BASILICA, a particular kind of public edifice. The word, according to its strict etymology, (from gxo.aivc and ()mac), means a royal house. The basi lica seems originally to have been a hall in which justice was administered; and as this was, in the pri mitive ages, the exclusive prerogative of the sove reign, it might then, with great propriety, be called the house of the king. All the ancient basilicas have been so completely destroyed, that scarcely any thing is known with certainty of their form and internal ar rangement. The basilicas at Rome were spacious halls built around the forum, where the different or ders of judges administered justice, and where public business of every kind was transacted. The first of these hails was built under the direction 'of M. Pore cius Cato, the censor, in the year the city 566. Vitruvius, the only ancient architect of whose wri tings we have any remains, gives the following direc tions for the construction of these buildings : "That merchants who resort thither on business may not be incommoded by the weather, the basilica should be built adjoining to the forum on the warmest side. Its breadth should not be less than one-third, nor ex ceed one-half of the length, ,unless the nature of its situation render it. necessary to depart from these rules of symmetry. The height of the columns must be equal to the breadth of the portico, which occu pies a third part of the space in the centre ; the up per columns should be one-fourth less than the lower. 7 The piuteum, between the upper columns, should also be made one-fourth less than these columns, that those who walk on the floor above may not be seen by the merchants below." From this description it appears that the basilica consisted of a great nave in the middle, surrounded with one range of porticoes, and a single row of columns.
It has been erroneously supposed, that the ancient basilicas were converted, on the overthrow of pa ganism, into Christian churches. Buildings of a si
milar form, and of the same name, were indeed oc cupied by the early Christians for the purposes of their worship; but the details of their architecture forbid us to refer these buildings to a rertoter date than the reign of Constantine, when Christianity first became the established religion of the empire. Con"-, stantine reared many of these edifices, as monuments of the triumph of his religion. One built on-the scite of his own palace on the Ceelian Mount, is ascer tained to be the most ancient of these Christian basi licas. He next demolished the circus of Nero, and the temples of Apollo and Mars, to raise on their scite the magnificent basilica of St Peter of the Va tican. It consisted of five aisles from cast to west, terminating at the end in another aisle from north to south, in the centre of which was a large tribunal, giving the whole the form of a cross. The aisles were enclosed by numerous columns of the richest marble ; superb paintings covered the wails ; mosaics of exquisite beauty adorned the tribunal ; and the whole temple was illuminated by an incredible num ber of lamps. This magnificent edifice, respected even by the barbarous conquerors of Rome, stood unin jured for twelve centuries; till yielding at length to the corrosive influence of time, it was pulled down by Pope Julius II., and the famous church of St Peter, the grandest specimen of the ecclesiastical ba silica, and the boast of modern Rome, rose out of its ruins. As the simple grandeur of ancient architec ture was lost in the clumsy magnitude of the Gothic structures, the airy elegance of these ecclesiastical basilicas, consisting of quadrilateral halls, with a single roof and flat ceiling, supported on ranges of light pillars, degenerated into the awkward cross. shape, the vaulted roof, and the massy columns of the modern cathedral. See Encyclopedic ilIcthodique, , Arch. de A. Palladio, and Vitruvius. (F.)