This book examines the development of Roman temple architecture from its earliest history in the sixth century BC to the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines in the second century AD. John Stamper analyzes the temples' formal qualities, the public spaces in which they were located and, most importantly, the authority of precedent in their designs. He also traces Rome's temple architecture as it evolved over time and how it accommodated changing political and religious contexts, as well as the affects of new stylistic influences.

Few things have had such a great cultural and architectural influence on Western society as the architecture of Roman temples. Where did the Romans find their inspiration? What did these temples really look like? Beautifully illustrated with Minecraft, "Roman Temple: A Story of its Origins and Construction" by Jessie Craft tells the story of the evolution of Roman temple architecture through the eyes of a young Vitruvius (a Roman architect during the Age of Augustus). Readers journey alongside Vitruvius to places near and far to find the answers to questions about inspiration and appearance. On this journey, they will witness the construction of some of the most well-known temples in antiquity: from the creation of mud bricks, quarrying of stone, and polishing of marble to the raising of huge stone pediments, and the decoration of the temple's interior and exterior. "Roman Temple" is a concise and succinct account of Roman temple architecture presented in a simple, straightforward and accessible language.

In his sixth satire, Juvenal speculates about how Roman wives busy themselves while their husbands are away, namely, by entertaining a revolving door of exotic visitors who include a eunuch of the eastern goddess Bellona, an impersonator of Egyptian Anubis, a Judean priestess, and Chaldean astrologers. From these self-proclaimed religious specialists women solicit services ranging from dream interpretation to the coercion of lovers. Juvenal's catalogue suggests the popularity of such "freelance" experts at the turn of the second century and their familiarity to his audience, whom he could expect to get the joke. Heidi Wendt investigates the backdrop of this enthusiasm for the religion of freelance experts by examining their rise during the first two centuries of the Roman Empire. Unlike civic priests and temple personnel, freelance experts had to generate their own authority and legitimacy, often through demonstrations of skill and learning in the streets, in marketplaces, and at the temple gates, among other locations in the Roman world. Wendt argues that these professionals participated in a highly competitive form of religious activity that intersected with multiple areas of specialty, particularly philosophy and medicine. Over the course of the imperial period freelance experts grew increasingly influential, more diverse with respect to their skills and methods, and more assorted in the ethnic coding of their practices. Wendt argues that this context engendered many of the innovative forms of religion that flourished in the second and third centuries, including phenomena linked with Persian Mithras, the Egyptian gods, and the Judean Christ. The evidence for freelance experts in religion is abundant, but scholars of ancient Mediterranean religion have only recently begun to appreciate their impact on the empire's changing religious landscape. At the Temple Gates integrates studies of Judaism, Christianity, mystery cults, astrology, magic, and philosophy to paint a colorful portrait of religious expertise in early Rome.

This study offers a new interpretation for the construction of new temples in Rome. By emphasizing the role of the Roman Senate, it offers a reassessment of the relationship between the individual and the community. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

This work relies on the results of archaeological surveys and excavations of Roman temples, shrines and temene, discovered in Israel. Unfortunately, the literary sources are curiously silent with regard to most of the constructions. Nonetheless, literary sources, archaeological-architectural analogies and circumstantial evidence do provide some additional information for the understanding of their context, architecture, functions and religious-cultic perceptions. Their remains reflect a large scale of sacred buildings or complexes in the Roman period throughout the country, evincing the veneration and worship of many and varied deities of the Graeco-Roman and Oriental pantheons. Many temples and shrines are depicted on coins or mentioned in literary and epigraphic sources. These indicate that a large number of temples/shrines, dedicated to various gods, existed in Israel in the Roman period. Thus, it may be assumed that they reflect not only the architectural reality, but also the religious cultic atmosphere. It would seem that these architectural complexes had either been deliberately concealed and/or destroyed in Late Antiquity (fifth and sixth centuries CE) by order of the Christian authorities and Byzantine emperors, or converted into churches. Some of them were demolished by later generations, natural disasters, fires, conquests, etc. The chronological range of the temples/shrines and temene, discussed in this book, extends over a period of approximately 250 years, from Herod's reign up to the Severan era.

In Gardens of the Roman Empire, the pioneering archaeologist Wilhelmina F. Jashemski sets out to examine the role of ancient Roman gardens in daily life throughout the empire. This study, therefore, includes for the first time, archaeological, literary, and artistic evidence about ancient Roman gardens across the entire Roman Empire from Britain to Arabia. Through well-illustrated essays by leading scholars in the field, various types of gardens are examined, from how Romans actually created their gardens to the experience of gardens as revealed in literature and art. Demonstrating the central role and value of gardens in Roman civilization, Jashemski and a distinguished, international team of contributors have created a landmark reference work that will serve as the foundation for future scholarship on this topic. An accompanying digital catalogue will be made available at: www.gardensoftheromanempire.org.

This lavishly illustrated volume presents a comprehensive architectural study of 87 individual temples and sanctuaries built in the Roman East between the end of the 1st century BCE and the end of the 3rd century CE, within a broad region encompassing the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan. Religious architecture gave faithful expression to the complexity of the Roman East and to its multiplicity of traditions pertaining to ethnic and religious aspects as well as to the powerful influence of Imperial Rome. The source of this power lay in the uniformity of the architectural language, the inventory of forms, the choice of styles and the spatial layout of the buildings. Thus, while temples have an eclectic character, there is an underlying unity of form comprising the podium, the stairway between the terminating walls (antae) and the columns along the entrance front - in other words, the axiality, frontality and symmetry of the temple as viewed from outside. The temples and sanctuaries studied in this volume demonstrate individual nuances of plan, spatial design, location in the sanctuary and interrelations with the immediate vicinity but can be divided into two main categories: Vitruvian temples (derived from Hellenistic-Roman architecture) and Non-Vitruvian temples (those with plans and spatial designs that cannot be analysed according to architectural criteria such as those defined by Vitruvius). The individual descriptions presented focus solely upon the analysis of the external and internal space of the temples of all types and do not involve any cultural or ethnic discussion.

This book follows the evidence for Asclepius' supplicants from the moment in which they realized that they were sick until the healing experiences, which they might have had at the asclepieia. From a historical perspective, the main features of the Asclepius cult, as they were shaped mainly in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, are examined. The cult is situated in the wider political, social, cultural, and intellectual contexts of the Graeco-Roman era, in which Asclepius' reputation as a divine physician spread. Social interactions and multiple neurocognitive processes are examined, which would have influenced supplicants' perceptions, choices, and reasoning about health and sickness, and attracted thousands of visitors to the Asclepius temples. The influence of the cult environment on the minds and bodies of supplicants is investigated in order to show how the cult context would have prepared supplicants for the incubation ritual. Modern theories on placebo effects are taken into consideration in order to investigate the possibility of healing at the asclepieia as a result of supplicants' self-healing mechanisms. Finally, the ways in which supplicants might have interpreted their personal experiences during incubation are examined.

"This publication is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)"--Page v.