17. Bigger Is Better: The Baths of Caracalla and Other Second and Third Century Buildings in Rome

Roman Architecture (HSAR 252) Professor Kleiner discusses the increasing size of Roman architecture in the second and third centuries A. D. as an example of a bigger is better philosophy. She begins with an overview of tomb architecture, a genre that, in Rome as in Ostia, embraced the aesthetic of exposed brick as a facing for the exteriors of buildings. Interiors of secondcentury tombs, Professor Kleiner reveals, encompass two primary groups those that are decorated with painted stucco and those embellished primarily with architectural elements. After a discussion of the Temple of the Divine Antoninus Pius and Faustina and its postantique afterlife as the Church of S. Lorenzo in Miranda, Professor Kleiner introduces the Severan dynasty as it ushers in the third century. She focuses first on the Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum, the earliest surviving triplebayed arch in Rome. She next presents the socalled Septizodium, a lively baroquestyle façade for Domitian, 39