Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/396

 364 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. Part I. That part of the j^alace on the Palatine which most impresses the visitor is the eastern half, which looks on one hand to the Amphi- theatre, on the other to the Baths of Caracalla, and overhangs the Circus Maximius. Though all their marble or painted decorations are gone, the enormous masses of masonry which here exist convey tliat impression of grandeur which is generally found in Roman works. It is not of Esthetic beauty arising from ornamental or ornamented construction, but the Technic expression of power and greatness arising from mass and stability. It is the same feeling with which we contemplate the aqueducts and engineering works of this great people ; and, though not of the highest class, few scenes of architectural grandeur are more impressive than the now ruined Palace of the Coesars. Notwithstanding all this splendor, this palace was probably as an architectural object inferior to the Thermoe. The thousand and one exigencies of private life render it impossible to impart to a residence — even to that of the world's master — the same character of grandeur as may be given to a building wholly devoted to show and public purposes. In its glory the Palace of the Cjcsars must have been the world's wonder ; but as a ruin deprived of its furniture and ephemeral splendor, it loses much that would tend to make it either pleasing or instructive. We must not look for either beauty of proportion or perfection of construction, nor even for appropriateness of material, in the hastily constructed halls of men whose unbounded power was only equalled by the coarse vulgarity of their characters. Spalatro. The only palace of the Roman world of which sufficient remains are still left to enable us to judge either of its extent or arrange- ments is that which Diocletian built for himself at Spalatro, in Dal- matia, and in which he spent the remaining years of his life, after sliaking off the cares of empire. It certainly gives us a most exalted idea of what the si)lendor of the imperial palace at Rome must have been when we find one emperor — certainly neither the richest nor the most powerful — building, for liis retirement, a villa in the country of almost exactly the same dimensions as the Escurial in Spain, and consequently surpassing in size, as it did in magnificence, most of the modern palaces of Europe. It is uncertain how far it resembles or was copied from that in Rome, more especially as it must be regarded as a fortified palace, which there is no reason to believe that at Rome was, while its model would seem to have been the pra?torian camp rather than any habita- tion built Avithin the protection of the city walls. In consequence of