Roman Architecture

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE) .

Graeco-Roman Period (100 B.C.–A.D. 300).

Many of the buildings erected in Greek lands during the Roman domination were still characteristically Greek. Doric was used in propylaea at Athens and Eleusis, and in temples at Eleusis and Kourno.

Greek Ionic appears in the circular temple on the Athenian Acropolis, in a propylon at Priene, and particularly in a series of octastyle pseudodipteral temples in Asia Minor (Aezani, An cyra, Aphrodisias). A hybrid Corinthian style with mixed Doric Ionic entablatures occurs at Eleusis and Paestum. A simple type on Corinthian capital was used in the clock tower ("Tower of the Winds") at Athens. But the developed Corinthian orders of temples at Sagalassus, Euromus, Cnidus, Pargamum and Isthmia are hardly to be differentiated from those of imperial Rome.

Even though the decorative orders might be those of Rome, some buildings were still distinctive in type. Side by side with true Roman theatres, with wide low stages and semicircular orchestras (Appendus), were erected theatres of a compromise type, with equally wide but lofty stages and three-quarter circular orchestras (Termes sus) ; both types had lofty scene buildings incrusted with columns, sometimes con necting with colonnades at the top of the auditorium. The stadium likewise re mained characteristically Greek, with further elaboration, such as semicircles at both ends and colon nades at the top. The interior of the Telestrion at Eleusis was rebuilt in a Greek form, though with a new disposition of the columns. But the basilicas, baths, triumphal arches and other forms which flourished everywhere in Greece and Asia Minor at this epoch can with more propriety be considered as part of the purely Roman development.

See also ARCHITECTURAL ARTICLES, ARCHITECTURE and GREEK ART.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--General: Fowler and Wheeler, Handbook of Greek Bibliography.--General: Fowler and Wheeler, Handbook of Greek Archaeology (1909) ; A. Marquand, Greek Architecture (1909) ; J. Durm, Die Baukunst der Griechen (3rd ed., Leipzig, 191o) ; F. Benoit, L'Architecture. Antiquite (1911) ; H. L. Warren, The Foundations of Classic Architecture (1919) ; E. Bell, Hellenic Architecture (1920) ; Anderson, Spiers and Dinsmoor, The Architecture of Ancient Greece (1927, bibl.) ; Cambridge Ancient History (1926-27, IV., pp. 601 610 ; V., PP. 444-464; VI., PP. bibl.) .

Special: Stuart and Revett, The Antiquities of Athens (5 vols., 1762-183o) ; Dilettanti Society, The Antiquities of Ionia (5 vols., 1797-1915) ; A. Blouet, Expedition scientifique de Morie (3 vols., 1831-38) ; L. Fenger, Dorische Polychromie (1886) ; F. C. Penrose, The Principles of Athenian Architecture (2nd ed., 1888) ; Curtius and Adler, Olympia, Die Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen (II., 1892-96) ; Dorpfeld and Reisch, Das Griechische Theater (1896) ; Die Griechische Tempel in Unteritalien and Sicilien (1899) ; H. d'Espouy, Fragments d'Architecture antique (2 vols., 1896-1905) and Monuments antiques (I., 1906) ; F. H. Bacon, Investigations at Assos (Boston, 1902-21) ; W. H. Goodyear, Greek Refinements (New Haven, 1912) ; Stevens and Paton, The Erechtheum (Cambridge, Mass., 1927) . (W. B. D.)