Rome and the Americas

The first European impressions of the Inca Empire were shaped by knowledge of ancient Rome. Roman history, religion, and political structures provided ready and appealing models for the Spaniards as they sought to come to terms with the Incas’ vast territories, traditions, and systems of social organization (Pease 1995; MacCormack 1995, 2007). But the legacy of Roman architecture and urban planning was no less powerful, informing or inspiring Spanish perceptions of the Inca built environment.

Colonization in the Americas unfolded as Spaniards were rediscovering their own heritage, both through the revival of Latin literature and the materiality of the past. During the 1500s, antiquarian and royal collectors assembled cabinets of ancient art and artifacts. Ruins of Roman provincial towns were scattered all over Spain’s landscape, particularly in Extremadura, the homeland of many conquistadors. Classical antiquity provided a yardstick by which to reckon with the peninsula’s past as Roman Iberia and the validity of its “civilizing” mission abroad.

The Guadalupe, a Latin epic from colonial Mexico, contains a striking ekphrasis of a series of murals depicting the history of the Mexica, or Aztecs, clearly reminiscent of Virgil’s description of the Temple of Juno and the parade of Roman heroes (Aen.1.441-93 and 6.679-83). The Spanish and Portuguese brought Roman literature as well as the Latin language to the New World (Leonard 1992), and that literature soon took on a new life of its own: a vast corpus of Latin poetry was produced in colonial Latin America.

‘A language, your Majesty, so polished and rich, regulated and enclosed within the rules and precepts of Latin as this is, is not barbarous, that is to say (according to Quintilian and other Latin sources) it is not full of barbarisms, but it is clean and refined’.