Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/404

 372 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. Part I. which could only have come into fashion from the continued use of iron or bronze, or other metallic substances, for pillars and other archi- tectural members. Vitruvius reprobates it ; and in a later age Cassio- dorus speaks of it in a manner which shows that it was practised in his time. The general adoption of this class of ornament, both at Pompeii and in the baths at Titus, proves it to have been a very favorite style at that time. This being the case, it must have either been the repre- sentation of metallic pillars and other architectural objects then in use, or it must have been copied from painted decorations. This is a new subject and cannot be made clear, except at considerable length and with the assistance of many drawings. It seems, however, an almost undoubted fact that the Romans did use metal as a constructive material. Were it only that columns of extreme tenuity are repre- sented in these paintings, we might be inclined to ascribe it to mere incorrect drawing ; but the whole style of ornament here shown is such as is never found in stone or brick jiillars, and which is only susceptible of execution in metal. Besides this, the pillars in question are always shown in the decorations as though simply gilt or bronzed, while the representations of stone pillars are colored. All this evidence goes to prove that a style of art once existed in which metal was gene- rally employed in all the principal features, all material traces of which are now lost. The disappearance of all remains of such a style is easily accounted for by the perishable nature of iron from rust, and the value and consequent peculation induced by bronze and similar metals. We are, moreover, aware that much bronze has been stolen, even in recent days, from the Pantheon and other buildings which are known to have been adorned with it. Another thing which we learn from these paintings is, that though the necessities of street architecture compelled these city mansions to take a rectilinear outline, whenever the Roman architects built in the country they indulged in a picturesque variety of outline and of form which they carried perhaps as far as even the Gothic architects of the Middle Ages. This indeed we might have expected, from their care- lessness in respect to regularity in their town-houses ; but these were interiors, and, were it not for the painted rejn-esentations of houses we should have no means of judging how the same architects would treat an exterior in the country. From this source, however, we learn that in the exterior arrangements, in situations where they were not cram])ed by confined s])ace, their plans were totally free from all stiff- ness and formality. In this resj»ect Roman taste coincided with that of all true architecture in all parts of the world. Each part of the design was left to tell its own tale and to express the use to which each apartment was applied though the whole were probably grouped together with some reference to symmetry. There is certainly nothing in these ancient examples to justify the 2^i"ecise