Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/381

 Bk. IV. Ch. V TOMBS. 349 defect of the Pantheon. It is not known what the side erections are which are usually shown in the ground-plans, nor even whether they are coeval with the main central edifice. I suspect they have never been very correctly laid down. Taking: it altosrether, the building is certainly, both as concerns construction and pro- portion, by far the most scientific of all those in ancient Rome, and in these respects as far superior to the Pantheon as it is inferior to that temple in size. Indeed there are few inventions of the Middle Ages that are not at- tempted here or in the Temple of Peace — Ijut more in this than in the latter ; so much so, indeed, that I cannnot lielp believing that it is much more modern than is generally su])posed. As might be expected from our knowledge of the race that inha- bited the European provinces of the Roman Empire, there are very few S})ecimens of tombs of any importance to be found in them. One very beautiful example exists at St. Remi, represented in the annexed wood- cut (No. 230). It can hardly, however, be correctly called a tomb, but is, rather a cenotaph, or a monument, erected, as the insci'iption on it tells us, by Sextus and Marcus, of the family of the Julii, to their parents, whose statues apjiear under the dome of the upper stor}-. There is noth- ing funereal either in the inscription or the form, nor anything to lead us, to suppose that the bodies of the parents repose beneath its foundation. The lower portion of this monument is the square basement >vhich the Romans always added to the Etruscan form of tomb. Upon this stands a story pierced with an archway in each face, with a three- quarter pillar of the Corinthian order at every angle. The highest part is a circular colonnade, a miniature coi)y of that which we know to have once encircled Hadrian's Mole. The o])en arrangement of the arches and colonnade, while it takes off considerably from the tomb-like simplicity appropriate to such buildings, adds very much to the lightness and elegance of the whole. Altogether the building lias much more of the as])iring character of Christian art than of the more solid and horizontal forms which were characteristic of the style then dying out. 230. Tomb at St. K6mi. (From Laborde's " Moiiumens de la France.")