Roman Villas - a Social and Economic History - Essay Example

ROMAN VILLAS The Roman villas were the buildings which were allocated for the upper class and Roman Empire who are the well of society, they could manage the houses which were building and no poor or the lower class could manage it. In the south east of the Britain the roman home style known as the Romans villas were established but a few of them were found in the north and west of Britain[ CITATION Lib06 \l 1033 ]. Majority of the population lived in the Celtic houses while one percent of the population occupied the villas in Roman Britain. This is a well differentiation of the two sectors in the Britain, those who were known as the well-off only had to occupy the villas and the poor who were the majority occupied the Celtic houses. The villas have paints on the tops which were different and the changing artistic styles. The walls were not or never plastered, this different information in the artist’s works was mostly borrowed from the Greeks art. The arts found in the Romans are presumed to be borrowed from the Greek hence most of the art work of the Roman villas and the Greek villas are same and closely related[ CITATION Ela94 \l 1033 ]. The presences of the Romans villas in other provinces show Romanization and the acceptance of the architectural forms and practices by the local elite. The proliferation of the villas in the Italy is a drastic transformation of the economy, it is regarded as capitalism in the empire and it was a clear indication of division in the social class. The villas are considered in two forms; the social and the economic way in which the intensity of change between different empires are considered[ CITATION Mic13 \l 1033 ]. The roman art is considered in two ways; the public work and the private work. The public work is more pronounce than the private because as it’s per the public monument will always continue to provide a chronological armature in the field of the roman art with abroad view of the history. The public work of the roman art is more commemorate major historical events, religious rites and imperial policies through public monuments which express the collective ideas and achievements of the roman people. For the work of the private sphere it is upon them to turn forms and images that express the personal belief, taste and self-perceptions of the Romans. This art work helps to know the place and the position of individuals[ CITATION Mar00 \l 1033 ]. The private work art poses certain problem in that the scant documentation is available to student of art but the student is outside the purview of the official Rome. Also the meaning of the private art to the roman is not well explain And the function of the private arts in its specific settings are not laid down[ CITATION Nik92 \l 1033 ]. Such situation can be sorted when an integrated approaches which associates the works with their social context. Another impediment is that the private art is a product of its own time and place is stubborn prejudice which informs the scholarly tradition in Roman art. There is tendency that work in the roman art lack originality and it is largely derived from the Greeks work[ CITATION Eli87 \l 1033 ]. As per the statement it means that all the Roman art work including buildings, architectural decorations, sculptural ornament on sarcophagi, funerary alter and urns, votive bones, ideal sculpture for gardens, floor mosaic, wall paintings is found to be the masterful monument of the work of Greek art that the Romans copied. The authors shared the respect of the integrity of the roman art and the architecture which was for the private realm as an expression of Romans social situation[ CITATION Mar03 \l 1033 ]. The sculpture in the roman are similar with those of the Greeks sculpture, this is so because the figurative and stylistic and the iconographic elements are depended on the Greek models mostly. Like the statues of marbles and bronzes in the public places are not deployment from Rome but it was derived from the Greek world. Most of the Roman sculptural is seen to half the Greek in both the style and the subject matter. A good examples id the classical and Hellenistic sculpture is largely known as the roman copies and version of the marbles. Continuous narratives are seen to be the original Romances of the roman sculpture in relief and realism in the portraiture[ CITATION Ann07 \l 1033 ]. In analyzing the sculpture the chronological model is of less use because the Greek style of decorative and cult statuary did not evolve over the centuries between the first century BC and the third century BC. The Romans had the wall painting sculpture which is similar to that in Greek, also there is there were floor decoration in the Romans, often done with cut marbles or with tessellated mosaics. Mosaic decorations in the Romans were not restricted to decoration of the ceilings, walls or floors also they were applied mostly between columns or in vaulted inches[ CITATION Dom13 \l 1033 ]. The Roman sculpture also had problems as to the top level of most sculptural production had a remarkable similarity across the Roman empire, it created a dramatic testimony of the attraction of those outside to feel belonging or appearing to belong to Rome. The main reason why the sculpture of the Roman is resistance to definition is its variability in stylistic. In current world for one to produce a sculpture it is his or her creativity of the artist who produces a commentary on the society in which he or she lives, in the time of sculpture was more of patron driven kind of production of the sculpture. The Roman country villa was based on the written records describing them is necessarily fragmentary since the evidence of roman painting and also the discovery of modern excavation and were more informative and the extrapolation to many profitability were made not only to the garden that was attached to the urban roman residences but also to the older gardens of more easterly Mediterranean countries[ CITATION Rog13 \l 1033 ]. The Romans are the first to construct buildings in England with substantial stones, tiled roof, timber framing, plaster work, mosaic floors and also the central heating in the houses. This architectural work was mostly done in the fertile landscape in the Daren’t valley, thus the name villa exists to mean the fertile land. The construction style, design and layout of the Romans villa vary from place to place with the reference to building materials available in the area and also the wealth as well as the taste of the owner[ CITATION Mar00 \l 1033 ]. Darenth Roman villa is one of the England largest estates, it was built at the center of important farming estates that were built in the third century and in the main villa there were facilities that were used for off-loading, threshing, drying and storage of grains. The building of the luxurious house partook in the social and political games of the period and this serve the owners’ with the bid for political power and social advancement in the empire. The luxurious villas were attached to the agricultural houses and they were named according to the functions they perform in the villa. This was determine by the land owners who name them as pars Urbana which comprise the dwelling place, the pars rustica which was the production quarter within the villa and lastly the pars fructuaria this was the store house for all the products from production quarters for storage[ CITATION Dom13 \l 1033 ]. Other archaeological finds which should include more than the literary text also the evidence covered by the archaeological excavations; these are the architectural remains, coins, pottery, Ostrava, glass, metal objects, papyri, painting, mosaics and other works of arts, utensils and tools, animals and human remains, and also any organic and inorganic matter preserved in the soil that can retrieved and analyzed[ CITATION Ann07 \l 1033 ]. All of those give primary evidence on the availability of archaeological findings which connects us to the past, the art is historical evidence an example is the Roman Architecture. The archaeological findings are also secondary sources which presents the scholars interpretation and conclusions about what a set of literary texts. The authors use the secondary evidence to draw conclusions The Romans coins provided by the commonwealth and the empire of Rome were an indication of the latter of the same coinage all over the empire of Rome or its provinces which it serves. It follows a chronological arrangement where the oldest Roman money placed first, then followed by the commonwealth, which bearded the names of those who took part in first striking it. Coins were considered in each family and this families where arranged in an alphabetical order. The coinage arrangement which is done chronologically and geographically, according to indications it offers and also without separation of the denominations of the coinage[ CITATION Ann07 \l 1033 ]. There should be alphabetical arrangement inscriptions that are resorted in the family’s series and the imperial. We have coins in two types, the coins of first class and the coin of second class. The coins of the first class are of silver electrum and sometimes they are of gold. The coins of the second class are those that are made of gold, electrum, silver and copper. The coin in this class is thinner than those of the precedent class and is usually convex in obverse and slightly concave or reverse. Those coins of the third class are with the exceptions of copper, they are flat and broad but thin and obverse to portrait the Roman Empire[ CITATION Nik92 \l 1033 ]. The Graeco Roman coins began in different periods in the century and it was characterized and important according to those in it and is almost of copper. Through them we see a departure from the original religious intentions to those of early times. There is a class of coins in the Roman Empire which is always considered as the Greek imperial and they are characterized by imperial effigies although seen in many respect to be distinct. It is the colonial series which struck the Roman colonies and having the Latin inscriptions always. The origin of Greek coins help to complete a series of civic money. In conclusion, the roman villas which are the infrastructure within the Rome was built on, the buildings within the Romans empire were the best for the development of their economy as it was known the Roman empire is wholly ruled by the men and no woman was not allowed to take part in the development of this empire[ CITATION Mic13 \l 1033 ]. The villas which is an indicator of a given social class as those from the upper class and the empire could manage to own villas, this was so because the only the wealthy class could manage the materials which were required for the building of the villas. The lower class which was the majority could own only those small round hurt called the Celtic houses. The Romans are known to have copied most of the art work of the Greek as most of the work is similar with theirs; they are also known to have no work of their own that they call Romanness. The Romans borrowed among others; the building style, wall painting and mosaic. There is also the agricultural part of the Roman Empire and due to better climatic conditions of Garenth Empire that was productive as it was more fertile and of agricultural activities was more successful[ CITATION Lib06 \l 1033 ]. The owners of the houses are known to bid for political power and social advancement as their buildings embrace their social and political game. Also they were viewed to have control the business in the empire through their investment which improves the economy of the country. Works Cited CITATION Lib06 \l 1033 : , (Congress), CITATION Ela94 \l 1033 : , (Elaine K. Gazda), CITATION Mic13 \l 1033 : , (Grant), CITATION Mar00 \l 1033 : , (Kemp), CITATION Nik92 \l 1033 : , (Kokkinos), CITATION Eli87 \l 1033 : , (MacDougall), CITATION Mar03 \l 1033 : , (Marian Moffett), CITATION Ann07 \l 1033 : , (Marzano), CITATION Dom13 \l 1033 : , (Perring), CITATION Rog13 \l 1033 : , (Roger B. Ulrich), Read More