# The American Historical Review/Volume 23/Reviews of Books/Manuel d'Archéologie Romaine

This is the first volume of our first manual of Roman archaeology. Stuart Jones's Companion to Roman History, Sandys's Companion to Latin Studies, and Baumgarten, Poland, and Wagner's Hellenistisch-Römische Kultur are all manuals with archaeological inclinations, but none lays titular claim to the entire field. MM. Cagnat and Chapot do make such claim. In this first volume they treat of monuments and their sculptural decoration, in the second volume they are to take up painting and mosaic, and the instrumenta of public and private life.
The poor quality of paper used in the book reflects war times. It makes no great difference, to be sure, but many illustrations (there are 371 in the book), especially those reproduced from photographs, have lost the sharpness that is needed to bring out detail. The things one ​sees in all the books are reproduced as a matter of course, but it is a pleasure to find illustrations of new monuments, especially from Africa, where the French have been doing so much good archaeological work these past fifteen or twenty years.
The chapters (I. and II.) on building materials and their use are very satisfactory, and the notes—as is true throughout the book—show widespread up-to-date reading and careful discrimination. For example, in the matter of dating imperial brick-faced constructions, the authors mention the brick stamps, but they accept the canons of mortar and brick measurements as lately laid down by Dr. Esther B. Van Deman of the Carnegie Institution. Again, McCabe's Roman Empresses is mentioned, but the reader is warned about it, and rightly so. By the time one finishes chapter XVI., the last chapter of part I., he will have a pretty definite idea about the towns, their walls and gates, their aqueducts and fountains, their fora and the various buildings therein. Illustrations both fix and qualify the statements that the fora in the towns of the provinces took the Forum Magnum at Rome as their model. But the differences are as important as the likenesses, and practical reasons inspired enough variations in form to qualify decidedly the Greek-inspired dictum as to Roman slavishness of imitation. The temples, the various buildings for athletic and theatrical spectacles, the baths, libraries, camps, honorary and funeral monuments, all have their share of attention. Perhaps monuments that have been lately discovered or that have escaped general notice get at times something more than their due share.
The decoration of monuments is the general subject of part II., and in thirteen chapters, portraits—ideal for divinities, idealized for emperors, and realistic for other persons—genre subjects, decorative relief, and bas-relief of several sorts, lamps, stucco and ceramic reliefs, are handled in much detail, but with conservative judgment. The authors do not allow the Romans any creative credit beyond the wax masks of the atrium. Less than justice seems to have been done the Romans in historical relief work, perhaps to counteract the over-enthusiasm of several recent writers on Roman art.
There are almost no typographical errors in the book, and few errors of fact. The temple of Castor (note 1, p. 113) is wrongly called Castor and Pollux on page 22, the Via Appia (p. 44) is not in as good preservation as stated, Ponte Amato should have been added to the bridge list (p. 48), "Le Sette Sale" (p. 87) are not on the Aventine but on the Esquiline, the four reservoirs mentioned by Fernique, Nibby, and Marucchi, and the great one described by Magoffin in his book on Praeneste should have been mentioned (p. 91), Canina is given more credit than he deserves, to the exclusion of Nibby and Piranesi, Cuq's correct explanation of insula was not seen by the authors (p. 292). Particularly worthy of remark, on the other hand, are the classification of sarcophagi (p. 333), the settling of "tear-bottles" as unguentaria ​(p. 334), the fact that Honos is the only masculine abstract divinity (p. 461), and the arrangement of imperial iconographic groups (p. 501).
R. V. D. Magoffin.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
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