The roman empire Mr. Cline History Marshall High School Marshall High School Mr. Cline Western Civilization I: Ancient Foundations Unit Four ED * The Legacy of the Roman Empire • Perhaps nothing has defined western civilization as much as having once been part of the Roman Empire • The construction of cities, buildings, monuments, and the roads that connected them throughout the empire brought a feeling of connectedness to people living thousands of miles apart. • Many great cities of Europe today began as Roman military camps, or trade centers • London • Vienna • Zurich • Paris • Orleans • Palermo • Cologne • Florence • Barcelona • Milan • York • Strasbourg • Budapest • Geneva English Spelling of Greek Word Translation Letter Iota Iesous Jesus Chi Christos Christ Theta Theou God's Ypsilon Uios Son Sigma Soter Savior * The Legacy of the Roman Empire • The inventions and innovations which were generated in the Roman Empire profoundly altered the lives of the ancient people and continue to be used in cultures around the world today. • indoor plumbing, • aqueducts, • and even fast-drying cement were either invented or improved upon by the Romans. • The calendar used in the West derives from the one created by Julius Caesar, and the names of the days of the week (in the romance languages) and months of the year also come from Rome. • Apartment complexes (known as `insula), public toilets, locks and keys, newspapers, even socks all were developed by the Romans as were shoes, a postal system (modeled after the Persians), cosmetics, the magnifying glass, and the concept of satire in literature. • During the time of the empire, significant developments were also advanced in the fields of medicine, law, religion, government, and warfare. Early Christian Art: An Underground Movement The first few centuries after the death of Jesus afforded Christians few opportunities for artistic or architectural expression. Christianity was often oppressed by the Roman Empire. Christians might have their property seized or be burned alive. In such a hostile environment, Christian artwork would have proven a liability. The only distinctly Christian symbol of this early age was the Ichthys, or 'Jesus fish.' The Ichthys was a secret symbol, whose name formed an acrostic for the central concept of Christian faith. Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior. So the nature of Jesus could all be summed up with a simple fish, allowing Christians to identify their secret places of worship as well as the burial places of the faithful. The Catacombs of Rome The burial of Christians was a secret affair as well. Unlike their pagan predecessors, Christians were not fans of cremation. Christians believed in a bodily resurrection. I suppose they thought Jesus wouldn't know what to do with an urn full of ashes. So, instead of keeping the burnt remains of their loved ones on a shelf at home, Christians buried their dead. In overpopulated Rome, with its severe lack of space, this meant Christians had to find unique places to put their bodies. So Christians tunneled into the soft volcanic stone beneath the city, and there they built amazing catacombs. And it is in these catacombs that we begin to see the first traces of Christian art. Early Christians decorated their catacombs with frescoes, or paintings on fresh plaster. These frescoes are very simple and allegorical; not refined at all. This sort of primitive Christian painting copies the Pompeian style that was popular across the Roman Empire. They just reused an old style for new content. Sarcophagi After the Emperor Constantine fully legalized Christianity with the 313 Edict of Milan, Christians began moving their burials above ground, with grand sarcophagi, or stone caskets. These sarcophagi provide us with our first examples of Christian sculpture. Yet with sculpture, Christians faced a new problem. The classical world was full of sculpture, from idols of gods to friezes to life-sized sculptures adorning buildings. The early Christians saw pagan sculptures of gods as what they were - graven images, which are strictly forbidden by the Bible as idolatry. For this reason, sculpture took a back seat during the early Christian years. Though the early Christians did make use of sculpture on occasion, they took special care to make sure that the sculpture was clearly part of the decoration, rather than an object of adoration. Therefore, early Christian sculpture avoided the life-sized scale of their pagan predecessors, and almost completely avoided full statues or sculpture in the round. Instead, Christians used shallow relief sculpture and depicted biblical scenes and Christian allegory. Early Christian Mosaic Yet Constantine did more for Christianity than just protecting it from persecution. Constantine also actively sponsored the spread of Christianity through the building of churches throughout his empire. Though these churches were very plain on the outside, their interiors were bursting with colorful design in the form of mosaics. The mosaic had been around since Sumerian times. The Romans and Greeks did some incredibly detailed mosaics using cubes of colored marble. Provided with these vast spaces, early Christians took the art form of mosaic from the floor and spread it onto the ceilings, the walls, everywhere. Early Christians created mosaics of biblical narratives and symbolic awesomeness. And instead of natural stone, they used colored glass, allowing them to create vibrant colors. This glass also gives the mosaic a sort of glittery, semi-translucent quality that you really must see in person to appreciate. The figures seem to shimmer as you move about. Though the Christians created some beautiful mosaics, the art of mosaic would reach its apex in the Byzantine art to follow. Illuminating the Word of God Just one form of early Christian art remains to be covered, and that is the illuminated manuscript. Illuminations are illustrations to accompany a written text, usually incorporating gold leaf. This addition became possible as the ancient world shifted from the tightly wound scroll of papyrus to the bound codex, what we would call a book. The fact that papyrus scrolls needed to be rolled made illumination all but impossible, because layers of paint would crack off and fall apart with repeated rolling and unrolling. The advent of vellum, or parchment, as a writing surface provided artists with a much more supple surface than brittle papyrus. It also meant that pages could lie flat, rather than being rolled and unrolled. The codex arrived on the scene around 100 AD, just in time for Christians to start illustrating their favorite book: the Bible. One of the earliest surviving illuminated Bibles is the Vienna Genesis, created around 500 CE. Here we can see a naturalistic style and a strange association of place and time. The picture does not display a single event, but a whole sequence, strung out along the path of the illustration - sort of like a medieval comic book. This illustration technique allowed illustrators to pack a lot of story into a very small space. The Rise of Constantine and Christianity Christianity and the Roman Empire had a long history of bad blood. Several Roman emperors made a point of persecuting Christianity, either because they were trying to preserve the religion of their ancestors or simply because Christians provided a convenient scapegoat for the problems of the empire. Christianity was illegal throughout the empire, and Christians were subject to injustices ranging from seizure of property to death in the arena. Yet, after three centuries of Roman Emperors grinding Christians under their feet, a new emperor decided to give Christians a hand up. His name was Constantine. Early Christian architecture exploded under the protection and patronage of this ambitious emperor. Constantine wanted to unify the crumbling Roman Empire under Christianity. To do so, he began building churches across the empire on a massive scale. The Basilica For centuries Christians had been meeting secretly in houses. With Constantine's conversion to Christianity, there was suddenly an opportunity to build public places of worship. Yet what should these churches look like? They could not look like Roman temples. A Roman temple is a pretty place for an idol to sit. It holds a god, a place for ritual sacrifice and perhaps a treasury. Christian ritual is not about burning food to an idol; it's about coming together as a congregation. The problem is there's nowhere in a Roman temple for a congregation to congregate. A bigger, more open space is necessary. To meet these needs, Constantine chose the Roman basilica as the model for his churches. Basilicas were the shopping malls of ancient Rome; they also served as council chambers, meeting halls and law courts throughout the empire. The basilica was a large rectangular hall with colonnades running down both sides. It had high windows to let in plenty of light. Many were built with a wooden roof, making their construction cheap and fast. Others featured an apse or raised semi circle at the opposite end of the entrance, framed by a triumphal arch, one of the most distinctly Roman forms of architecture. Constantine adapted this building to Christian services. The long, open rectangular colonnade was the perfect place for congregations to congregate. This area became known as the nave. That semicircular area at one end, or apse, seemed like the perfect place to put an altar. The entrances were then moved from the sides to the front, so the whole building has a single axis, with the apse as its focal point. Before the entrance, he added an atrium, or open-aired columned courtyard typical of Roman palaces. Between the atrium and the nave was the narthex, or main entrance of the church. With these adaptations, the Constantine's basilicas provided the space the Christians needed for their congregations and lent the Church the authority of an established form of imperial architecture, thereby proclaiming Christianity's status as a state religion.