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Street Theater: Building Monumental Avenues in Roman Ephesus and Renaissance Florence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 December 2018

Garrett Ryan*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Abstract

Between the late first and the mid-third century CE, local elites in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire lined the formerly utilitarian streets of their cities with honorific statues, colonnades, and ornamental buildings. The monumental avenues thus created have usually been interpreted as unplanned products of competitive munificence. This article, by contrast, suggests that the new streets had real political significance. It compares the monumental avenues of Roman Ephesus with a formal analogue from a better-documented historical context: the long, colonnaded courtyard of Florence's Uffizi complex, constructed by Duke Cosimo I in the mid-sixteenth century. Comparison with the Uffizi courtyard illuminates the prominence of “democratic” architectural conventions in Ephesian monumental avenues, the elite-centric vision of civic history implicit in their sculptural displays, and the degree to which public ceremonies reinforced their political messages.

Type
History Gathers in Trees and Streets
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2018 

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References

1 This article focuses on the provinces that occupied the territory of modern Greece and western Turkey. This densely urbanized region, oriented toward the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, was the traditional heart of the Greek world, differentiated from the Levant and Egypt (where Greek culture was a relatively recent import) by a long tradition of civic self-government. Monumental streets were constructed throughout the eastern provinces; but the political meanings that will be discussed here were particular to Greece and Asia Minor.

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8 Although the formal political arrangements were quite different—a council of several hundred notables in the case of Ephesus, a single duke at Florence—both cities were effectively dominated by a small inner elite: Ephesus by a few exceptionally wealthy and well-connected council members, Florence by the duke and representatives of the city's great families (Litchfield, R. Burr, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Particians, 1530–1790 (Princeton, 1986)Google Scholar).

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13 Wolfgang Lotz discusses the development of architecturally regular public spaces in Sixteenth-Century Italian Squares,” in Studies in Italian Renaissance Architecture (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 74139Google Scholar. On the special case of Rome, see Ackerman, James, “The Planning of Renaissance Rome, 1450–1580,” in Ramsey, P. A., ed., Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth (Binghamton, N.Y., 1982), 318Google Scholar; and Frommel, Cristoph, “Papal Policy: The Planning of Rome during the Renaissance,” in Rotberg, R. I. and Rabb, T. K., eds., Art and History: Images and Their Meaning (Cambridge, 1988), 3965Google Scholar. For a broader perspective, see Calabi, Donatella, The Market and the City: Square, Street and Architecture in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2004), 127–50Google Scholar.

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15 Particularly impressive examples include Ludovico Sforza's colonnaded forum at Vigevano (Lotz, “Sixteenth-Century,” 117–39) and the straight new boulevards and rationalized squares of Ercole d'Este's Ferrara; see Rosenberg, Charles, The Este Monuments and Urban Development in Renaissance Ferrara (New York, 1997), 110–52Google Scholar. Dukes, however, were far from the only elite patrons of Romanizing public spaces. In mid-sixteenth century, for example, a group of Genoese nobles collaborated to create a broad avenue lined by palaces with regular monumental facades; see Gorse, George, “A Classical Stage for the Old Nobility: The Strada Nuova and Sixteenth-Century Genoa,” Art Bulletin 79 (1997): 301–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Palladio's Basilica and Palazzo Chiericati at Vicenza, which were supposed to be incorporated into a monumental façade ringing the piazza, represented an analogous impulse (Palladio, I quattro libri II, 3).

16 On the Renaissance conceptions of public space adapted from Vitruvius’ discussion of the forum (De Architectura V. 1–2), see Kruft, Hanno-Walter, “L'idea della piazza rinascimentale secondo i trattati e le fonti visive,” Annali di architettura 4–5 (1993): 215–29Google Scholar. Vasari's borrowings from Vitruvius are discussed in Lessmann, Studien zu einer Baumonographie, 169–70; and Satkowski, Giorgio Vasari, 43. For a more general discussion of the ideas associated with Roman architecture in Renaissance Italy, see Weise, Georg, L' ideale eroico del rinascimento et le sue premesse umanistiche (Naples, 1961), 124–29Google Scholar.

17 Leon Battista Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria, VIII, 6; compare Filarete, Trattato di Architettura X.

18 I quattro libri dell'architettura III, 16–20.

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22 Vasari regularly cites Vitruvius in the discussion of architecture appended to the 1568 edition of his Lives. See also his comments on Jacopo Sansovino's introduction of Vitruvian architecture into Venice: Milanesi, Gaetano, ed., Le Opere di Giorgio Vasari (Florence, 1878–1885), VII, 502–3Google Scholar.

23 Milanesi, Le Opere, I, 130. Compare Sebastiano Serlio, Regole generali di architettura (Venice, 1551), xvii.

24 The basic plan was inspired by Pliny's Laurentian Villa and the ruins of Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, as understood by early sixteenth-century Italian theorists; see Rosenthal, Earl, The Palace of Charles V in Granada (Princeton, 1985), 163Google Scholar.

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27 On Medieval Italian loggias, see Burroughs, Charles, “Spaces of Arbitration and the Organization of Space in Late Medieval Italian Cities,” in Hanawalt, Barbara and Kobialka, Michal, eds., Medieval Practices of Space (Minneapolis, 2000), 64100Google Scholar.

28 Tinagli, Paola, “Claiming a Place in History: Giorgio Vasari's Ragionamenti and the Primacy of the Medici,” in Eisenbichler, Konrad, ed., The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de 'Medici (Burlington, 2001), 6376Google Scholar.

29 Milanesi, Le Opere, VIII, 14: “…non volere alterare i fondamenti e le mura maternali di questo luogo, per avere esse, con questa forma vecchia, dato origine al suo governo nuovo. Che poi che egli, fu creato duca di questa repubblica, per conservar le leggi, e sopra quelle aggiunger que'modi che rettamente faccin vivere sotto la iustitia e la pace i suoi cittadini e che dependendo la grandezza sua da l’ origine di questo palazzo e mura vecchie, benchè sieno sconsertate e scomposte, gli è bastato l’ animo di ridurle con ordine e misura e sopr'esse ponendovi, come vedete, questi ornamenti diritti e ben composti….

30 On these proposals, see Satkowski, Giorgio Vasari, 26–28; see also Bocchi, Francesco, Le bellezze della città di Firenze (Florence, 1591), 71Google Scholar.

31 Litchfield, R. Burr, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530–1790 (Princeton, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cosimo actually encouraged Florentine nobles to build, providing them with incentives for constructing larger palazzi in a 1551 law; Cantini, Lorenzo, Legislazione toscana raccolta e illustrata (Florence, 1800–5), vol. 2: 194–98Google Scholar.

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33 The classic survey of Greek civic government in the imperial era is Jones, A.H.M., The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (Oxford, 1940), 170–91Google Scholar. Good recent treatments of the governing class include Pleket, H. W., “Political Culture and Political Practice in the Cities of Asia Minor in the Roman Empire,” in Schuller, Wolfgang, ed., Politische Theorie und Praxis im Altertum (Darmstadt, 1998), 204–16Google Scholar; Zuiderhoek, Arjan, “On the Political Sociology of the Imperial Greek City,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 48 (2008): 417–45Google Scholar; and Heller, Anna, “La cité grecque d'époque impériale: vers une société d'ordres?Annales 64 (2009): 341–73Google Scholar.

34 By the beginning of the second century CE, the roughly five hundred members of the Ephesian council sat together in a specially designated section of the theater; Inschriften von Ephesos (IvE) 27, #222–30.

35 Pleket, “Political Culture,” 209–10.

36 Ryan, Garrett, “Building Order: Unified Cityscapes and Elite Collaboration in Roman Asia Minor,” Classical Antiquity 37, 1 (2018): 151–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 On the council's role in civic building, see Martin, L'urbanisme, 48–72; and Pont, Orner la cité, 352–86.

38 See Rogers, G. M., “The Assembly of Imperial Ephesus,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 94 (1992): 224–28Google Scholar. On the continued (but delimited) vitality of assemblies in the imperial Greek world, see Fernoux, Henri-Louis, Le demos et la cité: communautés et assemblées populaires en Asie mineure à l'époque impériale (Rennes, 2011)Google Scholar.

39 References to popular unrest in imperial Greek cities are collected in De Ste. Croix, G.E.M., The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (Ithaca, 1981), 307–13Google Scholar.

40 Colonnades were especially attractive candidates for cooperative benefaction, since even donors of relatively modest means could contribute a few columns (e.g., IvE #465, 3851–52). That the Arcadiane was constructed collaboratively is suggested both by an inscription (IvE #465) that records a benefactor's gift of a few columns and by contemporaneous parallels like the main colonnaded street at Perge (Heinzelmann, “Städtekonkurrenz”). The Council's direction of construction is clearest in a decree it issued commending urban renewal projects inspired by the newly-built Temple of Domitian (IvE #449, 11–14).

41 Portrait statues certainly stood along the Arcadiane. But since the street was reconstructed in late antiquity, the disposition of honorific statues along the colonnades must be extrapolated from better-preserved streets of the same vintage, like the example at Termessos. See VanNijf, Onno, “Public Space and the Political Culture of Roman Termessos,” in Van Nijf, Onno and Alston, Richard, eds., Political Culture in the Greek City after the Classical Age (Louvain, 2011), 215–42Google Scholar.

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46 The Upper Agora, the political center of Ephesus, was lined with porticoes in the third century BCE and extensively remodeled in the reign of Augustus. It was recently discovered that the Upper Agora was ringed by colonnades as early as the mid-Hellenistic period. For an online summary of these findings (not yet published), see http://www.uni-regensburg.de/philosophie-kunst-geschichte-gesellschaft/klassische-archaeologie/forschung/projekte/ephesos/index.html. On the Augustan reconstruction of the agora (which enhanced its monumental appearance), see Kenzler, Ulf, “Die augusteische Neugestaltung des Staatsmarkts von EphesosHephaistos 24 (2006): 169–81Google Scholar; and Thür, Hilke, “Wie römisch ist der sog. Staatsmarkt in Ephesos?” in Meyer, M., ed., Neue Zeiten—Neue Sitten: Zu Rezeption und Integration römischen und italischen Kulturguts in Kleinasien (Vienna, 2007), 7790Google Scholar.

47 Monumental streets can be conceptualized as extensions of the forum/agora; see MacDonald, William, The Architecture of the Roman Empire, II: An Urban Appraisal (New Haven, 1986)Google Scholar.

48 Burns, Origins of the Colonnaded Streets, 52–72.

49 To reference two of the best-known examples, a sanctuary of the Roman Emperors in Aphrodisias was modeled on the Forum of Nerva in Rome (R.R.R. Smith, Aphrodisias VI: The Marble Reliefs from the Julio-Claudian Sebasteion [Mainz, 2013]); and a scaled-down copy of the Pantheon was erected in the Sanctuary of Asclepius at Pergamum (Oskar Ziegenaus and Goia de Luca, Altertümer von Pergamon XI.3: Die Kulturbauten aus römischer Zeit an der Ostseite des heiligen Bezirks [Berlin, 1968], 30–75).

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53 The physical remains of the Forum of Augustus—thoroughly documented by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Baldassare Peruzzi, Antonio Labacco, and other artists—were often confused with the nearby ruins of the Forum of Trajan. Plans of the ruins are collected in Bartoli, Alfonso, I monumenti antichi di Roma nei disegni degli Uffizi di Firenze (Florence, 1914–1922)Google Scholar; and discussed by Günther, Hubertus, Das Studium der antiken Architektur in den Zeichnungen der Hochrenaissance (Tübingen, 1988)Google Scholar. For an intriguing look at how the Forum of Augustus was understood in the sixteenth century, see Fulvius, Andrea, Antiquitates Urbis (Rome, 1527)Google Scholar, lib. III, fol. XLIIII.

54 Suetonius, Divus Augustus 29.1–2, 31.5. On the Forum of Augustus, see the Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae II, 289–95, “Forum Augustum.”

55 Lessmann, Studien zu einer Baumonographie, 223–25. The statues currently visible in the Uffizi courtyard were installed in the nineteenth century.

56 On the idea of integrating exemplary sculptures and/or paintings into spaces associated with a ruler, compare Filarete, Trattati di architettura, A. M. Finoli and L. Grassi, eds. (Milan, I972), IX, 112–21; XIV, 186.

57 “Orazione Terza in morte del Gran Duca Cosimo Primo,” in Prose Fiorentine raccolte dallo Smarrito Accademico della Crusca I (Venice, 1735), 25: “[Cosimo] fece quella gran fabbrica de’ Magistrati, l’ annestò al Palagio suo, e voleva nelle nicchie di que’ pilastri metter le statue de’ Cittadini illustri, e quasi in nuovo Ceramaico Ateniense, o Foro Romano, magnificare, e con generosa, e nobil dirittura distribuire, a’ suoi autori la Gloria della cittadinanza antica.” For other contemporary reactions to the Uffizi's gallery of virtue, see van Veen, H. T., Cosimo I de’ Medici and His Self-Representation in Florentine Art and Culture (New York, 2006), 8485Google Scholar.

58 Crum, Roger J., “Cosmos, the World of Cosimo: The Iconography of the Uffizi Façade,” Art Bulletin 71 (1989): 237–53Google Scholar. Cosimo habitually likened himself to Augustus. The analogy appealed on multiple levels: Augustus had established lasting peace and prosperity, ruled justly, and, not least, put an end to the Roman Republic.

59 Cosimo's addition of statues to the Piazza della Signoria can be regarded as an extension of his transformation of the Palazzo Vecchio into a personal residence. See Rubenstein, Nicolai, The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298–1532: Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic (Oxford, 1995), 4778Google Scholar; Starn, Randolph and Partridge, Loren, Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300–1600 (Berkeley, 2012), 149212Google Scholar.

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61 On how Renaissance spectators viewed and interpreted public art, see Shearman, John, Only Connect: Art and Spectator in the Italian Renaissance (Princeton, 1992)Google Scholar. Whatever their economic background and level of education, all Florentines shared a basic field of reference for interpreting sculpture; see McHam, Sarah, “Structuring Communal History through Repeated Metaphors of Rule,” in Crum, R. and Paoletti, J., eds., Renaissance Florence: A Social History (New York, 2006), 104–37Google Scholar.

62 On the famous debate over this statue's placement, see Levine, Saul, “The Location of Michelangelo's David: The Meeting of January 25, 1504,” Art Bulletin 56 (1974): 3149CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Parks, N. Randolph, “The Placement of Michelangelo's David: A Review of the Documents,” Art Bulletin 57 (1975): 560–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 It has also been suggested that, by juxtaposing Hercules and Cacus with Donatello's Judith and Holofernes, Cosimo wished to oppose the “male” vitality of his ducal rule to the effeminacy of the Republic. See Even, Yael, “The Loggia dei Lanzi: A Showcase of Female Subjugation,” Woman's Art Journal 12 (1991): 1014CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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67 Waldman, Louis, “Miracol’ novo et raro: Two Unpublished Contemporary Satires on Bandinelli's Hercules,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 38 (1994): 419–27Google Scholar.

68 Milanesi, Le Opere, VIII, 221: “…mi è parso che quelle tante fatiche delli antichi cittadini e delli avoli vostri sieno state quassi che una scale a condurre il dignor duca Cosimo nella Gloria e nella felicità presente.

69 Like their Renaissance counterparts, ancient viewers were accustomed to viewing statues not only as artistic achievements or objects of devotion, but also as political tokens. See, for example, Dio Chrysostom's description of the famous statue of Zeus at Olympia (Oration 12.55–84) and Pausanias’ exhaustive descriptions of many statues and sculptural assemblages in the cities of Roman Greece. For a useful discussion, see Pollitt, J. J., The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History, and Terminology (Yale, 1974)Google Scholar. It is possible that nymphaea and other structures with extensive sculptural ensembles received a speech of dedication explaining their programs; see Pernot, Laurent, La rhétorique de l'éloge dans le monde gréco-romain (Paris, 1993), 240–41Google Scholar.

70 Pleket, “Political Culture,” 208–10.

71 On the growth of large estates, see Pont, Anne-Valerie, “Élites civiques et propriété foncière: les effets de l'intégration à l'empire sur une cité grecque moyenne, à partir de l'exemple d'Iasos,” in Lerouxel, F. and Pont, A.-V., eds., Propriétaires et citoyens dans l'Orient romain (Bourdeux, 2016), 233–60Google Scholar. On the provincial councils, see Edelmann-Singer, Babette, Koina und Concilia: Genese, Organisation und sozioökonomische Funktion der Provinziallandtage im römischen Reich (Stuttgart, 2015)Google Scholar.

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77 For a useful overview, see Jennifer Chi, Studies in the Programmatic Statuary of Roman Asia Minor (PhD diss., New York University, 2002). On the significance of the sculptural programs of nymphaea, see Dorl-Klingenschmid, Claudia, Prunkbrunnen in kleinasiatischen Städten: Funktion im Kontext (Munich, 2001), 86102Google Scholar.

78 Quatember, Ursula, Forschungen in Ephesos XI.2: Das Nymphaeum Traiani (Vienna, 2011), 6578Google Scholar, 101–3.

79 On the decoration of nymphaea, see the discussion in Dorl-Klingenschmid, Prunkbrunnen, 96–97. Compare Fuchs, Michaela, Untersuchungen zur Ausstattung römischer Theater in Italien und den Westprovinzen des Imperium Romanum (Mainz, 1987), 185–88Google Scholar.

80 Around the time the Nymphaeum was begun, Pliny wrote a letter (Epistle 6.31.3) mentioning Aristion's local preeminence and connections with Rome.

81 IvE #424: “[Ἀ]ρτέμιδι Ἐϕ[ε]σίᾳ κα[ὶ] Αὐ[τοκράτορι] Νέρουᾳ Τρα[ιανῶι Κα]ίσα[ρι Σεβαστῶ]ι Γερμ̣[ανικ]ῷ Δακικῶι καὶ τῇ πατρίδι….”

82 Compare Low, Setha, On the Plaza: the Politics of Public Space and Culture (Austin, 2000), 84101Google Scholar; and Inomata, Takeshi, “Plazas, Performers, and Spectators: Political Theaters of the Classic Maya,” Current Anthropology 47 (2006): 805–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 I borrow the term “cue” from Amos Rapoport. According to him, environmental cues communicate identity, status, and the like and through this they establish a context and define a situation. The subjects read the cues, identify the situation and the context, and act accordingly.” The Meaning of the Built Environment: A Nonverbal Communication Approach (London, 1982), 56Google Scholar.

84 On the significance of the ruler's body in Early Modern Europe, see the useful survey in Smuts, Malcolm and Gorse, George, “Introduction,” in Fantoni, Marcello, Gorse, George, and Smuts, Malcolm. eds., The Politics of Space: European Courts, ca. 1500–1700 (Rome, 2009), 1635Google Scholar.

85 It has been suggested, for example, that the Strada Nuova of Genoa was designed as a permanent setting for increasingly elaborate ceremonies of welcome; see Gorse, George, “Between Empire and Republic: Triumphal Entries into Genoa during the Sixteenth Century,” in “All the World's a Stage…”: Art and Pageantry in the Renaissance and Baroque (University Park, Penn., 1990), 203Google Scholar. Compare the route of the papal possesso in Rome, gradually monumentalized to complement the ceremony; Nuti, Lucia, “Re-Moulding the City: The Roman Possessi in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century,” in Mulryne, J. R., ed., Ceremonial Entries in Early Modern Europe: The Iconography of Power (Burlington, 2015), 113–34Google Scholar.

86 Barbaro, I Dieci Libri dell' Architettura, 129: “é necessario, bello & commodo nella città che oltra le strade & le vie ci siano delle piazza … egli si ha questo commodo, che iui si runano le genti a passeggiare … & si dà luogo a molti spettacoli.” On Barbaro's association of orderly architecture with an orderly society, see Tafuri, Manfredo, “La norma e il programma,” in Morresi, Manuela, ed., I dieci libri dell'architettura tradotti e commentati da Daniele Barbaro (Milan, 1987)Google Scholar, XVIIf.

87 Hart and Hicks, Serlio on Architecture, 88–91; see Onians, John, Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance (Princeton, 1988), 284–85Google Scholar.

88 De conscribenda vita Magni Ducis Hetruriae Cosmi Medices V, F. 79: “Et modo Magnus Dux aedes iudicalis fori sumptu articioque maximo farbrefactas et foro Civium proximas constituens declaravit: Cum publicae potestatis magna ubique authoritas augustiore conspecta loco … illorum qui muneri eiusmodi administrando preaesint plurimum interesse credatur, si oculis omnium, et principis praesertim expositi….

89 Earlier Medici had contemplated broadly similar projects. In the last decades of the fifteenth century, Lorenzo the Magnificent planned, but never executed, a major construction program centered on the creation of two new avenues and the erection of colonnades on the Piazza dell’ Annunziata. The new streets and embellished piazza were probably intended to frame a projected Medici palace, and movement to and from it. See Elam, Caroline, “Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Urban Development of Renaissance Florence,” Art History 1 (1978): 4366CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tafuri, Manfredo, Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects, Sherer, D., trans. (New Haven, 2006), 6067Google Scholar. Compare Brunelleschi's earlier plan for a plaza in front of the Medici palazzo (Milanesi, Le Opere, II, 371–72).

90 Giorgio Vasari il Giovane, La città ideale: Piante di chiese (palazzi e ville) di Toscana e d'Italia. A cura di Virginia Stefanelli (Rome, 1970), 9899Google Scholar.

91 Sansoni, Diario Fiorentino, 301.

92 See Lessmann, Studien zu einer Baumonographie, 166–67 on the ritual functions of the Uffizi courtyard.

93 Sansoni, G. C., ed., Diario Fiorentino di Agostino Lapini (Florence, 1900), 231Google Scholar.

94 Cosimo's funeral: Sansoni, Diario Fiorentino, 185; see also Borsook, Eve, “Art and Politics at the Medici Court I: The Funeral of Cosimo I de' Medici,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 12 (1965): 3154Google Scholar, 37–38. The evidence for Fransceso's funeral derives from the diary of an anonymous Florentine cited by Lessmann, Studien zu einer Baumonographie, 448 n716.

95 On the theatrical qualities of the Uffizi courtyard, see Fleming, Alison, “Presenting the Spectators as the Show: The Piazza degli Uffizi as Theater and Stage,” Sixteenth Century Journal 37 (2006): 701–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the general evolution and significance of stage setting in this period, see Strong, Roy, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450–1650 (Berkeley, 1984), 3235Google Scholar.

96 For a useful survey, see the contributions in Fagiolo, Marcello, ed., La città efimera e l'universo artificiale del giardino: la Firenze dei Medici e l'Italia del '500 (Rome, 1980)Google Scholar.

97 Shearman, John, “The Florentine Entrata of Leo X, 1515,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 38 (1975): 136–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Ettlinger, Leopold, “Hercules Florentinus,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 16 (1972): 119–42Google Scholar, 128f.

99 The fullest account is P. Ginori Conti, L'apparato per le nozze di Francesco de' Medici e di Giovanna d'Austria (Florence, 1936). Useful studies include: Scorza, R. A., “Vincenzo Borghini and Invenzione: The Florentine Apparato of 1565,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (1981): 5775CrossRefGoogle Scholar; van Veen, Henk, “Republicanism in the Visual Propaganda of Cosimo I de' Medici,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 55 (1992): 200–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Starn and Partridge, Arts of Power, 151–89. Compare Saslow, James M., The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven, 1996)Google Scholar.

100 Several recent studies have examined the interrelations of public movement and setting in the Classical world. See Laurence, Ray and Newsome, David J., eds., Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: Movement and Space (Oxford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laurence, Ray, “Streets and Facades,” in Ulrich, Roger B., and Quenemoen, Caroline K., eds., A Companion to Roman Architecture (Malden, Mass., 2014), 399411Google Scholar; and Östenberg, Ida, Malmberg, Simon, and Bjørnebye, Jonas, eds., The Moving City: Processions, Passages and Promenades in Ancient Rome (London, 2015)Google Scholar.

101 On the one hand, they were degraded by their association with busybodies, the indigent, and the idle; on the other, they were sanctified by the practice of politics. See Christopher Dickenson, On the Agora: Power and Public Space in Hellenistic and Roman Greece (PhD thesis, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2012), 315–62. For a useful list of terms imperial Greeks associated with the agora, see Pollux, Onomastikon 3: 126–27.

102 Buildings for the performance of plays, speeches, and other products of Hellenic elite culture proliferated on agoras in the early imperial era; see Dickenson, Christopher, On the Agora. The Evolution of a Public Space in Hellenistic and Roman Greece (Boston, 2017), 370–77Google Scholar. The agora of Thasos provides a particularly well-documented example of the formalization and monumentalization that transformed so many agoras in the early imperial era. See Marc, Jean-Yves, “L'agora de Thasos du IIe siècle av. J.-C. au Ier siècle ap. J.-C.: état des recherches,” in Marc, J. and Moretti, J., eds., Constructions publiques et programmes édilitaires en Grèce entre le IIe siècle av. J.-C. et le Ier siècle ap. J.-C (Athens, 2001), 495516Google Scholar.

103 De vitioso pudore 16 (Moralia 535B). Compare Dio Chrysostom, Oration 7.133–34; Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 1.76.53; and Apuleius, Metamorphoses 2.2.

104 Greek declamations of the imperial era habitually describe both streets and agoras as possessions of the people; see Russell, Donald, Greek Declamation (Cambridge, 1983), 2139CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Compare Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 212f, and Libanius, Oration 11.213–17.

105 Östenberg, Malmberg, and Bjørnebye, Moving City; Hartnett, Jeremy, The Roman Street: Urban Life and Society in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome (Cambridge, 2017), 84111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 On walking, see Hoyland, Robert, “The Leiden Polemon,” in Swain, Simon, ed., Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul (Oxford, 2007), 439–43Google Scholar; and O'Sullivan, Timothy, Walking in Roman Culture (Cambridge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Compare Revell, Roman Imperialism, 150–90. See more generally de Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life, Rendall, Steven, trans. (Berkeley, 1984), 91110Google Scholar.

107 Wealthy men in the mid-imperial east often commissioned sarcophagi decorated with stylized arcades, on which they and their families appeared as statues, or suspended walkers, on a colonnaded street. See Thomas, Edmund, “Houses of the Dead? Columnar Sarcophagi as Micro-Architecture,” in Elsner, Jas and Huskinson, Janet, eds., Life, Death and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi (Berlin, 2011), 387435Google Scholar.

108 A useful summary of civic ritual in imperial Greek cities is provided by Fritz Graf, Roman Festivals in the Greek East (Cambridge, 2015), 11–60. The influence of ritual in encouraging the development of formalized built environments is discussed in a late antique context by Dey, Hendrik, The Afterlife of the Roman City: Architecture and Ceremony in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2015)Google Scholar.

109 It has been suggested, for example, that a statue of a satyr erected in a prominent place near the Nymphaeum of Trajan was referenced, or played some role in, Dionysiac processions along the Embolos. Helmut Englemann, “Statue und Standort (IvE 507),” in Ekkehard Weber and Gerhard Dobesch, eds., Römische Geschichte, Altertumskunde und Epigraphik: Festschrift für Artur Betz zur Vollendung seines 80. Lebensjahres (Vienna, 1985), 249–55.

110 Cavalier, Laurence and Courtils, Jacques Des, “Degrés et Gradins en Bordure de Rue: Aménagements pour les Pompai?” in Ballet, Pascale, Saliou, Catherine, and Dieudonné-Glad, Nadine, eds., La rue dans l'Antiquité: définition, aménagement et devenir de l'Orient méditerranéen à la Gaule (Rennes, 2008), 8392Google Scholar.

111 Bérenger, Agnes, “L’ Adventus des Gouverneurs de Province,” in Bérenger, A. and Perrin-Saminadayar, E., eds., Les entrées royales et impériales: histoire, représentation et diffusion d'une cérémonie publique, de l'Orient ancien à Byzance (Paris, 2009), 123–38Google Scholar.

112 See especially Hamon, Patrice, “Le Conseil et la participation des citoyens: mutations de la basse époque hellénistique,” in Fröhlich, Pierre and Müller, Christel, eds., Citoyenneté et participation à la basse époque hellénistique (Droz, 2005), 121–44Google Scholar.

113 Rogers, Guy, The Sacred Identity of Ephesos: Foundation Myths of a Roman City (New York, 1991), 80126Google Scholar.