an artificer or an architect, and who regulated their labors, made designs or plans, and corrected the errors of the workmen.

In all this we see a great analogy to the method pursued by the operative Stonemasons of the Middle Ages.

First, there was a prelate, nobleman, or man of wealth and dignity, who had formed the design of building a cathedral, an abbey, or a castle. In the old English Constitutions this great personage is always referred to as "the Lord," and the work or building was called "the Lord's work."

Having congregated in huts or temporary dwellings around the site of the edifice they were about to erect, they formed a Lodge, which was under the control of a Master. And then there was the architect or Master of the Works, who was responsible for the faithful performance of the task.

The convenience of military operations, such as the establishment or removal of camps, and the passage of armies from one place to another, required that the legions should carry with them in their marches architects and competent workmen to accomplish these objects. Bergerius, who wrote a treatise On the Public and Military Roads of the Roman Empire,1 estimates, with perhaps some extravagance, that the number of architects and workmen engaged in the Roman states in the repairs of roads, the construction of bridges and other works of a similar kind, exceeded those employed in the building of the Pyramids of Egypt and the Temple of Solomon.

Of these a great number were distributed among the legions; accompanied them in their marches; remained with them wherever they were stationed; created their colleges and proceeded to the erection of works, sometimes of a temporary and sometimes of a more permanent character.

Dr. Krause says, citing as his authority the Corpus Juris and the inscriptions, that in every legion there were corporations or colleges of workmen who were employed for building and other purposes needed in military operations.

Hence, in tracing the advance of the Roman legions into different colonies, we are also tracing the advance of the Roman architects and builders who accompanied them. And when the legion

1" De publicis et militaribus Imperii Romani Viis," contained in vol. x. of the "Thesaurus Antiq. Rom." of Grævius.

stopped in its progress and made any colony its temporary home, it exercised all the influence of a conquering army of civilized soldiers over a country of barbarians. Of all these influences of civilization the one that has been the most patent was that of the architects who substituted for the rude constructions which they found in the countries which had been invaded, the more refined principles of building. The monuments of the edifices erected in Spain, in Gaul, and in Britain have, for the most part, disappeared under the destructive agencies of time; but their memorials remain to us in ruins, in inscriptions, and in the history of the improved condition of architecture, among these barbarous and uncultivated peoples. It was, it is true, developed in subsequent times, and greatly modified by the instructions of Byzantine artists, but the first growth and outspring of the architecture practiced by the mediaval guilds of Freemasons must be traced to the introduction of the art into the Roman provinces by the Colleges of Builders which accompanied the Roman legions in the stream of conquest which these victorious armies followed.

Having thus presented the details of the history of these Roman Colleges of Builders from their organization by Numa, through the successive eras of regal, of republican, and of imperial Rome; having shown their continued existence and eventually their spread into the municipal or free cities and into the conquered provinces, impressing everywhere the evidences of an influence on the art of building, it is proper that we should now pause to examine the memorials of their labors in the different provinces and colonies.

It is thus that we shall be enabled to establish the first link in that chain which connects the Freemasonry of the medieval and more recent periods of Europe with the building corporations of Rome.

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST LINK: SETTLEMENT OF ROMAN COLLEGES OF ARTIFICERS

IN THE PROVINCES OF THE EMPIRE

HE first link of the chain which connects the Roman Colleges of Artificers with the building corporations of the Middle Ages, is found in the dispersion and settlement of the former in the conquered colonies of Rome.

It has been satisfactorily shown that the Masons at Rome were incorporated into colleges, where the principles of their art were diligently studied and taught to younger members who stood for that purpose in the place occupied by the Apprentices in the Stonemasons' lodges at a long subsequent period. We have seen that an immunity from all public services was granted by the Emperor Constantine to workmen, and among others to architects for the express reason that they might have the opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of their professions and of imparting it to their disciples.

Now these architects, one of whom was always appointed to a legion with workmen from the colleges under him, carried the skill which they had been enabled to acquire at home, with them into the colonies or provinces which they visited, and there, if they remained long enough, which was usually the case, as the legions were for the most part stationed for long periods, they erected, besides the military defences constructed for the safety of the army, and the roads which they opened for its convenience, more permanent edifices, such as temples. Of this we have abundant evidence in the ruins which still remain of some of these structures, ruins so dilapidated as to supply us with only meagre and yet sufficient evidence of their former existence and even splendor, but more especially in the numerous inscriptions on stone or marble tablets, hundreds of which, in every province, have been collected by Gruter, Muratori, Reine

sius and other writers who have devoted themselves to the study of Roman antiquities.

Thus we shall find in Spain, in Gaul, and in Britain abundant evidences, of the kind referred to, of these labors of the Roman architects, while these provinces were under Roman domination. It can not be denied that this must have exercised a certain influence on the original inhabitants and have introduced a more refined taste and a superior skill in the art of building. Nor was the influence thus exerted of an altogether ephemeral nature. When the Roman domination ceased, and the legions were withdrawn to sustain the feeble powers of a decaying empire, threatened by the barbarian hordes of the north with extinction, not all the Romans who had come with the legions, or since their advent immigrated into the country, left with them. A very long series of A very long series of years had passed, and many of these architects and builders had been naturalized, as it were, and were unwilling to depart from the homes which they had made. They remained, and continued to perpetuate among the people with whom they were domiciliated the skill and the usages which they had originally brought from Rome.

M. Viollet-le-Duc says, in his Dictionary of Architecture,' that in the Middle Ages the workmen of the southern cities of Europe preserved the Roman traditions, and that in them the corporations or colleges did not cease to exist, but that these bodies were not established in the northern cities until the time of the affranchisement of the communes.

Even if this were the fact, it would only be lengthening the chain of connection, for it is fair to suppose that the corporations of the north, at whatever later period they were established, must have adopted the system of confraternities from the southern cities where they had long existed as a part of the Roman tradition. So that even in this view the chain is uninterrupted which binds the corporations of builders of the Middle Ages with those of Rome.

But I think that it will hereafter be shown to be historically true that the traditions and the usages of the Roman colleges were well preserved in the early period of English architecture, and that out of these traditions sprang, in part, the regulations of the Saxon

1" Dictionnaire Raisonné de l'Architecture de XIe au XVIe siècle," tome vi., p. 346.

guilds. But this is a question for future consideration when we come to the investigation of the post-Roman architecture of Gaul and England.

The evidences of the influence of the Roman colleges on the province of Spain are very abundant, arising from the peculiar relations of that province to the Empire.

Upon the expulsion of the Carthaginians from Spain, which occurred 206 B.C., it was erected into a Roman province, at least so much as had been conquered by the Romans under the Scipios, which did not include more than half of the peninsular. Thenceforward it was governed sometimes by one prætor and sometimes by two, and two legions were always kept stationary in the province. The influence of this political arrangement was of the most important character. The soldiers intermarried with the native women, and thus became so estranged from Italy that when the legions were disbanded. many of them refused to return home, and continued their residence in Spain.1

A little more than a century after its conquest, such a system of internal communication had been established by the opening of roads, and especially the military one of Pompey over the Pyrenees, that the country was laid open to travelers, many of whom settled there. In the time of Strabo, a portion of the province had been so Romanized in manners as to have become almost Roman. The great privilege of citizenship had been granted to many of the inhabitants, and they had even forgotten their native language.

Spain, thus becoming more intimately connected with the Empire than any of the other provinces, furnished, as it is well known, some distinguished names to Latin literature, such as Lucanus, the poet, the older and the younger Seneca, Columelle, Quintilian, and the epigrammatist, Martial.

In the reign of Augustus many considerable colonies were founded, represented by the modern cities of Zaragossa, Merida, Badajoz, and many others. In these cities the art of building flourished, and they were adorned with some of the finest productions of Roman architecture, of many of which the magnificent ruins still remain, while temples, theaters, baths, circuses, and other public edifices, which had been erected by the Roman masons, have perished through the

1 Niebuhr, "Lectures on Roman History," ii., p. 208.