The culture of ancient Rome is often understood as the creation and continuation of the culture of Greece. Indeed, there is a lot in common, and there is every reason for the term "antiquity" to combine the antiquities of Greece and Rome. But it was Rome that was destined to go beyond the city-state and unite other cities and peoples of antiquity under its leadership.
In the Republic period, the history of Rome is almost continuous war. At this time, the Romans created primarily what was necessary for life and defense - walls, bridges, roads and aqueducts.
The construction of the oldest wall is attributed to the semi-legendary Servius Tulius. The construction of the wall was begun in the VI century BC. The size of this barrier is impressive. Folded from a quad of tuff, it reached a length of 11 km, encircled the city around the perimeter and had a height of 10 and a width of 4 meters.
The Romans became unsurpassed builders of bridges. Two of them remained from the republican time - this is the Factory bridge and the Cestius bridge. The Romans learned many engineering and construction skills from their predecessors on the Apennine Peninsula - the Etruscans, including the construction of bridges. But the constructions of ancient Rome are more grandiose.
In addition to bridges, roads were of strategic importance. The first stone-paved road on the Apennine Peninsula was laid by the censor Appius Claudius. Construction began in 312 and this marked the beginning of a whole network of roads. They were paved with stone, along the sides they were framed by pillars indicating the distance. Roads of Rome were stopped by swamps, hills and river flows. As of today, one can judge the high degree of skill of builders. Well-packed earth was poured with concrete, stone slabs were laid on top. In the center of the pavement there was an elevation to allow water to drain. In general, the structure reached a height of 90 cm, which is more than modern highways. Laid in the 4th century BC, Via Appia crossed half of modern Italy.
Ancient Greece gave the world a culture of high artistic dignity. The civilization of Ancient Rome is the result of the activities of practitioners: politicians, military, administrators, traders, in this regard, the creation of an extensive road network is difficult to overestimate. At the same time, the opinion of the coldness and artistic sterility of the art of Ancient Rome is completely unfounded.
There are many areas of art in which the ancient Romans achieved much greater success than the ancient Greeks. Despite the similarity of cultures, these peoples were characterized by a completely different worldview. The Greeks saw the world through the haze of myth, for the Romans the mythological basis of art is not characteristic, they were inspired by reality. This determines the fundamental difference between the art of Ancient Greece and the art of Ancient Rome. For the Greeks, generalization was characteristic, for the Romans - decomposition into details and a detailed depiction of phenomena.
In ancient Roman art, sculptural relief, which consistently and accurately tells about certain events, was widely used. Diligence was considered in ancient Rome as one of the civic virtues, and therefore labor scenes were reproduced with documentary accuracy on tombstones.
The origin of the historical relief is an indisputable achievement of the culture of Ancient Rome. An interesting example of comparing the worldview of the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans is the sculptural decoration of the altar of censor Domitius Agenobarba. On three sides of the altar there is a relief telling of the wedding of Neptune and Amphitrite. It is assumed that this mythological composition was borrowed from the reliefs of the Greek sculptor Skopas. On the fourth side of the altar is a scene from Roman life. The sculptor describes in detail all the details of the ceremony, his images are reliable, and the event is true. The Roman historical relief reaches the peak of its development in the decoration of the column of Trajan. This memorial and triumphal monument to the emperor of Rome is surrounded by a two-hundred-meter ribbon of relief. She coherently and meticulously shows all the details of the military campaign of the Romans led by Trajan.
Another area discovered by Roman art is a sculptural portrait. It was in ancient Rome for the first time that such a realistic image of a specific person appeared. The appearance of the Roman sculptural portrait was provoked by the features of the cult of the ancestors. The ancient Romans believed that deceased relatives became guardians of the clan, so their images were stored in the house and used in various rituals. Something similar can be found in the culture of the Etruscans. This mysterious people put the ashes of the dead in special vases. The covers of these vessels had an anthropomorphic shape; over time, portrait features began to give them. Extraordinary skill in the image of a beautiful human body has reached the art of Ancient Greece. The Roman sculptural portrait combines Etruscan and Greek traditions, but its essence is unique. Only in ancient Roman portrait art did civic significance and the individual uniqueness of a particular person manifest itself.
Foro romano - Roman Republican Forum is also a unique phenomenon. In ancient Greece there is no analogue of it. The cultural and religious center of the ancient Greek city is the acropolis. It was located on a hill and was separated from the center of national life, the agora market. The Roman Forum in the period of the republic is an area that was the focus of both public and popular life. It housed public buildings, shopping arcades, workshops and temples.
Ancient Roman temples only at first glance are no different from Greek. Upon closer examination, the originality of their architectural appearance is revealed. The Greeks preferred the peripter - a temple surrounded by columns on all sides. The Romans favored the pseudo-perperter. In such a temple, the columns of the rear and side facades do not have a detour, but only protrude from the wall. You can enter the Greek temple from any direction. The Romans erected their religious buildings on a higher pedestal, and steps were placed only from the main facade. These features of the Roman temple show the influence of Etruscan architecture.
The culture of ancient Rome is often positioned as a compilation of Etruscan and Greek achievements. This position is erroneous. The Romans learned a lot from the Etruscans, but rethought and improved all their achievements. This is not about superiority, but about a new round of civilization. At the end of the Republican period, the Etruscans completely disappeared into the Romans. The parallels between the cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome are undeniable, as are certain borrowings. But the difference in worldview makes each of these civilizations unique.
The Romans and Greeks differently understood the relationship between form and space. Greek buildings - both temples and acropolis are open to the surrounding area. The Romans, on the contrary, preferred closed forms, an example of this is Roman temples, with an entrance on only one side. The Roman city squares, the forums of the Imperial time, are also closed. In ensemble expression, the architecture of Ancient Rome generally achieved more impressive successes than the architecture of Ancient Greece.
The creative thinking of the Romans was inherent in a developed constructive beginning. They were destined to open a new page in the history of world architecture. The Romans invented concrete. This allowed to cover large spaces. Instead of a rack-and-beam constructive system invented by the Greeks, a new one came - monolithic-shell. Broken gravel was poured between two brick walls and poured with concrete, then the structure was lined with marble or other material.
It was thanks to the appearance of concrete that an outstanding monument was built, which has little equal in the history of world architecture - the Flavian Amphitheater or the Colosseum. Its facade is solved in the form of four arcades standing on each other with a total height of 57 meters. Alternating arches are separated from each other by half-columns. This is the so-called Roman architectural cell, over time it has gained popularity in the architecture of various countries. One example of a Roman architectural cell is the Arc de Triomphe. In ancient Rome, they were erected by the people and the senate in honor of the victors. Triumphal arches will also be widespread.
In ancient Rome, according to the customs of the ancestors, not words but actions were recognized as valor. Therefore, the Romans did not theorize, but gathered knowledge and put it into practice. And they had no equal in engineering and construction. Another unique monument of ancient Roman art - the Pantheon - the temple of all gods. The beauty of this architectural structure in combination of clear volumes - cylinder, hemisphere and parallelepiped. This is the only ancient temple, not destroyed and not rebuilt in the Middle Ages. The Pantheon combines technical skill with a deep and complex interpretation of the architectural space. In its interior, you can enter a ball of the same diameter as the rotunda. Such proportions give rise to a feeling of special harmony. The diameter of the dome is 43.44 m, builders of later eras were only able to approach its size, but it was possible to surpass these sizes only at the beginning of the twentieth century. For centuries, the Pantheon has remained an example of an outstanding, almost unique architectural solution.
