Description:
This book explores how Roman perceptions of streets influenced their decisions about where to place urban buildings. Using textual evidence as well as the physical evidence from Pompeii, Ostia, Silchester, and Empúries, Alan Kaiser argues that ideals about the arrangement of space united the phenomenon of Roman urbanism.
Review Quotes:
'This book's individual chapters will profit scholars specializing in each city, but the most profound points emerge when the book is read in its entirety. Kaiser's work exposes some dynamics and phenomena that might otherwise slip by and provides critical context for sites like Pompeii that can occasionally be taken as "typical" or paradigmatic for Roman urbanism. All in all, Kaiser should be commended for bringing a new and rigorous approach to these cities and for arming scholars of Roman urbanism with a toolkit for interrogating other street networks and the placement of buildings within them.' - Bryn Mawr Classical Review
'The emergence of the academic study of streets is probably the most exciting development in Classical Archaeology in the 21st century. Alan Kaiser resourcefully draws together philology and archaeology to further establish the architecture of the street as the means to understand the nature of urbanism in the Roman Empire.' - Ray Laurence, University of Birmingham
'An important study which will be essential reading for all those interested in the topography of Roman cities and the people who inhabited them.' - Penny Goodman, University of Leeds
'Alan Kaiser takes an innovative approach to the study of Roman cities in this highly readable book. The scholarship is impressive, and the results of the study are significant.' - James Wiseman, Boston University