Triumphal Arches and Columns, Palaces and Dwellings

TRIUMPHAL ARCHES AND COLUMNS

Rome and the provincial cities abounded in monuments commemorative of victory, usually single or triple arches with engaged columns and rich sculptural adornments, or single colossal columns supporting statues. The arches were characteristic products of Roman design, and some of them deserve high praise for the excellence of their proportions and elegance of their details. There were in Rome in the second century A.D., thirty-eight of these monuments. The Arch of Titus ( 71-82 A.D.) is the simplest and most perfect of those still extant in Rome; the arch of Septimius Severus in the Forum ( 203 A.D.) and that of Constantine (330 A.D.) near the Colosseum, are more sumptuous but less pure in detail. The last-named was in part enriched with sculptures taken from the earlier arch of Trajan. The statues of Dacian captives on the attic (attic=a species of subordinate story added above the main cornice) of this arch were a fortunate addition, furnishing a raison d'être for the columns and broken entablatures on which they rest. Memorial columns of colossal size were erected by several emperors, both in Rome and abroad. Those of Trajan and of Marcus Aurelius are still standing in Rome in perfect preservation. The first was 140 feet high including the pedestal and the statue which surmounted it; its capital marked the height of the ridge levelled by the emperor for the forum on which the column stands. Its most striking peculiarity is the spiral band of reliefs winding around the shaft from bottom to top and representing the Dacian campaigns of Trajan. The other column is of similar design and dimensions, but greatly inferior to the first in execution.

Both are really towers, with interior stair-cases leading to the top.

TOMBS

The Romans developed no special and national type of tomb, and few of their sepulchral monuments were of large dimensions. The most important in Rome were the pyramid of Caius Cestius (late first century B.C.), and the circular tombs of Cecilia Matella ( 60 B.C.), Augustus ( 14 A.D.) and Hadrian, now the Castle of S. Angelo ( 138 A.D.). The latter was composed of a huge cone of marble supported on a cylindrical structure 230 feet in diameter standing on a square podium 300 feet long and wide. The cone probably once terminated in the gilt bronze pine-cone now in the Giardino della Pigna of the Vatican. In the Mausoleum of Augustus a mound of earth planted with trees crowned a similar circular base of marble on a podium 220 feet square, now buried.

The smaller tombs varied greatly in size and form. Some were vaulted chambers, with graceful internal painted decorations of figures and vine patterns combined with low-relief enrichments in stucco. Others were designed in the form of altars or sarcophagi, as at Pompeii; while others again resembled, little temples, shrines, or small towers in several stories of arches and columns, as at St. Rémy ( France).

PALACES AND DWELLINGS

Into their dwellings the Romans carried all their love of ostentation and personal luxury. They anticipated in many details the comforts of modern civilization in their furniture, their plumbing and heating, and their utensils. Their houses may be divided into four classes: the palace, the villa, the domus or ordinary house, and the insula or many-storied tenement built in compact blocks. The first three alone concern us, and will be taken up in the above order.

The imperial palaces on the Palatine Hill comprised a wide range in style and variety of buildings, beginning with the first simple house of Augustus ( 26 B.C.), burnt and rebuilt 3 A.D. Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero added to the Augustan group; Domitian rebuilt a second time and enlarged the palace of Augustus, and Septimius Severus remodelled the whole group, adding to it his own extraordinary seven-storied palace, the Septizonium. The ruins of these successive buildings have been carefully excavated, and reveal a remarkable combination of dwelling-rooms, courts, temples, libraries, basilicas, baths, gardens, peristyles, fountains, terraces, and covered passages. These were adorned with a profusion of precious marbles, mosaics, columns, and statues. Parts of the demolished palace of Nero were incorporated in the substructions of the Baths of Titus. The beautiful arabesques and plaster reliefs which adorned them were the inspiration of much of the fresco and stucco decoration of the Italian Renaissance. At Spalato, in Dalmatia, are the extensive ruins of the great Palace of Diocletian, which was laid out on the plan of a Roman camp, with two intersecting avenues. It comprised a temple, mausoleum, basilica, and other structures besides those portions devoted to the purposes of a royal residence.

The villa was in reality a country palace, arranged with special reference to the prevailing winds, exposure to the sun and shade, and the enjoyment of a wide prospect. Baths, temples, exedrœ, theatres, tennis-courts, sun-rooms, and shaded porticos were connected with the hous e proper, which was built around two or three interior courts or peristyles. Statues, fountains, and colossal vases of marble adorned the grounds, which were laid out in terraces and treated with all the fantastic arts of the Roman landscape-gardener. The most elaborate and extensive villa was that of Hadrian, at Tibur (Tivoli); its ruins, covering hundreds of acres, form one of the most interesting spots to visit in the neighborhood of Rome.

There are few remains in Rome of the domus or private house. Two, however, have left remarkably interesting ruins--the Atrium Vest? , or House of the Vestal Virgins, east of the Forum, a well-planned and extensive house surrounding a cloister or court; and the House of Livia, or Germanicus, so-called, on the Palatine Hill, the walls and decorations of which are excellently preserved. The typical Roman house in a provincial town is best illustrated by the ruins of Pompeii and Herculanum, which, buried by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., have been partially excavated since 1721. The Pompeiian house consisted of several courts or atria, some of which were surrounded by colonnades and called peristyles. The front portion was reserved for shops, or presented to the street a wall unbroken save by the entrance; all the rooms and chambers opened upon the interior courts, from which alone they borrowed their light. In the brilliant climate of southern Italy windows were little needed, as sufficient light was admitted by the door, closed only by portières for the most part; especially as the family life was passed mainly in the shaded courts, to which fountains, parterres of shrubbery, statues, and other adornments lent their inviting charm. The general plan of these houses seems to have been of Greek origin, as well as the system of decoration used on the walls. These, when not wainscoted with marble, were covered with fantastic, but often artistic, painted decorations, in which an imaginary architecture as of metal, a fantastic and arbitrary perspective, illusory pictures, and highly finished figures were the chief elements. These were executed in brilliant colors with excellent effect. The houses were lightly built, with wooden ceilings and roofs instead of vaulting, and usually with but one story on account of the danger from earthquakes. That the workmanship and decoration were in the capital often superior to what was to be found in a provincial town like Pompeii, is evidenced by beautiful wall-paintings and reliefs discovered in Rome in 1879 and now preserved in the Museo delle Terme. More or less fragmentary remains of Roman houses have been found in almost every corner of the Roman empire, but nowhere exhibiting as completely as in Pompeii the typical Roman arrangement.