CHAPTER III

ROMAN CIVILISATION

Such empire as Hellas achieved was succeeded by the Roman Empire. The earlier, as we have seen, was an empire loosely founded on kinship of race, ideals, and character, and on common interests of commerce. It was an empire of individualism; preserving the individuality of cities and their individual states, producing a few men of rare individuality and, as it spread throughout the Mediterranean, planting colonies which maintained their independence both against the Motherland of Hellas and the people in their immediate surroundings. It was, from the first, an empire of the spirit and, as such, survived its physical dissolution and has maintained its dominion over the human mind even to the present time.

On the contrary, the Roman Empire, in so far as it succeeded, was an empire of constructive organisation. It grew, cell by cell, each added cell becoming gradually impregnated with the life-principle of the earliest one, so that every part of the unwieldy body was an organic part of the whole. Thus, in time, each independent city and its adjoining community, alien races and huge slices of foreign territory, became gradually absorbed into the practical system of government that originated with the little settlement of Latins which first occupied the Palatine Hill and then extended its authority over the seven hills of Rome. Part after part became absorbed into the system of the Lex Romana and enjoyed the benefits of the Pax Romana. The Roman citizenship, judiciously extended over the whole empire, carried with it substantial rights and equally substantial duties. The provinces of the empire contributed men of learning, generals, and statesmen to the central government. In time some of the provinces, notably those of Spain and Southern France, became more characteristically Roman than Rome herself. They had absorbed her system and her culture, and, far removed from the petty intrigues which convulsed the capital, reached a degree of civilisation that represented the finest product of the Roman ideal; an ideal that included individual uprightness, a sense of service and self-sacrifice for the common weal, and a high regard for order. It was a practical ideal, little concerned with abstractions, not devoted to excessive refinement, but centred on the effectual accomplishment of the individual and collective requirements of everyday life.

It is true that this ideal was never fully achieved. This is only to say that the ideal was truly human and therefore at the mercy of human chances and weaknesses. Moreover, that it was really an ideal; a principle of life, that is to say, which by reason of its bigness was only possible of partial achievement. And if the Romans failed in achieving theirs, they failed nobly, and with sufficient success to have left behind them a legacy of law and order and constructive principles of government that, like the cultural ideals of the Hellenes, survive to the present time.

And the Roman Empire played a part in the progress of the world, more immediately necessary than that of Hellas. The latter’s Empire of Spirit was in advance of its age. The world outside of the scattered outposts of Hellas was too rude, too backward in the very necessaries of life, to accept its message of beauty. Recognising this, the Hellenes called all other races and nations barbarians and held aloof from them. The Romans, on the contrary, absorbed the aliens, instilled into them the rudiments of their own civilisation, while taking advantage of any good trait in the people themselves, so that they helped them to rise out of themselves to a higher plane of living. In a lawless world they became the great exponents of order, the upbuilders and engineers of a system of organised society, and so firmly did they lay the foundations and so strongly did they build that, although subsequent hordes of barbarians overthrew the dominion of the empire of Rome and laid waste many of the visible signs of her building, the destroyers were gradually absorbed into her system and became its continuers.

Therefore, when we consider the Romans specifically in relation to architecture, we look back to them as tireless and prodigious builders, constructors, and engineers, whose sense of beauty in architecture, as well as their aspirations in all branches of higher culture, were derived from the Hellenes. Their respect for the latter was such that so long as possible they tried to treat them as an independent power, with whom they could pursue the mutual advantages of commerce. Gradually, however, the tangle of politics made absorption necessary, and after a series of invasions Hellas herself became a province of the Roman Empire.

War, in those days, as for centuries after, involved the barbarous practice of looting, and the Romans, with their shrewd instinct for acquiring what they most needed for their own development, bore back home in increasing quantity the treasures of architectural and sculptural art. Later, as the power of Hellas dwindled, Rome became the centre to which Hellenic artists and scholars flocked.

The conquest of Hellas and gradual absorption of a part of her culture occupied the second century before the Christian era and the earlier years of the first. By this time, however, Rome herself had become a prey to the rivalries of political factions, beginning with the conspiracy of Sulla and ending with the civil war that followed upon the assassination of Julius Cæsar. The latter’s great-nephew, Octavianus, in conjunction with Marc Antony, conquered Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in Macedonia and Octavianus assumed authority over the West, while Antony established himself as ruler in the East. But his infatuation for Cleopatra raised the suspicion in Rome that he intended to marry her and make himself despot of an Oriental empire with Alexandria as its capital. War was declared against him as a national enemy and he was defeated at Actium, B.C. 31. The authority of Octavianus was now supreme. Republicanism, as a practical form of government, was dead. Conditions demanded one-man rule and Octavianus, in B.C. 27, resigned his office as Triumvir and received from the Senate the title of Augustus, which hitherto had been reserved for the gods.

During this period of struggle the Hellenic influence had been rapidly growing. The sons of the ruling class had Greek tutors; many studied in the schools of Athens and Rhodes, and Roman writers began to emulate the Greek authors. Cæsar published his Commentaries on the Gallic War and on the Civil War; Sallust wrote on the Conspiracy of Catiline and the Jugurthine War and Cornelius Nepos compiled biographies of eminent men. Cicero published under the name of “Philippics” the speeches which he made against Antony in the Senate, as well as “Letters” to various friends on the topics of the times, while Lucretius composed in verse a treatise on the “Nature of the World” and Varro was the author of an encyclopædic work relating to the history, geography, agriculture, law, literature, philology, philosophy, and religion of the Romans. To Varro also had been assigned by Julius Cæsar the collection of a public Library of Greek and Roman writers.

The enthusiasm for literature was encouraged by Augustus and his minister, Mycæenas, who saw in it a means of allaying the bitterness of party strife. To this, the “Augustan” or “Golden Age,” as the writers called it in flattery of their patron, belong Horace, Livy, and Virgil.

In an effort also to lead the people back to the honourable simplicity of their forefathers, Augustus revived the ancient religious ceremonies and restored the temples. He became chief pontiff and, being regarded as the son of the deified Julius--in reality, his great-nephew--was treated almost as a divinity in Rome and deified by the provincials who built temples in his honour.

It was in the Augustan Age that Roman architecture virtually commenced and its developments are associated with Imperial rule. Of the period immediately preceding the new era Mommsen writes as follows: “There was in the world as Cæsar found it much of the noble heritage of past centuries and an infinite abundance of pomp and glory, but little spirit, still less taste and least of all true delight in life. It was indeed, an old world; and even the richly gifted patriotism of Cæsar could not make it young again.”

Rome, the heart of the Empire, was corrupt. The ruling class coveted pensions from the public exchequer to be spent on luxurious living; while the mass of the populace clamoured for “panem et circenses”--feeding and shows at the public charge. To satisfy their hunger both classes would have taxed the provinces. But among the chief duties of the emperors were the development of the resources of the provinces and the protection of the frontiers; and, while the best of the emperors performed these functions from high motives, even the worst found it politic to court the growing power of the provinces. Thus, the main vitality of the empire was in its extremities, and, although the emperors beautified Rome, they also encouraged public works of utility and beauty in the provinces. To this end a law was passed, permitting municipalities to receive bequests and gifts from private individuals. In the liberality with which wealthy provincials enriched their communities, Dr. Ferrero, the latest historian of Rome, has seen a parallel to the munificent public gifts of American millionaires.

Accordingly, this great era of Roman building left its impress not only upon Italy, but in Greece and northward as far as the Danube, in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, along the whole Northern coast of Africa, and in Spain, France, and Great Britain as far as the Firth of Forth. It was distinguished not only by the magnitude of the operations but also by their character.

Whereas in Egypt the architectural works had consisted of temples and tombs; and in Hellas these had been supplemented by theatres and odeia; while Assyria and Persia left their memorials in palaces, those of the Roman Empire embraced all of these types and many more. The Romans applied architecture to the practical needs of everyday life, and reinforced it with engineering. They overlaid the Empire with fine trunk-roads, many of which survive to-day; constructed sewers; spanned rivers with bridges; conveyed water in countless miles of aqueducts; erected fora and market-places, triumphal arches, temples, palaces, villas, baths, basilicas, theatres, and hippodromes; providing alike for the necessities of life, the needs of government, and the amusements and luxuries of living.

To accomplish so prodigious an amount of building the Romans systematised the methods of construction in regard to both the labour and the material. The labour was mainly of an unskilled kind, including soldiers of the legions, slaves, and subjects liable through debt or other causes to statute labour. This employment of unskilled labour was made possible by the Roman habit of carrying the principle of repetition of motives to its utmost limit, and also by the methods of construction which they invented.

This was the extended use of concrete. During the Republic the Romans had followed the Greek method of building with large blocks of stone, unconnected with mortar. Their practical spirit, however, urged them to make a more economical use of materials and instead of composing the walls entirely of blocks of stone or marble, they used these or bricks as a facing, filling in the thickness of the wall with small fragments of stone mixed with lime or mortar.

They had been led to this practice by the existence of _pozzolana_, a volcanic product of clean, sandy earth, found in Rome and in greater quantities at Pozzuoli on the Bay of Naples, which, when mixed with lime, formed a concrete of exceptional hardness, strength, and durability. Material, approximating the properties of pozzolana and lime, was procurable in all parts of the Empire. Accordingly the use of this method of construction gave a similarity to Roman building everywhere.

While the chief, and almost sole building material in Greece was marble, the geological formation of Italy supplied stone as well as marble and plentiful supplies of clay, which was converted into terra-cotta or bricks. The bricks were of two shapes: either square, from 1 to 2 feet in size and 2 inches thick or triangular in plan and of about 1½ inches in thickness. The latter were especially used for the facing of the walls, their pointed ends being driven into the concrete to form the smooth surfaces, while at the corners the points projected. In Rome itself the following materials were available: _travertine_, a hard limestone from Tivoli; _tufa_, a volcanic substance of which the hills of Rome are mainly composed; and _peperino_, a stone of volcanic origin from Mount Albano.

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While Roman architecture was developed under the stimulus of Greek art and culture it probably owes its origin to the example of the Etruscans.

The origin of this race is uncertain, but its own traditions ascribe it to Lydia in Asia Minor, whence it may have passed during that general migration from Hellas into Italy about B.C. 1000. It was for long the dominant power in Italy, extending at various times over a territory that reached from the Tiber to the Apennines, and southward into Campania. This gave the Etruscans command of the Tyrrhenian Sea and made them commercial rivals of the Carthagenians. Their enmity toward the rising city of Rome would be natural and some authorities believe that the reign of the Tarquin kings was a period of Etruscan domination. Then the Romans expelled the tyrants, established a republic of their own, and by degrees wore down the power of the Etruscans, who had become enervated through increase of luxury. Their civilisation long antedated that of the Romans. The earliest remains of art, found in Etruria, are now believed to have been imported from Hellas; but the tombs have revealed a quantity of later art objects which prove this people to have been skilful in the modelling and colouring of terra-cotta, in mural paintings, jewellery, and household adornments.

“The houses of the earliest period, to judge by the burial urns, known from their shape as ‘hut-urns,’ were small single room constructions of rectangular plan, similar to certain types of the _capanne_ used by the shepherds to-day. Probably the walls were wattled and the roofs were certainly thatched, for the urns show plainly the long beams fastened together at the top and hanging from the ridge down each side.” (Encyclopædia Britannica, “Etruria.”) Tombs erected even later than the fifth century B.C. were cut in imitation of a most simple form of post and beam construction. The elements of the decoration, such as capitals, mouldings, rosettes, patterns, etc., were borrowed from Greece, Egypt, and elsewhere.

The architectural remains comprise tombs, city walls, gateways, bridges, and aqueducts, the walls of which are remarkable for their cyclopean masonry, while the general character of the construction resembles the early work of Tiryns and Mycenæ.

No example remains of Etruscan temples, but Vitruvius has described them. The plan was nearly square and the cella was divided into three chambers, since it was in groups of three that the Etruscans worshipped their deities. The columns represented in rude form the Doric order, set so far apart that it is concluded they were surmounted by beams of timber. A further distinction of the Etruscan temple, adopted by the Romans, was the replacing of the stylobate by a _podium_. This was a continuous pedestal or low wall on which the columns were carried. It was approached in front by a flight of steps, enclosed between the prolongation of the side-walls of the podium. The most famous example was the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, dedicated B.C. 509, which contained three chambers, for the statues of Jupiter, Minerva, and Juno. It was destroyed by fire B.C. 83, and rebuilt by Sulla, who brought over for the purpose some of the Corinthian columns from the temple of Zeus Olympius in Athens. (See p. 122.)

Until recently the great sewer, or “Cloaca Maxima,” of Rome, constructed about B.C. 578, has been attributed to the Etruscans and considered a proof that they introduced the use of the arch to the Romans. But in 1903, when excavating the Forum, Commendatore Boni proved that the drain was originally uncovered and that the arch, which consists of three rings of voussoirs, each 2 feet 6 inches high, was added at the end of the Republic. “Thus the honour, not of discovering the arch, for it was known in the East, as we noted, but of popularising its use, does not belong to the Etrurians, though they did use it at a comparatively late time for city gates, as at Volterra.” (Encyclopædia Britannica, “Etruria.”)

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Following Augustus, the emperors under whom Roman architecture chiefly flourished were: Nero ( A.D. 54-69), Vespasian (69-79), Trajan (98-117), Hadrian (137-138), Septimus Severus (193-211), Caracalla (211-217), and Diocletian (284-305). By Constantine (306-337) were inaugurated two changes of policy, which affected the destinies of the world. For by granting toleration to all religions he raised Christianity to equal footing with paganism and thus paved the way for the power of the Church; and in establishing his capital at Byzantium took the first step in the partition of the Empire into East and West. Aided by his vigorous efforts, architecture, which had declined, enjoyed a measure of revival, in which, as we shall see later, the Church began to play a conspicuous part.

With the commencement of the fifth century, A.D. , began the irruption of Barbarians. Attila’s Huns swept like a scourge over Europe, while the German tribes conquered the provinces in turn and occupied them. In 455 Rome was sacked by the Vandals. In 476 Odoacer was proclaimed by his troops King of Italy, and thus the Western part of the Empire was finally separated from the Eastern. This is the date selected to mark the “Fall” of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile the steady decline of the power of the emperors had been long in process and was accompanied by a corresponding increase in the power of the Popes. Henceforth, during the “Dark Ages” of civil confusion, the influence and authority of the Church were the chief sources of social as well as religious organisation.

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The Roman ideal of civilisation received its most characteristic architectural expression in the several fora, beginning with the oldest--the Forum Romanum. From ancient times it was the heart of the city; the centre of civil activity; the scene of some of the most stirring incidents in the growth of Rome; in later times the nucleus of the pomp and pride of the Empire. Here at some time was erected a cylindrical monument in three tiers, the Umbilicus or Navel of Rome, and hard by it stood the Milliarium, a marble column, sheathed in bronze and inscribed with the names and distances of the chief cities on the great trunk-roads that radiated throughout the Empire from the thirty-seven gates of Rome.

Between these two monuments extended a platform, decorated with the bronze beaks of conquered vessels and hence called the Rostra, from which any citizen could speak who had aught to say concerning the commonweal. For it faced the Comitium or open space, which from earliest times had been the meeting place of the General Assembly of the people. It is true that the voice of the people was too often dominated by the Patrician class whose Curia or Senate House overlooked the Comitium; but the Comitium continued to represent, at least, the theory of Roman Government and to be the veritable nucleus of the Roman Forum.

Since the Forum embodied the ideals and the progress of Rome, its architectural aspects were continually changing throughout the more than one thousand years of Rome’s vicissitudes. But without attempting to follow these changes--many of which are shrouded in obscurity--let us try to picture the Forum in its general aspects and particularly as the embodiment of the Roman ideal.

The ancient citadel was the Capitoline Hill on which in early times had been erected the temple already mentioned to the three divinities of Male and Female Power and of Wisdom--Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. It corresponded to the Acropolis of Athens and her Parthenon. But whereas the Parthenon was the nucleus of the Hellenic ideal, as embodied in architectural glory--the embodiment of an ideal, detached and lifted up above the common life--the formal grandeur of Rome descended from the Capitoline Hill and occupied the low ground that separated it from the Palatine, so that it might identify itself with the practical, everyday ideals of the city.

And, first, for the purely practical. The southern side of the Forum was in early times bordered with the tabernæ or wooden booths of the butchers and other produce merchants, while on the north were the shops of the gold-and silversmiths, and money changers. The Forum, in fact, was the central market of Rome and came to be its financial centre, and, as a necessary result, the centre also of legal and judicial procedure. In later times, as the volume and intricacies of business increased, the tabernæ were replaced by basilicas, which included halls of justice and of exchange for merchants. Meanwhile, let us try to picture the Forum as the embodiment of Roman ideals.

It was bounded on both sides by the Via Sacra, or Sacred Way; the two forks uniting near the foot of the Palatine Hill, around which the Sacred Way continued to its junction with the Appian Way. Its stones were sacred because they had been trod by the countless hosts of Rome’s victorious armies, returning in triumphal procession to pay their homage to the deities of Male and Female Power and of Wisdom upon the Capitol.

As the soldiers swept out of the Appian Way, they would skirt the spot, where in later times arose the Colosseum, and the roadway was spanned by the Arch of Constantine, and a little farther on by the Arch of Titus. From this the road advanced in an easterly direction and then turned north.

Then from earliest times two objects would greet the victors’ eyes. Upon the right stood the arch of two-headed Janus, god of gates and doors. It was all but a certainty that its two doors would be standing open; for, although this army was returning victorious, there were others almost continuously engaged on the frontiers of the empire. So the soldiers, glutted with fighting and hungry for the sight of their loved ones, would turn more eagerly to the left, where rose the circular temple of Vesta, guardian of the home and hearth. It was the symbol of the ideal of sane and simple home life, on which the greatness of Rome was founded, and as the Vestal Virgins thronged the steps of their convent or atrium, hard by the temple, the eagles would be lowered and every bronzed warrior would salute the maiden priestesses, who, in their absence, had kept perpetually alive the sacred fire.

Just beyond this spot in later times Cæsar Augustus erected a Triumphal Arch. Meanwhile, from Rome’s early days the victorious hosts would next defile past the Temple of Castor and Pollux, memorial of the victory gained at Lake Regillus with the help of these twin gods. Close by it came to be erected the Temple of Cæsar, in front of which the great Julius caused a rostrum to be placed, from the steps of which the oration over his dead body was spoken by Marc Antony.

At this spot the veterans would enter the Forum proper, welcomed by the cheers of the merchants; in old times, from the fronts of their booths and later from the porticoes of the Basilica Æmilia on the right and the Basilica Julia on the left. Then, both early and late in Rome’s history, would be reached the ancient Temple of Saturn, god of seed growing and the bounties of the soil, a god of meaning to the soldiers, for many a veteran had been left behind in distant lands, planted upon farms that were to consolidate the power and prosperity of the Empire. Moreover, in some of the chambers of the Temple, which formed the official Treasury of Rome, a part of their spoils of war would be deposited.

The procession by this time is filing past the Comitium, filled with enthusiastic crowds, while orators welcome it from the rostra and the Senators are ranged in ranks upon the steps of the Curia. The roar of welcome is still in the ears of the host as it begins the ascent of the Capitol, passing under the Arch of Septimus Severus, if the date be after A.D. 203. Midway of the ascent, it passes the Temple of Concord, memorial of the termination of the internecine struggle between the Patricians and the Plebs; skirts the Tabularium, wherein the archives of the Empire were preserved, and finally reaches the summit of the Capitol.

Let us take one glance back before the picture fades. The scene is superb but not without confusion. The Romans paid no attention to orientation; consequently there is little uniformity in the placing of the several structures. They vary not only in size and design, but also in the direction which they face. In the contracted space the various edifices seem crowded. Indeed, the conjectured restoration of the Roman Forum and vicinity suggests rather a medley of magnificence.

But even in this respect the character of this heart of Rome, lying between the Capitoline and Palatine hills, symbolised the magnificent variety of elements that composed the Empire. One may find some parallel to Rome’s confusion of appearances in the variety and, for the most part, lack of an organic lay-out in the modern London, the present mother-city of an Empire, founded, like the Roman, upon commerce, and like it in having grown, cell by cell, transcending it, however, not only in size but in grandeur. For the policy of the British Empire has gradually evolved beyond the Roman, substituting for the process of absorption the principle of free, self-governing dominions.