Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late-Sixteenth Century Rome by Pamela O. Long is an interesting and informative look at the politics and intellectual advancements during the redesign of Rome between the years 1557 and 1590. Pamela O. Long received her Ph.D. in Renaissance and Reformation History from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1979. She describes herself as an independent historian of late medieval and early modern Europe and the history of science and technology. In addition to research, Long has been a visiting professor at institutions such as the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, Princeton University, and Harvard University. She has taught courses on the history of medieval and renaissance Europe, the “scientific revolution”, and technology in medieval and renaissance Europe. Engineering the Eternal City, published in 2018, is Long’s latest in a repertoire that includes authoring and co-authoring five other books on technology and science from the medieval to early modern periods. For example, her 2011 book, Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400-1600 analyzes the influence of artisans and craftsmen on the “new sciences” of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (https://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/artisanpractitioners-and-rise-of-new-sciences-1400-1600).
Engineering the Eternal City focuses on a thirty-year period of redesign and rebuilding of Rome between the aftermath of the great flood of 1557 and the death of pope Sixtus V in 1590. The author argues that despite Rome’s reputation as a “backwater for the sciences,” the reconstruction of the city forced technological innovation inspired by the study of Roman antiquity which promoted scientific development amidst the complex political and religious spheres of early modern Italy. Combining pictorial and written evidence such as maps, manuscripts, meeting minutes, and papal bulls with anecdotes about the challenges of archival research, Long compiles a structured look at the inner working of Rome’s bureaucratic processes and the completion of major infrastructure redesign and rebuilding.
Pamela Long noted that the purpose of her narrow focus on the years between 1557 and 1590 carve a new path in the historiography of early modern science because it allowed her to examine both the successes and the failures of the urban reconstruction projects in Rome. This differs from previous scholarly works which focus only on the successes or major innovations in this period. Since the book is focused on a narrow window of time, the author chose to organize her book topically instead of chronologically, beginning with the catalyst of the reconstruction efforts, the great flood of 1557. In chapter one, the author discussed the impacts of the severe flooding of the Tiber River and introduced the key themes of the book; the relationship between natural philosophy and the work of ancient Romans to explain and solve contemporary issues. These ideas caused the scientists and statesmen of early modern Rome to ask, what caused the river to flood? And how did the ancients explain such a phenomenon and solve it? The combination of natural philosophy and antiquarian studies are a key theme which carries throughout the book.
The topic of study in chapter two is the unsuccessful attempt at managing and cleaning the city via the streets and sewer systems. Here, Pamela Long’s expertise as an independent historian shines through with an emphasis on her archival research process using documents and archaeological reports to piece together information on late-sixteenth century drains and sewers. One of the strengths of this book is that the author concedes to the limitations of archival research where it is necessary before she makes her argument. This not only gives the reader a prompt from which to think about their own theories and interpretations of the evidence that she presents, but it adds credibility to the author’s argument through her acknowledgment of said limitations. Chapters three and four are devoted to the repair of the Acqua Vergine aqueduct and broken bridges, respectfully. The theme of the study of antiquities continued with an analysis of the While these two chapters are less interesting than the previous, they do provide an in depth look at the Roman bureaucratic system that buoyed between the people and the pope. In particular, these chapters highlighted the system of patronage which funded the artisans, engineers and architects that completed these public works projects.
Chapters five and six delve into the world of mapmaking. In chapter five, Pamela Long discusses the burgeoning mapmaking business of the sixteenth century and the topography of Rome. Innovations during this time “revolutionized” mapmaking, allowing maps to be drawn to a fixed scale. It is within the description of the fixed scale mapmaking system that the idea of the scientific revolution being a “revolution” is challenged. Long makes a point here to say that the idea and technology to create a fixed scale map had been used abundantly in ancient Mesopotamia, China, and even Rome, but they were not “continuous cartographical practices,” (114). Meaning, what may have seemed to be a “revolution” was not a revolution but a revival of older practices. Chapter six focused more on the artistic side of the mapmaking process, and on the act of printmaking itself. This chapter was a bit repetitive of chapter five but tied together the author’s argument that “reenvisioning Rome on paper and remaking Rome as a physical entity went hand in hand,” (162).
The two concluding chapters, seven and eight, felt slightly out of place compared to the rest of the book. Chapter seven discussed reforming the streets, meaning social reform and physically altering the width, scope and sometimes direction of the streets. However, this chapter felt less like it had to do with the reengineering of streets than it did with the people on them. And while this is an important aspect of any historical analysis, the two ideas felt disjointed. Chapter eight dealt with moving the Vatican Obelisk, a monolith that had been removed from Egypt in 41 CE by the emperor Caligula, and which in the sixteenth century was to be moved to a more prominent position at the Vatican. While the moving of the Obelisk was a task that required feats of engineering to accomplish, this event felt out of place among the chapters on aqueducts, bridges, sewers, and streets. Though both chapters seven and eight had moments that reflected the author’s thesis, they felt largely unnecessary.
Throughout her examination of the urban reconstruction of Rome, Long uses language that is structured for both academic audiences and the casual enthusiast of Roman history, without oversimplifying it for either. In addition, Long made a point of translating all of the Italian words and phrases she used into English for the ease of the reader, while still providing the original language in parentheses. Overall, Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome was an informative, well organized, and well researched book that skillfully argued Rome’s importance in scientific and technological advancement which was inspired by a dialogue between sixteenth century contemporaries and Roman antiquity in the journey to redesign and rebuild the city.
