Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/85

 Roman Architecture. 55 dignity and beauty. In the centre was a statue of the emperor on a triumphal column,* covered with sculpture from the pedestal to the capital (Fig. 28). Of all the monuments of departed greatness to be found in Rome, the remains of the the mire (public baths) are the most remarkable for extent. They were not only fitted for bathing, but for gymnastic exercises, and as places of public resort. The Baths of Caracalla (a.d. 217) were gigantic halls, in which there were marble seats for sixteen hundred bathers ; splendid columns and magnificent sculp- ture adorned this immense building : it was amid its ruins that the " Farnese Bull " and the " Farnese Hercules " were found in later years. The Baths of Diocletian (a.d. 303) were larger still, and had seats for two thousand four hundred bathers. The walls are still standing, and show the prodigious size of these grand public baths. In each of these establishments, the central building, which is the type of almost all the greatest public halls that have been erected since, was a group of vast halls of varied shapes and magnificent size. The monuments of Pompeii deserve a word of special notice, as in them we can trace the transition from Greek to Roman forms. In the triumphal arches, baths, city walls and gates, temples (Fig. 29) and palaces of Pompeii, we have a Rome in miniature. The private residences — the house of Sallust, for instance — show us that the people of this buried city enjoyed all the appliances of comfort and luxury known to the ancients.
 * A cast is in the South Kensington Museum.