ing Greece in practical ways. All during the first and second centuries the growth of Roman culture as a separate entity and the Romans' technical advances, especially "increasing exploitation of concrete and brickwork," were leading to a new, truly Roman style of architecture.
In the centuries between the Parthenon (447-432 BC) in Athens and the Pantheon (AD 118-128) in Rome the slow transformation of architecture from Greek to Roman has been characterized as a matter of turning architecture "outside-in". The differences in the Greek and Roman world-views are reflected in their respective approaches to architecture and city-planning. Under Rome, politically and intellectually, the civilized world was no longer a mere collection of city-states and disconnected cultural phenomena. It had become a coherent whole that found its political expression in a centralized empire. Rome adopted some Greek practices in laying out cities, including a north-south and east-west axis at their centers. But, while the Greeks were somewhat casually organized around an agora, or central meeting place and market, the Romans emphasized this axis "by placing public buildings such as the f
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