A temple is usually built for the purpose of religious activities such as; prayer, meditation, worship or sacrifice. The English word ‘temple’ derives from the Latin word ‘templum’. The city of Rome has many of the great architectural feats of the ancient world. “Many of these building and other structures, although they were built some 2000 years ago, are still standing and in use.”(Wayman). Ancient Roman Temples are one of the most visible sources of Roman architecture still present today. With lots of changes and additions to the Greeks ideas, the Romans were able to create something that would go down as a part of their history, a way of their life, a part of their culture. With knowledge borrowed from the Greeks, Rome made impressive architectural achievements. These were major attributes of buildings, colossal structures, and a legacy that would influence later buildings for a lifetime. The Romans succeeded in building some of the most architecturally sound buildings of ancient times and these ideas are the forerunners of architectural practices today. The Romans built their architecture, but they had important reasons of why they decided to do so.
Romans were influenced by older civilizations, and they developed an amazing religious and civic architecture that changed history. They took and borrowed a lot of things from the Greek culture, two of them being how they took the Greek Gods and renamed them and they also took the styles of Greek temples, and added a few changes. The Romans began their architecture for religious reasons. They used the important buildings to worship their Gods. Just like the Greeks, Romans built temples to clarify certain Gods and Goddesses and to worship them. Each God needed an image – usually a statue or relief in stone or bronze – and an altar or temple at which to offer prayers and sacrifices. The architects of Rome used concrete to make different structures on the temples such as domes, arches and vaults. The Romans also added a lot of details and decorations to their temples and made what became the very common round, domed temple.
In Ancient Rome there were many rituals that took place in order to decide how and where to build the temples. Most of the time these things were decided on by a high priest who understood the loci of the Gods. Most of the Roman Temples faced east or toward the rising sun. They would do this so that in the early morning when the temple would hold ceremonies and such there would be light that would shine in. Light a lot of times represents a God or holy figure and darkness is linked to a sin or the Devil and when the temples were built facing towards the sun rising due to the fact that there was a deeper meaning behind it all, the Glory of God, the first thing in the morning shining into the temple is the Glory of God and that stays with them until dusk, where it then returns again in the morning. The myth of the temple facing the east is an a second order semiological system; an added layer of meaning.
I feel as though the reason that the Romans took and borrowed ideas from the Greeks was a reflective theory of representation. The signs of the Gods and the names of them mirror the reality of themselves, the true meaning comes from the objects themselves. “The relation between ‘things’, concepts, and signs lies at the heart of the production of meaning in language. The process which links these three elements together is what we call representation.” (Hall, 19). Representation is the link between concepts and language, which enables us to refer to either, the real world of objects, people, or events, or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional objects, people, and events. Whether or not their Gods were real world of imaginary beliefs they still represented the beliefs of the Romans. According to hall, representation is the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture through the use of language, signs, and images which stand for represent things.
Hall says that meaning is not inherent to an sign or object, he argues that it is determined by popular consent. “It is by our use of things, and what we say, think, and feel about them – how was represent them – that we give them meaning.” (Hall, 19). The ideas of the Greeks were not fixed, they were subject to change, which is why and how the Romans changed their ideas into their own. Their group had enough power to determine and shape the meaning of their temples. With enough popular consent, the Romans were able to create a design that would affect architect forever all around the world.
The importance of each change to the Ancient Roman Temples can be debated, but what is fact is that there were several factors that led them to change. Older civilizations, myths, representations, and popular consent all played a role in the changing of culture for the Roman temples. While it has been some 2000 years since the temples were built, they are still having a lasting effect on architect in todays day.
Work Cited
- Hall, Stuart. Stuart Hall: Representation and the Media. MediaRights, 1999, www.mediarights.org/.
- Wayman, Erin. “The Secrets of Ancient Rome’s Buildings.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 16 Nov. 2015, www.smithsonianmag.com