We will be returning the exams on Thursday.

They're being graded now and we'll return them to you on

Thursday.

And I've always found, I've found in the past,

that having--once we finish the midterm exam,

and all of you have had a chance to go back over the

material, mastered it,

is the ideal time to begin to talk about a selection of a

paper topic, a term paper topic.

And I'm going to concentrate on that particular issue in today's

class, the choice of a paper topic.

Right before Spring Break is also a good time to begin

thinking about this, because there are a lucky few

of you in here who are actually going to Rome,

for Spring Break, and there are others that are

heading home to California, possibly near Malibu -- might

have a chance to go to the Getty Museum,

in Malibu, which is based on an important villa,

ancient Roman villa at Herculaneum,

as well as other travels that may give you some ideas about

potential paper topics.

And don't underestimate just the experience of architecture

of any period, in terms of inspiring you,

as you go to whatever city you're headed toward,

or even whatever small town you're headed toward.

Looking at what's around you can be a stimulation to making a

selection on a paper topic.

So I want to go over that with you today.

Also I'm going to show you some magnificent parts of the Roman

Empire, as a prelude to what we'll be doing when we get back

after Spring Break.

And that is, although we'll spend--we'll do

one lecture on Hadrian and the Pantheon,

and Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, and one on a colony in Italy,

namely Ostia, the port of Rome.

From that point on we'll make our way around the rest of the

Roman Empire.

We'll go to North Africa, we'll go to Jordan.

We'll go to other parts of the Middle East.

We'll go to France and Spain.

So we'll be spending spring going around the Roman Empire to

some extraordinary spots.

And I think by introducing you to some of those today,

vis-à-vis the paper topics,

will get you in the mood, I hope, for that kind of

whirlwind tour that we're going to take in the second half of

this semester.

Now I'd like to spend the rest of the time again showing you

some magnificent places, giving you a sense of the three

options for the paper topics, and specific monuments and

sites that I hope you'll consider as possibilities for

your paper.

And again, as I mentioned, it's also a good chance for us

to begin to experience the provinces of the Roman Empire.

Obviously I've chosen topics that are ones that for the most

part-- there's one or two

exceptions--but for the most part are not topics that I'm

going to be going over in class, to give you an opportunity to

look into a part of the world that we may not cover in class,

but also to be able to use what you have learned about Roman

buildings in general to decipher buildings that you haven't yet

seen before.

The first of these--well the first option;

there are three options, as I mentioned before--

and Option 1 is a straightforward research paper

that is comparable, obviously, to research papers

that you've done, not only in other Art History

courses, but in other History courses

and other-- whatever courses,

even science courses-- a straight research paper in

which you have a topic that you do a considerable amount of

reading on, focused reading,

on that particular topic, and I give you bibliography for

all of these.

And, by the way, all of these,

pretty much all of these bibliographical sources are on

reserve, in the Art and Architecture Library,

for this course.

With a group this size, obviously if a number of you

choose the same topic, I don't want a situation and

whoever-- the early bird catches the

worm--whoever gets the book out of Sterling has it and nobody

else can get to it.

So I have put the books on reserve for this course.

I know that creates other challenges,

because you can't take it home with you,

but--and it means you do need to share--

but it will mean that it will be there for you,

in the library.

In some instances there are second copies at the University.

So again, in that sense, the early bird can catch the

worm, if there is a second or third copy that can be checked

out.

So I do urge you, if you have a pretty good sense

of what it is that you may want to work on,

and want to pick up a book or two before you leave for Spring

Break, the next couple of days would

be the time to do that.

So the first topic--so under Research Paper,

again a straightforward research paper in which you do

some reading, you do some looking,

you think about this monument; you think about its own special

characteristics, as well as where it fits into

in the evolution of Roman architecture.

And one hopes, of course, that you'll do both

synthetic -- once you've done your reading

and your research, that you will present this work

of architecture synthetically.

But at the same time I hope that you will have a thesis,

that there will be something that you will come up with on

your own, a major point,

a major focus, that you'll want to have and

that you'll want to make.

And that you'll want to use the paper toward arguing some thesis

of your own-- even though,

for the most part, it will be a synthesis of what

you read, what's understood--and a

placement of it.

Since you now know Rome itself particularly well,

if you choose a topic of a building,

or a group of buildings that are outside Rome,

the relationship of what's going on,

on the periphery, to what is going on in the

center, and the relationship of center

to periphery.

So the first topic I give you under Research Paper is the

Roman city of Corinth, which is in Greece.

This would be a good paper topic for the classicists among

you; and I know there are some.

Anyone who's into--who's fairly well steeped in Greek culture,

as well as Roman culture and civilization,

who might want to look back at a Greek city,

a city that was already very built up under the Greeks,

as early as the Archaic Period.

This is a view, for example,

of the Greek Archaic Temple at Corinth.

So a Greek city, a very well developed Greek

city, that is eventually taken over by the Romans,

and the Romans remake it in the Roman manner.

They add typical Roman buildings to it,

create a kind of mini Rome, in Greece.

But it's interesting to see the way in which those new buildings

blend with those that were built there earlier.

I also mention here not only the Archaic Temple at Corinth,

but also the so-called Isthmus at Corinth.

You might remember, from our conversation about

Julius Caesar and the architecture that he built,

that Julius Caesar was the one who built a canal at the Isthmus

of Corinth.

And the canal that is still visible and used at Corinth

today-- which you see an excellent view

of on the left-hand side of the screen--

is essentially the same canal that was built initially,

or begun initially, by Julius Caesar.

So that gives you some sense of a Roman addition to the scene.

And I show you just one other example.

There are quite a number of buildings preserved from

Corinth, Roman buildings.

So one could do--for a paper like this,

one could do an overview of the Roman city,

all the pieces of the Roman city, how the urban fabric

worked, or you could choose one or two

buildings at Corinth, at Roman Corinth,

to concentrate on.

I show you, for example, a view of the remains of the

Roman Baths at Corinth.

And what's interesting about these--

and you can pick this out on your own already,

just by looking at this one view--what's interesting about

these is although they look back to Roman bath architecture,

in Italy, you can see that this bath is made entirely of

cut-stone construction, which is quite different from

either the small baths we saw at Pompeii,

the Stabian Baths or the Forum Baths,

or the later imperial baths -- the Baths of Titus,

for example, that we've already explored,

where concrete construction was used.

Here stone was used.

Why was stone used?

Because there was a very long tradition,

already begun in Greece, from the Archaic Period through

the Classical Period to the Hellenistic Period,

of using stone for architecture.

And the architects, in this particular part of the

world, because stone was so readily

available-- and especially marble,

but other kinds of stone as well--

so readily available, and because the architects and

designers in this part of the world were so skilled at carving

stone, it was natural for them to use

stone in their construction.

So we see that they are not seduced by concrete domes and

the like-- don't use concrete in their

architecture, which you're going to see,

not only today but in the future,

is really an Italian phenomenon.

Concrete is picked up very sparingly in the Roman

provinces.

Stone construction tends to be the norm, for the most part,

and we see that at Corinth.

So the whole question of building materials becomes very

important.

But one would ask oneself, if one looked at the Baths at

Corinth for example, what is the plan like?

How similar is it to the small baths that we saw at Pompeii?

How similar is it to the imperial bath building,

that we saw the symmetrical and axial--imperial bath building

that we saw, for example, under Titus.

What kinds of materials was it made of?

What is the layout of rooms; the men's section,

women's section?

All the obvious questions that you would want to put to this

particular structure.

Also in the eastern part of the Empire, the city of Ephesus,

in what was ancient Asia Minor, modern Turkey,

on the western coast of Turkey.

An extraordinary place.

It too had a very long history, not only historical and

cultural and political, but also in terms of its

architecture; built up already in the Greek

period, just as Greece itself was.

And one of the most famous temples at Ephesus was the

Temple of Artemis, at Ephesus.

And I show you a coin of that temple here.

It was renowned worldwide, and pilgrims came from all over

the Hellenistic and Roman world, to see it.

And I show you a representation on this coin of what the Temple

of Artemis, in Ephesus, looked like.

And you can see here that it had eight columns across the

front.

They were Ionic columns; at least at one point.

It was rebuilt over a number of years and that got changed over

time.

But we see it here, with its Ionic columns,

with its pedimental decoration, and with the columns spread out

in the center, in order to reveal the cult

statue of Artemis.

And what a statue it was.