ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

Ling: The mechanics of the building trade
Fig I9 Architect’s plan, now in Perugia, of funerary buildings (Photo: G Lucarini, courtesy Archaeological Superintendency
of Umbria)
In the planning stage we straightway come to a
difference in approach between Roman architecture and
that of the Greeks which preceded it. Greek buildings, at
least before Hellenistic times, had all tended to conform to
certain basic stereotypes and could, therefore, to some
extent be improvised; general instructions would be given
in advance, but detailed adjustments could be made by a
supervising architect as the building actually went up.
The nearest thing to a ‘plan’ to have survived from Greek
times is the inscription recording Philo’s specifications for
an arsenal at the Piraeus (late 4th century BC); here all the
relevant information is given in written form (IG, 2,
1054). By the Roman period, however, the situation had
changed, largely because of the greater complexity and
variety of buildings. There is now good evidence that
some sort of drawn plans and elevations (Vitruvius’s
ichnographia and orthographia; i.2.2) were prepared in
advance. These were not necessarily highly accurate scale
drawings; such would have been impracticable, given the
limited size of the available writing surfaces (wooden
tablets, papyrus, parchment). But a general guidedrawing
with written measurements, probably accompanied
by a written description and specifications in the
Greek style, would have been feasible and indeed highly
desirable. A papyrus from Ptolemaic Egypt, dating from
as early as the 3rd century BC, combines specifications for
an irrigation system with a sketch-plan; and from Roman
times we have two plans on stone which almost certainly
reproduce the working plans of architects. One, now in
16
Perugia, shows the plans of a funerary monument and of
the guardian’s house, the latter at both ground-floor and
first-floor level (Fig. 19); the other, now in Urbino, is
incomplete, but appears to have represented a large
funerary garden in Rome containing a monumental
mausoleum. Neither drawing is to scale; in each case there
is a clear disparity between the measurements written on
the plan and the actual proportions of the elements
illustrated. This did not matter; however approximate in
scale, the visual guide was still an eminently more clear
Fig 20 Incised elevation of an arch, used to guide masons
constructing the amphitheatre at Capua (Drawn by
R Lea, after A De Francis)