CHAPTER VII.

GREEK ARCHITECTURE—Continued.

Books Recommended: Same as for Chapter VI. Also, Bacon and Clarke, Investigations at Assos. Espouy, Fragments d’architecture antique. Harrison and Verrall, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens. Hitorff et Zanth, Recueil des Monuments de Ségeste et Sélinonte. Magne, Le Parthénon. Koldewey and Puchstein, Die griechischen Tempel in Unteritalien und Sicilien. Waldstein, The Argive Heræum.

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT. The history of Greek architecture, subsequent to the Heroic or Primitive Age, may be divided into periods as follows:

The Archaic; from 650 to 500 B.C.

The Transitional; from 500 to 460 B.C., or to the revival of prosperity after the Persian wars.

The Periclean; from 460 to 400 B.C.

The Florid or Alexandrian; from 400 to 300 B.C.

The Decadent; 300 to 100 B.C.

The Roman; 100 B.C. to 200 A.D.

These dates are, of course, somewhat arbitrary; it is impossible to set exact bounds to style-periods, which must inevitably overlap at certain points, but the dates, as given above, will assist in distinguishing the successive phases of the history.

ARCHAIC PERIOD. The archaic period is characterized by the exclusive use of the Doric order, which appears in the earliest monuments complete in all its parts, but heavy in its proportions and coarse in its execution. The oldest known temples of this period are the Apollo Temple at Corinth (650 B.C.?), and the Northern Temple on the acropolis at Selinus in Sicily (cir. 610–590 B.C.). They are both of a coarse limestone covered with stucco. The columns are low and massive (4⅓ to 4⅔ diameters in height), widely spaced, and carry a very high entablature. The triglyphs still appear around the cella wall under the pteroma ceiling, an illogical detail destined to disappear in later buildings. Other temples at Selinus date from the middle or latter part of the sixth century; they have higher columns and finer profiles than those just mentioned. The great Temple of Zeus at Selinus was the earliest of five colossal Greek temples of very nearly identical dimensions; it measured 360 feet by 167 feet in plan, but was never completed. During the second half of the sixth century important Doric temples were built at Pæstum in South Italy, and Agrigentum in Sicily; the somewhat primitive temple at Assos in Asia Minor, with uncouth carvings of centaurs and monsters on its architrave, belongs to this same period. The Temple of Zeus at Agrigentum (Fig. 33) is another singular and exceptional design, and was the second of the five colossal temples mentioned above. The pteroma was entirely enclosed by walls with engaged columns showing externally, and was of extraordinary width. The walls of the narrow cella were interrupted by heavy piers supporting atlantes, or applied statues under the ceiling. There seem to have been windows between these figures, but it is not clear whence they borrowed their light, unless it was admitted by the omission of the metopes between the external triglyphs.

see caption and text
FIG. 33.—TEMPLE OF ZEUS. AGRIGENTUM.

THE TRANSITION. During the transitional period there was a marked improvement in the proportions, detail, and workmanship of the temples. The cella was made broader, the columns more slender, the entablature lighter. The triglyphs disappeared from the cella wall, and sculpture of a higher order enhanced the architectural effect. The profiles of the mouldings and especially of the capitals became more subtle and refined in their curves, while the development of the Ionic order in important monuments in Asia Minor was preparing the way for the splendors of the Periclean age. Three temples especially deserve notice: the Athena Temple on the island of Ægina, the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and the so-called Theseum—perhaps a temple of Heracles—in Athens. They belong to the period 470–450 B.C.; they are all hexastyle and peripteral, and without triglyphs on the cella wall. Of the three the second in the list is interesting as the scene of those rites which preceded and accompanied the Panhellenic Olympian games, and as the central feature of the Altis, the most complete temple-group and enclosure among all Greek remains. It was built of a coarse conglomerate, finished with fine stucco, and embellished with sculpture by the greatest masters of the time. The adjacent Heraion (temple of Hera) was a highly venerated and ancient shrine, originally built with wooden columns which, according to Pausanias, were replaced one by one, as they decayed, by stone columns. The truth of this statement is attested by the discovery of a singular variety of capitals among its ruins, corresponding to the various periods at which they were added. The Theseum is the most perfectly preserved of all Greek temples, and in the refinement of its forms is only surpassed by those of the Periclean age.

see caption and text
FIG. 34.—RUINS OF THE PARTHENON.

THE PERICLEAN AGE. The Persian wars may be taken as the dividing line between the Transition period and the Periclean age. The élan of national enthusiasm that followed the expulsion of the invader, and the glory and wealth which accrued to Athens as the champion of all Hellas, resulted in a splendid reconstruction of the Attic monuments as well as a revival of building activity in Asia Minor. By the wise administration of Pericles and by the genius of Ictinus, Phidias, and other artists of surpassing skill, the Acropolis at Athens was crowned with a group of buildings and statues absolutely unrivalled. Chief among them was the Parthenon, the shrine of Athena Parthenos, which the critics of all schools have agreed in considering the most faultless in design and execution of all buildings erected by man (Figs. 31, 34, and Frontispiece). It was an octastyle peripteral temple, with seventeen columns on the side, and measured 220 by 100 feet on the top of the stylobate. It was the work of Ictinus and Callicrates, built to enshrine the noble statue of the goddess by Phidias, a standing chryselephantine figure forty feet high. It was the masterpiece of Greek architecture not only by reason of its refinements of detail, but also on account of the beauty of its sculptural adornments. The frieze about the cella wall under the pteroma ceiling, representing in low relief with masterly skill the Panathenaic procession; the sculptured groups in the metopes, and the superb assemblages of Olympic and symbolic figures of colossal size in the pediments, added their majesty to the perfection of the architecture. see caption and text
FIG. 35.—PLAN OF ERECHTHEUM. see caption and text
FIG. 36.—WEST END OF ERECHTHEUM,
RESTORED. Here also the horizontal curvatures and other refinements are found in their highest development. Northward from it, upon the Acropolis, stood the Erechtheum, an excellent example of the Attic-Ionic style (Figs. 35, 36). Its singular irregularities of plan and level, and the variety of its detail, exhibit in a striking way the Greek indifference to mere formal symmetry when confronted by practical considerations. The motive in this case was the desire to include in one design several existing and venerated shrines to Attic deities and heroes—Athena Polias, Poseidon, Pandrosus, Erechtheus, Boutes, etc. Begun by unknown architects in 479 B.C., and not completed until 408 B.C., it remains in its ruin still one of the most interesting and attractive of ancient buildings. Its two colonnades of differing design, its beautiful north doorway, and the unique and noble caryatid porch or balcony on the south side are unsurpassed in delicate beauty combined with vigor of design.11 A smaller monument of the Ionic order, the amphiprostyle temple to Nike Apteros—the Wingless Victory—stands on a projecting spur of the Acropolis to the southwest. It measures only 27 feet by 18 feet in plan; the cella is nearly square; the columns are sturdier than those of the Erechtheum, and the execution of the monument is admirable. It was the first completed of the extant buildings of the group of the Acropolis and dates from 466 B.C.

see caption and text
FIG. 37.—PROPYLÆA AT ATHENS. PLAN.

In the Propylæa (Fig. 37), the monumental gateway to the Acropolis, the Doric and Ionic orders appear to have been combined for the first time (437 to 432 B.C.). It was the master work of Mnesicles. The front and rear façades were Doric hexastyles; adjoining the front porch were two projecting lateral wings employing a smaller Doric order. The central passageway led between two rows of Ionic columns to the rear porch, entered by five doorways and crowned, like the front, with a pediment. The whole was executed with the same splendor and perfection as the other buildings of the Acropolis, and was a worthy gateway to the group of noble monuments which crowned that citadel of the Attic capital. The two orders were also combined in the temple of Apollo Epicurius at Phigalæa (Bassæ). This temple was erected in 430 B.C. by Ictinus, who used the Ionic order internally to decorate a row of projecting piers instead of free-standing columns in the naos, in which there was also a single Corinthian column of rather archaic design, which may have been used as a support for a statue or votive offering.

ALEXANDRIAN AGE. A period of reaction followed the splendid architectural activity of the Periclean age. A succession of disastrous wars—the Sicilian, Peloponnesian, and Corinthian—drained the energies and destroyed the peace of European Greece for seventy-five years, robbing Athens of her supremacy and inflicting wounds from which she never recovered. In the latter part of the fourth century, however, the triumph of the Macedonian empire over all the Mediterranean lands inaugurated a new era of architectural magnificence, especially in Asia Minor. The keynote of the art of this time was splendor, as that of the preceding age was artistic perfection. The Corinthian order came into use, as though the Ionic were not rich enough for the sumptuous taste of the time, and capitals and bases of novel and elaborate design embellished the Ionic temples of Asia Minor. In the temple of Apollo Didymæus at Miletus, the plinths of the bases were made octagonal and panelled with rich scroll-carvings; and the piers which buttressed the interior faces of the cella-walls were given capitals of singular but elegant form, midway between the Ionic and Corinthian types. This temple belongs to the list of colossal edifices already referred to; its dimensions were 366 by 163 feet, making it the largest of them all. The famous Artemisium (temple of Artemis or Diana) measured 342 by 163 feet. Several of the columns of the latter were enriched with sculptured figures encircling the lower drums of the colossal shafts. see caption and text
FIG. 38.—CHORAGIC
MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES.
(Restored model, N.Y.) The most lavish expenditure was bestowed upon small structures, shrines, and sarcophagi. The graceful monument still visible in Athens, erected by the choragus Lysicrates in token of his victory in the choral competitions, belongs to this period (330 B.C.). It is circular, with a slightly domical imbricated roof, and is decorated with elegant engaged Corinthian columns (Fig. 38). In the Imperial Museum at Constantinople are several sarcophagi of this period found at Sidon, but executed by Greek artists, and of exceptional beauty. They are in the form of temples or shrines; the finest of them, supposed by some to have been made for Alexander’s favorite general Perdiccas, and by others for the Persian satrap who figures prominently on its sculptured reliefs, is the most sumptuous work of the kind in existence. The exquisite polychromy of its beautiful reliefs and the perfection of its rich details of cornice, pediment, tiling, and crestings, make it an exceedingly interesting and instructive example of the minor architecture of the period.

THE DECADENCE. After the decline of Alexandrian magnificence Greek art never recovered its ancient glory, but the flame was not suddenly extinguished. While in Greece proper the works of the second and third centuries B.C., are for the most part weak and lifeless, like the Stoa of Attalus (175 B.C.) and the Tower of the Winds (the Clepsydra of Andronicus Cyrrhestes, 100 B.C.) at Athens or the Portico of Philip in Delos, there were still a few worthy works built in Asia Minor. The splendid Altar erected at Pergamon by Eumenes II. (circ. 180 B.C.) in the Ionic order, combined sculpture of extraordinary vigor with imposing architecture in masterly fashion. At Aizanoi an Ionic Temple to Zeus, by some attributed to the Roman period, but showing rather the character of good late Greek work, deserves mention for its elegant details, and especially for its frieze-decoration of acanthus leaves and scrolls resembling those of a Corinthian capital.

see caption and text
FIG. 39.—TEMPLE OF OLYMPIAN ZEUS. ATHENS.
Larger View

ROMAN PERIOD. During this period, i.e., throughout the second and first centuries B.C., the Roman dominion was spreading over Greek territory, and the structures erected subsequent to the conquest partake of the Roman character and mingle Roman conceptions with Greek details and vice versâ. The temple of the Olympian Zeus at Athens (Fig. 39), a mighty dipteral Corinthian edifice measuring 354 by 171 feet, standing on a vast terrace or temenos surrounded by a buttressed wall, was begun by Antiochus Epiphanes (170 B.C.) on the site of an earlier unfinished Doric temple of the time of Pisistratus, and carried out under the direction of the Roman architect, Cossutius. It was not, however, finally completed until the time of Hadrian, 130 A.D. Meanwhile Sulla had despoiled it of several columns12 which he carried to Rome (86 B.C.), to use in the rebuilding of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, where they undoubtedly served as models in the development of the Roman Corinthian order. The columns were 57 feet high, with capitals of the most perfect Corinthian type; fifteen are now standing, and one lies prostrate near by. To the Roman period also belong the Agora Gate (circ. 35 B.C.), the Arch of Hadrian (117 A.D.), the Odeon of Regilla or of Herodes Atticus (143 A.D.), at Athens, and many temples and tombs, theatres, arches, etc., in the Greek provinces.

SECULAR MONUMENTS; PROPYLÆA. The stately gateway by which the Acropolis was entered has already been described. It was the noblest and most perfect of a class of buildings whose prototype is found in the monumental columnar porches of the palace-group at Persepolis. The Greeks never used the arch in these structures, nor did they attach to them the same importance as did most of the other nations of antiquity. The Altis of Olympia, the national shrine of Hellenism, appears to have had no central gateway of imposing size, but a number of insignificant entrances disposed at random. The Propylæa of Sunium, Priene and Eleusis are the most conspicuous, after those of the Athenian Acropolis. Of these the Ionic gateway at Priene is the finest, although the later of the two at Eleusis is interesting for its anta-capitals. (Anta = a flat pilaster decorating the end of a wing-wall and treated with a base and capital usually differing from those of the adjacent columns.) These are of Corinthian type, adorned with winged horses, scrolls, and anthemions of an exuberant richness of design, characteristic of this late period.

COLONNADES, STOÆ. These were built to connect public monuments (as the Dionysiac theatre and Odeon at Athens); or along the sides of great public squares, as at Assos and Olympia (the so-called Echo Hall); or as independent open public halls, as the Stoa Diple at Thoricus. They afforded shelter from sun and rain, places for promenading, meetings with friends, public gatherings, and similar purposes. They were rarely of great size, and most of them are of rather late date, though the archaic structure at Pæstum, known as the Basilica, was probably in reality an open hall of this kind.

see caption and text
FIG. 40.—PLAN OF GREEK THEATRE.

o, Orchestra; l, Logeion; p, Paraskenai; s, s, Stoa.

Larger View

THEATRES, ODEONS. These were invariably cut out of the rocky hillsides, though in a few cases (Mantinæa, Myra, Antiphellus) a part of the seats were sustained by a built-up substructure and walls to eke out the deficiency of the hill-slope under them. The front of the excavation was enclosed by a stage and a set scene or background, built up so as to leave somewhat over a semicircle for the orchestra or space enclosed by the lower tier of seats (Fig. 40). An altar to Dionysus (Bacchus) was the essential feature in the foreground of the orchestra, where the Dionysiac choral dance was performed. The seats formed successive steps of stone or marble sweeping around the sloping excavation, with carved marble thrones for the priests, archons, and other dignitaries. The only architectural decoration of the theatre was that of the set scene or skene, which with its wing-walls (paraskenai) enclosing the stage (logeion) was a permanent structure of stone or marble adorned with doors, cornices, pilasters, etc. This has perished in nearly every case; but at Aspendus, in Asia Minor, there is one still fairly well preserved, with a rich architectural decoration on its inner face. The extreme diameter of the theatres varied greatly; thus at Aizanoi it is 187 feet, and at Syracuse 495 feet. The theatre of Dionysus at Athens (finished 325 B.C.) could accommodate thirty thousand spectators.

The odeon differed from the theatre principally in being smaller and entirely covered in by a wooden roof. The Odeon of Regilla, built by Herodes Atticus in Athens (143 A.D.), is a well-preserved specimen of this class, but all traces of its cedar ceiling and of its intermediate supports have disappeared.

BUILDINGS FOR ATHLETIC CONTESTS. These comprised stadia and hippodromes for races, and gymnasia and palæstræ for individual exercise, bathing, and amusement. The stadia and hippodromes were oblong enclosures surrounded by tiers of seats and without conspicuous architectural features. The palæstra or gymnasium—for the terms are not clearly distinguished—was a combination of courts, chambers, tanks (piscinæ) for bathers and exedræ or semicircular recesses provided with tiers of seats for spectators and auditors, destined not merely for the exercises of athletes preparing for the stadium, but also for the instruction and diversion of the public by recitations, lectures, and discussions. It was the prototype of the Roman thermæ, but less imposing, more simple in plan and adornment. Every Greek city had one or more of them, but they have almost wholly disappeared, and the brief description by Vitruvius and scanty remains at Alexandria Troas and Ephesus furnish almost the only information we possess regarding their form and arrangement.

TOMBS. These are not numerous, and the most important are found in Asia Minor. The greatest of these is the famed Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in Caria, the monument erected to the king Mausolus by his widow Artemisia (354 B.C.; Fig. 41). It was designed by Satyrus and Pythius in the Ionic style, and comprised a podium or base 50 feet high and measuring 80 feet by 100 feet, in which was the sepulchre. Upon this base stood a cella surrounded by thirty-six Ionic columns; and crowned by a pyramidal roof, on the peak of which was a colossal marble quadriga at a height of 130 feet. It was superbly decorated by Scopas and other great sculptors with statues, marble lions, and a magnificent frieze. The British Museum possesses fragments of this most imposing monument. At Xanthus the Nereid Monument, so called from its sculptured figures of Nereides, was a somewhat similar design on a smaller scale, with sixteen Ionic columns. At Mylassa was another tomb with an open Corinthian colonnade supporting a roof formed in a stepped pyramid. Some of the later rock-cut tombs of Lycia at Myra and Antiphellus may also be counted as Hellenic works.

see caption and text
FIG. 41.—MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS.
(As restored by the author.)

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE. This never attained great importance in Greece, and our knowledge of the typical Greek house is principally derived from literary sources. Very few remains of Greek houses have been found sufficiently well preserved to permit of restoring even the plan. It is probable that they resembled in general arrangement the houses of Pompeii (see p. 107); but that they were generally insignificant in size and decoration. The exterior walls were pierced only by the entrance doors, all light being derived from one or more interior courts. In the Macedonian epoch there must have been greater display and luxury in domestic architecture, but no remains have come down to us of sufficient importance or completeness to warrant further discussion.

CHAPTER VIII.

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE.

Books Recommended: As before, Anderson and Spiers, Baumeister, Reber. Choisy, L’Art de bâtir chez les Romains. Desgodetz, Rome in her Ancient Grandeur. Durm, Die Baukunst der Etrusker; Die Baukunst der Romer. Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Modern Discovery; New Tales of Old Rome; Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome. De Martha, Archéologie étrusque et romaine. Middleton, Ancient Rome in 1888.

LAND AND PEOPLE. The geographical position of Italy conferred upon her special and obvious advantages for taking up and carrying northward and westward the arts of civilization. A scarcity of good harbors was the only drawback amid the blessings of a glorious climate, fertile soil, varied scenery, and rich material resources. From a remote antiquity Dorian colonists had occupied the southern portion and the island of Sicily, enriching them with splendid monuments of Doric art; and Phœnician commerce had brought thither the products of Oriental art and industry. The foundation of Rome in 753 B.C. established the nucleus about which the sundry populations of Italy were to crystallize into the Roman nation, under the dominating influence of the Latin element. Later on, the absorption of the conquered Etruscans added to this composite people a race of builders and engineers, as yet rude and uncouth in their art, but destined to become a powerful factor in developing the new architecture that was to spring from the contact of the practical Romans with the noble art of the Greek centres.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. While the Greeks bequeathed to posterity the most perfect models of form in literary and plastic art, it was reserved for the Romans to work out the applications of these to every-day material life. The Romans were above all things a practical people. Their consummate skill as organizers is manifest in the marvellous administrative institutions of their government, under which they united the most distant and diverse nationalities. Seemingly deficient in culture, they were yet able to recast the forms of Greek architecture in new moulds, and to evolve therefrom a mighty architecture adapted to wholly novel conditions. They brought engineering into the service of architecture, which they fitted to the varied requirements of government, public amusement, private luxury, and the common comfort. They covered the antique world with arches and amphitheatres, with villas, baths, basilicas, and temples, all bearing the unmistakable impress of Rome, though wrought by artists and artisans of divers races. Only an extraordinary genius for organization could have accomplished such results.

The architects of Rome marvellously extended the range of their art, and gave it a flexibility by which it accommodated itself to the widest variety of materials and conditions. They made the arch and vault the basis of their system of design, employing them on a scale previously undreamed of, and in combinations of surpassing richness and majesty. They systematized their methods of construction so that soldiers and barbarians could execute the rough mass of their buildings, and formulated the designing of the decorative details so that artisans of moderate skill could execute them with good effect. They carried the principle of repetition of motives to its utmost limit, and sought to counteract any resulting monotony by the scale and splendor of the design. Above all they developed planning into a fine art, displaying their genius in a wonderful variety of combinations and in an unfailing sense of the demands of constructive propriety, practical convenience, and artistic effect. Where Egyptian or Greek architecture shows one type of plan, the Roman shows a score.

GREEK INFLUENCE. Previous to the closing years of the Republic the Romans had no art but the Etruscan. The few buildings of importance they possessed were of Etruscan design and workmanship, excepting a small number built by Greek hands. It was not until the Empire that Roman architecture took on a truly national form. True Roman architecture is essentially imperial. The change from the primitive Etruscan style to the splendors of the imperial age was due to the conquest of the Greek states. Not only did the Greek campaigns enrich Rome with an unprecedented wealth of artistic spoils; they also brought into Italy hosts of Greek artists, and filled the minds of the campaigners with the ambition to realize in their own dominions the marble colonnades, the temples, theatres, and propylæa of the Greek cities they had pillaged. The Greek orders were adopted, altered, and applied to arcaded designs as well as to peristyles and other open colonnades. The marriage of the column and arch gave birth to a system of forms as characteristic of Roman architecture as the Doric or Ionic colonnade is of the Greek.

see caption and text
FIG. 42.—ROMAN DORIC ORDER. (THEATRE OF MARCELLUS).

THE ROMAN ORDERS. To meet the demands of Roman taste the Etruscan column was retained with its simple entablature; the Doric and Ionic were adopted in a modified form; the Corinthian was developed into a complete and independent order, and the Composite was added to the list. A regular system of proportions for all these five orders was gradually evolved, and the mouldings were profiled with arcs of circles instead of the subtler Greek curves. In the building of many-storied structures the orders were superposed, the more slender over the sturdier, in an orderly and graded succession. The immense extent and number of the Roman buildings, the coarse materials often used, the relative scarcity of highly trained artisans, and above all, the necessity of making a given amount of artistic design serve for the largest possible amount of architecture, combined to direct the designing of detail into uniform channels. Thus in time was established a sort of canon of proportions, which was reduced to rules by Vitruvius, and revived in much more detailed and precise form by Vignola in the sixteenth century.

see caption and text
FIG. 43.—ROMAN IONIC ORDER.

In each of the orders, including the Doric, the column was given a base one half of a diameter in height (the unit of measurement being the diameter of the lower part of the shaft, the crassitudo of Vitruvius). The shaft was made to contract about one-sixth in diameter toward the capital, under which it was terminated by an astragal or collar of small mouldings; at the base it ended in a slight flare and fillet called the cincture. The entablature was in all cases given not far from one quarter the height of the whole column. The Tuscan order was a rudimentary or Etruscan Doric with a column seven diameters high and a simple entablature without triglyphs, mutules, or dentils. But few examples of its use are known. The Doric (Fig. 42) retained the triglyphs and metopes, the mutules and guttæ of the Greek; but the column was made eight diameters high, the shaft was smooth or had deep flutings separated by narrow fillets, and was usually provided with a simple moulded base on a square plinth. Mutules were used only over the triglyphs, and were even replaced in some cases by dentils; the corona was made lighter than the Greek, and a cymatium replaced the antefixæ on the lateral cornices. The Ionic underwent fewer changes, and these principally in the smaller mouldings and details of the capital. The column was nine diameters high (Fig. 43). The Corinthian was made into an independent order by the designing of a special base of small tori and scotiæ, and by sumptuously carved modillions or brackets enriching the cornice and supporting the corona above a denticulated bed-mould (Fig. 44). Though the first designers of the modillion were probably Greeks, it must, nevertheless, be taken as really a Roman device, worthily completing the essentially Roman Corinthian order. The Composite was formed by combining into one capital portions of the Ionic and Corinthian, and giving to it a simplified form of the Corinthian cornice. The Corinthian order remained, however, the favorite order of Roman architecture.

see caption and text
FIG. 44.—CORINTHIAN ORDER (TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX).

USE OF THE ORDERS. The Romans introduced many innovations in the general use and treatment of the orders. Monolithic shafts were preferred to those built up of superposed drums. The fluting was omitted on these, and when hard and semi-precious stone like porphyry or verd-antique was the material, it was highly polished to bring out its color. These polished monoliths were often of great size, and they were used in almost incredible numbers.

Another radical departure from Greek usage was the mounting of columns on pedestals to secure greater height without increasing the size of the column and its entablature. The Greek anta was developed into the Roman pilaster or flattened wall-column, and every free column, or range of columns perpendicular to the façade, had its corresponding pilaster to support the wall-end of the architrave. But the most radical innovation was the general use of engaged columns as wall-decorations or buttresses. The engaged column projected from the wall by more than half its diameter, and was built up with the wall as a part of its substance (Fig. 45). The entablature was in many cases advanced only over the columns, between which it was set back almost to the plane of the wall. This practice is open to the obvious criticism that it makes the column appear superfluous by depriving it of its function of supporting the continuous entablature. The objection has less weight when the projecting entablature over the column serves as a pedestal for a statue or similar object, which restores to the column its function as a support (see the Arch of Constantine, Fig. 63).

see caption and text
FIG. 45.—ROMAN ARCADE WITH ENGAGED COLUMNS
(From the Colosseum.)

ARCADES. The orders, though probably at first used only as free supports in porticos and colonnades, were early applied as decorations to arcaded structures. This practice became general with the multiplication of many-storied arcades like those of the amphitheatres, the engaged columns being set between the arches as buttresses, supporting entablatures which marked the divisions into stories (Fig. 45). This combination has been assailed as a false and illogical device, but the criticism proceeds from a too narrow conception of architectural propriety. It is defensible upon both artistic and logical grounds; for it not only furnishes a most desirable play of light and shade and a pleasing contrast of rectangular and curved lines, but by emphasizing the constructive divisions and elements of the building and the vertical support of the piers, it also contributes to the expressiveness and vigor of the design.

VAULTING. The Romans substituted vaulting in brick, concrete, or masonry for wooden ceilings wherever possible, both in public and private edifices. The Etruscans were the first vault-builders, and the Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer of Republican Rome (about 500 B.C.) still remains as a monument of their engineering skill. Probably not only Etruscan engineers (whose traditions were perhaps derived from Asiatic sources in the remote past), but Asiatic builders also from conquered eastern provinces, were engaged together in the development of the wonderful system of vaulted construction to which Roman architecture so largely owed its grandeur. Three types of vault were commonly used: the barrel-vault, the groined or four-part vault, and the dome.

see caption and text
FIG. 46.—BARREL VAULT.

The barrel vault (Fig. 46) was generally semi-cylindrical in section, and was used to cover corridors and oblong halls, like the temple-cellas, or was bent around a curve, as in amphitheatre passages.

see caption and text
FIG. 47.—GROINED VAULT.
g, g, Groins.

The groined vault is formed by the intersection of two barrel-vaults (Fig. 47). When several compartments of groined vaulting are placed together over an oblong plan, a double advantage is secured. Lateral windows can be carried up to the full height of the vaulting instead of being stopped below its springing; and the weight and thrust of the vaulting are concentrated upon a number of isolated points instead of being exerted along the whole extent of the side walls, as with the barrel-vault. The Romans saw that it was sufficient to dispose the masonry at these points in masses at right angles to the length of the hall, to best resist the lateral thrust of the vault. This appears clearly in the plan of the Basilica of Constantine (Fig. 58).

The dome was in almost all Roman examples supported on a circular wall built up from the ground, as in the Pantheon (Fig. 54). The pendentive dome, sustained by four or eight arches over a square or octagonal plan, is not found in true Roman buildings.

The Romans made of the vault something more than a mere constructive device. It became in their hands an element of interior effect at least equally important with the arch and column. No style of architecture has ever evolved nobler forms of ceiling than the groined vault and the dome. Moreover, the use of vaulting made possible effects of unencumbered spaciousness and amplitude which could never be compassed by any combination of piers and columns. It also assured to the Roman monuments a duration and a freedom from danger of destruction by fire impossible with any wooden-roofed architecture, however noble its form or careful its execution.

CONSTRUCTION. The constructive methods of the Romans varied with the conditions and resources of different provinces, but were everywhere dominated by the same practical spirit. Their vaulted architecture demanded for the support of its enormous weights and for resistance to its disruptive thrusts, piers and buttresses of great mass. To construct these wholly of cut stone appeared preposterous and wasteful to the Roman. Italy abounds in clay, lime, and a volcanic product, pozzolana (from Puteoli or Pozzuoli, where it has always been obtained in large quantities), which makes an admirable hydraulic cement. With these materials it was possible to employ unskilled labor for the great bulk of this massive masonry, and to erect with the greatest rapidity and in the most economical manner those stupendous piles which, even in their ruin, excite the admiration of every beholder.

see caption and text
FIG. 48.—ROMAN WALL MASONRY.

a, Brickwork; b, Tufa ashlar; r, Opus reticulatum; i, Opus incertum.

STONE, CONCRETE, AND BRICK MASONRY. For buildings of an externally decorative character such as temples, arches of triumph, and amphitheatres, as well as in all places where brick and concrete were not easily obtained, stone was employed. The walls were built by laying up the inner and outer faces in ashlar or cut stone, and filling in the intermediate space with rubble (random masonry of uncut stone) laid up in cement, or with concrete of broken stone and cement dumped into the space in successive layers. The cement converted the whole into a conglomerate closely united with the face-masonry. In Syria and Egypt the local preference for stones of enormous size was gratified, and even surpassed, as in Herod’s terrace-walls for the temple at Jerusalem (p. 41), and in the splendid structures of Palmyra and Baalbec. In Italy, however, stones of moderate size were preferred, and when blocks of unusual dimensions occur, they are in many cases marked with false joints, dividing them into apparently smaller blocks, lest they should dwarf the building by their large scale. The general use in the Augustan period of marble for a decorative lining or wainscot in interiors led in time to the objectionable practice of coating buildings of concrete with an apparel of sham marble masonry, by carving false joints upon an external veneer of thin slabs of that material. Ordinary concrete walls were frequently faced with small blocks of tufa, called, according to the manner of its application, opus reticulatum, opus incertum, opus spicatum, etc. (Fig. 48). In most cases, however, the facing was of carefully executed brickwork, covered sometimes by a coating of stucco. The bricks were large, measuring from one to two feet square where used for quoins or arches, but triangular where they served only as facings. Bricks were also used in the construction of skeleton ribs for concrete vaults of large span.

VAULTING. Here, as in the wall-masonry, economy and common sense devised methods extremely simple for accomplishing vast designs. While the smaller vaults were, so to speak, cast in concrete upon moulds made of rough boards, the enormous weight of the larger vaults precluded their being supported, while drying or “setting,” upon timber centrings built up from the ground. Accordingly, a skeleton of light ribs was first built on wooden centrings, and these ribs, when firmly “set,” became themselves supports for intermediate centrings on which to cast the concrete fillings between the ribs. The whole vault, once hardened, formed really a monolithic curved lintel, exerting no thrust whatever, so that the extraordinary precautions against lateral disruption practised by the Romans were, in fact, in many cases quite superfluous.

DECORATION. The temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum (long miscalled the temple of Jupiter Stator), is a typical example of Roman architectural decoration, in which richness was preferred to the subtler refinements of design (see Fig. 44). The splendid figure-sculpture which adorned the Greek monuments would have been inappropriate on the theatres and thermæ of Rome or the provinces, even had there been the taste or the skill to produce it. Conventional carved ornament was substituted in its place, and developed into a splendid system of highly decorative forms. Two principal elements appear in this decoration—the acanthus-leaf, as the basis of a whole series of wonderfully varied motives; and symbolism, represented principally by what are technically termed grotesques—incongruous combinations of natural forms, as when an infant’s body terminates in a bunch of foliage (Fig. 49). Only to a limited extent do we find true sculpture employed as decoration, and that mainly for triumphal arches or memorial columns.

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FIG. 49—ROMAN CARVED ORNAMENT.
(Lateran Museum.)

The architectural mouldings were nearly always carved, the Greek water-leaf and egg-and-dart forming the basis of most of the enrichments; but these were greatly elaborated and treated with more minute detail than the Greek prototypes. Friezes and bands were commonly ornamented with the foliated scroll or rinceau (a convenient French term for which we have no equivalent). This motive was as characteristic of Roman art as the anthemion was of the Greek. It consists of a continuous stem throwing out alternately on either side branches which curl into spirals and are richly adorned with rosettes, acanthus-leaves, scrolls, tendrils, and blossoms. In the best examples the detail was modelled with great care and minuteness, and the motive itself was treated with extraordinary variety and fertility of invention. A derived and enriched form of the anthemion was sometimes used for bands and friezes; and grotesques, dolphins, griffins, infant genii, wreaths, festoons, ribbons, eagles, and masks are also common features in Roman relief carving.

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FIG. 50.—ROMAN CEILING PANELS.
(a, From Palmyra; b, Basilica of Constantine.)

The Romans made great use of panelling and of moulded plaster in their interior decoration, especially for ceilings. The panelling of domes and vaults was usually roughly shaped in their first construction and finished afterward in stucco with rich moulding and rosettes. The panels were not always square or rectangular, as in Greek ceilings, but of various geometric forms in pleasing combinations (Fig. 50). In works of a small scale the panels and decorations were wrought in relief in a heavy coating of plaster applied to the finished structure, and these stucco reliefs are among the most refined and charming products of Roman art. (Baths of Titus; Baths at Pompeii; Palace of the Cæsars and tombs at Rome.)

COLOR DECORATION. Plaster was also used as a ground for painting, executed in distemper or by the encaustic process, wax liquefied by a hot iron being the medium for applying the color in the latter case. Pompeii and Herculaneum furnish countless examples of brilliant wall-painting in which strong primary colors form the ground, and a semi-naturalistic, semi-fantastic representation of figures, architecture and landscape is mingled with festoons, vines, and purely conventional ornament. Mosaic was also employed to decorate floors and wall-spaces, and sometimes for ceilings.13 The later imperial baths and palaces were especially rich in mosaic of the kind called opus Grecanicum, executed with numberless minute cubes of stone or glass, as in the Baths of Caracalla and the Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli.

To the walls of monumental interiors, such as temples, basilicas, and thermæ, splendor of color was given by veneering them with thin slabs of rare and richly colored marble. No limit seems to have been placed upon the costliness or amount of these precious materials. Byzantine architecture borrowed from this practice its system of interior color decoration.

13. See Van Dyke’s History of Paintings, p. 33.

CHAPTER IX.

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE—Continued.

Books Recommended: Same as for Chapter VIII. Also, Guhl and Kohner, Life of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Adams, Ruins of the Palace of Spalato. Burn, Rome and the Campagna. Cameron, Roman Baths. Mau, tr. by Kelcey, Pompeii, its Life and Art. Mazois, Ruines de Pompeii. Von Presuhn, Die neueste Ausgrabungen zu Pompeii. Wood, Ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec.

THE ETRUSCAN STYLE. Although the first Greek architects were employed in Rome as early as 493 B.C., the architecture of the Republic was practically Etruscan until nearly 100 B.C. Its monuments, consisting mainly of city walls, tombs, and temples, are all marked by a general uncouthness of detail, denoting a lack of artistic refinement, but they display considerable constructive skill. In the Etruscan walls we meet with both polygonal and regularly coursed masonry; in both kinds the true arch appears as the almost universal form for gates and openings. A famous example is the Augustan Gate at Perugia, a late work rebuilt about 40 B.C., but thoroughly Etruscan in style. At Volaterræ (Volterra) is another arched gate, and in Perugia fragments of still another appear built into the modern walls.

The Etruscans built both structural and excavated tombs; they consisted in general of a single chamber with a slightly arched or gabled roof, supported in the larger tombs on heavy square piers. The interiors were covered with pictures; externally there was little ornament except about the gable and doorway. The latter had a stepped or moulded frame with curious crossettes or ears projecting laterally at the top. The gable recalled the wooden roofs of Etruscan temples, but was coarse in detail, especially in its mouldings. Sepulchral monuments of other types are also met with, such as cippi or memorial pillars, sometimes in groups of five on a single pedestal (tomb at Albano).

Among the temples of Etruscan style that of Jupiter Capitolinus on the Capitol at Rome, destroyed by fire in 80 B.C., was the chief. Three narrow chambers side by side formed a cella nearly square in plan, preceded by a hexastyle porch of huge Doric, or rather Tuscan, columns arranged in three aisles, widely spaced and carrying ponderous wooden architraves. The roof was of wood; the cymatium and ornaments, as well as the statues in the pediment, were of terra-cotta, painted and gilded. The details in general showed acquaintance with Greek models, which appeared in debased and awkward imitations of triglyphs, cornices, antefixæ, etc.

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FIG. 51.—TEMPLE FORTUNA VIRILIS. PLAN.

GREEK STYLE. The victories of Marcellus at Syracuse, 212 B.C., Fabius Maximus at Tarentum (209 B.C.), Flaminius (196 B.C.), Mummius (146 B.C.), Sulla (86 B.C.), and others in the various Greek provinces, steadily increased the vogue of Greek architecture and the number of Greek artists in Rome. The temples of the last two centuries B.C., and some of earlier date, though still Etruscan in plan, were in many cases strongly Greek in the character of their details. A few have remained to our time in tolerable preservation. The temple of Fortuna Virilis (really of Fors Fortuna), of the second century (?) B.C., is a tetrastyle prostyle pseudoperipteral temple with a high podium or base, a typical Etruscan cella, and a deep porch, now walled up, but thoroughly Greek in the elegant details of its Ionic order (Fig. 51). Two circular temples, both called erroneously Temples of Vesta, one at Rome near the Cloaca Maxima, the other at Tivoli, belong among the monuments of Greek style. The first was probably dedicated to Hercules, the second probably to the Sibyls; the latter being much the better preserved of the two. Both were surrounded by peristyles of eighteen Corinthian columns, and probably covered by domical roofs with gilded bronze tiles. The Corinthian order appears here complete with its modillion cornice, but the crispness of the detail and the fineness of the execution are Greek and not Roman. These temples date from about 72 B.C., though the one at Rome was probably rebuilt in the first century A.D. (Fig. 52).

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FIG. 52.—CIRCULAR TEMPLE. TIVOLI.

IMPERIAL ARCHITECTURE; AUGUSTAN AGE. Even in the temples of Greek style Roman conceptions of plan and composition are dominant. The Greek architect was not free to reproduce textually Greek designs or details, however strongly he might impress with the Greek character whatever he touched. The demands of imperial splendor and the building of great edifices of varied form and complex structure, like the thermæ and amphitheatres, called for new adaptations and combinations of planning and engineering. The reign of Augustus (27 B.C.-14 A.D.) inaugurated the imperial epoch, but many works erected before and after his reign properly belong to the Augustan age by right of style. In general, we find in the works of this period the happiest combination of Greek refinement with Roman splendor. It was in this period that Rome first assumed the aspect of an opulent and splendid metropolis, though the way had been prepared for this by the regularization and adornment of the Roman Forum and the erection of many temples, basilicas, fora, arches, and theatres during the generation preceding the accession of Augustus. His reign saw the inception or completion of the portico of Octavia, the Augustan forum, the Septa Julia, the first Pantheon, the adjoining Thermæ of Agrippa, the theatre of Marcellus, the first of the imperial palaces on the Palatine, and a long list of temples, including those of the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux), of Mars Ultor, of Jupiter Tonans on the Capitol, and others in the provinces; besides colonnades, statues, arches, and other embellishments almost without number.

LATER IMPERIAL WORKS. With the successors of Augustus splendor increased to almost fabulous limits, as, for instance, in the vast extent and the prodigality of ivory and gold in the famous Golden House of Nero. After the great fire in Rome, presumably kindled by the agents of this emperor, a more regular and monumental system of street-planning and building was introduced, and the first municipal building-law was decreed by him. To the reign of Vespasian (68–79 A.D.) we owe the rebuilding in Roman style and with the Corinthian order of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, the Baths of Titus, and the beginning of the Flavian amphitheatre or Colosseum. The two last-named edifices both stood on the site of Nero’s Golden House, of which the greater part was demolished to make way for them. During the last years of the first century the arch of Titus was erected, the Colosseum finished, amphitheatres built at Verona, Pola, Reggio, Tusculum, Nîmes (France), Constantine (Algiers), Pompeii and Herculanum (these last two cities and Stabiæ rebuilt after the earthquake of 63 A.D.), and arches, bridges, and temples erected all over the Roman world.

The first part of the second century was distinguished by the splendid architectural achievements of the reign of Hadrian (117–138 A.D.) in Rome and the provinces, especially Athens. Nearly all his works were marked by great dignity of conception as well as beauty of detail. During the latter part of the century a very interesting series of buildings were erected in the Hauran (Syria), in which Greek and Arab workmen under Roman direction produced examples of vigorous stone architecture of a mingled Roman and Syrian character.

The most-remarkable thermæ of Rome belong to the third century—those of Caracalla (211–217 A.D.) and of Diocletian (284–305 A.D.)—their ruins to-day ranking among the most imposing remains of antiquity. In Syria the temples of the Sun at Baalbec and Palmyra (273 A.D., under Aurelian), and the great palace of Diocletian at Spalato, in Dalmatia (300 A.D.), are still the wonder of the few travellers who reach those distant spots.

While during the third and fourth centuries there was a marked decline in purity and refinement of detail, many of the later works of the period display a remarkable freedom and originality in conception. But these works are really not Roman, they are foreign, that is, provincial products; and the transfer of the capital to Byzantium revealed the increasing degree in which Rome was coming to look to the East for her strength and her art.

see caption and text
FIG. 53.—TEMPLE OF VENUS AND ROME. PLAN.

TEMPLES. The Romans built both rectangular and circular temples, and there was much variety in their treatment. In the rectangular temples a high podium, or basement, was substituted for the Greek stepped stylobate, and the prostyle plan was more common than the peripteral. The cella was relatively short and wide, the front porch inordinately deep, and frequently divided by longitudinal rows of columns into three aisles. In most cases the exterior of the cella in prostyle temples was decorated by engaged columns. A barrel vault gave the interior an aspect of spaciousness impossible with the Greek system of a wooden ceiling supported on double ranges of columns. In the place of these, free or engaged columns along the side-walls received the ribs of the vaulting. Between these ribs the ceiling was richly panelled, or coffered and sumptuously gilded. The temples of Fortuna Virilis and of Faustina at Rome (the latter built 141 A.D., and its ruins incorporated into the modern church of S. Lorenzo in Miranda), and the beautiful and admirably preserved Maison Carrée, at Nîmes (France) (4 A.D.) are examples of this type. The temple of Concord, of which only the podium remains, and the small temple of Julius (both of these in the Forum) illustrate another form of prostyle temple in which the porch was on a long side of the cella. Some of the larger temples were peripteral. The temple of the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux) in the Forum, was one of the most magnificent of these, certainly the richest in detail (Fig. 44). Very remarkable was the double temple of Venus and Rome, east of the Forum, designed by the Emperor Hadrian about 130 A.D. (Fig. 53). It was a vast pseudodipteral edifice containing two cellas in one structure, their statue-niches or apses meeting back to back in the centre. The temple stood in the midst of an imposing columnar peribolus entered by magnificent gateways. Other important temples have already been mentioned on p. 91.

Besides the two circular temples already described, the temple of Vesta, adjoining the House of the Vestals, at the east end of the Forum should be mentioned. At Baalbec is a circular temple whose entablature curves inward between the widely-spaced columns until it touches the cella in the middle of each intercolumniation. It illustrates the caprices of design which sometimes resulted from the disregard of tradition and the striving after originality (273 A.D.).

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FIG. 54.—PLAN OF THE PANTHEON.

THE PANTHEON. The noblest of all circular temples of Rome and of the world was the Pantheon. It was built by Hadrian, 117–138 A.D., on the site of the earlier rectangular temple of the same name erected by Agrippa. It measures 142 feet in diameter internally; the wall is 20 feet thick and supports a hemispherical dome rising to a height of 140 feet (Figs. 54, 55). Light is admitted solely through a round opening 28 feet in diameter at the top of the dome, the simplest and most impressive method of illumination conceivable. The rain and snow that enter produce no appreciable effect upon the temperature of the vast hall. There is a single entrance, with noble bronze doors, admitting directly to the interior, around which seven niches, alternately rectangular and semicircular in plan and fronted by Corinthian columns, lighten, without weakening, the mass of the encircling wall. This wall was originally incrusted with rich marbles, and the great dome, adorned with deep coffering in rectangular panels, was decorated with rosettes and mouldings in gilt stucco. The dome appears to have been composed of numerous arches and ribs, filled in and finally coated with concrete. A recent examination of a denuded portion of its inner surface has convinced the writer that the interior panelling was executed after, and not during, its construction, by hewing the panels out of the mass of brick and concrete, without regard to the form and position of the origin skeleton of ribs.

see caption and text
FIG. 55.—INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON.

The exterior (Fig. 56) was less successful than the interior. The gabled porch of twelve superb granite columns 50 feet high, three-aisled in plan after the Etruscan mode, and covered originally by a ceiling of bronze, was a rebuilding with the materials and on the plan of the original pronaos of the Pantheon of Agrippa. The circular wall behind it is faced with fine brickwork, and displays, like the dome, many curious arrangements of discharging arches, reminiscences of traditional constructive precautions here wholly useless and fictitious because only skin-deep. A revetment of marble below and plaster above once concealed this brick facing. The portico, in spite of its too steep gable (once filled with a “gigantomachia” in gilt bronze) and its somewhat awkward association with a round building, is nevertheless a noble work, its capitals in Pentelic marble ranking among the finest known examples of the Roman Corinthian. Taken as a whole, the Pantheon is one of the great masterpieces of the world’s architecture.

see caption and text
FIG. 56.—EXTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON.
(From model in Metropolitan Museum, New York.)

FORA AND BASILICAS. The fora were the places for general public assemblage. The chief of those in Rome, the Forum Magnum, or Forum Romanum, was at first merely an irregular vacant space, about and in which, as the focus of the civic life, temples, halls, colonnades, and statues gradually accumulated. These chance aggregations the systematic Roman mind reduced in time to orderly and monumental form; successive emperors extended them and added new fora at enormous cost and with great splendor of architecture. Those of Julius, Augustus, Vespasian, and Nerva (or Domitian), adjoining the Roman Forum, were magnificent enclosures surrounded by high walls and single or double colonnades. Each contained a temple or basilica, besides gateways, memorial columns or arches, and countless statues. The Forum of Trajan surpassed all the rest; it covered an area of thirty-five thousand square yards, and included, besides the main area, entered through a triumphal arch, the Basilica Ulpia, the temple of Trajan, and his colossal Doric column of Victory. Both in size and beauty it ranked as the chief architectural glory of the city (Fig. 57). The six fora together contained thirteen temples, three basilicas, eight triumphal arches, a mile of porticos, and a number of other public edifices.14 Besides these, a net-work of colonnades covered large tracts of the city, affording sheltered communication in every direction, and here and there expanding into squares or gardens surrounded by peristyles.

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FIG. 57.—FORUM AND BASILICA OF TRAJAN.
Larger View

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FIG. 58.—BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE. PLAN.

The public business of Rome, both judicial and commercial, was largely transacted in the basilicas, large buildings consisting usually of a wide and lofty central nave flanked by lower side-aisles, and terminating at one or both ends in an apse or semicircular recess called the tribune, in which were the seats for the magistrates. The side-aisles were separated from the nave by columns supporting a clearstory wall, pierced by windows above the roofs of the side-aisles. In some cases the latter were two stories high, with galleries; in others the central space was open to the sky, as at Pompeii, suggesting the derivation of the basilica from the open square surrounded by colonnades, or from the forum itself, with which we find it usually associated. The most important basilicas in Rome were the Sempronian, the Æmilian (about 54 B.C.), the Julian in the Forum Magnum (51 B.C.), and the Ulpian in the Forum of Trajan (113 A.D.). The last two were probably open basilicas, only the side-aisles being roofed. The Ulpian (Fig. 57) was the most magnificent of all, and in conjunction with the Forum of Trajan formed one of the most imposing of those monumental aggregations of columnar architecture which contributed so largely to the splendor of the Roman capital.

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FIG. 59.—BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE. RUINS.

These monuments frequently suffered from the burning of their wooden roofs. It was Constantine who completed the first vaulted and fireproof basilica, begun by his predecessor and rival, Maxentius, on the site of the former Temple of Peace (Figs. 58, 59). Its design reproduced on a grand scale the plan of the tepidarium-halls of the thermæ, the side-recesses of which were converted into a continuous side-aisle by piercing arches through the buttress-walls that separated them. Above the imposing vaults of these recesses and under the cross-vaults of the nave were windows admitting abundant light. A narthex, or porch, preceded the hall at one end; there were also a side entrance from the Via Sacra, and an apse or tribune for the magistrates opposite each of these entrances. The dimensions of the main hall (325 × 85 feet), the height of its vault (117 feet), and the splendor of its columns and incrustations excited universal admiration, and exercised a powerful influence on later architecture.