Ornamenting Empire

This book reveals a powerful but neglected Greco‑Roman model of making and viewing, in which objects were crafted first and foremost as ornament rather than as autonomous 'works of art.' Reconstructing ornamentum/kosmos as an insider, honour‑laden aesthetic category, it shows how the same vocabulary tied together statues, paintings, architecture, jewellery, funerary monuments, wall‑painting, vessels, and civic infrastructure as interacting ornaments that beautified and dignified cities, communities, and persons. Part I builds this conceptual history from literary, epigraphic, and papyrological sources, arguing that Romans imagined a world literally built of ornament. The case studies that follow-from the Campus Martius and Trajan's Column to illusionistic interiors, and luxury glass-demonstrate how 'ornamental logic' cut across media, regions, and social strata. Putting ornament at the centre of Roman visuality, the book challenges modern hierarchies between 'high' and 'decorative' art and clarifies how visual form generated aesthetic and social power across the empire.