smaller arches to bring up the level, which would have been a far greater error in construction than the other is in taste. The bridge consists of 6 arches, the whole length of the roadway being 650 ft.; the 2 central arches are about 100 ft. span; the roadway is 140 ft. above the level of the stream which it crosses. The piers are well proportioned and graceful; and altogether the work is as fine and as tasteful an example of bridge-building as can be found anywhere, even in these days of engineering activity.

The bridge which the same Emperor erected over the Danube was a far more difficult work in an engineering point of view; but the superstructure being of wood, resting only on stone piers, it would necessarily have possessed much less architectural beauty than this, or indeed than many others.

These examples must suffice of this class of Roman works, which is so typical of the style that it was impossible to omit the subject altogether, though it scarcely belongs in strictness to the objects of this book. The bridges and aqueducts of the Romans richly deserve the attention of the architect, not only because they are in fact the only works which the Romans, either from taste or from social position, were enabled to carry out without affectation, and with all their originality and power, but also because it was in building these works that the Romans acquired that constructive skill and largeness of proportion which enabled them to grasp at such large dimensions, to vault such spaces, and to give to their buildings generally that size and impress of power which form their chief if not their only merit. It was this too that enabled them to invent that new style of vaulted buildings which at one period of the middle ages promised to reach a degree of perfection which no architecture of the world had ever attained. The Gothic style, it is true, perished at a time when it was very far from completed; but it is a point of no small interest to know where and how it was invented. We shall afterwards have to trace how far it advanced towards that perfection at which it aimed, but to which it never reached. Strangely enough it failed solely because of the revival and the pernicious influence of that very parent style to which it owed its birth, and whose own growth and maturity we have described in the grandeur of the edifices reared at Rome in the first centuries of the Empire.

BOOK VIII.

SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE.

CHAPTER I.

SASSANIAN ART.

CONTENTS.

Historical notice Palaces of Diarbekr and Al Hadhr Domes
Firouzabad Tak Kesra.

CHRONOLOGICAL MEMORANDA.

Serbistan

THERE is no hiatus in the whole history of architecture more complete than that which occurs in Central Asia during the 10 centuries which elapsed from the conquest of that country by Alexander the Great till the time when it fell under the yoke of the Mahometans. At the same time there are few gaps which it would be more interesting to fill up. For though we are enabled from our knowledge of the history of Roman art to trace every step of the change which took place in the transformation of the classic style of Rome to that of the Mediæval Gothic, we are wholly without the means of following out the same process in the East. The destruction of Alexandria, and the disappearance of Seleucia and Ctesiphon and all the other great cities of Asia, have left us almost wholly without materials for this purpose. In consequence of this many of the forms which architecture took during the middle ages in the eastern half of the Roman Empire must remain to us inexplicable riddles, unless it should happen that a more careful examination of provincial examples may supply the required information. It is more than probable that such cities as Diarbekr, Mardin, Nisibin, and others situated near the hills and where stone was currently used, may afford many examples for this purpose when looked for, and there are no doubt many very early churches in Asia Minor

and Armenia which would supply some at least of the links in the now broken chain.

It is true nevertheless that the study of Roman art explains much of what we find in the first ages of that of Byzantium. But the transformation of the former into the latter style was owing to the introduction of a new element which has hitherto been unheeded, and a knowledge of which can only be supplied from Central Asia.

The want of this knowledge is not so much felt in studying the buildings of Constantinople itself as in those of Armenia and Asia Minor. In the capital the influence of Rome always predominated, but farther east it very early gave place to the Asiatic forms whose influence soon obliterated all trace of western art.

It is only when we shall acquire a knowledge of the steps of the transformation in the East as well as in the West that we shall understand the Christian Byzantine style, which is almost equally important with the Gothic, or know from whence and how that Eastern style arose at present we are very far from having the information requisite for the purpose.

The dearth of monuments is almost absolute during the first half of these dark ages of the Persian Empire. During that period the throne was occupied by the Seleucidæ and Arsacidæ, Grecian and Parthian strangers, who occupied the country more as a conquered province than as their settled home, and consequently cared little to adorn it with great or lasting monuments of art.

Their cities were built principally out of the materials of the older capitals, and adorned with architectural ornaments stolen from their edifices. These materials too being merely sunburnt bricks, we cannot wonder that all the principal buildings, not only of Susa and Babylon, but also of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, have wholly disappeared.

Had these cities been situated farther north, and had stone been more generally employed in their construction, the case might have been different; but the sunburnt bricks and wooden pillars which seem always to have been the staple material of construction in the southern parts of the valley of the Euphrates perish almost as soon as the buildings in which they are used are deserted, and in a few years leave nothing but a mass of undefinable rubbish.

The only two buildings which are known to exist belonging to this period are the ruins of two palaces, one at Diarbekr, the other at Al Hadhr. Both owe their preservation to the circumstance of their being situated near the hills, and consequently to their being built of the stone of the neighbourhood.

The building at Diarbekr is known as the palace of Tigranes, though certainly more modern than his age. It consists principally of a façade two stories in height, ornamented with Corinthian pilasters and three quarter columns of a debased but picturesque style. These are surmounted by very deep entablatures, every member of which is overloaded with minute and elaborate carving, displaying all the Roman ornaments, but seldom in their right places, and far too crowded to be pleasing.

Between the pillars are doorways and windows, some crowned with pointed arches, others with a rude trefoil, but none with the plain square architrave of the classic styles. Altogether the building is such that if it were found in France no one would hesitate to ascribe it to the reign of Francis I.; and it would be difficult to point out any feature in this Eastern example which would not perfectly agree with such an ascription. So remarkably similar were the forms which arose in different parts of the world immediately out of the Classic style, in the middle ages, both to one another and to those which prevailed when, during the period of the Renaissance, architecture passed back to the pseudo-classic again.

The Golden Gateway and the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem are the buildings in the East which most resemble this one at Diarbekr in style. Those examples certainly belong to the age of Constantine, and the exuberance of ornament at Diarbekr, and the admixture of barbarian details, would lead us to suppose that this palace was more modern than those buildings at Jerusalem. The true explanation, however, most probably is that this building is situated in a remote province, where Roman influence must always have been weak, and where consequently its builders emancipated themselves earlier from the classic forms than they could do in countries longer occupied by the Romans. Though not so early as the time of Tigranes, it is probable that this building was erected at least a century before that of Constantine.

The other building, that at Al Hadhr, is situated in the plain, about 30 miles from the Tigris, nearly west from the ruins of Kaleh Sherghat.

301. Plan of Palace at Al Hadhr. From a Sketch by Mr. Layard. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.

The city itself is circular in plan, nearly an English mile in diameter, and surrounded by a stone wall with towers at intervals. In the centre of this stands a walled enclosure, nearly square in plan, about 700 ft. by 800. This is again subdivided into an outer and inner court by a wall across its centre. The outer court is unencumbered

by buildings, the inner nearly filled with them. The principal of these is that represented in woodcut No. 301. It consists of three large and four smaller halls placed side by side, with various smaller apartments in the rear of these. All these halls are roofed by semicircular tunnel vaults, without ribs or other ornament, and they are all entirely open in front, all the light and air being admitted from this one end.

There can be very little doubt but that these halls are copies, or intended to be so, of the halls of the old Assyrian palaces; but that strange mania for vaulted roofs which seized on all the nations of the East as well as on those of the West during the middle ages led the architect on to a new class of arrangements, which renders the resemblance by no means apparent at first sight.

The old halls had almost invariably their entrances on the longer side; but with a vault this would have required immense abutments; and without intersecting vaults, which were not then invented, would even then have been difficult.

The most obvious mode of meeting the difficulty was that adopted here of using the halls as abutments the one to the other, like the arches of a bridge; so that, if the two external arches were firm, all the rest were safe. This was provided for by making the outer halls smaller, as shown in the elevation (woodcut No. 302), or by strengthening the outer wall. But even then the architect seems to have shrunk from weakening the intermediate walls by making too many openings in them. Those which do exist are small and infrequent; so that there is generally only one entrance to each apartment, and that so narrow as to seem incongruous with the size of the room to which it leads.

It is by no means clear to what use the square apartment in the rear with the double wall was applied. It may have been a temple, but more probably contained a stair or inclined plane leading to the roof or upper rooms, which almost certainly existed over the smaller halls at least.

All the details of the building are copied from the Roman, the

archivolts and pilasters almost literally so, but still so rudely executed as to prove that it was not done under the direct superintendence of a Roman artist. This is even

302. Elevation of part of the Palace at Al Hadhr. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. more evident with regard to the griffins

and scroll-work, and the acanthus-leaves which ornament the capitals and friezes. The most peculiar ornament, however, is the range of masks which are carried round all the archivolts of the arches. The only thing known at all similar is the celebrated arch at Volterra with three masks; but here these are infinitely more numerous over