Apollodorus
Apollodorus
Active Early Second Century c.e.
Architect
Relationship with the Emperors. Apollodorus carried out many of Trajan’s building projects, including his forum, and may have been the chief designer for the famous column dedicated to that emperor. As was the case with Vitruvius, Apollodorus probably had a military background designing machinery for warfare, on which he wrote a treatise, as did many practitioners in the visual arts in antiquity. He seems to have been on close terms with Trajan, with whom he was in regular contact, but had a less fortunate association with his heir, Hadrian. Cassio Dio (69.4.1-5) tells how Apollodorus dismissed some architectural plans drawn by Hadrian before he was emperor as mere “pumpkins”—possibly a reference to Hadrian’s fondness for vaults and domes, which are evident in his palace buildings at Tivoli and in such monuments as the Pantheon, rebuilt under his regime. In any event, Hadrian certainly took his own drawings seriously, according to ancient sources. Later, when Hadrian was emperor, Apollodorus stridently criticized in detail his plans for a temple to Venus and Rome. Hadrian resented this criticism and, not forgetting the earlier insult, is said to have banished Apollodorus, eventually having him executed.
Sources
Jacob Isager, Pliny on Art and Society (London: Routledge, 1991).
K. Jex-Blake and Eugenie S. Sellers, eds., The Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art (Chicago: Argonaut, 1968).
Jerome J. Pollitt, The Art of Rome c.753 B.C.-337 A.D. Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966).