INTRODUCTION.

We now approach the last revolution that completed and closed the great cycle of the arts and civilisation of the ancient world. We have seen Art spring Minerva-like, perfect from the head of her great parent, in Egypt. We have admired it in Assyria, rich, varied, but unstable; aiming at everything, but never attaining maturity or perfection. We have tried to trace the threads of early Pelasgic art in Asia, Greece, and Etruria, spreading their influence over the world, and laying the foundation of other arts which the Pelasgi were incapable of developing. We have seen all these elements gathered together in Greece, the essence extracted from each, and the whole forming the most perfect and beautiful combinations of intellectual power that the world has yet witnessed. We have now only to contemplate the last act in the great drama, the gorgeous but melancholy catastrophe by which all these styles of architecture were collected in wild confusion in Rome, and there perished beneath the luxury and crimes of that mighty people, who for a while made Rome the capital of Europe.

View them as we will, the arts of Rome were never an indigenous or natural production of the soil or people, but an aggregation of foreign styles in a state of transition from the old and time-honoured forms of Pagan antiquity to the new development introduced by Christianity. We cannot of course suppose that the Romans foresaw the result to which their amalgamation of previous styles was tending; still they advanced as steadily towards that result as if a prophetic spirit had guided them to a well-defined conception of what was to be. It was not however permitted to the Romans to complete this task. Long before the ancient methods and ideas had been completely moulded into the new, the power of Rome sank beneath her corruption, and a long pause took place, during which the Christian arts did not advance in Western Europe beyond the point they had reached in the age of Constantine. Indeed, in many respects, they receded from it during the dark ages. When they reappeared in the 10th and 11th centuries it was in an entirely new garb and with scarcely a trace of their origin—so distinct indeed that it appears more like a reinvention than a reproduction of forms long since familiar to the Roman world. Had Rome retained her power and pre-eminence a century or two longer, a style might have been elaborated as distinct from that of the ancient world, and as complete in itself, as our pointed Gothic, and perhaps more beautiful. Such was not the destiny of the world; and what we have now to do is to examine this transition style as we find it in ancient Rome, and familiarise ourselves with the forms it took during the three centuries of its existence, as without this knowledge all the arts of the Gothic era would for ever remain an inexplicable mystery. The chief value of the Roman style consists in the fact that it contains the germs of all that is found in the Middle Ages, and affords the key by which its mysteries may be unlocked, and its treasures rendered available. Had the transition been carried through in the hands of an art-loving and artistic people, the architectural beauties of Rome must have surpassed those of any other city in the world, for its buildings surpass in scale those of Egypt and in variety those of Greece, while they affect to combine the beauties of both. In constructive ingenuity they far surpass anything the world had seen up to that time, but this cannot redeem offences against good taste, nor enable any Roman productions to command our admiration as works of art, or entitle them to rank as models to be followed either literally or in spirit.

During the first two centuries and a half of her existence, Rome was virtually an Etruscan city, wholly under Etruscan influence; and during that period we read of temples and palaces being built and of works of immense magnitude being undertaken for the embellishment of the city; and we have even now more remains of kingly than we have of consular Rome.

After expelling her kings and shaking off Etruscan influence, Rome existed as a republic for five centuries, and during this long age of barbarism she did nothing to advance science or art. Literature was almost wholly unknown within her walls, and not one monument has come down to our time, even by tradition, worthy of a city of a tenth part of her power and magnitude. There is probably no instance in the history of the world of a capital city existing so long, populous and peaceful at home, prosperous and powerful abroad, and at the same time so utterly devoid of any monuments or any magnificence to dignify her existence.

When, however, Carthage was conquered and destroyed, when Greece was overrun and plundered, and Egypt, with her long-treasured art, had become a dependent province, Rome was no longer the city of the Aryan Romans, but the sole capital of the civilised world. Into her lap were poured all the artistic riches of the universe; to Rome flocked all who sought a higher distinction or a more extended field for their ambition than their own provincial capitals could then afford. She thus became the centre of all the arts and of all the science then known; and, so far at least as quantity is concerned, she amply redeemed her previous neglect of them. It seems an almost indisputable fact that, during the three centuries of the Empire, more and larger buildings were erected in Rome and her dependent cities than ever were erected in a like period in any part of the world.

For centuries before the establishment of the Roman Empire, progressive development and increasing population, joined to comparative peace and security, had accumulated around the shores of the Mediterranean a mass of people enjoying material prosperity greater than had ever been known before. All this culminated in the first centuries of the Christian era. The greatness of the ancient world was then full, and a more overwhelming and gorgeous spectacle than the Roman Empire then displayed never dazzled the eyes of mankind. From the banks of the Euphrates to those of the Tagus, every city vied with its neighbour in the erection of temples, baths, theatres, and edifices for public use or private luxury. In all cases these display far more evidence of wealth and power than of taste and refinement, and all exhibit traces of that haste to enjoy, which seems incompatible with the correct elaboration of anything that is to be truly great. Notwithstanding all this, there is a greatness in the mass, a grandeur in the conception, and a certain expression of power in all these Roman remains which never fail to strike the beholder with awe and force admiration from him despite his better judgment. These qualities, coupled with the associations that attach themselves to every brick and every stone, render the study of them irresistibly attractive. It was with Imperial Rome that the ancient world perished; it was in her dominions that the new and Christian world was born. All that was great in Heathendom was gathered within her walls, tied, it is true, into an inextricable knot, which was cut by the sword of those barbarians who moulded for themselves out of the fragments that polity and those arts which will next occupy our attention. To Rome all previous history tends; from Rome all modern history springs: to her, therefore, and to her arts, we inevitably turn, if not to admire, at least to learn, and if not to imitate, at any rate to wonder at and to contemplate a phase of art as unknown to previous as to subsequent history, and, if properly understood, more replete with instruction than any other form hitherto known. Though the lesson we learn from it is far oftener what to avoid than what to follow, still there is such wisdom to be gathered from it as should guide us in the onward path, which may lead us to a far higher grade than it was given to Rome herself ever to attain.

CHAPTER III.
ROMAN ARCHITECTURE.

CONTENTS.

Origin of style—The arch—Orders: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite—Temples—The Pantheon—Roman temples at Athens—at Baalbec.

CHRONOLOGICAL MEMORANDA.

DATES.
Foundation of RomeB.C. 753
Tarquinius Priscus—Cloaca Maxima, foundation of Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.616
Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus dedicated507
Scipio—tomb at Literium184
Augustus—temples at Rome31
Marcellus—theatre at Rome—died23
Agrippa—portico of Pantheon—died13
Nero—burning and rebuilding of Rome—diedA.D. 68
Vespasian—Flavian amphitheatre built70
Titus—arch in Forum79
Destruction of Pompeii79
Trajan—Ulpian Basilica and Pillar of Victory98
Hadrian builds temple at Rome, Temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens, &c.117
Septimius Severus—arch at Rome194
Caracalla—baths211
Diocletian—palace at Spalato284
Maxentius—Basilica at Rome306
Constantine—transfer of Empire to Constantinople328

The earliest inhabitants of Rome were an Aryan or, as they used to be called, Indo-Germanic race, who established themselves in a country previously occupied by Pelasgians. Their principal neighbour on one side was Etruria, a Pelasgian nation. On the other hand was Magna Græcia, which had been colonised in very early ages by Hellenic settlers of kindred origin. It was therefore impossible that the architecture of the Romans should not be in fact a mixture of the styles of these two people. As a transition order, it was only a mechanical juxtaposition of both styles, the real fusion taking place many long centuries afterwards. Throughout the Roman period the two styles remain distinct, and there is no great difficulty in referring almost every feature in Roman architecture to its origin.

From the Greeks were borrowed the rectangular peristylar temple, with its columns and horizontal architraves, though they seldom if ever used it in its perfect purity, the cella of the Greek temples not being sufficiently large for their purposes. The principal Etruscan temples, as we have already shown, were square in plan, and the inner half occupied by one or more cells, to the sides and back of which the portico never extended. The Roman rectangular temple is a mixture of these two: it is generally, like the Greek examples, longer than its breadth, but the colonnade never seems to have entirely surrounded the building. Sometimes it extends to the two sides as well as the front, but more generally the cella occupies the whole of the inner part though frequently ornamented by a false peristyle of three-quarter columns attached to its walls.

Besides this, the Romans borrowed from the Etruscans or Greeks a circular form of temple. As applied by the Romans it was generally encircled by a peristyle of columns, though it is not clear that the Etruscans so used it; this may therefore be an improvement adopted from the Greeks on an Etruscan form. In early times these circular temples were dedicated to Vesta, Cybele, or some god or goddess either unknown or not generally worshipped by the Aryan races; but in later times this distinction was lost sight of.

A more important characteristic which the Romans borrowed from the Etruscans was the circular arch. It was known, it is true, to the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks; yet none of these people, perhaps excepting the Assyrians, seem to have used it as a feature in their ornamental architecture; but the Etruscans appear to have had a peculiar predilection for it, and from them the Romans adopted it boldly, and introduced it into almost all their buildings. It was not at first used in temples of Grecian form, nor even in their peristylar circular ones. In the civil buildings of the Romans it was a universal feature, but was generally placed in juxtaposition with the Grecian orders. In the Colosseum, for instance, the whole construction is arched; but a useless network of ill-designed and ill-arranged Grecian columns, with their entablatures, is spread over the whole. This is a curious instance of the mixture of the two styles, and as such is very characteristic of Roman art; but in an artistic point of view the place of these columns would have been far better supplied by buttresses or panels, or some expedient more correctly constructive.

After having thoroughly familiarised themselves with the forms of the arch as an architectural feature, the Romans made a bold stride in advance by applying it as a vault both to the circular and rectangular forms of buildings. The most perfect examples of this are the rotunda of the Pantheon and the basilica of Maxentius, commonly called the Temple of Peace, strangely like each other in conception, though apparently so distant in date. In these buildings the Roman architects so completely emancipated themselves from the trammels of former styles as almost to entitle them to claim the invention of a new order of architecture. It would have required some more practice to invent details appropriate to the purpose; still these two buildings are to this hour unsurpassed for boldness of conception and just appreciation of the manner in which the new method ought to be applied. This is almost universally acknowledged so far as the interior of the Pantheon is concerned. In simple grandeur it is as yet unequalled; its faults being principally those of detail. It is not so easy, however, to form an opinion of the Temple of Peace in its present ruined state; but in so far as we can judge from what yet remains of it, in boldness and majesty of conception it must have been quite equal to the other example, though it must have required far more familiarity with the style adopted to manage its design as appropriately as the simpler dome of the Pantheon.

These two buildings may be considered as exemplifying the extent to which the Romans had progressed in the invention of a new style of architecture and the state in which they left it to their successors. It may however be worth while pointing out how, in transplanting Roman architecture to their new capital on the shores of the Bosphorus, the semi-Oriental nation seized on its own circular form, and, modifying and moulding it to its purpose, wrought out the Byzantine style; in which the dome is the great feature, almost to the total exclusion of the rectangular form with its intersecting vaults. On the other hand, the rectangular form was appropriated by the nations of the West with an equally distinct rejection of the circular and domical forms, except in those cases in which we find an Eastern people still incorporated with them. Thus in Italy both styles continued long in use, the one in baptisteries, the other in churches, but always kept distinct, as in Rome. In France they were so completely fused into each other that it requires considerable knowledge of architectural analysis to separate them again into their component parts. In England we rejected the circular form altogether, and so they did eventually in Germany, except when under French influence. Each race reclaimed its own among the spoils of Rome, and used it with the improvements it had acquired during its employment in the Imperial city.