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PRINCIPLES OF ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. By MARK WILSON JONES. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2000. Pp. xi, 270, 285 figs.
Architects who without culture aim at manual skill cannot gain a prestige corresponding to their labours, while those who trust to theory and literature obviously follow a shadow and not reality. But those who have mastered both, like men equipped in full armour, soon acquire influence and attain their purpose.1
IN THIS LAVISHLY ILLUSTRATED BOOK modern architect Mark Wilson Jones takes his cue from the most famous of Roman architects, and finds that Vitruvius' opening characterization is in the end an accurate summary of the scientia architects at Rome.
In Part One, Wilson Jones reconsiders several major issues in the design of Roman buildings and the relationship between architectural theory and practice, establishing the key factors in the mind-set of ancient architects and their effect on the structures they built; Part Two entails the application of these conclusions to two of the best known monuments of the imperial city, the Column of Trajan and the Pantheon. As Wilson Jones readily admits, the material in Part One is tailored to fit his analysis of two unique structures in Part Two; the reader should not therefore expect the thorough survey of all the principles of Roman architecture which might be inferred from the book's title. Although much of this material has been published elsewhere over the past decade,2 its collection into one volume allows the author to develop a coherent thread of argumentation out of otherwise isolated studies, and to draw together valuable sketches, reconstructions, and technical data to support it.
Historically, analyses of Roman architectural practice have moved between two extremes. Renaissance writers dwelt on the notion of a guiding principle that relied on mathematical rules or on more abstract geometrical theories to reach aesthetically...