Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T16:03:41.038Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2015

Gilbert J. Gorski
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
James E. Packer
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
James E. Packer
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
Gilbert J. Gorski
Affiliation:
San Francisco, California, and South Bend, Indiana
Get access

Summary

If Roman builders and their patrons sired a great architecture now in ruins, we, who wander through the ruins with open eyes and ears, are parents to its refashioning.

Rabun Taylor

Why another book on the Roman Forum (Figs. 0.1–4, 1.2–6)? Surely, the many who have written on the site in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will have described it so thoroughly that they must have satisfied all possible future interest. Surprisingly, that is not the case. Works on the Forum fall into three general categories: archaeological reports, articles in learned journals and monographs, and guidebooks. For most readers in English, the archaeological reports and the articles, largely in foreign languages, usually Italian, German, and French (listed here roughly according to the volume of material available in each), are virtually incomprehensible. And should the casual reader live near a good university library and have the skills and interest necessary to access these essays, he/she will find simple descriptions of the topography of the site and objects found, with or without exegesis, and technical discussions of difficult, special problems.

While recent archaeological monographs may investigate a single building in detail, they do not necessarily reconstruct its original appearance. They include invaluable measured drawings of architectural elements and standing ruins, but they normally do not use these elements in measurable restored plans, elevations, and sections. They consider neither the relationship of their monument to its neighbors nor its conceptual part in the design of the whole Forum. Guidebooks in English are sometimes more helpful, but they also have their limitations. Their short sections usually do little more than identify and briefly characterize each monument, and even their longer entries present every structure either as an excavation or as a three-dimensional nexus for an essay on relevant historical sources. In other words, neither scholarly articles and specialized monographs nor guidebooks in English treat the Forum as an architectural entity.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Roman Forum
A Reconstruction and Architectural Guide
, pp. xiii - xx
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×