CHAPTER III

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE

After the Golden Age of Greek architecture properly so called was over, a kind of aftermath prevailed for some little time in the peninsula and the outlying colonies of Greece, to be succeeded by a transition time to which the name of the Hellenistic has been given, during which is supposed to have been inaugurated the use of the arch and the vault, which were in course of time to revolutionise the art of building.

It has long been customary to give to the Etruscans, an Asiatic people who in very early times occupied a considerable portion of Italy, the credit of the first introduction of the arch in Western Europe. It is however now more generally believed that the Roman style of building was an offshoot of the Hellenistic, in which the dome was certainly employed, though no existing examples of its use can be quoted. The city of Alexandria, founded about 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, is known to have had four principal colonnaded streets leading from a four-arched central building, and many are of opinion that much of the town was built over arched cisterns. The dome may possibly have been in the first instance introduced into western Europe as a cover for the hot baths in which the wealthy delighted, and its form was probably the same as that of the one preserved at Pompeii. The famous arched drain at Rome, known as the Cloaca Maxima, so constantly referred to as the greatest masterpiece of the Etruscans was not, it has now been proved, built until after their subjugation and extinction as a nation. For all that they were without doubt most skilful architects and engineers; the walls of their cities were of cyclopean masonry and were entered from arched gateways, a good example of which is to be seen at Volterra, constructed of wedge-shaped stones fixed without cement. Their rock-cut tombs, such as those at Corneto, Vulci, and Chiusi, are divided into many chambers, the walls adorned with paintings, the roof upheld by columns, and the facades resembling those of Egyptian temples, whilst the tumuli in which they sometimes buried their dead are surmounted by pyramids of earth resting on stone foundations.

From whatever source Roman architects got their inspiration, they very soon absorbed all external influences and stamped the buildings they erected with a character of their own. From the first sun-dried bricks, sometimes combined with stone, were the chief materials used, even the grander structures of the best period such as the huge palaces and halls were of plastered brickwork, stone having been as a general rule reserved for such works as temples, theatres, and triumphal arches. Concrete was also largely employed, and timber in many cases was turned to account for roofing. The most distinctive peculiarity of the architecture of the Romans is the vaulted roof, which they employed in an infinite variety of ways, introducing it at every possible opportunity. The simplest form, known as the waggon or barrel vault, is a semicircular arch spanning two walls, whilst a more elaborate contrivance consists of two intersecting vaults of the same height crossing each other at right angles, which was used in Rome as early as 75 B.C. These two forms were sometimes supplemented by what are distinguished as conches or half-domes over external semicircular recesses, of which the apse is a characteristic example. With the aid of these three varieties of vaulting, that were occasionally combined with consummate skill, the Romans were able to roof in large or small circular spaces, and in some few cases, as in the Baths of Caracalla at Rome, they even to a certain extent anticipated the clever contrivance known as the pendentive, a triangular piece of vaulting springing from the corners of a right-angled enclosure, that was later brought to such perfection in Byzantine architecture.

With their wonderful system of vaulting the Romans combined the columnation and entablature of the Greeks, introducing innovations however that were in many cases anything but improvements. Thus they sometimes supplemented the foliage of the Corinthian capital with the volutes of the Ionic; whilst what is known as the Tuscan style is really merely a modification of the Doric, and is wanting in the simple dignity that characterised the latter, the metopes being adorned with sculptures very inferior to the beautiful figure subjects of the Parthenon and other Greek temples. Roman architects were in fact rather skilful engineers and adapters of the aesthetic conceptions of others than original designers of new forms of beauty, but they were unrivalled in their power of harmoniously co-ordinating in a single building an infinite variety of structural features. They were moreover exceptionally successful in the laying out of cities, as proved by the wonderful groups of buildings in the fora or public squares in which courts of justice and markets were held, of the capital and other cities, and by the fine continuous vistas of their streets, in which irregularities were masked by clever contrivances, adding greatly to the symmetry of the general effect. Temples, basilicas, baths, bridges, aqueducts, triumphal arches, palaces, and private houses were all set in the environment most suitable to them, and even tombs were ranged according to a definite plan, not, as in most modern cemeteries, dotted here and there in an arbitrary manner.

The earliest Roman works of architecture were of a purely utilitarian character, and in addition to the Cloaca Maxima already mentioned the most noteworthy still in existence are the bridges over the Tiber, the aqueducts of the Campagna outside Rome, and the so-called Pont du Gard at Nimes, France. The most ancient temples greatly resemble those of Greece, and amongst them may be named as specially typical those of Fortuna Virilis and of Antoninus and Faustina, both now in use as churches, and that of Venus and Rome, all in the capital, that of Diana at Nimes known as the Maison Carree, and that of the Sun at Baalbec. Of later date are the beautiful circular temples, of which the grandest example is the Pantheon of Rome, built under Hadrian about A.D. 117, in which Roman architecture reached its noblest development. The colonnaded porch with entablature and pediment, that detracts so much from the external effect of this magnificent building, did not originally belong to it, but formed the entrance of a temple built by Agrippa more than a century before, and was added to the Rotunda after the completion of the latter. The internal diameter of the Pantheon is 142 feet 6 inches, and its height at the apex of the dome is the same; its walls are 20 feet thick, and its concrete dome is adorned with deeply recessed panels or coffers and has a single circular opening at the crown through which alone light is admitted. The floor is of marble; bronze pilasters flank doorways of the same metal, the oldest existing specimens of their kind, and it is supposed that when first completed the whole of the outside was cased in white and the inside in coloured marbles.

Other circular temples of Roman origin, but on a much smaller scale than the Pantheon, are the Temple of Vesta and that in the Forum Boarium, Rome, the latter much injured and spoiled by a modern roof quite out of character with it; the one at Tivoli near the capital, known as that of the Sybils, still beautiful in spite of the loss of much of its entablature and many of its columns; the Temple of Jupiter at Spalato with a domed roof upheld by columns; and that at Baalbec, which has the distinctive feature of a curved instead of a perfectly flat entablature.

A very special interest attaches to the Roman basilica on account of its having so long been supposed to have been the type on which the earliest Christian churches were built. Basilicas were used as courts of justice and exchanges, more rarely as market-places, and the most ancient are said to have been merely square spaces, enclosed within rows of columns open to the air, that were however soon succeeded by walled buildings roofed with timber or with vaults of concrete supported on massive piers of stone. In them a raised semicircular space at the eastern end was divided off by columns known as cancelli for the use of the magistrate and his lectors, and between it and the main body of the hall, which was divided by columns into a nave and aisles, rose the altar on which sacrifice was offered up before any business of importance was entered upon.

A good example of an early Roman basilica is that called the Ulpian in the Forum of Trajan, Rome, dating from A.D. 98, which is said to have had a flat roof and double aisles, the latter surmounted by galleries, whilst that of Maxentius and Constantine, the ruins of which are known as the Temple of Peace, also in the capital, of considerably later date, A.D. 312, had a groined central roof and barrel-vaulted side aisles.

It was in their Thermae or Baths rather than in their Temples and Basilicas that the Roman architects achieved their greatest triumphs. These were vast complex structures fitted up with every conceivable luxury for the use of bathers, with a large hall artificially heated and known as the tepidarium, open colonnaded courts, and many subsidiary buildings including gymnasia, debating rooms, &c. They combined simple grandeur of structure with rich internal decoration. The most ancient Thermae in Rome, of which extensive remains still exist, were those of Caracalla, erected in A.D. 217, already referred to in connection with the earliest use of the contrivance which foreshadowed the pendentive. Rising from a lofty platform, the noble tepidarium was roofed in by three fine intersecting vaults, and its walls were cased in marble. With their supplementary buildings the baths covered a space some 110 yards square, and beneath them were many vaulted rooms for the attendants on the bathers. Amongst their ruins were found the masterpieces of sculpture known as the Farnese Hercules and the Farnese Bull, but when they were first placed there, there is no evidence to prove.

Larger and more imposing in appearance even than the Baths of Caracalla were those of Diocletian, that were capable of accommodating more than 3000 bathers and were built about A.D. 303. The grand hall or tepidarium and the barrel-vaulted entrance portico were most successfully converted in the sixteenth century into the church of S. Maria degli Angeli by Michael Angelo, and one of two circular structures that flanked the encircling wall was later consecrated under the name of S. Bernardo, and is still used as a place of worship.

Next in importance to the Thermae rank the Amphitheatres of the Roman Empire, in which gladiatorial contests and other trials of skill took place, and without which no town however small was considered complete. Though their detail was almost exclusively borrowed from the Greeks--tiers of arches resting on columns and surmounted by an entablature rising one above the other--their architects managed to impress on them a distinctive character of their own. Finest of all still existing examples is the Flavian Amphitheatre, generally known as the Coliseum at Rome, which occupies the site of the famous Golden House of Nero, and was completed about A.D. 70. It is of elliptical plan, measures some 612 by 515 feet, and was from 160 to 180 feet high. It was capable of containing some 80,000 spectators, and was for a long period the chief meeting-place of the Roman citizens. The exterior is four stories high and consists of a series of three rows of arches, the lowest with Doric, the second with Ionic, and the third with Corinthian capitals, the last surmounted by a row of Corinthian pilasters, forming a fourth story, which is supposed to have been originally of wood and to have been rebuilt in stone considerably later. The groups of seats, which, with the central arena they commanded, were protected from the weather by a moveable awning called the velarium, corresponded with the exterior stories, and to each tier a staircase led up, wide vaulted corridors connecting the various entrances with each other, running round the entire building, the whole producing a most harmonious and pleasing effect.

At Verona, Capria, Pola, and Pezzuoli in Italy, at Syracuse in Sicily, and at Arles and Nimes in France are remains of important Roman amphitheatres, and of the rarer theatres used for dramatic entertainments must be named the two well-preserved examples at Pompeii, the ruins of the Odeion of Herodes Atticus at Athens, and most ancient of all, the remains of the so-called Theatre of Marcellus at Rome now incorporated with the Orsinii Palace, all which appear to have resembled the Coliseum to a great extent in their general style and decoration.

Of the vast and imposing palaces built or added to by successive Roman emperors, that included audience chambers, basilicas, stadia for athletic games, galleries, state dining-halls, baths, and many suites of apartments for various purposes, there exist unfortunately but a few remains. Nero's Golden House, several of the ruins of which were excavated in the 16th century, and inspired Raphael with some of the decorative details of the loggia of the Vatican, is said to have covered more than a mile of ground, and at one time the whole of the Palatine Hill was occupied by stately edifices, with the Palace of Augustus in the centre and those of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and Septimius Severus, who greatly added to and modified the work of his predecessors, grouped about them, but all that can now be fully identified are some of the ground plans with a few of the minor details of structure. To atone for this however, much of the Palace of Diocletian at Spalato in Dalmatia, to which that emperor withdrew after his abdication in A.D. 305, which originally formed a small town in itself, is still to a great extent intact, including a temple now used as a cathedral, a gallery 520 feet long by 24 wide, and a few of the covered arcades that originally connected its various parts.

What is left of the so-called Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli near Rome proves that it too was of vast extent, with a great variety of buildings, different suites of rooms having been occupied according to the seasons, and at Pompeii and Herculaneum, thanks to the remarkable preservation of many of the houses in them, notably that named after Pansa, the domestic architecture of the private citizens of the great Roman Empire, of which picturesque arcaded courts were a noteworthy feature, can be well studied, as well as that of the temples, triumphal arches, public baths, &c., all of which greatly resembled those of the Capital.

Whether the Romans were or were not the first people of Western Europe to use the arch, they certainly took a very great delight in it, setting up ornately decorated examples of it at the entrances to their towns, their fora, and their bridges, as well as in commemoration of great victories in war and of the completion of civic enterprises. Most remarkable of those still standing in Rome are the Arch of Titus of one span only, erected in memory of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Emperor after whom it is named; the triple-span arch of Septimius Severus, and the smaller one of Constantine. Though they were rather triumphs of engineering skill than works of architecture properly so called, the fine stone built aqueducts such as those in the Campagna of Rome and at Nimes must be mentioned here on account of the aesthetic effect of the long rows of lofty arches, and a few words must also be said of the Pillars of Victory, of which that of Trajan at Rome is the most notable still extant, adorned as it is with a spiral of finely sculptured bas-reliefs.

In the early days of the Roman power it was customary to cremate the dead, the ashes being preserved in urns that were ranged in cells known as Columbaria, generally hewn in the living rock. As time went on, however, the Egyptian mode of sepulchre was adopted. Bodies were embalmed and laid in stone or marble coffins which were placed in the basements of tombs of two or more stories, surmounted by round towers with pointed or circular roofs. Of these complex resting-places of the dead the finest now in existence is the Mole or Mausoleum of Hadrian, known as the Castle of S. Angelo, at Rome, which is some 300 feet high and was originally encased in marble. No burial was allowed within the walls of a Roman city, but the approaches were generally lined with tombs as at Rome, at Pompeii, and elsewhere, most of them, though on a smaller scale, of a similar plan to that of Hadrian.