Welcome to the Ornamenting Empire Database
The Ornamenting Empire Project assembles and parses some 2500 passages of Latin and Greek text that discuss visual works through the language of ornament. Taken together, these texts reveal a previously unrecognised ancient taxonomical value for the visual arts.
The database compiles evidence from the fifth century BCE to the third century CE (though strong examples from as late as the fifth century CE are also included). By far the most material dates from the first to the third centuries CE—the heyday of the a Roman Empire. This corpus thus provides particular insight upon the aesthetic conceptualisation of the ancient Roman world. Textually the project casts a wide net, including passages from various genres of literature, from papyri, and the epigraphic record. Since the dataset further draws examples not only from Italy and Greece but from the four corners of the Roman world, it presents us with an aesthetic paradigm that is of wide relevance for Roman antiquity. The influence of this value was diffused over a large area and it endured over time.
What emerges from this data is a model of visual value in which works in media ranging from famous sculptures of Greek masters to jewellery, and from floor mosaics to civic structures are celebrated through the same terminology. This evidence disrupts more recent paradigms of aesthetic medial hierarchy that have been projected back upon the ancient world. The ancient concept of ornament further challenges models of aesthetic value that celebrate the autonomy of the artwork, as a thing complete in itself. This alternative notion inherently lays continual emphasis on how a work impacts its environment.
The ancient concept of ornament ultimately provides an emic alternative to the later notion of art. It offers unique insight upon Greco-Roman aesthetic notions of visual value.
This project was devised and executed by Professor Nicola Barham. The website was developed in conjunction with the project team.
This research was funded by generous fellowships and research grants from:
The University of Chicago | The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts | Ludwig Maximilians Universität | The University of Michigan
