The Architecture of the Roman Empire, I: An Introductory Study by William L. MacDonald (review)

122 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS WI lLlAM L. MacDONALD. The Architecture of the Roman Empire, I: An Introductory Study. Revised Edition. New Haven and london: Yale University Press, 1982. Pp. xxi + 225; 10 figures, 135 plates. Cloth, U.S. $37.50, ISBN 0-300-02818-0. Paperback, U.S. $12.95, ISBN 0-300-02819-9. This updated version of MacDonald1s study of imperial vaulted design will be received as happily today as on its first appearance in 1965. That almost nothing in the first edition has required alteration or even qualification is a tribute to the author's earlier industry and original ity. His chapters on four of the most remarkable structures in the imperial capital - the Palaces of Nero and Domitian, Trajan's Markets, and the Pantheon - are unexceptionable in the acuteness of their observations and in their stimulating analysis of the buildings ' pol itical, social, and architectural significance. The revisions are more modest: the bibliography has been brought up to date, and a Supplement added as Chapter I X of the text. The latter combines two disparate subjects: a survey of publications on vaulted design that have appeared in the intervening seventeen years (184-190); and a brief analysis (190-199) first of what constitutes "classical" architecture and, more specifically, of the twenty-five basic elements of design that "can reveal the historical anatomy of Roman imperial architecture in a general but accurate way" (197) . This essay provides a useful synthesis of the "artistic diversity" of Roman design and establishes a wider architectural context for the author's detailed study of vaulting. While these additions and revisions have not made the original version obsolete, they are by themselves worth the modest cost of the new paperback edition, which might prove the most attractive feature of this re-issue. THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY JOHN W. HUMPHREY ...