IV. Roman Architecture. The history of Roman architecture under its kings and at the beginning of the republic is somewhat obscure, as but few of the monuments of that period remain. The Roman kings fortified the city, and erected various palaces, temples, and tombs. It gradually became adorned with colossal works of art, whose grand features, forming such a contrast with the comparative insignificance of its power and condition, would seem to indicate that the future of imperial Rome had been foreshadowed to its people. The early Romans employed Etruscans in their works. After conquering Greece, Rome became enriched with the spoils of Athens and Corinth. The Greek artists sought protection and patronage among their conquerors, and adorned the imperial capital with structures which called forth unbounded praise. The Grecian style was blended with the Etruscan during the more early period of the Roman school. But as the arch, which was the characteristic feature of Roman architecture, revealed its treasures, the Grecian elements were employed only as a system of ornamentation. Thus, oftentimes, the column no longer served as a support, but was merely used to decorate the pier or wall from which the arch sprang. Great discussions have arisen as to who were the inventors of the arch.

In Etruria are found many monuments wherein its design exists, and which are of an anterior date to the construction of the cloaca maxima (wherein it is fully developed), and even to the foundations of Rome. It is probable that the Romans borrowed it from the Etruscans, who may have followed eastern examples, but that it owed its useful application to Rome. With its introduction came various important modifications in architecture. Arches were substituted for lintels. With the assistance of the arch great spaces could be covered, and the various combinations of vaulted ceilings naturally ensued. - The early Roman structures were of stone. Subsequently the mass of the constructions was of brick, externally decorated with slabs of marble, and similarly decorated internally, together with stucco work. Bricks seem to have been used by the Romans, partly in consequence of the facility offered by this material for the construction of the arch, and partly because they had but little marble. Stone, terra cotta, bricks, and marble were ingeniously put together in various ways. The edifices of the Romans display a taste for the luxurious and magnificent rather than for the harmonious and beautiful.

Their exterior pavements were variously composed of stone, tiles, marble, porphyry, and other durable materials, laid in cement. Internally their floors were similarly laid in mosaic work. This style of work is supposed to have originated among the eastern nations, subsequently being employed by the Egyptians and Greeks. The walls of the Romans were stuccoed and decorated with paintings in the arabesque style, or covered with various marble, alabaster, and jaspers, while their columns also were of granite, marble, and porphyry. This luxury strikes us the more forcibly, as these apartments, so richly adorned and containing various chefs d'Aeuvre of art, were but very imperfectly lighted; in fact, they were sometimes wholly dependent upon lamps. This, too, is one of the great defects in their dwellings, as can be clearly seen at Pompeii. Their houses generally presented an entrance on the street, accompanied by shops if in a principal thoroughfare, leading into an atrium or court, with a compluvium in the middle and porticos on the sides connecting with the rooms occupied by the servants. This court connected with another in the rear, also surrounded by a portico, which led to the apartments of the master.

But nowhere is this taste for richness rather than simplicity more evident than in comparing the details and mouldings of the Greeks and Romans. It is due the latter, however, to make an exception in favor of their Corinthian order, which they employed as universally as did the Greeks the Doric, and to their structures must we turn for many of the finest types of this order. The column, varying in height from 9 1/2 to 10 diameters, is composed of base, shaft, and capital. The base, about one half diameter in height, in some cases consists of two tori and a scotia, with intervening fillets, placed upon a plinth, as in the examples of the temples of Antoninus and Faustina and of Vesta; in the temples of Jupiter Tonans, of Castor and Pollux, and in the portico of the Pantheon, there exists a double scotia. The shaft diminishes with entasis about one eighth of a diameter, and is generally fluted when the material permitted. These flutes were semicircular, separated by fillets one quarter of their width, and 24 in number. At the upper extremity, the fillet above the cavetto supports a small torus, on which rests the capital, about 1 1/8 diameter in height, composed of two rows of eight acanthus or olive leaves.

The lower row, about one third taller than the upper one, occupies about one quarter of the whole height of the capital. The leaves of both finish on the hypotra-chelium. Above are helices and tendrils trained with foliage,surmounted by anabacus,composed of a cavetto, fillet, and ovolo, forming together one seventh of the entire height, and which in plan presents a square with the corners cut off; the sides being concave segments of circles, in the middle of each of which is placed a flower or rosette. The entablature is about one fifth of the column in height, three fifths of it being . occupied by the architrave, together with the frieze, the former divided into three unequal fascias, generally separated by a bead and a cyma reversa, and crowned by a small congeries of mouldings, the first fascia impending the shaft at top. The frieze is generally en-riched with sculpture. The bed mouldings of the cornice, when decorated with modillions, occupy about three fifths of the total height; when no modillions exist, only one half is taken up by them.