Roman architectural ornament was simply Greek with a few variations, not always improvements. It was less refined, but in some cases, especially in the examples of large acanthus scrolls on friezes, panels, and pilasters (Fig. 319), and in their large capitals, the ornament was designed with great skill and virility. They used the softer-leaved variety of acanthus—the mollis—while the Greeks used the spinosus, or prickly-leaved variety.
Fig. 316.—Greek Ivy Meander Border.
The decorations of the Roman mouldings were less elegant than those of the Greeks, owing to the contours being segments of circles where the Greeks used forms like conic sections, and the execution was less artistic in the Roman mouldings (Figs. 320, 321, 322).
Fig. 317.—Decorated Mouldings from the Temple of Minerva Polias; Ogee Ovolo, and Beads.
Fig. 318.—The Ovolo, with Egg and Tongue, from the Erectheum.
The domestic architecture of Greece is guessed at by the remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which, though Roman provincial cities, were in style and decoration a fair reflection of Greek art. The remains of the art found in these cities have been styled Greco-Roman. The destruction of Pompeii was in the year A.D. 79.
