ABSTRACT
The diversity of Roman institutions required a wide range of specialised buildings, some religious, others secular. There were commercial, domestic and recreational buildings; some were for entertainment and others purely utilitarian; there were honorific buildings such as triumphal arches, and of course a wide range of military and defensive buildings. Many of these buildings had already achieved what might be termed their orthodox form by the time of Augustus. Others, notably baths, still had a good deal of development ahead of them. Some buildings, such as temples and basilicas, remained relatively unchanged in their layout after the time of Augustus, although in the late Empire they occasionally appeared in a striking new form. For example, Hadrian's Pantheon was a breathtakingly original version of a Roman temple, and at the beginning of the fourth century Maxentius built a daringly novel basilica in terms of its layout and structure. Some buildings were affected by fashion or the economic climate. For example, houses were radically modified because of changing economic conditions in Roman towns, and high-rise apartment blocks began to take the place of the old domus during the early Empire. Buildings such as amphitheatres and circuses were steadily improved as time went on. For example the spina of the circus was angled to allow more space for the chariots at the crucial beginning of the race, and amphitheatres began to be equipped with a complex underground system of cells which allowed a large number of animals to appear in the arena simultaneously, thus increasing the tempo of the spectacle.
