Arches at Rome; in France—Arch at Trèves—Columns of Victory—Tombs—Minerva Medica—Provincial tombs—Eastern tombs—Domestic architecture—Spalato—Pompeii—Bridges—Aqueducts.

Triumphal Arches were among the most peculiar of the various forms of art which the Romans borrowed from those around them, and used with that strange mixture of splendour and bad taste which characterises all their works.

These were in the first instance no doubt borrowed from the Etruscans, as was also the ceremony of the triumph with which they were ultimately associated. At first they seem rather to have been used as festal entrances to the great public roads, the construction of which was considered one of the most important benefits a ruler could confer upon his country. There was one erected at Rimini in honour of an important restoration of the Flaminian way by Augustus; another at Susa in Piedmont, to commemorate a similar act of the same Emperor. Trajan built one on the pier at Ancona, when he restored that harbour, and another at Beneventum, when he repaired the Via Appia, represented in the preceding woodcut (No. 215). It is one of the best preserved as well as most graceful of its class in Italy. The Arch of the Sergii at Pola in Istria seems also to have been erected for a like purpose. That of Hadrian at Athens, and another built by him at Antinoë in Egypt, were monuments merely commemorative of the benefits which he had conferred on those cities by the architectural works he had erected within their walls. By far the most important application of these gateways, in Rome at least, was to commemorate a triumph which may have passed along the road over which the arch was erected, and perhaps in some instances they may have been erected beforehand, for the triumphal procession to pass through, and of which they would remain memorials.

The Arch of Titus at Rome is well known for the beauty of its detail, as well as from the extraordinary interest which it derives from having been erected to commemorate the conquest of Jerusalem, and consequently representing in its bassi-rilievi the spoils of the Temple. From the annexed elevation, drawn to the usual scale, it will be seen that the building is not large, and it is not so well proportioned as that at Beneventum, represented in the preceding woodcut, the attic being overpoweringly high. The absence of sculpture on each side of the arch is also a defect, for the real merit of these buildings is their being used as frameworks for the exhibition of sculptural representations of the deeds they were erected to commemorate.

In the later days of the Empire two side arches were added for foot-passengers, in addition to the carriage-way in the centre. This added much to the splendour of the edifice, and gave a greater opportunity for sculptural decoration than the single arch afforded. The Arch of Septimius Severus, represented to the same scale in Woodcut No. 217, is perhaps the best specimen of the class. That of Constantine is very similar and in most respects equal to this—a merit which it owes to most of its sculptures being borrowed from earlier monuments.

More splendid than either of these is the Arch at Orange. It is not known by whom it was erected, or even in what age: it is, however, certainly very late in the Roman period, and shows a strong tendency to treat the order as entirely subordinate, and to exalt the plain masses into that importance which characterises the late transitional period. Unfortunately its sculptures are so much destroyed by time and violence that it is not easy to speak with certainty as to their age; but more might be done than has hitherto been effected to illustrate this important monument.

At Rheims there is an arch which was probably much more magnificent than this. When in a perfect state it was 110 ft. in width, and had three openings, the central one 17 ft. wide by 40 ft. high, and those on each side 10 ft. in width, each separated by two Corinthian columns. From the style of the sculpture it certainly was of the last age of the Roman Empire, but having been built into the walls of the city, it has been so much injured that it is difficult to say what its original form may have been.

Besides these there is in France a very elegant single-arched gateway at St. Rémi, similar to and probably of the same age as that at Beneventum; another at Cavallon, and one at Carpentras, each with one arch. There is also one with two similar arches at Langres; and one, the Porta Nigra, at Besançon, which shows so complete a transition from the Roman style that it is difficult to believe that it does not belong to the Renaissance.

There still remains in France another class of arches, certainly not triumphal, but so similar to those just mentioned that it is difficult to separate the one from the other. The most important of these are two at Autun, called respectively the Porte Arroux and the Porte St. André, a view of which is given in Woodcut No. 218. Each of these has two central large archways for carriages, and one on each side for foot-passengers. Their most remarkable peculiarity is the light arcade or gallery that runs across the top of them, replacing the attic of the Roman arch, and giving a degree of lightness combined with height that those never possessed. These gates were certainly not meant for defence, and the apartment over them could scarcely be applied to utilitarian purposes; so that we may, I believe, consider it as a mere ornamental appendage, or as a balcony for display on festal occasions. It appears, however, to offer a better hint for modern arch-builders than any other example of its class.

Even more interesting than these gates at Autun is that called the Porta Nigra at Trèves; for though far ruder in style and coarser in detail, as might be expected from the remoteness of the province where it is found, it is far more complete. Indeed it is the only example of its class which we possess in anything like its original state. Its front consists of a double archway surmounted by an arcaded gallery, like the French examples. Within this is a rectangular court which seems never to have been roofed, and beyond this a second double archway similar to the first. At the ends of the court, projecting each way beyond the face of the gateway and the gallery surmounting it, are two wings four storeys in height, containing a series of apartments in the form of small basilicas, all similar to one another, and measuring about 55 ft. by 22. It is not easy to understand how these were approached, as there is no stair and no place for one. Of course there must have been some mode of access, and perhaps it may have been on the site of the apse, shown in the plan (Woodcut No. 219), which was added when the building was converted into a church in the Middle Ages. These apartments were probably originally used as courts or chambers of justice, thus realising, more nearly than any other European example I am acquainted with, the idea of a gate of justice.

Notwithstanding its defects of detail, there is a variety in the outline of this building and a boldness of profile that render it an extremely pleasing example of the style adopted; and though exhibiting many of the faults incidental to the design of the Colosseum, it possesses all that repetition of parts and Gothic feeling of design which give such value to its dimensions, though these are far from being contemptible, the building being 115 ft. wide by 95 in height to the top of the wings.

There probably were many similar gates of justice in the province, but all have perished, unless we except those at Autun just described. I am convinced that at that place there were originally such wings as these at Trèves, and that the small church, the apse of which is seen on the right hand (woodcut No. 220), stands upon the foundations of one of these. A slight excavation on the opposite side would settle this point at once. If it could be proved that these gateways at Autun had such lateral adjuncts, it would at once explain the use of the gallery over the arch, which otherwise looks so unmeaning, but would be intelligible as a passage connecting the two wings together.

Another form also is that of an arch at the entrance of a bridge, generally bearing an inscription commemorative of its building. Its purpose is thus closely connected with that of the arches before mentioned, which commemorate the execution of roads. Most of the great bridges of Italy and Spain were so adorned; but unfortunately they have either been used as fortifications in the Middle Ages, or removed in modern times to make room for the increased circulation of traffic. That built by Trajan on his noble bridge at Alcantara in Spain is well known; and there exists a double-arched bridge at Saintes, in the south of France. The most elegant and most perfect specimen, however, of this class is that of St. Chamas in Provence, represented in woodcut No. 221. It consists of two arches, one at each end of the bridge, of singular elegance of form and detail. Although it bears a still legible inscription, it is uncertain to what age it belongs, probably that of the Antonines: and I would account for the purity of its details by referring to the Greek element that pervades the south of France. Whether this is so or not, it is impossible not to admire not only the design of the whole bridge with its two arches, but the elegance with which the details have been executed.

Used in this mode as commencements of roads, or entrances to bridges, or as festal entrances to unfortified towns, there are perhaps no monuments of the second class more appropriate or more capable of architectural expression than these arches, though all of them have been more or less spoiled by an incongruous order being applied to them. Used, however, as they were in Rome, as monuments of victory, without offering even an excuse for a passage through them, the taste displayed in them is more than questionable: the manner, too, in which they were cut up by broken cornices and useless columns placed on tall pedestals, with other trivial details highly objectionable, deprive them of that largeness of design which is the only true merit and peculiar characteristic of Roman art, while that exquisite elegance with which the Greeks knew so well how to dignify even the most trivial objects was in them almost entirely lost.

Columns of Victory.

Columns of Victory are a class of monuments which seem to have been used in the East in very early times, though their history it must be confessed is somewhat fragmentary and uncertain, and they seem to have been adopted by the Romans in those provinces where they had been employed by the earlier inhabitants. Whatever the original may have been, the Romans were singularly unsuccessful in their application of the form. They never, in fact, rose above the idea of taking a column of construction, magnifying it, and placing it on a pedestal, without any attempt to modify its details or hide the original utilitarian purpose for which the column was designed. When they attempted more than this, they failed entirely in elaborating any new form at all worthy of admiration. The Columna Rostrata, or that erected to celebrate naval victories, was, so far as we can judge from representations (for no perfect specimen exists), one of the ugliest and clumsiest forms of column it is possible to conceive.

Of those of Victory, one of the most celebrated is that erected by Diocletian at Alexandria. A somewhat similar one exists at Arsinoë, erected by Alexander Severus; and a third at Mylassa in Caria. All these are mere Corinthian columns of the usual form, and with the details of those used to support entablatures in porticoes. However beautiful these may be in their proper place, they are singularly inappropriate and ungraceful when used as minarets or single columns.

There are two in Rome not quite so bad as these, both being of the Doric order. Had the square abacus in these been cut to a round form, and ornamented with an appropriate railing, we might almost have forgotten their original, and have fancied that they really were round towers with balconies at the top. The great object of their erection was to serve as vehicles for sculpture, though, as we now see them, or as they are caricatured at Paris and elsewhere, they are little more than instances of immense labour bestowed to very little purpose. As originally used, these columns were placed in small courts surrounded by open porticoes, whence the spectator could at two or perhaps at three different levels examine the sculpture at his leisure and at a convenient distance, while the absurdity of the column supporting nothing was not apparent, from its not being seen from the outside. This arrangement is explained in woodcut No. 200, which is a section through the basilica of Trajan, showing the position of his column, not only with reference to that building, but to the surrounding colonnade. The same was almost certainly the case with the column of Marcus Aurelius, which, with slight modifications, seems to have been copied from that of Trajan; but even in the most favourable situations no monuments can be less worthy of admiration or of being copied than these.

A far better specimen of this class is that at Cussi, near Beaune, in France. It probably belongs to the time of Aurelian, but it is not known either by whom it was erected or what victory it was designed to celebrate; still that it is a column of victory seems undoubted; and its resemblance to columns raised with the same object in India is quite striking.

The arrangement of the base serving as a pedestal for eight statues is not only elegant but appropriate. The ornament which covers the shaft takes off from the idea of its being a mere pillar, and at the same time is so subdued as not to break the outline or interfere with constructive propriety.

The capital, of the Corinthian order, is found in the neighbourhood used as the mouth of a well. In its original position it no doubt had a hole through it, which being enlarged suggested its application to its present ignoble purpose, the hole being no doubt intended either to receive or support the statue or emblem that originally crowned the monument, but of that no trace now remains.

There cannot be a more natural mode of monumental expression than that of a simple upright stone set up by the victors to commemorate their prowess and success. Accordingly steles or pillars erected for this purpose are found everywhere, and take shapes as various as the countries where they stand or the people who erected them. In Northern Europe they are known as Cath or battle-stones, and as rude unhewn monoliths are found everywhere. In India they are as elegant and as elaborately adorned as the Kutub Minar at Delhi, but nowhere was their true architectural expression so mistaken as in Rome. There, by perverting a feature designed for one purpose to a totally different use, an example of bad taste was given till then unknown, though in our days it has become not uncommon.

Tombs.

In that strange collection of the styles of all nations which mingled together makes up the sum of Roman art, nothing strikes the architectural student with more astonishment than the number and importance of their tombs. If the Romans are of Aryan origin, as is generally assumed, they are the only people of that race among whom tomb-building was not utterly neglected. The importance of the tombs among the Roman remains proves one of two things. Either a considerable proportion of Etruscan blood was mixed up with that of the dominant race in Rome, or that the fierce and inartistic Romans, having no art of their own, were led blindly to copy that of the people among whom they were located.

Of the tombs of Consular Rome nothing remains except perhaps the sarcophagus of Scipio; and it is only on the eve of the Empire that we meet with the well-known one of Cæcilia Metella, the wife of Crassus, which is not only the best specimen of a Roman tomb now remaining to us, but the oldest architectural building of the imperial city of which we have an authentic date. It consists of a bold square basement about 100 ft. square, which was originally ornamented in some manner not now intelligible. From this rose a circular tower about 94 ft. in diameter, of very bold masonry, surmounted by a frieze of ox-skulls with wreaths joining them, and a well-profiled cornice: two or three courses of masonry above this seem to have belonged to the original work; and above this, almost certainly, in the original design rose a conical roof, which has perished. The tower having been used as a fortress in the Middle Ages, battlements have been added to supply the place of the roof, and it has been otherwise disfigured, so as to detract much from its beauty as now seen. Still we have no tomb of the same importance so perfect, nor one which enables us to connect the Roman tombs so nearly with the Etruscan. The only addition in this instance is that of the square basement or podium, though even this was not unknown at a much earlier period, as for instance in the tomb of Aruns (Woodcut No. 176). The exaggerated height of the circular base is also remarkable. Here it rises to be a tower instead of a mere circular base of stones for the earthen cone of the original sepulchre. The stone roof which probably surmounted the tower was a mere reproduction of the original earthen cone.

Next in age and importance was the tomb of Augustus in the Campus Martius. It is now so completely ruined that it is extremely difficult to make out its plan, and those who drew and restored it in former days were so careless in their measurements that even its dimensions cannot be ascertained; it appears, however, to have consisted of a circular basement about 300 ft. in diameter and about 60 ft. in height, adorned with 12 large niches. Above this rose a cone of earth as in the Etruscan tombs, not smooth like those, but divided into terraces, which were planted with trees. We also learn from Suetonius that Augustus laid out the grounds around his tomb and planted them with gardens for public use during his lifetime. More like the practice of a true Mogul in the East than the ruler of an Indo-Germanic people in Europe.

This tomb, however, was far surpassed, not only in solidity but in splendour, by that which Hadrian erected for himself on the banks of the Tiber, now known as the Mole of Hadrian, or more frequently the Castle of St. Angelo. The basement of this great tomb was a square, about 340 ft. each way and about 75 ft. high. Above this rose a circular tower 235 ft. in diameter and 140 in height. The whole was crowned either by a dome or by a conical roof in steps, which, with its central ornament, must have risen to a height of not less than 300 ft. The circular or tower-like part of this splendid building was ornamented with columns, but in what manner restorers have not been quite able to agree; some making two storeys, both with pillars, some, one of pillars and the upper one of pilasters. It would require more correct measurements than we have to enable us to settle this point, but it seems probable that there was only one range of columns on a circular basement of some height surmounted by an attic of at least equal dimensions. The order might have been 70 ft., the base and attic 35 ft. each.

Internally the mass was nearly solid, there being only one sepulchral apartment, as nearly as may be in the centre of the mass, approached by an inclined plane, winding round the whole building, from the entrance in the centre of the river face.

Besides these there was another class of tombs in Rome, called columbaria, generally oblong or square rooms below the level of the ground, the walls of which were pierced with a great number of little pigeon-holes or cells just of sufficient size to receive an urn containing the ashes of the body, which had been burnt according to the usual Roman mode of disposing of the dead. Externally of course they had no architecture, though some of the more important family sepulchres of this class were adorned internally with pilasters and painted ornaments of considerable beauty.

In the earlier ages of the Roman Empire these two forms of tombs characterised with sufficient clearness the two races, each with their distinctive customs, which made up the population of Rome. Long before its expiration the two were fused together so thoroughly that we lose all trace of the distinction, and a new form of tomb arose compounded of the two older, which became the typical form with the early Christians, and from them passed to the Saracens and other Eastern nations.

The new form of tomb retained externally the circular form of the Pelasgic sepulchre, though constructive necessities afterwards caused it to become polygonal. Instead however of being solid, or nearly so, the walls were only so thick as was necessary to support the dome, which became the universal form of roof of these buildings.

The sepulchres of Rome have as yet been far too carelessly examined to enable us to trace all the steps by which the transformation took place, but as a general rule it may be stated that the gradual enlargement of the central circular apartment is almost a certain test of the age of a tomb; till at last, before the age of Constantine, they became in fact representations of the Pantheon on a small scale, almost always with a crypt or circular vault below the principal apartment.

One of the most curious transitional specimens is that found near San Vito, represented in Woodcut No. 226. Here, as in all the earlier specimens, the principal apartment is the lower, in the square basement. The upper, which has lost its decoration, has the appearance of having been hollowed out of the frustum of a gigantic Doric column, or rather out of a solid tower like the central one of the Tomb of Aruns (Woodcut No. 176). Shortly after the age of this sepulchre the lower apartment became a mere crypt, and in such examples as those of the sepulchres of the Cornelia and Tossia families we have merely miniature Pantheons somewhat taller in proportion, and with a crypt. This is still more remarkable in a building called the Torre dei Schiavi, which has had a portico attached to one side, and in other respects looks very like a direct imitation of that celebrated temple. It seems certainly, however, to have been built for a tomb.

Another tomb, very similar to that of the Tossia family, is called that of Sta. Helena, the mother of Constantine. If it is not hers, it belongs at any rate to the last days of the Empire, and may be taken as a fair specimen of the tombs of that age and class. It is a vast transition from the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, though, like all the changes introduced by the Romans, it shows the never-failing tendency to transfer all architectural embellishments from the exterior to the interior of every style of building.

It consists of a basement about 100 ft. square, containing the crypt. On this stands a circular tower in two storeys. In the lower storey is a circular apartment about 66 ft. in diameter, surrounded by eight niches; in the upper the niches are external, and each is pierced with a window. The dimensions of the tomb are nearly the same as those of Cæcilia Metella, and it thus affords an excellent opportunity of comparing the two extremes of the series, and of contrasting the early Roman with the early Christian tomb.

The typical example of a sepulchre of this age is the tomb or baptistery of Sta. Costanza, the daughter of Constantine (Woodcut No. 423.) In this building the pillars that adorned the exterior of such a mausoleum, for instance, as that of Hadrian, are introduced internally. Externally the building never can have had much ornament. But the breaks between the lower aisle and the central compartment, pierced with the clerestory, must have had a very pleasing effect. In this example there is still shown a certain degree of timidity, which does not afterwards reappear. The columns are coupled and are far more numerous than they need have been, and are united by a fragment of an entablature, as if the architect had been afraid to place his vault directly on the capitals. Notwithstanding these defects, it is a pleasing and singularly instructive example of a completed transformation, and is just what we miss in those secular buildings for which the Christians had no use.

Another building, which is now known as the Lateran Baptistery (Woodcut No. 422), was also undoubtedly a place of sepulture. Its erection is generally ascribed to Constantine, and it is said was intended by him to be the place of his own sepulture. Whether this is correct or not, it certainly belongs to his age, and exhibits all the characteristics of the architecture of his time. Here the central apartment, never having been designed to support a dome, is of a far lighter construction, an upper order of pillars being placed on the lower, with merely a slight architrave and frieze running between the two orders, the external walls being slight in construction and octagonal in plan.^[188] We must not in this place pursue any further the subject of the transition of style, as we have already trespassed within the pale of Christian architecture and passed beyond the limits of Heathen art. So gradual, however, was the change, and so long in preparation, that it is impossible to draw the line exactly where the separation actually took place between the two.

Temple of Minerva Medica.

One important building remains to be mentioned before leaving this part of the subject. It commonly goes by the name of the Temple of Minerva Medica, though this is certainly a misnomer.^[189] Recently it has become the fashion to assume that it was the hall of some bath; no building of that class, however, was known to exist in the neighbourhood, and it is extremely improbable that any should be found outside the Servian walls in this direction; moreover, it is wanting in all the necessary accompaniments of such an establishment.

It is here placed with the tombs, because its site is one that would justify its being so classed, and its form being just such as would be applicable to that purpose and to no other. It is not by any means certain, however, that it is a tomb, though there does not seem to be any more probable supposition. It certainly belongs to the last days of the Roman Empire, if indeed it be not a Christian building, which I am very much inclined to believe it is, for, on comparing it with the Baptistery of Constantine and the tomb of Sta. Costanza, it shows a considerable advance in construction on both these buildings, and a greater similarity to San Vitale at Ravenna, and other buildings of Justinian’s time, than to anything else now found in Rome.

As will be seen from the plan and section (Woodcuts Nos. 228 and 229), it has a dome, 80 ft. in diameter, resting on a decagon of singularly light and elegant construction. Nine of the compartments contain niches which give great room on the floor, as well as great variety and lightness to the general design. Above this is a clerestory of ten well-proportioned windows, which give light to the building, perhaps not in so effective a manner as the one eye of the Pantheon, though by a far more convenient arrangement, to protect from the elements a people who did not possess glass. So far as I know, all the domed buildings erected by the Romans up to the time of Constantine, and indeed long afterwards, were circular in the interior, though, like the temple built by Diocletian at Spalato, they were sometimes octagonal externally. This, however, is a Polygon both internally and on the outside, and the mode in which the dome is placed on the polygon shows the first rudiments of the pendentive system, which was afterwards carried to such perfection by the Byzantine architects, but is nowhere else to be found in Rome. It probably was for the purpose of somewhat diminishing the difficulties of this construction that the architect adopted a figure with ten instead of eight sides.

This, too, is, I believe, the first building in which buttresses are applied so as to give strength to the walls exactly at the point where it is most wanted. By this arrangement the architect was enabled to dispense with nearly one-half the quantity of material that was thought necessary when the dome of the Pantheon was constructed, and which he must have employed had he copied that building. Besides this, the dome was ribbed with tiles, as shown in Woodcut No. 230, and the space between the ribs filled in with inferior, perhaps lighter masonry, bonded together at certain heights by horizontal courses of tiles where necessary.

Besides the lightness and variety which the base of this building derives from the niches, it is 10 ft. higher than its diameter, which gives to it that proportion of height to width, the want of which is the principal defect of the Pantheon. It is not known what the side erections are which are usually shown in the ground-plans, nor even whether they are coeval with the main central edifice. I suspect they have never been very correctly laid down.

Taking it altogether, the building is certainly, both as concerns construction and proportion, by far the most scientific of all those in ancient Rome, and in these respects as far superior to the Pantheon as it is inferior to that temple in size. Indeed there are few inventions of the Middle Ages that are not attempted here or in the Temple of Peace—but more in this than in the latter; so much so, indeed, that I cannot help believing that it is much more modern than is generally supposed.

As might be expected from our knowledge of the race that inhabited the European provinces of the Roman Empire, there are very few specimens of tombs of any importance to be found in them. One very beautiful example exists at St. Rémi, represented in the annexed woodcut (No. 231). It can hardly, however, be correctly called a tomb, but is rather a cenotaph or a monument, erected as the inscription on it tells us, by Sextus and Marcus, of the family of the Julii, to their parents, whose statues appear under the dome of the upper storey. There is nothing funereal either in the inscription or the form, nor anything to lead us to suppose that the bodies of the parents repose beneath its foundation.

The lower portion of this monument is the square basement which the Romans always added to the Etruscan form of tomb. Upon this stands a storey pierced with an archway in each face, with a three-quarter pillar of the Corinthian order at every angle. The highest part is a circular colonnade, a miniature copy of that which we know to have once encircled Hadrian’s Mole.

The open arrangement of the arches and colonnade, while it takes off considerably from the tomb-like simplicity appropriate to such buildings, adds very much to the lightness and elegance of the whole. Altogether the building has much more of the aspiring character of Christian art than of the more solid and horizontal forms which were characteristic of the style then dying out.

Another monument of very singular and exceptional form is found at Igel, near Trèves, in Germany. It is so unlike anything found in Italy, or indeed anything of the Roman age, that were its date not perfectly known from the inscription upon it, one might rather be inclined to ascribe it to the age of Francis I. than to the latter days of the Roman Empire.

The form is graceful, though the pilasters and architectural ornaments seem somewhat misplaced. It is covered with sculptures from top to bottom. These, however, as is generally the case with Roman funereal monuments, have no reference to death, nor to the life or actions of the person to whom the monument is sacred, but are more like the scenes painted on a wall or ornamental stele anywhere. The principal object on the face represented in the woodcut is the sun, but the subjects are varied on each face, and, though much time-worn, they still give a very perfect idea of the rich ornamentation of the monuments of the last age of the Empire.

The Tour Magne at Nîmes is too important a monument to be passed over, though in its present ruined state it is almost more difficult to explain than any other Roman remains that have reached our times. It consists of an octagonal tower 50 ft. in diameter, and now about 120 ft. high. The basement is extended beyond this tower on every side by a series of arches supporting a terrace to which access was obtained by an external flight of steps, or rather an inclined plane. From the marks in the walls it seems evident that this terrace originally supported a peristyle, or, possibly, a range of chambers. Within the basement is a great chamber covered by a dome of rubble masonry, to which no access could be obtained from without, but the interior may have been reached through the eye of the dome. From the terrace an important flight of steps led upwards to—what? It is almost impossible to refrain from answering, to a cella, like those which crowned the tomb temples of Assyria. That the main object of the building was sepulchral seems hardly doubtful, but we have no other instance in Europe of a tomb with such a staircase leading to a chamber above it.

That Marseilles was a Phœnician and then a Phocian colony long before Roman times seems generally to be admitted, and that in the Temple of Diana (Woodcuts Nos. 188 and 189) and in this building there is an Etruscan or Eastern element which can hardly be mistaken, and may lead to very important ethnographical indications when more fully investigated and better understood.

Eastern Tombs.

This scarcity of tombs in the western part of the Roman Empire is to a great extent made up for in the East; but the history of those erected under the Roman rule in that part of the world is as yet so little known that it is not easy either to classify or to describe them; and as nearly all those which have been preserved are cut in the rock, it is sometimes difficult—as with other rock-cut objects all over the world—to understand the form of building from which they were copied.

The three principal groups of tombs of the Roman epoch are those of Petra, Cyrene, and Jerusalem. Though many other important tombs exist in those countries, they are so little known that they must be passed over for the present.

From the time when Abraham was laid in the cave of Machpelah until after the Christian era, we know that burying in the rock was not the exception but the general practice among the nations of this part of the East. So far as can be known, the example was set by Egypt, which was the parent of much of their civilisation. In Egypt the façades of their rock-cut tombs were—with the solitary exception of those of Beni Hasan^[190]—ornamented so simply and unobtrusively as rather to belie than to announce their internal magnificence. All the oldest Asiatic tombs seem to have been mere holes in the rock, wholly without architectural decorations.

We have seen, however, how the Persian kings copied their palace façades to adorn their last resting-places, and how about the same time in Lycia the tomb-builders copied, first their own wooden structures, and afterwards the architectural façades which they had learned from the Greeks how to construct. But it was not till the Roman period that this species of magnificence extended to the places enumerated above; when to such an extent did it prevail at Petra as to give to that now deserted valley the appearance of a petrified city of the dead.

The typical and most beautiful tomb of this place is that called the Khasné or Treasury of Pharaoh—represented in elevation and section in the annexed woodcuts, Nos. 233 and 234. As will be seen, it consists of a square basement, adorned with a portico of four very beautiful Corinthian pillars, surmounted by a pediment of low Grecian pitch. Above this are three very singular turrets, the use and application of which it is extremely difficult to understand. The central one is circular, and is of a well-understood sepulchral form, the use of which, had it been more important, or had it stood alone, would have been intelligible enough; but what are the side turrets? If one might hazard so bold a conjecture, I would suggest that the original from which this is derived was a five-turreted tomb, like that of Aruns (Woodcut No. 176), or that of Alyattes at Sardis, which in course of time became translated into so foreign a shape as this; but where are the intermediate forms? and by whom and when was this change effected? Before forming any theories on this subject, it will be well to consider whether all these buildings really are tombs. Most of them undoubtedly are so; but may not the name el Deir, or the Convent, applied by the Arabs to one of the principal rock-cut monuments of Petra, be after all the true designation? Are none of them, in short, cells for priests, like the viharas found in India? All who have hitherto visited these spots have assumed at once that everything cut in the rock must be a tomb, but I am much mistaken if this is really the case with all.

To return, however, to the Khasné. Though all the forms of the architecture are Roman, the details are so elegant and generally so well designed as almost to lead to the suspicion that there must have been some Grecian influence brought to bear upon the work. The masses of rock left above the wings show how early a specimen of its class it is, and how little practice its designers could have had in copying in the rock the forms of their regular buildings.

A little further within the city is found another very similar in design to this, but far inferior to it in detail and execution, and showing at least a century of degradation, though at the same time presenting an adaptation to rock-cut forms not found in the earlier examples.

A third is that above alluded to, called el Deir. This is the same in general outline as the two former—of an order neither Greek nor Roman, but with something like a Doric frieze over a very plain Corinthian capital. In other respects it presents no new feature except the apparent absence of a door, and on the whole it seems, if finished, to deserve its name less than either of the other two.