Rhetoric and the architecture of empire in the Athenian agora

• Main Author: Lewis, John Vandenbergh
• Other Authors: Julian Beinart.
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2012
• Subjects: Architecture.
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/68303

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1995. === Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-185). === The various political regimes of ancient Athens established and legitimated their power through civic architecture and public rhetoric in the agora. A study of the parallel developments of architectural and rhetorical form , supported by previously published archaeological evidence and the well documented history of classical rhetoric, demonstrates that both served to propel democracy and, later, to euphemize the asymmetrical power structures of the Hellenistic and Roman empires. In addition, civic architecture and rhetoric worked in unison following analogous patterns of presentation in civic space. Civic imperial architecture in the agora may be thus understood to function as the stageset and legitimator of imperial political rhetoric in the agora. === by John Vandenbergh Lewis. === M.S.