Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/217

Rh, for example, adopted a totally different style of architecture for their temples or palaces than they did for their dwellings. The former were of stone, and of a massive method of building that was intended to withstand the wear and tear of ages; the latter were of wood or brick, constructed in a light manner, and without much concern as to their durability. The Romans supply another illustration of the same fact. These people were unquestionably the greatest builders the world has seen, and the methods they employed can properly serve as a guide for later usage. Much of their architecture, judged by the pure standard of the Greek, on which it largely rested, is bad from an aesthetic point of view, and not a little of their construction was devised on methods that can not always be approved of; but, apart from this, the buildings of the Romans offer many interesting examples of the application of idea to structure, and-the importance of utility over mere questions of art.

It has been remarked that in ancient Rome no one ever had a doubt as to the use to which any building was put or what it was; and, in truth, great as was the variety of Roman buildings, their forms were so many, their plans so varied and so well expressed in the structure, that there never could have been room for the smallest doubt on the subject. The temple differed from the basilica, the basilica from the amphitheatre, the amphitheatre from the palace, the palace from the baths. In a word, each class of buildings had its own form, its own plan, which was based, not on some fancy of the architect, not on some individual caprice, not on some mistaken idea of the beautiful, but on the single thought that if the building answered its purpose it was satisfactory and accomplished all that was to be expected of it. In the golden age of the Roman Empire enormous sums of money were spent in adorning the capital and chief cities with public works—buildings not only for the emperor himself but for public and state use as well. The display of wealth and luxury was lavish in the extreme; ornament and decoration were to be seen in every available place in the greatest profusion; yet in the midst of all this gorgeousness the Roman architect never forgot the destination of the building. If a complicated structure, like a bath, was needed, there was no limit to the extent to which the plan was elaborated; if a simple edifice was required, such as a basilica, there was no multiplication of parts for external effect, but simply the large hall and the necessary rooms. The ornament was frequently profuse and much overdone, but the architecture proper, the structure itself, the plan, the essential part, was never anything else than what it was intended to be.

There is nothing astonishing in this method, which is only the application of common sense to art and the subordination of