Roman Art

Architecture.

For this branch of the subject see ARCHITEC TURE ; CAPITAL ; COLUMN ; ORDER ; TRIUMPHAL ARCH ; here it suffices to note traits which persisted in later Western art. The Etruscans, by modifying the type of the Greek temple, profoundly influenced Roman construction; the Etrusco-Roman temple was not, like the Greek, approached on all sides by a low flight of steps, but raised on a high platform (podium) with a staircase in the front ; in many instances the cella was square in order to house the divine Etruscan triads (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva; Ceres, Liber, Libera, etc.) ; and this cella was faced by a deep portico, which often occupied half the platform and thus restored to the outer structure the canonical length of the classic temple. This high podium is a first step in the development of building in a vertical direction, whereby, as H. B. Walters remarks, the Romans "paved the way for mediaeval and more particularly Gothic architecture." The round temple, which originated in the primitive Latin hut, was adopted for the house of the king and for the ancient cults of Vesta and of Hercules. The theme was repeated, with many varia tions, from the circular temple by the Tiber to those fantastic structures at Baalbek and at Petra which anticipate the innova tions of Borromini and the Baroque. For the irregular temple precincts of the Greeks, the Roman substituted the colonnaded courts, in which—as in the Imperial Fora—the temple was of ten set against the rear wall (Fora of Augustus, Nerva, Trajan, etc.). This type of enclosure was imitated throughout the Graeco Roman world—Baalbek (q.v.) is a well known instance ; from it are derived the forecourts of Christian churches and basilicas, and its inspiration is visible in Bernini's colonnade at St. Peter's.

Another specific achievement of the Roman architect was the application of the arch, the vault and the dome. The rectilinear buildings of the Greeks, with their direct vertical supports, gave place to vaulted structures in which lateral thrust was called into play, a constructional device which was a paramount influence in the Roman architecture of the 17th century. The aesthetic effect of curves was well understood by the Romans; and they were the inventors of those decorative combinations of the Greek orders with the arcade, of which the more famous—the Triumphal Arch and the Arcade order (see ORDER) had a far-reaching influence. It is impossible, as Rushforth points out, to overlook the analogy between the Arch of Constantine (to take a typical example) and the decorative portals of mediaeval cathedrals, while, at a later date, the triumphal arch influenced Baroque facades (fountains of Moses and of Trevi) besides being directly imitated in more mod ern times. Likewise, the superposed arcades adorned with columns or pilasters of a different order on each tier, formed a system of facade decoration which became almost as popular in the Renais sance as it had been in antiquity.

Republican Sculpture.

The art of the republican period may best be studied in its portraiture, where the simple naturalism of the Etruscans gradually makes way for the careful if uncom promising realism of the Romans. Of republican portraiture we have many fine examples, such as the magnificent head—probably of Brutus—which competent authorities now date back to the 4th century, an early date which would account for its partially Etruscan character (Plate I., fig. I). Somewhat later are the statue of an orator (Arringatore) in Florence, in which the Etrus can manner is beginning to yield to the Roman, and the lovely head of a young man wearing the athlete'.s cap, in the British Museum (Plate I., fig. 9). The bronze bust of the actor, Nor

banus Sorix, in Naples, is an example of the first quality attribu table to the age of the dictator Sulla. Numerous examples in stone or marble are provided by the funeral stelae, within which busts, clearly imitated from the wax imagines, are stiffly aligned (Plate II., fig. 3) ; while the more purely Hellenic manner fash ionable in the 1st century B.c. may be studied in the well known heads of Pompey and of Cicero. Apart from portraiture, examples of republican sculpture, both in the round and in relief, are now slowly emerging from oblivion ; we may quote the sepulchral urn, lately acquired by the British Museum, showing a company of knights, preceded by musicians, riding towards a small temple, in front of which a boy leads a sheep to sacrifice (Plate II., fig. 2). Though the relief retains something of the Etruscan style, sub ject and spirit are distinctly Roman. The fragment at Ny Carls berg (Plate I., fig. o), with a group of women looking on at a mule-race, is still more highly Romanized—a crowd being sug gested by three or four figures, as in Julio-Claudian art. The well-known slab, in the Museo Mussolini, of Mettius Curtius leap ing into the chasm, is presumably copied from an original of re publican date, and akin to it is the fine fragment in Munich, re cently claimed as republican by C. Weickert, which represents a group of trumpeters and gladiators, one of whom is shown, fallen and crouching, in three-quarters view from the back (Plate I., fig.

I). Again, a circular altar in the Villa Borghese, representing a Roman sacrifice in presence of Hercules and of Venus Genetrix ancestress of the Julian house—is, according to the same authority, of republican date and commemorates the Judi Caesaris of the year 46 B.C. Another notable example of a Roman altar is the altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, already referred to (Plate II., fig. II ), in which the historical scene of one face is naïvely juxta posed with the "marriage-procession of Poseidon and Amphitrite" represented on the sides ; we thus have here the actual event with all its accessories, told in Roman style, while the naval victories and triumphs of the donor are given in the allegorical Greek man ner. The same blend of realism and allegory recurs under Augustus in the Ara Pacis Augustae, executed between 13 and 9 B.C. in com memoration of the emperor's pacification of the West. This altar stood in a walled enclosure with two entrances, measuring I I Z by ol metres. The walls, with their plinth, were about 6 metres in height, and were decorated internally with a frieze of garlands and bucrania, treated with the utmost truth to nature, and externally with two bands of relief, the lower consisting of scrolls of acanthus varied with other floral motives, the upper showing processions passing across the field from east to west ; on the south wall Augustus himself with the great officers of State, the flamens and the imperial family ; on the north the senators and a crowd of citizens with their children. On the western face, towards which the processions are directed, the "Sacrifice of Aeneas on his ar rival in Latium" (Plate II., fig. 9) symbolizes the link between Rome and the ancient Troy. To the east front (apparently) belongs the beautiful group of the earth goddess (Tellus) and the spirits of air and water, allegorical of prosperity and of the fer tility of nature under the new rule. The babes that cling to the Earth Mother and the children that accompany their elders in the processional friezes introduce a human note which enhances the imperial beneficence. The glorification of empire is the key note of all Augustan decoration.