Читать книгу Resilience. Persistence and Change in Landscape Forms онлайн

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The idea that the permanence of forms is a result of resistance, primarily in the sense of material continuity, is an old one. In 1622, for example, N. Bergier ascribed the continued existence of Roman roads to their construction. Speaking of “Brunehaut” roads, wide Roman thoroughfares found across the former Belgian Gaul, he stated that one hypothesis for the use of the term via ferrata (lit. “iron road”) in this context is “the hardness and firmness of their construction, which has resisted wear from carts for fifteen or sixteen hundred years”ssss1 (Bergier 1622, p. 93). In the 19th century, the historian Camille Jullian also emphasized the hard-wearing (résistant) nature of the materials used in ancient road construction, comparing their foundations to an “invisible wall” (Jullian 1964, pp. 108–109). The continued existence of ancient roads was thus considered to be intimately linked to the notion of physical resistance. The dureté, hardness, of their construction ensured their durée, perennity, long after Rome had fallen. Material hardness may also be linked to the durability of power. In a proverb quoted by the Venerable Bede in the 7th century, the persistence of Rome, and, by extension, of the whole world, is linked to the resistance of a monument (the Colosseum):