Saturday, October 8, 2011

Roman Art

I think that the Romans, although they seem barbaric to some, were the smartest civilization. They used the method Iron Fist to basically conquer everyone. Their empire was very large at a time. In regards to art, the Romans basically copied from everyone else and built upon it. When they defeated the Etruscans, who were great collectors of Greek art, the Romans absorbed the Etruscan art. So, much of the Roman artwork was inspired by the Greeks. They also thought highly of the the Greeks by making copies of their statues and even building Greek libraries. They were also very practical in their ideas, especially in architecture. In sum, the Romans were extremely smart in their strategies and ideas and that's the reason that they built such a large empire.

4 comments:

Mallory said...

I agree, I thought that Trajan's column was very interesting. It was done with such detail even though it was at such a low relief. The entire column was only 4 inches wide which is a very small amount of stone to carve an entire story in it. People thought that the column was like propaganda just like many people thought that the Aeneid was propagada for Augustus.

Shaina Lu said...

I liked that the column was between the two libraries. I think it was really cool how they wanted to state that you could learn just as much from illustrations as you could from texts. For this, I have yet another cliche, "A picture is worth a thousand words."

ParkerC said...

The Romans where smart. They built things for practical purposes and that is why they sought to make the strongest architecture. I think this is why people revere the romans to this day, as they made great, simple things

alyb said...

The romans were smart. You can really tell this by the way the borrowed the best from each preceding civilization and then they improved upon them. For example the columns that the created took from the Greek columns. Also the Romans took a cue from Greek literature and then they created the Aeneid.