Guide to Further Reading

The innovative books by Coarelli 1983-5,1988c, 1997 have changed our ideas about the topographical development of Republican Rome; detailed entries concerning all public and private buildings known through literary sources and/or archaeological evidence are in Steinby 1993-2000, where the reader will find a careful description of each monument and discussion concerning the most controversial points, supported by the essential bibliographical references. In English, see Richardson 1992, Nash 1968, and Platner and Ashby 1929 for individual monuments; see also the works cited in the Guide to Further Reading of Chapter 16. Chapters 16 and 24 below have many points of contact with this one and offer further bibliographical guidance.

Roman architecture from the Middle Republic is treated by Gros 1996-2001, a new, exhaustive handbook with up-to-date bibliographies; Gros’s earlier book (Gros 1978) illustrates his preference for the Late Republic, while for the earliest phases (fifth and fourth centuries) the reader should consult Donati 2000 and Prayon 2000. One will find detailed discussion of temples of the Middle Republic in Ziolkowski 1992, who often disagrees from Coarelli, but rarely with strong arguments; the standard work on Italian monumental sanctuaries of the Late Republic is Coarelli 1987. The story of the general development of urban forms in Italy and Rome is reconstructed in Gros and Torelli 1991 (a third revised edition is in preparation); archaeological reconstructions of urban form and significant public buildings of Latin colonies, specifically Cosa and Paestum, have been offered by Brown 1980 and Torelli 1999.

Even for beginners it is important to consult general books on new types of buildings which, for the Middle Republic, include basilicas (Nunnerich-Asmus 1994) and macella (De Ruyt 1983), and for the Late Republic, theater-temples (Hanson 1959), odeia (Meinel 1980), villae (Carandini and Ricci 1985), and funerary monuments (Hesberg 1992). However, the mentality of the Late Republic is fairly well illustrated by the almost pathological luxuria of domestic architecture, which is the subject of an influential book (Wallace-Hadrill 1994); the dwellings of the elite of the Italian towns of the second and early first centuries - often even more affluent than their Roman counterparts - are extensively discussed by Pesando (1997). Finally, the standard work on Roman gardens, Cima and La Rocca 1998, is too sketchy for the Late Republic.