The Etruscans, at an early day, inhabited the west coast of Italy,
between the rivers Arno and Tiber. At the time of the founding of
Rome as a city, they were a civilized people and showed considerable
architectural skill, and their arts had a very great influence on Roman
art. The remains of several Etruscan towns show that their masonry was of
what has been called a Cyclopean character—that is, the stones were of an
enormous size. The massive blocks being fitted together with consummate
accuracy, much of the masonry endures to the present day. The temples,
palaces and dwelling houses which made up the cities so fortified, have
all disappeared, and the only structural remains of Etruscan art are
tombs—some cut in live rock, and some detached structures. These built
of heavy stones and arched securely, still exist as monuments of the
science and skill of those early builders. They were acquainted with
and extensively used the true radiating arch, composed of wedge-shaped
stones. From them the Romans learned to construct arches, and combined
the arch with the trabeated or lintel mode which they copied from the
Greeks. Hence arose a style distinctively Roman.
The largest Etruscan temple of which any record remains was that of
Jupiter Capitolinus, at Rome, one of the most splendid temples of
antiquity.
The last of the classical styles of antiquity is the Roman. This seems
rather an amalgamation of several other styles than an original,
independent creation. It was formed slowly, and is harmonious, though
uniting elements widely dissimilar.
The Grecian artist was imaginative and idealistic in the highest degree.
He seemed to have an innate genius for art and beauty, and was eager
to perpetuate in marble his brightest conceptions of excellence. The
stern, practical Roman, realistic in every pore, eager for conquest,
was dominated by the idea of bringing all nations under his sway, and
of making his city the capital of the world. At first he looked with
disdain on the fine arts, in all their forms, and regarded a love for the
beautiful, whether in literature or art, as an evidence of effeminacy.
For nearly five hundred years there was very little architectural taste
displayed in the buildings at Rome. All public works, as the Appian Way,
bridges and aqueducts bore the utilitarian stamp. Their best buildings
were of brick or the local stone, and there is little evidence that
architecture was studied as a fine art until about 150 B. C.
After the fall of Carthage, and the destruction of Corinth, when Greece
became a Roman province—both which events occurred in the year 146 B.
C.—Rome became desirous of emulating the older civilization which she had
destroyed. She had, by her conquests, immense wealth, and expended much,
both privately and publicly, in erecting monuments, many of which, more
or less altered, remain to the present day.
The first marble temple in Rome was built by the consul Q. Metellus
Macedonicus, who died 115 B. C. From that period Roman architecture
showed a wonderful diversity in the objects to which it was applied. Not
only tombs, temples, and palaces, but baths, theaters, and amphitheaters,
basilicas, aqueducts and triumphal arches were planned and built as
elaborately as the temples of the gods.
Under the emperors the architectural display reached its full
magnificence. The boast of Augustus, that he found Rome of brick, and
left her of marble, expresses in a few words the great feature of his
reign, and of that of several of the succeeding emperors.
Though the most destructive of all agencies—hostile invasions,
conflagrations, and long ages of neglect—have done their utmost to
destroy all vestiges of Imperial Rome, there still remain relics enough
to make the city of the Cæsars, after Athens, the richest store of
classical architectural antiquities in the world.