Introduction

This chapter reflects a clear sense of continuity, stretching over a long period of time. It follows three stages: the late Republic, early Empire, and the transition from the late Middle Ages' to the early Renaissance. The first one introduces the classical background inspiring Trajan's generation to reconstruct Agrippa's building with a domed rotunda perhaps an intuitive response to its nickname. The continuity of classical heritage in the midst of Christian beliefs runs on multiple tracks. The Pantheon's most famous characteristic the circumscription of a perfect sphere assured such level of universality. It was a connotation intimately associated with the shape of the universe. Fishwick's hypothesis that Agrippa's building was an Augustan heroon explains why the Pantheon became a fundamental precedent for subsequent generations. The juxtaposition of Venus and Mars was extremely powerful under such vein. Its allegorical value advanced influential connotations.