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.