CLASSIC ROMAN IONIC Development and Use of the Order. There'are comparatively few remains of Roman buildings where the Ionic Order was originally used. Among the Romans this Order certainly never met with the favor accorded to it by the Greeks. At the same time, the great num ber of antique Ionic capi tals used in the naves of Roman Basilicas of later date, indicate that at one time this Order must have been employed to a consid erable extent—probably in the early Forums that were afterwards destroyed to make room for later build ings. The Roman columns, being generally monoliths of marble or other beautiful material, instead of being shafts composed of various s m a 11 sections after the Greek fashion, were suffi ciently valuable to be saved and used again in the newer work that was to take the place of that torn down. The capitals may have been used a second time with the columns to which they belonged, or they may have been transposed and used with other columns. As a consequence, in many Roman churches, frequently neither the column shafts nor the capitals exactly match in either color, material, design, or workmanship, often being obviously of different dates and taken from different buildings.
In the Roman colonies and in Syria, the Ionic Order seems to have been employed longer than in Rome itself, possibly because of the difficulty of carving the elaborate Corinthian capital which had later so much vogue. Examples of the Ionic capital carrying the canted volute on the angle, are very rare. At the large size in which this Order was employed by the Romans, the awkwardness of this angular treatment of the Ionic Capital undoubtedly became more apparent, and for this reason they may have avoided its use whenever it was possible. When, during the Renaissance, an Ionic capital with the angular vo lute treatment on the four corners came into general use, it was called the "Scamozzi" capital, after the architect who first most frequently employed it, for the purpose of distinguishing it from the more usual Classic form. The actual treatment of this capital as used by Scamozzi himself is shown in Fig. 120.
The earlier Roman Ionic Orders were evidently made by Greek workmen; and the capital from Pompeii shown in Fig. 121 clearly
evidences this fact. In this example—that of an attached column—a rather interesting treatment of the volute on the angle is shown. Seen from the front, the volute is canted after the same fashion as it would be in order to make all four—or in this case, three—elevations of the capital agree; but on the end the roll is still employed, although treated in a somewhat free manner.
The Base. The base of the column shafts of the Ionic Order offer little dissimilarity in treatment. This is very clearly shown in Fig. 122, in which A is from the Theater of Marcellus, and B from the Baths of Diocletian, both Classic examples, while C and D are taken from the columns of Palladio and Vignola. It will be observed that the form given by Vignola is rather an exceptional one, the general type being more nearly that shown by Palladio.
The Capital. The capital of the Roman Ionic column is fashioned after the same general manner as that described in detail in the Greek Ionic Order, but the mouldings are not so finely cut. The shaft was never given a necking, such as the Greeks, and later, some of the Re naissance architects, occasionally employed. It will also be noticed that the volute or spiral of the Roman Order is much less refined than in the Greek examples. It contains, moreover, fewer spirals on the face. Whether this paucity of spirals was occasioned by a lack of skill in the carver, or whether—as in the case of the use of the spiral in the Theater of Marcellus, on the second story—it was because these details were somewhat removed from the eye and therefore this simplification was to be preferred in the judgment of the builders, we do not know.
Fortunately the volute of the Romans is much more easily re duced to a rule than that of the Greeks. The Roman volute may have been laid out with compasses, while the Greek volute was certainly laid out in no such simple fashion. It has been suggested that, in the Greek Doric capital, the volute eye was filled with a round wooden plug, and that a string fastened to this and wound up around it would produce the concentric circles of the volute faces.