CHAPTER VI.

GREEK ARCHITECTURE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Reber. Also, Anderson and Spiers, Architecture of

Greece and Rome. Baumeister, Denkmäler der Klassischen Alterthums. Bötticher,
Tektonik der Hellenen. Chipiez, Histoire critique des ordres grecs. Curtius, Adler and
Treu, Die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia. Durm, Antike Baukunst (in Handbuch d. Arch.).
Frazer, Pausanias’ Description of Greece. Hitorff, L’architecture polychrome chez les
Grecs. Michaelis, Der Parthenon. Penrose, An Investigation, etc., of Athenian
Architecture. Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Primitive Greece; La Grèce de
l’Epopée; La Grèce archaïque. Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens. Tarbell, History
of Greek Art. Texier, L’Asie Mineure. Wilkins, Antiquities of Magna Græcia.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. Greek art marks the beginning of European

civilization. The Hellenic race gathered up influences and suggestions from both Asia
and Africa and fused them with others, whose sources are unknown, into an art
intensely national and original, which was to influence the arts of many races and
nations long centuries after the decay of the Hellenic states. The Greek mind,
compared with the Egyptian or Assyrian, was more highly intellectual, more logical,
more symmetrical, and above all more inquiring and analytic. Living nowhere remote
from the sea, the Greeks became sailors, merchants, and colonizers. The Ionian
kinsmen of the European Greeks, speaking a dialect of the same language, populated
the coasts of Asia Minor and many of the islands, so that through them the Greeks
were open to the influences of the Assyrian, Phœnician, Persian, and Lycian
civilizations. In Cyprus they encountered Egyptian influences, and finally, under
Psammetichus, they established in Egypt itself the Greek city of Naukratis. They
were thus by geographical situation, by character, and by circumstances, peculiarly
fitted to receive, develop, and transmit the mingled influences of the East and the
South.
PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS.7 Authentic Greek history begins with the first
Olympiad, 776 B.C. The earliest monuments of that historic architecture which
developed into the masterpieces of the Periclean and Alexandrian ages, date from the
middle of the following century. But there are a number of older buildings, belonging
presumably to the so-called Heroic Age, which, though seemingly unconnected with
the later historic development of Greek architecture, are still worthy of note. They
are the work of a people somewhat advanced in civilization, probably the Pelasgi,
who preceded the Dorians on Greek soil, and consist mainly of fortifications, walls,
gates, and tombs, the most important of which are at Mycenæ and Tiryns. At the
latter place is a well-defined acropolis, with massive walls in which are passages
covered by stones successively overhanging or corbelled until they meet. The
masonry is of huge stones piled without cement. At Mycenæ the city wall is pierced
by the remarkable Lion Gate (Fig. 22), consisting of two jambs and a huge lintel,
over which the weight is relieved by a triangular opening. This is filled with a
sculptured group, now much defaced, representing two rampant lions flanking a
singular column which tapers downward. This symbolic group has relations with
Hittite and Phrygian sculptures, and with the symbolism of the worship of Rhea
Cybele. The masonry of the wall is carefully dressed but not regularly coursed. Other
primitive walls and gates showing openings and embryonic arches of various forms,
are found widely scattered, at Samos and Delos, at Phigaleia, Thoricus, Argos and
many other points.

FIG. 22.—LION GATE AT MYCENÆ.

FIG. 23.—POLYGONAL MASONRY.

The very earliest are hardly more than random piles of rough stone. Those which
may fairly claim notice for their artistic masonry are of a later date and of two kinds:
the coursed, and the polygonal or Cyclopean, so called from the tradition that they
were built by the Cyclopes. These Cyclopean walls were composed of large, irregular
polygonal blocks carefully fitted together and dressed to a fairly smooth face (Fig.
23). Both kinds were used contemporaneously, though in the course of time the
regular coursed masonry finally superseded the polygonal.
THOLOS OF ATREUS. All these structures present, however, only the rudiments of
architectural art. The so-called Tholos (or Treasury) of Atreus, at Mycenæ, on the
other hand, shows the germs of truly artistic design (Fig. 24). It is in reality a tomb,
and is one of a large class of prehistoric tombs found in almost every part of the
globe, consisting of a circular stone-walled and stone-roofed chamber buried under a
tumulus of earth. This one is a beehive-shaped construction of horizontal courses of
masonry, with a stone-walled passage, the dromos, leading to the entrance door.
Though internally of domical form, its construction with horizontal beds in the
masonry proves that the idea of the true dome with the beds of each course pitched
at an angle always normal to the curve of the vault, was not yet grasped. A small
sepulchral chamber opens from the great one, by a door with the customary relieving
triangle over it.

FIG. 24.—THOLOS OF ATREUS. PLAN AND SECTION.

FIG. 25.—THOLOS OF ATREUS. DOORWAY.

Traces of a metal lining have been found on the inner surface of the dome and on the
jambs of the entrance door. This entrance is the most artistic and elaborate part of
the edifice (Fig. 25). The main opening is enclosed in a three-banded frame, and was
once flanked by columns which, as shown by fragments still existing and by marks
on either side the door, tapered downward as in the sculptured column over the Lion
Gate. Shafts, bases, and capitals were covered with zig-zag bands or chevrons of fine
spirals. This well-studied decoration, the banded jambs, and the curiously inverted
columns (of which several other examples exist in or near Mycenæ), all point to a
fairly developed art, derived partly from Egyptian and partly from Asiatic sources.
That Egyptian influences had affected this early art is further proved by a fragment
of carved and painted ornament on a ceiling in Orchomenos, imitating with
remarkable closeness certain ceiling decorations in Egyptian tombs.
HISTORIC MONUMENTS; THE ORDERS. It was the Dorians and Ionians who
developed the architecture of classic Greece. This fact is perpetuated in the
traditional names, Doric and Ionic, given to the two systems of columnar design
which formed the most striking feature of that architecture. While in Egypt the
column was used almost exclusively as an internal support and decoration, in Greece
it was chiefly employed to produce an imposing exterior effect. It was the most
important element in the temple architecture of the Greeks, and an almost
indispensable adornment of their gateways, public squares, and temple enclosures.
To the column the two races named above gave each a special and radically distinct
development, and it was not until the Periclean age that the two forms came to be
used in conjunction, even by the mixed Doric-Ionic people of Attica. Each of the two
types had its own special shaft, capital, entablature, mouldings, and ornaments,
although considerable variation was allowed in the proportions and minor details.
The general type, however, remained substantially unchanged from first to last. The
earliest examples known to us of either order show it complete in all its parts, its
later development being restricted to the refining and perfecting of its proportions
and details. The probable origin of these orders will be separately considered
later on.

FIG. 26.—GREEK DORIC ORDER.

A, Crepidoma, or stylobate; b, Column; c, Architrave; d, Tænia; e, Frieze; f, Horizontal

cornice; g, Raking cornice; h, Tympanum of pediment; k, Metope.

THE DORIC. The column of the Doric order (Figs. 26, 27) consists of a tapering
shaft rising directly from the stylobate or platform and surmounted by a capital of
great simplicity and beauty. The shaft is fluted with sixteen to twenty shallow
channellings of segmental or elliptical section, meeting in sharp edges or arrises. The
capital is made up of a circular cushion or echinus adorned with fine grooves called
annulæ, and a plain square abacus or cap Upon this rests a plain architrave or
epistyle, with a narrow fillet, the tænia, running along its upper edge. The frieze
above it is divided into square panels, called the metopes, separated by vertical
triglyphs having each two vertical grooves and chamfered edges. There is a triglyph
over each column and one over each intercolumniation, or two in rare instances
where the columns are widely spaced. The cornice consists of a broadly projecting
corona resting on a bed-mould of one or two simple mouldings. Its under surface,
called the soffit, is adorned with mutules, square, flat projections having each
eighteen guttæ depending from its under side. Two or three small mouldings run
along the upper edge of the corona, which has in addition, over each slope of the
gable, a gutter-moulding or cymatium. The cornices along the horizontal edges of the
roof have instead of the cymatium a row of antefixæ, ornaments of terra-cotta or
marble placed opposite the foot of each tile-ridge of the roofing. The enclosed
triangular field of the gable, called the tympanum, was in the larger monuments
adorned with sculptured groups resting on the shelf formed by the horizontal cornice
below. Carved ornaments called acroteria commonly embellished the three angles of
the gable or pediment.
POLYCHROMY. It has been fully proved, after a century of debate, that all this
elaborate system of parts, severe and dignified in their simplicity of form, received a
rich decoration of color. While the precise shades and tones employed cannot be
predicated with certainty, it is well established that the triglyphs were painted blue
and the metopes red, and that all the mouldings were decorated with leaf-ornaments,
“eggs-and-darts,” and frets, in red, green, blue, and gold. The walls and columns
were also colored, probably with pale tints of yellow or buff, to reduce the glare of
the fresh marble or the whiteness of the fine stucco with which the surfaces of
masonry of coarser stone were primed. In the clear Greek atmosphere and outlined
against the brilliant sky, the Greek temple must have presented an aspect of rich,
sparkling gayety.

FIG. 27.—DORIC ORDER OF THE PARTHENON.

ORIGIN OF THE ORDER. It is generally believed that the details of the Doric frieze
and cornice were reminiscences of a primitive wood construction. The triglyph
suggests the chamfered ends of cross-beams made up of three planks each; the
mutules, the sheathing of the eaves; and the guttæ, the heads of the spikes or
trenails by which the sheathing was secured. It is known that in early astylar temples
the metopes were left open like the spaces between the ends of ceiling-rafters. In the
earlier peripteral temples, as at Selinus, the triglyph-frieze is retained around the
cella-wall under the ceiling of the colonnade, where it has no functional significance,
as a survival from times antedating the adoption of the colonnade, when the tradition
of a wooden roof-construction showing externally had not yet been forgotten.
A similar wooden origin for the Doric column has been advocated by some, who
point to the assertion of Pausanias that in the Doric Heraion at Olympia the original
wooden columns had with one exception been replaced by stone columns as fast as
they decayed. This, however, only proves that wooden columns were sometimes used
in early buildings, not that the Doric column was derived from them. Others would
derive it from the Egyptian columns of Beni Hassan, which it certainly resembles. But
they do not explain how the Greeks could have been familiar with the Beni Hassan
column long before the opening of Egypt to them under Psammetichus; nor why,
granting them some knowledge of Egyptian architecture, they should have passed
over the splendors of Karnak and Luxor to copy these inconspicuous tombs perched
high up on the cliffs of the Nile. It would seem that the Greeks invented this form
independently, developing it in buildings which have perished; unless, indeed, they
brought the idea with them from their primitive Aryan home in Asia.

THE IONIC ORDER was characterized by greater slenderness of proportion and

elegance of detail than the Doric, and depended more on carving than on color for
the decoration of its members (Fig. 28). It was adopted in the fifth century B.C. by
the people of Attica, and used both for civic and religious buildings, sometimes alone
and sometimes in conjunction with the Doric. The column was from eight to ten
diameters in height, against four and one-third to seven for the Doric. It stood on a
base which was usually composed of two tori separated by a scotia (a concave
moulding of semicircular or semi-elliptical profile), and was sometimes provided also
with a square flat base-block, the plinth. There was much variety in the proportions
and details of these mouldings, which were often enriched by flutings or carved
guilloches. The tall shaft bore twenty-four deep narrow flutings separated by narrow
fillets. The capital was the most peculiar feature of the order. It consisted of a bead
or astragal and echinus, over which was a horizontal band ending on either side in a
scroll or volute, the sides of which presented the aspect shown in Fig. 29. A thin
moulded abacus was interposed between this member and the architrave.
The Ionic capital was marked by two awkward features which all its richness could
not conceal. One was the protrusion of the echinus beyond the face of the band
above it, the other was the disparity between the side and front views of the capital,
especially noticeable at the corners of a colonnade. To obviate this, various
contrivances were tried, none wholly successful. Ordinarily the two adjacent exterior
sides of the corner capital were treated alike, the scrolls at their meeting being bent
out at an angle of 45°, while the two inner faces simply intersected, cutting each
other in halves.
 FIG. 28.—GREEK IONIC ORDER. (MILETUS.)

The entablature comprised an architrave of two or three flat bands crowned by fine
mouldings; an uninterrupted frieze, frequently sculptured in relief; and a simple
cornice of great beauty. In addition to the ordinary bed-mouldings there was in most
examples a row of narrow blocks or dentils under the corona, which was itself
crowned by a high cymatium of extremely graceful profile, carved with the rich
“honeysuckle” (anthemion) ornament. All the mouldings were carved with the “egg-
and-dart,” heart-leaf and anthemion ornaments, so designed as to recall by their
outline the profile of the moulding itself. The details of this order were treated with
much more freedom and variety than those of the Doric. The pediments of Ionic
buildings were rarely or never adorned with groups of sculpture. The volutes and
echinus of the capital, the fluting of the shaft, the use of a moulded circular base,
and in the cornice the high corona and cymatium, these were constant elements in
every Ionic order, but all other details varied widely in the different examples.

FIG. 29.—SIDE VIEW OF IONIC CAPITAL.

ORIGIN OF THE IONIC ORDER. The origin of the Ionic order has given rise to
almost as much controversy as that of the Doric. Its different elements were
apparently derived from various sources. The Lycian tombs may have contributed the
denticular cornice and perhaps also the general form of the column and capital. In
the Persian architecture of the sixth century B.C., the high moulded base, the narrow
flutings of the shaft, the carved bead-moulding and the use of scrolls in the capital
are characteristic features, which may have been borrowed by the Ionians during the
same century, unless, indeed, they were themselves the work of Ionic or Lycian
workmen in Persian employ. The banded architrave and the use of the volute in the
decoration of stele-caps (from στηλη = a memorial stone or column standing isolated
and upright), furniture, and minor structures are common features in Assyrian,
Lycian, and other Asiatic architecture of early date. The volute or scroll itself as an
independent decorative motive may have originated in successive variations of
Egyptian lotus-patterns.8 But the combination of these diverse elements and their
development into the final form of the order was the work of the Ionian Greeks, and
it was in the Ionian provinces of Asia Minor that the most splendid examples of its
use are to be found (Halicarnassus, Miletus, Priene, Ephesus), while the most
graceful and perfect are those of Doric-Ionic Attica.

FIG. 30.—GREEK CORINTHIAN ORDER.

(From the monument of Lysicrates.)
THE CORINTHIAN ORDER. This was a late outgrowth of the Ionic rather than a
new order, and up to the time of the Roman conquest was only used for monuments
of small size (see Fig. 38). Its entablature in pure Greek examples was identical with
the Ionic; the shaft and base were only slightly changed in proportion and detail. The
capital, however, was a new departure, based probably on metallic embellishments of
altars, pedestals, etc., of Ionic style. It consisted in the best examples of a high bell-
shaped core surrounded by one or two rows of acanthus leaves, above which were
pairs of branching scrolls meeting at the corners in spiral volutes. These served to
support the angles of a moulded abacus with concave sides (Fig. 30). One example,
from the Tower of the Winds (the clepsydra of Andronicus Cyrrhestes) at Athens, has
only smooth pointed palm-leaves and no scrolls above a single row of acanthus
leaves. Indeed, the variety and disparity among the different examples prove that we
have here only the first steps toward the evolution of an independent order, which it
was reserved for the Romans to fully develop.
GREEK TEMPLES; THE TYPE. With the orders as their chief decorative element the
Greeks built up a splendid architecture of religious and secular monuments. Their
noblest works were temples, which they designed with the utmost simplicity of
general scheme, but carried out with a mastery of proportion and detail which has
never been surpassed. Of moderate size in most cases, they were intended primarily
to enshrine the simulacrum of the deity, and not, like Christian churches, to
accommodate great throngs of worshippers. Nor were they, on the other hand,
sanctuaries designed, like those of Egypt, to exclude all but a privileged few from
secret rites performed only by the priests and king. The statue of the deity was
enshrined in a chamber, the naos (see plan, Fig. 31), often of considerable size, and
accessible to the public through a columnar porch the pronaos. A smaller chamber,
the opisthodomus, was sometimes added in the rear of the main sanctuary, to serve
as a treasury or depository for votive offerings. Together these formed a windowless
structure called the cella, beyond which was the rear porch, the posticum or epinaos.
This whole structure was in the larger temples surrounded by a colonnade, the
peristyle, which formed the most splendid feature of Greek architecture. The external
aisle on either side of the cella was called the pteroma. A single gabled roof covered
the entire building.

FIG. 31.—TYPES OF GREEK TEMPLE PLANS.

a, In Antis; b, Prostyle; c, Amphiprostyle; d, Peripteral (The Parthenon); N, Naos; O,

Opisthodomus; S, Statue.

The Greek colonnade was thus an exterior feature, surrounding the solid cella-wall
instead of being enclosed by it as in Egypt. The temple was a public, not a royal
monument; and its builders aimed, not as in Egypt at size and overwhelming sombre
majesty, but rather at sunny beauty and the highest perfection of proportion,
execution, and detail (Fig. 34).
There were of course many variations of the general type just described. Each of
these has received a special name, which is given below with explanations and is
illustrated in Fig. 31.
In antis; with a porch having two or more columns enclosed between the projecting
side-walls of the cella.
Prostylar (or prostyle); with a columnar porch in front and no peristyle.
Amphiprostylar (or -style); with columnar porches at both ends but no peristyle.
Peripteral; surrounded by columns.
Pseudoperipteral; with false or engaged columns built into the walls of the cella,
leaving no pteroma.
Dipteral; with double lateral ranges of columns (see Fig. 39).
Pseudodipteral; with a single row of columns on each side, whose distance from the
wall is equal to two intercolumniations of the front.
Tetrastyle, hexastyle, octastyle, decastyle, etc.; with four, six, eight, or ten columns in
the end rows.
CONSTRUCTION. All the temples known to us are of stone, though it is evident
from allusions in the ancient writers that wood was sometimes used in early times.
The finest temples, especially those of Attica, Olympia, and Asia Minor, were of
marble. In Magna Græcia, at Assos, and in other places where marble was wanting,
limestone, sandstone, or lava was employed and finished with a thin, fine stucco.
The roof was almost invariably of wood and gabled, forming at the ends pediments
decorated in most cases with sculpture. The disappearance of these inflammable and
perishable roofs has given rise to endless speculations as to the lighting of the cellas,
which in all known ruins, except one at Agrigentum, are destitute of windows. It has
been conjectured that light was admitted through openings in the roof, and even that
the central part of the cella was wholly open to the sky. Such an arrangement is
termed hypæthral, from an expression used in a description by Vitruvius;9 but this
description corresponds to no known structure, and the weight of opinion now
inclines against the use of the hypæthral opening, except possibly in one or two of
the largest temples, in which a part of the cella in front of the statue may have been
thus left open. But even this partial hypæthros is not substantiated by direct
evidence. It hardly seems probable that the magnificent chryselephantine statues of
such temples were ever thus left exposed to the extremes of the climate, which are
often severe even in Greece. In the model of the Parthenon designed by Ch. Chipiez
for the Metropolitan Museum in New York, a small clerestory opening through the
roof admits a moderate amount of light to the cella; but this ingenious device rests
on no positive evidence (see Frontispiece). It seems on the whole most probable that
the cella was lighted entirely by artificial illumination; but the controversy in its
present state is and must be wholly speculative.
The wooden roof was covered with tiles of terra-cotta or marble. It was probably
ceiled and panelled on the under side, and richly decorated with color and gold. The
pteroma had under the exterior roof a ceiling of stone or marble, deeply panelled
between transverse architraves.
The naos and opisthodomus being in the larger temples too wide to be spanned by
single beams, were furnished with interior columns to afford intermediate support.
To avoid the extremes of too great massiveness and excessive slenderness in these
columns, they were built in two stages, and advantage was taken of this
arrangement, in some cases, at least, to introduce lateral galleries into the naos.

FIG. 32.—CARVED ANTHEMION ORNAMENT. ATHENS.

SCULPTURE AND CARVING. All the architectural membering was treated with the
greatest refinement of design and execution, and the aid of sculpture, both in relief
and in the round, was invoked to give splendor and significance to the monument.
The statue of the deity was the focus of internal interest, while externally, groups of
statues representing the Olympian deities or the mythical exploits of gods, demigods,
and heroes, adorned the gables. Relief carvings in the friezes and metopes
commemorated the favorite national myths. In these sculptures we have the finest
known adaptations of pure sculpture—i.e., sculpture treated as such and complete in
itself—to an architectural framework. The noblest examples of this decorative
sculpture are those of the Parthenon, consisting of figures in the full round from the
pediments, groups in high relief from the metopes, and the beautiful frieze of the
Panathenaic procession from the cella-wall under the pteroma ceiling. The greater
part of these splendid works are now in the British Museum, whither they were
removed by Lord Elgin in 1801. From Olympia, Ægina, and Phigaleia, other master-
works of the same kind have been transferred to the museums of Europe. In the
Doric style there was little carving other than the sculpture, the ornament being
mainly polychromatic. Greek Ionic and Corinthian monuments, however, as well as
minor works such as steles, altars, etc., were richly adorned with carved mouldings
and friezes, festoons, acroteria, and other embellishments executed with the chisel.
The anthemion ornament, a form related to the Egyptian lotus and Assyrian
palmette, most frequently figures in these. It was made into designs of wonderful
vigor and beauty (Fig. 32).
DETAIL AND EXECUTION. In the handling and cutting of stone the Greeks
displayed a surpassing skill and delicacy. While ordinarily they were content to use
stones of moderate size, they never hesitated at any dimension necessary for proper
effect or solid construction. The lower drums of the Parthenon peristyle are 6 feet
6½ inches in diameter, and 2 feet 10 inches high, cut from single blocks of Pentelic
marble. The architraves of the Propylæa at Athens are each made up of two lintels
placed side by side, the longest 17 feet 7 inches long, 3 feet 10 inches high, and
2 feet 4 inches thick. In the colossal temples of Asia Minor, where the taste for the
vast and grandiose was more pronounced, blocks of much greater size were used.
These enormous stones were cut and fitted with the most scrupulous exactness. The
walls of all important structures were built in regular courses throughout, every stone
carefully bedded with extremely close joints. The masonry was usually laid up
without cement and clamped with metal; there is no filling in with rubble and
concrete between mere facings of cut stone, as in most modern work. When the only
available stone was of coarse texture it was finished with a coating of fine stucco, in
which sharp edges and minute detail could be worked.
The details were, in the best period, executed with the most extraordinary refinement
and care. The profiles of capitals and mouldings, the carved ornament, the arrises of
the flutings, were cut with marvellous precision and delicacy. It has been rightly said
that the Greeks “built like Titans and finished like jewellers.” But this perfect finish
was never petty nor wasted on unworthy or vulgar design. The just relation of scale
between the building and all its parts was admirably maintained; the ornament was
distributed with rare judgment, and the vigor of its design saved it from all
appearance of triviality.
The sensitive taste of the Greeks led them into other refinements than those of mere
mechanical perfection. In the Parthenon especially, but also in lesser degree in other
temples, the seemingly straight lines of the building were all slightly curved, and the
vertical faces inclined. This was done to correct the monotony and stiffness of
absolutely straight lines and right angles, and certain optical illusions which their
acute observation had detected. The long horizontal lines of the stylobate and cornice
were made convex upward; a similar convexity in the horizontal corona of the
pediment counteracted the seeming concavity otherwise resulting from its meeting
with the multiplied inclined lines of the raking cornice. The columns were almost
imperceptibly inclined toward the cella, and the corner intercolumniations made a
trifle narrower than the rest; while the vertical lines of the arrises of the flutings were
made convex outward with a curve of the utmost beauty and delicacy. By these and
other like refinements there was imparted to the monument an elasticity and vigor of
aspect, an elusive and surprising beauty impossible to describe and not to be
explained by the mere composition and general proportions, yet manifest to every
cultivated eye.10

7. For enlargement on this topic see Appendix A.

8. As contended by W. H. Goodyear in his Grammar of the Lotus.
9. Lib. III., Cap. I.
10. These refinements, first noticed by Allason in 1814, and later confirmed by
Cockerell and Haller as to the columns, were published to the world in 1838 by
Hoffer, verified by Penrose in 1846, and further developed by the investigations of
Ziller and later observers.

Ebd
E-BooksDirectory.com
 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.

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.
 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.
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.

FIG. 35.—PLAN OF ERECHTHEUM.

FIG. 36.—WEST END OF ERECHTHEUM, RESTORED.

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.
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.

FIG. 38.—CHORAGIC
MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES.
(Restored model, N.Y.)
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.

FIG. 39.—TEMPLE OF OLYMPIAN ZEUS. ATHENS.

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.
 FIG. 40.—PLAN OF GREEK THEATRE.

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

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.

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 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.

MONUMENTS. In addition to those already mentioned in the text the following should
be enumerated:
PREHISTORIC PERIOD. In the Islands about Santorin, remains of houses antedating 1500
B.C.; at Tiryns the Acropolis, walls, and miscellaneous ruins; the like also at Mycenæ,
besides various tombs; walls and gates at Samos, Thoricus, Menidi, Athens, etc.
ARCHAIC PERIOD. Doric Temples at Metapontium (by Durm assigned to 610 B.C.), Selinus,
Agrigentum, Pæstum; at Athens the first Parthenon; in Asia Minor the primitive Ionic
Artemisium at Ephesus and the Heraion at Samos, the latter the oldest of colossal Greek
temples.
TRANSITIONAL PERIOD. At Agrigentum, temples of Concord, Castor and Pollux, Demeter,
Æsculapius, all circ. 480 B.C.; temples at Selinus and Segesta.
PERICLEAN PERIOD. In Athens the Ionic temple on the Illissus, destroyed during the present
century; on Cape Sunium the temple of Athena, 430 B.C., partly standing; at Nemea, the
temple of Zeus; at Tegea, the temple of Athena Elea (400? B.C.); at Rhamnus, the temples
of Themis and of Nemesis; at Argos, two temples, stoa, and other buildings; all these
were Doric.
ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD. The temple of Dionysus at Teos; temple of Artemis Leucophryne at
Magnesia, both about 330 B.C. and of the Ionic order.
DECADENCE AND ROMAN PERIOD. At Athens the Stoa of Eumenes, circ. 170 B.C.; the
monument of Philopappus on the Museum hill, 110 A.D.; the Gymnasium of Hadrian,
114 to 137 A.D.; the last two of the Corinthian order.
THEATRES. Besides those already mentioned there are important remains of theatres at
Epidaurus, Argos, Segesta, Iassus (400? B.C.), Delos, Sicyon, and Thoricus; at Aizanoi,
Myra, Telmissus, and Patara, besides many others of less importance scattered through
the Hellenic world. At Taormina are extensive ruins of a large Greek theatre rebuilt in the
Roman period.

11. See Appendix, p. 427.

12. L. Bevier, in Papers of the American Classical School at Athens (vol. i., pp. 195,
196), contends that these were columns left from the old Doric temple. This is
untenable, for Sulla would certainly not have taken the trouble to carry away
archaic Doric columns, with such splendid Corinthian columns before him.
 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.

FIG. 42.—ROMAN DORIC ORDER. (THEATRE OF MARCELLUS).

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.
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.

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, he 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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

FIG. 51.—TEMPLE FORTUNA VIRILIS. PLAN.

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.
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).
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.

FIG. 52.—CIRCULAR TEMPLE. TIVOLI.

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.

FIG. 53.—TEMPLE OF VENUS AND ROME. PLAN.

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.
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.).
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.

FIG. 54.—PLAN OF THE PANTHEON.

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.

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.

FIG. 57.—FORUM AND BASILICA OF TRAJAN.

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.

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.
THERMÆ. The leisure of the Roman people was largely spent in the great baths, or
thermæ, which took the place substantially of the modern club. The establishments
erected by the emperors for this purpose were vast and complex congeries of large
and small halls, courts, and chambers, combined with a masterly comprehension of
artistic propriety and effect in the sequence of oblong, square, oval, and circular
apartments, and in the relation of the greater to the lesser masses. They were a
combination of the Greek palæstra with the Roman balnea, and united in one
harmonious design great public swimming-baths, private baths for individuals and
families, places for gymnastic exercises and games, courts, peristyles, gardens, halls
for literary entertainments, lounging-rooms, and all the complex accommodation
required for the service of the whole establishment. They were built with apparent
disregard of cost, and adorned with splendid extravagance. The earliest were the
Baths of Agrippa (27 B.C.) behind the Pantheon; next may be mentioned those of
Titus, built on the substructions of Nero’s Golden House. The remains of the
Thermæ of Caracalla (211 A.D.) form the most extensive mass of ruins in Rome,
and clearly display the admirable planning of this and similar establishments.
A gigantic block of buildings containing the three great halls for cold, warm, and hot
baths, stood in the centre of a vast enclosure surrounded by private baths, exedræ,
and halls for lecture-audiences and other gatherings. The enclosure was adorned with
statues, flower-gardens, and places for out-door games. The Baths of Diocletian (302
A.D.) embodied this arrangement on a still more extensive scale; they could
accommodate 3,500 bathers at once, and their ruins cover a broad territory near the
railway terminus of the modern city. The church of S. Maria degli Angeli was formed
by Michael Angelo out of the tepidarium of these baths—a colossal hall 340 × 87
feet, and 90 feet high. The original vaulting and columns are still intact, and the
whole interior most imposing, in spite of later stucco disfigurements. The circular
laconicum (sweat-room) serves as the porch to the present church. It was in the
building of these great halls that Roman architecture reached its most original and
characteristic expression. Wholly unrelated to any foreign model, they represent
distinctively Roman ideals, both as to plan and construction.

FIG. 60.—THERMÆ OF CARACALLA. PLAN OF CENTRAL BLOCK.

A, Caldarium, or Hot Bath; B, Intermediate Chamber; C, Tepidarium, or Warm Bath; D,

Frigidarium, or Cold Bath; E, Peristyles; a, Gymnastic Rooms; b, Dressing Rooms; c,
Cooling Rooms; d, Small Courts; e, Entrances; v, Vestibules.
 FIG. 61.—ROMAN THEATRE. (HERCULANUM.)
(From model.)
PLACES OF AMUSEMENT. The earliest Roman theatres differed from the Greek in
having a nearly semicircular plan, and in being built up from the level ground, not
excavated in a hillside (Fig. 61). The first theatre was of wood, built by Mummius
145 B.C., and it was not until ninety years later that stone was first substituted for
the more perishable material, in the theatre of Pompey. The Theatre of Marcellus
(23–13 B.C.) is in part still extant, and later theatres in Pompeii, Orange (France),
and in the Asiatic provinces are in excellent preservation. The orchestra was not, as
in the Greek theatre, reserved for the choral dance, but was given up to spectators of
rank; the stage was adorned with a permanent architectural background of columns
and arches, and sometimes roofed with wood, and an arcade or colonnade
surrounded the upper tier of seats. The amphitheatre was a still more distinctively
Roman edifice. It was elliptical in plan, surrounding an elliptical arena, and built up
with continuous encircling tiers of seats. The earliest stone amphitheatre was erected
by Statilius Taurus in the time of Augustus. It was practically identical in design with
the later and much larger Flavian amphitheatre, commonly known as the Colosseum,
begun by Vespasian and completed 82 A.D. (Fig. 62). This immense structure
measured 607 × 506 feet in plan and was 180 feet high; it could accommodate
eighty-seven thousand spectators. Engaged columns of the Tuscan, Ionic, and
Corinthian orders decorated three stories of the exterior; the fourth was a nearly
unbroken wall with slender Corinthian pilasters. Solidly constructed of travertine,
concrete, and tufa, the Colosseum, with its imposing but monotonous exterior,
almost sublime by its scale and seemingly endless repetition, but lacking in
refinement or originality of detail and dedicated to bloody and cruel sports, was a
characteristic product of the Roman character and civilization. At Verona, Pola,
Capua, and many cities in the foreign provinces there are well-preserved remains of
similar structures.
Closely related to the amphitheatre were the circus and the stadium. The Circus
Maximus between the Palatine and Aventine hills was the oldest of those in Rome.
That erected by Caligula and Nero on the site afterward partly occupied by St.
Peter’s, was more splendid, and is said to have been capable of accommodating over
three hundred thousand spectators after its enlargement in the fourth century. The
long, narrow race-course was divided into two nearly equal parts by a low parapet,
the spina, on which were the goals (metæ) and many small decorative structures and
columns. One end of the circus, as of the stadium also, was semicircular; the other
was segmental in the circus, square in the stadium; a colonnade or arcade ran along
the top of the building, and the entrances and exits were adorned with monumental
arches.

FIG. 62.—COLOSSEUM. HALF PLAN.

FIG. 63.—ARCH OF CONSTANTINE.

(From model in Metropolitan Museum, New York.)
TRIUMPHAL ARCHES AND COLUMNS. Rome and the provincial cities abounded
in monuments commemorative of victory, usually single or triple arches with engaged
columns and rich sculptural adornments, or single colossal columns supporting
statues. The arches were characteristic products of Roman design, and some of them
deserve high praise for the excellence of their proportions and the elegance of their
details. There were in Rome in the second century A.D., thirty-eight of these
monuments. The Arch of Titus (71–82 A.D.) is the simplest and most perfect of
those still extant in Rome; the arch of Septimius Severus in the Forum (203 A.D.)
and that of Constantine (330 A.D.) near the Colosseum, are more sumptuous but
less pure in detail. The last-named was in part enriched with sculptures taken from
the earlier arch of Trajan. The statues of Dacian captives on the attic (attic = a
species of subordinate story added above the main cornice) of this arch were a
fortunate addition, furnishing a raison-d’être for the columns and broken entablatures
on which they rest. Memorial columns of colossal size were erected by several
emperors, both in Rome and abroad. Those of Trajan and of Marcus Aurelius are
still standing in Rome in perfect preservation. The first was 140 feet high including
the pedestal and the statue which surmounted it; its capital marked the height of the
ridge levelled by the emperor for the forum on which the column stands. Its most
striking peculiarity is the spiral band of reliefs winding around the shaft from bottom
to top and representing the Dacian campaigns of Trajan. The other column is of
similar design and dimensions, but greatly inferior to the first in execution. Both are
really towers, with interior stair-cases leading to the top.
TOMBS. The Romans developed no special and national type of tomb, and few of
their sepulchral monuments were of large dimensions. The most important in Rome
were the pyramid of Caius Cestius (late first century B.C.), and the circular tombs of
Cecilia Metella (60 B.C.), Augustus (14 A.D.) and Hadrian, now the Castle of
S. Angelo (138 A.D.). The latter was composed of a huge cone of marble supported
on a cylindrical structure 230 feet in diameter standing on a square podium 300 feet
long and wide. The cone probably once terminated in the gilt bronze pine-cone now
in the Giardino della Pigna of the Vatican. In the Mausoleum of Augustus a mound of
earth planted with trees crowned a similar circular base of marble on a podium 220
feet square, now buried.
The smaller tombs varied greatly in size and form. Some were vaulted chambers,
with graceful internal painted decorations of figures and vine patterns combined with
low-relief enrichments in stucco. Others were designed in the form of altars or
sarcophagi, as at Pompeii; while others again resembled ædiculæ, little temples,
shrines, or small towers in several stories of arches and columns, as at St. Rémy
(France).
PALACES AND DWELLINGS. Into their dwellings the Romans carried all their love
of ostentation and personal luxury. They anticipated in many details the comforts of
modern civilization in their furniture, their plumbing and heating, and their utensils.
Their houses may be divided into four classes: the palace, the villa, the domus or
ordinary house, and the insula or many-storied tenement built in compact blocks.
The first three alone concern us, and will be taken up in the above order.
The imperial palaces on the Palatine Hill comprised a wide range in style and variety
of buildings, beginning with the first simple house of Augustus (26 B.C.), burnt and
rebuilt 3 A.D. Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero added to the Augustan group; Domitian
rebuilt a second time and enlarged the palace of Augustus, and Septimius Severus
remodelled the whole group, adding to it his own extraordinary seven-storied palace,
the Septizonium. The ruins of these successive buildings have been carefully
excavated, and reveal a remarkable combination of dwelling-rooms, courts, temples,
libraries, basilicas, baths, gardens, peristyles, fountains, terraces, and covered
passages. These were adorned with a profusion of precious marbles, mosaics,
columns, and statues. Parts of the demolished palace of Nero were incorporated in
the substructions of the Baths of Titus. The beautiful arabesques and plaster reliefs
which adorned them were the inspiration of much of the fresco and stucco decoration
of the Italian Renaissance. At Spalato, in Dalmatia, are the extensive ruins of the
great Palace of Diocletian, which was laid out on the plan of a Roman camp, with
two intersecting avenues (Fig. 64). It comprised a temple, mausoleum, basilica, and
other structures besides those portions devoted to the purposes of a royal residence.

FIG. 64.—PALACE OF DIOCLETIAN. SPALATO.

The villa was in reality a country palace, arranged with special reference to the
prevailing winds, exposure to the sun and shade, and the enjoyment of a wide
prospect. Baths, temples, exedræ, theatres, tennis-courts, sun-rooms, and shaded
porticoes were connected with the house proper, which was built around two or
three interior courts or peristyles. Statues, fountains, and colossal vases of marble
adorned the grounds, which were laid out in terraces and treated with all the
fantastic arts of the Roman landscape-gardener. The most elaborate and extensive
villa was that of Hadrian, at Tibur (Tivoli); its ruins, covering hundreds of acres,
form one of the most interesting spots to visit in the neighborhood of Rome.
There are few remains in Rome of the domus or private house. Two, however, have
left remarkably interesting ruins—the Atrium Vestæ, or House of the Vestal Virgins,
east of the Forum, a well-planned and extensive house surrounding a cloister or
court; and the House of Livia, so-called, on the Palatine Hill, the walls and
decorations of which are excellently preserved. The typical Roman house in a
provincial town is best illustrated by the ruins of Pompeii and Herculanum, which,
buried by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., have been partially excavated since
1721.
 FIG. 65.—HOUSE OF PANSA, POMPEII.

s, Shops; v, Vestibule; f, Family Rooms; k, Kitchen; l, Lavarium; P, P, P, Peristyles.

The Pompeiian house (Fig. 65) consisted of several courts or atria, some of which
were surrounded by colonnades and called peristyles. The front portion was reserved
for shops, or presented to the street a wall unbroken save by the entrance; all the
rooms and chambers opened upon the interior courts, from which alone they
borrowed their light. In the brilliant climate of southern Italy windows were little
needed, as sufficient light was admitted by the door, closed only by portières for the
most part; especially as the family life was passed mainly in the shaded courts, to
which fountains, parterres of shrubbery, statues, and other adornments lent their
inviting charm. The general plan of these houses seems to have been of Greek origin,
as well as the system of decoration used on the walls. These, when not wainscoted
with marble, were covered with fantastic, but often artistic, painted decorations, in
which an imaginary architecture as of metal, a fantastic and arbitrary perspective,
illusory pictures, and highly finished figures were the chief elements. These were
executed in brilliant colors with excellent effect. The houses were lightly built, with
wooden ceilings and roofs instead of vaulting, and usually with but one story on
account of the danger from earthquakes. That the workmanship and decoration were
in the capital often superior to what was to be found in a provincial town like
Pompeii, is evidenced by beautiful wall-paintings and reliefs discovered in Rome in
1879 and now preserved in the Museo delle Terme. More or less fragmentary
remains of Roman houses have been found in almost every corner of the Roman
empire, but nowhere exhibiting as completely as in Pompeii the typical Roman
arrangement.
WORKS OF UTILITY. A word should be said about Roman engineering works,
which in many cases were designed with an artistic sense of proportion and form
which raises them into the domain of genuine art. Such were especially the bridges,
in which a remarkable effect of monumental grandeur was often produced by the
form and proportions of the arches and piers, and an appropriate use of rough and
dressed masonry, as in the Pons Ælius (Ponte S. Angelo), the great bridge at
Alcantara (Spain), and the Pont du Gard, in southern France. The aqueducts are
impressive rather by their length, scale, and simplicity, than by any special
refinements of design, except where their arches are treated with some architectural
decoration to form gates, as in the Porta Maggiore, at Rome.

MONUMENTS: (Those which have no important extant remains are given in italics.)
TEMPLES: Jupiter Capitolinus, 600 B.C.; Ceres, Liber, and Libera, 494 B.C. (ruins of later
rebuilding in S. Maria in Cosmedin); first T. of Concord (rebuilt in Augustan age), 254
B.C.; first marble temple in portico of Metellus, by a Greek, Hermodorus, 143 B.C.;
temples of Fortune at Præneste and at Rome, and of “Vesta” at Rome, 83–78 B.C.; of
“Vesta” at Tivoli, and of Hercules at Cori, 72 B.C.; first Pantheon, 27 B.C. In Augustan
Age temples of Apollo, Concord rebuilt, Dioscuri, Julius, Jupiter Stator, Jupiter Tonans,
Mars Ultor, Minerva (at Rome and Assisi), Maison Carrée at Nîmes, Saturn; at Puteoli,
Pola, etc. T. of Peace; T. Jupiter Capitolinus, rebuilt 70 A.D.; temple at Brescia. Temple of
Vespasian, 96 A.D.; also of Minerva in Forum of Nerva; of Trajan, 117 A.D.; second
Pantheon; T. of Venus and Rome at Rome, and of Jupiter Olympius at Athens, 135–138
A.D.; Faustina, 141 A.D.; many in Syria; temples of Sun at Rome, Baalbec, and Palmyra,
cir. 273 A.D.; of Romulus, 305 A.D. (porch S. Cosmo and Damiano). PLACES OF
ASSEMBLY: FORA—Roman, Julian, 46 B.C.; Augustan, 40–42 B.C.; of Peace, 75 A.D.;
Nerva, 97 A.D.; Trajan (by Apollodorus of Damascus, 117 A.D.) BASILICAS: Sempronian,
Æmilian, 1st century B.C.; Julian, 51 B.C.; Septa Julia, 26 B.C.; the Curia, later rebuilt
by Diocletian, 300 A.D. (now Church of S. Adriano); at Fano, 20 A.D. (?); Forum and
Basilica at Pompeii, 60 A.D.; of Trajan; of Constantine, 310–324 A.D. THEATRES (th.)
and AMPHITHEATRES (amp.): th. Pompey, 55 B.C.; of Balbus and of Marcellus, 13 B.C.; th.
and amp. at Pompeii and Herculanum; Colosseum at Rome, 78–82 A.D.; th. at Orange
and in Asia Minor; amp. at Albano, Constantine, Nîmes, Petra, Pola, Reggio, Trevi,
Tusculum, Verona, etc.; amp. Castrense at Rome, 96 A.D. Circuses and stadia at Rome.
THERMÆ: of Agrippa, 27 B.C.; of Nero; of Titus, 78 A.D. Domitian, 90 A.D.; Caracalla,
211 A.D.; Diocletian, 305 A.D.; Constantine, 320 A.D.; “Minerva Medica,” 3d or 4th
century A.D. ARCHES: of Stertinius, 196 B.C.; Scipio, 190 B.C.; Augustus, 30 B.C.; Titus,
71–82 A.D.; Trajan, 117 A.D.; Severus, 203 A.D.; Constantine, 320 A.D.; of Drusus,
Dolabella, Silversmiths, 204 A.D.; Janus Quadrifrons, 320 A.D. (?); all at Rome. Others
at Benevento, Ancona, Rimini in Italy; also at Athens, and at Reims and St. Chamas in
France. Columns of Trajan, Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius at Rome, others at
Constantinople, Alexandria, etc. TOMBS: along Via Appia and Via Latina, at Rome; Via
Sacra at Pompeii; tower-tombs at St. Rémy in France; rock-cut at Petra; at Rome, of Caius
Cestius and Cecilia Metella, 1st century B.C.; of Augustus, 14 A.D.; Hadrian, 138 A.D.
PALACES and PRIVATE HOUSES: On Palatine, of Augustus, Tiberius, Nero, Domitian,
Septimius Severus, Elagabalus; Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli; palaces of Diocletian at Spalato
and of Constantine at Constantinople. House of Livia on Palatine (Augustan period); of
Vestals, rebuilt by Hadrian, cir. 120 A.D. Houses at Pompeii and Herculanum, cir. 60–
79 A.D.; Villas of Gordianus (“Tor’ de’ Schiavi,” 240 A.D.), and of Sallust at Rome and
of Pliny at Laurentium.

14. Lanciani: Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, p. 89.

Ebd
E-BooksDirectory.com
 CHAPTER X.
EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Bunsen, Die Basiliken christlichen Roms. Butler, Architecture

and other Arts in Northern Central Syria. Corroyer, L’architecture romane. Cummings,
A History of Architecture in Italy. Essenwein (Handbuch d. Architektur), Ausgänge der
klassischen Baukunst. Gutensohn u. Knapp, Denkmäler der christlichen Religion.
Hübsch, Monuments de l’architecture chrétienne. Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome.
Mothes, Die Basilikenform bei den Christen, etc. Okely, Development of Christian
Architecture in Italy. Von Quast, Die altchristlichen Bauwerke zu Ravenna. De Rossi,
Roma Sotterranea. De Vogüé, Syrie Centrale; Églises de la Terre Sainte.

INTRODUCTORY. The official recognition of Christianity in the year 328 by

Constantine simply legalized an institution which had been for three centuries
gathering momentum for its final conquest of the antique world. The new religion
rapidly enlisted in its service for a common purpose and under a common impulse
races as wide apart in blood and culture as those which had built up the art of
imperial Rome. It was Christianity which reduced to civilization in the West the
Germanic hordes that had overthrown Rome, bringing their fresh and hitherto
untamed vigor to the task of recreating architecture out of the decaying fragments of
classic art. So in the East its life-giving influence awoke the slumbering Greek art-
instinct to new triumphs in the arts of building, less refined and perfect indeed, but
not less sublime than those of the Periclean age. Long before the Constantinian edict,
the Christians in the Eastern provinces had enjoyed substantial freedom of worship.
Meeting often in the private basilicas of wealthy converts, and finding these, and still
more the great public basilicas, suited to the requirements of their worship, they
early began to build in imitation of these edifices. There are many remains of these
early churches in northern Africa and central Syria.
EARLY CHRISTIAN ART IN ROME. This was at first wholly sepulchral, developing
in the catacombs the symbols of the new faith. Once liberated, however, Christianity
appropriated bodily for its public rites the basilica-type and the general substance of
Roman architecture. Shafts and capitals, architraves and rich linings of veined
marble, even the pagan Bacchic symbolism of the vine, it adapted to new uses in its
own service. Constantine led the way in architecture, endowing Bethlehem and
Jerusalem with splendid churches, and his new capital on the Bosphorus with the
first of the three historic basilicas dedicated to the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia). One
of the greatest of innovators, he seems to have had a special predilection for circular
buildings, and the tombs and baptisteries which he erected in this form, especially
that for his sister Constantia in Rome (known as Santa Costanza, Fig. 66), furnished
the prototype for numberless Italian baptisteries in later ages.
 FIG. 66.—STA. COSTANZA, ROME.

The Christian basilica (see Figs. 67, 68) generally comprised a broad and lofty nave,
separated by rows of columns from the single or double side-aisles. The aisles had
usually about half the width and height of the nave, and like it were covered with
wooden roofs and ceilings. Above the columns which flanked the nave rose the lofty
clearstory wall, pierced with windows above the side-aisle roofs and supporting the
immense trusses of the roof of the nave. The timbering of the latter was sometimes
bare, sometimes concealed by a richly panelled ceiling, carved, gilded, and painted.
At the further end of the nave was the sanctuary or apse, with the seats for the
clergy on a raised platform, the bema, in front of which was the altar. Transepts
sometimes expanded to right and left before the altar, under which was the confessio
or shrine of the titular saint or martyr.
An atrium or forecourt surrounded by a covered arcade preceded the basilica proper,
the arcade at the front of the church forming a porch or narthex, which, however, in
some cases existed without the atrium. The exterior was extremely plain; the interior,
on the contrary, was resplendent with incrustations of veined marble and with
sumptuous decorations in glass mosaic (called opus Grecanicum) on a blue or golden
ground. Especially rich were the half-dome of the apse and the wall-space
surrounding its arch and called the triumphal arch; next in decorative importance
came the broad band of wall beneath the clearstory windows. Upon these surfaces
the mosaic-workers wrought with minute cubes of colored glass pictures and symbols
almost imperishable, in which the glow of color and a certain decorative grandeur of
effect in the composition went far to atone for the uncouth drawing. With growing
wealth and an increasingly elaborate ritual, the furniture and equipments of the
church assumed greater architectural importance. A large rectangular space was
retained for the choir in front of the bema, and enclosed by a breast-high parapet of
marble, richly inlaid. On either side were the pulpits or ambones for the Gospel and
Epistle. A lofty canopy was built over the altar, the baldaquin, supported on four
marble columns. A few basilicas were built with side-aisles, in two stories, as in
S. Lorenzo and Sta. Agnese. Adjoining the basilica in the earlier examples were the
baptistery and the tomb of the saint, circular or polygonal buildings usually; but in
later times these were replaced by the font or baptismal chapel in the church and the
confessio under the altar.
 FIG. 67.—PLAN OF THE BASILICA OF ST. PAUL.

Of the two Constantinian basilicas in Rome, the one dedicated to St. Peter was
demolished in the fifteenth century; that of St. John Lateran has been so disfigured
by modern alterations as to be unrecognizable. The former of the two adjoined the
site of the martyrdom of St. Peter in the circus of Caligula and Nero; it was five-
aisled, 380 feet in length by 212 feet in width. The nave was 80 feet wide and 100
feet high, and the disproportionately high clearstory wall rested on horizontal
architraves carried by columns. The impressive dimensions and simple plan of this
structure gave it a majesty worthy of its rank as the first church of Christendom. St.
Paul beyond the Walls (S. Paolo fuori le mura), built in 386 by Theodosius,
resembled St. Peter’s closely in plan (Figs. 67, 68). Destroyed by fire in 1821, it has
been rebuilt with almost its pristine splendor, and is, next to the modern St. Peter’s
and the Pantheon, the most impressive place of worship in Rome. Santa Maria
Maggiore,15 though smaller in size, is more interesting because it so largely retains
its original aspect, its Renaissance ceiling happily harmonizing with its simple
antique lines. Ionic columns support architraves to carry the clearstory, as in St.
Peter’s. In most other examples, St. Paul’s included, arches turned from column to
column perform this function. The first known case of such use of classic columns as
arch-bearers was in the palace of Diocletian at Spalato; it also appears in Syrian
buildings of the third and fourth centuries A.D.
The basilica remained the model for ecclesiastical architecture in Rome, without
noticeable change either of plan or detail, until the time of the Renaissance. All the
earlier examples employed columns and capitals taken from ancient ruins, often
incongruous and ill-matched in size and order. San Clemente (1084) has retained
almost intact its early aspect, its choir-enclosure, baldaquin, and ambones having
been well preserved or carefully restored. Other important basilicas are mentioned in
the list of monuments on pages 118, 119.
RAVENNA. The fifth and sixth centuries endowed Ravenna with a number of notable
buildings which, with the exception of the cathedral, demolished in the last century,
have been preserved to our day. Subdued by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in 537,
Ravenna became the meeting-ground for Early Christian and Byzantine traditions and
the basilican and circular plans are both represented. The two churches dedicated to
St. Apollinaris, S. Apollinare Nuovo (520) in the city, and S. Apollinare in Classe
(538) three miles distant from the city, in what was formerly the port, are especially
interesting for their fine mosaics, and for the impost-blocks interposed above the
capitals of their columns to receive the springing of the pier-arches. These blocks
appear to be somewhat crude modifications of the fragmentary architraves or
entablatures employed in classic Roman architecture to receive the springing of
vaults sustained by columns, and became common in Byzantine structures (Fig. 73).
The use of external arcading to give some slight adornment to the walls of the second
of the above-named churches, and the round bell-towers of brick which adjoined both
of them, were first steps toward the development of the “wall-veil” or arcaded
decoration, and of the campaniles, which in later centuries became so characteristic
of north Italian churches (see Chapter XIII.). In Rome the campaniles which
accompany many of the mediæval basilicas are square and pierced with many
windows.

FIG. 68.—ST. PAUL BEYOND THE WALLS. INTERIOR.

The basilican form of church became general in Italy, a large proportion of whose
churches continued to be built with wooden roofs and with but slight deviations from
the original type, long after the appearance of the Gothic style. The chief departures
from early precedent were in the exterior, which was embellished with marble
incrustations as in S. Miniato (Florence); or with successive stories of wall-arcades,
as in many churches in Pisa and Lucca (see Fig. 90); until finally the introduction of
clustered piers, pointed arches, and vaulting, gradually transformed the basilican into
the Italian Romanesque and Gothic styles.
SYRIA AND THE EAST. In Syria, particularly the central portion, the Christian
architecture of the 3d to 8th centuries produced a number of very interesting
monuments. The churches built by Constantine in Syria—the Church of the Nativity
in Bethlehem (nominally built by his mother), of the Ascension at Jerusalem, the
magnificent octagonal church on the site of the Temple, and finally the somewhat
similar church at Antioch—were the most notable Christian monuments in Syria. The
first three on the list, still extant in part at least, have been so altered by later
additions and restorations that their original forms are only approximately known
from early descriptions. They were all of large size, and the octagonal church on the
Temple platform was of exceptional magnificence.16 The columns and a part of the
marble incrustations of the early design are still visible in the “Mosque of Omar,”
but most of the old work is concealed by the decoration of tiles applied by the
Moslems, and the whole interior aspect altered by the wood-and-plaster dome with
which they replaced the simpler roof of the original.

FIG. 69.—CHURCH AT KALB LOUZEH.

Christian architecture in Syria soon, however, diverged from Roman traditions. The
abundance of hard stone, the total lack of clay or brick, the remoteness from Rome,
led to a peculiar independence and originality in the forms and details of the
ecclesiastical as well as of the domestic architecture of central Syria. These
innovations upon Roman models resulted in the development of distinct types which,
but for the arrest of progress by the Mohammedan conquest in the seventh century,
would doubtless have inaugurated a new and independent style of architecture. Piers
of masonry came to replace the classic column, as at Tafkha (third or fourth century),
Rouheiha and Kalb Louzeh (fifth century? Fig. 69); the ceilings in the smaller
churches were often formed with stone slabs; the apse was at first confined within
the main rectangle of the plan, and was sometimes square. The exterior assumed a
striking and picturesque variety of forms by means of turrets, porches, and gables.
Singularly enough, vaulting hardly appears at all, though the arch is used with fine
effect. Conventional and monastic groups of buildings appear early in Syria, and that
of St. Simeon Stylites at Kelat Seman is an impressive and interesting monument.
Four three-aisled wings form the arms of a cross, meeting in a central octagonal open
court, in the midst of which stood the column of the saint. The eastern arm of the
cross forms a complete basilica of itself, and the whole cross measures 330 × 300
feet. Chapels, cloisters, and cells adjoin the main edifice.

FIG. 70.—CATHEDRAL AT BOZRAH.

Circular and polygonal plans appear in a number of Syrian examples of the early
sixth century. Their most striking feature is the inscribing of the circle or polygon in
a square which forms the exterior outline, and the use of four niches to fill out the
corners. This occurs at Kelat Seman in a small double church, perhaps the tomb and
chapel of a martyr; in the cathedral at Bozrah (Fig. 70), and in the small domical
church of St. George at Ezra. These were probably the prototypes of many Byzantine
churches like St. Sergius at Constantinople, and San Vitale at Ravenna (Fig. 74),
though the exact dates of the Syrian churches are not known. The one at Ezra is the
only one of the three which has a dome, the others having been roofed with wood.
The interesting domestic architecture of this period is preserved in whole towns and
villages in the Hauran, which, deserted at the Arab conquest, have never been
reoccupied and remain almost intact but for the decay of their wooden roofs. They
are marked by dignity and simplicity of design, and by the same picturesque massing
of gables and roofs and porches which has already been remarked of the churches.
The arches are broad, the columns rather heavy, the mouldings few and simple, and
the scanty carving vigorous and effective, often strongly Byzantine in type.
Elsewhere in the Eastern world are many early churches of which even the
enumeration would exceed the limits of this work. Salonica counts a number of
basilicas and several domical churches. The church of St. George, now a mosque, is
of early date and thoroughly Roman in plan and section, of the same class with the
Pantheon and the tomb of Helena, in both of which a massive circular wall is
lightened by eight niches. At Angora (Ancyra), Hierapolis, Pergamus, and other
points in Asia Minor; in Egypt, Nubia, and Algiers, are many examples of both
circular and basilican edifices of the early centuries of Christianity. In Constantinople
there remains but a single representative of the basilican type, the church of St. John
Studius, now the Emir Akhor mosque.
MONUMENTS: ROME: 4th century: St. Peter’s, Sta. Costanza, 330?; Sta. Pudentiana,
335 (rebuilt 1598); tomb of St. Helena; Baptistery of Constantine; St. Paul’s beyond the
Walls, 386; St. John Lateran (wholly remodelled in modern times). 5th century:
Baptistery of St. John Lateran; Sta. Sabina, 425; Sta. Maria Maggiore, 432; S. Pietro in
Vincoli, 442 (greatly altered in modern times). 6th century: S. Lorenzo, 580 (the older
portion in two stories); SS. Cosmo e Damiano. 7th century: Sta. Agnese, 625; S. Giorgio
in Velabro, 682. 8th century: Sta. Maria in Cosmedin; S. Crisogono. 9th century:
S. Nereo ed Achilleo; Sta. Prassede; Sta. Maria in Dominica. 12th and 13th centuries:
S. Clemente, 1118; Sta. Maria in Trastevere; S. Lorenzo (nave); Sta. Maria in Ara Coeli.
RAVENNA: Baptistery of S. John, 400 (?); S. Francesco; S. Giovanni Evangelista, 425; Sta.
Agata, 430; S. Giovanni Battista, 439; tomb of Galla Placidia, 450; S. Apollinare Nuovo,
500–520; S. Apollinare in Classe, 538; St. Victor; Sta. Maria in Cosmedin (the Arian
Baptistery); tomb of Theodoric (Sta. Maria della Rotonda, a decagonal two-storied
mausoleum, with a low dome cut from a single stone 36 feet in diameter), 530–540.
ITALY IN GENERAL: basilica at Parenzo, 6th century; cathedral and Sta. Fosca at Torcello,
640–700; at Naples Sta. Restituta, 7th century; others, mostly of 10th-13th centuries, at
Murano near Venice, at Florence (S. Miniato), Spoleto, Toscanella, etc.; baptisteries at
Asti, Florence, Nocera dei Pagani, and other places. IN SYRIA AND THE EAST: basilicas of
the Nativity at Bethlehem, of the Sepulchre and of the Ascension at Jerusalem; also
polygonal church on Temple platform; these all of 4th century. Basilicas at Bakouzah,
Hass, Kelat Seman, Kalb Louzeh, Rouheiha, Tourmanin, etc.; circular churches, tombs,
and baptisteries at Bozrah, Ezra, Hass, Kelat Seman, Rouheiha, etc.; all these 4th-8th
centuries. Churches at Constantinople (Holy Wisdom, St. John Studius, etc.), Hierapolis,
Pergamus, and Thessalonica (St. Demetrius, “Eski Djuma”); in Egypt and Nubia (Djemla,
Announa, Ibreem, Siout, etc.); at Orléansville in Algeria. (For churches, etc., of 8th-10th
centuries in the West, see Chapter XIII.)

15. Hereafter the abbreviation S. M. will be generally used instead of the name
Santa Maria.
16. Fergusson (History of Architecture, vol. ii., pp. 408, 432) contends that this
was the real Constantinian church of the Holy Sepulchre, and that the one called
to-day by that name was erected by the Crusaders in the twelfth century. The more
general view is that the latter was originally built by Constantine as the Church of
the Sepulchre, though subsequently much altered, and that the octagonal edifice
was also his work, but erected under some other name. Whether this church was
later incorporated in the “Mosque of Omar,” or merely furnished some of the
materials for its construction, is not quite clear.

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 CHAPTER XI.
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Essenwein, Hübsch, Von Quast. Also, Bayet, L’Art
Byzantin. Choisy, L’Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins. Lethaby and Swainson, Sancta
Sophia. Ongania, La Basilica di San Marco. Pulgher, Anciennes Églises Byzantines de
Constantinople. Salzenberg, Altchristliche Baudenkmäle von Constantinopel. Texier and
Pullan, Byzantine Architecture.

ORIGIN AND CHARACTER. The decline and fall of Rome arrested the development
of the basilican style in the West, as did the Arab conquest later in Syria. It was
otherwise in the new Eastern capital founded by Constantine in the ancient
Byzantium, which was rising in power and wealth while Rome lay in ruins. Situated
at the strategic point of the natural highway of commerce between East and West,
salubrious and enchantingly beautiful in its surroundings, the new capital grew
rapidly from provincial insignificance to metropolitan importance. Its founder had
embellished it with an extraordinary wealth of buildings, in which, owing to the
scarcity of trained architects, quantity and cost doubtless outran quality. But at least
the tameness of blindly followed precedent was avoided, and this departure from
traditional tenets contributed undoubtedly to the originality of Byzantine
architecture. A large part of the artisans employed in building were then, as now,
from Asia Minor and the Ægean Islands, Greek in race if not in name. An Oriental
taste for brilliant and harmonious color and for minute decoration spread over broad
surfaces must have been stimulated by trade with the Far East and by constant
contact with Oriental peoples, costumes, and arts. An Asiatic origin may also be
assigned to the methods of vaulting employed, far more varied than the Roman, not
only in form but also in materials and processes. From Roman architecture, however,
the Byzantines borrowed the fundamental notion of their structural art; that, namely,
of distributing the weights and strains of their vaulted structures upon isolated and
massive points of support, strengthened by deep buttresses, internal or external, as
the case might be. Roman, likewise, was the use of polished monolithic columns, and
the incrustation of the piers and walls with panels of variegated marble, as well as
the decoration of plastered surfaces by fresco and mosaic, and the use of opus sectile
and opus Alexandrinum for the production of sumptuous marble pavements. In the
first of these processes the color-figures of the pattern are formed each of a single
piece of marble cut to the shape required; in the second the pattern is compounded
of minute squares, triangles, and curved pieces of uniform size. Under these
combined influences the artists of Constantinople wrought out new problems in
construction and decoration, giving to all that they touched a new and striking
character.
There is no absolute line of demarcation, chronological, geographical, or structural,
between Early Christian and Byzantine architecture. But the former was especially
characterized by the basilica with three or five aisles, and the use of wooden roofs
even in its circular edifices; the vault and dome, though not unknown, being
exceedingly rare. Byzantine architecture, on the other hand, rarely produced the
simple three-aisled or five-aisled basilica, and nearly all its monuments were vaulted.
The dome was especially frequent, and Byzantine architecture achieved its highest
triumphs in the use of the pendentive, as the triangular spherical surfaces are called,
by the aid of which a dome can be supported on the summits of four arches spanning
the four sides of a square, as explained later. There is as little uniformity in the plans
of Byzantine buildings as in the forms of the vaulting. A few types of church-plan,
however, predominated locally in one or another centre; but the controlling feature of
the style was the dome and the constructive system with which it was associated.
The dome, it is true, had long been used by the Romans, but always on a circular
plan, as in the Pantheon. It is also a fact that pendentives have been found in Syria
and Asia Minor older than the oldest Byzantine examples. But the special feature
characterizing the Byzantine dome on pendentives was its almost exclusive
association with plans having piers and columns or aisles, with the dome as the
central and dominant feature of the complex design (see plans, Figs. 74, 75, 78).
Another strictly Byzantine practice was the piercing of the lower portion of the dome
with windows forming a circle or crown, and the final development of this feature
into a high drum.

FIG. 71.—DIAGRAM OF PENDENTIVES.

CONSTRUCTION. Still another divergence from Roman methods was in the

substitution of brick and stone masonry for concrete. Brick was used for the mass as
well as the facing of walls and piers, and for the vaulting in many buildings mainly
built of stone. Stone was used either alone or in combination with brick, the latter
appearing in bands of four or five courses at intervals of three or four feet. In later
work a regular alternation of the two materials, course for course, was not
uncommon. In piers intended to support unusually heavy loads the stone was very
carefully cut and fitted, and sometimes tied and clamped with iron.
Vaults were built sometimes of brick, sometimes of cut stone; in a few cases even of
earthenware jars fitting into each other, and laid up in a continuous contracting
spiral from the base to the crown of a dome, as in San Vitale at Ravenna. Ingenious
processes for building vaults without centrings were made use of—processes
inherited from the drain-builders of ancient Assyria, and still in vogue in Armenia,
Persia, and Asia Minor. The groined vault was common, but always approximated
the form of a dome, by a longitudinal convexity upward in the intersecting vaults.
The aisles of Hagia Sophia17 display a remarkable variety of forms in the vaulting.
DOMES. The dome, as we have seen, early became the most characteristic feature of
Byzantine architecture; and especially the dome on pendentives. If a hemisphere be
cut by five planes, four perpendicular to its base and bounding a square inscribed
therein, and the fifth plane parallel to the base and tangent to the semicircular
intersections made by the first four, there will remain of the original surface only
four triangular spaces bounded by arcs of circles. These are called pendentives (Fig.
71 a). When these are built up of masonry, each course forms a species of arch, by
virtue of its convexity. At the crown of the four arches on which they rest, these
courses meet and form a complete circle, perfectly stable and capable of sustaining
any superstructure that does not by excessive weight disrupt the whole fabric by
overthrowing the four arches which support it. Upon these pendentives, then, a new
dome may be started of any desired curvature, or even a cylindrical drum to support
a still loftier dome, as in the later churches (Fig. 71 b). This method of covering a
square is simpler than the groined vault, having no sharp edges or intersections; it is
at least as effective architecturally, by reason of its greater height in the centre; and
is equally applicable to successive bays of an oblong, cruciform, and even columnar
building. In the great cisterns at Constantinople vast areas are covered by rows of
small domes supported on ranges of columns.
The earlier domes were commonly pierced with windows at the base, this apparent
weakening of the vault being compensated for by strongly buttressing the piers
between the windows, as in Hagia Sophia. Here forty windows form a crown of light
at the spring of the dome, producing an effect almost as striking as that of the simple
oculus of the Pantheon, and celebrated by ancient writers in the most extravagant
terms. In later and smaller churches a high drum was introduced beneath the dome,
in order to secure, by means of longer windows, more light than could be obtained
by merely piercing the diminutive domes.
Buttressing was well understood by the Byzantines, whose plans were skilfully
devised to provide internal abutments, which were often continued above the roofs
of the side-aisles to prop the main vaults, precisely as was done by the Romans in
their thermæ and similar halls. But the Byzantines, while adhering less strictly than
the Romans to traditional forms and processes, and displaying much more ready
contrivance and special adaptation of means to ends, never worked out this pregnant
structural principle to its logical conclusion as did the Gothic architects of Western
Europe a few centuries later.
DECORATION. The exteriors of Byzantine buildings (except in some of the small
churches of late date) were generally bare and lacking in beauty. The interiors, on the
contrary, were richly decorated, color playing a much larger part than carving in the
designs. Painting was resorted to only in the smaller buildings, the more durable and
splendid medium of mosaic being usually preferred. This was, as a rule, confined to
the vaults and to those portions of the wall-surfaces embraced by the vaults above
their springing. The colors were brilliant, the background being usually of gold,
though sometimes of blue or a delicate green. Biblical scenes, symbolic and
allegorical figures and groups of saints adorned the larger areas, particularly the half-
dome of the apse, as in the basilicas. The smaller vaults, the soffits of arches,
borders of pictures, and other minor surfaces, received a more conventional
decoration of crosses, monograms, and set patterns.

FIG. 72.—SPANDRIL. HAGIA SOPHIA.

The walls throughout were sheathed with slabs of rare marble in panels so disposed
that the veining should produce symmetrical figures. The panels were framed in
billet-mouldings, derived perhaps from classic dentils; the billets or projections on
one side the moulding coming opposite the spaces on the other. This seems to have
been a purely Byzantine feature.
CARVED DETAILS. Internally the different stories were marked by horizontal bands
and cornices of white or inlaid marble richly carved. The arch-soffits, the archivolts
or bands around the arches, and the spandrils between them were covered with
minute and intricate incised carving. The motives used, though based on the
acanthus and anthemion, were given a wholly new aspect. The relief was low and
flat, the leaves sharp and crowded, and the effect rich and lacelike, rather than
vigorous. It was, however, well adapted to the covering of large areas where general
effect was more important than detail. Even the capitals were treated in the same
spirit. The impost-block was almost universal, except where its use was rendered
unnecessary by giving to the capital itself the massive pyramidal form required to
receive properly the spring of the arch or vault. In such cases (more frequent in
Constantinople than elsewhere) the surface of the capital was simply covered with
incised carving of foliage, basketwork, monograms, etc.; rudimentary volutes in a few
cases recalling classic traditions (Figs. 72, 73). The mouldings were weak and poorly
executed, and the vigorous profiles of classic cornices were only remotely suggested
by the characterless aggregations of mouldings which took their place.

FIG. 73.—CAPITAL WITH IMPOST BLOCK, S. VITALE.

FIG. 74.—ST. SERGIUS, CONSTANTINOPLE.

PLANS. The remains of Byzantine architecture are almost exclusively of churches and
baptisteries, but the plans of these are exceedingly varied. The first radical departure
from the basilica-type seems to have been the adoption of circular or polygonal plans,
such as had usually served only for tombs and baptisteries. The Baptistery of St. John
at Ravenna (early fifth century) is classed by many authorities as a Byzantine
monument. In the early years of the sixth century the adoption of this model had
become quite general, and with it the development of domical design began to
advance. The church of St. Sergius at Constantinople (Fig. 74), originally joined to a
short basilica dedicated to St. Bacchus (afterward destroyed by the Turks), as in the
double church at Kelat Seman, was built about 520; that of San Vitale at Ravenna
was begun a few years later; both are domical churches on an octagonal plan, with
an exterior aisle. Semicircular niches—four in St. Sergius and eight in San Vitale—
projecting into the aisle, enlarge somewhat the area of the central space and give
variety to the internal effect. The origin of this characteristic feature may be traced to
the eight niches of the Pantheon, through such intermediate examples as the temple
of Minerva Medica at Rome. The true pendentive does not appear in these two
churches.

FIG. 75.—PLAN OF HAGIA SOPHIA.

Timidly employed up to that time in small structures, it received a remarkable

development in the magnificent church of Hagia Sophia, built by Anthemius of
Tralles and Isodorus of Miletus, under Justinian, 532–538 A.D. In the plan of this
marvellous edifice (Fig. 75) the dome rests upon four mighty arches bounding a
square, into two of which open the half-domes of semicircular apses. These apses are
penetrated and extended each by two smaller niches and a central arch, and the
whole vast nave, measuring over 200 × 100 feet, is flanked by enormously wide
aisles connecting at the front with a majestic narthex. Huge transverse buttresses, as
in the Basilica of Constantine (with whose structural design this building shows
striking affinities), divide the aisles each into three sections. The plan suggests that
of St. Sergius cut in two, with a lofty dome on pendentives over a square plan
inserted between the halves. Thus was secured a noble and unobstructed hall of
unrivalled proportions and great beauty, covered by a combination of half-domes
increasing in span and height as they lead up successively to the stupendous central
vault, which rises 180 feet into the air and fitly crowns the whole. The imposing
effect of this low-curved but loftily-poised dome, resting as it does upon a crown of
windows, and so disposed that its summit is visible from every point of the nave (as
may be easily seen from an examination of the section, Fig. 76), is not surpassed in
any interior ever erected.

FIG. 76.—SECTION OF HAGIA SOPHIA.

The two lateral arches under the dome are filled by clearstory walls pierced by twelve
windows, and resting on arcades in two stories carried by magnificent columns taken
from ancient ruins. These separate the nave from the side-aisles, which are in two
stories forming galleries, and are vaulted with a remarkable variety of groined vaults.
All the masses are disposed with studied reference to the resistance required by the
many and complex thrusts exerted by the dome and other vaults. That the
earthquakes of one thousand three hundred and fifty years have not destroyed the
church is the best evidence of the sufficiency of these precautions.

FIG. 77.—INTERIOR OF HAGIA SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE.

Not less remarkable than the noble planning and construction of this church was the
treatment of scale and decoration in its interior design. It was as conspicuously the
masterpiece of Byzantine architecture as the Parthenon was of the classic Greek.
With little external beauty, it is internally one of the most perfectly composed and
beautifully decorated halls of worship ever erected. Instead of the simplicity of the
Pantheon it displays the complexity of an organism of admirably related parts. The
division of the interior height into two stories below the spring of the four arches,
reduces the component parts of the design to moderate dimensions, so that the scale
of the whole is more easily grasped and its vast size emphasized by the contrast. The
walls are incrusted with precious marbles up to the spring of the vaulting; the
capitals, spandrils, and soffits are richly and minutely carved with incised ornament,
and all the vaults covered with splendid mosaics. Dimmed by the lapse of centuries
and disfigured by the vandalism of the Moslems, this noble interior, by the harmony
of its coloring and its impressive grandeur, is one of the masterpieces of all time (Fig.
77).
LATER CHURCHES. After the sixth century no monuments were built at all rivalling
in scale the creations of the former period. The later churches were, with few
exceptions, relatively small and trivial. Neither the plan nor the general aspect of
Hagia Sophia seems to have been imitated in these later works. The crown of dome-
windows was replaced by a cylindrical drum under the dome, which was usually of
insignificant size. The exterior was treated more decoratively than before, by means
of bands and incrustations of colored marble, or alternations of stone and brick; and
internally mosaic continued to be executed with great skill and of great beauty until
the tenth century, when the art rapidly declined. These later churches, of which a
number were spared by the Turks, are, therefore, generally pleasing and elegant
rather than striking or imposing.

FIG. 78.—PLAN OF ST. MARK’S, VENICE.

FOREIGN MONUMENTS. The influence of Byzantine art was wide-spread, both in

Europe and Asia. The leading city of civilization through the Dark Ages,
Constantinople influenced Italy through her political and commercial relations with
Ravenna, Genoa, and Venice. The church of St. Mark in the latter city was one result
of this influence (Figs. 78, 79). Begun in 1063 to replace an earlier church destroyed
by fire, it received through several centuries additions not always Byzantine in
character. Yet it was mainly the work of Byzantine builders, who copied most
probably the church of the Apostles at Constantinople, built by Justinian. The
picturesque but wholly unstructural use of columns in the entrance porches, the
upper parts of the façade, the wooden cupolas over the five domes, and the pointed
arches in the narthex, are deviations from Byzantine traditions dating in part from
the later Middle Ages Nothing could well be conceived more irrational, from a
structural point of view, than the accumulation of columns in the entrance-arches;
but the total effect is so picturesque and so rich in color, that its architectural defects
are easily overlooked. The external veneering of white and colored marble occurs
rarely in the East, but became a favorite practice in Venice, where it continued in use
for five hundred years. The interior of St. Mark’s, in some respects better preserved
than that of Hagia Sophia, is especially fine in color, though not equal in scale and
grandeur to the latter church. With its five domes it has less unity of effect than
Hagia Sophia, but more of the charm of picturesqueness, and its less brilliant and
simpler lighting enhances the impressiveness of its more modest dimensions.

FIG. 79.—INTERIOR OF ST. MARK’S.

In Russia and Greece the Byzantine style has continued to be the official style of the
Greek Church. The Russian monuments are for the most part of a somewhat fantastic
aspect, the Muscovite taste having introduced many innovations in the form of
bulbous domes and other eccentric details. In Greece there are few large churches,
and some of the most interesting, like the Cathedral at Athens, are almost toy-like in
their diminutiveness. On Mt. Athos (Hagion Oros) is an ancient monastery which still
retains its Byzantine character and traditions. In Armenia (as at Ani, Etchmiadzin,
etc.) are also interesting examples of late Armeno-Byzantine architecture, showing
applications to exterior carved detail of elaborate interlaced ornament looking like a
re-echo of Celtic MSS. illumination, itself, no doubt, originating in Byzantine
traditions. But the greatest and most prolific offspring of Byzantine architecture
appeared after the fall of Constantinople (1453) in the new mosque-architecture of
the victorious Turks.

MONUMENTS. CONSTANTINOPLE: St. Sergius, 520; Hagia Sophia, 532–538; Holy

Apostles by Justinian (demolished); Holy Peace (St. Irene) originally by Constantine,
rebuilt by Justinian, and again in 8th century by Leo the Isaurian; Hagia Theotokos, 12th
century (?); Monétes Choras (“Kahiré Djami”), 10th century; Pantokrator; “Fetiyeh
Djami.” Cisterns, especially the “Bin Bir Direk” (1,001 columns) and “Yere Batan Serai;”
palaces, few vestiges except the great hall of the Blachernæ palace. SALONICA: Churches—
of Divine Wisdom (“Aya Sofia”) St. Bardias, St. Elias. RAVENNA: San Vitale, 527–540.
VENICE: St. Mark’s, 977–1071; “Fondaco dei Turchi,” now Civic Museum, 12th century.
Other churches at Athens and Mt. Athos; at Misitra, Myra, Ancyra, Ephesus, etc.; in
Armenia at Ani, Dighour, Etchmiadzin, Kouthais, Pitzounda, Usunlar, etc.; tombs at Ani,
Varzhahan, etc.; in Russia at Kieff (St. Basil, Cathedral), Kostroma, Moscow (Assumption,
St. Basil, Vasili Blaghennoi, etc.), Novgorod, Tchernigoff; at Kurtea Darghish in Wallachia,
and many other places.

17. “St. Sophia,” the common name of this church, is a misnomer. It was not
dedicated to a saint at all, but to the Divine Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), which name
the Turks have retained in the softened form “Aya Sofia.”

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