opulence and luxury of the East poured into Rome, and diffused a general order for splendour and costliness in all the works of art that were undertaken in the city. This was on the return of Sylla from the Mithridatic war, when he transplanted the Grecian arts into Rome by the Grecian models which he had brought from these people, renowned for their architectural works; and thus was paved the way for the magnificence which afterwards arose under the emperors, and constituted the architectural glory of Rome.*

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE CAPITOL.

This brilliant period opened with Augustus, (at the time that Vitruvius wrote his history of classic architecture,) whose taste for the arts caused to be brought from all parts of Asia and Greece the most scientific professors, to execute the various works he had planned,† and which was eventually followed up by Titus and Trajan, and at length produced such riches, splendour, and architectural pomp under the Antonines, that the golden age of the imperial city has been justly affixed to the era of their reigns. The Romans now adopted the three Grecian orders; but their taste, impatient under control, broke forth from these prescribed rules of Grecian art; they altered the proportions and contours of the mouldings, and added the Tuscan to their list, and afterwards formed the composite. They often indiscriminately blended the members of the different orders, and overcharged the whole with the most extravagant excess of decoration they could invent, till at last they had five orders of their own.‡ At the same time it cannot be denied, that notwithstanding this departure from Grecian simplicity, by the mixture of style and luxuriancy of ornament, the Romans actually produced edifices in such a striking character of magnificence and grandeur, that they threw into shade some of the finest structures of the Greeks.§

TUSCAN ORDER.

The Tuscan order at Rome is so altered in its members since its first introduction there, that it is in a great measure assimilated with the Doric. The place of its origin was in Tuscany, and the column contained in its original proportion that of seven of its diameters in height. For a detailed description

* At the close of the war between the Republic of Rome and the Achæan league, Corinth was taken and destroyed by Mummius, the Roman general: it was afterwards rebuilt and peopled by Julius Cæsar. The Romans therefore imbibed a taste for the sciences and arts so assiduously cultivated by the Greeks, and felt some reverence for those by whose ancestors their favourite studies had been carried to perfection.—(H.)

† Augustus was content to inhabit a plain, unadorned mansion at Rome, while he displayed all his riches and munificence in edifices devoted to public use, and prided himself in his last moments, that "having found Rome of bricks he had left it of marble."-(Sueton. in August. c. 28, 72.)

The Greek column and entablature are found co-existing with the Roman arch and vault in every work of the empire. A combination so unnatural broke that unity of design which had prevailed here during the Etrurian period; it soon altered the native forms and proportions of the Greek orders; it amassed incomparable ornaments, and beauty disappeared under the load of riches.-(Forsyth's Italy.)

§ In this period the forums arose, which are represented by the ancient writers as alone sufficient to eclipse the splendour of every other city. There were two kinds of forums; the Fora Vendia and the Fora Civilia; the former were merely markets, the latter intended, as the name implies, for the transaction of public business. The Forum Trajani, though the last in date, was the first in beauty. This matchless edifice of Trajan consisted of four porticos, supported by pillars of the most beautiful marble; the roof rested upon brazen beams, and was covered with plates of brass; it was adorned with statues and chariots all of brass; the pavement was of variegated marble. The entrance was at one end by an equilateral arch, at the other end was a temple; on the one side a basilica, and on the other a public library. In the centre of the whole square rose the celebrated column of Trajan, surrounded on the outside with historical sculptures of this hero's many achievements, winding round the column in a spiral line from the base to the summit, and crowned with a colossal statue of that mighty general. Apollodorus was the architect of this wonderful pile; and so great was the beauty (we might almost say the perfection of architecture) and so rich the materials, that those who beheld it seem to have been struck dumb with astonishment, and at a loss to find words to express their admiration.—(Gibbon.)

R

of this plain, simple, but useful pillar, see Vitruvius, the only authenticated source on the subject of this order, where its proportions are preserved.

DORIC ORDER.

The Doric order appears here in very few edifices, and so Latinized that we lose the original order. In the Roman temples (says Forsyth) columns were a mere decoration, or at most supported the pediment alone. In the Greek they formed an integral part of the edifice; not inserted in the wall, but rather formed the wall itself; hence arose the necessity of a difference in their proportions. At Rome the ancient Doric column is eight diameters in height. At Athens the greatest height of the column is about six diameters and a half, and at Pæstum five.*

IONIC ORDER.

The Ionic order in Rome, whose column is nine diameters high, is too meagre at the Coliseum; too clumsy for its entablature at Marcellus' Theatre; irregular, nay unequal, at the Temple of Concord; the volutes too small and full of disproportion in that of Fortuna Virilis. Nowhere in Rome is it comparable to the Grecian Ionic on the Ilissus, or in the Erecthean at Athens, which latter may be proposed as the canon of this chaste and extremely beautiful order.

CORINTHIAN ORDER.

We have seen that the Romans, in borrowing the Grecian architecture, adopted it with various peculiarities of taste and manner; but they most particularly appropriated the use of the Corinthian order, which on account of its decorative character was peculiarly adapted to the general splendour and costliness of their buildings. It was the only order executed with any degree of perfection in Rome, where to this day may be found some of its finest models for the study of the architect, such as Jupiter Stator in the Campo-Vaccino and at the Pantheon.† For variety they enriched the capitals with the olive, the laurel, and the acanthus, in foliage very differently disposed. For further variety they brought griffins, eagles, cornucopiæ, and other emblems into the abacus and helix of the capitals. In the entablatures may be found every variety of moulding, and in the friezes pateras, musical instruments, thunderbolts, and other symbolical ornaments appropriate to the edifice into which the order was introduced. In the Pantheon, in the Campo-Vaccino, the Capitol, the Via Sacra, everywhere in Rome have they left us a richer Corinthian than can be found in Greece, where the order seems to have been rare and naked‡.

COMPOSITE ORDER.

This order is of Roman origin, and was composed from the Corinthian and Ionic orders, and applied

* The three Doric temples at Pæstum in Italy, situated on a pestilential plain, are the oldest Grecian orders now in existence. Considering them, and contemplating their solidity, bordering upon heaviness, we are led to consider them as an intermediate link between the Egyptian and Grecian manner, and the first attempt to pass from the immense masses of the former to the graceful proportions of the latter; but in one of these temples, that of Ceres, the columns are too much swelled, being so puffed out as if they were bursting asunder under the load they have to support: in every other part of the temple there is a sublime grandeur. According to the learned Mazzochi, Pæstum was founded by a colony of Dorians, from Dora, a city of Phoenicia, about six hundred years B.C.

The columns in the temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli are of Grecian origin, being designed and executed by a Grecian architect. There is a great peculiarity in the foliage of these capitals, which differs from every other Corinthian, and the frieze is ornamented with heads of buffalos, from the horns of which are suspended festoons of flowers and fruits in the metopes are pateras. (See Piranessi, Roman Antiq.)

Forsyth's Italy.

to their triumphal arches. That in the arch of Titus is the most beautiful in proportion, chasteness, and richness. The one in Septimus Severus' arch is heavy and ill-proportioned in all its parts.* The peculiarities of Roman architecture are as remarkable as they are various. With their own original greatness of manner they combined the knowledge and cultivation of the arch, as may be seen in their aqueducts, the first of which was erected by Appius Claudius in the year 313 B.C.,† which powerfully operated in changing not only the principle but the forms of architecture as hitherto practised in Greece. The Romans brought the use of the arch to the highest possible perfection, as we see in the triumphal arches of Titus and Septimus Severus, and by aid of its operations the Italians afterwards exhibited the greatest mathematical skill in the construction of their sublime edifices.‡ The successive conquests, and almost unbounded territorial accessions of the Romans, poured into their courts such an acquisition of private as well as public opulence, that innumerable individuals became enabled to indulge in the predominating taste that peculiarized the city under the imperial sway, which offered a much wider expanse for the display of architectural greatness than Greece ever attained. Marcellus, happy in victory as well as a fine genius, brought from Greece one of the most beautiful and regular pieces of architecture extant, which was called after his name. And Pompey the Great, though an unfortunate hero, is reported to have built the first amphitheatre of stone in the city of Rome.§ The baths of Dioclesian, the palace of Nero, the Rotunda, the theatres, and upwards of fifty temples dedicated to their deities, their triumphal arches, &c. give us a vast idea of the perfection of architecture at Rome in its flourishing state under the consuls and emperors. They were so much given to building, that they endeavoured to excel each other in pomp and magnificence in the public edifices they erected, for the honour, ornament, and use of the city. Hence then that unrivalled splendour of imperial Rome. It is a city of monuments whose grandeur and beauty have attracted the wonder and applause of an admiring world.

ROMAN CITY HOUSES.

The early houses in the city of Rome were but of one story high, and surrounded by a court with a colonnade, and the only light received into the rooms was over the door, and even this was borrowed.|| The houses only began to be constructed with two stories towards the end of the republic, and the

*The pilasters of the Roman orders do not differ from the columns.—(B.)

+ These aqueducts ran a distance of from twelve to sixty miles, and conveyed whole rivers through mountains and over plains, sometimes underground and sometimes supported by arches, to the centre of the city, so that Rome in twenty-four hours was supplied with five hundred thousand hogsheads of water. Two in particular, the Claudia and Anio nova, were carried over arches for more than twenty miles, and sometimes raised more than a hundred and twenty feet above the level of the country. The channel through which the water flowed in these aqueducts (and in one of these, two streams rolled unmingled the one over the other) was always wide and high enough for workmen to pass and carry materials for repair, and all were lined with a species of plaster hard and impenetrable as marble itself.--(Eustace's Classical Tour through Italy.)

From whence does the invention of the arch proceed? It is nowhere traceable among the ancients, scientifically constructed, before the age of Alexander the Great, in the fourth century B.C.; and we have every reason to believe the Egyptians were totally ignorant of it, not only from its absence in any relics of their buildings, but from the rude mode in which they have constructed the passages into the pyramids. The arch of the Cloaca Maxima, built by the Tarquins, is the earliest we are enabled to discover, which inclines us to think we are indebted to the Etruscans for its invention, but that the Romans brought it to perfection by first determining its powers both experimentally and mathematically. The knowledge of it however has produced the greatest revolution in the practice of the art of building; and on account of its utility, ornament, and strength, it is now universally adopted.—(Boid's Analysis.)

§ Tacit. Ann. lib. xiv.

We are to recollect that the Romans were not a genus ignavum, qui tecto gaudet et umbra." (Juvenal.) Not a domestic people, their society was to be sought in the Forum and porticos. The doors of their houses were left open or unclosed during the single meal which sufficed for the day, that it might be seen no one exceeded the bounds of frugality prescribed by the laws; but when civilization and luxury were introduced, the size of their houses was enlarged to excess, so that four hundred slaves do not appear to have been an extraordinary number to be included under one roof. Tacitus says these were all decapitated if their master was murdered, because he had not been sufficiently protected. Within the walls of the house and garden was frequently produced every necessary of life.--(Sir William Gell, pp. 164, 165.)

uppermost apartments were then the sitting, dining, and drawing-rooms.

The streets of ancient Rome were very narrow in general, and when Nero rebuilt the city after the dreadful conflagration in 64 B.C., many of the Romans complained of his conduct, alleging that they were too much widened, inasmuch as they let the heat of the sun indiscriminately upon them.*

Though the streets of Rome were still comparatively narrow, yet the houses were now built remarkably lofty; they generally at this period rose to six, seven, or eight stories in height. They were permitted by Augustus, even in his restraint upon the popular humour, to ascend no less than seventy feet, and they were allowed by Trajan, even in his greatest restraint, to mount but as high as sixty.+

ROMAN PALACE.

Nero was the first who ventured to expend the public treasures in the erection of an imperial residence, and built that celebrated palace of which Pliny relates some wonderful particulars, and which from the gold that shone in such profusion on every side was called Domus Aurea. In the vestibule stood a colossal statue of Nero of the immense height of one hundred and twenty feet; there were three porticos, each a mile in length, and supported by three rows of pillars. In the palace the rooms were lined with gold, gems, and mother-of-pearl. The ceilings of the dining-rooms were adorned with ivory panels, so contrived as to turn round and scatter flowers and shower perfumes on the guests. The principal banqueting-room revolved upon itself, representing the motions of the heavenly bodies. The baths were supplied with salt water from the sea, and mineral water from the Albula.+

ROMAN VILLAS.

The well-known term villa signified a Roman country seat; the superior ones were called palaces and were of different kinds. Town-houses, or rather winter houses, estiva; villæ suburbane or æstival dwellings, a citizen's villa, and subterraneous houses for the heat of the summer; or habitable grottos, built by the great men, were exceedingly magnificent. Of this character were Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, and Gardian's on the Via Præstina; of such extent were these that they resembled towns. Hadrian's villa alone formed a circuit of nearly ten Italian miles.¶ In ancient Rome the villas were generally erected on the tops of hills; such was the villa of Sallust, the historian, on the Pincian hill, adorned with so much magnificence that it seems to have excelled even the specimens of Asiatic grandeur in splendour and luxury, and to have become the favourite resort of successive emperors.

**

* Nero was passionately fond of building, and first made Rome a regular city. He ordered that each house should be surrounded by its own court, or curtain-wall; but some thought that regulating the width and disposition of the streets and height of the houses by lessening the shade, did not conduce to the health of the inhabitants.-(Tacit. Ann. lib. xx. c. 4. 3.) Tacit. Ann. lib. xv. c. 4. Variorum edit. Would not this be a good law in our cities, and conduce more to the health of the inhabitants ?—(B.)

Suetonius' Life of Nero, 31. The palaces at Rome, though from their magnitude they contribute not a little to that general air of magnificence which pervades the city, are not exempt from faults in the details. It is objected to them that they are built rather for the spectator than for the tenant, that hence the elevation is more studied than the plan; that some are mere fronts, so crowded with stories as to suggest the idea of a lodging-house rather than the residence of a prince. (Evans's Classic and Connaisseur in Italy, vol. p. 322.)

§ Sce Seneca, Caus. ad Helv. ix.

li Vesp. Hist. Aug. ii. 274.

¶ To form an idea of this imperial residence, we must imagine to ourselves a town, or rather a city, composed of temples, palestra, gymnasiæ, baths, pleasure-houses, lodgings for officers, friends, slaves, and soldiers, and an infinity of other buildings both of utility and show. In this villa Hadrian, with much good taste, imitated all the best buildings of Greece, such as the Lyceum, the Academy, the Prytaneum, the Portico, the beautiful temple at Thessaly, and the painted Portico at Athens. He had also among the gardens and pleasure-grounds representations of the Elysian fields and the realms of Pluto.-(Eustace's Classical Tour.)

** Tacitus.

The gardens of Lucullus are supposed to have bordered on those of Sallust, and, with several other delicious retreats which crowned the summit and brow of the Pincian Hill (Monte Pincio), gave it its ancient appellation of Collis Hortulorum. To the intermingled graces of town and country that adorned these fashionable mansions of the rich and luxurious Romans, Horace, when addressing Fuscus Aristius, says,

"Nempe inter varias nutritur sylva columnas," as in the verse immmediately following,

"Laudaturque domus, longos quæ prospicit agros,"

(Hor. Ep. i. 10.)

he evidently hints at the extensive views which might be enjoyed from the lofty apartments erected expressly for the purpose of commanding a wide range of country. Of all the Roman villas, we have the most complete account of the one erected by the younger Pliny near Tifernum (now Città di Castello) in Tuscany, called Tusculan, and which he has fully and minutely described in his epistle.*

DECLINE OF ROMAN ARCHITECTURE.

Civil feuds and desolating wars at last interrupted the progress of the arts, and after a few attempts of Septimius Severus and Dioclesian, they gradually sunk into a state of corruption, and were finally degraded under Constantine, who commenced the destructive work of spoliation by removing all the finest parts of the architectural structures in Rome, to adorn some less magnificent architectural creations of fancy in his new city of Constantinople.+ This example established a ruinous precedent, and the general destruction of classic architecture followed. The love of the arts, as a science, totally disappeared; and architects becoming destitute of both taste and skill, were now mere depredators and barbarous compilers of one another's works. One structure, in which reigned beauty and solidity, for the sake of the materials, was often pulled down, to erect another equally devoid of taste or strength; till incursions of barbarians at length extinguished the last lingering flower of the art, and gave a deathblow to the remains of Roman greatness.

LOMBARD ARCHITECTURE,

The successive inroads of the various tribes of barbarians that came from the north in the fifth century, and inundated Italy after Constantine had withdrawn the nobility to his new seat of power at Constantinople, were possessed with such a spirit of demolition and ruin, that the whole empire as well as the city of Rome, in a few years exhibited one continued scene of pillage and devastation. The mixture of the various conquering tribes then inhabiting Rome, produced a Babel of languages, in which the Latin tongue was soon lost; the social virtues disappeared, and the arts seemed for ever buried under the ancient city; the spirit of science vanished with the glory of Rome, the most eminent poets and philosophers left the empire, and the remaining societies sunk into the most degraded state of obscurity.+

In this state architecture soon sunk under the intruders Alaric, Odoacer, and Gensericus, so that the

Lib. v. Epist. 6. The villas are to this day the Ocelli Italiæ. There Casinos generally stand to advantage in the park. Light, gay, airy, and fanciful, they seem to court that load of ornament to which all architecture must here be subservient. Some of their fronts are coated with bassi-rilievi in profusion, and their porticos composed of ancient columns from other edifices. The Belvedere above the building is often a blot on the symmetry, an insignificant object too conspicuous,―a hut stuck upon a house-top, and seldom placed in the centre.-(Edwards's Lanzi, vol. i.)

+ It was an abhorrence of the Pagan edifices which caused the Christians to demolish them; but it is singular to observe that the Pantheon should have been spared.--(Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.)

Eustace's Classical Tour.

S