Roman brick

“ It was applied extensively to doorways and windows, and is an ornament as well as a utility. The most imposing forms of Roman architecture may be traced to a knowledge of the properties of the arch, and as brick was more extensively used than any other material, the arch was invaluable. The imperial palace on Mount Palatine, the Pantheon (except its portico and internal columns) , the temples of Peace, of Venus and Rome, and of Minerva Medica, were of brick. ”

“ The character of the brick facing is a great help towards determining the date of Roman buildings. In early work the bricks are thick and the joints thin, while in later times the reverse is the case, so that brickwork of the time of Severus and later has more bricks to the foot than that of the Flavian period. ”

“ After the Republican period this material was still employed outside Rome with burnt-brick cornices, [2422] but even this was exceptional. Pliny mentions walls of sun-dried bricks at Arretium and Mevania. [2423] Henceforth, then, burnt brick was employed more and more as Rome grew more populous. [2424] In Vitruvius’ time (the beginning of our era) the materials used for building were stone for substructures, burnt brick (structura testacea) for the outer walls, concrete for the party-walls, and wood for the roofs and floors. ”

“ The legionary builders would seem to have found clay unattainable, or inconvenient to work, and were sufficiently remote from the Clyde to render importation unadvisable. They have accordingly been compelled to resort to stone; but true to the more familiar material, they have with perverse ingenuity hewn it into the shape and size of the common Roman brick, making in fact, as nearly as possible, bricks of stone. It is not improbable that similar relics may still exist at some places on the line of Hadrian's Wall ”

“ The remains at Leicester of the ancient Roman building called the Jury wall, exhibit the like construction, being composed of rag-stone embedded in mortar, bonded at intervals with regular horizontal layers of Roman brick. The arched recesses, in the only wall of this structure which remains, are likewise soffited and faced with Roman brick. ”

“ In referring to the plan we notice that in front of the first building a pedestal was placed on a flooring 7 to 8 inches thick, made with pieces of soft red rock and bedded in clay; 8 feet immediately to the east was
Building I., 20 feet long and 10 feet wide, floored with Roman cement (mortar and pounded brick) , the floor, 9 inches thick, "resting on a body of marl about as many in depth; at the further end from the pedestal were found human and animal bones lying under a decayed arch of Roman bricks, and fragments of urns." ”

“ This is a very important point, and one which is usually overlooked, mainly owing to the Roman practice of facing their concrete with bricks, which (from an examination of the surface only) appear to be a principal item in the construction. The walls of the Pantheon, for example, are covered with tiers of brick arches, and many theories have been invented as to their use in distributing the weight of the walls. But a recognition of the fact that these walls are of concrete about 20 ft. thick, while the brick facing averages scarcely 6 in. ”

“ From the necessity for symmetrical buildings arose the invention of the brick, which must have superseded the rude plastering of the hut with clay, to protect it against the sun or storm. In the history of the Semitic nations the brick appears among the earliest inventions, and its use can be traced with various modifications, from the building of the Tower of Babel to the present day. It is essential that bricks should be symmetrical, and their form is generally rectangular. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the nations of Europe took form out of the ruins of the Roman Empire, they inherited among other arts that of making brick, and subsequently carried it to a higher state of development, especially in countries such as Northern Italy, Southern France, the Netherlands, and Northern Germany, where the absence of good building stone gave a natural impulse to brickmaking. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxons appear, as far as we can judge from the scanty remains of mixed masonry in those structures which may fairly be attributed to that people, to have made use of the materials procured from the ruins of pre-existing Roman buildings; they did not however work up the materials of stone and brick in the same regular and systematic mode as the Romans, but though they formed some of their arches with brick-work, they seem to have inserted bricks in the walls just as they may have come to hand, irregularly and without rule or order. ”

“ Any one who has worked among ruins in Italy could tell, even blindfold, the difference between the work done in ancient times and that of the middle ages. Roman brickwork is quite as compact as solid sandstone, but mediaeval masonry was almost invariably built in a hurry by bad workmen, of all sorts of fragments embedded in poorly mingled cement, and it breaks up with tolerable ease under a heavy pickaxe.
In half a day Malipieri and Masin had widened the slit to a convenient passage, but as soon as it had been possible to squeeze through, the architect had gone in. ”

“ There is no doubt, however, that in Greece, with its stores of marble and stone for building, brick never became general, though it was probably more used in sun-dried form in earlier buildings before the Greeks had begun to realise the possibilities of stone buildings. Pausanias [306] speaks of temples of Demeter at Lepreon in Arcadia and Stiris in Phokis, of a shrine of Asklepios at Panopeus in Phokis, and of the Stoa of Kotys at Epidauros (restored by Antoninus Pius) as being of unburnt brick (πηλός) . Of the same material was the cella of a temple at Patrae [307] ”

“ Aug. 29) that he “found Rome of brick and left it of marble” has probably much truth in it, if for “brick” we read “peperino and tufa.” In the time of Augustus burnt brick was very little used, the usual wall facings being opus quadratum of tufa or peperino, and opus reticulatum of tufa only. ↑ These Nile quarries were worked during the 19th century, and many blocks were imported into Rome for the rebuilding of S. Paolo fuori le Mura. ↑ On the subject of Roman marbles, see Corsi, Delle pietre antiche (ed. 3, 1845) . and Pullen, Handbook of Roman Marbles (London, 1894) ”

“ Burnt bricks were not often used before the Roman period (Note 4) , nor tiles, either flat or curved. Glazed bricks appear to have been the fashion in the Delta. The finest specimen that I have seen, namely, one in the Gizeh Museum, is inscribed in black ink with the cartouches of Rameses III. The glaze of this brick is green, but other fragments are coloured blue, red, yellow, or white.
The nature of the soil does not allow of deep foundations. It consists of a thin bed of made earth, which, except in large towns, never reaches any degree of thickness ”

“ The use of several brick-shaped blocks of stone,—such blocks are not found in other buildings of the pre-Roman time,—the lack of any trace of the wall decoration of the first style, the form of the egg-and-dart moulding on the capitals of the Ionic columns in the cella, and the correspondence of certain dimensions with the Roman scale of measurements may be alleged in favor of this hypothesis. The evidence at present does not warrant a positive decision against it. ”

“ Such a mode of wall construction has no resemblance to anything remaining in Rome or in any Etruscan city. It indicates a still higher antiquity; while the brick foundations remind us of the fame which the Etruscans and particularly the people of Veii had acquired on account of their skill in works of terra cotta. The famous Quadriga or brick chariot which adorned the pediment of the great temple of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome was made at Veii, and was a remarkable proof of the superiority of its people in this species of art. ”

“ The great aim of the criticisms above enumerated has been to get rid of the supposed anomaly of finding burnt brick and pottery at depths and places which would give them claim to an antiquity far exceeding that of the Roman domination in Egypt. For until the time of the Romans, it is said, no clay was burnt into bricks in the valley of the Nile. ”

“ We know indeed that some of the earliest Roman buildings were constructed of Roman bricks or tiles laid evenly upon one another (the opus lateritium) , but the tiles of the first two centuries were remarkably thin, as contrasted with later specimens. They vary, at different periods, in length from 15 inches to 2 feet, and in thickness from 3⁄4 inch to 3 inches. Unfortunately little credence is now given to the ingenious rough-and-ready rule, formulated by Mr Parker, that where (including mortar) there are ten bricks to one foot, the wall is of the first century, as in the arches of Nero ”

“ But the bricks could not be properly tested until they had undergone some exposure to the weather, and for this reason Vitruvius recommends the employment of old roof-tiles where possible in building walls. [2416]
For baked bricks the processes must have been much the same, with, of course, the addition of the baking in the furnace. Existing Roman bricks are nearly always of well-tempered clay and well baked; but the clay exhibits a great variety of colour—red, yellow, and brown. ”

“ Frequently we find the impression of an animal’s foot on these bricks and tiles, formed when they were in a soft state before they were baked, and one tile recently found had the impression of a Roman baby’s foot. Roman bricks have often been used by subsequent builders, and are found built up in the masonry of much later periods.
It is quite possible to build up in imagination the old Roman city, and to depict before our mind’s eye the scenes that once took place where now the rustics toil and till the ground. ”

“ The cement is white lime, and the layers are much thicker than is seen in any of the burnt brick edifices at Babylon; approaching nearer to the style of the Greek and Roman masonry found among the ruins of Alexandria, where the layers of lime are almost as thick as the bricks themselves. At Babylon the cement is scarcely perceptible. The symmetry of the work bears considerable resemblance, however, both to the Birs and the fine fragments of brick-masonry of the age of the Caliphs, still remaining at Bagdad. ”

“ Even party walls of small rooms are not built solid, but have a concrete core faced with brick triangles about 3 in. long. In order to support the facing until the concrete was set, the Roman builders used a wooden framing covered with planks on the inside. Sometimes the planks were nailed outside the wooden uprights, as was done with unfaced concrete walls, and then a series of grooves appear in the face of the brickwork. Walls faced with opus reticulatum must have been supported temporarily in the same way. ”

“ The fourth side was formed by a great mass of crumbling rubble, patched in places with rough masonry and brickwork, and showing in its lower part the remains of courses of Roman bricks. It rose to a considerable height, and was evidently of enormous thickness, as could be seen where large areas of the face had crumbled away, exposing great cavities, in which wall-flowers, valerian and other rock-haunting plants, had taken up their abode. ”

“ But this is an old thing in a new way, for here the material is not stone but brick, the beautifully-proportioned rose-red Roman kind, used unashamedly without veneer of stucco or marble, like the rose-red arcades of Renaissance Bologna.
Fig. 10.8 Rome, Trajan’s Market. (Fototeca)
269 Some of the rooms have drains in the floor for carrying of spilled liquid; the inference is that these were wine or oil shops; those without such provision would be for dry commodities like grain. There are 150 of these shops altogether, all more or less identical. ”

“ But there were also tegulae bessales or bricks measuring two-thirds of a foot square, i.e. about 8 inches, and triangular bricks, equilateral in form, with a length varying from 4 to 14 inches. The latter are the kind used in all existing Roman walls of concrete with brick facings. The thickness varies from 11⁄4 to 2 inches. They are not always made with mechanical accuracy, the edges being rounded and the sides not always parallel. ”

“ Wherever the outer casing is worn away, or has been removed by violence, the walls exhibit the usual mode of Roman building with the material of the districts; in this case with tufa or stalactite, brought perhaps from the opposite coast of France, and flint, with layers of large flat Roman bricks, some of them two feet long, each layer two courses deep, placed regularly and horizontally in the walls at equal intervals, or nearly so. ”

“ Though nowhere carried to such perfection as by the Lombards of the twelfth century, this decorative use of brick was by no means a discovery of the more modern times, as we see from the following extract from Thomas Hope's Historical Essay on Architecture:—"The ancient Romans wherever they found clay more abundant or easier to work than stone, used it plentifully, both in regular layers throughout the body of the walls as we do, and in an external reticulated coating, which has proved to be as durable as stone itself, from the fineness of its texture and the firmness of its joints. ”