Showing Roman construction in Italy from Nerva through the Antonines by Marion Elizabeth Blake

The late Marion E. Blake, sometime Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and Research Associate, Carnegie Institution of Washington, published two notable volumes on Roman construction in Italy from the prehistoric times through the Flavian period (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1947 and 1959). In this third volume she continued her detailed summary of the techniques used in the surviving monuments, both imperial and private. In addition to thorough treatment of the Trajanic, Hadrianic, and Antonine remains in and near Rome, including a full section on Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, Miss Blake analyzed with especial fullness the great growth of Ostia in this period, thus providing a useful study to parallel the available volumes in "Scavi di Ostia", Russell Meiggs's "Roman Ostia", and James Packer's "The Insulae of Imperial Ostia".

Construction of public works - aqueducts, roads and bridges, harbors, theaters and amphitheaters, and baths - throughout Italy, and of tombs and of private estates is surveyed as thoroughly as the remains warrant and permit. A useful feature is the running summaries placed appropriately in the text.

When Miss Blake's death left the manuscript unfinished, it was carefully and expertly verified and almost completed by the late Doris Taylor Bishop, Professor of Classics, Wheaton College, Massachusetts. As now completed by J. David Bishop, it is a worthy monument to these two scholars.