Description
Book SynopsisThis 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.
Trade Review'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
Table of ContentsIntroduction: 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.
