Inception of Roman the boundary-line is not a rigid one, we may reckon the commencement of Roman art at about the middle of the second century B. c., from which date we possess a complete series of monuments illustrating the entire round of public life. From this age date the buildings of the Capitol and of the Forum, bridges and aque ducts, city walls, tombs, etc. The first arrangement of the Forum, the centre of the city, is attributed to Tarquinius Priscus (616-579 B. c.), the conqueror of Etruria. It was a place for public assemblies, a market in which were booths where all things needful were exposed for sale. As the city grew, this sale of commodities was drafted off into separate mar kets, and so the Forum became splendid with grand edifices; thus in the third century the Goldsmiths' Forum was erected for the exchange of gold and silver and the trade in jewelry. But the magnificence of a later generation rebuilt the Forum as well as all Rome in Grecian style. The grandest work of Etruscan art was executed about boo B. C.: it was the sewerage system of Rome, culminating in the Cloaca Maxima. To this earlier age of Rome belongs also the first Circus Maximus.
Etruscan and Roman temples of both the Etruscans and the Romans followed the ancient traditions, and, though the walls and columns were of stone, the beams and roofs were of wood. A racteristic example of this is the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinns. It had three adjoining sanctuaries, with a portico of three rows of columns in front and lateral portieoes of a single series of shafts; ordinary temples had only the anterior portico. Vitruvius mentions such a temple, not as something left from historic times, but as extant in his day; lie describes it as low, broach spreading, and top-heavy. Especially characteristic of the time are the wide projecting roof, the comparatively high pediments, and the wide spacing of the columns. Figure 7 (p. 5) shows such a temple. It is believed that in this description he had in view the Temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera, a three-celled temple built in the fifth cen tury B. c., and extant in the time of Augustus.
But we have further sources of information, and the copy of the temple-façade shown in Figure 5 (pi. 5) does not entirely agree with the description of Vitruvius; so that Semper, making use of all sources of information, has reconstructed the Etruscan temple in all the glory of its coloring, as shown in Figure 6. Among the temples we must mention that of Salus, which C. Fabius Pictor enriched with wall-paintings, as also that of Virtus et Honos, which dates from the dose of the third century B. C., and which was afterward decked with works of Grecian art taken
from Syracuse. Figures 9 to 12 are characteristic examples of the details of Etruscan architecture.
Public first aqueduct, the Aqua Appia, was erected 313 B. c., in 272 B. C. the Anio Vetus, but both were at first of small capacity. A unique monument was the Columna rostrata, which in 261 B. C. was erected in honor of C. Duilius and commemorated his first naval victory over the Carthaginians (261 B. C.). How far the basilicas belong to the period tinder discussion must be left undetermined; the Greek title renders it probable that we should postpone their consideration till we come to speak of Grecian art in Rome.
we can trace the development of Architecture from the old Pelasgian times through the Etruscan epoch to Rome, we can still more definitely trace the various mechanical arts which are allied to Architecture. Metal-work had indeed ceased to have in Architecture that importance which it assumed among the early Asiatic peoples, and through them attained among the earliest inhabitants of Greece; yet it flourished among the Etruscans for employment in small utensils and ornaments. The ceramic art was so transcendently developed, so superior was the pottery of the Etruscans, that they on the one hand furnished the Greeks even to the time of the greatest art-development of that people with cherished products of their industry, and on the other supplied the Celtic and Germanic races of the North with their productions. Thus these races were provided with elements of culture which may be traced to Etruria; so that we see the last phases of Pelasgian art displayed in a comparatively late age in the lands north of the Alps, though of course it is not monumental art which reappears here.
We have already seen in treating of heroic times that many small independent communities will not permit of the development of an art comparable to that which results from a great people working together toward the same goal. This federation of small communities endured in Italy among the Etruscans, Latins, and others; so that even in their case monumental art does not present us with results of great magnificence, and therefore it can still less be looked for among the Celts and Germans, where there is no tradition of any similar federation of powers, where the simplicity of needs was against art-development, and where the sentiment for magnificent creations was first awakened when an entirely new ele ment of national genius gave it direction, though meanwhile even clas sical culture had perished.