Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/340

 308 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE Part 1. 189. View of the interior of the Temple of Diana at Nimes. (From Laborde.) by four slender colnmiis of singularly elegant (lesion, hut placed so widely apart that they could not have carried a stone ental)lature. It is difficult to guess what could have been the form of the wooden ones ; but a mortice which still exists in the walls of the temple shows that it must have been eight oi- ten feet deej), and therefore probably of Etruscan form (Woodcut No. 167) ; though it may have assumed a circular arched form between the pillai-s.' Another peculiarity is, that the light was introduced over the ])ortico by a great semicircular window, as is done in the Buddhist caves in India; which, so far as I know, is the most perfect mode of lighting the interior of a temple which has yet been discovered. Not far from the Colosseum, in the direction of the Forum, ai"e still to be seen the remains of a great double temple built by the Em])eror Hadrian, and dedicated to Venus and Rome, and consisting of the ruins of its two cells, each about 70 ft. square, covered Avith tunnel-vaults, and ])laced back to back, so that their apses touch one another. These stand on a platform 480 ft. long by 330 ft. wide ; and it is generally su))posed that on the edge of this once stood 56 great columns, 65 ft. in height, thus moulding the whole into one great ]>eripteral temple. Some fragments of such pillars are said to be found in the neighborhood, but not one is now erect, — not even a ^ liabonle. " Monumens de la France," vol. i. pis. xxix. xxx. p. 68.