LIterary Dose #35

"Supposedly the emperor [Hadrian] sent the plans for [the Temple of Venus and Roma] to the professional architect Apollodorus. Apollodorus, one of the great architects of Imperial Rome, had previously served Trajan, and known Hadrian for perhaps twenty years; the modern historian William MacDonald describes the architect as "a man of considerable consequence, a writer and a cosmopolitan citizen." When Hadrian sent him the plans for this new work, Apollodorus criticized the technical construction and the proportions of both the building and its statues. Hadrian reacted, according to later gossip, by having Appolodorus killed.

- Richard Sennett from Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (W.W. Norton & Co., 1994, p. 97)