ROMAN ARCHITECTURE
After the Golden Age of Greek architecture properly so called was over,
a kind of aftermath prevailed for some little time in the peninsula and
the outlying colonies of Greece, to be succeeded by a transition time to
which the name of the Hellenistic has been given, during which is
supposed to have been inaugurated the use of the arch and the vault,
which were in course of time to revolutionise the art of building.
It has long been customary to give to the Etruscans, an Asiatic people
who in very early times occupied a considerable portion of Italy, the
credit of the first introduction of the arch in Western Europe. It is
however now more generally believed that the Roman style of building was
an offshoot of the Hellenistic, in which the dome was certainly
employed, though no existing examples of its use can be quoted. The city
of Alexandria, founded about 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, is known
to have had four principal colonnaded streets leading from a four-arched
central building, and many are of opinion that much of the town was
built over arched cisterns. The dome may possibly have been in the first
instance introduced into western Europe as a cover for the hot baths in
which the wealthy delighted, and its form was probably the same as that
of the one preserved at Pompeii. The famous arched drain at Rome, known
as the Cloaca Maxima, so constantly referred to as the greatest
masterpiece of the Etruscans was not, it has now been proved, built
until after their subjugation and extinction as a nation. For all that
they were without doubt most skilful architects and engineers; the walls
of their cities were of cyclopean masonry and were entered from arched
gateways, a good example of which is to be seen at Volterra, constructed
of wedge-shaped stones fixed without cement. Their rock-cut tombs, such
as those at Corneto, Vulci, and Chiusi, are divided into many chambers,
the walls adorned with paintings, the roof upheld by columns, and the
facades resembling those of Egyptian temples, whilst the tumuli in which
they sometimes buried their dead are surmounted by pyramids of earth
resting on stone foundations.
[Illustration: Roman Barrel Vault]
From whatever source Roman architects got their inspiration, they very
soon absorbed all external influences and stamped the buildings they
erected with a character of their own. From the first sun-dried bricks,
sometimes combined with stone, were the chief materials used, even the
grander structures of the best period such as the huge palaces and halls
were of plastered brickwork, stone having been as a general rule
reserved for such works as temples, theatres, and triumphal arches.
Concrete was also largely employed, and timber in many cases was turned
to account for roofing. The most distinctive peculiarity of the
architecture of the Romans is the vaulted roof, which they employed in
an infinite variety of ways, introducing it at every possible
opportunity. The simplest form, known as the waggon or barrel vault, is
a semicircular arch spanning two walls, whilst a more elaborate
contrivance consists of two intersecting vaults of the same height
crossing each other at right angles, which was used in Rome as early as
75 B.C. These two forms were sometimes supplemented by what are
distinguished as conches or half-domes over external semicircular
recesses, of which the apse is a characteristic example. With the aid of
these three varieties of vaulting, that were occasionally combined with
consummate skill, the Romans were able to roof in large or small
circular spaces, and in some few cases, as in the Baths of Caracalla at
Rome, they even to a certain extent anticipated the clever contrivance
known as the pendentive, a triangular piece of vaulting springing from
the corners of a right-angled enclosure, that was later brought to such
perfection in Byzantine architecture.
[Illustration: Intersecting Vaulting]
With their wonderful system of vaulting the Romans combined the
columnation and entablature of the Greeks, introducing innovations
however that were in many cases anything but improvements. Thus they
sometimes supplemented the foliage of the Corinthian capital with the
volutes of the Ionic; whilst what is known as the Tuscan style is really
merely a modification of the Doric, and is wanting in the simple dignity
that characterised the latter, the metopes being adorned with sculptures
very inferior to the beautiful figure subjects of the Parthenon and
other Greek temples. Roman architects were in fact rather skilful
engineers and adapters of the aesthetic conceptions of others than
original designers of new forms of beauty, but they were unrivalled in
their power of harmoniously co-ordinating in a single building an
infinite variety of structural features. They were moreover
exceptionally successful in the laying out of cities, as proved by the
wonderful groups of buildings in the fora or public squares in which
courts of justice and markets were held, of the capital and other
cities, and by the fine continuous vistas of their streets, in which
irregularities were masked by clever contrivances, adding greatly to the
symmetry of the general effect. Temples, basilicas, baths, bridges,
aqueducts, triumphal arches, palaces, and private houses were all set in
the environment most suitable to them, and even tombs were ranged
according to a definite plan, not, as in most modern cemeteries, dotted
here and there in an arbitrary manner.
[Illustration: Pont du Gard, Nimes]
The earliest Roman works of architecture were of a purely utilitarian
character, and in addition to the Cloaca Maxima already mentioned the
most noteworthy still in existence are the bridges over the Tiber, the
aqueducts of the Campagna outside Rome, and the so-called Pont du Gard
at Nimes, France. The most ancient temples greatly resemble those of
Greece, and amongst them may be named as specially typical those of
Fortuna Virilis and of Antoninus and Faustina, both now in use as
churches, and that of Venus and Rome, all in the capital, that of Diana
at Nimes known as the Maison Carree, and that of the Sun at Baalbec. Of
later date are the beautiful circular temples, of which the grandest
example is the Pantheon of Rome, built under Hadrian about A.D. 117, in
which Roman architecture reached its noblest development. The colonnaded
porch with entablature and pediment, that detracts so much from the
external effect of this magnificent building, did not originally belong
to it, but formed the entrance of a temple built by Agrippa more than a
century before, and was added to the Rotunda after the completion of the
latter. The internal diameter of the Pantheon is 142 feet 6 inches, and
its height at the apex of the dome is the same; its walls are 20 feet
thick, and its concrete dome is adorned with deeply recessed panels or
coffers and has a single circular opening at the crown through which
alone light is admitted. The floor is of marble; bronze pilasters flank
doorways of the same metal, the oldest existing specimens of their kind,
and it is supposed that when first completed the whole of the outside
was cased in white and the inside in coloured marbles.
[Illustration: Section of Pantheon]
Other circular temples of Roman origin, but on a much smaller scale than
the Pantheon, are the Temple of Vesta and that in the Forum Boarium,
Rome, the latter much injured and spoiled by a modern roof quite out of
character with it; the one at Tivoli near the capital, known as that of
the Sybils, still beautiful in spite of the loss of much of its
entablature and many of its columns; the Temple of Jupiter at Spalato
with a domed roof upheld by columns; and that at Baalbec, which has the
distinctive feature of a curved instead of a perfectly flat entablature.
A very special interest attaches to the Roman basilica on account of its
having so long been supposed to have been the type on which the earliest
Christian churches were built. Basilicas were used as courts of justice
and exchanges, more rarely as market-places, and the most ancient are
said to have been merely square spaces, enclosed within rows of columns
open to the air, that were however soon succeeded by walled buildings
roofed with timber or with vaults of concrete supported on massive piers
of stone. In them a raised semicircular space at the eastern end was
divided off by columns known as cancelli for the use of the magistrate
and his lectors, and between it and the main body of the hall, which
was divided by columns into a nave and aisles, rose the altar on which
sacrifice was offered up before any business of importance was entered
upon.
A good example of an early Roman basilica is that called the Ulpian in
the Forum of Trajan, Rome, dating from A.D. 98, which is said to have
had a flat roof and double aisles, the latter surmounted by galleries,
whilst that of Maxentius and Constantine, the ruins of which are known
as the Temple of Peace, also in the capital, of considerably later date,
A.D. 312, had a groined central roof and barrel-vaulted side aisles.
[Illustration: Roman Doric Column and Entablature]
[Illustration: Roman Ionic Column and Entablature]
[Illustration: Roman Corinthian Column and Entablature]
It was in their Thermae or Baths rather than in their Temples and
Basilicas that the Roman architects achieved their greatest triumphs.
These were vast complex structures fitted up with every conceivable
luxury for the use of bathers, with a large hall artificially heated and
known as the tepidarium, open colonnaded courts, and many subsidiary
buildings including gymnasia, debating rooms, &c. They combined simple
grandeur of structure with rich internal decoration. The most ancient
Thermae in Rome, of which extensive remains still exist, were those of
Caracalla, erected in A.D. 217, already referred to in connection with
the earliest use of the contrivance which foreshadowed the pendentive.
Rising from a lofty platform, the noble tepidarium was roofed in by
three fine intersecting vaults, and its walls were cased in marble.
With their supplementary buildings the baths covered a space some 110
yards square, and beneath them were many vaulted rooms for the
attendants on the bathers. Amongst their ruins were found the
masterpieces of sculpture known as the Farnese Hercules and the Farnese
Bull, but when they were first placed there, there is no evidence to
prove.
[Illustration: Temple of Vesta, Rome]
Larger and more imposing in appearance even than the Baths of Caracalla
were those of Diocletian, that were capable of accommodating more than
3000 bathers and were built about A.D. 303. The grand hall or tepidarium
and the barrel-vaulted entrance portico were most successfully converted
in the sixteenth century into the church of S. Maria degli Angeli by
Michael Angelo, and one of two circular structures that flanked the
encircling wall was later consecrated under the name of S. Bernardo, and
is still used as a place of worship.
Next in importance to the Thermae rank the Amphitheatres of the Roman
Empire, in which gladiatorial contests and other trials of skill took
place, and without which no town however small was considered complete.
Though their detail was almost exclusively borrowed from the
Greeks--tiers of arches resting on columns and surmounted by an
entablature rising one above the other--their architects managed to
impress on them a distinctive character of their own. Finest of all
still existing examples is the Flavian Amphitheatre, generally known as
the Coliseum at Rome, which occupies the site of the famous Golden
House of Nero, and was completed about A.D. 70. It is of elliptical
plan, measures some 612 by 515 feet, and was from 160 to 180 feet high.
It was capable of containing some 80,000 spectators, and was for a long
period the chief meeting-place of the Roman citizens. The exterior is
four stories high and consists of a series of three rows of arches, the
lowest with Doric, the second with Ionic, and the third with Corinthian
capitals, the last surmounted by a row of Corinthian pilasters, forming
a fourth story, which is supposed to have been originally of wood and to
have been rebuilt in stone considerably later. The groups of seats,
which, with the central arena they commanded, were protected from the
weather by a moveable awning called the velarium, corresponded with the
exterior stories, and to each tier a staircase led up, wide vaulted
corridors connecting the various entrances with each other, running
round the entire building, the whole producing a most harmonious and
pleasing effect.
At Verona, Capria, Pola, and Pezzuoli in Italy, at Syracuse in Sicily,
and at Arles and Nimes in France are remains of important Roman
amphitheatres, and of the rarer theatres used for dramatic
entertainments must be named the two well-preserved examples at Pompeii,
the ruins of the Odeion of Herodes Atticus at Athens, and most ancient
of all, the remains of the so-called Theatre of Marcellus at Rome now
incorporated with the Orsinii Palace, all which appear to have resembled
the Coliseum to a great extent in their general style and decoration.
Of the vast and imposing palaces built or added to by successive Roman
emperors, that included audience chambers, basilicas, stadia for
athletic games, galleries, state dining-halls, baths, and many suites of
apartments for various purposes, there exist unfortunately but a few
remains. Nero's Golden House, several of the ruins of which were
excavated in the 16th century, and inspired Raphael with some of the
decorative details of the loggia of the Vatican, is said to have covered
more than a mile of ground, and at one time the whole of the Palatine
Hill was occupied by stately edifices, with the Palace of Augustus in
the centre and those of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and
Septimius Severus, who greatly added to and modified the work of his
predecessors, grouped about them, but all that can now be fully
identified are some of the ground plans with a few of the minor details
of structure. To atone for this however, much of the Palace of
Diocletian at Spalato in Dalmatia, to which that emperor withdrew after
his abdication in A.D. 305, which originally formed a small town in
itself, is still to a great extent intact, including a temple now used
as a cathedral, a gallery 520 feet long by 24 wide, and a few of the
covered arcades that originally connected its various parts.
What is left of the so-called Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli near Rome proves
that it too was of vast extent, with a great variety of buildings,
different suites of rooms having been occupied according to the seasons,
and at Pompeii and Herculaneum, thanks to the remarkable preservation of
many of the houses in them, notably that named after Pansa, the domestic
architecture of the private citizens of the great Roman Empire, of which
picturesque arcaded courts were a noteworthy feature, can be well
studied, as well as that of the temples, triumphal arches, public baths,
&c., all of which greatly resembled those of the Capital.
[Illustration: Arch of Titus at Rome]
Whether the Romans were or were not the first people of Western Europe
to use the arch, they certainly took a very great delight in it, setting
up ornately decorated examples of it at the entrances to their towns,
their fora, and their bridges, as well as in commemoration of great
victories in war and of the completion of civic enterprises. Most
remarkable of those still standing in Rome are the Arch of Titus of one
span only, erected in memory of the destruction of Jerusalem by the
Emperor after whom it is named; the triple-span arch of Septimius
Severus, and the smaller one of Constantine. Though they were rather
triumphs of engineering skill than works of architecture properly so
called, the fine stone built aqueducts such as those in the Campagna of
Rome and at Nimes must be mentioned here on account of the aesthetic
effect of the long rows of lofty arches, and a few words must also be
said of the Pillars of Victory, of which that of Trajan at Rome is the
most notable still extant, adorned as it is with a spiral of finely
sculptured bas-reliefs.
In the early days of the Roman power it was customary to cremate the
dead, the ashes being preserved in urns that were ranged in cells known
as Columbaria, generally hewn in the living rock. As time went on,
however, the Egyptian mode of sepulchre was adopted. Bodies were
embalmed and laid in stone or marble coffins which were placed in the
basements of tombs of two or more stories, surmounted by round towers
with pointed or circular roofs. Of these complex resting-places of the
dead the finest now in existence is the Mole or Mausoleum of Hadrian,
known as the Castle of S. Angelo, at Rome, which is some 300 feet high
and was originally encased in marble. No burial was allowed within the
walls of a Roman city, but the approaches were generally lined with
tombs as at Rome, at Pompeii, and elsewhere, most of them, though on a
smaller scale, of a similar plan to that of Hadrian.