Sun-dried bricks were known as πλίνθοι ὠμαί (lateres crudi); baked bricks as πλίνθοι ὠπταί (lateres cocti or coctiles). The Romans also used the word testa for baked brick, corresponding to the Greek κέραμος. Vitruvius[[324]] distinguishes three varieties of unburnt bricks, as used by the Greeks. One, known as “Lydian,” was also used by the Romans, who named the bricks from their length sesquipedales; their size was 1½ by 1 ft. The other two, exclusively Greek, were known as πεντάδωρον and τετράδωρον, the word δῶρον signifying a “palm” or three inches; in other words, they were respectively fifteen inches and one foot square. The former was used for public buildings, the latter for private houses, and they were arranged in the walls in courses of alternate whole and half bricks, as is frequently done at the present day. Vitruvius also speaks of bricks made at Pitane in Mysia, and in Spain, which were so light that they would float in water.[[325]] He advises that bricks should not be made of sandy or pebbly clay, which makes them heavy and prevents the straw from cohering, so that they fall to pieces after wet. Many other directions are given by him,[[326]] but are too lengthy to quote here. Bricks were made in a mould called πλαίσιον, a rectangular framework of boards[[327]]; and the sun-dried bricks were, as we learn from the passage quoted above, made by collecting the clay with shovels (ἄμαι) into troughs (λεκάναι) and working it with the feet.[[328]] It is probable that we have some allusion to the use of moulds in certain passages from the Latin writers.[[329]] The final proceeding was the drying in the sun.
An important branch of the subject is the use of terracotta for roof-tiles and other architectural decorations of temples and other buildings. On this point our knowledge has during the last five-and-twenty years been marvellously increased, the extent of its use in architecture having been hitherto but little suspected.[[330]] The generic term for a roof-tile is in Greek κέραμος; they are generally divided into flat tiles (στεγαστῆρες or σωλῆες, tegulae) and covering-tiles (καλυπῆρες, imbrices). Besides the ordinary roof-tiles there must also be taken into consideration four varieties of ornamental tiles which found their place on a classical building. They are: (1) the covering-slabs arranged in a row along the γεῖσον, or raking cornice of the pediment; (2) the κυμάτιον or cornice above the γεῖσον; (3) the cornice along the sides of the building, with spouts in the form of lions' heads, to carry off rain-water; (4) the row of antefixal ornaments or ἀκρωτήρια surmounting the side-tiles.[[331]]
The flat roof-tiles or σωλῆες, as in the Heraion of Olympia and other early buildings, are square and slightly concave, so that the raised edges placed side by side may catch under the semi-cylindrical καλυπῆρες, and so be held in their place. The latter are of plain semi-cylindrical form, except the row at the lower edge of the roof, which have attached to them the vertical semi-elliptical slabs known as “antefixae,” of which more later.
The κυμάτια were painted with elaborate patterns of lotos-and-honeysuckle, or maeanders, in red, blue, brown, and yellow, the principle being preserved (as always in Greek architectural decoration) of employing curvilinear patterns only on curved surfaces, rectilinear only on flat surfaces.[[332]] At the back was the gutter for collecting rain-water, which ran off through the holes pierced at intervals in the cornice, passing through the mouths of lions’ heads, moulded in very salient relief. These correspond to the gurgoyles of Gothic architecture. Many specimens have been found at Olympia, Elateia, and elsewhere in Greece; one of the finest, from a temple of Apollo at Metapontum, is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. It is very finely modelled, and the whole, with the background, richly coloured in red, yellow, and black.[[333]] Spouts were sometimes modelled in other forms, such as a Satyric mask, or the fore-part of a lion; of the latter there are some examples in the British Museum.[[334]] In the accounts for the erection of the arsenal at the Peiraeus there is an interesting entry relating to these lions’ head spouts, in which they are described as κεραμίδες ἡγέμονες λεοντοκεφάλαι, “principal tiles with lions' heads.”[[335]]
The invention of antefixae is attributed by Pliny[[336]] to Butades of Sikyon, who is also credited with the invention of modelling in clay, in a well-known story; “he was,” says Pliny, “the first to place masks on the extremities of the roof-tiles, which were at first called bas-reliefs (protypa), but afterwards alto-reliefs (ectypa).”[[337]] It is possible that the ἀγάλματα ὀπτῆς γῆς seen by Pausanias in the Stoa Basileios at Athens[[338]] were ἀκρωτήρια or antefixal ornaments at the angles of the cornice, but they are more likely to have been modelled free and in the round than in relief on a background.[[339]] Such sculptured groups were not uncommon in Greek architecture; thus the cornice of the pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia was adorned with a series of figures of Victory. The groups above mentioned represented Theseus slaying Skiron and Eos carrying off Kephalos; and it is interesting to note that a terracotta group with the latter subject found at Cervetri[[340]] also undoubtedly came from the cornice of a building.
PLATE II
Archaic Antefixae of Graeco-Italian Style (British Museum).
1. Satyr and Maenad, from Civita Lavinia; 2. Female Head, from Capua.