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Rh economy — both of material and labour — had pro- bably much to do with it. The common idea of the wealth and luxury of Roman building as com- pared with Greek can only be accepted with great reservation ; their system of construction was rela- tively much less costly. The Greeks rarely attempted a colossal building ; where they did, as at Agri- gentuni, it is a failure. They were content with comparatively small buildings ; but on these they lavished the highest skill, materials and labour of the costhest. They never required whole armies of workmen, and were, therefore, able to give the same skilled labour to the building throughout. The materials are costly in themselves, in large blocks, and selected with the greatest care ; the work is exe- cuted with a delicacy even to the smallest details, which shows that every workman was an artist. Parts which could never be examined, such as the beds and joints of the masonry, or the backs of the statues in the pediments, are all worked and sculp- tured as conscientiously as the rest ; the walls are invariably built solid, of the same material through- out. Even in works of fortification, as in the Cyclo- pean walls of Tiryns and IVIycenae, the luicoursed polygonal masonry, though of ordinary stone, is worked with a nicety and care that must have made it quite as costly as regular ashlar-work. The Romans, on the other liand, entered upon the path of economy. They reached architecture through engineering (to draw a distinction more easily recog- nised than defined). ' The Greeks,' we must remem- ber, means, after all, the inhabitants of a few small cities isolated and without cohesion ; by far the greater portion of the incomparable heritage of art, letters, and science that comes to us from Greece we owe to a single city, surpassed in size by many a constituency of modern times. But the Romans, who ultimately welded the world into a whole, re- quired to execute great works of engineering, fortifi- cations and roads, aqueducts and bridges. They had to employ enormous numbers of men, the vast majority of whom were probably their soldiers. In comparison, the skilled workmen must have been few, and it was natural to apply their skill to the more important points in the construction. We find, therefore, exactly the opposite of what we have in Greece. Materials and skilled labour alike are economised wherever possible, without risk to sta- bility. The walls are often merely faced with ashlar ; the nucleus of the construction is rubble or concrete. Difficulties of construction, too, are avoided. Penetrations in vaulting of unequal cm-- vature are steadily rejected, lo avoid the complicated and difficult tracing of the resulting intersection. Thus, where two barrel vaults communicate, if of unequal span, the Roman architect sjirings the larger from a line above the crown of the smaller. This is constantly seen in the theatres and amphitheatres, where the vomitories and enti-ances penetrate the vaulted ambulatories or galleries running round the building at every stage. Similarly, if a barrel vault has to run into a cupola, the latter is sprung from above the apex of the arch. It was left for the Renascence architects to work out the problems of iniequal penetrations, with the resulting intersec- tions and lunettes, and in this the Renascence inidoubtedly represents a great advance, though exaggerated in the eighteenth century into all sorts of complications as useless as Ikr-fetched (still to be found by the ciu-ious in treatises on stereotomy). It was the Gothic architects who followed faitlifully in the path opened out by Rome, developing to its highest possibilities the system of ribbed vaulting and concentrated buttressed thrusts. In this sense Gothic architecture is as truly the offspring of Roman as is Byzantine, the latter also steadily de- veloping the barrel vault, both simple and intersect- ing, and, above all, the cupola.

One other characteristic difference between Greek and Roman architecture remains to be noted. In the Greek temple, as universally in the East, hori- zontal lines are the predominant feature ; the building forms a rectangular prism, divided by strongly-marked lines into horizontal zones. In a Gothic cathedral the vertical predominates as strongly ; instead of the calm sweep of level line 'long drawn out,' we have constant grouping leading the eye aloft ; the prism has given place to the pyramid. The two are absolutely divided; between them is Rome, serving as transition, but again separating herself from Greece, and opening the way for Western architecture. The two best in- stances, perhaps, are the Baths of Caracalla and the Basilica of Maxentius. In the former the great central hall is very lofty, and the thrust of its vaulting rests upon a series of smrounding buildings arranged like steps to buttress it in the latter the great central nave has an intersecting vault springing ostensibly from single columns, but really buttressed by the lateral aisles, which are roofed with transverse barrel vaults to receive the thrust.

Of course there is much in Rome that belongs to trabeate architecture; often there is indecision between the architrave and the arch. It is not contended that Roman architecture represents an abrupt severance between the old and the new, the East and the West ; it is only a transition and steady growth, though, perhaps, the most marked and important in architectural liistory. Enough, however, it is hoped, has been said to vindicate the claim of Rome to be no mere second-hand imitator of her more art-gifted neighbour, but herself the maker of an epoch and the founder of perhaps the fairest period of evolution in the art. S. H. Ca^ppek.