The Roman Amphitheatre: From its Origins to the Colosseum [Paperback]

Katherine E. Welch (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521744350 | ISBN-13: 978-0521744355 | Publication Date: February 2, 2009 | Edition: 1

Analyzing the evolution of the Roman amphitheatre as an architectural form, Katherine Welch addresses the critical period in the history of this building type. She covers the origins and dissemination under the Republic (from the third to first centuries BC); monumentalization as an architectural form under Augustus; and canonization as a building type with the Colosseum (AD 80). The study then focuses on the reception of the amphitheatre in the Greek East, a part of the Empire strongly divided about the new realities of Roman rule.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Colosseum, more than any other building from ancient Rome, is routinely the subject of both scholarly and popular texts. While it seems that important studies are published on this structure every year, rarely does any attain the status of definitive text. Katherine Welch's The Roman Amphitheatre: From Its Origins to the Colosseum is such a book. Welch's splendid volume is a culmination of her amphitheatre studies and provides a much-needed examination of the building type's origins in Republican Rome and its development up to and including the Colosseum."
-Thomas J. Morton, The Art Bulletin

Book Description

This is the first book to analyze the evolution of the Roman amphitheatre as an architectural form. Katherine Welch addresses the critical period in the history of this building type: its origins and dissemination under the Republic, from the third to first centuries BC; its monumentalization as an architectural form under Augustus; and its canonization as a building type with the Colosseum (AD 80). The study then shifts focus to the reception of the amphitheatre in the Greek East, a part of the Empire deeply fractured about the new realities of Roman rule.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 378 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (February 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521744350
• ISBN-13: 978-0521744355
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #687,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars very interesting, June 28, 2009

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H. H. Verveer "HHV" (Amsterdam, Netherlands) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Roman Amphitheatre: From its Origins to the Colosseum (Paperback)

I came across this book when I, being a layman, was searching for something to update my knowledge about ancient Rome. My only recommendation here is that I know Rome (and Italy) well. Mrs. Welch writes about the amphitheatre in Roman Republican times. I am not specialized enough even to have had an idea about the precise origins of the amphitheatre, but I had always assumed that it was, more or less, a sort of variation on the Greek theatre as it existed in Magna Graecia and Greece itself. And that is precisely the assumption she has undertaken to challenge. And she does so well, it appears to me.
Traditionally it seems to have been the idea that the South-Italian amphitheatres (Pompeii, Capua, Nola etc.) were the first to appear, and furthermore, that they influenced the versions in the city of Rome, foremost of the Coliseum of course. It did always sound strange to me that the Roman province would be responsible for influencing the architecture in the capital, but then, I seem to remember, Rome was conservative where architecture was concerned. Mrs. Welch, who is an associate professor at New York University, disagrees. In her book she points out, to begin with, that the gladiatorial fights, which originally took place in a funerary context, became connected to military practices, and the same, she maintains, goes for the early amphitheatres. Gladiatorial education became part of the military training. The amphitheatres became part of the military tradition as well. She doesn't spend much attention on the customary view (which was mine as well), but her assumption is that the amphitheatres (mostly) in southern Italy were based on early temporary, wooden examples built in the Forum, in the second and first century BC. This seems to me the weakest part of her argument, mainly because we know so little about these early wooden structures, spectaculae, as they were called. In her view some of these spectaculae were a 100 meters in length, covering for instance the Lacus Curtius on the Forum. The places where the amphitheatres appeared in the first century BC, most famously of course in Pompeii, were in several ways connected to Rome, because they were colonies of veterans, for instance, installed by Sulla in this case. They were primitive versions of the Roman ones the veterans knew from the Forum. Another important part in her argument is the idea that there is a definite architectural difference between the (Greek) theatres and the Roman amphitheatres, stressing the different activities that took place there, mainly in the use of columns the Tuscan order. She considers the permanent and at least partly stone amphitheatre of Taurus (now completely lost, but probably situated in what is now the ghetto), which was opened in 30 BC or so, as the model for the Coliseum, inverting the direction of influence for the second time. Taurus was a general under Octavian. She also tries to prove that the building of the Coliseum was in a way a restoration of the Roman hierarchy undermined by Nero, whose Domus Aurea, built on vestiges of the elite, in the center of the city, and partly open to the Roman people was an early example of the Horti of the later emperors, and more democratic than we are used to associate with Nero. In a final chapter she takes an excursion to Greece, were people were not always amused by the bloody foreign amusement held in their sometimes redecorated theatres, as was the case in Athens. There is some humor here of course, because the Romans sometimes sniggered at the unroman, feminine (and Greek) activities in their theatres. The argumentation of Mrs. Welch is much more dense than I can do justice to here, but I found her book interesting, and in large parts, convincing. But then, I am an amateur. Now and then she does have a tendency to be a bit heavy on her arguments. The book is rather pricy, but it looks great, has a very useful 80 page index with all the Republican amphitheatres, and 60 pages of footnotes, and is packed with (mostly black and white) photographs, drawings and diagrams, which are, what is more, connected to the text in an intelligent way. I found it a pleasure to read the book, and enlightening as well, and consider this review as a thank you for having had an interesting time. In the last photograph but two of the book we see Mrs. Welch herself, very small, and as the caption reads, in the amphitheatre in Corinth (Greece): "with author for scale." Now that is modesty.