Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/367

 Bk. IV. Ch. V. TRIUMPHAL AECHES. •ddb CHAPTER V. TRIUMPHAL ARCHES, TOMBS, AND OTHER BUILDINGS. CONTENTS. Arches at Rome ; in France —Arch at Treves — Pillars of Victory — Tombs — Minerva Medica — Provincial tombs — Eastern tombs — Domestic architecture — Spalatro — Pompeii — Bridges — Aqueducts. TRIUMPHAL arches were among the most peculiar of the various forms of art which the Romans borrowed from those around them, and used with that strange mixture of splendor and bad taste which characterizes all their works. These were in the first instance no doubt borrowed from the Etrus- cans, as was also the ceremony of the triumph Avith which they were ultimately asso- ciated. At first they seem rather to have been used as festal entrances to the great pub- lic roads, the con- struction of which was considered one of the most im- portant benefits a -'^ ruler could confer upon his country. There was one erected at Rimini in lionor of an im- portant restora- tion of the Flami- nian Way by Augustus ; another at Susa in Piedmont, to commemo- rate a similar act of the same Emperor. Trajan built one on the pier at Ancona, when he restored that harbor, and another at Bene- ventum, when he repaired the Via Appia, represented in the woodcut, 14. Arch of Trajan at Beiuveiituiu. (From a plate in Gailabaud's •' Architecture.")