+SCULPTURE AND CARVING.+ All the architectural membering was treated

with the greatest refinement of design and execution, and the aid of

sculpture, both in relief and in the round, was invoked to give splendor

and significance to the monument. The statue of the deity was the focus

of internal interest, while externally, groups of statues representing

the Olympian deities or the mythical exploits of gods, demigods, and

heroes, adorned the gables. Relief carvings in the friezes and metopes

commemorated the favorite national myths. In these sculptures we have

the finest known adaptations of pure sculpture--_i.e._, sculpture

treated as such and complete in itself--to an architectural framework.

The noblest examples of this decorative sculpture are those of the

Parthenon, consisting of figures in the full round from the pediments,

groups in high relief from the metopes, and the beautiful frieze of the

Panathenaic procession from the cella-wall under the pteroma ceiling.

The greater part of these splendid works are now in the British Museum,

whither they were removed by Lord Elgin in 1801. From Olympia, Ægina,

and Phigaleia, other master-works of the same kind have been transferred

to the museums of Europe. In the Doric style there was little carving

other than the sculpture, the ornament being mainly polychromatic. Greek

Ionic and Corinthian monuments, however, as well as minor works such as

steles, altars, etc., were richly adorned with carved mouldings and

friezes, festoons, acroteria, and other embellishments executed with the

chisel. The anthemion ornament, a form related to the Egyptian lotus and

Assyrian palmette, most frequently figures in these. It was made into

designs of wonderful vigor and beauty (Fig. 32).

+DETAIL AND EXECUTION.+ In the handling and cutting of stone the Greeks

displayed a surpassing skill and delicacy. While ordinarily they were

content to use stones of moderate size, they never hesitated at any

dimension necessary for proper effect or solid construction. The lower

drums of the Parthenon peristyle are 6 feet 6½ inches in diameter, and

2 feet 10 inches high, cut from single blocks of Pentelic marble. The

architraves of the Propylæa at Athens are each made up of two lintels

placed side by side, the longest 17 feet 7 inches long, 3 feet 10 inches

high, and 2 feet 4 inches thick. In the colossal temples of Asia Minor,

where the taste for the vast and grandiose was more pronounced, blocks

of much greater size were used. These enormous stones were cut and

fitted with the most scrupulous exactness. The walls of all important

structures were built in regular courses throughout, every stone

carefully bedded with extremely close joints. The masonry was usually

laid up without cement and clamped with metal; there is no filling in

with rubble and concrete between mere facings of cut stone, as in most

modern work. When the only available stone was of coarse texture it was

finished with a coating of fine stucco, in which sharp edges and minute

detail could be worked.

The details were, in the best period, executed with the most

extraordinary refinement and care. The profiles of capitals and

mouldings, the carved ornament, the arrises of the flutings, were cut

with marvellous precision and delicacy. It has been rightly said that

the Greeks “built like Titans and finished like jewellers.” But this

perfect finish was never petty nor wasted on unworthy or vulgar design.

The just relation of scale between the building and all its parts was

admirably maintained; the ornament was distributed with rare judgment,

and the vigor of its design saved it from all appearance of triviality.

The sensitive taste of the Greeks led them into other refinements than

those of mere mechanical perfection. In the Parthenon especially, but

also in lesser degree in other temples, the seemingly straight lines of

the building were all slightly curved, and the vertical faces inclined.

This was done to correct the monotony and stiffness of absolutely

straight lines and right angles, and certain optical illusions which

their acute observation had detected. The long horizontal lines of the

stylobate and cornice were made convex upward; a similar convexity in

the horizontal corona of the pediment counteracted the seeming concavity

otherwise resulting from its meeting with the multiplied inclined lines

of the raking cornice. The columns were almost imperceptibly inclined

toward the cella, and the corner intercolumniations made a trifle

narrower than the rest; while the vertical lines of the arrises of the

flutings were made convex outward with a curve of the utmost beauty and

delicacy. By these and other like refinements there was imparted to the

monument an elasticity and vigor of aspect, an elusive and surprising

beauty impossible to describe and not to be explained by the mere

composition and general proportions, yet manifest to every cultivated

eye.[10]

[Footnote 10: These refinements, first noticed by Allason in

1814, and later confirmed by Cockerell and Haller as to the

columns, were published to the world in 1838 by Hoffer, verified

by Penrose in 1846, and further developed by the investigations

of Ziller and later observers.]

CHAPTER VII.

GREEK ARCHITECTURE--_Continued_.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Same as for Chapter VI. Also, Bacon and Clarke,

_Investigations at Assos_. Espouy, _Fragments d’architecture

antique_. Harrison and Verrall, _Mythology and Monuments of

Ancient Athens_. Hitorff et Zanth, _Recueil des Monuments de

Ségeste et Sélinonte_. Magne, _Le Parthénon_. Koldewey and

Puchstein, _Die griechischen Tempel in Unteritalien und Sicilien_.

Waldstein, _The Argive Heræum_.

+HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT.+ The history of Greek architecture, subsequent to

the Heroic or Primitive Age, may be divided into periods as follows:

The ARCHAIC; from 650 to 500 B.C.

The TRANSITIONAL; from 500 to 460 B.C., or to the revival of prosperity

after the Persian wars.

The PERICLEAN; from 460 to 400 B.C.

The FLORID or ALEXANDRIAN; from 400 to 300 B.C.

The DECADENT; 300 to 100 B.C.

The ROMAN; 100 B.C. to 200 A.D.

These dates are, of course, somewhat arbitrary; it is impossible to set

exact bounds to style-periods, which must inevitably overlap at certain

points, but the dates, as given above, will assist in distinguishing the

successive phases of the history.

+ARCHAIC PERIOD.+ The archaic period is characterized by the exclusive

use of the Doric order, which appears in the earliest monuments complete

in all its parts, but heavy in its proportions and coarse in its

execution. The oldest known temples of this period are the +Apollo

Temple+ at Corinth (650 B.C.?), and the +Northern Temple+ on the

acropolis at +Selinus+ in Sicily (cir. 610-590 B.C.). They are both of a

coarse limestone covered with stucco. The columns are low and massive

(4⅓ to 4⅔ diameters in height), widely spaced, and carry a very high

entablature. The triglyphs still appear around the cella wall under the

pteroma ceiling, an illogical detail destined to disappear in later

buildings. Other temples at Selinus date from the middle or latter part

of the sixth century; they have higher columns and finer profiles than

those just mentioned. The great +Temple of Zeus+ at +Selinus+ was the

earliest of five colossal Greek temples of very nearly identical

dimensions; it measured 360 feet by 167 feet in plan, but was never

completed. During the second half of the sixth century important Doric

temples were built at Pæstum in South Italy, and Agrigentum in Sicily;

the somewhat primitive temple at Assos in Asia Minor, with uncouth

carvings of centaurs and monsters on its architrave, belongs to this

same period. The +Temple of Zeus+ at +Agrigentum+ (Fig. 33) is another

singular and exceptional design, and was the second of the five colossal

temples mentioned above. The pteroma was entirely enclosed by walls with

engaged columns showing externally, and was of extraordinary width. The

walls of the narrow cella were interrupted by heavy piers supporting

atlantes, or applied statues under the ceiling. There seem to have been

windows between these figures, but it is not clear whence they borrowed

their light, unless it was admitted by the omission of the metopes

between the external triglyphs.

[Illustration: FIG. 33.--TEMPLE OF ZEUS. AGRIGENTUM.]

+THE TRANSITION.+ During the transitional period there was a marked

improvement in the proportions, detail, and workmanship of the temples.

The cella was made broader, the columns more slender, the entablature

lighter. The triglyphs disappeared from the cella wall, and sculpture of

a higher order enhanced the architectural effect. The profiles of the

mouldings and especially of the capitals became more subtle and refined

in their curves, while the development of the Ionic order in important

monuments in Asia Minor was preparing the way for the splendors of the

Periclean age. Three temples especially deserve notice: the +Athena

Temple+ on the island of +Ægina+, the +Temple of Zeus+ at +Olympia+, and

the so-called +Theseum+--perhaps a temple of Heracles--in Athens. They

belong to the period 470-450 B.C.; they are all hexastyle and

peripteral, and without triglyphs on the cella wall. Of the three the

second in the list is interesting as the scene of those rites which

preceded and accompanied the Panhellenic Olympian games, and as the

central feature of the Altis, the most complete temple-group and

enclosure among all Greek remains. It was built of a coarse

conglomerate, finished with fine stucco, and embellished with sculpture

by the greatest masters of the time. The adjacent +Heraion+ (temple of

Hera) was a highly venerated and ancient shrine, originally built with

wooden columns which, according to Pausanias, were replaced one by one,

as they decayed, by stone columns. The truth of this statement is

attested by the discovery of a singular variety of capitals among its

ruins, corresponding to the various periods at which they were added.

The Theseum is the most perfectly preserved of all Greek temples, and in

the refinement of its forms is only surpassed by those of the Periclean

age.

[Illustration: FIG. 34.--RUINS OF THE PARTHENON.]

[Illustration: FIG. 35.--PLAN OF ERECHTHEUM.]

[Illustration: FIG. 36.--WEST END OF ERECHTHEUM, RESTORED.]

+THE PERICLEAN AGE.+ The Persian wars may be taken as the dividing line

between the Transition period and the Periclean age. The _élan_ of

national enthusiasm that followed the expulsion of the invader, and the

glory and wealth which accrued to Athens as the champion of all Hellas,

resulted in a splendid reconstruction of the Attic monuments as well as

a revival of building activity in Asia Minor. By the wise administration

of Pericles and by the genius of Ictinus, Phidias, and other artists of

surpassing skill, the Acropolis at Athens was crowned with a group of

buildings and statues absolutely unrivalled. Chief among them was the

+Parthenon+, the shrine of Athena Parthenos, which the critics of all

schools have agreed in considering the most faultless in design and

execution of all buildings erected by man (Figs. 31, 34, and

Frontispiece). It was an octastyle peripteral temple, with seventeen

columns on the side, and measured 220 by 100 feet on the top of the

stylobate. It was the work of Ictinus and Callicrates, built to enshrine

the noble statue of the goddess by Phidias, a standing chryselephantine

figure forty feet high. It was the masterpiece of Greek architecture not

only by reason of its refinements of detail, but also on account of the

beauty of its sculptural adornments. The frieze about the cella wall

under the pteroma ceiling, representing in low relief with masterly

skill the Panathenaic procession; the sculptured groups in the metopes,

and the superb assemblages of Olympic and symbolic figures of colossal

size in the pediments, added their majesty to the perfection of the

architecture. Here also the horizontal curvatures and other refinements

are found in their highest development. Northward from it, upon the

Acropolis, stood the +Erechtheum+, an excellent example of the

Attic-Ionic style (Figs. 35, 36). Its singular irregularities of plan

and level, and the variety of its detail, exhibit in a striking way the

Greek indifference to mere formal symmetry when confronted by practical

considerations. The motive in this case was the desire to include in one

design several existing and venerated shrines to Attic deities and

heroes--Athena Polias, Poseidon, Pandrosus, Erechtheus, Boutes, etc.

Begun by unknown architects in 479 B.C., and not completed until 408

B.C., it remains in its ruin still one of the most interesting and

attractive of ancient buildings. Its two colonnades of differing design,

its beautiful north doorway, and the unique and noble caryatid porch or

balcony on the south side are unsurpassed in delicate beauty combined

with vigor of design.[11] A smaller monument of the Ionic order, the

amphiprostyle temple to +Nike Apteros+--the Wingless Victory--stands on

a projecting spur of the Acropolis to the southwest. It measures only 27

feet by 18 feet in plan; the cella is nearly square; the columns are

sturdier than those of the Erechtheum, and the execution of the monument

is admirable. It was the first completed of the extant buildings of the

group of the Acropolis and dates from 466 B.C.

[Footnote 11: See Appendix, p. 427.]

[Illustration: FIG. 37.--PROPYLÆA AT ATHENS. PLAN.]

In the +Propylæa+ (Fig. 37), the monumental gateway to the Acropolis,

the Doric and Ionic orders appear to have been combined for the first

time (437 to 432 B.C.). It was the master work of Mnesicles. The front

and rear façades were Doric hexastyles; adjoining the front porch were

two projecting lateral wings employing a smaller Doric order. The

central passageway led between two rows of Ionic columns to the rear

porch, entered by five doorways and crowned, like the front, with a

pediment. The whole was executed with the same splendor and perfection

as the other buildings of the Acropolis, and was a worthy gateway to the

group of noble monuments which crowned that citadel of the Attic

capital. The two orders were also combined in the temple of +Apollo

Epicurius+ at +Phigalæa+ (Bassæ). This temple was erected in 430 B.C. by

Ictinus, who used the Ionic order internally to decorate a row of

projecting piers instead of free-standing columns in the naos, in which

there was also a single Corinthian column of rather archaic design,

which may have been used as a support for a statue or votive offering.

+ALEXANDRIAN AGE.+ A period of reaction followed the splendid

architectural activity of the Periclean age. A succession of disastrous

wars--the Sicilian, Peloponnesian, and Corinthian--drained the energies

and destroyed the peace of European Greece for seventy-five years,

robbing Athens of her supremacy and inflicting wounds from which she

never recovered. In the latter part of the fourth century, however, the

triumph of the Macedonian empire over all the Mediterranean lands

inaugurated a new era of architectural magnificence, especially in Asia

Minor. The keynote of the art of this time was splendor, as that of the

preceding age was artistic perfection. The Corinthian order came into

use, as though the Ionic were not rich enough for the sumptuous taste of

the time, and capitals and bases of novel and elaborate design

embellished the Ionic temples of Asia Minor. In the temple of +Apollo

Didymæus+ at Miletus, the plinths of the bases were made octagonal and

panelled with rich scroll-carvings; and the piers which buttressed the

interior faces of the cella-walls were given capitals of singular but

elegant form, midway between the Ionic and Corinthian types. This temple

belongs to the list of colossal edifices already referred to; its

dimensions were 366 by 163 feet, making it the largest of them all. The

famous +Artemisium+ (temple of Artemis or Diana) measured 342 by 163

feet. Several of the columns of the latter were enriched with sculptured

figures encircling the lower drums of the colossal shafts. The most

lavish expenditure was bestowed upon small structures, shrines, and

sarcophagi. The graceful monument still visible in Athens, erected by

the choragus Lysicrates in token of his victory in the choral

competitions, belongs to this period (330 B.C.). It is circular, with a

slightly domical imbricated roof, and is decorated with elegant engaged

Corinthian columns (Fig. 38). In the Imperial Museum at Constantinople

are several sarcophagi of this period found at Sidon, but executed by

Greek artists, and of exceptional beauty. They are in the form of

temples or shrines; the finest of them, supposed by some to have been

made for Alexander’s favorite general Perdiccas, and by others for the

Persian satrap who figures prominently on its sculptured reliefs, is the

most sumptuous work of the kind in existence. The exquisite polychromy

of its beautiful reliefs and the perfection of its rich details of

cornice, pediment, tiling, and crestings, make it an exceedingly

interesting and instructive example of the minor architecture of the

period.

[Illustration: FIG. 38.--CHORAGIC MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES.

(Restored model, N.Y.)]

+THE DECADENCE.+ After the decline of Alexandrian magnificence Greek art

never recovered its ancient glory, but the flame was not suddenly

extinguished. While in Greece proper the works of the second and third

centuries B.C., are for the most part weak and lifeless, like the +Stoa

of Attalus+ (175 B.C.) and the +Tower of the Winds+ (the Clepsydra of

Andronicus Cyrrhestes, 100 B.C.) at Athens or the Portico of Philip in

Delos, there were still a few worthy works built in Asia Minor. The

splendid +Altar+ erected at +Pergamon+ by Eumenes II. (circ. 180 B.C.)

in the Ionic order, combined sculpture of extraordinary vigor with

imposing architecture in masterly fashion. At +Aizanoi+ an Ionic +Temple

to Zeus+, by some attributed to the Roman period, but showing rather the

character of good late Greek work, deserves mention for its elegant

details, and especially for its frieze-decoration of acanthus leaves and

scrolls resembling those of a Corinthian capital.

[Illustration: FIG. 39.--TEMPLE OF OLYMPIAN ZEUS. ATHENS.]

+ROMAN PERIOD.+ During this period, _i.e._, throughout the second and

first centuries B.C., the Roman dominion was spreading over Greek

territory, and the structures erected subsequent to the conquest partake

of the Roman character and mingle Roman conceptions with Greek details

and _vice versâ_. The temple of the +Olympian Zeus+ at Athens (Fig. 39),

a mighty dipteral Corinthian edifice measuring 354 by 171 feet, standing

on a vast terrace or temenos surrounded by a buttressed wall, was begun

by Antiochus Epiphanes (170 B.C.) on the site of an earlier unfinished

Doric temple of the time of Pisistratus, and carried out under the

direction of the Roman architect, Cossutius. It was not, however,

finally completed until the time of Hadrian, 130 A.D. Meanwhile Sulla

had despoiled it of several columns[12] which he carried to Rome (86

B.C.), to use in the rebuilding of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol,

where they undoubtedly served as models in the development of the Roman

Corinthian order. The columns were 57 feet high, with capitals of the

most perfect Corinthian type; fifteen are now standing, and one lies

prostrate near by. To the Roman period also belong the +Agora Gate+

(circ. 35 B.C.), the +Arch of Hadrian+ (117 A.D.), the +Odeon of

Regilla+ or of Herodes Atticus (143 A.D.), at Athens, and many temples

and tombs, theatres, arches, etc., in the Greek provinces.

[Footnote 12: L. Bevier, in _Papers of the American Classical

School at Athens_ (vol. i., pp. 195, 196), contends that these

were columns left from the old Doric temple. This is untenable,

for Sulla would certainly not have taken the trouble to carry

away archaic Doric columns, with such splendid Corinthian columns

before him.]

+SECULAR MONUMENTS; PROPYLÆA.+ The stately gateway by which the

Acropolis was entered has already been described. It was the noblest and

most perfect of a class of buildings whose prototype is found in the

monumental columnar porches of the palace-group at Persepolis. The

Greeks never used the arch in these structures, nor did they attach to

them the same importance as did most of the other nations of antiquity.

The Altis of Olympia, the national shrine of Hellenism, appears to have

had no central gateway of imposing size, but a number of insignificant

entrances disposed at random. The +Propylæa+ of +Sunium+, +Priene+ and

+Eleusis+ are the most conspicuous, after those of the Athenian

Acropolis. Of these the Ionic gateway at Priene is the finest, although

the later of the two at Eleusis is interesting for its anta-capitals.

(_Anta_ = a flat pilaster decorating the end of a wing-wall and treated

with a base and capital usually differing from those of the adjacent

columns.) These are of Corinthian type, adorned with winged horses,

scrolls, and anthemions of an exuberant richness of design,

characteristic of this late period.

+COLONNADES, STOÆ.+ These were built to connect public monuments (as the

Dionysiac theatre and Odeon at Athens); or along the sides of great

public squares, as at Assos and Olympia (the so-called +Echo Hall+); or

as independent open public halls, as the +Stoa Diple+ at Thoricus. They

afforded shelter from sun and rain, places for promenading, meetings

with friends, public gatherings, and similar purposes. They were rarely

of great size, and most of them are of rather late date, though the

archaic structure at Pæstum, known as the +Basilica+, was probably in

reality an open hall of this kind.

[Illustration: FIG. 40.--PLAN OF GREEK THEATRE.

o, _Orchestra_; l, _Logeion_; p, _Paraskenai_; _s, s_, _Stoa_.]

+THEATRES, ODEONS.+ These were invariably cut out of the rocky

hillsides, though in a few cases (Mantinæa, Myra, Antiphellus) a part of

the seats were sustained by a built-up substructure and walls to eke out

the deficiency of the hill-slope under them. The front of the excavation

was enclosed by a stage and a set scene or background, built up so as to

leave somewhat over a semicircle for the _orchestra_ or space enclosed

by the lower tier of seats (Fig. 40). An altar to Dionysus (Bacchus) was

the essential feature in the foreground of the orchestra, where the

Dionysiac choral dance was performed. The seats formed successive steps

of stone or marble sweeping around the sloping excavation, with carved

marble thrones for the priests, archons, and other dignitaries. The only

architectural decoration of the theatre was that of the set scene or

_skene_, which with its wing-walls (_paraskenai_) enclosing the stage

(_logeion_) was a permanent structure of stone or marble adorned with

doors, cornices, pilasters, etc. This has perished in nearly every case;

but at Aspendus, in Asia Minor, there is one still fairly well

preserved, with a rich architectural decoration on its inner face. The

extreme diameter of the theatres varied greatly; thus at Aizanoi it is

187 feet, and at Syracuse 495 feet. The theatre of Dionysus at Athens

(finished 325 B.C.) could accommodate thirty thousand spectators.

The odeon differed from the theatre principally in being smaller and

entirely covered in by a wooden roof. The +Odeon of Regilla+, built by

Herodes Atticus in Athens (143 A.D.), is a well-preserved specimen of

this class, but all traces of its cedar ceiling and of its intermediate

supports have disappeared.

+BUILDINGS FOR ATHLETIC CONTESTS.+ These comprised stadia and

hippodromes for races, and gymnasia and palæstræ for individual

exercise, bathing, and amusement. The _stadia_ and _hippodromes_ were

oblong enclosures surrounded by tiers of seats and without conspicuous

architectural features. The _palæstra_ or _gymnasium_--for the terms are

not clearly distinguished--was a combination of courts, chambers, tanks

(_piscinæ_) for bathers and _exedræ_ or semicircular recesses provided

with tiers of seats for spectators and auditors, destined not merely for

the exercises of athletes preparing for the stadium, but also for the

instruction and diversion of the public by recitations, lectures, and

discussions. It was the prototype of the Roman thermæ, but less

imposing, more simple in plan and adornment. Every Greek city had one or

more of them, but they have almost wholly disappeared, and the brief

description by Vitruvius and scanty remains at Alexandria Troas and

Ephesus furnish almost the only information we possess regarding their

form and arrangement.

+TOMBS.+ These are not numerous, and the most important are found in

Asia Minor. The greatest of these is the famed +Mausoleum+ at

Halicarnassus in Caria, the monument erected to the king Mausolus by his

widow Artemisia (354 B.C.; Fig. 41). It was designed by Satyrus and

Pythius in the Ionic style, and comprised a podium or base 50 feet high

and measuring 80 feet by 100 feet, in which was the sepulchre. Upon this

base stood a cella surrounded by thirty-six Ionic columns; and crowned

by a pyramidal roof, on the peak of which was a colossal marble quadriga

at a height of 130 feet. It was superbly decorated by Scopas and other

great sculptors with statues, marble lions, and a magnificent frieze.

The British Museum possesses fragments of this most imposing monument.

At Xanthus the +Nereid Monument+, so called from its sculptured figures

of Nereides, was a somewhat similar design on a smaller scale, with

sixteen Ionic columns. At Mylassa was another tomb with an open

Corinthian colonnade supporting a roof formed in a stepped pyramid. Some

of the later rock-cut tombs of Lycia at Myra and Antiphellus may also be

counted as Hellenic works.

[Illustration: FIG. 41.--MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS.

(As restored by the author.)]

+DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.+ This never attained great importance in Greece,

and our knowledge of the typical Greek house is principally derived from

literary sources. Very few remains of Greek houses have been found

sufficiently well preserved to permit of restoring even the plan. It is

probable that they resembled in general arrangement the houses of

Pompeii (see p. 107); but that they were generally insignificant in size

and decoration. The exterior walls were pierced only by the entrance

doors, all light being derived from one or more interior courts. In the

Macedonian epoch there must have been greater display and luxury in

domestic architecture, but no remains have come down to us of sufficient

importance or completeness to warrant further discussion.

+MONUMENTS.+ In addition to those already mentioned in the text

the following should be enumerated:

PREHISTORIC PERIOD. In the Islands about Santorin, remains of

houses antedating 1500 B.C.; at Tiryns the Acropolis, walls, and

miscellaneous ruins; the like also at Mycenæ, besides various

tombs; walls and gates at Samos, Thoricus, Menidi, Athens, etc.

ARCHAIC PERIOD. Doric Temples at Metapontium (by Durm assigned to

610 B.C.), Selinus, Agrigentum, Pæstum; at Athens the first

Parthenon; in Asia Minor the primitive Ionic Artemisium at Ephesus

and the Heraion at Samos, the latter the oldest of colossal Greek

temples.

TRANSITIONAL PERIOD. At Agrigentum, temples of Concord, Castor and

Pollux, Demeter, Æsculapius, all circ. 480 B.C.; temples at

Selinus and Segesta.

PERICLEAN PERIOD. In Athens the Ionic temple on the Illissus,

destroyed during the present century; on Cape Sunium the temple of

Athena, 430 B.C., partly standing; at Nemea, the temple of Zeus;

at Tegea, the temple of Athena Elea (400? B.C.); at Rhamnus, the

temples of Themis and of Nemesis; at Argos, two temples, stoa, and

other buildings; all these were Doric.

ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD. The temple of Dionysus at Teos; temple of

Artemis Leucophryne at Magnesia, both about 330 B.C. and of the

Ionic order.

DECADENCE AND ROMAN PERIOD. At Athens the Stoa of Eumenes, circ.

170 B.C.; the monument of Philopappus on the Museum hill, 110

A.D.; the Gymnasium of Hadrian, 114 to 137 A.D.; the last two of

the Corinthian order.

THEATRES. Besides those already mentioned there are important

remains of theatres at Epidaurus, Argos, Segesta, Iassus (400?

B.C.), Delos, Sicyon, and Thoricus; at Aizanoi, Myra, Telmissus,

and Patara, besides many others of less importance scattered

through the Hellenic world. At Taormina are extensive ruins of a

large Greek theatre rebuilt in the Roman period.

CHAPTER VIII.

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Anderson and Spiers, Baumeister,

Reber. Choisy, _L’Art de bâtir chez les Romains_. Desgodetz, _Rome

in her Ancient Grandeur_. Durm, _Die Baukunst der Etrusker_; _Die

Baukunst der Romer_. Lanciani, _Ancient Rome in the Light of

Modern Discovery_; _New Tales of Old Rome_; _Ruins and Excavations

of Ancient Rome_. De Martha, _Archéologie étrusque et romaine_.

Middleton, _Ancient Rome in 1888_.

+LAND AND PEOPLE.+ The geographical position of Italy conferred upon her

special and obvious advantages for taking up and carrying northward and

westward the arts of civilization. A scarcity of good harbors was the

only drawback amid the blessings of a glorious climate, fertile soil,

varied scenery, and rich material resources. From a remote antiquity

Dorian colonists had occupied the southern portion and the island of

Sicily, enriching them with splendid monuments of Doric art; and

Phœnician commerce had brought thither the products of Oriental art and

industry. The foundation of Rome in 753 B.C. established the nucleus

about which the sundry populations of Italy were to crystallize into the

Roman nation, under the dominating influence of the Latin element. Later

on, the absorption of the conquered Etruscans added to this composite

people a race of builders and engineers, as yet rude and uncouth in

their art, but destined to become a powerful factor in developing the

new architecture that was to spring from the contact of the practical

Romans with the noble art of the Greek centres.

+GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.+ While the Greeks bequeathed to posterity the

most perfect models of form in literary and plastic art, it was reserved

for the Romans to work out the applications of these to every-day

material life. The Romans were above all things a practical people.

Their consummate skill as organizers is manifest in the marvellous

administrative institutions of their government, under which they united

the most distant and diverse nationalities. Seemingly deficient in

culture, they were yet able to recast the forms of Greek architecture in

new moulds, and to evolve therefrom a mighty architecture adapted to

wholly novel conditions. They brought engineering into the service of

architecture, which they fitted to the varied requirements of

government, public amusement, private luxury, and the common comfort.

They covered the antique world with arches and amphitheatres, with

villas, baths, basilicas, and temples, all bearing the unmistakable

impress of Rome, though wrought by artists and artisans of divers races.

Only an extraordinary genius for organization could have accomplished

such results.

The architects of Rome marvellously extended the range of their art, and

gave it a flexibility by which it accommodated itself to the widest

variety of materials and conditions. They made the arch and vault the

basis of their system of design, employing them on a scale previously

undreamed of, and in combinations of surpassing richness and majesty.

They systematized their methods of construction so that soldiers and

barbarians could execute the rough mass of their buildings, and

formulated the designing of the decorative details so that artisans of

moderate skill could execute them with good effect. They carried the

principle of repetition of motives to its utmost limit, and sought to

counteract any resulting monotony by the scale and splendor of the

design. Above all they developed planning into a fine art, displaying

their genius in a wonderful variety of combinations and in an unfailing

sense of the demands of constructive propriety, practical convenience,

and artistic effect. Where Egyptian or Greek architecture shows one type

of plan, the Roman shows a score.

+GREEK INFLUENCE.+ Previous to the closing years of the Republic the

Romans had no art but the Etruscan. The few buildings of importance they

possessed were of Etruscan design and workmanship, excepting a small

number built by Greek hands. It was not until the Empire that Roman

architecture took on a truly national form. True Roman architecture is

essentially imperial. The change from the primitive Etruscan style to

the splendors of the imperial age was due to the conquest of the Greek

states. Not only did the Greek campaigns enrich Rome with an

unprecedented wealth of artistic spoils; they also brought into Italy

hosts of Greek artists, and filled the minds of the campaigners with the

ambition to realize in their own dominions the marble colonnades, the

temples, theatres, and propylæa of the Greek cities they had pillaged.

The Greek orders were adopted, altered, and applied to arcaded designs

as well as to peristyles and other open colonnades. The marriage of the

column and arch gave birth to a system of forms as characteristic of

Roman architecture as the Doric or Ionic colonnade is of the Greek.

+THE ROMAN ORDERS.+ To meet the demands of Roman taste the Etruscan

column was retained with its simple entablature; the Doric and Ionic

were adopted in a modified form; the Corinthian was developed into a

complete and independent order, and the Composite was added to the list.

A regular system of proportions for all these five orders was gradually

evolved, and the mouldings were profiled with arcs of circles instead of

the subtler Greek curves. In the building of many-storied structures the

orders were superposed, the more slender over the sturdier, in an

orderly and graded succession. The immense extent and number of the

Roman buildings, the coarse materials often used, the relative scarcity

of highly trained artisans, and above all, the necessity of making a

given amount of artistic design serve for the largest possible amount of

architecture, combined to direct the designing of detail into uniform

channels. Thus in time was established a sort of canon of proportions,

which was reduced to rules by Vitruvius, and revived in much more

detailed and precise form by Vignola in the sixteenth century.

[Illustration: FIG. 42.--ROMAN DORIC ORDER.

(THEATRE OF MARCELLUS).]

In each of the orders, including the Doric, the column was given a base

one half of a diameter in height (the unit of measurement being the

diameter of the lower part of the shaft, the _crassitudo_ of Vitruvius).

The shaft was made to contract about one-sixth in diameter toward the

capital, under which it was terminated by an _astragal_ or collar of

small mouldings; at the base it ended in a slight flare and fillet

called the _cincture_. The entablature was in all cases given not far

from one quarter the height of the whole column. The +Tuscan+ order was

a rudimentary or Etruscan Doric with a column seven diameters high and a

simple entablature without triglyphs, mutules, or dentils. But few

examples of its use are known. The +Doric+ (Fig. 42) retained the

triglyphs and metopes, the mutules and guttæ of the Greek; but the

column was made eight diameters high, the shaft was smooth or had deep

flutings separated by narrow fillets, and was usually provided with a

simple moulded base on a square plinth. Mutules were used only over the

triglyphs, and were even replaced in some cases by dentils; the corona

was made lighter than the Greek, and a cymatium replaced the antefixæ on

the lateral cornices. The Ionic underwent fewer changes, and these

principally in the smaller mouldings and details of the capital. The

column was nine diameters high (Fig. 43). The +Corinthian+ was made into

an independent order by the designing of a special base of small _tori_

and _scotiæ_, and by sumptuously carved _modillions_ or brackets

enriching the cornice and supporting the corona above a denticulated

bed-mould (Fig. 44). Though the first designers of the modillion were

probably Greeks, it must, nevertheless, be taken as really a Roman

device, worthily completing the essentially Roman Corinthian order. The

+Composite+ was formed by combining into one capital portions of the

Ionic and Corinthian, and giving to it a simplified form of the

Corinthian cornice. The Corinthian order remained, however, the favorite

order of Roman architecture.

[Illustration: FIG. 43.--ROMAN IONIC ORDER.]

+USE OF THE ORDERS.+ The Romans introduced many innovations in the

general use and treatment of the orders. Monolithic shafts were

preferred to those built up of superposed drums. The fluting was omitted

on these, and when hard and semi-precious stone like porphyry or

verd-antique was the material, it was highly polished to bring out its

color. These polished monoliths were often of great size, and they were

used in almost incredible numbers.

[Illustration: FIG. 44.--CORINTHIAN ORDER

(TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX).]

Another radical departure from Greek usage was the mounting of columns

on pedestals to secure greater height without increasing the size of the

column and its entablature. The Greek _anta_ was developed into the

Roman pilaster or flattened wall-column, and every free column, or range

of columns perpendicular to the façade, had its corresponding pilaster

to support the wall-end of the architrave. But the most radical

innovation was the general use of engaged columns as wall-decorations or

buttresses. The engaged column projected from the wall by more than half

its diameter, and was built up with the wall as a part of its substance

(Fig. 45). The entablature was in many cases advanced only over the

columns, between which it was set back almost to the plane of the wall.

This practice is open to the obvious criticism that it makes the column

appear superfluous by depriving it of its function of supporting the

continuous entablature. The objection has less weight when the

projecting entablature over the column serves as a pedestal for a statue

or similar object, which restores to the column its function as a

support (see the Arch of Constantine, Fig. 63).

[Illustration: FIG. 45.--ROMAN ARCADE WITH ENGAGED COLUMNS

(From the Colosseum.)]

+ARCADES.+ The orders, though probably at first used only as free

supports in porticos and colonnades, were early applied as decorations

to arcaded structures. This practice became general with the

multiplication of many-storied arcades like those of the amphitheatres,

the engaged columns being set between the arches as buttresses,

supporting entablatures which marked the divisions into stories (Fig.

45). This combination has been assailed as a false and illogical device,

but the criticism proceeds from a too narrow conception of architectural

propriety. It is defensible upon both artistic and logical grounds; for

it not only furnishes a most desirable play of light and shade and a

pleasing contrast of rectangular and curved lines, but by emphasizing

the constructive divisions and elements of the building and the vertical

support of the piers, it also contributes to the expressiveness and

vigor of the design.

+VAULTING.+ The Romans substituted vaulting in brick, concrete, or

masonry for wooden ceilings wherever possible, both in public and

private edifices. The Etruscans were the first vault-builders, and the

Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer of Republican Rome (about 500 B.C.) still

remains as a monument of their engineering skill. Probably not only

Etruscan engineers (whose traditions were perhaps derived from Asiatic

sources in the remote past), but Asiatic builders also from conquered

eastern provinces, were engaged together in the development of the

wonderful system of vaulted construction to which Roman architecture so

largely owed its grandeur. Three types of vault were commonly used: the

barrel-vault, the groined or four-part vault, and the dome.

[Illustration: FIG. 46.--BARREL VAULT.]

The barrel vault (Fig. 46) was generally semi-cylindrical in section,

and was used to cover corridors and oblong halls, like the

temple-cellas, or was bent around a curve, as in amphitheatre passages.

[Illustration: FIG. 47.--GROINED VAULT.

_g, g_, _Groins._]

The groined vault is formed by the intersection of two barrel-vaults

(Fig. 47). When several compartments of groined vaulting are placed

together over an oblong plan, a double advantage is secured. Lateral

windows can be carried up to the full height of the vaulting instead of

being stopped below its springing; and the weight and thrust of the

vaulting are concentrated upon a number of isolated points instead of

being exerted along the whole extent of the side walls, as with the

barrel-vault. The Romans saw that it was sufficient to dispose the

masonry at these points in masses at right angles to the length of the

hall, to best resist the lateral thrust of the vault. This appears

clearly in the plan of the Basilica of Constantine (Fig. 58).

The dome was in almost all Roman examples supported on a circular wall

built up from the ground, as in the Pantheon (Fig. 54). The pendentive

dome, sustained by four or eight arches over a square or octagonal plan,

is not found in true Roman buildings.

The Romans made of the vault something more than a mere constructive

device. It became in their hands an element of interior effect at least

equally important with the arch and column. No style of architecture has

ever evolved nobler forms of ceiling than the groined vault and the

dome. Moreover, the use of vaulting made possible effects of

unencumbered spaciousness and amplitude which could never be compassed

by any combination of piers and columns. It also assured to the Roman

monuments a duration and a freedom from danger of destruction by fire

impossible with any wooden-roofed architecture, however noble its form

or careful its execution.

+CONSTRUCTION.+ The constructive methods of the Romans varied with the

conditions and resources of different provinces, but were everywhere

dominated by the same practical spirit. Their vaulted architecture

demanded for the support of its enormous weights and for resistance to

its disruptive thrusts, piers and buttresses of great mass. To construct

these wholly of cut stone appeared preposterous and wasteful to the

Roman. Italy abounds in clay, lime, and a volcanic product, _pozzolana_

(from Puteoli or Pozzuoli, where it has always been obtained in large

quantities), which makes an admirable hydraulic cement. With these

materials it was possible to employ unskilled labor for the great bulk

of this massive masonry, and to erect with the greatest rapidity and in

the most economical manner those stupendous piles which, even in their

ruin, excite the admiration of every beholder.

[Illustration: FIG. 48.--ROMAN WALL MASONRY.

a, _Brickwork_; b, _Tufa ashlar_; r, _Opus reticulatum_;

i, _Opus incertum_.]

+STONE, CONCRETE, AND BRICK MASONRY.+ For buildings of an externally

decorative character such as temples, arches of triumph, and

amphitheatres, as well as in all places where brick and concrete were

not easily obtained, stone was employed. The walls were built by laying

up the inner and outer faces in _ashlar_ or cut stone, and filling in

the intermediate space with rubble (random masonry of uncut stone) laid

up in cement, or with concrete of broken stone and cement dumped into

the space in successive layers. The cement converted the whole into a

conglomerate closely united with the face-masonry. In Syria and Egypt

the local preference for stones of enormous size was gratified, and even

surpassed, as in Herod’s terrace-walls for the temple at Jerusalem

(p. 41), and in the splendid structures of Palmyra and Baalbec. In

Italy, however, stones of moderate size were preferred, and when blocks

of unusual dimensions occur, they are in many cases marked with false

joints, dividing them into apparently smaller blocks, lest they should

dwarf the building by their large scale. The general use in the Augustan

period of marble for a decorative lining or wainscot in interiors led in

time to the objectionable practice of coating buildings of concrete with

an apparel of sham marble masonry, by carving false joints upon an

external veneer of thin slabs of that material. Ordinary concrete walls

were frequently faced with small blocks of tufa, called, according to

the manner of its application, _opus reticulatum_, _opus incertum_,

_opus spicatum_, etc. (Fig. 48). In most cases, however, the facing was

of carefully executed brickwork, covered sometimes by a coating of

stucco. The bricks were large, measuring from one to two feet square

where used for quoins or arches, but triangular where they served only

as facings. Bricks were also used in the construction of skeleton ribs

for concrete vaults of large span.

+VAULTING.+ Here, as in the wall-masonry, economy and common sense

devised methods extremely simple for accomplishing vast designs. While

the smaller vaults were, so to speak, cast in concrete upon moulds made

of rough boards, the enormous weight of the larger vaults precluded

their being supported, while drying or “setting,” upon timber centrings

built up from the ground. Accordingly, a skeleton of light ribs was

first built on wooden centrings, and these ribs, when firmly “set,”

became themselves supports for intermediate centrings on which to cast

the concrete fillings between the ribs. The whole vault, once hardened,

formed really a monolithic curved lintel, exerting no thrust whatever,

so that the extraordinary precautions against lateral disruption

practised by the Romans were, in fact, in many cases quite superfluous.

+DECORATION.+ The temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum (long

miscalled the temple of Jupiter Stator), is a typical example of Roman

architectural decoration, in which richness was preferred to the subtler

refinements of design (see Fig. 44). The splendid figure-sculpture which

adorned the Greek monuments would have been inappropriate on the

theatres and thermæ of Rome or the provinces, even had there been the

taste or the skill to produce it. Conventional carved ornament was

substituted in its place, and developed into a splendid system of highly

decorative forms. Two principal elements appear in this decoration--the

acanthus-leaf, as the basis of a whole series of wonderfully varied

motives; and symbolism, represented principally by what are technically

termed _grotesques_--incongruous combinations of natural forms, as when

an infant’s body terminates in a bunch of foliage (Fig. 49). Only to a

limited extent do we find true sculpture employed as decoration, and

that mainly for triumphal arches or memorial columns.

[Illustration: FIG. 49--ROMAN CARVED ORNAMENT.

(Lateran Museum.)]

The architectural mouldings were nearly always carved, the Greek

water-leaf and egg-and-dart forming the basis of most of the

enrichments; but these were greatly elaborated and treated with more

minute detail than the Greek prototypes. Friezes and bands were commonly

ornamented with the foliated scroll or _rinceau_ (a convenient French

term for which we have no equivalent). This motive was as characteristic

of Roman art as the anthemion was of the Greek. It consists of a

continuous stem throwing out alternately on either side branches which

curl into spirals and are richly adorned with rosettes, acanthus-leaves,

scrolls, tendrils, and blossoms. In the best examples the detail was

modelled with great care and minuteness, and the motive itself was

treated with extraordinary variety and fertility of invention. A derived

and enriched form of the anthemion was sometimes used for bands and

friezes; and grotesques, dolphins, griffins, infant genii, wreaths,

festoons, ribbons, eagles, and masks are also common features in Roman

relief carving.

[Illustration: FIG. 50.--ROMAN CEILING PANELS.

(a, From Palmyra; b, Basilica of Constantine.)]

The Romans made great use of panelling and of moulded plaster in their

interior decoration, especially for ceilings. The panelling of domes and

vaults was usually roughly shaped in their first construction and

finished afterward in stucco with rich moulding and rosettes. The panels

were not always square or rectangular, as in Greek ceilings, but of

various geometric forms in pleasing combinations (Fig. 50). In works of

a small scale the panels and decorations were wrought in relief in a

heavy coating of plaster applied to the finished structure, and these

stucco reliefs are among the most refined and charming products of Roman

art. (Baths of Titus; Baths at Pompeii; Palace of the Cæsars and tombs

at Rome.)

+COLOR DECORATION.+ Plaster was also used as a ground for painting,

executed in distemper or by the encaustic process, wax liquefied by a

hot iron being the medium for applying the color in the latter case.

Pompeii and Herculaneum furnish countless examples of brilliant

wall-painting in which strong primary colors form the ground, and a

semi-naturalistic, semi-fantastic representation of figures,

architecture and landscape is mingled with festoons, vines, and purely

conventional ornament. Mosaic was also employed to decorate floors and

wall-spaces, and sometimes for ceilings.[13] The later imperial baths

and palaces were especially rich in mosaic of the kind called opus

Grecanicum, executed with numberless minute cubes of stone or glass, as

in the Baths of Caracalla and the Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli.

[Footnote 13: See Van Dyke’s _History of Paintings_, p. 33.]

To the walls of monumental interiors, such as temples, basilicas, and

thermæ, splendor of color was given by veneering them with thin slabs of

rare and richly colored marble. No limit seems to have been placed upon

the costliness or amount of these precious materials. Byzantine

architecture borrowed from this practice its system of interior color

decoration.

CHAPTER IX.

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE--_Continued_.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Same as for Chapter VIII. Also, Guhl and

Kohner, _Life of the Ancient Greeks and Romans_. Adams, _Ruins of

the Palace of Spalato_. Burn, _Rome and the Campagna_. Cameron,

_Roman Baths_. Mau, tr. by Kelcey, _Pompeii, its Life and Art_.

Mazois, _Ruines de Pompeii_. Von Presuhn, _Die neueste

Ausgrabungen zu Pompeii_. Wood, _Ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec_.

+THE ETRUSCAN STYLE.+ Although the first Greek architects were employed

in Rome as early as 493 B.C., the architecture of the Republic was

practically Etruscan until nearly 100 B.C. Its monuments, consisting

mainly of city walls, tombs, and temples, are all marked by a general

uncouthness of detail, denoting a lack of artistic refinement, but they

display considerable constructive skill. In the Etruscan walls we meet

with both polygonal and regularly coursed masonry; in both kinds the

true arch appears as the almost universal form for gates and openings.

A famous example is the Augustan Gate at Perugia, a late work rebuilt

about 40 B.C., but thoroughly Etruscan in style. At Volaterræ (Volterra)

is another arched gate, and in Perugia fragments of still another appear

built into the modern walls.

The Etruscans built both structural and excavated tombs; they consisted

in general of a single chamber with a slightly arched or gabled roof,

supported in the larger tombs on heavy square piers. The interiors were

covered with pictures; externally there was little ornament except about

the gable and doorway. The latter had a stepped or moulded frame with

curious _crossettes_ or ears projecting laterally at the top. The gable

recalled the wooden roofs of Etruscan temples, but was coarse in detail,

especially in its mouldings. Sepulchral monuments of other types are

also met with, such as _cippi_ or memorial pillars, sometimes in groups

of five on a single pedestal (tomb at Albano).

Among the temples of Etruscan style that of +Jupiter Capitolinus+ on the

Capitol at Rome, destroyed by fire in 80 B.C., was the chief. Three

narrow chambers side by side formed a cella nearly square in plan,

preceded by a hexastyle porch of huge Doric, or rather Tuscan, columns

arranged in three aisles, widely spaced and carrying ponderous wooden

architraves. The roof was of wood; the cymatium and ornaments, as well

as the statues in the pediment, were of terra-cotta, painted and gilded.

The details in general showed acquaintance with Greek models, which

appeared in debased and awkward imitations of triglyphs, cornices,

antefixæ, etc.

[Illustration: FIG. 51.--TEMPLE FORTUNA VIRILIS. PLAN.]

+GREEK STYLE.+ The victories of Marcellus at Syracuse, 212 B.C., Fabius

Maximus at Tarentum (209 B.C.), Flaminius (196 B.C.), Mummius (146

B.C.), Sulla (86 B.C.), and others in the various Greek provinces,

steadily increased the vogue of Greek architecture and the number of

Greek artists in Rome. The temples of the last two centuries B.C., and

some of earlier date, though still Etruscan in plan, were in many cases

strongly Greek in the character of their details. A few have remained to

our time in tolerable preservation. The temple of +Fortuna Virilis+

(really of Fors Fortuna), of the second century (?) B.C., is a

tetrastyle prostyle pseudoperipteral temple with a high _podium_ or

base, a typical Etruscan cella, and a deep porch, now walled up, but

thoroughly Greek in the elegant details of its Ionic order (Fig. 51).

Two circular temples, both called erroneously +Temples of Vesta+, one at

Rome near the Cloaca Maxima, the other at Tivoli, belong among the

monuments of Greek style. The first was probably dedicated to Hercules,

the second probably to the Sibyls; the latter being much the better

preserved of the two. Both were surrounded by peristyles of eighteen

Corinthian columns, and probably covered by domical roofs with gilded

bronze tiles. The Corinthian order appears here complete with its

modillion cornice, but the crispness of the detail and the fineness of

the execution are Greek and not Roman. These temples date from about 72

B.C., though the one at Rome was probably rebuilt in the first century

A.D. (Fig. 52).

[Illustration: FIG. 52.--CIRCULAR TEMPLE. TIVOLI.]

+IMPERIAL ARCHITECTURE; AUGUSTAN AGE.+ Even in the temples of Greek

style Roman conceptions of plan and composition are dominant. The Greek

architect was not free to reproduce textually Greek designs or details,

however strongly he might impress with the Greek character whatever he

touched. The demands of imperial splendor and the building of great

edifices of varied form and complex structure, like the thermæ and

amphitheatres, called for new adaptations and combinations of planning

and engineering. The reign of Augustus (27 B.C.-14 A.D.) inaugurated the

imperial epoch, but many works erected before and after his reign

properly belong to the Augustan age by right of style. In general, we

find in the works of this period the happiest combination of Greek

refinement with Roman splendor. It was in this period that Rome first

assumed the aspect of an opulent and splendid metropolis, though the way

had been prepared for this by the regularization and adornment of the

Roman Forum and the erection of many temples, basilicas, fora, arches,

and theatres during the generation preceding the accession of Augustus.

His reign saw the inception or completion of the portico of Octavia, the

Augustan forum, the Septa Julia, the first Pantheon, the adjoining

Thermæ of Agrippa, the theatre of Marcellus, the first of the imperial

palaces on the Palatine, and a long list of temples, including those of

the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux), of Mars Ultor, of Jupiter Tonans on

the Capitol, and others in the provinces; besides colonnades, statues,

arches, and other embellishments almost without number.

+LATER IMPERIAL WORKS.+ With the successors of Augustus splendor

increased to almost fabulous limits, as, for instance, in the vast

extent and the prodigality of ivory and gold in the famous Golden House

of Nero. After the great fire in Rome, presumably kindled by the agents

of this emperor, a more regular and monumental system of street-planning

and building was introduced, and the first municipal building-law was

decreed by him. To the reign of Vespasian (68-79 A.D.) we owe the

rebuilding in Roman style and with the Corinthian order of the temple of

Jupiter Capitolinus, the Baths of Titus, and the beginning of the

Flavian amphitheatre or Colosseum. The two last-named edifices both

stood on the site of Nero’s Golden House, of which the greater part was

demolished to make way for them. During the last years of the first

century the arch of Titus was erected, the Colosseum finished,

amphitheatres built at Verona, Pola, Reggio, Tusculum, Nîmes (France),

Constantine (Algiers), Pompeii and Herculanum (these last two cities and

Stabiæ rebuilt after the earthquake of 63 A.D.), and arches, bridges,

and temples erected all over the Roman world.

The first part of the second century was distinguished by the splendid

architectural achievements of the reign of Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) in

Rome and the provinces, especially Athens. Nearly all his works were

marked by great dignity of conception as well as beauty of detail.

During the latter part of the century a very interesting series of

buildings were erected in the Hauran (Syria), in which Greek and Arab

workmen under Roman direction produced examples of vigorous stone

architecture of a mingled Roman and Syrian character.

The most-remarkable thermæ of Rome belong to the third century--those of

Caracalla (211-217 A.D.) and of Diocletian (284-305 A.D.)--their ruins

to-day ranking among the most imposing remains of antiquity. In Syria

the temples of the Sun at Baalbec and Palmyra (273 A.D., under

Aurelian), and the great palace of Diocletian at Spalato, in Dalmatia

(300 A.D.), are still the wonder of the few travellers who reach those

distant spots.

While during the third and fourth centuries there was a marked decline

in purity and refinement of detail, many of the later works of the

period display a remarkable freedom and originality in conception. But

these works are really not Roman, they are foreign, that is, provincial

products; and the transfer of the capital to Byzantium revealed the

increasing degree in which Rome was coming to look to the East for her

strength and her art.

[Illustration: FIG. 53.--TEMPLE OF VENUS AND ROME. PLAN.]

+TEMPLES.+ The Romans built both rectangular and circular temples, and

there was much variety in their treatment. In the rectangular temples a

high _podium_, or basement, was substituted for the Greek stepped

stylobate, and the prostyle plan was more common than the peripteral.

The cella was relatively short and wide, the front porch inordinately

deep, and frequently divided by longitudinal rows of columns into three

aisles. In most cases the exterior of the cella in prostyle temples was

decorated by engaged columns. A barrel vault gave the interior an aspect

of spaciousness impossible with the Greek system of a wooden ceiling

supported on double ranges of columns. In the place of these, free or

engaged columns along the side-walls received the ribs of the vaulting.

Between these ribs the ceiling was richly panelled, or coffered and

sumptuously gilded. The temples of +Fortuna Virilis+ and of +Faustina+

at Rome (the latter built 141 A.D., and its ruins incorporated into the

modern church of S. Lorenzo in Miranda), and the beautiful and admirably

preserved +Maison Carrée+, at Nîmes (France) (4 A.D.) are examples of

this type. The temple of +Concord+, of which only the podium remains,

and the small temple of Julius (both of these in the Forum) illustrate

another form of prostyle temple in which the porch was on a long side of

the cella. Some of the larger temples were peripteral. The temple of the

+Dioscuri+ (Castor and Pollux) in the Forum, was one of the most

magnificent of these, certainly the richest in detail (Fig. 44). Very

remarkable was the double temple of +Venus and Rome+, east of the Forum,

designed by the Emperor Hadrian about 130 A.D. (Fig. 53). It was a vast

pseudodipteral edifice containing two cellas in one structure, their

statue-niches or apses meeting back to back in the centre. The temple

stood in the midst of an imposing columnar peribolus entered by

magnificent gateways. Other important temples have already been

mentioned on p. 91.

Besides the two circular temples already described, the temple of Vesta,

adjoining the House of the Vestals, at the east end of the Forum should

be mentioned. At Baalbec is a circular temple whose entablature curves

inward between the widely-spaced columns until it touches the cella in

the middle of each intercolumniation. It illustrates the caprices of

design which sometimes resulted from the disregard of tradition and the

striving after originality (273 A.D.).

[Illustration: FIG. 54.--PLAN OF THE PANTHEON.]

+THE PANTHEON.+ The noblest of all circular temples of Rome and of the

world was the +Pantheon+. It was built by Hadrian, 117-138 A.D., on the

site of the earlier rectangular temple of the same name erected by

Agrippa. It measures 142 feet in diameter internally; the wall is 20

feet thick and supports a hemispherical dome rising to a height of 140

feet (Figs. 54, 55). Light is admitted solely through a round opening 28

feet in diameter at the top of the dome, the simplest and most

impressive method of illumination conceivable. The rain and snow that

enter produce no appreciable effect upon the temperature of the vast

hall. There is a single entrance, with noble bronze doors, admitting

directly to the interior, around which seven niches, alternately

rectangular and semicircular in plan and fronted by Corinthian columns,

lighten, without weakening, the mass of the encircling wall. This wall

was originally incrusted with rich marbles, and the great dome, adorned

with deep coffering in rectangular panels, was decorated with rosettes

and mouldings in gilt stucco. The dome appears to have been composed of

numerous arches and ribs, filled in and finally coated with concrete.

A recent examination of a denuded portion of its inner surface has

convinced the writer that the interior panelling was executed after, and

not during, its construction, by hewing the panels out of the mass of

brick and concrete, without regard to the form and position of the

origin skeleton of ribs.

[Illustration: FIG. 55.--INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON.]

[Illustration: FIG. 56.--EXTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON.

(From model in Metropolitan Museum, New York.)]

The exterior (Fig. 56) was less successful than the interior. The gabled

porch of twelve superb granite columns 50 feet high, three-aisled in

plan after the Etruscan mode, and covered originally by a ceiling of

bronze, was a rebuilding with the materials and on the plan of the

original pronaos of the Pantheon of Agrippa. The circular wall behind it

is faced with fine brickwork, and displays, like the dome, many curious

arrangements of discharging arches, reminiscences of traditional

constructive precautions here wholly useless and fictitious because only

skin-deep. A revetment of marble below and plaster above once concealed

this brick facing. The portico, in spite of its too steep gable (once

filled with a “gigantomachia” in gilt bronze) and its somewhat awkward

association with a round building, is nevertheless a noble work, its

capitals in Pentelic marble ranking among the finest known examples of

the Roman Corinthian. Taken as a whole, the Pantheon is one of the great

masterpieces of the world’s architecture.

[Illustration: FIG. 57.--FORUM AND BASILICA OF TRAJAN.]

+FORA AND BASILICAS.+ The fora were the places for general public

assemblage. The chief of those in Rome, the +Forum Magnum+, or +Forum

Romanum+, was at first merely an irregular vacant space, about and in

which, as the focus of the civic life, temples, halls, colonnades, and

statues gradually accumulated. These chance aggregations the systematic

Roman mind reduced in time to orderly and monumental form; successive

emperors extended them and added new fora at enormous cost and with

great splendor of architecture. Those of Julius, Augustus, Vespasian,

and Nerva (or Domitian), adjoining the Roman Forum, were magnificent

enclosures surrounded by high walls and single or double colonnades.

Each contained a temple or basilica, besides gateways, memorial columns

or arches, and countless statues. The +Forum of Trajan+ surpassed all

the rest; it covered an area of thirty-five thousand square yards, and

included, besides the main area, entered through a triumphal arch, the

Basilica Ulpia, the temple of Trajan, and his colossal Doric column of

Victory. Both in size and beauty it ranked as the chief architectural

glory of the city (Fig. 57). The six fora together contained thirteen

temples, three basilicas, eight triumphal arches, a mile of porticos,

and a number of other public edifices.[14] Besides these, a net-work of

colonnades covered large tracts of the city, affording sheltered

communication in every direction, and here and there expanding into

squares or gardens surrounded by peristyles.

[Footnote 14: Lanciani: _Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent

Discoveries_, p. 89.]

[Illustration: FIG. 58.--BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE. PLAN.]

The public business of Rome, both judicial and commercial, was largely

transacted in the _basilicas_, large buildings consisting usually of a

wide and lofty central nave flanked by lower side-aisles, and

terminating at one or both ends in an apse or semicircular recess called

the _tribune_, in which were the seats for the magistrates. The

side-aisles were separated from the nave by columns supporting a

clearstory wall, pierced by windows above the roofs of the side-aisles.

In some cases the latter were two stories high, with galleries; in

others the central space was open to the sky, as at Pompeii, suggesting

the derivation of the basilica from the open square surrounded by

colonnades, or from the forum itself, with which we find it usually

associated. The most important basilicas in Rome were the +Sempronian+,

the +Æmilian+ (about 54 B.C.), the +Julian+ in the Forum Magnum (51

B.C.), and the +Ulpian+ in the Forum of Trajan (113 A.D.). The last two

were probably open basilicas, only the side-aisles being roofed. The

Ulpian (Fig. 57) was the most magnificent of all, and in conjunction

with the Forum of Trajan formed one of the most imposing of those

monumental aggregations of columnar architecture which contributed so

largely to the splendor of the Roman capital.

These monuments frequently suffered from the burning of their wooden

roofs. It was Constantine who completed the first vaulted and fireproof

basilica, begun by his predecessor and rival, Maxentius, on the site of

the former Temple of Peace (Figs. 58, 59). Its design reproduced on a

grand scale the plan of the tepidarium-halls of the thermæ, the

side-recesses of which were converted into a continuous side-aisle by

piercing arches through the buttress-walls that separated them. Above

the imposing vaults of these recesses and under the cross-vaults of the

nave were windows admitting abundant light. A _narthex_, or porch,

preceded the hall at one end; there were also a side entrance from the

Via Sacra, and an apse or tribune for the magistrates opposite each of

these entrances. The dimensions of the main hall (325 × 85 feet), the

height of its vault (117 feet), and the splendor of its columns and

incrustations excited universal admiration, and exercised a powerful

influence on later architecture.

[Illustration: FIG. 59.--BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE. RUINS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 60.--THERMÆ OF CARACALLA.

PLAN OF CENTRAL BLOCK.

A, _Caldarium, or Hot Bath_; B, _Intermediate Chamber_;

C, _Tepidarium, or Warm Bath_; D, _Frigidarium, or Cold Bath_;

E, _Peristyles_; a, _Gymnastic Rooms_; b, _Dressing Rooms_;

c, _Cooling Rooms_; d, _Small Courts_; e, _Entrances_;

v, _Vestibules_.]

+THERMÆ.+ The leisure of the Roman people was largely spent in the great

baths, or _thermæ_, which took the place substantially of the modern

club. The establishments erected by the emperors for this purpose were

vast and complex congeries of large and small halls, courts, and

chambers, combined with a masterly comprehension of artistic propriety

and effect in the sequence of oblong, square, oval, and circular

apartments, and in the relation of the greater to the lesser masses.

They were a combination of the Greek _palæstra_ with the Roman _balnea_,

and united in one harmonious design great public swimming-baths, private

baths for individuals and families, places for gymnastic exercises and

games, courts, peristyles, gardens, halls for literary entertainments,

lounging-rooms, and all the complex accommodation required for the

service of the whole establishment. They were built with apparent

disregard of cost, and adorned with splendid extravagance. The earliest

were the +Baths of Agrippa+ (27 B.C.) behind the Pantheon; next may be

mentioned those of +Titus+, built on the substructions of Nero’s Golden

House. The remains of the +Thermæ of Caracalla+ (211 A.D.) form the most

extensive mass of ruins in Rome, and clearly display the admirable

planning of this and similar establishments. A gigantic block of

buildings containing the three great halls for cold, warm, and hot

baths, stood in the centre of a vast enclosure surrounded by private

baths, _exedræ_, and halls for lecture-audiences and other gatherings.

The enclosure was adorned with statues, flower-gardens, and places for

out-door games. The +Baths of Diocletian+ (302 A.D.) embodied this

arrangement on a still more extensive scale; they could accommodate

3,500 bathers at once, and their ruins cover a broad territory near the

railway terminus of the modern city. The church of S. Maria degli Angeli

was formed by Michael Angelo out of the _tepidarium_ of these

baths--a colossal hall 340 × 87 feet, and 90 feet high. The original

vaulting and columns are still intact, and the whole interior most

imposing, in spite of later stucco disfigurements. The circular

_laconicum_ (sweat-room) serves as the porch to the present church. It

was in the building of these great halls that Roman architecture reached

its most original and characteristic expression. Wholly unrelated to any

foreign model, they represent distinctively Roman ideals, both as to

plan and construction.

[Illustration: FIG. 61.--ROMAN THEATRE. (HERCULANUM.)

(From model.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 62.--COLOSSEUM. HALF PLAN.]

+PLACES OF AMUSEMENT.+ The earliest Roman theatres differed from the

Greek in having a nearly semicircular plan, and in being built up from

the level ground, not excavated in a hillside (Fig. 61). The first

theatre was of wood, built by Mummius 145 B.C., and it was not until

ninety years later that stone was first substituted for the more

perishable material, in the theatre of Pompey. The +Theatre of

Marcellus+ (23-13 B.C.) is in part still extant, and later theatres in

Pompeii, Orange (France), and in the Asiatic provinces are in excellent

preservation. The orchestra was not, as in the Greek theatre, reserved

for the choral dance, but was given up to spectators of rank; the stage

was adorned with a permanent architectural background of columns and

arches, and sometimes roofed with wood, and an arcade or colonnade

surrounded the upper tier of seats. The amphitheatre was a still more

distinctively Roman edifice. It was elliptical in plan, surrounding an

elliptical arena, and built up with continuous encircling tiers of

seats. The earliest stone amphitheatre was erected by Statilius Taurus

in the time of Augustus. It was practically identical in design with the

later and much larger Flavian amphitheatre, commonly known as the

+Colosseum+, begun by Vespasian and completed 82 A.D. (Fig. 62). This

immense structure measured 607 × 506 feet in plan and was 180 feet high;

it could accommodate eighty-seven thousand spectators. Engaged columns

of the Tuscan, Ionic, and Corinthian orders decorated three stories of

the exterior; the fourth was a nearly unbroken wall with slender

Corinthian pilasters. Solidly constructed of travertine, concrete, and

tufa, the Colosseum, with its imposing but monotonous exterior, almost

sublime by its scale and seemingly endless repetition, but lacking in

refinement or originality of detail and dedicated to bloody and cruel

sports, was a characteristic product of the Roman character and

civilization. At Verona, Pola, Capua, and many cities in the foreign

provinces there are well-preserved remains of similar structures.

Closely related to the amphitheatre were the circus and the stadium. The

+Circus Maximus+ between the Palatine and Aventine hills was the oldest

of those in Rome. That erected by Caligula and Nero on the site

afterward partly occupied by St. Peter’s, was more splendid, and is said

to have been capable of accommodating over three hundred thousand

spectators after its enlargement in the fourth century. The long, narrow

race-course was divided into two nearly equal parts by a low parapet,

the _spina_, on which were the goals (_metæ_) and many small decorative

structures and columns. One end of the circus, as of the stadium also,

was semicircular; the other was segmental in the circus, square in the

stadium; a colonnade or arcade ran along the top of the building, and

the entrances and exits were adorned with monumental arches.

+TRIUMPHAL ARCHES AND COLUMNS.+ Rome and the provincial cities abounded

in monuments commemorative of victory, usually single or triple arches

with engaged columns and rich sculptural adornments, or single colossal

columns supporting statues. The arches were characteristic products of

Roman design, and some of them deserve high praise for the excellence of

their proportions and the elegance of their details. There were in Rome

in the second century A.D., thirty-eight of these monuments. The +Arch

of Titus+ (71-82 A.D.) is the simplest and most perfect of those still

extant in Rome; the arch of +Septimius Severus+ in the Forum (203 A.D.)

and that of +Constantine+ (330 A.D.) near the Colosseum, are more

sumptuous but less pure in detail. The last-named was in part enriched

with sculptures taken from the earlier arch of Trajan. The statues of

Dacian captives on the attic (_attic_ = a species of subordinate story

added above the main cornice) of this arch were a fortunate addition,

furnishing a _raison-d’être_ for the columns and broken entablatures on

which they rest. Memorial columns of colossal size were erected by

several emperors, both in Rome and abroad. Those of +Trajan+ and of

+Marcus Aurelius+ are still standing in Rome in perfect preservation.

The first was 140 feet high including the pedestal and the statue which

surmounted it; its capital marked the height of the ridge levelled by

the emperor for the forum on which the column stands. Its most striking

peculiarity is the spiral band of reliefs winding around the shaft from

bottom to top and representing the Dacian campaigns of Trajan. The other

column is of similar design and dimensions, but greatly inferior to the

first in execution. Both are really towers, with interior stair-cases

leading to the top.

[Illustration: FIG. 63.--ARCH OF CONSTANTINE.

(From model in Metropolitan Museum, New York.)]

+TOMBS.+ The Romans developed no special and national type of tomb, and

few of their sepulchral monuments were of large dimensions. The most

important in Rome were the pyramid of +Caius Cestius+ (late first

century B.C.), and the circular tombs of +Cecilia Metella+ (60 B.C.),

+Augustus+ (14 A.D.) and +Hadrian+, now the Castle of S. Angelo (138

A.D.). The latter was composed of a huge cone of marble supported on a

cylindrical structure 230 feet in diameter standing on a square podium

300 feet long and wide. The cone probably once terminated in the gilt

bronze pine-cone now in the Giardino della Pigna of the Vatican. In the

Mausoleum of Augustus a mound of earth planted with trees crowned a

similar circular base of marble on a podium 220 feet square, now buried.

The smaller tombs varied greatly in size and form. Some were vaulted

chambers, with graceful internal painted decorations of figures and vine

patterns combined with low-relief enrichments in stucco. Others were

designed in the form of altars or sarcophagi, as at Pompeii; while

others again resembled ædiculæ, little temples, shrines, or small towers

in several stories of arches and columns, as at St. Rémy (France).

+PALACES AND DWELLINGS.+ Into their dwellings the Romans carried all

their love of ostentation and personal luxury. They anticipated in many

details the comforts of modern civilization in their furniture, their

plumbing and heating, and their utensils. Their houses may be divided

into four classes: the palace, the villa, the _domus_ or ordinary house,

and the _insula_ or many-storied tenement built in compact blocks. The

first three alone concern us, and will be taken up in the above order.

The imperial +palaces+ on the Palatine Hill comprised a wide range in

style and variety of buildings, beginning with the first simple house of

Augustus (26 B.C.), burnt and rebuilt 3 A.D. Tiberius, Caligula, and

Nero added to the Augustan group; Domitian rebuilt a second time and

enlarged the palace of Augustus, and Septimius Severus remodelled the

whole group, adding to it his own extraordinary seven-storied palace,

the Septizonium. The ruins of these successive buildings have been

carefully excavated, and reveal a remarkable combination of

dwelling-rooms, courts, temples, libraries, basilicas, baths, gardens,

peristyles, fountains, terraces, and covered passages. These were

adorned with a profusion of precious marbles, mosaics, columns, and

statues. Parts of the demolished palace of Nero were incorporated in the

substructions of the Baths of Titus. The beautiful arabesques and

plaster reliefs which adorned them were the inspiration of much of the

fresco and stucco decoration of the Italian Renaissance. At Spalato, in

Dalmatia, are the extensive ruins of the great +Palace of Diocletian+,

which was laid out on the plan of a Roman camp, with two intersecting

avenues (Fig. 64). It comprised a temple, mausoleum, basilica, and other

structures besides those portions devoted to the purposes of a royal

residence.

[Illustration: FIG. 64.--PALACE OF DIOCLETIAN. SPALATO.]

The +villa+ was in reality a country palace, arranged with special

reference to the prevailing winds, exposure to the sun and shade, and

the enjoyment of a wide prospect. Baths, temples, _exedræ_, theatres,

tennis-courts, sun-rooms, and shaded porticoes were connected with the

house proper, which was built around two or three interior courts or

peristyles. Statues, fountains, and colossal vases of marble adorned the

grounds, which were laid out in terraces and treated with all the

fantastic arts of the Roman landscape-gardener. The most elaborate and

extensive villa was that of +Hadrian+, at Tibur (Tivoli); its ruins,

covering hundreds of acres, form one of the most interesting spots to

visit in the neighborhood of Rome.

[Illustration: FIG. 65.--HOUSE OF PANSA, POMPEII.

s, _Shops_; v, _Vestibule_; f, _Family Rooms_; k, _Kitchen_;

l, _Lavarium_; _P, P, P_, _Peristyles_.]

There are few remains in Rome of the +domus+ or private house. Two,

however, have left remarkably interesting ruins--the +Atrium Vestæ+, or

House of the Vestal Virgins, east of the Forum, a well-planned and

extensive house surrounding a cloister or court; and the +House of

Livia+, so-called, on the Palatine Hill, the walls and decorations of

which are excellently preserved. The typical Roman house in a provincial

town is best illustrated by the ruins of Pompeii and Herculanum, which,

buried by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., have been partially

excavated since 1721. The Pompeiian house (Fig. 65) consisted of several

courts or _atria_, some of which were surrounded by colonnades and

called _peristyles_. The front portion was reserved for shops, or

presented to the street a wall unbroken save by the entrance; all the

rooms and chambers opened upon the interior courts, from which alone

they borrowed their light. In the brilliant climate of southern Italy

windows were little needed, as sufficient light was admitted by the

door, closed only by portières for the most part; especially as the

family life was passed mainly in the shaded courts, to which fountains,

parterres of shrubbery, statues, and other adornments lent their

inviting charm. The general plan of these houses seems to have been of

Greek origin, as well as the system of decoration used on the walls.

These, when not wainscoted with marble, were covered with fantastic, but

often artistic, painted decorations, in which an imaginary architecture

as of metal, a fantastic and arbitrary perspective, illusory pictures,

and highly finished figures were the chief elements. These were executed

in brilliant colors with excellent effect. The houses were lightly

built, with wooden ceilings and roofs instead of vaulting, and usually

with but one story on account of the danger from earthquakes. That the

workmanship and decoration were in the capital often superior to what

was to be found in a provincial town like Pompeii, is evidenced by

beautiful wall-paintings and reliefs discovered in Rome in 1879 and now

preserved in the Museo delle Terme. More or less fragmentary remains of

Roman houses have been found in almost every corner of the Roman empire,

but nowhere exhibiting as completely as in Pompeii the typical Roman

arrangement.

+WORKS OF UTILITY.+ A word should be said about Roman engineering works,

which in many cases were designed with an artistic sense of proportion

and form which raises them into the domain of genuine art. Such were

especially the bridges, in which a remarkable effect of monumental

grandeur was often produced by the form and proportions of the arches

and piers, and an appropriate use of rough and dressed masonry, as in

the Pons Ælius (Ponte S. Angelo), the great bridge at Alcantara (Spain),

and the Pont du Gard, in southern France. The aqueducts are impressive

rather by their length, scale, and simplicity, than by any special

refinements of design, except where their arches are treated with some

architectural decoration to form gates, as in the Porta Maggiore, at

Rome.

+MONUMENTS:+ (Those which have no important extant remains are

given in italics.) TEMPLES: _Jupiter Capitolinus_, 600 B.C.;

_Ceres, Liber, and Libera_, 494 B.C. (ruins of later rebuilding in

S. Maria in Cosmedin); _first T. of Concord_ (rebuilt in Augustan

age), 254 B.C.; _first marble temple_ in _portico of Metellus_, by

a Greek, Hermodorus, 143 B.C.; temples of Fortune at Præneste and

at Rome, and of “Vesta” at Rome, 83-78 B.C.; of “Vesta” at Tivoli,

and of Hercules at Cori, 72 B.C.; _first Pantheon_, 27 B.C. In

Augustan Age temples of _Apollo_, Concord rebuilt, Dioscuri,

_Julius_, _Jupiter Stator_, _Jupiter Tonans_, Mars Ultor, Minerva

(_at Rome_ and Assisi), Maison Carrée at Nîmes, Saturn; at

Puteoli, Pola, etc. _T. of Peace_; _T. Jupiter Capitolinus_,

rebuilt 70 A.D.; temple at Brescia. Temple of Vespasian, 96 A.D.;

also _of Minerva_ in Forum of Nerva; _of Trajan_, 117 A.D.; second

Pantheon; T. of Venus and Rome at Rome, and of Jupiter Olympius at

Athens, 135-138 A.D.; Faustina, 141 A.D.; many in Syria; temples

of Sun at _Rome_, Baalbec, and Palmyra, cir. 273 A.D.; of Romulus,

305 A.D. (porch S. Cosmo and Damiano). PLACES OF ASSEMBLY:

FORA--Roman, Julian, 46 B.C.; Augustan, 40-42 B.C.; _of Peace_, 75

A.D.; Nerva, 97 A.D.; Trajan (by Apollodorus of Damascus, 117 A.D.)

BASILICAS: _Sempronian_, _Æmilian_, 1st century B.C.; Julian, 51

B.C.; _Septa Julia_, 26 B.C.; the Curia, later rebuilt by

Diocletian, 300 A.D. (now Church of S. Adriano); _at Fano_, 20

A.D. (?); Forum and Basilica at Pompeii, 60 A.D.; of Trajan; of

Constantine, 310-324 A.D. THEATRES (th.) and AMPHITHEATRES (amp.):

th. _Pompey_, 55 B.C.; of _Balbus_ and of Marcellus, 13 B.C.; th.

and amp. at Pompeii and Herculanum; Colosseum at Rome, 78-82 A.D.;

th. at Orange and in Asia Minor; amp. at Albano, Constantine,

Nîmes, Petra, Pola, Reggio, Trevi, Tusculum, Verona, etc.; amp.

Castrense at Rome, 96 A.D. Circuses and stadia at Rome. THERMÆ: of

Agrippa, 27 B.C.; _of Nero_; of Titus, 78 A.D. _Domitian_, 90

A.D.; Caracalla, 211 A.D.; Diocletian, 305 A.D.; _Constantine_,

320 A.D.; “Minerva Medica,” 3d or 4th century A.D. ARCHES: _of

Stertinius_, 196 B.C.; _Scipio_, 190 B.C.; _Augustus_, 30 B.C.;

Titus, 71-82 A.D.; _Trajan_, 117 A.D.; Severus, 203 A.D.;

Constantine, 320 A.D.; of Drusus, Dolabella, Silversmiths, 204

A.D.; Janus Quadrifrons, 320 A.D. (?); all at Rome. Others at

Benevento, Ancona, Rimini in Italy; also at Athens, and at Reims

and St. Chamas in France. Columns of Trajan, _Antoninus_, Marcus

Aurelius at Rome, others at Constantinople, Alexandria, etc.

TOMBS: along Via Appia and Via Latina, at Rome; Via Sacra at

Pompeii; tower-tombs at St. Rémy in France; rock-cut at Petra; at

Rome, of Caius Cestius and Cecilia Metella, 1st century B.C.; of

Augustus, 14 A.D.; Hadrian, 138 A.D. PALACES and PRIVATE HOUSES:

On Palatine, of Augustus, Tiberius, Nero, Domitian, Septimius

Severus, _Elagabalus_; Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli; palaces of

Diocletian at Spalato and _of Constantine_ at Constantinople.

House of Livia on Palatine (Augustan period); of Vestals, rebuilt

by Hadrian, cir. 120 A.D. Houses at Pompeii and Herculanum, cir.

60-79 A.D.; Villas of Gordianus (“Tor’ de’ Schiavi,” 240 A.D.),

and _of Sallust_ at Rome and _of Pliny_ at Laurentium.

CHAPTER X.

EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Bunsen, _Die Basiliken christlichen Roms_.

Butler, _Architecture and other Arts in Northern Central Syria_.

Corroyer, _L’architecture romane_. Cummings, _A History of

Architecture in Italy_. Essenwein (Handbuch d. Architektur),

_Ausgänge der klassischen Baukunst_. Gutensohn u. Knapp,

_Denkmäler der christlichen Religion_. Hübsch, _Monuments de

l’architecture chrétienne_. Lanciani, _Pagan and Christian Rome_.

Mothes, _Die Basilikenform bei den Christen_, etc. Okely,

_Development of Christian Architecture in Italy_. Von Quast, _Die

altchristlichen Bauwerke zu Ravenna_. De Rossi, _Roma

Sotterranea_. De Vogüé, _Syrie Centrale_; _Églises de la Terre

Sainte_.

+INTRODUCTORY.+ The official recognition of Christianity in the year 328

by Constantine simply legalized an institution which had been for three

centuries gathering momentum for its final conquest of the antique

world. The new religion rapidly enlisted in its service for a common

purpose and under a common impulse races as wide apart in blood and

culture as those which had built up the art of imperial Rome. It was

Christianity which reduced to civilization in the West the Germanic

hordes that had overthrown Rome, bringing their fresh and hitherto

untamed vigor to the task of recreating architecture out of the decaying

fragments of classic art. So in the East its life-giving influence awoke

the slumbering Greek art-instinct to new triumphs in the arts of

building, less refined and perfect indeed, but not less sublime than

those of the Periclean age. Long before the Constantinian edict, the

Christians in the Eastern provinces had enjoyed substantial freedom of

worship. Meeting often in the private basilicas of wealthy converts, and

finding these, and still more the great public basilicas, suited to the

requirements of their worship, they early began to build in imitation of

these edifices. There are many remains of these early churches in

northern Africa and central Syria.

+EARLY CHRISTIAN ART IN ROME.+ This was at first wholly sepulchral,

developing in the catacombs the symbols of the new faith. Once

liberated, however, Christianity appropriated bodily for its public

rites the basilica-type and the general substance of Roman architecture.

Shafts and capitals, architraves and rich linings of veined marble, even

the pagan Bacchic symbolism of the vine, it adapted to new uses in its

own service. Constantine led the way in architecture, endowing Bethlehem

and Jerusalem with splendid churches, and his new capital on the

Bosphorus with the first of the three historic basilicas dedicated to

the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia). One of the greatest of innovators, he

seems to have had a special predilection for circular buildings, and the

tombs and baptisteries which he erected in this form, especially that

for his sister Constantia in Rome (known as Santa Costanza, Fig. 66),

furnished the prototype for numberless Italian baptisteries in later

ages.

[Illustration: FIG. 66.--STA. COSTANZA, ROME.]

The Christian basilica (see Figs. 67, 68) generally comprised a broad

and lofty nave, separated by rows of columns from the single or double

side-aisles. The aisles had usually about half the width and height of

the nave, and like it were covered with wooden roofs and ceilings. Above

the columns which flanked the nave rose the lofty clearstory wall,

pierced with windows above the side-aisle roofs and supporting the

immense trusses of the roof of the nave. The timbering of the latter was

sometimes bare, sometimes concealed by a richly panelled ceiling,

carved, gilded, and painted. At the further end of the nave was the

sanctuary or apse, with the seats for the clergy on a raised platform,

the _bema_, in front of which was the altar. Transepts sometimes

expanded to right and left before the altar, under which was the

_confessio_ or shrine of the titular saint or martyr.

An _atrium_ or forecourt surrounded by a covered arcade preceded the

basilica proper, the arcade at the front of the church forming a porch

or _narthex_, which, however, in some cases existed without the atrium.

The exterior was extremely plain; the interior, on the contrary, was

resplendent with incrustations of veined marble and with sumptuous

decorations in glass mosaic (called _opus Grecanicum_) on a blue or

golden ground. Especially rich were the half-dome of the apse and the

wall-space surrounding its arch and called the _triumphal arch_; next in

decorative importance came the broad band of wall beneath the clearstory

windows. Upon these surfaces the mosaic-workers wrought with minute

cubes of colored glass pictures and symbols almost imperishable, in

which the glow of color and a certain decorative grandeur of effect in

the composition went far to atone for the uncouth drawing. With growing

wealth and an increasingly elaborate ritual, the furniture and

equipments of the church assumed greater architectural importance.

A large rectangular space was retained for the choir in front of the

bema, and enclosed by a breast-high parapet of marble, richly inlaid. On

either side were the pulpits or _ambones_ for the Gospel and Epistle.

A lofty canopy was built over the altar, the _baldaquin_, supported on

four marble columns. A few basilicas were built with side-aisles, in two

stories, as in S. Lorenzo and Sta. Agnese. Adjoining the basilica in the

earlier examples were the baptistery and the tomb of the saint, circular

or polygonal buildings usually; but in later times these were replaced

by the font or baptismal chapel in the church and the _confessio_ under

the altar.

[Illustration: FIG. 67.--PLAN OF THE BASILICA OF ST. PAUL.]

Of the two Constantinian basilicas in Rome, the one dedicated to +St.

Peter+ was demolished in the fifteenth century; that of +St. John

Lateran+ has been so disfigured by modern alterations as to be

unrecognizable. The former of the two adjoined the site of the martyrdom

of St. Peter in the circus of Caligula and Nero; it was five-aisled, 380

feet in length by 212 feet in width. The nave was 80 feet wide and 100

feet high, and the disproportionately high clearstory wall rested on

horizontal architraves carried by columns. The impressive dimensions and

simple plan of this structure gave it a majesty worthy of its rank as

the first church of Christendom. +St. Paul beyond the Walls+ (S. Paolo

fuori le mura), built in 386 by Theodosius, resembled St. Peter’s

closely in plan (Figs. 67, 68). Destroyed by fire in 1821, it has been

rebuilt with almost its pristine splendor, and is, next to the modern

St. Peter’s and the Pantheon, the most impressive place of worship in

Rome. +Santa Maria Maggiore+,[15] though smaller in size, is more

interesting because it so largely retains its original aspect, its

Renaissance ceiling happily harmonizing with its simple antique lines.

Ionic columns support architraves to carry the clearstory, as in St.

Peter’s. In most other examples, St. Paul’s included, arches turned from

column to column perform this function. The first known case of such use

of classic columns as arch-bearers was in the palace of Diocletian at

Spalato; it also appears in Syrian buildings of the third and fourth

centuries A.D.

[Footnote 15: Hereafter the abbreviation S. M. will be generally

used instead of the name Santa Maria.]

[Illustration: FIG. 68.--ST. PAUL BEYOND THE WALLS. INTERIOR.]

The basilica remained the model for ecclesiastical architecture in Rome,

without noticeable change either of plan or detail, until the time of

the Renaissance. All the earlier examples employed columns and capitals

taken from ancient ruins, often incongruous and ill-matched in size and

order. +San Clemente+ (1084) has retained almost intact its early

aspect, its choir-enclosure, baldaquin, and ambones having been well

preserved or carefully restored. Other important basilicas are mentioned

in the list of monuments on pages 118, 119.

+RAVENNA.+ The fifth and sixth centuries endowed Ravenna with a number

of notable buildings which, with the exception of the cathedral,

demolished in the last century, have been preserved to our day. Subdued

by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in 537, Ravenna became the

meeting-ground for Early Christian and Byzantine traditions and the

basilican and circular plans are both represented. The two churches

dedicated to St. Apollinaris, +S. Apollinare Nuovo+ (520) in the city,

and +S. Apollinare in Classe+ (538) three miles distant from the city,

in what was formerly the port, are especially interesting for their fine

mosaics, and for the impost-blocks interposed above the capitals of

their columns to receive the springing of the pier-arches. These blocks

appear to be somewhat crude modifications of the fragmentary architraves

or entablatures employed in classic Roman architecture to receive the

springing of vaults sustained by columns, and became common in Byzantine

structures (Fig. 73). The use of external arcading to give some slight

adornment to the walls of the second of the above-named churches, and

the round bell-towers of brick which adjoined both of them, were first

steps toward the development of the “wall-veil” or arcaded decoration,

and of the campaniles, which in later centuries became so characteristic

of north Italian churches (see Chapter XIII.). In Rome the campaniles

which accompany many of the mediæval basilicas are square and pierced

with many windows.

The basilican form of church became general in Italy, a large proportion

of whose churches continued to be built with wooden roofs and with but

slight deviations from the original type, long after the appearance of

the Gothic style. The chief departures from early precedent were in the

exterior, which was embellished with marble incrustations as in

S. Miniato (Florence); or with successive stories of wall-arcades, as in

many churches in Pisa and Lucca (see Fig. 90); until finally the

introduction of clustered piers, pointed arches, and vaulting, gradually

transformed the basilican into the Italian Romanesque and Gothic styles.

+SYRIA AND THE EAST.+ In Syria, particularly the central portion, the

Christian architecture of the 3d to 8th centuries produced a number of

very interesting monuments. The churches built by Constantine in

Syria--the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (nominally built by his

mother), of the Ascension at Jerusalem, the magnificent octagonal church

on the site of the Temple, and finally the somewhat similar church at

Antioch--were the most notable Christian monuments in Syria. The first

three on the list, still extant in part at least, have been so altered

by later additions and restorations that their original forms are only

approximately known from early descriptions. They were all of large

size, and the octagonal church on the Temple platform was of exceptional

magnificence.[16] The columns and a part of the marble incrustations of

the early design are still visible in the “Mosque of Omar,” but most of

the old work is concealed by the decoration of tiles applied by the

Moslems, and the whole interior aspect altered by the wood-and-plaster

dome with which they replaced the simpler roof of the original.

[Footnote 16: Fergusson (_History of Architecture_, vol. ii., pp.

408, 432) contends that this was the real Constantinian church of

the Holy Sepulchre, and that the one called to-day by that name

was erected by the Crusaders in the twelfth century. The more

general view is that the latter was originally built by

Constantine as the Church of the Sepulchre, though subsequently

much altered, and that the octagonal edifice was also his work,

but erected under some other name. Whether this church was later

incorporated in the “Mosque of Omar,” or merely furnished some of

the materials for its construction, is not quite clear.]

[Illustration: FIG. 69.--CHURCH AT KALB LOUZEH.]

Christian architecture in Syria soon, however, diverged from Roman

traditions. The abundance of hard stone, the total lack of clay or

brick, the remoteness from Rome, led to a peculiar independence and

originality in the forms and details of the ecclesiastical as well as of

the domestic architecture of central Syria. These innovations upon Roman

models resulted in the development of distinct types which, but for the

arrest of progress by the Mohammedan conquest in the seventh century,

would doubtless have inaugurated a new and independent style of

architecture. Piers of masonry came to replace the classic column, as at

Tafkha (third or fourth century), Rouheiha and Kalb Louzeh (fifth

century? Fig. 69); the ceilings in the smaller churches were often

formed with stone slabs; the apse was at first confined within the main

rectangle of the plan, and was sometimes square. The exterior assumed a

striking and picturesque variety of forms by means of turrets, porches,

and gables. Singularly enough, vaulting hardly appears at all, though

the arch is used with fine effect. Conventional and monastic groups of

buildings appear early in Syria, and that of +St. Simeon Stylites+ at

Kelat Seman is an impressive and interesting monument. Four three-aisled

wings form the arms of a cross, meeting in a central octagonal open

court, in the midst of which stood the column of the saint. The eastern

arm of the cross forms a complete basilica of itself, and the whole

cross measures 330 × 300 feet. Chapels, cloisters, and cells adjoin the

main edifice.

[Illustration: FIG. 70.--CATHEDRAL AT BOZRAH.]

Circular and polygonal plans appear in a number of Syrian examples of

the early sixth century. Their most striking feature is the inscribing

of the circle or polygon in a square which forms the exterior outline,

and the use of four niches to fill out the corners. This occurs at Kelat

Seman in a small double church, perhaps the tomb and chapel of a martyr;

in the cathedral at +Bozrah+ (Fig. 70), and in the small domical church

of +St. George+ at +Ezra+. These were probably the prototypes of many

Byzantine churches like St. Sergius at Constantinople, and San Vitale at

Ravenna (Fig. 74), though the exact dates of the Syrian churches are not

known. The one at Ezra is the only one of the three which has a dome,

the others having been roofed with wood.

The interesting domestic architecture of this period is preserved in

whole towns and villages in the Hauran, which, deserted at the Arab

conquest, have never been reoccupied and remain almost intact but for

the decay of their wooden roofs. They are marked by dignity and

simplicity of design, and by the same picturesque massing of gables and

roofs and porches which has already been remarked of the churches. The

arches are broad, the columns rather heavy, the mouldings few and

simple, and the scanty carving vigorous and effective, often strongly

Byzantine in type.

Elsewhere in the Eastern world are many early churches of which even the

enumeration would exceed the limits of this work. Salonica counts a

number of basilicas and several domical churches. The church of +St.

George+, now a mosque, is of early date and thoroughly Roman in plan and

section, of the same class with the Pantheon and the tomb of Helena, in

both of which a massive circular wall is lightened by eight niches. At

Angora (Ancyra), Hierapolis, Pergamus, and other points in Asia Minor;

in Egypt, Nubia, and Algiers, are many examples of both circular and

basilican edifices of the early centuries of Christianity. In

Constantinople there remains but a single representative of the

basilican type, the church of +St. John Studius+, now the Emir Akhor

mosque.

+MONUMENTS+: ROME: 4th century: St. Peter’s, Sta. Costanza, 330?;

Sta. Pudentiana, 335 (rebuilt 1598); tomb of St. Helena;

Baptistery of Constantine; St. Paul’s beyond the Walls, 386; St.

John Lateran (wholly remodelled in modern times). 5th century:

Baptistery of St. John Lateran; Sta. Sabina, 425; Sta. Maria

Maggiore, 432; S. Pietro in Vincoli, 442 (greatly altered in

modern times). 6th century: S. Lorenzo, 580 (the older portion in

two stories); SS. Cosmo e Damiano. 7th century: Sta. Agnese, 625;

S. Giorgio in Velabro, 682. 8th century: Sta. Maria in Cosmedin;

S. Crisogono. 9th century: S. Nereo ed Achilleo; Sta. Prassede;

Sta. Maria in Dominica. 12th and 13th centuries: S. Clemente,

1118; Sta. Maria in Trastevere; S. Lorenzo (nave); Sta. Maria in

Ara Coeli. RAVENNA: Baptistery of S. John, 400 (?); S. Francesco;

S. Giovanni Evangelista, 425; Sta. Agata, 430; S. Giovanni

Battista, 439; tomb of Galla Placidia, 450; S. Apollinare Nuovo,

500-520; S. Apollinare in Classe, 538; St. Victor; Sta. Maria in

Cosmedin (the Arian Baptistery); tomb of Theodoric (Sta. Maria

della Rotonda, a decagonal two-storied mausoleum, with a low dome

cut from a single stone 36 feet in diameter), 530-540. ITALY IN

GENERAL: basilica at Parenzo, 6th century; cathedral and Sta.

Fosca at Torcello, 640-700; at Naples Sta. Restituta, 7th century;

others, mostly of 10th-13th centuries, at Murano near Venice, at

Florence (S. Miniato), Spoleto, Toscanella, etc.; baptisteries at

Asti, Florence, Nocera dei Pagani, and other places. IN SYRIA AND

THE EAST: basilicas of the Nativity at Bethlehem, of the Sepulchre

and of the Ascension at Jerusalem; also polygonal church on Temple

platform; these all of 4th century. Basilicas at Bakouzah, Hass,

Kelat Seman, Kalb Louzeh, Rouheiha, Tourmanin, etc.; circular

churches, tombs, and baptisteries at Bozrah, Ezra, Hass, Kelat

Seman, Rouheiha, etc.; all these 4th-8th centuries. Churches at

Constantinople (Holy Wisdom, St. John Studius, etc.), Hierapolis,

Pergamus, and Thessalonica (St. Demetrius, “Eski Djuma”); in Egypt

and Nubia (Djemla, Announa, Ibreem, Siout, etc.); at Orléansville

in Algeria. (For churches, etc., of 8th-10th centuries in the

West, see Chapter XIII.)

CHAPTER XI.

BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Essenwein, Hübsch, Von Quast. Also,

Bayet, _L’Art Byzantin_. Choisy, _L’Art de bâtir chez les

Byzantins_. Lethaby and Swainson, _Sancta Sophia_. Ongania, _La

Basilica di San Marco_. Pulgher, _Anciennes Églises Byzantines de

Constantinople_. Salzenberg, _Altchristliche Baudenkmäle von

Constantinopel_. Texier and Pullan, _Byzantine Architecture_.

+ORIGIN AND CHARACTER.+ The decline and fall of Rome arrested the

development of the basilican style in the West, as did the Arab conquest

later in Syria. It was otherwise in the new Eastern capital founded by

Constantine in the ancient Byzantium, which was rising in power and

wealth while Rome lay in ruins. Situated at the strategic point of the

natural highway of commerce between East and West, salubrious and

enchantingly beautiful in its surroundings, the new capital grew rapidly

from provincial insignificance to metropolitan importance. Its founder

had embellished it with an extraordinary wealth of buildings, in which,

owing to the scarcity of trained architects, quantity and cost doubtless

outran quality. But at least the tameness of blindly followed precedent

was avoided, and this departure from traditional tenets contributed

undoubtedly to the originality of Byzantine architecture. A large part

of the artisans employed in building were then, as now, from Asia Minor

and the Ægean Islands, Greek in race if not in name. An Oriental taste

for brilliant and harmonious color and for minute decoration spread over

broad surfaces must have been stimulated by trade with the Far East and

by constant contact with Oriental peoples, costumes, and arts. An

Asiatic origin may also be assigned to the methods of vaulting employed,

far more varied than the Roman, not only in form but also in materials

and processes. From Roman architecture, however, the Byzantines borrowed

the fundamental notion of their structural art; that, namely, of

distributing the weights and strains of their vaulted structures upon

isolated and massive points of support, strengthened by deep buttresses,

internal or external, as the case might be. Roman, likewise, was the use

of polished monolithic columns, and the incrustation of the piers and

walls with panels of variegated marble, as well as the decoration of

plastered surfaces by fresco and mosaic, and the use of _opus sectile_

and _opus Alexandrinum_ for the production of sumptuous marble

pavements. In the first of these processes the color-figures of the

pattern are formed each of a single piece of marble cut to the shape

required; in the second the pattern is compounded of minute squares,

triangles, and curved pieces of uniform size. Under these combined

influences the artists of Constantinople wrought out new problems in

construction and decoration, giving to all that they touched a new and

striking character.

There is no absolute line of demarcation, chronological, geographical,

or structural, between Early Christian and Byzantine architecture. But

the former was especially characterized by the basilica with three or

five aisles, and the use of wooden roofs even in its circular edifices;

the vault and dome, though not unknown, being exceedingly rare.

Byzantine architecture, on the other hand, rarely produced the simple

three-aisled or five-aisled basilica, and nearly all its monuments were

vaulted. The dome was especially frequent, and Byzantine architecture

achieved its highest triumphs in the use of the _pendentive_, as the

triangular spherical surfaces are called, by the aid of which a dome can

be supported on the summits of four arches spanning the four sides of a

square, as explained later. There is as little uniformity in the plans

of Byzantine buildings as in the forms of the vaulting. A few types of

church-plan, however, predominated locally in one or another centre; but

the controlling feature of the style was the dome and the constructive

system with which it was associated. The dome, it is true, had long been

used by the Romans, but always on a circular plan, as in the Pantheon.

It is also a fact that pendentives have been found in Syria and Asia

Minor older than the oldest Byzantine examples. But the special feature

characterizing the Byzantine dome on pendentives was its almost

exclusive association with plans having piers and columns or aisles,

with the dome as the central and dominant feature of the complex design

(see plans, Figs. 74, 75, 78). Another strictly Byzantine practice was

the piercing of the lower portion of the dome with windows forming a

circle or crown, and the final development of this feature into a high

drum.

+CONSTRUCTION.+ Still another divergence from Roman methods was in the

substitution of brick and stone masonry for concrete. Brick was used for

the mass as well as the facing of walls and piers, and for the vaulting

in many buildings mainly built of stone. Stone was used either alone or

in combination with brick, the latter appearing in bands of four or five

courses at intervals of three or four feet. In later work a regular

alternation of the two materials, course for course, was not uncommon.

In piers intended to support unusually heavy loads the stone was very

carefully cut and fitted, and sometimes tied and clamped with iron.

Vaults were built sometimes of brick, sometimes of cut stone; in a few

cases even of earthenware jars fitting into each other, and laid up in a

continuous contracting spiral from the base to the crown of a dome, as

in San Vitale at Ravenna. Ingenious processes for building vaults

without centrings were made use of--processes inherited from the

drain-builders of ancient Assyria, and still in vogue in Armenia,

Persia, and Asia Minor. The groined vault was common, but always

approximated the form of a dome, by a longitudinal convexity upward in

the intersecting vaults. The aisles of Hagia Sophia[17] display a

remarkable variety of forms in the vaulting.

[Footnote 17: “St. Sophia,” the common name of this church, is a

misnomer. It was not dedicated to a saint at all, but to the

Divine Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), which name the Turks have retained

in the softened form “Aya Sofia.”]

[Illustration: FIG. 71.--DIAGRAM OF PENDENTIVES.]

+DOMES.+ The dome, as we have seen, early became the most characteristic

feature of Byzantine architecture; and especially the dome on

pendentives. If a hemisphere be cut by five planes, four perpendicular

to its base and bounding a square inscribed therein, and the fifth plane

parallel to the base and tangent to the semicircular intersections made

by the first four, there will remain of the original surface only four

triangular spaces bounded by arcs of circles. These are called

_pendentives_ (Fig. 71 a). When these are built up of masonry, each

course forms a species of arch, by virtue of its convexity. At the crown

of the four arches on which they rest, these courses meet and form a

complete circle, perfectly stable and capable of sustaining any

superstructure that does not by excessive weight disrupt the whole

fabric by overthrowing the four arches which support it. Upon these

pendentives, then, a new dome may be started of any desired curvature,

or even a cylindrical drum to support a still loftier dome, as in the

later churches (Fig. 71 b). This method of covering a square is simpler

than the groined vault, having no sharp edges or intersections; it is at

least as effective architecturally, by reason of its greater height in

the centre; and is equally applicable to successive bays of an oblong,

cruciform, and even columnar building. In the great cisterns at

Constantinople vast areas are covered by rows of small domes supported

on ranges of columns.

The earlier domes were commonly pierced with windows at the base, this

apparent weakening of the vault being compensated for by strongly

buttressing the piers between the windows, as in Hagia Sophia. Here

forty windows form a crown of light at the spring of the dome, producing

an effect almost as striking as that of the simple _oculus_ of the

Pantheon, and celebrated by ancient writers in the most extravagant

terms. In later and smaller churches a high drum was introduced beneath

the dome, in order to secure, by means of longer windows, more light

than could be obtained by merely piercing the diminutive domes.

Buttressing was well understood by the Byzantines, whose plans were

skilfully devised to provide internal abutments, which were often

continued above the roofs of the side-aisles to prop the main vaults,

precisely as was done by the Romans in their thermæ and similar halls.

But the Byzantines, while adhering less strictly than the Romans to

traditional forms and processes, and displaying much more ready

contrivance and special adaptation of means to ends, never worked out

this pregnant structural principle to its logical conclusion as did the

Gothic architects of Western Europe a few centuries later.

+DECORATION+. The exteriors of Byzantine buildings (except in some of

the small churches of late date) were generally bare and lacking in

beauty. The interiors, on the contrary, were richly decorated, color

playing a much larger part than carving in the designs. Painting was

resorted to only in the smaller buildings, the more durable and splendid

medium of mosaic being usually preferred. This was, as a rule, confined

to the vaults and to those portions of the wall-surfaces embraced by the

vaults above their springing. The colors were brilliant, the background

being usually of gold, though sometimes of blue or a delicate green.

Biblical scenes, symbolic and allegorical figures and groups of saints

adorned the larger areas, particularly the half-dome of the apse, as in

the basilicas. The smaller vaults, the soffits of arches, borders of

pictures, and other minor surfaces, received a more conventional

decoration of crosses, monograms, and set patterns.

[Illustration: FIG. 72.--SPANDRIL. HAGIA SOPHIA.]

The walls throughout were sheathed with slabs of rare marble in panels

so disposed that the veining should produce symmetrical figures. The

panels were framed in billet-mouldings, derived perhaps from classic

dentils; the billets or projections on one side the moulding coming

opposite the spaces on the other. This seems to have been a purely

Byzantine feature.

+CARVED DETAILS.+ Internally the different stories were marked by

horizontal bands and cornices of white or inlaid marble richly carved.

The arch-soffits, the archivolts or bands around the arches, and the

spandrils between them were covered with minute and intricate incised

carving. The motives used, though based on the acanthus and anthemion,

were given a wholly new aspect. The relief was low and flat, the leaves

sharp and crowded, and the effect rich and lacelike, rather than

vigorous. It was, however, well adapted to the covering of large areas

where general effect was more important than detail. Even the capitals

were treated in the same spirit. The impost-block was almost universal,

except where its use was rendered unnecessary by giving to the capital

itself the massive pyramidal form required to receive properly the

spring of the arch or vault. In such cases (more frequent in

Constantinople than elsewhere) the surface of the capital was simply

covered with incised carving of foliage, basketwork, monograms, etc.;

rudimentary volutes in a few cases recalling classic traditions (Figs.

72, 73). The mouldings were weak and poorly executed, and the vigorous

profiles of classic cornices were only remotely suggested by the

characterless aggregations of mouldings which took their place.

[Illustration: FIG. 73.--CAPITAL WITH IMPOST BLOCK, S. VITALE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 74.--ST. SERGIUS, CONSTANTINOPLE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 75.--PLAN OF HAGIA SOPHIA.]

[Illustration: FIG. 76.--SECTION OF HAGIA SOPHIA.]

+PLANS.+ The remains of Byzantine architecture are almost exclusively of

churches and baptisteries, but the plans of these are exceedingly

varied. The first radical departure from the basilica-type seems to have

been the adoption of circular or polygonal plans, such as had usually

served only for tombs and baptisteries. The Baptistery of St. John at

Ravenna (early fifth century) is classed by many authorities as a

Byzantine monument. In the early years of the sixth century the adoption

of this model had become quite general, and with it the development of

domical design began to advance. The church of +St. Sergius+ at

Constantinople (Fig. 74), originally joined to a short basilica

dedicated to St. Bacchus (afterward destroyed by the Turks), as in the

double church at Kelat Seman, was built about 520; that of +San Vitale+

at Ravenna was begun a few years later; both are domical churches on an

octagonal plan, with an exterior aisle. Semicircular niches--four in St.

Sergius and eight in San Vitale--projecting into the aisle, enlarge

somewhat the area of the central space and give variety to the internal

effect. The origin of this characteristic feature may be traced to the

eight niches of the Pantheon, through such intermediate examples as the

temple of Minerva Medica at Rome. The true pendentive does not appear in

these two churches. Timidly employed up to that time in small

structures, it received a remarkable development in the magnificent

church of +Hagia Sophia+, built by Anthemius of Tralles and Isodorus of

Miletus, under Justinian, 532-538 A.D. In the plan of this marvellous

edifice (Fig. 75) the dome rests upon four mighty arches bounding a

square, into two of which open the half-domes of semicircular apses.

These apses are penetrated and extended each by two smaller niches and a

central arch, and the whole vast nave, measuring over 200 × 100 feet, is

flanked by enormously wide aisles connecting at the front with a

majestic narthex. Huge transverse buttresses, as in the Basilica of

Constantine (with whose structural design this building shows striking

affinities), divide the aisles each into three sections. The plan

suggests that of St. Sergius cut in two, with a lofty dome on

pendentives over a square plan inserted between the halves. Thus was

secured a noble and unobstructed hall of unrivalled proportions and

great beauty, covered by a combination of half-domes increasing in span

and height as they lead up successively to the stupendous central vault,

which rises 180 feet into the air and fitly crowns the whole. The

imposing effect of this low-curved but loftily-poised dome, resting as

it does upon a crown of windows, and so disposed that its summit is

visible from every point of the nave (as may be easily seen from an

examination of the section, Fig. 76), is not surpassed in any interior

ever erected.

[Illustration: FIG. 77.--INTERIOR OF HAGIA SOPHIA,

CONSTANTINOPLE.]

The two lateral arches under the dome are filled by clearstory walls

pierced by twelve windows, and resting on arcades in two stories carried

by magnificent columns taken from ancient ruins. These separate the nave

from the side-aisles, which are in two stories forming galleries, and

are vaulted with a remarkable variety of groined vaults. All the masses

are disposed with studied reference to the resistance required by the

many and complex thrusts exerted by the dome and other vaults. That the

earthquakes of one thousand three hundred and fifty years have not

destroyed the church is the best evidence of the sufficiency of these

precautions.

Not less remarkable than the noble planning and construction of this

church was the treatment of scale and decoration in its interior design.

It was as conspicuously the masterpiece of Byzantine architecture as the

Parthenon was of the classic Greek. With little external beauty, it is

internally one of the most perfectly composed and beautifully decorated

halls of worship ever erected. Instead of the simplicity of the Pantheon

it displays the complexity of an organism of admirably related parts.

The division of the interior height into two stories below the spring of

the four arches, reduces the component parts of the design to moderate

dimensions, so that the scale of the whole is more easily grasped and

its vast size emphasized by the contrast. The walls are incrusted with

precious marbles up to the spring of the vaulting; the capitals,

spandrils, and soffits are richly and minutely carved with incised

ornament, and all the vaults covered with splendid mosaics. Dimmed by

the lapse of centuries and disfigured by the vandalism of the Moslems,

this noble interior, by the harmony of its coloring and its impressive

grandeur, is one of the masterpieces of all time (Fig. 77).

+LATER CHURCHES.+ After the sixth century no monuments were built at all

rivalling in scale the creations of the former period. The later

churches were, with few exceptions, relatively small and trivial.

Neither the plan nor the general aspect of Hagia Sophia seems to have

been imitated in these later works. The crown of dome-windows was

replaced by a cylindrical drum under the dome, which was usually of

insignificant size. The exterior was treated more decoratively than

before, by means of bands and incrustations of colored marble, or

alternations of stone and brick; and internally mosaic continued to be

executed with great skill and of great beauty until the tenth century,

when the art rapidly declined. These later churches, of which a number

were spared by the Turks, are, therefore, generally pleasing and elegant

rather than striking or imposing.

[Illustration: FIG. 78.--PLAN OF ST. MARK’S, VENICE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 79.--INTERIOR OF ST. MARK’S.]

+FOREIGN MONUMENTS.+ The influence of Byzantine art was wide-spread,

both in Europe and Asia. The leading city of civilization through the

Dark Ages, Constantinople influenced Italy through her political and

commercial relations with Ravenna, Genoa, and Venice. The church of +St.

Mark+ in the latter city was one result of this influence (Figs. 78,

79). Begun in 1063 to replace an earlier church destroyed by fire, it

received through several centuries additions not always Byzantine in

character. Yet it was mainly the work of Byzantine builders, who copied

most probably the church of the Apostles at Constantinople, built by

Justinian. The picturesque but wholly unstructural use of columns in the

entrance porches, the upper parts of the façade, the wooden cupolas over

the five domes, and the pointed arches in the narthex, are deviations

from Byzantine traditions dating in part from the later Middle Ages

Nothing could well be conceived more irrational, from a structural point

of view, than the accumulation of columns in the entrance-arches; but

the total effect is so picturesque and so rich in color, that its

architectural defects are easily overlooked. The external veneering of

white and colored marble occurs rarely in the East, but became a

favorite practice in Venice, where it continued in use for five hundred

years. The interior of St. Mark’s, in some respects better preserved

than that of Hagia Sophia, is especially fine in color, though not equal

in scale and grandeur to the latter church. With its five domes it has

less unity of effect than Hagia Sophia, but more of the charm of

picturesqueness, and its less brilliant and simpler lighting enhances

the impressiveness of its more modest dimensions.

In Russia and Greece the Byzantine style has continued to be the

official style of the Greek Church. The Russian monuments are for the

most part of a somewhat fantastic aspect, the Muscovite taste having

introduced many innovations in the form of bulbous domes and other

eccentric details. In Greece there are few large churches, and some of

the most interesting, like the Cathedral at Athens, are almost toy-like

in their diminutiveness. On +Mt. Athos+ (Hagion Oros) is an ancient

monastery which still retains its Byzantine character and traditions. In

Armenia (as at Ani, Etchmiadzin, etc.) are also interesting examples of

late Armeno-Byzantine architecture, showing applications to exterior

carved detail of elaborate interlaced ornament looking like a re-echo of

Celtic MSS. illumination, itself, no doubt, originating in Byzantine

traditions. But the greatest and most prolific offspring of Byzantine

architecture appeared after the fall of Constantinople (1453) in the new

mosque-architecture of the victorious Turks.

+MONUMENTS.+ CONSTANTINOPLE: St. Sergius, 520; Hagia Sophia,

532-538; Holy Apostles by Justinian (demolished); Holy Peace (St.

Irene) originally by Constantine, rebuilt by Justinian, and again

in 8th century by Leo the Isaurian; Hagia Theotokos, 12th century

(?); Monétes Choras (“Kahiré Djami”), 10th century; Pantokrator;

“Fetiyeh Djami.” Cisterns, especially the “Bin Bir Direk” (1,001

columns) and “Yere Batan Serai;” palaces, few vestiges except the

great hall of the Blachernæ palace. SALONICA: Churches--of Divine

Wisdom (“Aya Sofia”) St. Bardias, St. Elias. RAVENNA: San Vitale,

527-540. VENICE: St. Mark’s, 977-1071; “Fondaco dei Turchi,” now

Civic Museum, 12th century. Other churches at Athens and Mt.

Athos; at Misitra, Myra, Ancyra, Ephesus, etc.; in Armenia at Ani,

Dighour, Etchmiadzin, Kouthais, Pitzounda, Usunlar, etc.; tombs at

Ani, Varzhahan, etc.; in Russia at Kieff (St. Basil, Cathedral),

Kostroma, Moscow (Assumption, St. Basil, Vasili Blaghennoi, etc.),

Novgorod, Tchernigoff; at Kurtea Darghish in Wallachia, and many

other places.

CHAPTER XII.

SASSANIAN AND MOHAMMEDAN ARCHITECTURE.

(ARABIAN, MORESQUE, PERSIAN, INDIAN, AND TURKISH.)