Vocabulary
This term refers to the Roman public spaces that were rectangular plazas surrounded by public buildings such as temples, markets, court houses, libraries, etc.
What is a forum?
This emperor completed the Pantheon in c.126 CE.
Who is Hadrian?
This monument commemorated Augustan peace and illustrated the emperor's family in conjunction with images of Roman mythological history.
What is the Ara Pacis?
This concrete building contains an oculus in its dome.
What is the Pantheon?
This monument, built by Constantine, contains obvious spolia from other popular emperors' reigns to make a political statement associating Constantine with those emperors.
What is the Arch of Constantine?
This Latin phrase refers to the systematic erasure of a hated public official in Roman city life after the death of that individual.
What is damnatio memoriae?
This emperor built the Colosseum on top of the site of Nero's palace.
Who is Vespasian?
This sculpture is named for its original location in the empress Livia's villa and illustrates the emperor as ideally young, strong, militaristic, and connected to the goddess Venus, which is a significant break from Roman Republican traditions for portraiture.
What is the Augustus Primaporta?
This monument commemorates the emperor's defeat of the Dacians through a long frieze that wraps around the entirety of the monument.
What is the Column of Trajan?
In this small ancient city in Syria that was abandoned in the 3rd century CE, we have the earliest surviving Christian church in addition to buildings associated with many other religions, including Judaism, ancient near eastern polytheism, ancient Roman polytheism, Mithraism, and others.
What is Dura-Europos?
This term refers to a building type that was often a court house in ancient Rome and that comprised a central nave, side aisles, and an apse.
What is the basilica?
This emperor built the Ara Pacis.
Who is Augustus?
This building makes visible the Roman ideal order for society by segregating seating assignments by class: the senatorial class sits at the bottom, closest to the stage, and the slaves and women sit at the top.
What is the Colosseum (also known as the Flavian Amphitheater)?
This Roman forum contains a temple to a deified emperor, a basilica, a market, a Greek library, and a Latin library.
What is the Forum of Trajan?
This porphyry sculpture of four men illustrates the unique ideals of the period in which four rulers (two augusti and two caesars) controlled the empire: brotherhood and complete equality among the rulers through abstracted and stylized features.
What is the Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs?
This term refers to the elements taken from an existing structure and reused in a new one.
What is spolia?
This emperor built the Arch of Titus.
Who is Domitian?
The portrait bust of this emperor illustrates his desire to make a political statement by returning to a Roman Republican tradition for portraiture as a visible departure from the grandiose portraiture of the hated emperor Nero.
What is the Portrait Bust of Vespasian?
This area of ancient Rome contained the Pantheon, the Ara Pacis, the Mausoleum of Augustus, and was generally associated with the military.
What is the Campus Martius (Field of Mars)?
This building, constructed outside the walls of Rome and over a necropolis, marks the burial and the site of the martyrdom of the first pope.
What is Old St. Peter's Basilica?
This term refers to the Roman wall painting style that is described as "architectural" and illusionistic.
What is second-style wall painting?
This emperor is considered the first Christian Roman emperor. According to legend, he received a vision from God that he would win a battle if he used the Chi-Rho sign (a Greek cipher for Christ's name) on his banner, and on his deathbed he officially converted to Christianity.
Who is Constantine?
This wall painting was in a basement-level room in the villa of the empress and illustrated in exacting detail a series of plants and animals.
What is the Garden Scene in the Villa of Livia (in Primaporta)?
This statue, which shows the emperor on horseback, was once one of many of a similar subject that decorated the Roman fora but now is the only survival of that genre, and it survived because medieval Christians incorrectly thought it represented the first Christian emperor of Rome.
What is the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius?
These are the names of four primary areas of the early Christian basilica: the large central space, the entrance/porch, the semicircular projection that houses the altar, and the perpendicular addition that causes the building to take the shape of a cross.
What are the nave, the narthex, apse, and transept?