214. Baths of Caracalla, as restored by A. Blouet.
The great hall belonging to the baths of Diocletian is now the Church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli, and has been considerably altered to suit the changed circumstances of its use; while the modern buildings attached to the church have so overlaid the older remains that it is not easy to follow out the complete plan. This is of less consequence, as both in dimensions and plan they are extremely similar to those of Caracalla, which seem to have been among the most magnificent, as they certainly are the best preserved, of these establishments.[[184]]
The general plan of the whole enclosure of the baths of Caracalla was a square of about 1150 ft. each way, with a bold but graceful curvilinear projection on two sides, containing porticoes, gymnasia, lecture-rooms, and other halls for exercise of mind or body. In the rear were the reservoirs to contain the requisite supply of water and below them the hypocaust or furnace, by which it was warmed with a degree of scientific skill we hardly give the Romans of that age credit for. Opposite to this and facing the street was one great portico extending the whole length of the building, into which opened a range of apartments, meant apparently to be used as private baths, which extend also some way up each side. In front of the hypocaust, facing the north-east, was a semicircus or theatridium, 530 ft. long, where youths performed their exercises or contended for prizes.
These parts were, however, merely the accessories of the establishment surrounding the garden, in which the principal building was placed. This was a rectangle 730 ft. by 380, with a projection covered by a dome on the south-western side, which was 167 ft. in diameter externally, and 115 ft. internally. There were two small courts (A A) included in the block, but nearly the whole of the rest appears to have been roofed over.
The modern building which approaches nearest in extent to this is probably our Parliament Houses. These are about 830 ft. in length, with an average breadth of about 300, and, with Westminster Hall, cover as nearly as may be the same area as the central block of these baths. But there the comparison stops; there is no building of modern times on anything like the same scale arranged wholly for architectural effect as this one is, irrespective of any utilitarian purpose. On the other hand, the whole of the walls being covered with stucco, and almost all the architecture being expressed in that material, must have detracted considerably from the monumental grandeur of the effect. Judging, however, from what remains of the stucco ornament of the roof of the Maxentian basilica (Woodcut No. [202]), it is wonderful to observe what effects may be obtained with even this material in the hands of a people who understand its employment. While stone and marble have perished, the stucco of these vaults still remains, and is as impressive as any other relic of ancient Rome.
In the centre was a great hall (B), almost identical in dimensions with the central aisle of the basilica of Maxentius already described, being 82 ft. wide by 170 in length, and roofed in the same manner by an intersecting vault in three compartments, springing from eight great pillars. This opened into a smaller apartment at each end, of rectangular form, and then again into two other semicircular halls forming a splendid suite 460 ft. in length. This central room is generally considered as the tepidarium, or warmed apartment, having four warm baths opening out of it. On the north-east side was the frigidarium, or cold water bath, a hall[[185]] of nearly the same dimensions as the central Hall. Between this and the circular hall (D) was the sudatorium or sweating-bath, with a hypocaust underneath, and flue-tiles lining its walls. The laconicum or caldarium (D) is an immense circular hall, 116 ft. in diameter, also heated by a hypocaust underneath, and by flue tiles in the walls. This rotunda is said to be of later date than Caracalla. There are four other rooms on this side, which seem also to have been cold baths. None of these points have, however, yet been satisfactorily settled, nor the uses of the smaller subordinate rooms; every restorer giving them names according to his own ideas. For our purpose it suffices to know that no groups of state apartments in such dimensions, and wholly devoted to purposes of display and recreation, were ever before or since grouped together under one roof. The taste of many of the decorations would no doubt be faulty, and the architecture shows those incongruities inseparable from its state of transition; but such a collection of stately halls must have made up a whole of greater splendour than we can easily realise from their bare and weather-beaten ruins, or from anything else to which we can compare them. Even allowing for their being almost wholly built of brick, and for their being disfigured by the bad taste inseparable from everything Roman, there is nothing in the world which for size and grandeur can compare with these imperial places of recreation.[[186]]
CHAPTER V.
TRIUMPHAL ARCHES, TOMBS, AND OTHER BUILDINGS.
CONTENTS.
Arches at Rome; in France—Arch at Trèves—Columns of Victory—Tombs—Minerva Medica—Provincial tombs—Eastern tombs—Domestic architecture—Spalato—Pompeii—Bridges—Aqueducts.
Triumphal Arches were among the most peculiar of the various forms of art which the Romans borrowed from those around them, and used with that strange mixture of splendour and bad taste which characterises all their works.