in which form of art were the romans most innovative

It was in the area of architecture that Roman art produced its greatest innovations. Because the Roman Empire extended over so great of an area and included so many urbanized areas, Roman engineers developed methods for city building on a grand scale, including the use of concrete. Massive buildings like the Pantheon and the Colosseum could never have been constructed with previous materials and methods. Though concrete had been invented a thousand years earlier in the Near East, the Romans extended its use from fortifications to their most impressive buildings and monuments, capitalizing on the materialâ€™s strength and low cost.[58] The concrete core was covered with a plaster, brick, stone, or marble veneer, and decorative polychrome and gold-gilded sculpture was often added to produce a dazzling effect of power and wealth.[58]

Roman art

Roman art refers to the visual arts made in Ancient Rome and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Roman art includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work. Luxury objects in metal-work, gem engraving, ivory carvings, and glass are sometimes considered in modern terms to be minor forms of Roman art,[1] although this would not necessarily have been the case for contemporaries. Sculpture was perhaps considered as the highest form of art by Romans, but figure painting was also very highly regarded. The two forms have had very contrasting rates of survival, with a very large body of sculpture surviving from about the 1st century BC on wards, though very little from before, but very little painting at all remains, and probably nothing that a contemporary would have considered to be of the highest quality.

Ancient Roman pottery was not a luxury product, but a vast production of "fine wares" in terra sigillata were decorated with reliefs that reflected the latest taste, and provided a large group in society with stylish objects at what was evidently an affordable price. Roman coins were an important means of propaganda, and have survived in enormous numbers. Other perishable forms of art have not survived at all.

While the traditional view of the ancient Roman artists is that they often borrowed from, and copied Greek precedents (much of the Greek sculptures known today are in the form of Roman marble copies), more recent analysis has indicated that Roman art is a highly creative pastiche relying heavily on Greek models but also encompassing Etruscan, native Italic, and even Egyptian visual culture. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much Roman art.

Pliny, Ancient Rome’s most important historian concerning the arts, recorded that nearly all the forms of art – sculpture, landscape, portrait painting, even genre painting – were advanced in Greek times, and in some cases, more advanced than in Rome. Though very little remains of Greek wall art and portraiture, certainly Greek sculpture and vase painting bears this out. These forms were not likely surpassed by Roman artists in fineness of design or execution. As another example of the lost "Golden Age", he singled out Peiraikos, "whose artistry is surpassed by only a very few ... He painted barbershops and shoemakers’ stalls, donkeys, vegetables, and such, and for that reason came to be called the 'painter of vulgar subjects'; yet these works are altogether delightful, and they were sold at higher prices than the greatest [paintings] of many other artists.”[2] The adjective "vulgar" is used here in its original meaning, which means "common".

The Greek antecedents of Roman art were legendary. In the mid-5th century BC, the most famous Greek artists were Polygnotos, noted for his wall murals, and Apollodoros, the originator of chiaroscuro. The development of realistic technique is credited to Zeuxis and Parrhasius, who according to ancient Greek legend, are said to have once competed in a bravura display of their talents, history’s earliest descriptions of trompe l’oeil painting.[3] In sculpture, Skopas, Praxiteles, Phidias, and Lysippos were the foremost sculptors. It appears that Roman artists had much Ancient Greek art to copy from, as trade in art was brisk throughout the empire, and much of the Greek artistic heritage found its way into Roman art through books and teaching. Ancient Greek treatises on the arts are known to have existed in Roman times though are now lost.[4] Many Roman artists came from Greek colonies and provinces...[5]

The high number of Roman copies of Greek art also speaks of the esteem Roman artists had for Greek art, and perhaps of its rarer and higher quality.[5] Many of the art forms and methods used by the Romans – such as high and low relief, free-standing sculpture, bronze casting, vase art, mosaic, cameo, coin art, fine jewelry and metalwork, funerary sculpture, perspective drawing, caricature, genre and portrait painting, landscape painting, architectural sculpture, and trompe l’oeil painting – all were developed or refined by Ancient Greek artists.[6] One exception is the Roman bust, which did not include the shoulders. The traditional head-and-shoulders bust may have been an Etruscan or early Roman form.[7] Virtually every artistic technique and method used by Renaissance artists 1,900 year later, had been demonstrated by Ancient Greek artists, with the notable exceptions of oil colors and mathematically accurate perspective.[8] Where Greek artists were highly revered in their society, most Roman artists were anonymous and considered tradesmen. There is no recording, as in Ancient Greece, of the great masters of Roman art, and practically no signed works. Where Greeks worshiped the aesthetic qualities of great art and wrote extensively on artistic theory, Roman art was more decorative and indicative of status and wealth, and apparently not the subject of scholars or philosophers.[9]

Owing in part to the fact that the Roman cities were far larger than the Greek city-states in power and population, and generally less provincial, art in Ancient Rome took on a wider, and sometimes more utilitarian, purpose. Roman culture assimilated many cultures and was for the most part tolerant of the ways of conquered peoples.[5] Roman art was commissioned, displayed, and owned in far greater quantities, and adapted to more uses than in Greek times. Wealthy Romans were more materialistic; they decorated their walls with art, their home with decorative objects, and themselves with fine jewelry.

In the Christian era of the late Empire, from 350 to 500 CE, wall painting, mosaic ceiling and floor work, and funerary sculpture thrived, while full-sized sculpture in the round and panel painting died out, most likely for religious reasons.[10] When Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople), Roman art incorporated Eastern influences to produce the Byzantine style of the late empire. When Rome was sacked in the 5th century, artisans moved to and found work in the Eastern capital. The Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople employed nearly 10,000 workmen and artisans, in a final burst of Roman art under Emperor Justinian (527â€“565 CE), who also ordered the creation of the famous mosaics of Ravenna.[11]

Of the vast body of Roman painting we now have only a very few pockets of survivals, with many documented types not surviving at all, or doing so only from the very end of the period. The best known and most important pocket is the wall paintings from Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites nearby, which show how residents of a wealthy seaside resort decorated their walls in the century or so before the fatal eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. A succession of dated styles have been defined and analysed by modern art historians beginning with August Mau, showing increasing elaboration and sophistication.

Starting in the 3rd century CE and finishing by about 400 we have a large body of paintings from the Catacombs of Rome, by no means all Christian, showing the later continuation of the domestic decorative tradition in a version adapted - probably not greatly adapted - for use in burial chambers, in what was probably a rather humbler social milieu than the largest houses in Pompeii. Much of Nero's palace in Rome, the Domus Aurea, survived as grottos and gives us examples which we can be sure represent the very finest quality of wall-painting in its style, and which may well have represented significant innovation in style. There are a number of other parts of painted rooms surviving from Rome and elsewhere, which somewhat help to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of wall-painting. From Roman Egypt there are a large number of what are known as Fayum mummy portraits, bust portraits on wood added to the outside of mummies by a Romanized middle-class; despite their very distinct local character they are probably broadly representative of Roman style in painted portraits, which are otherwise entirely lost.

Nothing remains of the Greek paintings imported to Rome during the 4th and 5th centuries, or of the painting on wood done in Italy during that period.[4] In sum, the range of samples is confined to only about 200 years out of the about 900 years of Roman history,[12] and of provincial and decorative painting. Most of this wall painting was done using the secco (“dry”) method, but some fresco paintings also existed in Roman times. There is evidence from mosaics and a few inscriptions that some Roman paintings were adaptations or copies of earlier Greek works.[12] However, adding to the confusion is the fact that inscriptions may be recording the names of immigrant Greek artists from Roman times, not from Ancient Greek originals that were copied.[8] The Romans entirely lacked a tradition of figurative vase-painting comparable to that of the Ancient Greeks, which the Etruscans had emulated.

Roman painting provides a wide variety of themes: animals, still life, scenes from everyday life, portraits, and some mythological subjects. During the Hellenistic period, it evoked the pleasures of the countryside and represented scenes of shepherds, herds, rustic temples, rural mountainous landscapes and country houses.[8] Erotic scenes are also relatively common. In the late empire, after 200AD, early Christian themes mixed with pagan imagery survive on catacomb walls.[13]

The main innovation of Roman painting compared to Greek art was the development of landscapes, in particular incorporating techniques of perspective, though true mathematical perspective developed 1,500 years later. Surface textures, shading, and coloration are well applied but scale and spatial depth was still not rendered accurately. Some landscapes were pure scenes of nature, particularly gardens with flowers and trees, while others were architectural vistas depicting urban buildings. Other landscapes show episodes from mythology, the most famous demonstrating scenes from the Odyssey.[14]

In the traditional view, the art of the ancient East would have known landscape painting only as the backdrop to civil or military narrative scenes.[15] This theory, defended by Franz Wickhoff, is debatable. It is possible to see evidence of Greek knowledge of landscape portrayal in Plato's Critias (107bâ€“108b):

... and if we look at the portraiture of divine and of human bodies as executed by painters, in respect of the ease or difficulty with which they succeed in imitating their subjects in the opinion of onlookers, we shall notice in the first place that as regards the earth and mountains and rivers and woods and the whole of heaven, with the things that exist and move therein, we are content if a man is able to represent them with even a small degree of likenessÂ ...[16]

Roman still life subjects are often placed in illusionist niches or shelves and depict a variety of everyday objects including fruit, live and dead animals, seafood, and shells. Examples of the theme of the glass jar filled with water were skillfully painted and later served as models for the same subject often painted during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.[17]

Pliny complained of the declining state of Roman portrait art, "The painting of portraits which used to transmit through the ages the accurate likenesses of people, has entirely gone outÂ ... Indolence has destroyed the arts."[18][19]

In Greece and Rome, wall painting was not considered as high art. The most prestigious form of art besides sculpture was panel painting, i.e. tempera or encaustic painting on wooden panels. Unfortunately, since wood is a perishable material, only a very few examples of such paintings have survived, namely the Severan Tondo from c. 200 AD, a very routine official portrait from some provincial government office, and the well-known Fayum mummy portraits, all from Roman Egypt, and almost certainly not of the highest contemporary quality. The portraits were attached to burial mummies at the face, from which almost all have now been detached. They usually depict a single person, showing the head, or head and upper chest, viewed frontally. The background is always monochrome, sometimes with decorative elements.[20] In terms of artistic tradition, the images clearly derive more from Greco-Roman traditions than Egyptian ones. They are remarkably realistic, though variable in artistic quality, and may indicate that similar art which was widespread elsewhere but did not survive. A few portraits painted on glass and medals from the later empire have survived, as have coin portraits, some of which are considered very realistic as well.[21]

Gold glass, or gold sandwich glass, was a technique for fixing a layer of gold leaf with a design between two fused layers of glass, developed in Hellenistic glass and revived in the 3rd century AD. There are a very few large designs, including a very fine group of portraits from the 3rd century with added paint, but the great majority of the around 500 survivals are roundels that are the cut-off bottoms of wine cups or glasses used to mark and decorate graves in the Catacombs of Rome by pressing them into the mortar. They predominantly date from the 4th and 5th centuries. Most are Christian, though there are many pagan and a few Jewish examples. It is likely that they were originally given as gifts on marriage, or festive occasions such as New Year. Their iconography has been much studied, although artistically they are relatively unsophisticated.[23] Their subjects are similar to the catacomb paintings, but with a difference balance including more portraiture. As time went on there was an increase in the depiction of saints.[24] The same technique began to be used for gold tesserae for mosaics in the mid-1st century in Rome, and by the 5th century these had become the standard background for religious mosaics.

The earlier group are "among the most vivid portraits to survive from Early Christian times. They stare out at us with an extraordinary stern and melancholy intensity",[25] and represent the best surviving indications of what high quality Roman portraiture could achieve in paint. The Gennadios medallion in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is a fine example of an Alexandrian portrait on blue glass, using a rather more complex technique and naturalistic style than most Late Roman examples, including painting onto the gold to create shading, and with the Greek inscription showing local dialect features. He had perhaps been given or commissioned the piece to celebrate victory in a musical competition.[26] One of the most famous Alexandrian-style portrait medallions, with an inscription in Egyptian Greek, was later mounted in an Early Medieval crux gemmata in Brescia, in the mistaken belief that it showed the pious empress and Gothic queen Galla Placida and her children;[27] in fact the knot in the central figure's dress may mark a devotee of Isis.[28] This is one of a group of 14 pieces dating to the 3rd century AD, all individualized secular portraits of high quality.[29] The inscription on the medallion is written in the Alexanrian dialect of Greek and hence most likely depicts a family from Roman Egypt.[30] The medallion has also been compared to other works of contemporaneous Roman-Egyptian artwork, such as the Fayum mummy portraits.[22] It is thought that the tiny detail of pieces such as these can only have been achieved using lenses.[31] The later glasses from the catacombs have a level of portraiture that is rudimentary, with features, hairstyles and clothes all following stereotypical styles.[32]

Roman genre scenes generally depict Romans at leisure and include gambling, music and sexual encounters.[citation needed] Some scenes depict gods and goddesses at leisure.[8][12]

From the 3rd century BC, a specific genre known as Triumphal Paintings appeared, as indicated by Pliny (XXXV, 22).[33] These were paintings which showed triumphal entries after military victories, represented episodes from the war, and conquered regions and cities. Summary maps were drawn to highlight key points of the campaign. Josephus describes the painting executed on the occasion of Vespasian and Titus's sack of Jerusalem:

There was also wrought gold and ivory fastened about them all; and many resemblances of the war, and those in several ways, and variety of contrivances, affording a most lively portraiture of itself. For there was to be seen a happy country laid waste, and entire squadrons of enemies slain; while some of them ran away, and some were carried into captivity; with walls of great altitude and magnitude overthrown and ruined by machines; with the strongest fortifications taken, and the walls of most populous cities upon the tops of hills seized on, and an army pouring itself within the walls; as also every place full of slaughter, and supplications of the enemies, when they were no longer able to lift up their hands in way of opposition. Fire also sent upon temples was here represented, and houses overthrown, and falling upon their owners: rivers also, after they came out of a large and melancholy desert, ran down, not into a land cultivated, nor as drink for men, or for cattle, but through a land still on fire upon every side; for the Jews related that such a thing they had undergone during this war. Now the workmanship of these representations was so magnificent and lively in the construction of the things, that it exhibited what had been done to such as did not see it, as if they had been there really present. On the top of every one of these pageants was placed the commander of the city that was taken, and the manner wherein he was taken.[34]

These paintings have disappeared, but they likely influenced the composition of the historical reliefs carved on military sarcophagi, the Arch of Titus, and Trajan's Column. This evidence underscores the significance of landscape painting, which sometimes tended towards being perspective plans.

Ranuccio also describes the oldest painting to be found in Rome, in a tomb on the Esquiline Hill:

It describes a historical scene, on a clear background, painted in four superimposed sections. Several people are identified, such Marcus Fannius and Marcus Fabius. These are larger than the other figuresÂ ... In the second zone, to the left, is a city encircled with crenellated walls, in front of which is a large warrior equipped with an oval buckler and a feathered helmet; near him is a man in a short tunic, armed with a spear...Around these two are smaller soldiers in short tunics, armed with spears...In the lower zone a battle is taking place, where a warrior with oval buckler and a feathered helmet is shown larger than the others, whose weapons allow to assume that these are probably Samnites.

This episode is difficult to pinpoint. One of Ranuccio's hypotheses is that it refers to a victory of the consul Fabius Maximus Rullianus during the second war against Samnites in 326 BC. The presentation of the figures with sizes proportional to their importance is typically Roman, and finds itself in plebeian reliefs. This painting is in the infancy of triumphal painting, and would have been accomplished by the beginning of the 3rd century BC to decorate the tomb.

Early Roman art was influenced by the art of Greece and that of the neighbouring Etruscans, themselves greatly influenced by their Greek trading partners. An Etruscan speciality was near life size tomb effigies in terracotta, usually lying on top of a sarcophagus lid propped up on one elbow in the pose of a diner in that period. As the expanding Roman Republic began to conquer Greek territory, at first in Southern Italy and then the entire Hellenistic world except for the Parthian far east, official and patrician sculpture became largely an extension of the Hellenistic style, from which specifically Roman elements are hard to disentangle, especially as so much Greek sculpture survives only in copies of the Roman period.[35] By the 2nd century BC, "most of the sculptors working in Rome" were Greek,[36] often enslaved in conquests such as that of Corinth (146 BC), and sculptors continued to be mostly Greeks, often slaves, whose names are very rarely recorded. Vast numbers of Greek statues were imported to Rome, whether as booty or the result of extortion or commerce, and temples were often decorated with re-used Greek works.[37]

A native Italian style can be seen in the tomb monuments of prosperous middle-class Romans, which very often featured portrait busts, and portraiture is arguably the main strength of Roman sculpture. There are no survivals from the tradition of masks of ancestors that were worn in processions at the funerals of the great families and otherwise displayed in the home, but many of the busts that survive must represent ancestral figures, perhaps from the large family tombs like the Tomb of the Scipios or the later mausolea outside the city. The famous bronze head supposedly of Lucius Junius Brutus is very variously dated, but taken as a very rare survival of Italic style under the Republic, in the preferred medium of bronze.[38] Similarly stern and forceful heads are seen in the coins of the consuls, and in the Imperial period coins as well as busts sent around the Empire to be placed in the basilicas of provincial cities were the main visual form of imperial propaganda; even Londinium had a near-colossal statue of Nero, though far smaller than the 30 metre high Colossus of Nero in Rome, now lost.[39] The Tomb of Eurysaces the Baker, a successful freedman (c. 50-20 BC) has a frieze that is an unusually large example of the "plebeian" style.[40] Imperial portraiture was initially Hellenized and highly idealized, as in the Blacas Cameo and other portraits of Augustus.

The Romans did not generally attempt to compete with free-standing Greek works of heroic exploits from history or mythology, but from early on produced historical works in relief, culminating in the great Roman triumphal columns with continuous narrative reliefs winding around them, of which those commemorating Trajan (113 CE) and Marcus Aurelius (by 193) survive in Rome, where the Ara Pacis ("Altar of Peace", 13 BC) represents the official Greco-Roman style at its most classical and refined, and the Sperlonga sculptures it at its most baroque. Some late Roman public sculptures developed a massive, simplified style that sometimes anticipates Soviet socialist realism. Among other major examples are the earlier re-used reliefs on the Arch of Constantine and the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius (161),[41] Campana reliefs were cheaper pottery versions of marble reliefs and the taste for relief was from the imperial period expanded to the sarcophagus.

All forms of luxury small sculpture continued to be patronized, and quality could be extremely high, as in the silver Warren Cup, glass Lycurgus Cup, and large cameos like the Gemma Augustea, Gonzaga Cameo and the "Great Cameo of France".[42] For a much wider section of the population, moulded relief decoration of pottery vessels and small figurines were produced in great quantity and often considerable quality.[43]

After moving through a late 2nd century "baroque" phase,[44] in the 3rd century, Roman art largely abandoned, or simply became unable to produce, sculpture in the classical tradition, a change whose causes remain much discussed. Even the most important imperial monuments now showed stumpy, large-eyed figures in a harsh frontal style, in simple compositions emphasizing power at the expense of grace. The contrast is famously illustrated in the Arch of Constantine of 315 in Rome, which combines sections in the new style with roundels in the earlier full Greco-Roman style taken from elsewhere, and the Four Tetrarchs (c. 305) from the new capital of Constantinople, now in Venice. Ernst Kitzinger found in both monuments the same "stubby proportions, angular movements, an ordering of parts through symmetry and repetition and a rendering of features and drapery folds through incisions rather than modelling... The hallmark of the style wherever it appears consists of an emphatic hardness, heaviness and angularity – in short, an almost complete rejection of the classical tradition".[45]

This revolution in style shortly preceded the period in which Christianity was adopted by the Roman state and the great majority of the people, leading to the end of large religious sculpture, with large statues now only used for emperors, as in the famous fragments of a colossal acrolithic statue of Constantine, and the 4th or 5th century Colossus of Barletta. However rich Christians continued to commission reliefs for sarcophagi, as in the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, and very small sculpture, especially in ivory, was continued by Christians, building on the style of the consular diptych.[46]

Etruscan sarcophagus, 3rd century BC

The "Capitoline Brutus", dated to the 4th to 3rd centuries BC

A Roman naval bireme depicted in a relief from the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste (Palastrina),[47] which was built c. 120 BC;[48] exhibited in the Pius-Clementine Museum (Museo Pio-Clementino) in the Vatican Museums.

The Orator, c. 100 BC, an Etrusco-Roman bronze statue depicting Aule Metele (Latin: Aulus Metellus), an Etruscan man wearing a Roman toga while engaged in rhetoric; the statue features an inscription in the Etruscan alphabet

The Grave relief of Publius Aiedius and Aiedia, 30 BC, Pergamon Museum (Berlin)

Augustus of Prima Porta, statue of the emperor Augustus, 1st century AD, Vatican Museums

Tomb relief of the Decii, 98â€“117 AD

Bust of Emperor Claudius, c. 50 CE, (reworked from a bust of emperor Caligula), Vatican Museums

Commodus dressed as Hercules, c. 191 CE, in the late imperial "baroque" style; Capitoline Museum, Rome.

The Four Tetrarchs, c. 305, showing the new anti-classical style, in porphyry, now San Marco, Venice

The cameo gem known as the "Great Cameo of France", c. 23 AD, with an allegory of Augustus and his family

Portrait Bust of a Man, Ancient Rome, 60 BC

Roman portraiture is characterized by its "warts and all" realism.

Veristic portrait bust of an old man, head covered (capite velato), either a priest or paterfamilias (marble, mid-1st century BC)

Traditional Roman sculpture is divided into five categories: portraiture, historical relief, funerary reliefs, sarcophagi, and copies of ancient Greek works.[49] Contrary to the belief of early archaeologists, many of these sculptures were large polychrome terra-cotta images, such as the Apollo of Veii (Villa Givlia, Rome), but the painted surface of many of them has worn away with time.

While Greek sculptors traditionally illustrated military exploits through the use of mythological allegory, the Romans used a more documentary style. Roman reliefs of battle scenes, like those on the Column of Trajan, were created for the glorification of Roman might, but also provide first-hand representation of military costumes and military equipment. Trajan's column records the various Dacian wars conducted by Trajan in what is modern day Romania. It is the foremost example of Roman historical relief and one of the great artistic treasures of the ancient world. This unprecedented achievement, over 650 foot of spiraling length, presents not just realistically rendered individuals (over 2,500 of them), but landscapes, animals, ships, and other elements in a continuous visual history – in effect an ancient precursor of a documentary movie. It survived destruction when it was adapted as a base for Christian sculpture.[50] During the Christian era after 300 AD, the decoration of door panels and sarcophagi continued but full-sized sculpture died out and did not appear to be an important element in early churches.[10]

The Romans inherited a tradition of art in a wide range of the so-called "minor arts" or decorative art. Most of these flourished most impressively at the luxury level, but large numbers of terracotta figurines, both religious and secular, continued to be produced cheaply, as well as some larger Campana reliefs in terracotta.[51] Roman art did not use vase-painting in the way of the ancient Greeks, but vessels in Ancient Roman pottery were often stylishly decorated in moulded relief.[52] Producers of the millions of small oil lamps sold seem to have relied on attractive decoration to beat competitors and every subject of Roman art except landscape and portraiture is found on them in miniature.[53]

Luxury arts included fancy Roman glass in a great range of techniques, many smaller types of which were probably affordable to a good proportion of the Roman public. This was certainly not the case for the most extravagant types of glass, such as the cage cups or diatreta, of which the Lycurgus Cup in the British Museum is a near-unique figurative example in glass that changes colour when seen with light passing through it. The Augustan Portland Vase is the masterpiece of Roman cameo glass,[54] and imitated the style of the large engraved gems (Blacas Cameo, Gemma Augustea, Great Cameo of France) and other hardstone carvings that were also most popular around this time.[55]

Mosaic was a minor art, though often on a very large scale, until the very end of the period, when late-4th-century Christians began to use it for large religious images on walls in their new large churches; in earlier Roman art mosaic was mainly used for floors, curved ceilings, and inside and outside walls that were going to get wet. The famous copy of a Hellenistic painting in the Alexander Mosaic in Naples was originally placed in a floor in Pompeii; this is much higher quality work than most Roman mosaic, though very fine panels, often of still life subjects in small or micromosaic tesserae have also survived. The Romans distinguished between normal opus tessellatum with tesserae mostly over 4Â mm across, which was laid down on site, and finer opus vermiculatum for small panels, which is thought to have been produced offsite in a workshop, and brought to the site as a finished panel. The latter was a Hellenistic genre which is found in Italy between about 100 BC and 100 AD. Most signed mosaics have Greek names, suggesting the artists remained mostly Greek, though probably often slaves trained up in workshops. The late 2nd century BC Nile mosaic of Palestrina is a very large example of the popular genre of Nilotic landscape, while the 4th century Gladiator Mosaic in Rome shows several large figures in combat.[56]

Metalwork was highly developed, and clearly an essential part of the homes of the rich, who dined off silver, while often drinking from glass, and had elaborate cast fittings on their furniture, jewellery, and small figurines. A number of important hoards found in the last 200 years, mostly from the more violent edges of the late empire, have given us a much clearer idea of Roman silver plate. The Mildenhall Treasure and Hoxne Hoard are both from East Anglia in England.[57] There are few survivals of upmarket ancient Roman furniture, but these show refined and elegant design and execution.

Few Roman coins reach the artistic peaks of the best Greek coins, but they survive in vast numbers and their iconography and inscriptions form a crucial source for the study of Roman history, and the development of imperial iconography, as well as containing many fine examples of portraiture. They penetrated to the rural population of the whole Empire and beyond, with barbarians on the fringes of the Empire making their own copies. In the Empire medallions in precious metals began to be produced in small editions as imperial gifts, which are similar to coins, though larger and usually finer in execution. Images in coins initially followed Greek styles, with gods and symbols, but in the death throes of the Republic first Pompey and then Julius Caesar appeared on coins, and portraits of the emperor or members of his family became standard on imperial coinage. The inscriptions were used for propaganda, and in the later Empire the army joined the emperor as the beneficiary.

Because of these methods, Roman architecture is legendary for the durability of its construction; with many buildings still standing, and some still in use, mostly buildings converted to churches during the Christian era. Many ruins, however, have been stripped of their marble veneer and are left with their concrete core exposed, thus appearing somewhat reduced in size and grandeur from their original appearance, such as with the Basilica of Constantine.[59]

During the Republican era, Roman architecture combined Greek and Etruscan elements, and produced innovations such as the round temple and the curved arch.[60] As Roman power grew in the early empire, the first emperors inaugurated wholesale leveling of slums to build grand palaces on the Palatine Hill and nearby areas, which required advances in engineering methods and large scale design. Roman buildings were then built in the commercial, political, and social grouping known as a forum, that of Julius Caesar being the first and several added later, with the Forum Romanum being the most famous. The greatest arena in the Roman world, the Colosseum, was completed around 80 AD at the far end of that forum. It held over 50,000 spectators, had retractable fabric coverings for shade, and could stage massive spectacles including huge gladiatorial contests and mock naval battles. This masterpiece of Roman architecture epitomizes Roman engineering efficiency and incorporates all three architectural orders – Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.[61] Less celebrated but just as important if not more so for most Roman citizens, was the five-story insula or city block, the Roman equivalent of an apartment building, which housed tens of thousands of Romans.[62]

It was during the reign of Trajan (98–117 AD.) and Hadrian (117–138 AD) that the Roman Empire reached its greatest extent and that Rome itself was at the peak of its artistic glory – achieved through massive building programs of monuments, meeting houses, gardens, aqueducts, baths, palaces, pavilions, sarcophagi, and temples.[50] The Roman use of the arch, the use of concrete building methods, the use of the dome all permitted construction of vaulted ceilings and enabled the building of these public spaces and complexes, including the palaces, public baths and basilicas of the "Golden Age" of the empire. Outstanding examples of dome construction include the Pantheon, the Baths of Diocletian, and the Baths of Caracalla. The Pantheon (dedicated to all the planetary gods) is the best preserved temple of ancient times with an intact ceiling featuring an open "eye" in the center. The height of the ceiling exactly equals the interior diameter of the building, creating an enclosure that could contain giant sphere.[59] These grand buildings later served as inspirational models for architects of the Italian Renaissance, such as Brunelleschi. By the age of Constantine (306-337 AD), the last great building programs in Rome took place, including the erection of the Arch of Constantine built near the Colosseum, which recycled some stone work from the forum nearby, to produce an eclectic mix of styles.[13]

Roman aqueducts, also based on the arch, were commonplace in the empire and essential transporters of water to large urban areas. Their standing masonry remains are especially impressive, such as the Pont du Gard (featuring three tiers of arches) and the aqueduct of Segovia, serving as mute testimony to their quality of their design and construction.[61]


when was pole vault introduced in olympics games

The pole vault at the Summer Olympics is grouped among the four track and field jumping events held at the multi-sport event. The men's pole vault has been present on the Olympic athletics programme since the first Summer Olympics in 1896. The women's event is one of the latest additions to the programme, first being contested at the 2000 Summer Olympics â€“ along with the addition of the hammer throw, this brought the women's field event programme to parity with the men's.

Pole vault at the Olympics

The Olympic records for the event are 6.03 m (19 ft 91⁄4 in) for men, set by Thiago Braz da Silva in 2016, and 5.05 m (16 ft 63⁄4 in) for women, set by Yelena Isinbayeva in 2008. Isinbayeva's 2008 mark was a world record at the time and her 2004 victory in 4.91 m (16 ft 11⁄4 in) had been the first women's world record in the pole vault to be set at the Olympics. In spite of its longer history, the men's Olympic event has only seen two world record marks – a clearance of 4.09 m (13 ft 5 in) by Frank Foss at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics and Władysław Kozakiewicz's vault of 5.78 m (18 ft 111⁄2 in) to win at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.[1]

William Hoyt was the first Olympic champion in 1896 and Stacy Dragila became the first female Olympic pole vault champion over 100 years later in 2000. Thiago Braz da Silva and Ekaterini Stefanidi are the reigning Olympic champions from 2016. Yelena Isinbayeva and Bob Richards are the only two athletes to win two Olympic pole vault titles, and also the only two athletes to win more than two Olympic medals in the discipline. The United States is by far the most successful nation in the event, having won 21 gold medals and 49 medals in total. France is the next most successful with three gold medallists.

The 1906 Intercalated Games were held in Athens and at the time were officially recognised as part of the Olympic Games series, with the intention being to hold a games in Greece in two-year intervals between the internationally held Olympics. However, this plan never came to fruition and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) later decided not to recognise these games as part of the official Olympic series. Some sports historians continue to treat the results of these games as part of the Olympic canon.[2]

Continuing its presence since the first Olympics, a men's pole vault event was contested at the 1906 Games. France's Fernand Gonder entered as the world record holder and delivered by winning in an Olympic record-equalling mark.[3] The runner-up, Bruno Söderström of Sweden, also won a javelin throw medal that year.[4] Ed Glover, the American champion, was the bronze medallist.[3]

In addition to the main 1900 Olympic men's pole vault, a handicap competition was held four days later. The joint fourth-place finishers in the main event took the top two spots, with Jakab Kauser posting a mark of 3.45 m with a handicap of 45 cm, and Eric Lemming coming second with his result of 3.40 m with a 30 cm handicap. Meredith Colket, the silver medallist in the main event registered 3.20 m with a handicap of 15 cm.[5][6] Two further non-handicap "scratch" competitions were held that are no longer considered canon Olympic events: the American champion Bascom Johnson won an event on 16 July,[7] then three days later Daniel Horton (a triple jump competitor) defeated Charles Dvorak in a consolation event – both had missed the final proper as it was held on the Sabbath. Dvorak went on to win the Olympic pole vault gold in 1904.[8][9]

The handicap event returned at the 1904 Summer Olympics. LeRoy Samse, the runner-up in the main Olympic pole vault, won with 3.58 m and a handicap of one inch. Walter Dray, sixth in the Olympic event, came second with 3.58 m and a ten-inch handicap, while Olympic fifth placer Claude Allen recorded 3.55 m off a seven-inch handicap.[5]

These events are no longer considered part of the official Olympic history of the pole vault or the athletics programme in general. Consequently, medals from these competitions have not been assigned to nations on the all-time medal tables.[5]


when was the last time arthur's seat erupted

Like the rock on which Edinburgh Castle is built, it was formed by an extinct volcano system of Carboniferous age (lava samples have been dated at 341 to 335 million years old),[5] which was eroded by a glacier moving from west to east during the Quaternary (approximately the last two million years), exposing rocky crags to the west and leaving a tail of material swept to the east.[6] This is how the Salisbury Crags formed and became basalt cliffs between Arthur's Seat and the city centre. From some angles, Arthur's Seat resembles a lion couchant.[7][8] Two of the several extinct vents make up the 'Lion's Head' and the 'Lion's Haunch'.

Arthur's Seat

Arthur's Seat is the main peak of the group of hills in Edinburgh, Scotland which form most of Holyrood Park, described by Robert Louis Stevenson as "a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design".[1] It is situated just to the east of the city centre, about 1 mile (1.6 km) to the east of Edinburgh Castle. The hill rises above the city to a height of 250.5 m (822 ft), provides excellent panoramic views of the city and beyond, is relatively easy to climb, and is popular for hillwalking. Though it can be climbed from almost any direction, the easiest and simplest ascent is from the east, where a grassy slope rises above Dunsapie Loch. At a spur of the hill, Salisbury Crags has historically been a rock climbing venue with routes of various degrees of difficulty; however due to hazards rock climbing is now restricted to the South Quarry and a free permit is required.

It is sometimes said that its name is derived from legends pertaining to King Arthur, such as the reference in Y Gododdin. Some support for this may be provided by several other hilltop and mountaintop features in Britain which bear the same or similar names, such as the peak of Ben Arthur (The Cobbler) in the western highlands, sometimes known as Arthur's Seat,[2] and Arthur's Chair on the ridge called Stone Arthur in the Cumbrian lake district. There is no traditional Scottish Gaelic name for Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, but William Maitland proposed that the name was a corruption of Àrd-na-Said, implying the "Height of Arrows", which over the years became Arthur's Seat (perhaps via "Archer's Seat").[3] Alternatively, John Milne's proposed etymology of Àrd-thir Suidhe meaning "place on high ground" uncomfortably requires the transposition of the name elements.[4]

Arthur's Seat is the largest of the three parts of the Arthur's Seat Volcano site of special scientific interest (the other parts being Calton Hill and the Castle Rock) which is designated to protect its important geology (see below), grassland habitats and uncommon plant and animal species.

Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags adjoining it helped form the ideas of modern geology as it is currently understood. It was in these areas that James Hutton observed that the deposition of the sedimentary and formation of the igneous rocks must have occurred at different ages and in different ways than the thinking of that time said they did. It is possible to see a particular area known as Huttonâ€™s Section in the Salisbury Crags where the magma forced its way through the sedimentary rocks above it to form the dolerite sills that can be seen in the Section.

The hill bears a strong resemblance to the Cavehill in Belfast in terms of its geology and proximity to a major urban site.

A hill fort occupies the summit of Arthur's Seat and the subsidiary hill, Crow Hill.[9]

Hill fort defences are visible round the main massif of Arthur's Seat at Dunsapie Hill and above Samson's Ribs, in the latter cases certainly of prehistoric date. These forts are likely to have been centres of power of the Votadini, who were the subject of the poem Y Gododdin which is thought to have been written about 600 AD in their hillfort on Edinburgh castle crag. Two stony banks on the east side of the hill represent the remains of an Iron Age hill-fort and a series of cultivation terraces are obvious above the road just beyond and best viewed from Duddingston.

A track rising along the top of the slope immediately under Salisbury Crags has long been a popular walk, giving a view over the city. It became known as the Radical Road after it was paved in the aftermath of the Radical War of 1820, using the labour of unemployed weavers from the west of Scotland at the suggestion of Walter Scott as a form of work relief.[10]

In 1836 five boys hunting for rabbits found a set of 17 miniature coffins containing small wooden figures in a cave on the crags of Arthur's Seat. The purpose has remained a mystery ever since the discovery. A strong contemporary belief was that they were made for witchcraft, though more recently it has been suggested that they might be connected with the murders committed by Burke and Hare in 1828.[11] There were 16 known victims of the serial-killers plus the first person sold "to the doctors", namely a man who had died of natural causes. However, the murder victims were primarily female, while the eight surviving figures are male. Alternatively, the coffins may have represented the 16 bodies sold to the doctors, plus that of the final victim who remained unburied at the time of the duo's arrest, but was, as a destitute beggar, very likely dissected in any case. The surviving coffins are now displayed in Edinburgh's Royal Museum.

The prominence of Arthur's Seat over Edinburgh has attracted various groups and has a particular significance to the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because this is where the nation of Scotland was dedicated in 1840 "for the preaching of the gospel".[12] The apostle, Orson Pratt, arrived in Scotland in early 1850 and climbed the hill to pray to God for more converts.[13][14]

In 1884, alpine mountain guide Emile Rey visited Edinburgh where he climbed Arthur's Seat, local tradition stating that before doing so he estimated it would take much of the day to reach the top.[15]

Arthur's Seat is often mentioned as one of the possible locations for Camelot, the legendary castle and court of the Romano-British warrior-chief, King Arthur.

Tradition has it that it was at the foot of Arthur's Seat, covered by the forest of Drumselch, that Scotland's 12th-century king David I encountered a stag while out hunting. Having fallen from his horse and about to be gored, he had a vision of a cross appearing between the animal's antlers, before it inexplicably turned away, leaving him unharmed. David, believing his life had been spared through divine intervention, founded Holyrood Abbey on the spot. The burgh arms of the Canongate display the head of the stag with the cross framed by its antlers.

The slopes of the hill facing Holyrood are where young girls in Edinburgh traditionally bathe their faces in the dew on May Day to make themselves more beautiful. The poem 'Auld Reekie', written by Robert Fergusson in 1773, contains the lines:

On May-day, in a fairy ring,
We've seen them round St Anthon's spring,
Frae grass the cauler dew draps wring
To weet their een,
And water clear as crystal spring
To synd them clean

Arthur's Seat plays a prominent role in Scottish writer James Hogg's 1824 novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Robert and George Colwan, two feuding brothers, are caught in a fog atop Arthur's Seat and witness what could be interpreted as a Brocken spectre, a strange phenomenon of the light, which causes George to believe that he is seeing a ghost. In the confusion, Robert nearly kills George, but they both escape to the bottom of the hill as the fog begins to clear.

Arthur's Seat has a passing mention as one of the sights of Edinburgh in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

The 2009 novel One Day by David Nicholls begins and ends with the main characters, Emma and Dexter, climbing Arthur's Seat after their graduation from university. Arthur's Seat is shown at the end of the 2011 film One Day, which was based on the novel.

In Jules Verne's novel, The Underground City (or, The Child of the Cavern), Nell, a young girl who is an inhabitant of Verne's Underground City, is taken to Arthur's Seat to view her first sunrise. She has never before been above ground and is being acclimatized to life above ground.

In Catherine Sinclair's Holiday House, the children climb Arthur's Seat during a rare day away from their nurse. On the way down the children misbehave, almost causing Laura to fall over a cliff. She catches herself, and her brother comes to her rescue.

Arthur's Seat is featured in several of Ian Rankin's novels.

In Stephen Baxter's disaster novel Moonseed, the volcano reactivates and obliterates most of Edinburgh during the first act of Earth's eventual destruction.

The 17 coffins found on Arthur's Seat are the subject of a teen fiction novel called Seventeen Coffins written by Philip Caveney and published by Scottish-based publisher Fledgling Press in April 2014.

In Julian May's Galactic Milieu Series, Arthur's Seat has a central role as one of the sites of the Great Intervention. One of the main families in the series lives in Willowbrae on the slopes of the hill.


where did buffalo new york get its name

The City of Buffalo, formerly known as Buffalo Creek, received its name from the creek that flows through it. However, the origin of the creek's name is unclear, with several unproven theories existing. Early French explorers reported the abundance of buffalo on the Eastern shore of Lake Erie, but their presence on the banks of Buffalo Creek is still a matter of debate, although American Bison did range into western NY state at one time. Neither the Native American name Teyohoseroron (the Place of the Basswoods) nor the French name Riviere aux Chevaux (River of Horses) survived, so the current name likely dates to the British occupation which began with the capture of Fort Niagara in 1759.

History of Buffalo, New York

Buffalo is the county seat of Erie County, and the second most populous city in the U.S. state of New York, after New York City. Originating around 1789 as a small trading community inhabited by the Neutral Nation near the mouth of Buffalo Creek, the city, then a town, grew quickly after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, with the city at its western terminus. Its position at the eastern end of Lake Erie strengthened the economy, based on grain milling and steel production along the southern shores and in nearby Lackawanna.

In the dawn of the 20th century, Buffalo was one of the most populous cities in the United States. It had hosted the Pan-American Exposition in 1901 and later became a center for the automotive industry.

Later, the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway combined with the effects of suburbanization, deindustrialization, and globalization led to the decline of the city's chief industries. The city lost over half of its population from the time period of 1950 to 2010. Buffalo retains many industries and has developed a diverse economy based upon advanced manufacturing, healthcare and education.

Another theory holds that a Seneca Indian lived there, either whose name meant buffalo, or who had the physical characteristics of a buffalo, and was translated as such by the English settlers. The stream where he lived became Buffalo's Creek. Unlike other nearby creeks such as Scajaquada Creek and Smoke's Creek which were named after actual historic figures, there is no known reference to any Native American named Buffalo. Also given credence by local historians at one time was the possibility that an interpreter mistranslated the Native American word for "beaver" as "buffalo," the words being very similar, at a treaty-signing at present-day Rome, New York in 1784. The theory assumes that because there were beaver here, the creek was probably called Beaver Creek rather than Buffalo Creek.

Another theory holds that the name is an anglicized form of the French name Beau Fleuve (beautiful river), which was supposedly an exclamation uttered by Louis Hennepin when he first saw the Niagara River. This is a relatively recently proposed theory (1909) and is unlikely, as no period sources contain this quote. The earliest known name origin theory is an anecdote told to Captain Daniel Dobbins by Cornelius Winney in 1795 and also found with variations in Sheldon Ball's History of Buffalo (1825) and other sources, about a party of hunters whose guide shoots a horse and passes it off as bison meat, thereafter the origin of the term "buffaloed."

Despite many years of speculation and garbling of previous debate, more recently available sources indicate that the name Buffalo Creek was in common use on the Niagara Frontier by 1764, as John Montresor referenced 'Buffalo Creek' in his journal of that year.[3] The name may have originated with an English speaking person sometime between 1759 and 1764, possibly after seeing animal bones, thought to be bison but possibly elk or moose or domesticated cattle, at the salt lick called Sour Springs located at the head of navigation about 6 miles up the creek.

The societies of the Native Forest dwellers we know as Native Americans, Amerindians, or First Nations made highways of the Great Lakes, streams and were far more social than their reputed penchant for warfare, cruelty, and collecting scalps would suggest. Their canoes were built from lightweight birch bark, or far more often, Elm, the farther south the tribe, the more likely Elm was the material used for many purposes including the canoes. Buffalo, near the throat of the Niagara River, was a popular campsite for voyaging tribesmen, in a culture which often went on walk-abouts, touring neighboring lands and conducting the widespread practice of boy-meets-girl, trading of regional commodities.[a]

Prior to European colonization by French settlers, the region's inhabitants were an Iroquoian-speaking tribal offshoot called the Wenro people or 'Wenrohronon', who lived along the south shore of Lake Ontario and east end of Lake Erie and a bit of its southern shore. The population of the Wenro was small by comparison to other Iroquoian tribes the French encountered and reported upon, possibly because they'd only recently split off from other groups or because they'd suffered the misfortunes of war. They were possibly (most likely) a sub-group of the main Neutral Confederacy which had colonized the opposite shore, or possibly relatives of the great abutting neighboring Erie Nation,[b] which extended southwesterly through most of present-day Ohio, Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The American Heritage Book of Indians points out there are opposing (on the surface) contradictory theories[c] of the origination and the migration of the Iroquois and Iroquoian peoples that came to inhabit the region around Buffalo and the Niagara River.[d]

The French found the Neutral groups helpful in mediating disputes with other tribesâ€”in particular the League of the Iroquois which became sworn enemies of the French from their first meeting in 1609.[e] By comparison, the Huron also an Iroquoian people, were often at odds with the Iroquois once European traders offered highly desired goods for furs, especially water proof Beaver pelts[f] About 1651 the Iroquois Confederacy declared war on the Neutrals; by 1653, the Confederacy, particularly the Senecas, had practically annihilated the Neutrals[4][5] and the splinter tribe of Wenro people. The Wenro's area was subsequently populated by the Seneca tribe.

Also in 1653 the large and populous Erie tribe, having taken in survivors of the Huron, Neutral, Wenro, and Tabacco peoples—Iroquoian peoples one and all, with traditions of adopting outsiders—received demands to send Neutrals to the Iroquois and instead launched an preemptive attack on the League, kicking off three years of desperate warfare that eventually shattered the Erie and bled the Iroquois of much of their strength.[g] Ohio and Western Pennsylvania became nearly vacant Iroquois hunting grounds, exploited for furs, but ten years later the Iroquois, having also adopted tribal members of peoples they'd recently thrashed, found themselves in a new war with the Susquehannocks who lived down below the Allegheny Front, the escarpment above most of today's central Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna River valleys—another people believed to have significantly outnumbered the Iroquois[h] —so warring along the Susquehanna Valley from lower New York to Maryland through central Pennsylvania. In 1667-68 the Susquehannocks nearly wiped out two of the Five Iroquois people. At that point the Susquehannock's suffered one or more horrendous plagues, losing up to 90% of their population and military capabilities, and by 1672 the Iroquois became the proverbial 'Last Man Standing' in the Northern Beaver Wars.

Most of western New York was granted by Charles II of England to the Duke of York (later King James II & VII), but the first European settlement in what is now Erie County was by the French, at the mouth of Buffalo Creek in 1758. Its buildings were destroyed a year later by the evacuating French after the British captured Fort Niagara. The British took control of the entire region in 1763, at the conclusion of the French and Indian War. In 1764, British military engineer John Montresor made an inspection tour of Buffalo Creek before determining on a site for a fortification on the opposite shore. After the 1779 Sullivan Expedition, the British settled Seneca refugees in several villages on Buffalo Creek in the spring of 1780.

The first permanent settlers in present-day Buffalo were Cornelius Winney and "Black Joe" Hodges, who set up a log cabin store there in 1789 for trading with the Native American community. British interpreter William Johnston was another early settler. The British retained control of the area and prevented further settlement by Americans until their evacuation of Fort Niagara in 1796.

Dutch investors purchased the area from the Seneca Indians as part of the Holland Purchase. Although other Senecas were involved in ceding their land, the most famous today is Red Jacket, who died in Buffalo in 1830. His grave is in Forest Lawn Cemetery. Starting in 1801, parcels were sold through the Holland Land Companies office in Batavia, New York. The settlement was initially called Lake Erie, then Buffalo Creek, soon shortened to Buffalo. Holland Land Company agent Joseph Ellicott christened it New Amsterdam, but the name did not catch on.[6] In 1808, Niagara County was established with Buffalo as its county seat. Erie County was formed out of Niagara County in 1821, retaining Buffalo as the county seat.

In 1804, Joseph Ellicott, a principal agent of the Holland Land Company, designed a radial street and grid system that branches out from downtown like bicycle spokes, and is one of only three radial street patterns in the US[citation needed]. In 1810, the Town of Buffalo was formed from the western part of the Town of Clarence. On December 30, 1813, during the War of 1812, British troops and their Native American allies first captured the village of Black Rock, and then the rest of Buffalo, burning most of both to the ground. Buffalo gradually rebuilt itself and by 1816 had a new courthouse. In 1818, the eastern part of the town was lost to form the Town of Amherst.

Upon the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, Buffalo became the western end of the 524-mile waterway starting at New York City. At the time, Buffalo had a population of about 2,400 people. With the increased commerce of the canal, the population boomed and Buffalo was incorporated as a city in 1832.[7] On 1 June 1843, the world's first steam-powered grain elevator was put into service by a local merchant, Joseph Dart, Jr., and an engineer, Robert Dunbar. The "Dart Elevator" would remain standing until 1862, when it burned down. During the 1840s and 1850s, more than a dozen grain elevators were built in Buffalo's harbor, most of them designed by Dunbar.[8]

In 1853, Buffalo annexed Black Rock, which had been Buffalo's fierce rival for the canal terminus. During the 19th century, thousands of pioneers going to the western United States debarked from canal boats to continue their journey out of Buffalo by lake or rail transport. During their stopover, many experienced the pleasures and dangers of Buffalo's notorious Canal district.

Buffalo was a terminus of the Underground Railroad, an informal series of safe houses for African-Americans escaping slavery in the mid-19th century. Buffalonians helped many fugitives cross the Niagara River to Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada and freedom.

Several U.S. presidents have had connections with Buffalo.

Around the start of the 20th century, Buffalo was a growing city with a burgeoning economy. Immigrants came from Ireland, Italy, Germany, and Poland to work in the steel and grain mills which had taken advantage of the city's critical location at the junction of the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal. Hydroelectric power harnessed from nearby Niagara Falls made Buffalo the first American city to have widespread electric lighting yielding it the nickname, the "City of Light". Electricity was used to dramatic effect at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901. The Pan-American was also notable for being the scene of the aforementioned assassination of President William McKinley.

The opening of the Peace Bridge linking Buffalo with Fort Erie, Ontario on August 7, 1927 was an occasion for significant celebrations.

The Great Depression of 1929-39 saw severe unemployment, especially among working class men. The New Deal relief programs operated full force. The city became a stronghold of labor unions and the Democratic Party.[9] Buffalo's City Hall, an Art Deco masterpiece, was dedicated on July 1, 1932.

The city's importance declined in the later half of the 20th century for several reasons, perhaps the most devastating being the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1957. Goods which had previously passed through Buffalo could now bypass it using a series of canals and locks, reaching the ocean via the St. Lawrence River. Another major toll was suburban migration, a national trend at the time. Race riots rocked the city in 1967.[10] The city, which boasted over half a million people at its peak, has seen its population decline by some 50%, as industries shut down and people left the Rust Belt for the employment opportunities of the South and West. Erie County has lost population in every census year since 1970.

On July 3, 2003, at the climax of a fiscal crisis, the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority was established[11] to oversee the finances of the city. As a "hard control board," they have frozen the wages of city employees and must approve or reject all major expenditures. After a period of severe financial stress, Erie County, where Buffalo resides, was assigned a Fiscal Stability Authority on July 12, 2005. As a "soft control board," however, they act only in an advisory capacity.[12] Both Authorities were established by New York State. In November 2005, Byron Brown was elected Mayor of Buffalo. He is the first African-American to hold this office.

Economic development in the city was marked at $3.5 billion in 2006 compared to the ten year previous average of $50 million[citation needed]. New proposals and renovations were numerous, especially in the downtown area. Buffalo ranked 83rd on the Forbes best cities for jobs list, an increase from the previous year, beating out cities like New York City, Cleveland, and Detroit.


do you want quick ratio to be high or low

Note that inventory is excluded from the sum of assets in the quick ratio, but included in the current ratio. Ratios are tests of viability for business entities but do not give a complete picture of the business' health. If a business has large amounts in accounts receivable which are due for payment after a long period (say 120 days), and essential business expenses and accounts payable due for immediate payment, the quick ratio may look healthy when the business is actually about to run out of cash. In contrast, if the business has negotiated fast payment or cash from customers, and long terms from suppliers, it may have a very low quick ratio and yet be very healthy.

Quick ratio

In finance, the acid-test or quick ratio or liquidity ratio measures the ability of a company to use its near cash or quick assets to extinguish or retire its current liabilities immediately. Quick assets include those current assets that presumably can be quickly converted to cash at close to their book values. It is the ratio between quick or liquid assets and current liabilities.

A normal liquid ratio is considered to be 1:1. A company with a quick ratio of less than 1 cannot currently fully pay back its current liabilities.

This ratio is considered to be much better and reliable as a tool for assessment of liquidity position of firms.[citation needed]

Liquid Ratio

=

Liquid Assets

Current Liabilities

{\displaystyle {\mbox{Liquid Ratio}}={{\mbox{Liquid Assets}} \over {\mbox{Current Liabilities}}}}

or specifically:

Quick (Acid Test) Ratio

=

Cash and Cash Equivalent

+

Marketable Securities

+

Accounts Receivable

Current Liabilities

{\displaystyle {\mbox{Quick (Acid Test) Ratio}}={{\mbox{Cash and Cash Equivalent}}+{\mbox{Marketable Securities}}+{\mbox{Accounts Receivable}} \over {\mbox{Current Liabilities}}}}

More detailed analysis of all major payables and receivables in line with market sentiments and adjusting input data accordingly shall give more sensible outcomes which shall give actionable insights.

Generally, the acid test ratio should be 1:1 or higher, however this varies widely by industry.[1] In general, the higher the ratio, the greater the company's liquidity (i.e., the better able to meet current obligations using liquid assets).[2]


who plays the girl in high school musical

Adrienne Monique Jordan (née Coleman; born November 13, 1980),[1] known professionally as Monique Coleman, is an American actress, dancer, singer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist best known for her co-starring role in Disney's High School Musical movies, in which she plays Taylor McKessie. Coleman also had a recurring role on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, as a school girl named Mary–Margaret, along with Ashley Tisdale. She also competed in the third edition of ABC's Dancing with the Stars, finishing in fourth place. Most recent, Coleman was named the first ever UN Youth Champion for the International Year of Youth and is currently on a world tour to raise awareness of challenges facing youth. Coleman launched her online talk show Gimme Mo', a show dedicated to empowering today's youth on September 8, 2010.

Monique Coleman

Adrienne Monique Coleman was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina.[2] She started her acting career in theatre and television at a very young age in Columbia, South Carolina. She currently lives in Los Angeles. Her training began at the Workshop Theatre School of Dramatic Arts where she performed in over 15 plays.[3] An acting class taught by a guest teacher actually turned out to be an audition, and resulted in her booking her first commercial. Then Coleman began auditioning for anything she could in the Southeast region, landing several local and regional commercials, as well as a few supporting roles in films. In addition to acting, Coleman was very involved in her community and school where she did everything from performing in plays to competing in forensic tournaments, volunteering with abused children, running track, and even cheerleading.

Monique Coleman went to Heathwood Hall Episcopal School. Then she attended The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago, earning her BFA in Acting in 2002.

Monique Coleman also visited the American Farm School in Greece in 2012.

Coleman made her first lead in the independent feature entitled Mother of the River[4] which was shot in the historic Charleston, South Carolina. The film won numerous awards at film festivals in Chicago. Two years later, Coleman appeared as Young Donna in The Family Channel Movie The Ditch digger's Daughters[5] for which she was nominated for a Young Artists Award of Hollywood. During her sophomore year of high school, Coleman wrote, directed, produced, and starred in her own one-person play entitled "Voices from Within" with standing room only â€“ audience numbering in the hundreds. On stage in Chicago, Coleman starred in productions of Noises Off, Polaroid Stories, The Real Thing
and The Colored Museum.[6]

In 2005, Coleman had the honor of working opposite one of her heroes â€“ the legendary James Earl Jones when she played Leesha in the 2005 Hallmark TV Movie The Reading Room.[7] She received a 2006 Camie Award for the role and represented the film at the NAACP Image Awards.[8]

In 2006, Coleman rose to prominence in High School Musical, where she portrayed Taylor McKessie, the best friend of the new girl, Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens). Before then, she was a recurring guest star in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody episodes, "Forever Plaid", "Not So Suite 16", "Neither a Borrower Nor a Speller Bee" and "A Prom Story" along with Hudgens. Coleman has had seven other guest appearances on television including, Boston Public, Gilmore Girls, Malcolm in the Middle, Strong Medicine, 10-8: Officers on Duty, Married to the Kellys, and Veronica Mars. Coleman was also in the first ever Disney Channel Games in 2006, on the Blue Team (with Brenda Song, Corbin Bleu, Cole Sprouse, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jason Earles and Brandon Baker). She won with both teams.

She showcased her ballroom skills in "Dance With Me", while she partnered with National Youth Latin Champion Jared Murillo. Drew Seeley was the soloist. She is the host of 3 Minute Game Show: High School Musical Edition on Disney Channel. She recorded a song called "Christmas Vacation" for the holiday album entitled A Disney Channel Holiday. In 2007, she appeared in High School Musical 2. In 2008, she again repeated her role as Taylor McKessie in High School Musical 3.

Coleman competed in the Fall 2006 third edition of ABC's Dancing with the Stars reality dance competition. She was paired with professional partner Louis van Amstel throughout the competition. van Amstel and the judges praised her for "taking risks" during the competition. The pair appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show before they were eliminated and performed the same dance they performed in week 2's episode. She was eliminated from Dancing With The Stars on November 1, 2006, finishing fourth in the competition. She was the last female in the contest that year.[9] Coleman was very gracious in defeat, and appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show on the same night as the Results Show to thank her fans for their votes and support.[10] In the beginning of late December 2007, Coleman partook in the Dancing with the Stars tour that took her across America along with other former competitors until early February 2008.

At a ceremony at UN headquarters in New York, Coleman was presented with a letter of recognition of her new role by Assistant Secretary-General Jomo Kwame Sundaram of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.In presenting the letter, Mr. Sundaram said Coleman will work "to raise awareness about the challenges young people face and will highlight the positive contribution they make to their communities." Coleman said that receiving the designation of Youth Champion was "beyond an honour" and that she would use her new position to promote global efforts to achieve the anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which have a 2015 deadline, with a special emphasis on the empowerment of youth. The International Year was launched on August 12 and runs through August 11, 2011, and among its aims is to advance the participation of young people on global, regional and national issues that affect them.

Coleman worked with dosomething.org[11] to produce a "Do Something U" video tutorial. The video targets young activists who need a bit of guidance and inspiration to help them carry out their ideas for their communities to fruition. Coleman's video tutorial focused on teaching youth the best way to utilize social media to spread word of ideas and actions.[12]

Monique Coleman married Walter Jordan on February 14, 2012 (Valentine's Day) in a private ceremony in Koh Samui, Thailand.[13][14]

"Chapter Seventy-Eight";
"Chapter Eighty-One"

"Not So Suite 16"; "Neither a Borrower Nor a Speller Bee";
"Kept Man"; "Volley Dad"


where does fast and furious 2 take place

After letting Dominic Toretto escape from the authorities, Brian O'Conner relocates from Los Angeles to Miami and makes a living by participating in illegal street races. Tej Parker organizes a local street race, involving Suki, Orange Julius, and Slap Jack, however, the race lacks a fourth driver. Tej calls Brian, who agrees to be the fourth needed for the race. Brian wins, giving a few thousand of his winnings to Tej to show his gratitude. The police then arrive, forcing all the racers to flee. Watched by undercover U.S. Customs Service agent Monica Fuentes, Brian is caught by the agents. He is taken into custody, but given a deal by his former boss, FBI agent Bilkins, and Customs agent Markham, to go undercover and bring down Argentinian drug lord, Carter Verone in exchange for the erasure of his criminal record. Brian agrees, but only if he is given permission to choose his own partner. This prompts him to travel to Barstow, California, where he enlists the help of Roman Pearce, his childhood friend who served jail time for housing stolen cars in a garage. Roman, currently on parole, blames Brian for his arrest, but reluctantly agrees to help, but only for the same deal Brian was offered. Roman and Brian are later hired by Verone, who tasks the duo to obtain a package from a confiscated car located in a lot. Markham, who mistakenly thinks that the duo are trying to run away, follows them to the lot. However, Roman relents, and shoots at Markham to help maintain his cover. He later confronts him for interference with the mission. Brian is able to gain knowledge of the plan, however, and tells Bilkins that Verone is reportedly aiming to launder his money in Miami, before escaping on his private jet.

2 Fast 2 Furious

2 Fast 2 Furious (alternatively known as The Fast and the Furious 2) is a 2003 American action film directed by John Singleton, produced by Neal H. Moritz and written by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas. It is the second installment in The Fast and the Furious franchise, and a sequel to The Fast and the Furious (2001). The film stars Paul Walker, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Eva Mendes, and Cole Hauser. The film follows former cop Brian O'Conner, who teams up with Roman Pearce and U.S. Customs Service agent Monica Fuentes to bring down drug lord Carter Verone.

2 Fast 2 Furious marks the only film in the franchise not to feature Vin Diesel, who rejected the project in order to star in xXx (2002). The film saw a majority of shooting being done on location in Miami, and was released on June 6, 2003, grossing over $236 million worldwide from an estimated $76 million budget. The film was followed by The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in 2006.

Later, the team challenges a pair of muscle car drivers they raced when competing for Verone's hiring, for pink slips. Despite engine and power output handicaps, Brian and Roman manage to win the race and the other two cars. Meanwhile, Roman confronts Brian about his attraction to Monica and the constant threat of Verone's men. However, the two men patch up their differences, and focus on completing the mission.

After witnessing Verone torture Detective Whitworth of the Miami Police Department into giving them a window of opportunity to make their getaway, Brian and Roman are warned by Monica that they will be killed once the drop is made. However, Markham refuses to call off the job, claiming that is their one chance to catch Verone.

On the day of the mission, Brian and Roman begin transporting duffel bags of Verone's money, with Verone's right-hand men, Enrique and Roberto, riding alongside to accompany the duo. Before the window is set, Whitworth decides to call in the police to move in for an arrest of the drivers of the cars used by Brian and Roman. This results in a high-speed chase across the city. The duo leads the police to a warehouse, where a "scramble" by dozens of street racers organized by Tej disorients the police. Following the scramble, the police manage to pull over the cars, only to find out that they were driven by Tej and Suki. As it turns out, the duo had switched cars and had escaped in the two muscle cars they had won earlier.

As Brian approaches the destination point in a Yenko Camaro, Enrique tells him to take the Tarpon Point Marina exit, instead of heading to the airfield. Meanwhile, Roman gets rid of Roberto by using an improvised ejector seat in his Dodge Challenger powered by nitrous oxide. At the airfield, Customs agents have Verone's plane and convoy surrounded, only to discover they have been duped into a decoy maneuver while Verone is at a boatyard several miles away. Verone reveals he knew Monica was an undercover agent, and purposely gave her wrong information on the destination point. When Brian arrives at the Marina, Verone forces Monica onto his private yacht and orders Enrique to kill Brian. As Enrique prepares to kill him, Brian's ejector seat fails, but Roman suddenly appears and helps Brian to incapacitate Enrique. Verone makes his escape, but Brian and Roman use the Camaro to drive off a ramp, crashing on top of the yacht. The duo manages to apprehend Verone and save Monica.

With their crimes pardoned, Brian and Roman ponder on what to do next in Miami, with the former suggesting starting a garage. They are revealed to have taken some of Verone's money for themselves.

The cast also contains appearances from Devon Aoki as Suki, a friend of Tej. Thom Barry reprises his role as Bilkins, and James Remar features as Markham, with the duo overseeing the operation against Verone. Amaury Nolasco and Michael Ealy act as Orange Julius and Slap Jack respectively, street racers who engage in the first race, and help Brian and Roman evade capture. Mark Boone appears as Whitworth, a corrupt Miami Police Department detective. Mo Gallini and Roberto Sanchez also feature as Enrique and Roberto, Verone's henchman. Producer Neal H. Moritz appeared in a cameo as a police officer.

Plans to make a sequel came about after the box office success of The Fast and the Furious,[3] which grossed over $200 million worldwide.[4] John Singleton had seen the first film and was awed by it, saying: "When I saw The Fast and the Furious, I was like, 'Damn, why didnâ€™t I think of that?' Growing up in South Central L.A., we had street races all the time." Singleton's rave reaction of the film as well as the culture of street racing in general influenced his decision to direct the sequel. The director also claimed that the concept of street racing could be something young audiences can relate to.[3]

The screenplay was written by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, along with Gary Scott Thompson (the writer from the first film).[5] There were two film treatments submitted early on, one of which did not involve Vin Diesel's character in case he does not intend to return for the sequel.[6] Singleton credited Top Gun as a major influence for the film, particularly with regard to the action sequences.[7]

Vin Diesel was offered $25 million to return in the sequel as Dominic Toretto.[8] However, he refused after reading the screenplay as he felt that its potential was inferior compared to that of its predecessor; rather, he chose to appear in The Chronicles of Riddick.[9] According to Variety magazine in 2015 he was less taken with what the screenwriters had in mind for the film, "They didn't take a Francis Ford Coppola approach to it. They approached it like they did sequels in the '80s and '90s, when they would drum up a new story unrelated for the most part, and slap the same name on it."[8] However, Diesel reflected on his decision in a July 2014 report from Uproxx, saying: "I would've said, 'Don't walk away from it just because the script sucked in 2 Fast 2 Furious because there's an obligation to the audience to fight, no matter what, to make that film as good as possible.' (...) I might have had a little bit more patience or belief in the long-term of it."[9]

Paul Walker, who had just finished Timeline at the time, reprised his role in the second picture as Brian O'Conner. Tyrese Gibson, then known mononymously as Tyrese, also became a part of the cast having previously acted in Singleton's Baby Boy, which was the singer's feature film acting debut; he portrayed Roman Pearce.[10] Ja Rule, another prominent rap artist who appeared in The Fast and the Furious, was originally tapped for the role of Tej Parker. Ja Rule was offered $500,000 for the role, which was more than what he had been paid to appear in The Fast and the Furious, $15,000. According to Singleton, "Ja got too big for himself. He turned it down. He turned down a half a million dollars. (...) He was acting like he was too big to be in the sequel. He wouldn't return calls." The director then hired Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, a relatively unknown rap artist at the time as a substitute. Bridges would later rose to prominence for appearing in the film and star in later films such as Crash and Hustle & Flow.[11] Additional cast also included Cole Hauser as key villain Carter Verone, who appeared in Singleton's Higher Learning; Eva Mendes as undercover agent Monica Fuentes; and Devon Aoki as Suki, the sole female driver in the film.[3]

Principal photography began in the fall of 2002,[12] and Matthew F. Leonetti served as the director of photography.[13] Filming was done mostly in various parts of Florida such as Miami Beach, Seven Mile Bridge, and Homestead Air Force Base.[3][14] Hauser's character's mansion was shot in Coral Gables, which was owned by Sylvester Stallone.[3]

A car enthusiast himself,[3] Walker drove his personal Nissan Skyline GT-R model R-34 in the film's opening scenes.[15] Aoki did not have a driver's license or any driving experience prior to the film's production, and took driving lessons during filming;[16] she drove a pink 2001 Honda S2000 AP1 in the film.[15] Gibson drove a convertible Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII, while Michael Ealy drove a Toyota Supra Turbo MkIV model JZA80 that had belonged to Walker in The Fast and the Furious.[15]

The musical score was composed by David Arnold. The soundtrack was released on May 27, 2003 on Def Jam Recordings, the same record label that Ludacris was signed to.

2 Fast 2 Furious earned $50,472,480 in its U.S. opening in 3,408 theaters, ranking first for the weekend. In its 133 days in release, the film reached a peak release of 3,418 theaters in the U.S. and earned $127,154,901 domestically. The film had the 15th largest domestic gross of 2003 and the 16th largest worldwide gross of 2003; combined with the foreign gross of $109,195,760, the film earned $236,350,661 worldwide.[2]

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 36% based on 160 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Beautiful people and beautiful cars in a movie that won't tax the brain cells".[17] Metacritic assessed, based on 35 critics, a weighted average score of 38 out of 100, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews" among the sampled critics.[18]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave 3/4 and said, "It doesn't have a brain in its head, but it's made with skill and style and, boy, it is fast and furious."[19]

The movie received two Razzie Award nominations including Worst Remake or Sequel and Worst Excuse for an Actual Movie (All Concept/No Content).