Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/324

 292 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. Part L CHAPTER II. ROME. INTRODUCTION. WE now approach the last revokition that completed and closed the great cycle of the arts and civilization of the ancient w' orld. We have seen Art spring Minerva-like, perfect from the head of her great parent in Egypt. We have admired it in Assyria, rich, varied, V)ut un- stable; aiming at everything, but never attaining maturity or perfec- tion. We have tried to trace the threads of early Pelasgic art in Asia, Greece, and Etruria, spreading their influence over the world, and laying the foundation of other arts which the Pelasgi were incapable of devel- oping. We have seen all these elements gathered together in Greece, the essence extracted from each, and the whole forming the most perfect and beautiful combinations of intellectual jjower that the world has yet witnessed. We have now only to contemplate the last act in the great drama, the gorgeous but melancholy catastrophe by which all these styles of architecture were collected in wild confusion in Rome, and there perished beneath the luxury and crimes of that mighty j^eople, who for a while made Rome the capital of Europe. View them as we will, the arts of Rome were never an indigenous or natural production of the soil or people, but an aggregation of foreign styles in a state of transition from the old and time-honored forms of Pagan antiquity to the new develojjment introduced by Christianity. We cannot of course suppose that the Romans foresaw the result to which their amalgamation of previous styles was tending ; still they advanced as steadily towards that result as if a prophetic spirit had guided them to a well-defined conception of what was to be. It was not however permitted to the Romans to complete this task. Long before the ancient methods and ideas had been completely moulded into the new, the power of Rome sank beneath her corruption, and a long pause took place, during which the Christian arts did not advance in Western Eui'ope beyond the point they had reached in the age of Constantine. Indeed, in many respects, they receded from it during the dark ages. When they reappeared in the 10th and 11th centuries it was in an entirely new garb and with scarcely a trace of their origin — so distinct iiKleed that it appears more like a re-invention than a reproduction of