How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

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.”)

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.

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.