Ancient people including some of the romans were aware of the sounds we make actually representing structures.  These in fact belong to different meanings (like themes) with their own architectural styles; note the different types of ancient architecture around the world.  The roman style/theme ‘Sound is Contested’ is actually a meaning which I can get into in more detail later, these meanings can be expressed as a bit four of the others so for now I just want to say it’s a bit elven and a bit towards the grave; Eldar would be a good word.  The separate strips actually represent other meanings (and there are words for these) as part of the overall sound.  This is instead of strips literally of fire, ice or some kind of exotic material; so it’s a lot more feasible to implement in this way.  So with that said the bottom section of the Altar of Peace is the sound “Hush”.  The egg and dart is ‘Ornamental’ and the bottom strip ‘a Collective is Fragmented’, the latter here is a bit ‘Autocratic’ which can be seen on the underside of the architrave on the temple at Baalbek for comparison.  There is a leafy variant of something vaguely egg and dart visible on monuments elsewhere which I expect is a bit ‘Ornamental’ in meaning.

The Altar of Peace interestingly consists of several different architectural styles (meanings) put together.  The mid-section is the ‘Plain’ sound “Shh” and the top part the ‘Speechless’ sound “Shush”, these would have been plus shaped from above but have been made into an altar.  ‘Loveless is Plain’ is the meaning which architecturally appears like the stripped classicism of late 30’s Germany; it can be white or grey with chamfered corners or black for aerospace shapes.  The ‘Speechless’ style tends to look kind of unfinished where the detailing would be ethereal black and white in nature; conveniently enough the way the exterior of the Altar has been simply repaired and the yellowish white colour does give a good idea of how ‘Speechless’ would appear on its’ own.  The “Shush” while being ‘Speechless’ has been implemented in ‘Sound’, which is contested; revealing the detail therein.  The interior columns and lower portion feature the ‘Meaningless is Undivine’ style which although it was before his time has to do with Caligula and is a bit ‘Tall’.  The exterior columns and lower panels are ‘Silence is Golden’ which has the same meaning as Swans and is a bit ‘Plain’ and ‘Sound’ (‘Contested’ might be easier to perceive).  Originally the exterior would have contained the rest within the “Hush” sound also, but has not been repaired completely at the top.  It is therefore safe to say there is something hush-hush going on here.

The Colosseum is an accurate reproduction of the sound you make when you make a mistake; from the meaning ‘a Mistake is Repeated’.  While Diocletian’s tomb is the ‘Jovial’ sound “Hup” (this is hard to type; as in “Hup! Is that the time?”).  Elsewhere the Church of St George in Lalibella, Ethiopia is the sound “Shtum”.

More broadly speaking and in summary there is a set of meanings which are like the different aspects of a miracle which have different architecture, along with an archetype, phrases, actions and other things.  The roman engineering style is ‘Sound’ which visibly refers to these other meanings as part of the overall sound.  I have begun collecting all this information together it turns out everything can go into a spreadsheet once, every word, phrase and thing.  Sometimes I don’t even have the word let alone a phrase or a sound but I have touched on about 1200 meanings so far and have created the website whatsthemeaningofthis.com to serve as reference.

I am hoping to get some support to be able to do this full-time until everything has found its’ correct place.  One of my side interests therefore is identifying the overall sound and meaning of the decorative strips on roman buildings.  I hope you found this interesting, there are actually thousands of different meanings and we have only had a very small set of examples of this so far throughout history.