History from the ground up

John M. Oksanish
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Abstract

Vitruvius’s suggestion that De architectura will allow Augustus to comprehend buildings already built almost certainly points to the Augustan program of renovating buildings. But it also introduces the notion that buildings “already built” could represent the Augustan present for the future. History can be “built” just as it can be written, and its monuments can also be repurposed, whether through spoliation in the concrete sense or by recharacterizing what celebrated architectural signifiers mean, or both. Vitruvius’s phraseology in the preface (memorias posteris tradere) reflects a well-known Augustan concern for posterity’s reception in a general sense, but it also recalls historiography, especially Livy and (later) Tacitus. Vitruvius returns to this same language in his discussion of historia—one of the disciplines in which the architectus is supposed to be trained—in his aetiology of caryatids. Just as Augustus co-opted the forms of the Erechtheum korai for his forum, so does Vitruvius invent (here in the rhetorical sense) a new “history” of the caryatids that is useful for the Romans. The key to understanding Vitruvius’s approach here is textuality: his description of caryatids and their meaning is couched entirely in the language of rhetorical narratio, which suggests again that Vitruvius envisions architecture as a kind of ornamental persuasion, with a scope that rivals historiography in its ability not only to tell future generations about the present, but also to recharacterize the past in terms that suit the present’s needs.
从头开始的历史
维特鲁威认为,De architectura将使奥古斯都能够理解已经建成的建筑,这几乎肯定指向了奥古斯都对建筑进行翻新的计划。但它也引入了一个概念,即“已经建成的”建筑可以代表奥古斯都的未来。历史可以被“建造”,就像它可以被书写一样,它的纪念碑也可以被重新利用,无论是通过具体意义上的破坏,还是通过重新定义著名建筑符号的含义,或者两者兼而有之。维特鲁威在序言中的措辞(memorias posteris tradere)反映了奥古斯都对后人接受的普遍关注,但它也让人想起了史学,尤其是李维和(后来的)塔西佗。维特鲁威在他的女像柱的病因学中,在他对历史的讨论中——这是建筑师应该接受训练的学科之一——又回到了同样的语言。就像奥古斯都在他的论坛中采用了Erechtheum korai的形式一样,维特鲁威也发明了(在这里是修辞意义上的)一种对罗马人有用的新的女像柱“历史”。理解维特鲁威的方法的关键是文本性:他对女像柱及其意义的描述完全是用修辞叙事的语言表达的,这再次表明维特鲁威将建筑视为一种装饰性的说服,其范围与历史编纂相媲美,不仅能够告诉后代关于现在的事情,而且能够以适合现在需要的方式重新描述过去。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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