Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/458

Rh 418 AKGHITECTUEE Ionic, the external volute of this is turned out and repeated on the flank : either that or the abuse of it in the Compo site capital gave rise to distortions of this order, in which all the volutes of the capital are angular, and consequently all its four faces are alike. In other respects, however, it does not differ generally from the ordinary Roman examples of Ionic. The temple of Fortuna Virilis is pseudo-peri pteral, and consequently has neither antse nor pilasters, nor do ancient examples exist of either. The Roman Doric. The Roman Doric is even a ruder imitation of the Grecian original than the mean and tasteless deterioration of the voluted Ionic is of the graceful Athenian examples. The specimen of it which is considered preferable to the others is that of the theatre of Marcellus, in Rome (Plate XV. ex. 4). The column is nearly 8 diameters in height : it consists of shaft and capital only. The shaft is quite plain, except fillets above and below, with escape and cavetto; and it diminishes one-fifth of its diameter. The arrangement of the capital, composed of a torus, the necking, and three deep fillets, with a semitorus, sur mounted by the a.bacus, is shown in Plate XV. ex. 4. The corona and crown-mouldings of the cornice being destroyed, the whole height of the entablature cannot be correctly ascertained ; but from analogy it may be taken, with the bed-mould, part of which exists, at about two- thirds of a diameter, making, with the architrave and frieze, an entablature nearly 2 diameters high. Of this the architrave is exactly half a diameter. Three-tenths of its depth are unequally occupied by the tsenia, regula, and guttte, the last of which are six in number, and truncated semicones in form. The rest of the surface of the archi trave is plain and vertical, impending a point rather within the superior diameter of the column. A fascia, one-eighth of its own height, bands the frieze above the triglyphs ; the rest of its surface is plain vertically, but horizontally it is divided into triglyphs, half a diameter in width, and placed over the centres of the. columns. The space between the triglyphs is equal to the height of the frieze without its plat-band or fascia, making in effect perfectly square metopes. All that can be traced of the cornice is a small cyma-reversa, immediately over the frieze, and a square member with dentils on it. In the example, the cornice is completed from that of the Doric of the Colosseum. The temple at Cora presents a singular specimen of the Doric order, evidently the result of an examination of some Greek examples, but moulded to the Roman proportions and to Roman taste. The columns are enormously tall, but the shafts are partly fluted and partly chamfered for fluting, like the Greek. The capital is ridiculously shallow, but the abacus is plain, and the echinus of a somewhat Hellenic, form. The entablature is very little more than a diameter and one-third in height, and the architrave of it is shallower even than the capital; but the frieze and cornice are tolerably well proportioned, though the tri glyphs in the former are meagre, narrow slips, and the latter is covered by a deep widely-projecting cavetto, that would be injurious to even a better composition. Instead of regular mutules with guttse, the whole of the planceer of the cornice is studded with the latter ; but, like the Greek, the triglyph over the angular column extends to the angle of the architrave, which does not appear to have been the practice of the Romans ; yet the reason for this does not appear to have been understood, for the external intercolumniations are the same as the others. As far as we have the means of judging, the Romans made the antse of their Doric similar to the columns, only that they were, of course, square instead of round ; though, indeed, an attached column appears to have been generally preferred. It is, however, to be remembered, that these two orders, the Ionic and Doric of the Roman school, ought hardly to be considered as belonging to the architecture of the Romans. They are merely coarse and vulgar adaptations of the Greek originals, of which we now possess records of the finest examples. Yet their meanness and tastelessness, when compared with the Grecian models, more strikingly evince the superiority of the latter, and show to what ex tent the architects of the Italian school must have been blinded by their system, when they fancied such wretched examples to be beautiful. Roman Mouldings and Ornament (Plate XIII.) The mouldings used in Roman architectural works are the same as the Grecian in general form, but they vary materially from them in contour. The Roinan cyma-recta is projected much more than the Greek, with a deeper flexure. The ovolo is represented in the Roman style by a moulding whose outline is nearly the convex quadrant of a circle, or a quarter round, and sometimes it is nearly that of the quadrant of an ellipse. The Roman torus is either a semicircle or a semi-ellipse ; and the bead is a torus, except in its application, and in being smaller, and generally projected rather more than half the figure whose form it bears. The cavetto, in Roman architecture, is nearly a regular curve, being sometimes the concave quadrant of a circle, or the reverse of an ovolo, and sometimes a smaller segment. A Roman scotia is more deeply cut, and is con sequently less delicate than the same member in a Greek congeries : its form frequently approaches that of a concave semi-ellipse. The enrichments of Roman mouldings are, for the most part, similar to those of the Greek, but less delicate and graceful both in design and drawing. Those of the cym:i and ovolo are particularly referred to, but the Romans used others besides. Raffled leaves form a favourite enrichment in the architecture of the Romans ; indeed these are hardly less frequent in their works than the honeysuckle is in those of the Greeks. Mouldings were enriched with them : and a raffled leaf masks the angles of carved cymas and ovolos in the former, as a honeysuckle does in the latter. Nevertheless, the honeysuckle and lotus are both found in Roman enrichments, particularly the latter, and perhaps even more than in Greek. It is not uncommon to find examples of Roman architecture completely overdone with ornament, every moulding carved, and every straight sur face, whether vertical or horizontal, sculptured with foliage or with historical or characteristic subjects in relief. Particular Roman Structures. TEMPLES. Whatever forms were adopted from the Ten Greeks by the Romans were rapidly altered by the latter. The temples, for example, were, no doubt, constructed, in the main, after the Greek model. But wa find three- quarter columns used in the flanks, as at the temple of Fortuna Virilis at Rome and at Nismes, in place of the open peristyle or the plain flat wall. These three-quarter columns were, it is true, used at the rear of the Erechtheum and at the temple of the Giants at Agrigentum. But these were quite exceptions. Then, in the portico of the Pan theon (Plate XVI. fig. 4) the Romans availed themselves of the properties of the arch to effect an immense change in the internal design and appearance. From the forest of columns, as at the Parthenon, all placed at equal distances, or nearly so, the Romans boldly removed four rows (two in centre and one at. each side, as at the Pantheon, Plate XVI. fig. 5), arched over the space thus left, and so obtained a picturesque effect quite un-