A Text-Book of the History of Architecture Part 6

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 (Mantinaea, Myra, Antiph.e.l.lus) 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 s.p.a.ce 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 cla.s.s, 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 palaestrae for individual exercise, bathing, and amus.e.m.e.nt. The _stadia_ and _hippodromes_ were oblong enclosures surrounded by tiers of seats and without conspicuous architectural features. The _palaestra_ or _gymnasium_--for the terms are not clearly distinguished--was a combination of courts, chambers, tanks (_piscinae_) for bathers and _exedrae_ 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 thermae, 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 Halicarna.s.sus 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 Myla.s.sa 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 Antiph.e.l.lus may also be counted as h.e.l.lenic works.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 41.--MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNa.s.sUS.

(As restored by the author.)]

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

+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 Mycenae, besides various tombs; walls and gates at Samos, Thoricus, Menidi, Athens, etc.

ARCHAIC PERIOD. Doric Temples at Metapontium (by Durm a.s.signed to 610 B.C.), Selinus, Agrigentum, Paestum; 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, aesculapius, 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, Ia.s.sus (400?

B.C.), Delos, Sicyon, and Thoricus; at Aizanoi, Myra, Telmissus, and Patara, besides many others of less importance scattered through the h.e.l.lenic world. At Taormina are extensive ruins of a large Greek theatre rebuilt in the Roman period.

CHAPTER VIII.

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Anderson and Spiers, Baumeister, Reber. Choisy, _L'Art de batir chez les Romains_. DesG.o.detz, _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, _Archeologie etrusque 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 Phnician 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 n.o.ble 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 inst.i.tutions 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 surpa.s.sing richness and majesty.

They systematized their methods of construction so that soldiers and barbarians could execute the rough ma.s.s 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 repet.i.tion of motives to its utmost limit, and sought to counteract any resulting monotony by the scale and splendor of the design. Above all they developed planning into a fine art, displaying their genius in a wonderful variety of combinations and in an unfailing sense of the demands of constructive propriety, practical convenience, and artistic effect. Where Egyptian or Greek architecture shows one type of plan, the Roman shows a score.

+GREEK INFLUENCE.+ Previous to the closing years of the Republic the Romans had no art but the Etruscan. The few buildings of importance they possessed were of Etruscan design and workmans.h.i.+p, 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 propylaea 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 st.u.r.dier, in an orderly and graded succession. The immense extent and number of the Roman buildings, the coa.r.s.e 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 42.--ROMAN DORIC ORDER.

(THEATRE OF MARCELLUS).]

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 _cra.s.situdo_ 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 guttae of the Greek; but the column was made eight diameters high, the shaft was smooth or had deep flutings separated by narrow fillets, and was usually provided with a simple moulded base on a square plinth. Mutules were used only over the triglyphs, and were even replaced in some cases by dentils; the corona was made lighter than the Greek, and a cymatium replaced the antefixae on the lateral cornices. The Ionic underwent fewer changes, and these princ.i.p.ally 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 _scotiae_, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 43.--ROMAN IONIC ORDER.]

+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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 44.--CORINTHIAN ORDER (TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX).]

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 facade, 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 b.u.t.tresses. 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).

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 b.u.t.tresses, supporting entablatures which marked the divisions into stories (Fig.

45). This combination has been a.s.sailed 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 subst.i.tuted 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sages.