circumstance which, if its antiquity be allowed to be only of a moderately remote period, would go far to disprove all Lanzi's reasoning, for, as we have noticed in the preceding ar ticle, the arch was unknown in Greece till after the time of Alexander. According to Gorl (Museum Etruscum), vestiges of theatres have been discovered among the ruins of some of their cities. That they were acquainted with the method of conducting theatrical representations is evident from Livy, who mentions an occasion on which comedians were brought from Etruria to Rome, whose inhabitants at the time in question were only accustomed to the games of the circus. The gladiatorial sports, which were afterwards so much the delight of the Romans, were also borrowed from the same people. They constructed their temples peripterally; the pediments of them were decorated with statues, quadriga, and bassi rilievi, in terra cotta, many whereof were remaining in the time of Vitruvius and Pliny. Though it is supposed that the Etruscans made use of wood in the entablatures of their temples, it is not to be inferred that at even the earliest period they were unacquainted with the use of stone for their architraves and lintels, as is sufficiently proved in the Piscina of Volterra. 180. The Romans, until the conquest of Greece, borrowed the taste of their architecture from Etruria. Even to the time of Augustus, the species called Tuscan was to be seen by the side of the acclimatised temple of the Greeks. 181. The atrium or court, in private houses, seems to have been an invention of the Etruscans. Festus derives its name from its having been first used at Atria, in Etruria : Dictum Atrium quia id genus edificii primum Atriæ in Etruria sit institutum." We shall, however, allude in the next section to Etruscan architecture as connected with Roman; merely adding here, that in about a year after the death of Alexander the nation fell under the dominion of the Romans. SECT. XIII. ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 182. The Romans can scarcely be said to rather a modification of that of the Greeks. have had an original architecture; they had Their first instruction in the art was received from the Etruscans, which was probably not until the time of the Tarquins, when their edifices began to be constructed upon fixed principles, and to receive appropriate decoration. In the time of the first Tarquin, who was a native of Etruria, much had been done towards the improvement of Rome. He brought from his native country a taste for that grandeur and solidity which prevailed in the Etruscan works. After many victories he had the honour of a triumph, and applied the wealth he had acquired from the conquered cities to building a circus, for which a situation was chosen in the valley which reached from the Aventine to the Palatine Hill. Under his reign the city was fortified, cleansed, and beautified. The walls were built of hewn stone, and the low grounds about the Forum drained, which prepared the way for the second Tarquin to construct that Cloaca Maxima, which was reckoned among the wonders of the world. The Forum was surrounded with galleries by him; and his reign was further distinguished by the erection of temples, schools for both sexes, and halls for the administration of public justice. This, according to the best chronologies, must have been upwards of 610 years B. C. Servius Tullius enlarged the city, and among his other works continued those of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which had been commenced by his predecessor; but the operations of both were eclipsed by monuments, for which the Romans were indebted to Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh king of Rome. Under him the Circus was completed, and the most effective methods taken to finish the Cloaca Maxima. This work, on which neither labour nor expense was spared to make the work everlasting, is of wrought stone, and its height and breadth are so considerable, that a cart loaded with hay could pass through it. Hills and rocks were cut through for the purpose of passing the filth of the city into the Tiber. Pliny calls the Cloaca, "operum omnium dictu maximum, suffossis montibus, atque urbe pensili, sub terque navigatâ." The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was not finished till after the expulsion of the kings, 508 в. c.; but under Tarquinius Superbus it was considerably advanced. In the third consulship of Poplicola, the temple was consecrated. As the name, which was changed, imports, this temple stood on the Mons Capitolinus, and embraced, according to Plutarch, four acres of ground. It was twice afterwards destroyed, and twice rebuilt on the same foundations. Vespasian, at a late period, rebuilt it; and upon the destruction of this last by fire, Domitian raised the most splendid of all, in which the gilding alone cost 12,000 talents. It is impossible now to trace the architecture of the Romans through its various steps between the time of the last king, 508 B. c., and the subjugation of Greece by that people in the year 145 B. c., a period of 363 years. The disputes in which they were continually engaged left them little leisure for the arts of peace; yet the few monuments with which we are acquainted show a power and skill that mark them as an extraordinary race. Thus in the year 397 B. c., on the occasion of the siege of Veii, the prodigy, as it was supposed, of the lake of Alba overflowing, when there was little water in the neighbouring rivers, springs, and marshes, induced the authorities to make an emissarium, or outlet for the superfluous water, which subsists to this day. The water of the lake Albano, which runs along Castel Gondolfo, still passes through it. A few years after this event an opportunity was afforded, which, with more care on the part of the authorities, might have considerably improved it, after its demolition by Brennus. This event occurred 389 B. c., and was nearly the occasion of the population being removed to Veii altogether, a place which offered them a spot fortified by art and nature, good houses ready built, a wholesome air, and a fruitful territory. The eloquence, however, of Camillus prevailed over their despondency. Livy (b. vi.) observes, that in the rebuilding, the state furnished tiles, and the people were allowed to take stone and other materials wherever they could find them, giving security to finish their houses within the year. But the haste with which they went to work caused many encroachments on each other's soil. Every one raised his house where he found a vacant space; so that in many cases they built over the common sewers, which before ran under the streets. So little taste for regularity and beauty was observed, that the city, when rebuilt, was even less regular than in the time of Romulus; and though in the time of Augustus, when Rome had become the capital of the world, the temples, palaces, and private houses were more magnificent than before, yet these decorations could not rectify the fault of the plan. Though perhaps not strictly within our own province, we may here mention the temple built in honour of Juno Moneta, in consequence of a vow of L. Furius Camillus when before the Volsci. This was one of the temples on the Capitoline hill. The epithet above mentioned was given to the queen of the gods, a short time before the taking of Rome by the Gauls. It was pretended that from the temple of Juno a voice had proceeded, accompanied with an earthquake, and that the voice had admonished the Romans to avert the evils that threatened them by sacrificing a sow with pig. She was hence called Moneta (from monere). The temple of Juno Moneta becoming afterwards a public mint, the medals stamped in it for the current coin took the name of Moneta (money). This temple was erected about 345 years B. C., on the spot where the house of Marcus Manlius had stood. 183. In the time that Appius Claudius was censor, about 309 B. c., the earliest paved road was made by the Romans. It was first carried to Capua, and afterwards continued to Brundusium, a length altogether of 350 miles. Statius calls it regina viarum. Paved with the hardest stone, it remains entire to the present day. Its breadth is about 14 ft. ; the stones of which it is composed vary in size, but so admirably was it put together that they are like one stone. Its bed is on two strata; the first of rough stones cemented with mortar, and the second of gravel, the thickness altogether being about 3 ft. To the same Appius Claudius belongs the honour of having raised the first aqueduct. The water with which it supplied the city was collected from the neighbourhood of Frascati, about 100 ft. above the level of Rome. The Romans at this time were fast advancing in the arts and sciences; for in about nineteen years afterwards we find Papirius, after his victory over the Samnites, built a temple to Quirinus out of a portion of its spoils. Upon this temple was fixed (Pliny, b. vii. c. 60.) the first sun-dial that Rome ever saw. For a long while the Romans marked only the rising and setting of the sun; they afterwards observed, but in a rude clumsy manner, the hour of noon. When the sun's rays appeared between the rostra and the house appointed for the reception of the ambassadors, a herald of one of the consuls proclaimed with a loud voice that it was mid-day. With the aid of the dial they now marked the hours of the day, as they soon after did those of the night by the aid of the clepsydra or water-clock. The materials for carrying on the investigation are so scanty, and moreover, as in the case of Grecian architecture, without examples whereon we can reason, that we will not detain the reader with further speculations, but at once proceed to that period (145 B.C.) when Greece was reduced to a Roman province. Art, in the strict application of that word, was not properly understood by the victorious Romans; and a barrenness appears to have clung about that whereof we treat, even with all the advantages that Rome possessed. It may be supposed that the impulse given to the arts would have been immediate; but, like the waves generated by the ocean storm, a succession of them was necessary before the billows would approacli the coast. Perhaps, though it be only conjectural, the first effect was visible in the temple reared to Minerva at Rome, out of the spoils of the Mithridatic war, by Pompey the Great, about sixty years B. C., after a triumph unparalleled perhaps in the history of the world; after the conclusion of a war of thirty years' duration, in which upwards of two millions of his fellow-creatures had been slain and vanquished; after 846 ships had been sunk or taken, and 1538 towns and fortresses had been reduced to the power of the empire, and all the countries between the lake Mæotis and the Red Sea had been subdued. It is to be regretted that no remains of this temple exist. The inscription ( Plin. lib. vii. c. 26.) was as follows: ! CN. POMPEIUS. CN. F. MAGNUS. IMP. BELLO. XXX. ANNORUM. CONFECTO. PUSIS. FUGATIS. OCCISIS. IN. DEDITIONEM. ACCEPTIS LXXXIII. M. DEPRESSIS. AUT. CAPT. NAVIBUS. DCCCXLVI OPPIDIS. CASTELLIS. MDXXXVIII IN. FIDEM. RECEPTIS. TERRIS. A. MAEOTI. LACU. AD. RUBRUM. MARE. SUBACTIS. VOTUM. MERITO. MINERVÆ 184. The villas of the Romans at this period were of considerable extent; the statues of Greece had been acquired for their decoration, and every luxury in the way of decoration that the age could afford had been poured into them from the plentiful supply that Greek art afforded. To such an extreme was carried the determination to possess every thing that talent could supply, that we find Cicero was in the habit of employing two architects, Chrysippus and Cluatius (ad Atticum, lib. iii. epist. 29. and lib. xii. epist. 18.); the first certainly, the last probably a Greek. Their extent would scarcely be credited but for the corroboration we have of it in some of their ruins. 185. Until the time of Pompey no permanent theatre existed in Rome: the ancient discipline requiring that the theatre should continue no longer than the shows lasted. The most splendid temporary theatre was that of M. Æmilius Scaurus, who, when ædile, crected one capable of containing 80,000 persons, which was decorated, from all accounts, with singular magnificence and at an amazing cost. History (Plin. xxxvi. 15.) records an extraordinary instance of mechanical skill, in the theatre erected by Curio, one of Cæsar's partisans, at the funeral exhibition in honour of his father. Two large theatres of timber were constructed back to back, and on one side so connected with hinges and machinery for the purpose, that when the theatrical exhibitions had closed they were wheeled or slung round so as to form an amphitheatre, wherein, in the afternoon, shows of gladiators were given. Returning, however, to the theatre erected by Pompey, which, to avoid the animadversion of the censors, he dedicated as a temple to Venus: the plan ( Pliny, vii. 3.) was taken from that at Mitylene, but so enlarged as to be capable of containing 40,000 persons. Round it was a portico for shelter in case of bad weather: a curia or senate house was attached to it with a basilica or hall for the administration of jusThe statues of male and female persons celebrated for their lives and characters were selected and placed in it by Atticus, for his attention to which Cicero (Epist. ad Attic. iv. 9.) was commissioned by Pompey to convey his thanks. The temple of Venus, which was attached to avoid the breach of the laws committed, was so contrived that the seats of the theatre served as steps to the temple; a contrivance which also served to escape the reproach of encountering so vast an expense for mere luxury, for the temple was so placed that those who visited the theatre might seem at the same time to come for the purpose of worshipping the goddess. At the solemnity of its dedication the people were entertained with the most magnificent shows that had ever been exhibited in Rome. We cannot prolong the account of this edifice by detailing them,—indeed that would be foreign to our purpose; but we may add, that such a building presents to us a genuine idea of the vast grandeur and wealth of those principal subjects of Rome, who from their own private revenues could rear such magnificent buildings, and provide for the entertainment of the people shows to which all the quarters of the globe contributed, and which no monarch now on earth could afford to exhibit. This theatre was finished about 54 B.C. tice. 186. In the year 45 B.C. Rome witnessed a triumph not less extraordinary than that we have just recorded,—that of Julius Cæsar on his return from Utica. From the commencement of the civil war that had raged he had found no leisure for celebrating the triumphs which induced the people to create him dictator for ten years, and to place his statue in the Capitol opposite to that of Jupiter, with the globe of the earth under his feet, and the inscription "To Cæsar the Demi-God." We need scarcely remind our readers that his first triumph was over the Gauls; that this was followed by that over Ptolemy and Egypt; the third over Pharnaces and Pontus; and the fourth over Juba. The triumph recorded these appropriately; but we leave that merely observing, by the way, that the fruit of his victories amounted to 65,000 talents and 2822 crowns of gold, weighing together 20,414 Roman pounds,—to state that on this occasion the Circus was enlarged, a lake sunk for the exhibition of Egyptian and Tyrian galleys, and that in the same year he dedicated a temple to Venus Genetrix, and opened his new forum. Warriors are not often inclined to call in the aid of the arts, except for commemorating their own actions. Not so with Cæsar. In the year 44 B.C., after his triumph over the sons of Pompey, we once more find him engaged in the arts of peace. A temple to Clemency was erected by him, in which his statue was place near to that of the goddess, and joining hands with her. In the next year he laid the foundations of what at the time were considered two magnificent edifices for the ornament of the city: a temple to Venus, which for grandeur it is supposed would have surpassed every example of that kind in the world; and a theatre of very gigantic dimensions, -both which were afterwards completed by Augustus. But the projects he conceived were only equalled by those of Alexander. He began the rebuilding and repair of many towns in Italy; the drainage of the Pontine marshes, the malaria of which is the curse of Rome to the present day; the formation of a new bed for the Tiber from Rome to the sea, for the purpose of improving the navigation of that river; the formation of a port at Ostia for the reception of first-rate ships; a causeway over the Apennines from the Adriatic to Rome; the rebuilding of Corinth and Carthage, whither colonies had been sent by him, a scheme afterwards perfected by Augustus; a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth to avoid the navigation round the Peloponnesus; and lastly, the formation of an exact geographical map of the Roman empire, with the roads marked thereon, and the distances of the towns from each other. Such was Cæsar, whom to eulogise would be impertinent. 187. Augustus deprived the Romans of their liberty, and in return for the deprivation consoled them with all the gratification the arts could supply. The victorious Romans had known little of the arts in their highest state of refinement, and the degraded Greeks were constrained to neglect them. They were in a state of barrenness during a portion of the last age of the Roman republic; nor did they exhibit any signs of fruitfulness until Cæsar had established the empire on the ruins of the expiring republic, and his successor, giving peace to the universe, closed the temple of Janus, and opened that of the arts. By him skilful artists, pupils of the great masters, were invited from Greece, where, though languishing, they were yet silently working without fame or encouragement. Some who had been led into slavery, like Rachel of old, carried their gods with them the gods of the arts. Encouraged by the rising taste of their masters, they now began to develop the powers they possessed, and their productions became necessary to the gratification of the people. Thus it was that our art, among the others, born and reared in Greece, made Italy its adopted country, and there shone with undiminished splendour, though perhaps less happy and less durable. Though the exotic might have lost some beauties in the soil to which it was transplanted, the stock possessed such extraordinary vigour that grafts from it still continue to be propagated in every quarter of the globe. 188. The Greek architects who settled in Italy executed works of surprising beauty: they raised up pupils, and founded a school. It must be conceded that it was more an imitative than an original school, wherein it was necessary to engraft Roman taste which was modified by different habits and climate, on Greek art. And here we cannot refrain from an observation or two upon the practice in these days of comparing Greek and Roman architecture. Each was suitable to the nation that used it; the forms of Greek columns, their intercoluminations, the inclination of the pediment, were necessarily changed in a country lying between four and five degrees further north from the equator. But the superficial writers, whose knowledge occasionally appears to instruct the world, never take these matters into their consideration; and we regret, indeed, to admit that in this country the philosophy of the art is little understood by the public, from the professors being generally too much engaged in its practice to afford them leisure for diffusing the knowledge they possess. 189. The Romans were trained to arms from their cradle; and that they were very averse to the cultivation of the arts by their youth, the passage in the Æneid (b. vi. v. 847.), which has been so often quoted, is a sufficient proof: 190. They were at all times anxious to subjugate for their own purposes those nations that successfully cultivated the arts; a motive which, joined to the desire of aggrandisement, induced them at a very early period to carry their arms against the Etruscans, who were in a far higher state of cultivation than themselves. This was also one motive to their conJuct in Sicily and Asia Minor; whence, as well as from Greece, they drew supplies of artists for Rome, instead of employing their own citizens. Though in Rome architecture lost in simplicity, it gained in magnificence. It there took deeper root than the other arts, from its affording, by the dimensions of its monuments, more splendour to the character of so dominating a nation. Its forms are more susceptible of real grandeur than those of the other arts, which are put in juxtaposition with nature herself; and hence they were more in keeping with the politics of the people. The patronage of the fine arts by Augustus has never before or since been equalled. They followed his good fortune, they dwelt in the palace, and sat on the throne with him. His boast was not a vain one, when he asserted that he found his capital built of brick and left it of marble. By him was reared in the capital in question the temple and forum of Mars the Avenger; the temple of Jupiter Tonans, on the Capitol; that of Apollo Palatine, with public libraries; the portico and basilica of Caius and Lucius; the porticoes of Livia and Octavia; and the theatre of Marcellus. "The example," says Gibbon, "of the sovereign was imitated by his ministers and generals; and his friend Agrippa left behind him the immortal monument of the Pantheon." 191. Under Tiberius and Caligula architecture seems to have been in a state of languor, nor do we know of any thing in the reign of Claudius the fifth Cæsar, save the completion of one of the finest aqueducts of Rome, that of Aqua Claudia, whose length is 38 miles, in more than seven whereof the water passes over arches raised more than 100 ft. from the sur'face of the ground. Nero's reign, though his taste bordered more on show than intrinsic beauty, was on the whole favourable to architecture. Much could not be expected of a man who covered with gilding a statue of Alexander, and decapitated fine statues for the purpose of substituting his own head for that of the original. The colossal statues of himThe same A self which he caused to be sculptured indicate a mind prone to vice and excess. taste for exaggeration was carried into his buildings. His prodigality in every way was inexhaustible; he seems rather to have left monuments of expenditure than of taste. palace, which from its extraordinary richness has been called the Domus Aurea, was erected for him by his architects Severus and Celer, than which nothing could be more brilliant nor gorgeous; beyond it no pomp of decoration could be conceived. In the midst of so much wealth the only object of contempt was its possessor. The reader may form some notion of it when told (Plin. lib. xxxvi.) that in finishing a part of it Otho laid out a sum equivalent to near 404,000l. sterling. son. 192. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius scarcely reigned It was reserved for Vespasian and his son Titus, to astonish the world by masses of architecture such as it may be predicted will never again be reared. The Coliseum (fis. 110. and 129.), named, according to some from its gigantic dimensions, to others from its proximity to a colossal statue of Nero, was commenced by the father and finished by the According to Lepsius, the seats held 87,000 persons. Fontana says it was capable of containing 109,000, who could view the sports in the arena. This we think an exaggeration. Taking the clear length at 615 feet, and breadth at 510 feet, we have an Area of 246,340 sup. feet, whence deducting 38,842 for the arena, the remainder is 207,498. Now supposing this surface covered with persons standing upright, each occupying only 2-385 sup. feet, we have but 87,0. 0, and in the circuit of the upper portico and parts relied upon by Fontana, 22,000 could not be placed. Hence the estimate of Lepsius seems worthy of confidence. The reader will, from the above description, identify the structure mentioned by Martial : Fig. 110. THE COLISEUM. Omnis Cæsareo cedat labor amphitheatro, "Biennio post ac menses novem amphitheatri perfecto opere," is the expression of Victor in respect to the time employed in its construction. Though the monument itself be astonishing, still more so is it that such a mass should have taken only two years and nine months in building, even with all the means that the emperors had under their power. We shall reserve a more particular description of it. (See p. 94. and 95.) In spite of the ravages of time, and the hands, ancient and modern, which have despoiled it for its materials, enough still remains completely to exhibit the original plan, and to enable the spectator to form a perfect idea of the immense mass. The Baths of Titus were another of the wonders of the age. The remains of them are not so perfect as others, but they are still majestic. Besides the edifices erected by Vespasian and his son, they made it a part of their duty to take measures for the preservation of those which existed, and were in need of repair and restoration. 193. The last Cæsar, Domitian, was of a disposition too wicked to be of service to his country: his reign was, fortunately for it, but short. In the year 98, on the death of Nerva, Trajan became master of the empire. He had served against the Jews under Vespasian and Titus, and probably acquired from them and their example a great taste for architecture, in which he shed a lustre upon the country as great as his splendid victories over the Persians and Dacians gained for it in the field. Of his works, which, as Gibbon says, bear the stamp of his genius, his bridge over the Danube must have been a surprising effort. According to Dio Cassius, this bridge was cor structed with twenty stone piers in |