'Repeatedly, Welch's book stirs the embers under simmering controversies, thereby giving us both good reading and adventurous scholarship.' Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

'The Colosseum, more than any other building from ancient Rome, is routinely the subject of both scholarly and popular texts. While it seems that important studies are published on this structure every year, rarely does any attain the status of definitive text. Katherine Welch's The Roman Amphitheatre: From Its Origins to the Colosseum is such a book. Welch's splendid volume is a culmination of her amphitheatre studies and provides a much-needed examination of the building type's origins in Republican Rome and its development up to and including the Colosseum.' Thomas J. Morton, The Art Bulletin

This is the first book to analyze the evolution of the Roman amphitheatre as an architectural form. Katherine Welch addresses the critical period in the history of this building type: its origins and dissemination under the Republic, from the third to first centuries BC; its monumentalization as an architectural form under Augustus; and its canonization as a building type with the Colosseum (AD 80). She explores the social and political contexts of each of these phases in detail. The study then shifts focus to the reception of the amphitheatre and the games in the Greek East, a part of the Empire that was, initially, deeply fractured about the new realities of Roman rule.
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Katherine Welch's study analyzes the evolution of the Roman amphitheatre as an architectural form.
Introduction: the 'imperial' interpretation of arena games; 1. Arena games during the Republic; 2. Origins of amphitheatre architecture; 3. Stone amphitheatres during the republican period; 4. The amphitheatre between republic and empire: monumentalization of the amphitheatre building; 5. The colosseum: canonization of the amphitheatre building type; 6. The reception of the amphitheatre in the Greek world in the early imperial period; Conclusion; Appendix: amphitheatres of republican date.
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This is the first book to analyze the evolution of the Roman amphitheatre as an architectural form.

Product details

ISBN
9780521809443
Published
2007-09-10
Publisher
Vendor
Cambridge University Press
Weight
1102 gr
Height
254 mm
Width
180 mm
Thickness
27 mm
Age
P, U, 06, 05
Language
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Number of pages
376

Biographical note

Katherine E. Welch is Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She is a scholar of Roman art and archaeology and has held fellowships at the American Academy in Rome and the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.