Roman architecture

“ Utility and perfect adaptation of means to ends form the beauty of Roman buildings. The science of construction and large intelligence displayed in them, their strength, simplicity, solidity, and purpose, are their glory. Perhaps there is only one modern edifice—Palladio's Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza—which approaches the dignity and loftiness of Roman architecture ”

“ In its modern architecture Rome does not please me so much as Florence, Pisa, Lucca, or Siena, on all of which the religion and politics of the Middle Ages have stamped themselves ineffaceably. The characteristic of Roman architecture is ostentation, not splendor, much less grace. ”

“ The laws of continental Europe and, though to a less degree, of England and the United States, are based upon Roman law as finally established under Justinian. The so-called Gothic [Pg 284] architecture, which arose in France in the Middle Ages and which is still the prevailing style of our churches, can be traced back step by step to Roman buildings, and though Roman architecture was dependent upon that of Greece, it was through Rome that western Europe learned to use the column, the arch, and the vault. The beautiful architecture of the Renaissance is a conscious imitation of that of Rome. ”

“ The Roman fondness for costly decorations is well illustrated by the elaborateness of the frescoes and the mosaics of the villas of Pompeii, and other sites where excavations have revealed the interiors of Roman public and private buildings. The erection of the many temples, basilicas, baths, aqueducts, bridges, amphitheatres and other structures in Rome, Italy and other provinces supplied a great stimulus to Roman architecture and engineering. ”

“ The inspiration does not stop here: it is to be found on the Palatine, in Hadrian’s villa near Tivoli, Diocletian’s Baths in Rome, and his palace at Spalato, and the Basilica of Maxentius in the Roman Forum.
From his building, from which the history of Roman architecture really begins, we can reconstruct the personality of the architect. It makes the whole history of Roman architecture come alive, when we really know one complex. The architect was a master of the manipulation of surface, of light and shade, of counterthrust, controlled views, the unitary plan, of space both full and empty. ”

“ Its reign in Rome has left indelible traces. Its productions—and among them are the court of St. Damas, the Belvedere, the galleries of the Vatican, the Giraud palace—were the pride of the age. They taught the comprehension of proportions, the calculation of perspective, the culture of harmony of detail and ensemble, reformed false taste, and created an epoch in profane architecture. With increase of public security, even the Roman barons began to understand that the greatest beauty [362] of the architectural art might be found elsewhere than in a high tower or a battlemented block-house. ”

“ Daring, energy, readiness, structural skill, and a not too fastidious taste were characteristic of the Roman architect and his works. We find traces of vast spaces covered, bold construction successfully and solidly carried out, convenience studied, and a great deal of magnificence attained in those buildings the remains of which have come down to us; but we do not discover refinement or elegance, a fine feeling for proportion, or a close attention to details, to a degree at all approaching the extent to which these qualities are to be met with in Greek buildings. ”

“ The really good things in Roman architecture, of which anything remains to us, are comparatively very few. The temple of Vesta is rather Greek than Roman. Then we have the three columns of Jupiter Stator; three of Jupiter Tonans; the temple of Antoninus and Faustina; that of Mars Ultor, and the portico of the Pantheon, all six of the Corinthian order, nor have we anything of much value of any other. There are magnificent fragments besides, and in particular, some of the marble ornaments in the forum of Trajan raise a high idea of its beauty and perfection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the front is a plain, but noble portico of the Tuscan order, executed in the most masterly manner; the columns are massy, and the intercolumniation large, which has an air of noble simplicity, that if compared with the most ornamented Gothic structures, shews the superiority of the Roman architecture in its plainest form, over the finest barbarism. The building, tho’ as plain as possible, is happily proportioned; the walls are of brick covered with plaister, and the corners of stone; the roof is flat, and though of great extent, is supported by the walls alone, without columns. ”

“ The Romans invented no new principle in architecture, except the arch, which was not known to the Greeks, and carried out by them to greater perfection than by the Romans; but this, for simplicity, harmony, and beauty, has never been surpassed in any age, or by any nation. ”

“ Nothing similar ever flourished in Rome.
Unlike the Greeks, the Romans were never sensitive or imaginative. Properly speaking, they had nothing which they could express through art; they were utilitarian from the outset, and their architecture finally took shape in the most perfect system of materialistic building which, probably, has ever existed. Obviously such a system could only be matured in a capitalistic society, and, accordingly, Roman architecture only reached perfection somewhat late, perhaps, toward the close of the first century. ”

“ It is one of the ironies of history that when in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries scholars and artists awoke to the fact that there had been a great architecture in the past they should have known of no other version of it but the Roman. What splendid developments might have followed if the finer spirits of the Renaissance, Alberti, Bramante, or Peruzzi, had founded their theories of architecture on the temples of Sicily and Magna Graecia, instead of on the debased examples of Imperial Rome! ”

“ The architecture of Rome has been reproached with some justice for bestowing its finest achievements on buildings destined for amusement, or on mere private dwellings. But if from the amphitheatres, the villas, the baths, we turn to the roads, the sewers, and the aqueducts, we shall agree with Frontinus in deeply admiring so grand a combination of the artistic with the useful. A practical recognition of some of the great sanitary laws seem to have early prevailed at Rome, and might well excite our wonder, if such things had not been as a rule passed by in silence by historians. ”

“ The architecture which we inherit from the Middle Ages, associated by an accident of history with the name of the Goths, had its origin under the Empire, and may be traced down to modern times, step by step, from the basilica of Trajan and the palace of Diocletian. These are but a few instances of the inheritance we have received from Rome. But behind the ordered structure of her law and government, and the majestic fabric of her civilisation, lay a vital force of even deeper import; the strong grave Roman character, which has permanently heightened the ideal of human life. ”

“ Roman architecture may be considered really as a transitional style. While its true constructive characteristic is the round arch, every detail of the Greek or Lintel architecture is used both without and with the arch, and in the latter case the column frequently becomes a wall decoration in the shape of a pilaster, as well as the cornice, and is no longer made use of, as in true lintel construction, to support 20 the weight of the roof. ”

“ In Roman architecture were found great intelligence in the solution{448} of the constructive problems involved in the enclosing of large spaces, great independence in the development of technical perfection, and a masterly conformity to the purpose of the structure; but Roman sculpture, although of very extended application, had less independence and significance. The Romans, originally too practical to provide a place for the beautiful beside the useful, first gave decided admission to this art when the political growth of the world’s metropolis had reached the acme of its power ”

“ In such structures as the Colosseum and other Roman Amphitheatres, a different form of curvature, namely, the ellipsis, was employed with admirable propriety and effect. In interiors, again, we find the hemicycle or concave semicircular form [Pg 74] both frequently and variously applied by the Romans in such edifices as their Baths, which afford many excellent studies for combinations of plan.
To enter into the system of Roman Architecture as the subject itself would require, would very far exceed our present purpose and limits ”

“ The building as a whole is a perfect example of old Roman architecture, feeling its way toward the big architectural principles that are in vogue today, among others the economical principle involved in the counteracting of thrusts. If the Roman Emperor who was nicknamed Caracalla on account of the hooded military tunic that he made fashionable in his day hadn't built those baths we should probably not have the glorious Pennsylvania station in New York, that some of the architectural authorities consider the most important building of its kind built in this country. ”

“ I need not, of course, in any way follow out for you the mode in which the Greek system of architecture is derived from [7] the horizontal lintel; but I ought perhaps to explain, that by Roman architecture I do not mean that spurious condition of temple form which was nothing more than a luscious imitation of the Greek; but I mean that architecture in which the Roman spirit truly manifested itself, the magnificent vaultings of the aqueduct and the bath, and the colossal heaping of the rough stones in the arches of the amphitheater ”

“ The whole history of Roman art is that of a transition from the external trabeated style, with its horizontal entablature, which was common to the early races of Greece and Italy, to the complete development of the internal arched architecture, which was the final outcome of Roman constructional forms. ”

“ The amphitheatres and the triumphal{92} arches of the empire well illustrate this mixture of arched construction, as shewn in the round-headed wall openings, combined with trabeated decoration, in the form of horizontal entablatures supported on engaged columns or pilasters. This mixed style long prevailed, and examples of it are to be found in every part of the Roman world. But in later times, when purity of taste had begun to decay, the Romans gradually gave fuller scope to their noble constructive powers, and allowed them to find a worthier expression in their designs. ”

“ As for the Roman structure, built with unexampled massiveness, and wonderfully imposing in its mass and in the great size and noble proportions of its interiors, it was concealed from view by the entirely contradictory pretense at trabeated construction in the modified Greek orders of columns and pilasters: and where these were not in use the walls were very commonly{111} concealed by marble in great sheets, by tiling of glass, or by moulded stucco. ”

“ Then in the purer air, and among the more refined energies of Greece, architecture rose into a more studied beauty, equally perfect in its school, because fostered in a district not 50 miles square, and in its dependent isles and colonies, all of which were under the same air, and partook of the same features of landscape. In Rome, it became less perfect, because more imitative than indigenous, and corrupted by the traveling, and conquering, and stealing ambition of the Roman; yet still a school of architecture, because the whole of Italy presented the same peculiarities of scene. ”

“ The Roman builders left two great traditions, the adornment of the building, the open square, the city with combinations of Greek-seeming colonnades; and the huge interior, arranged for interior effect, vaulted when practicable, flat roofed with massive trabeated construction when the light and open character of the building, as of a huge portico, invited a pure Greek manner of design. The first-named of these traditions was destined not to be very boldly or very generally followed until after the Middle Ages. ”

“ In consequence of this invention, the Romans erected a greater variety of fine structures than either the Greeks or Egyptians, whose public edifices were chiefly confined to temples. The arch entered into almost every structure, public or private, and superseded the use of long stone beams, which were necessary in the Grecian temples, as also of wooden timbers, in the use of which the Romans were not skilled, and which do not really pertain to the art of architecture. An imposing building must always be constructed of stone or brick. ”

“ They longed to revive in their own time the glories of ancient Rome, and appropriated with uncritical and undiscriminating enthusiasm the good and the bad, the early and the late forms of Roman art, Naïvely unconscious of the disparity 272 between their own architectural conceptions and those they fancied they imitated, they were, unknown to themselves, creating a new style, in which the details of Roman art were fitted in novel combinations to new requirements. ”