The Atlas of Ancient Rome: Biography and Portraits of the City ed. by Andrea Carandini with Paolo Carafa (review)

Horace provides the epigraph for this massive boxed set (9.7 pounds on my bathroom scale): "Time will bring to light whatever is hidden." This positivist notion informs the project here, a summa of either "about twenty years of research" or "a lifetime of research" on the archaeology and topography of ancient Rome from its origins to the sixth century CE. The editor describes the hermeneutics behind the work as "Maimonidean, Talmudic, Protestant," surely the first time such descriptors have been used for an atlas of pagan and Catholic Rome. Both volumes are organized according to Augustus's division of the city into fourteen regions, presented not in numerical order but according to a vague hierarchy explained in a single paragraph. In the first volume, short essays alternate with unpaginated color plates that include current and historical views, buildings, artworks, and reconstruction drawings, many featuring toga-clad Romans. The second tome contains detailed plans, drawings, and complementary thumbnails.

To describe how the book works, I have chosen the sarcophagus of the Christian urban prefect Junius Bassus (d. 359), figure 216 opposite page 561. The caption cites the findspot, St. Peter's basilica, XIV 1052 and table a.t. 7, and references the work itself as XIV 2369. XIV refers to the fourteenth region, Transtiberim, which included the Vatican, and the plate appears in the essay on that region. To understand the numbers, one must turn to the "Topographical Units" at the back of volume 2. XIV 1052 directs the reader to pages 562–63 in volume 1, which discuss St. Peter's at length and Junius Bassus in a few lines, plus a longer endnote; and to "tables" 257–58 in volume 2, which contain architectural drawings of the basilica and its underlying tombs, plus a small image of an ivory plaque (one face of a box) thought to represent the eastern end of the fourth-century basilica. A.t. 7 refers to the "additional tables" for fourth-century Rome, the last third of volume 2. There we see the basilica plan in its relation to surrounding structures, plus thumbnails of some of the tombs. XIV 2369 unhelpfully directs the reader back to figure 216. Page flipping and weightlifting aside, almost every "table" in volume 2 offers a wealth of color-coded information and no little visual delight, with all the known finds restored to their presumably rightful place in the urban landscape. Yet this beautiful, cumbersome tool would surely be more useful as an application that one could access on a computer or when standing in Rome. Digitization would also make possible the addition of new finds, such as the villa or church complex uncovered recently near the Milvian Bridge. The editor acknowledges that "the book form appears to have been eclipsed already," and the English edition updates the 2012 Italian edition. Like the city itself, this monumental scholarly effort can only be a work in progress.