Was ancient Rome really a 'glittering city of marble'?

[Viggen]

Was ancient Rome really a 'glittering city of marble'? Reconstruction of capital shows it was made mostly from brick Emperor Augustus boasted about how his rule left Rome 'a city of marble' while historical accounts said it glittered Historians at the University of California Los Angeles have reconstructed ancient Rome using architectural software They found that most of the buildings were built mainly from brick and only a few temples were made from marble Those that were made from marble would have been difficult to see from many parts of the city, say the researchers   

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2981137/Was-ancient-Rome-really-glittering-city-marble-Reconstruction-capital-shows-brick.html#ixzz3Tg7zS9ax 

[caldrail]

Augustus was showing off. Sure, he added a lot of marble, paid for by squeezing whatever taxable source he could find, but Rome was still still a city of jerry built tenements built by cowboy builders. I understand the tallest ever was nine stories erected sometime around his reign, and I think it Augustus who brought in a law limiting the number of floors.

[Maty]

I guess it's a matter of perspective. One of the things about ancient cities is that much more of the area was devoted to public space than is the case today. So if you were on the Palatine you'd have a pretty good view of the monumental areas of Rome, the forum and the Campus Martius.

 

The nine-storey brick  tenements at the base of the Esquiline  were precisely because something like sixty percent of the population of Rome occupied twenty percent of the city's area. The other eighty percent was more marbly.

Edited March 9, 2015 by Maty

[Onasander]

You have a source for that 80-20 percent presumption? I'm having trouble visualizing this based on drawings of the various districts. I can't claim your wrong, but it doesn't feel right either in terms of workable Ekistics.

 

Like, sewage issues pop into mind immediately, as well as aqueduct constraints.

[caldrail]

The other eighty percent were more marbly? Actuially I doubt that. True, certain amenities and public buildings would have benefitted, but even the pa;latial villas of the most important and wealthy Romans were still largely brick - their ruins are still on the Palatine, and without nthe decoration, looking no different from any other tenement remains aside from arrangement and size, but then, the slave quarters under the house in at least one place were certainly nothing to shout about in terms of space, so it's relative I guess.

[guy]

Was ancient Rome really a 'glittering city of marble'?  

Maybe it was for the elite. For most of the residents, however, it was a dirty, fetid-smelling, densely-populated, crime-ridden, dilapidated urban sprawl. Ancient Rome reeked of excrement and urine (both human and animal), rotting animal carcasses and garbage, rancid human sweat barely cloaked with sickly-sweet perfumes, and exotic food and spice smells. (Not so) good times.

 

 

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited March 14, 2015 by guy

[caldrail]

Yet despite the bad smell (which they didn't make a great deal of) and the noise level (which they did), surviving evidence shows the people of Rome had a lively time, lots of humour, thrills, spills, and of course sex (unless you were the poor guy whose graffiti moans about why his girl won't love him).

[Maty]

Are you thinking of this conversation?

 

I.10.2-3 (Bar of Prima); 8258, 8259:

'Successus the weaver loves Iris the innkeeper’s slave girl.  She, however, does not love him.  Still, he begs her to have pity on him.'

[in a different hand].  'Goodbye.'

[ Successus]: 'Butt out, Envious one!  Submit to a handsomer man, who despite his good looks is being treated very wrongly.' 

[Answer]: 'I have spoken.  I have written all there is to say.  You love Iris, but she does not love you.'

 

Ah, the pains of unrequited love. (Though Prima's Bar was in Pompeii.)