-7.
• Ursula Staacke: Un palazzo normanno a Palermo: La zisa. La cultura musulmana negli edifici dei Re. Ricerche e documenti, Palermo 1991.
• Adolph Goldschmidt: Die normannischen Königspaläste in Palermo, Zeitschrift für Bauwesen, Bd. 48, 1898, S. 542–590 mit Abbildungen auf Blatt 56–59 im Atlas

 Commons: La Zisa (Palermo) – Sammlung von Bildern, Videos und Audiodateien

• La Zisa. In: Palermo e i suoi giardini nell’età arabo normanna. Scuola Media « Falcone e Borsellino » Lascari, S. 65–71, abgerufen am 26. März 2009 (PDF, 1,7 MB, italienisch).

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Zisa

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Sele metope, two women running

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Detail of one of the bronze vessels from the Heroon, in the museum showing a sheep and a woman

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

The ceiling of the Tomb of the Diver, c. 470 BC

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Detail of a Fresco from the North wall of the Tomb of the Diver in Paestum, Italy.

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

The symposium on the north wall

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

 

Cratere di Assteas(Napoli, Museo archeologico nazionale.)

Michikin – Opera propria

Cratere a campana del ceramografo Assteas, rinvenuto in area archeologica di Saticula (Sant’ Agata de’ Goti, BN), conservato al Museo Archeologico di Napoli (inv. nr. 82258). Mostra Cadmo che assale tenendo una pietra nella mano il dragone che è a guardia della fonte tebana, simboleggiata dall’anfora posta a terra.

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Torre di Paestum, ad un chilometro dagli scavi, una delle tante per il controllo del litorale tirrenico

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Krater of about 360 BC, now Getty Villa, California

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Odysseus and the Sirens on a Paestum vase in Berlin

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Bell-krater with an Elderly Satyr Followed by Young Dionysos », by the « Python » painter, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Rape of Europa from a krater, 350–340 BC

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Fresco of chariot race and the winning post, third century BC, in the museum

Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany –Lucanian fresco tomb painting of a man racing a chariot past the winning post, 3rd century BC, PaestrumPaestum Archaeological Museum

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Sele metope with Heracles killing the giant Alcyoneus

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Fresco from the « Tomb of the Black Rider », Lucanian period

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Paestum contains three of the most well-preserved ancient Greek temples in the world; two Hera Temples shown above
Shown within Italy
Location	Paestum, Province of Salerno, Campania, Italy
Region	Magna Graecia
Coordinates	40°25′20″N 15°0′19″ECoordinates: 40°25′20″N 15°0′19″E
Type	Settlement
History
Builder	Colonists from Sybaris and/or Troezen
Founded	Around 600 BC
Periods	Archaic Greece to Middle Ages
Site notes
Management	Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici di Salerno, Avellino, Benevento e Caserta
Website	www.museopaestum.beniculturali.it (in Italian) (in English)
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Official name	Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park with the Archeological Sites of Paestum and Velia, and the Certosa di Padula
Type	Cultural
Criteria	iii, iv
Designated	1998 (22nd session)
Reference no.	842
Region	Europe and North America

Paestum was a major ancient Greek city on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea in Magna Graecia(southern Italy). The ruins of Paestum are famous for their three ancient Greek temples in the Doric order, dating from about 600 to 450 BC, which are in a very good state of preservation. The city walls and amphitheatre are largely intact, and the bottom of the walls of many other structures remain, as well as paved roads. The site is open to the public, and there is a modern national museum within it, which also contains the finds from the associated Greek site of Foce del Sele.

After its foundation by Greek colonists under the name of Poseidonia (Ancient Greek: Ποσειδωνία) it was eventually conquered by the local Lucanians and later the Romans. The Lucanians renamed it to Paistos and the Romans gave the city its current name.^[1] As Pesto or Paestum, the town became a bishopric (now only titular), but it was abandoned in the Early Middle Ages, and left undisturbed and largely forgotten until the eighteenth century.

Today the remains of the city are found in the modern frazione of Paestum, which is part of the comune of Capaccio in the Province of Salerno, Campania, Italy. The modern settlement, directly to the south of the archaeological site, is a popular seaside resort, with long sandy beaches.

Ancient remains

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Aerial view of Paestum, looking northwest; two Hera Temples in foreground, Athena Temple in background, a modern museum on right

Much the most celebrated features of the site today are the three large temples in the Archaic version of the Greek Doric order, dating from about 550 to 450 BC. All are typical of the period,^[2] with massive colonnades having a very pronounced entasis (widening as they go down), and very wide capitals resembling upturned mushrooms. Above the columns, only the second Temple of Hera retains most of its entablature, the other two having only the architrave in place.

These were dedicated to Hera, Athena, and Poseidon (Juno, Minerva, and Neptune to the Romans), although previously they often have been identified otherwise, for example, as a basilica and a temple of Ceres (Greek Demeter), after eighteenth-century arguments. The two temples of Hera are right next to each other, while the Temple of Athena is on the other side of the town center. There were other temples, both Greek and Roman, which are far less well-preserved. Paestum is far from any sources of good marble. The three main temples had few stone reliefs, perhaps using painting instead. Painted terracotta was for some detailed parts of the structure. The large pieces of terracotta that have survived are in the museum.

The whole ancient city of Paestum covers an area of approximately 120 hectares. It is only the 25 hectares that contain the three main temples and the other main buildings that have been excavated. The other 95 hectares remain on private land and have not been excavated. The city is surrounded by defensive walls that still stand. The walls are approximately 4750 m long, 5 – 7 m thick and 15 m high. Positioned along the wall are 24 square and round towers. There may have been as many as 28, but some of them were destroyed during the construction of a highway during the eighteenth century that effectively cut the site in two.

The central area is completely clear of modern buildings and always has been largely so, since the Middle Ages. Although much stone has been stripped from the site, large numbers of buildings remain detectable by their footings or the lower parts of their walls, and the main roads remain paved. A low-built heroon or shrine memorial to an unknown local hero survived intact; the contents are in the museum. Numerous tombs have been excavated outside the walls.

The three Greek Temples

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

First temple of Hera, c. 550 BC

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Second temple of Hera, c. 460–450 BC

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Temple of Hera II at night – Paestum

The first Temple of Hera, built around 550 BC by the Greek colonists, is the oldest surviving temple in Paestum. Eighteenth-century archaeologists named it « The Basilica » because some mistakenly believed it to be a Roman building. (The original Roman basilica was essentially a civic form of building, before the basilica plan was adopted by the Early Christians for churches.)

Inscriptions and terracotta statuettes revealed that the goddess worshiped here was Hera. Later, an altar was unearthed in front of the temple, in the open-air site usual for a Greek altar. The faithful could attend rites and sacrifices without entering the cella.

The columns have a very strong entasis or curvature down their length, an indication of an early date of construction. The temple is wider than most Greek temples, probably because there are two doors and a row of seven columns running centrally inside the cella or inner sanctuary, an unusual feature.^[3] This may reflect a dual dedication of the temple. Having an odd number of columns, here nine, across the shorter sides also is very unusual; there are eighteen columns along the longer sides. This was possible, or necessary, because of the two doors, so that neither has a view blocked by a column.

The second Temple of Hera was built around 460–450 BC, just north of the first Hera Temple. It was once mistakenly thought to be dedicated to Poseidon. The columns do not have the typical 20 flutes on each column, but have 24 flutes. The Temple of Hera II also has a wider column size and smaller intervals between columns. The temple was also used to worship Zeus and another deity, whose identity is unknown. There are visible on the east side the remains of two altars, one large and one smaller. The smaller one is a Roman addition, built when a road leading to a Roman forum was cut through the larger one. It also is possible that the temple originally was dedicated to both Hera and Poseidon; some offertory statues found around the larger altar are thought to demonstrate this identification.

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Temple of Athena, c. 500 BC

On the highest point of the town, some way from the Hera Temples and north of the center of the ancient settlement, is the Temple of Athena. It was built around 500 BC, and was for some time incorrectly thought to have been dedicated to Ceres.^[4] The architecture is transitional, being partly in the Ionic style and partly early Doric. Three medieval Christian tombs in the floor show that the temple was at one time used as a Christian church.

All three Greek temples have undergone some renovation and repair in recent years.

E

smARThistory – Ancient Greek Temples at Paestum, Italy[5]

Other archaeological features

In the central part of the complex is the Roman Forum, thought to have been built on the site of the preceding Greek agora. On the north side of the forum is a small Roman temple, dated to 200 BC. It was dedicated to the Capitoline Triad, Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva.

To the north-east of the forum is the amphitheater. This is of normal Roman pattern, although much smaller than later examples. Only the western half is visible; in 1930 AD, a road was built across the site, burying the eastern half. It is said by local inhabitants that the civil engineer responsible was tried, convicted and received a prison sentence for what was described as wanton destruction of a historic site. There is also a small circular council hall (bouleuterion) or assembly space (ekklesiasterion), with seats in tiers. It was probably never roofed, but had a wall around it, perhaps with a small arcade round the inside.^[6]This ceased to have a role in Roman times and was filled over.^[7]

Detail of one of the bronze vessels from the Heroon, in the museum showing a sheep and a woman

The heroon, close to the forum and the Temple of Athena, probably celebrated the founder of the city, though constructed around a century after the death of this unnamed figure. It was a low tumulus with a walled rectangular enclosure faced with large stones around it. When it was excavated in 1954 a low stone chamber with a pitched roof was discovered at the centre, half below the surrounding ground leval and half above. This contained several large, rare, and splendid bronze vessels, perhaps not locally-made, and a large Athenian pottery black-figureamphora of about 520–500 BC. The bronze vessels had traces of honey inside. These are all now in the museum.^[7]

Just south of the city walls, at a site still called Santa Venera, a series of small terracottaoffertorymolded statuettes of a standing nude woman wearing the polos headdress of Anatolian and Syrian goddesses, which were dated to the first half of the sixth century BC, were found in the sanctuary. Other similar ones have been excavated at other Paestum sanctuaries during excavations in the 1980s. The figure is highly unusual in the Western Mediterranean.^[8] The open-air temenos was established at the start of Greek occupation: a temple on the site was not built until the early fifth century BC. A nude goddess is a figure alien to Greek culture before the famous Cnidian Aphrodite by Praxiteles in the fourth century: iconographic analogies must be sought in Phoenician Astarte and the Cypriote Aphrodite. « In places where the Greeks and Phoenicians came in contact with one another, there is often an overlapping in the persona of the two deities, » Rebecca Miller Ammerman has explained (Ammerman 1991), in identifying the cult at the site as that of Phoenician Astarte or Cypriot Aphrodite.

Inscriptions make clear that during Roman times, the cult was reserved to Venus.

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

• 

  The roof of the heroon chamber, after the tumulus was removed

   

• Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM
• 

  The ekklesiasterion or council chamber

   

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

• 

  A ruined tower on the city wall

   

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

• 

  The Via Sacra, main street of the Roman city

Painted tombs

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

The ceiling of the Tomb of the Diver, c. 470 BC

Main article: Tomb of the Diver

Paestum also is renowned for its painted tombs, mainly belonging to the period of Lucanian rule, while only one of them dates to the Greek period. However, this is the Tomb of the Diver (Italian: Tomba del tuffatore), which is the most famous. It is named after the enigmatic scene, depicted on the underside of the covering slab, of a young man diving into a stream of water. It dates to the first half of the fifth century BC (about 470 BC), the Golden Age of the Greek town. It was found, on 3 June 1968, in a small necropolis some 1.5 km south of the ancient walls. The paintings have now been transferred to the museum. The tomb is painted with the true fresco technique and its importance lies in being « the only example of Greek painting with figured scenes dating from the Orientalizing, Archaic, or Classical periods to survive in its entirety. Among the thousands of Greek tombs known from this time (roughly 700–400 BC), this is the only one found to have been decorated with frescoes of human subjects. »^[9]

The symposium on the north wall

The remaining four walls of the tomb are occupied by symposium-related scenes, an iconography far more familiar from Greek pottery than the diving scene. All the five frescoes are displayed in the museum, together with other cycles from Lucanian painted tombs. In contrast to earlier Greek tomb paintings, these later scenes have many figures and a high proportion of scenes including horses and equestrian sports.

Sele complex

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

The Sele metopes as displayed in the Paestum museum

Sele metope, two women running

Main article: Foce del Sele

A few kilometres from Paestum there was a temple complex at the mouth of the Sele river(Foce del Sele in Italian) dedicated to Hera. The temple is now all but destroyed, and little remains of several other buildings. About 70 of the sixth-century BC Archaicmetope relief panels on the temple and another building at the site were recovered, however. These fall into two groups, the earlier of which shows the story of the life of Heracles in 38 surviving reliefs; the later group, of about 510 BC, shows pairs of running women. The earlier cycle forms the centrepiece of the Paestum museum, set in place around walls of the original height. At the site there is a museo narrante with video displays, but no original artefacts.^[10]

Art from Paestum

The Paestum archaeological museum holds the largest collection, but there are many significant pieces that were removed from the site before modern controls, and they are in a number of collections around the world. The National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid has especially rich holdings, with two important Imperial Roman statues and many, very fine vases (see below). Other pieces, mostly painted pottery, are in the Louvre, the Antikensammlung Berlin, and other museums in Europe and America.

In the case of painted pottery, a number of individual artists, especially from the fourth century BC, have been identified and given notnames whose work has been found in tombs around the city and the region, and sometimes further afield. It has been presumed that these artists were based in the city.

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

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  Statues of Livia and Tiberius, c. 30 AD, now in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain

   

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

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  Odysseus and the Sirens on a Paestum vase in Berlin

   

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

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  Krater of about 360 BC, now Getty Villa, California

   

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

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  « Bell-krater with an Elderly Satyr Followed by Young Dionysos », by the « Python » painter, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

National Archaeological Museum at Paestum

The highlights of the national museum at Paestum are mentioned above: the Sele metopes, the Tomb of the Diver, and the contents of the Heroon. The displays also show a number of large painted terracotta architectural fragments from the temples and other buildings, many Greek terracotta figurines, and incomplete larger terracotta statues, and pottery including painted vases.

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

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  Sele metope with Heracles killing the giant Alcyoneus

   

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

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  Head of a lioness, Temple of Hera

   

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

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  Painted terracotta from the Temple of Athena

   

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

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  Hellenistic Greek terracotta figurines

History

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Overview of Paestum, 1769

Foundation

According to Strabothe city was founded as Poseidonia (named after the Greek deity of the sea) by Greek Achaeans from Sybaris. The colonists had built fortifications close to the sea, but then decided to found the city farther inland at a higher elevation.^[11] The fortifications might have been built to the south of Poseidonia on the promontory where Agropoli is now. According to the historical tradition the sanctuary to Poseidonwas located there, after which the city would have been named. The date of Poseidonia’s founding is not given by ancient sources, but the archaeological evidence gives a date of approximately 600 BC.^[12]

Alternatively in fact, the Sybarites may have been Troezenians. Aristotle wrote that a group of Troezenians was expelled from Sybaris by the Achaeans after their joint founding of that city.^[13]Gaius Julius Solinus calls Paestum a Doriancolony^[14] and Strabo mentions that Troezen once was called Poseidonia.^[15] As a consequence it has been argued that Paestum was founded by the Troezenians referred to by Aristotle.^[16]Another hypothesis is that the Sybarites were aided by Dorians in their founding of Poseidonia.^[12]

Greek period

Rape of Europa from a krater, 350–340 BC

Archaeological evidence from Paestum’s first centuries indicates the building of roads, temples, and other features of a growing city. Coinage, architecture, and molded votive figurines all attest to close relations maintained with Metaponto in the sixth and fifth centuries.^[17]

It is presumed that Poseidonia harbored refugees from its mother city, Sybaris, when that city was conquered by Croton in 510 BC. In the early fifth century, Poseidonia’s coins adopted the Achaean weight standard and the bull seen on Sybarite coins. A. J. Graham thinks it was plausible that the number of refugees was large enough for some kind of synoecism to have occurred between the Poseidonians and the Sybarites, possibly in the form of a sympolity.^[18]

Poseidonia might have had a major share in a new foundation of Sybaris, which lasted from 452/1 BC until 446/5 BC. This is suggested by the great resemblance of the coins of Sybaris to those of Poseidonia during this period. Possibly a treaty of friendship between Sybaris, its allies, and the Serdaioi (an unknown people) dates to this new foundation, because Poseidonia was the guarantor of this treaty.^[19][20]

Lucanian period

Fresco of chariot race and the winning post, third century BC, in the museum

It is not until the end of the fifth century BC that the city is mentioned, when according to Strabo, the city was conquered by the Lucanians. From the archaeological evidence it appears that the two cultures, Greek and Oscan, were able to thrive alongside one another.

Roman period and abandonment

What is known is it later became the Roman city of Paestum in 273 BC after the Graeco-Italian Poseidonians sided king Pyrrhus of Epirus, who lost in his war against republican Rome during the first quarter of the third century BC.

During the Carthaginian invasion of Italy by Hannibal, the city remained faithful to Rome and afterward, was granted special favours such as the minting of its own coinage. The city continued to prosper during the Roman imperial period and became a bishopric as the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pesto around 400 AD.

It started to go into decline between the fourth and seventh centuries AD, and was abandoned during the Middle Ages. The bishopric was suppressed in 1100. Like Naples and most of the surrounding region, the inhabitants presumably spoke a Greek dialect throughout its history. The decline and desertion were probably due to changes in local land drainage patterns, leading to swampy malarial conditions. Raids by « Saracen » pirates and slavers also may have been a deciding factor. The remaining population seems to have moved to the more easily defended cliff-top settlement at Agropoli (i.e. « acropolis » or « citadel » in Greek), a few kilometres away, although this settlement became a base for Muslim raiders for a period. The Paestum site became overgrown and largely forgotten, although some stone spolia were collected and used in Salerno Cathedral by Robert Guiscard (d. 1085).

Rediscovery

One of Giovanni Battista Piranesi‘s etchings, 1778

Part of the wall and the three temples, 1837

Despite stray mentions such as that in the history of Pietro Summonte in 1524, who correctly identified the three Doric temples as such, its ruins only came to wide notice again in the eighteenth century,^[21]following the rediscovery of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and during the construction of a new coastal road south from Naples. The modern settlement had begun to revive by at least the sixteenth century, to the side of the ancient ruins. After a complicated start, the rediscovery of the three relatively easily accessible, and early, Greek temples created huge interest throughout Europe. Prints of artworks by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1778) and others were widely circulated.^[22] The complete and relatively simple form of the temples became influential in early Greek Revival architecture.

In 1740 a proposal was made, but not executed, to remove columns for the new Palace of Capodimonte in Naples. Initially, eighteenth-century savants doubted that the structures had been temples, and it was suggested variously, that they included a gymnasium, a public basilicaor hall, or a « portico« .^[21] There also was controversy and misunderstanding of their cultural background. Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi, a clergyman and antiquarian, « the founder of the modern study of Magna Graecia » (the ancient Greeks in Italy),^[23] thought they were Etruscan, in line with his theories that Greek colonists merely had joined existing cultures in Italy, founded by peoples from farther east.^[24] He derived the etymology of « Poseidonia » from an invented Phoenician sea deity.^[25]

The first modern published account of the ruins was Les Ruines de Paestum in 1764, by G. P. M. Dumont, who had been taken to the site in 1750, along with the architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot, by Count Gazzola, an engineer for the government in Naples. Gazzola had drawn or commissioned measured drawings, to which Dumont added his own, as well as, more artistic plates. There was an expanded edition in 1769, the same year when a still more extensive account was published by the Englishman Thomas Major. By 1774 there were nine different illustrated publications on the site.^[26]

Second World War

A company of soldiers set up its office between the columns (Doric) of the Temple of Hera II (c 1943)

On September 9, 1943, Paestum was the location of the landing beaches of the U.S. 36th Infantry Division during the Alliedinvasion of Italy. German forces resisted the landings from the outset, causing heavy fighting within and around the town. Combat persisted around the town for nine days before the Germans withdrew to the north. The Allied forces set up their Red Cross first aid tents in, and around, the temples since the Temples were « off limits » to bombing by both sides.^[27]

Coins

Giacobbe Giusti, PAESTUM

Nomos of Poseidonia, c. 530–500 BC. Poseidon is seen wielding a tridentwith a chlamys draped over his arms.

The coins of Paestum begin about 550 BC. These early issues were perhaps all festival coins. They usually have Poseidon with upraised trident. Issues continue until the reign of Tiberius. For unknown reasons Paestum alone of all the smaller Italian mints, was allowed to continue minting bronze coins by a Senatorial decree of about 89 BC, after this had been centralized. Later coins carry « P. S. S. C. », standing for « Paesti Signatum Senatus Consulto » to reflect this.^[28]

In fiction

Fresco from the « Tomb of the Black Rider », Lucanian period

• Gate to the Sea, a historical novel by Bryherpublished in 1958, portrays the flight of Harmonia, a Greek high priestess, from Poseidonia (Paestum), where the Greek inhabitants have been enslaved and culturally dominated by the Lucani since the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC
• In the novel My Antonia by Willa Cather, the professor Gaston Cleric contracts a fever after spending the night outdoors admiring « the sea temples at Paestum »
• In the film Mare Nostrum (film) by Rex Ingram (director), they visit Paestum
• In the 2007 video game Medal of Honor: Airborne, the second mission takes place in Paestum
• Jason and the Argonauts (1963 film)

• Architecture of Ancient Greece
• Roman Catholic Diocese of Pesto
• Greek temple
• List of ancient Greek temples
• List of Greco-Roman roofs
• List of archaeological sites sorted by country

References

1. Jump up^ Cancik, Hubert; Schneider, Helmuth (eds.). « Poseidonia, Paistos, Paestum ». Brill’s New Pauly. Brill Online. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
2. Jump up^ Indeed, they very often are used to illustrate the style in architectural books.
3. Jump up^ « The early temple of Hera, known as the ‘Basilica’ »
4. Jump up^ « The temple of Athena »
5. Jump up^ « Ancient Greek Temples at Paestum, Italy ». smARThistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved December 18, 2012.
6. Jump up^ Two possible reconstructions here
7. ^ Jump up to:^a b « The Greek town at Paestum »
8. Jump up^ Rebecca Miller Ammerman, « The Naked Standing Goddess: A Group of Archaic Terracotta Figurines from Paestum », American Journal of Archaeology 95.2 (April 1991), pp. 203–230.
9. Jump up^ Holloway, R. Ross (2006). « The Tomb of the Diver ». American Journal of Archaeology. 110(3): 365–388. JSTOR 40024548.
10. Jump up^ http://www.paestum.org.uk « The Sanctuary at the mouth of the River Sele »
11. Jump up^ Strabo, Geographica 5.4.13
12. ^ Jump up to:^a b Cerchiai, Jannelli & Longo 2004, p. 62.
13. Jump up^ Aristotle, Politics, 5.1303a.20
14. Jump up^ Gaius Julius Solinus, De mirabilibus mundi2.10
15. Jump up^ Strabo, Geographica 8.6.14
16. Jump up^ Hall, Jonathan M. (2008). « Foundation Stories ». In Tsetskhladze, Gocha R. Greek Colonisation: An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas. 2. Leiden: Brill. p. 391. ISBN 978-90-04-15576-3.
17. Jump up^ Ammerman, Rebecca Miller (2002-01-01). Il Santuario Di Santa Venera a Paestum. University of Michigan Press. p. 48. ISBN 0472108999.
18. Jump up^ Graham, A. J. (1999). Colony and Mother City in Ancient Greece. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-7190-5739-7.
19. Jump up^ Diodorus Siculus (2006). Green, Peter, ed. Books 11–12.37.1: Greek History 480-431 B.C., the Alternative Version. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. p. 173. ISBN 978-0-292-71277-5.
20. Jump up^ Rutter, N. K. (1970). « Sybaris—Legend and Reality ». Greece and Rome. 17 (2): 168–176. doi:10.1017/S0017383500017836. JSTOR 642759.
21. ^ Jump up to:^a b Ceserani, 60
22. Jump up^ Piranesi’s full title was Differentes vues de quelques restes de trois grands édifices qui subsistent encore dans le milieu de l’ancienne ville de Pesto autrement Possidonia, et qui est située dans la Lucanie, 1778
23. Jump up^ Ceserani, 49–66, 49 quoted
24. Jump up^ Ceserani, 52–59, 62
25. Jump up^ Ceserani, 62
26. Jump up^ Wilton-Ely, 118; Ceserani, 60–65
27. Jump up^ Photo
28. Jump up^ « Poseidonia » in Historia Numorum

Sources

• Cerchiai, Luca; Jannelli, Lorena; Longo, Fausto, eds. (2004). The Greek Cities of Magna Graecia and Sicily. Translated from Italian by the J. Paul Getty Trust. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications. ISBN 978-0-89236-751-1.
• Ceserani, Giovanna, Italy’s Lost Greece: Magna Graecia and the Making of Modern Archaeology, 2012, Oxford University Press, ISBN978-0-19-987679-2, Google books
• Wilton-Ely, John, The Mind and Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1978, Thames & Hudson, London, ISBN0-500-09122-6

Further reading

• Amato, Vincenzo (2009). « Geomorphology and geoarchaeology of the Paestum area: modifications of the physical environment in historical times ». Méditerranée (112). doi:10.4000/mediterranee.3376.
• Bunbury, Edward Herbert (1854). « Paestum ». In Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography.
• Cipriani, Marina (1996). The Lucanians in Paestum. Sirene. 1. Paestum: Fondazione Paestum. ISBN 978-88-86884-02-0.
• Greco, Emanuele (2006). Archaeological and Historical Guide to the Excavations, the Museum and the Antiquities of Poseidonia and Paestum. Taranto: Scorpione editrice.
• Greco, Emanuele (1993). Paestum: A Guide with Reconstructions of Ancient Monuments. Past & Present (in Italian). 171. Vision SRL. ISBN 978-88-8162-016-6.
• Higginbotham, James (2012). « Paestum (Poseidonia) ». The Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. doi:10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah16104. ISBN 978-1-4443-3838-6. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
• Horsnaes, Helle W. (2002). The Cultural Development in North Western Lucania c. 600–273 BC. Analecta Romana Instituti Danici Supplementum. 28. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider. ISBN 978-88-8265-194-7.
• Pedley, John Griffiths (1990). Paestum: Greek and Romans in Southern Italy. New Aspects of Antiquity. London, England: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-39027-6.
• Strabo, Geographica6.1
• Wonder, John W. (2002). « What Happened to the Greeks in Lucanian-Occupied Paestum? Multiculturalism in Southern Italy ». Phoenix. 56(1/2): 40–55. JSTOR 1192469.

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Giacobbe Giusti, パエストゥム

パエストゥム Paestum
行政
国:	イタリア
州:	カンパニア
県:	サレルノ
コムーネ:	カパッチョ＝ペストゥム
市外局番:	0828
CAP（郵便番号）:	84063
人口
人口:	1,000 (概算)人 ()
文化
住人の呼称:	Pestani
地理
座標:	北緯40度25分0秒東経15度0分0秒座標: 北緯40度25分0秒 東経15度0分0秒
標高:	海抜 6 m
パエストゥムの位置
ポータル イタリア
テンプレートを表示 Giacobbe Giusti, パエストゥム

パエストゥム ネプトゥヌスの神殿

パエストゥム (Paestum) は、イタリア南部カンパーニア州サレルノ県カパッチョ＝ペストゥムにある古代ギリシア、古代ローマ遺跡。 1998年には、ユネスコ世界遺産に登録された。

パエストゥムとはポセイドニア（Poseidonia）が訛ったもので、イタリア読みでは「ペストゥム」が近い。

ポセイドニアは、海の神ポセイドンの町の意味である。紀元前550年ごろゼウス神の伴侶でオリュンピアの女王ヘラのための神殿建築が行なわれた。このヘラ神殿は古典的周柱式神殿のひとつである。その100年後ぐらいに町の主神ポセイドンのための神殿が建てられた。

ポセイドニアの発掘調査で出土したケイロンの石柱は古代ギリシア美術では見られないほど粗削りで古風である。この石柱は香を焚いたり、捧げものを焼いたりする台またはその一部分であったと考えられる。

イタリアのサレルノ湾の南端に、のちになってローマ時代にパエストゥムと呼ばれるようになるポセイドニアのギリシャ植民都市の遺構がたっている。この町平面は直交格子によって構成ており、この格子の中央の大きな長方形の中に、アゴラといくつかの聖域とがあった。例外的なほど保存のよい三つのドリス式神殿が今でもたっている。南の方は土地が低く、そこにヘーラー女神に捧げられた二つの建物が同じ方向を向いてたがいに接近しておかれている。土地が高まっている北方にはアテーナー女神に捧げられた神殿がある諸神殿の方向は都市の格子と平行でない。スカリは二つのヘーラー神殿の方向のわずかなずれを海岸平野の東にある錐状をなす険しい丘に合わせたのであると、たくみに分析している。彼は二つの神殿がどのように「聖なる景観に向かって特別なパースペクティヴを創造している」かを示し、「しかしこのように、ヘーラーの諸神殿はこの都市の、大地および女神との結合を祝おうとしたのである」とのべている。他方、アテーナー神殿は景観の上方にたち上がっている。そして町に近づく船から見ると、もっとも高い所にあってもっとも顕著に上方を志向しているアテーナー神殿は、ほかの諸神殿以上に山なみに対抗し、この都市が、、、このポリスが、暗黒の諸力に満ち諸法則で限られた自然界の恐怖から人々を解放する手助けをしたのであろうという事実を言明している。

ウィキメディア・コモンズには、パエストゥムに関連するメディアがあります。

表 話 編 歴 イタリアの世界遺産 文化遺産 ヴァルカモニカの岩絵群 ローマ歴史地区、教皇領とサン・パオロ・フオーリ・レ・ムーラ大聖堂（バチカン市国と共有） レオナルド・ダ・ヴィンチの『最後の晩餐』があるサンタ・マリア・デッレ・グラツィエ教会とドメニコ会修道院 フィレンツェ歴史地区 ヴェネツィアとその潟 ピサのドゥオモ広場 サン・ジミニャーノ歴史地区 マテーラの洞窟住居と岩窟教会公園 ヴィチェンツァ市街とヴェネト地方のパッラーディオのヴィッラ シエーナ歴史地区 ナポリ歴史地区 クレスピ・ダッダ フェラーラ：ルネサンス期の市街とポー川デルタ地帯 カステル・デル・モンテ アルベロベッロのトゥルッリ ラヴェンナの初期キリスト教建築物群 ピエンツァ市街の歴史地区 カゼルタの18世紀の王宮と公園、ヴァンヴィテッリの水道橋とサン・レウチョの邸宅群 サヴォイア王家の王宮群 パドヴァの植物園（オルト・ボタニコ） ポルトヴェーネレ、チンクエ・テッレと小島群（パルマリア島、ティーノ島、ティネット島） モデナの大聖堂、トッレ・チヴィカとグランデ広場 ポンペイ、ヘルクラネウム及びトッレ・アンヌンツィアータの遺跡地域 アマルフィ海岸 アグリジェントの考古的地域 ヴィッラ・ロマーナ・デル・カサーレ スー・ヌラージ・ディ・バルーミニ アクイレイアの遺跡地域と総大司教座聖堂のバシリカ ウルビーノ歴史地区 パエストゥムとヴェーリアの考古遺跡群やパドゥーラのカルトゥジオ修道院を含むチレントおよびヴァッロ・ディ・ディアーノ国立公園 ヴィッラ・アドリアーナ (ティヴォリ) ヴェローナ市街 アッシジ、フランチェスコ聖堂と関連修道施設群 ティヴォリのエステ家別荘 ヴァル・ディ・ノートの後期バロック様式の町々 ピエモンテ州とロンバルディア州のサクリ・モンティ ヴァル・ドルチャ チェルヴェーテリとタルクイーニアのエトルリア墓地遺跡群 シラクサとパンターリカの岩壁墓地遺跡 ジェノヴァのレ・ストラーデ・ヌオーヴェとパラッツィ・デイ・ロッリ制度 レーティッシュ鉄道アルブラ線・ベルニナ線と周辺の景観（スイスと共有） マントヴァとサッビオネータ イタリアのロンゴバルド族:権勢の足跡 (568-774年) アルプス山脈周辺の先史時代の杭上住居群（ほか5か国と共有） トスカーナ地方のメディチ家の邸宅群と庭園群 ピエモンテのブドウ畑の景観:ランゲ＝ロエーロとモンフェッラート パレルモのアラブ＝ノルマン様式建造物群およびチェファル大聖堂（英語版）、モンレアーレ大聖堂 15世紀から17世紀のヴェネツィア共和国防衛施設群 : スタート・ダ・テーラと西スタート・ダ・マール（ほか2か国と共有） 自然遺産 エオリア諸島 ドロミーティ サン・ジョルジョ山（スイスと共有） エトナ山 カルパティア山脈などの欧州各地のブナ原生林群（ほか11か国と共有） 世界遺産 危機遺産一覧 抹消 締約国の地域区分と一覧 ヨーロッパの世界遺産 イタリアの世界遺産 五十音順  ウィキメディア・コモンズには、イタリアの世界遺産に関するカテゴリがあります。

 

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