Pliny and the Materiality of Colored Marble Monolithic Columns (15 min)

Presenters

Peter De Staebler, Pratt Institute

Abstract

Roman patrons, designers, and engineers put immense effort into supplying monolithic columns, ones carved from a single block of stone, for projects in the capital and leading provincial centers from the later Republican period onward. Most were quarried far from Italy, in distinctive colored "marbles" (for the Romans, this was any colored stone, including granite, brescia, limestones, etc.). I would like to look at two discrete aspects of the contemporary reception of these columns through the lens of Pliny's writing. First, monolithic columns are generally unremarked upon; for their expense relative to that of an entire project, we might assume they would be more frequently discussed or at least mentioned. Second, the marbles themselves tend to be named not for their colors, but rather for their places of origin or a famous Roman associated with them. Together this suggests that the columns were enough of an urban presence that they were expected rather than extraordinary, and that in seeing the marbles observers were aware of the distance they had traveled. The massive physical presence of the columns—shiny, perfectly intact, and weighing tons—expressed the breadth of the Romans’ capacity to control land and sea.

  AIA-2A