How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (free reads .txt) 📕

the “Nature of the World” and Varro was the author of an encyclopædic work relating to the history, geography, agriculture, law, literature, philology, philosophy, and religion of the Romans. To Varro also had been assigned by Julius Cæsar the collection of a public Library of Greek and Roman writers.

The enthusiasm for literature was encouraged by Augustus and his minister, Mycæenas, who saw in it a means of allaying the bitterness of party strife. To this, the “Augustan” or “Golden Age,” as the writers called it in flattery of their patron, belong Horace, Livy, and Virgil.

In an effort also to lead the people back to the honourable simplicity of their forefathers, Augustus revived the ancient religious ceremonies and restored the temples. He became chief pontiff and, being regarded as the son of the deified Julius—in reality, his great-nephew—was treated almost as a divinity in Rome and deified by the provincials who built temples in his honour.

It was in the Augustan Age that Roman architecture virtually commenced and its developments are associated with Imperial rule. Of the period immediately preceding the new era Mommsen writes as follows: “There was in the world as Cæsar found it much of the noble heritage of past centuries and an infinite abundance of pomp and glory, but little spirit, still less taste and least of all true delight in life. It was indeed, an old world; and even the richly gifted patriotism of Cæsar could not make it young again.”

Rome, the heart of the Empire, was corrupt. The ruling class coveted pensions from the public exchequer to be spent on luxurious living; while the mass of the populace clamoured for “panem et circenses”—feeding and shows at the public charge. To satisfy their hunger both classes would have taxed the provinces. But among the chief duties of the emperors were the development of the resources of the provinces and the protection of the frontiers; and, while the best of the emperors performed these functions from high motives, even the worst found it politic to court the growing power of the provinces. Thus, the main vitality of the empire was in its extremities, and, although the emperors beautified Rome, they also encouraged public works of utility and beauty in the provinces. To this end a law was passed, permitting municipalities to receive bequests and gifts from private individuals. In the liberality with which wealthy provincials enriched their communities, Dr. Ferrero, the latest historian of Rome, has seen a parallel to the munificent public gifts of American millionaires.

Accordingly, this great era of Roman building left its impress not only upon Italy, but in Greece and northward as far as the Danube, in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, along the whole Northern coast of Africa, and in Spain, France, and Great Britain as far as the Firth of Forth. It was distinguished not only by the magnitude of the operations but also by their character.

Whereas in Egypt the architectural works had consisted of temples and tombs; and in Hellas these had been supplemented by theatres and odeia; while Assyria and Persia left their memorials in palaces, those of the Roman Empire embraced all of these types and many more. The Romans applied architecture to the practical needs of everyday life, and reinforced it with engineering. They overlaid the Empire with fine trunk-roads, many of which survive to-day; constructed sewers; spanned rivers with bridges; conveyed water in countless miles of aqueducts; erected fora and market-places, triumphal arches, temples, palaces, villas, baths, basilicas, theatres, and hippodromes; providing alike for the necessities of life, the needs of government, and the amusements and luxuries of living.

To accomplish so prodigious an amount of building the Romans systematised the methods of construction in regard to both the labour and the material. The labour was mainly of an unskilled kind, including soldiers of the legions, slaves, and subjects liable through debt or other causes to statute labour. This employment of unskilled labour was made possible by the Roman habit of carrying the principle of repetition of motives to its utmost limit, and also by the methods of construction which they invented.

This was the extended use of concrete. During the Republic the Romans had followed the Greek method of building with large blocks of stone, unconnected with mortar. Their practical spirit, however, urged them to make a more economical use of materials and instead of composing the walls entirely of blocks of stone or marble, they used these or bricks as a facing, filling in the thickness of the wall with small fragments of stone mixed with lime or mortar.

They had been led to this practice by the existence of pozzolana, a volcanic product of clean, sandy earth, found in Rome and in greater quantities at Pozzuoli on the Bay of Naples, which, when mixed with lime, formed a concrete of exceptional hardness, strength, and durability. Material, approximating the properties of pozzolana and lime, was procurable in all parts of the Empire. Accordingly the use of this method of construction gave a similarity to Roman building everywhere.

While the chief, and almost sole building material in Greece was marble, the geological formation of Italy supplied stone as well as marble and plentiful supplies of clay, which was converted into terra-cotta or bricks. The bricks were of two shapes: either square, from 1 to 2 feet in size and 2 inches thick or triangular in plan and of about 1½ inches in thickness. The latter were especially used for the facing of the walls, their pointed ends being driven into the concrete to form the smooth surfaces, while at the corners the points projected. In Rome itself the following materials were available: travertine, a hard limestone from Tivoli; tufa, a volcanic substance of which the hills of Rome are mainly composed; and peperino, a stone of volcanic origin from Mount Albano.

 

While Roman architecture was developed under the stimulus of Greek art and culture it probably owes its origin to the example of the Etruscans.

The origin of this race is uncertain, but its own traditions ascribe it to Lydia in Asia Minor, whence it may have passed during that general migration from Hellas into Italy about B.C. 1000. It was for long the dominant power in Italy, extending at various times over a territory that reached from the Tiber to the Apennines, and southward into Campania. This gave the Etruscans command of the Tyrrhenian Sea and made them commercial rivals of the Carthagenians. Their enmity toward the rising city of Rome would be natural and some authorities believe that the reign of the Tarquin kings was a period of Etruscan domination. Then the Romans expelled the tyrants, established a republic of their own, and by degrees wore down the power of the Etruscans, who had become enervated through increase of luxury. Their civilisation long antedated that of the Romans. The earliest remains of art, found in Etruria, are now believed to have been imported from Hellas; but the tombs have revealed a quantity of later art objects which prove this people to have been skilful in the modelling and colouring of terra-cotta, in mural paintings, jewellery, and household adornments.

“The houses of the earliest period, to judge by the burial urns, known from their shape as ‘hut-urns,’ were small single room constructions of rectangular plan, similar to certain types of the capanne used by the shepherds to-day. Probably the walls were wattled and the roofs were certainly thatched, for the urns show plainly the long beams fastened together at the top and hanging from the ridge down each side.” (Encyclopædia Britannica, “Etruria.”) Tombs erected even later than the fifth century B.C. were cut in imitation of a most simple form of post and beam construction. The elements of the decoration, such as capitals, mouldings, rosettes, patterns, etc., were borrowed from Greece, Egypt, and elsewhere.

The architectural remains comprise tombs, city walls, gateways, bridges, and aqueducts, the walls of which are remarkable for their cyclopean masonry, while the general character of the construction resembles the early work of Tiryns and Mycenæ.

No example remains of Etruscan temples, but Vitruvius has described them. The plan was nearly square and the cella was divided into three chambers, since it was in groups of three that the Etruscans worshipped their deities. The columns represented in rude form the Doric order, set so far apart that it is concluded they were surmounted by beams of timber. A further distinction of the Etruscan temple, adopted by the Romans, was the replacing of the stylobate by a podium. This was a continuous pedestal or low wall on which the columns were carried. It was approached in front by a flight of steps, enclosed between the prolongation of the side-walls of the podium. The most famous example was the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, dedicated B.C. 509, which contained three chambers, for the statues of Jupiter, Minerva, and Juno. It was destroyed by fire B.C. 83, and rebuilt by Sulla, who brought over for the purpose some of the Corinthian columns from the temple of Zeus Olympius in Athens. (See p. 122.)

Until recently the great sewer, or “Cloaca Maxima,” of Rome, constructed about B.C. 578, has been attributed to the Etruscans and considered a proof that they introduced the use of the arch to the Romans. But in 1903, when excavating the Forum, Commendatore Boni proved that the drain was originally uncovered and that the arch, which consists of three rings of voussoirs, each 2 feet 6 inches high, was added at the end of the Republic. “Thus the honour, not of discovering the arch, for it was known in the East, as we noted, but of popularising its use, does not belong to the Etrurians, though they did use it at a comparatively late time for city gates, as at Volterra.” (Encyclopædia Britannica, “Etruria.”)

 

Following Augustus, the emperors under whom Roman architecture chiefly flourished were: Nero (A.D. 54-69), Vespasian (69-79), Trajan (98-117), Hadrian (137-138), Septimus Severus (193-211), Caracalla (211-217), and Diocletian (284-305). By Constantine (306-337) were inaugurated two changes of policy, which affected the destinies of the world. For by granting toleration to all religions he raised Christianity to equal footing with paganism and thus paved the way for the power of the Church; and in establishing his capital at Byzantium took the first step in the partition of the Empire into East and West. Aided by his vigorous efforts, architecture, which had declined, enjoyed a measure of revival, in which, as we shall see later, the Church began to play a conspicuous part.

With the commencement of the fifth century, A.D., began the irruption of Barbarians. Attila’s Huns swept like a scourge over Europe, while the German tribes conquered the provinces in turn and occupied them. In 455 Rome was sacked by the Vandals. In 476 Odoacer was proclaimed by his troops King of Italy, and thus the Western part of the Empire was finally separated from the Eastern. This is the date selected to mark the “Fall” of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile the steady decline of the power of the emperors had been long in process and was accompanied by a corresponding increase in the power of the Popes. Henceforth, during the “Dark Ages” of civil confusion, the influence and authority of the Church were the chief sources of social as well as religious organisation.

 

The Roman ideal of civilisation received its most characteristic architectural expression in the several fora, beginning with the oldest—the Forum Romanum. From ancient times it was the heart of the city; the centre of civil activity; the scene of some of the most stirring incidents in the growth of Rome; in later times the nucleus of the pomp and pride of the Empire. Here at some time was erected a cylindrical monument in three tiers, the Umbilicus or Navel of Rome, and hard by it stood the Milliarium, a marble column, sheathed in bronze