The Story of Civilization: Volume III: Caesar and Christ

by Will Durant

  VII. ARCHITECTURE

  1. Principles, Materials, and Forms

  We have reserved for the climactic edification of our forgotten visitor the greatest of Rome’s arts, that in which she most ably defended herself against the Greek invasion, and displayed all her originality, courage, and power. Originality, however, is not parthenogenesis; it is, like parentage, a novel combination of pre-existing elements. All cultures are eclectic in their youth, as education begins with imitation; but when the soul or nation comes of age it stamps its character, if it has any, upon all its works and words. Rome, like other Mediterranean cities, took the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders from Egypt and Greece; but also she took the arch, the vault, and the dome from Asia, and with them made such a city of palaces, basilicas, amphitheaters, and baths as the earth had not yet beheld. Roman architecture became the art expression of the Roman spirit and state: boldness, organization, grandeur, and brutal strength raised these unparalleled structures upon the hills. They were the Roman soul in stone.

  Most of the leading architects in Rome were Romans, not Greeks. One of them, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, wrote a world classic On Architecture (ca. 27 B.C..).VIII Having served as military engineer under Caesar in Africa, and as an architect under Octavian, Vitruvius retired in old age to formulate the principles of Rome’s most honored art. “Nature has not given me stature,” he confessed, “my face is homely with years, and illness has stolen my strength; therefore I hope to win favor by my knowledge and my book.”29 As Cicero and Quintilian made philosophy a prerequisite for the orator, so Vitruvius required it of the architect; it would improve his purposes while science improved his means; it would make him “high-minded, urbane, just, loyal, and without greed; for no true work can be done without good faith and clean hands.”30 He described the materials of architecture, the orders and their elements, and the diverse types of building in Rome; and added discourses on machinery, water clocks, speedometers,IX aqueducts, town planning, and public sanitation. As against the rectangular design established by Hippodamus in many Greek cities, Vitruvius recommended the radial arrangement used in Alexandria (and modern Washington); the Romans, however, continued to lay out their towns on the rectangular plan of their camps. He warned Italy that in several localities its drinking water led to goiter, and declared that poisoning could come from working with lead. He explained sound as a vibratory motion of the air, and wrote our oldest extant discussion of architectural acoustics. His book, rediscovered in the Renaissance, deeply influenced Leonardo, Palladio, and Michelangelo.

  The Romans, says Vitruvius, built with wood, brick, stucco, concrete, stone, and marble. Bricks were the usual substance of walls, arches, and vaults, and served as a frequent facing for concrete. Stucco too was often used as a facing. It was made of sand, lime, marble dust, and water, took a high polish, and was laid on in several coats, often to a thickness of three inches; hence it could keep its form for nineteen centuries, as in some parts of the Colosseum. In making and using concrete the Romans were unrivaled until our time. They took the volcanic ash abounding near Naples, mixed it with lime and water, threw in fragments of brick, pottery, marble, and stone, and produced, from the second century B.C. onward, an opus caementicum as hard as rock, and capable of being poured into almost any shape. They cast it as we do, in troughs formed of boards. By its means they could cover large unsupported spaces with rigid domes free from the lateral thrust of an arched roof; in this way they topped the Pantheon and the great baths. Stone was employed for most temples and the more pretentious homes. One variety from Cappadocia was so translucent that a temple built with it was adequately lighted with all its openings closed.32 The conquest of Greece brought a taste for marble, which was satisfied first by importing columns, then marble, and finally by working the Carrara quarries near Luna. Before Augustus marble was largely confined to columns and slabs; in his time it was used as a facing for brick and concrete; only in this superficial sense did he leave Rome, here and there, a city of marble; walls of solid marble were rare. The Romans liked to mingle in the same building the red and gray granite of Egypt, the green cipollino of Euboea, the black and yellow marbles of Numidia, with their own white Carrara, and with basalt, alabaster, and porphyry. Never had architectural material been so complex or so colorful.

  To the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders Rome added the Tuscan and Composite styles, and certain modifications. Columns were often monoliths instead of superimposed drums. The Doric column received an Ionic base and took on a new, unfluted slenderness; the Ionic capital was sometimes given four volutes to offer the same appearance from every side; the Corinthian column and capital were developed to a delicate beauty beyond any Greek example, but in later decades this style was spoiled by undue elaborations. A like excess poured flowers over the Ionic volutes to make the Composite capital, as in the Arch of Titus; sometimes the volutes ended in animal or human forms suggestive of gargoyles and presaging medieval forms. The lavish Romans often mixed several orders in the same building, as in the theater of Marcellus; and then again, with perverse economy, they left the side columns attached to the cella, as in the Maison Carrée at Nîmes. Even when the development of the arch had taken from columns their old supporting role the Romans added them as functionless ornaments—a custom that has survived into our own uncertain age.

  2. The Temples of Rome

  For nearly all her temples Rome kept the Greek trabeate principle-architraves (i.e., master beams) upheld by columns and carrying the roof. Augustus was conservative in art as in everything else, and most of the shrines built by his order clung to the orthodox tradition. From his time onward the emperors multiplied homes for their Olympic rivals and clothed their lechery with an architectural piety that crowded the hills and blocked the streets with tiled and gilded fanes. Jupiter, of course, was their favorite recipient. Among many he had one as Jupiter Tonans, the Thunderer; another as Jupiter Stator, who had stayed the flight of the Romans in battle; and he shared with Juno and Minerva the holiest of Rome’s sanctuaries, atop the Capitoline hill. There in the central cell, flanked by a three-storied Corinthian colonnade, was the gold-and-ivory colossus of Jupiter Optimus Maximus—Jove the Best and Greatest. Tradition ascribed the first form of this supreme house of Roman worship to Tarquinius Priscus; it was several times burned down and rebuilt; Stilicho (A.D. 404) stole its gold-plated bronze doors to pay his soldiers, and the Vandals carried off the gold-plated tiles of the roof. Some fragments of the pavement remain.

  On the northern summit of the same hill rose the Temple of Juno Moneta, Juno the Monitor or Guardian; here was the Roman mint, and from its name, of course, comes our word for the root of much ambition. On the south side of the hill was the shrine of Saturn, the oldest god of the Capitol; the Romans dated its first dedication at 497 B.C.; eight Ionic columns and an architrave survive. In the Forum, at the foot of the hill, was the little Temple of Janus, god of all beginnings; its doors were opened only in time of war, and were closed but three times in Rome’s ancient history. At the southeast corner of the Forum stood the Temple of Castor and Pollux, erected in 495 B.C.; three slender Corinthian columns have come down to us from the reconstruction by Tiberius; they are by common consent the finest columns in Rome.

  In his own forum Augustus added a Temple of Mars Ultor—the Avenger-vowed before Philippi; three of its majestic columns stand. One end of its cella was a semicircular apse, an architectural form destined to become the chancel of early Christian churches. On the Palatine Augustus built entirely of marble a sumptuous temple to Apollo for the god’s help at Actium; he adorned it with sculptures by Myron and Scopas, added a splendid library and an art gallery to its enclosure, and did all he could to make men feel that the god had left Greece for Rome and had brought with him the spiritual and cultural leadership of the world. It was even whispered by Augustus’ friends, now that his mother was safely dead, that Apollo, disguised as an agile snake, had begotten the subtle prince.

  In the northwes
t part of the city was a great shrine to Isis, and on the Palatine a spacious sanctuary for Cybele. Handsome shelters were provided for personified abstractions—Health, Honor, Virtue, Concord, Faith, Fortune, and many more. Nearly all of these contained galleries of statuary and painting. In his great Temple of Peace Vespasian gathered for the general eye many of the art treasures of Nero’s Golden House, and some of the relics of Jerusalem. The Temple of Fortuna Virilis, in the Forum Boarium, has the distinction of being the most completely preserved of the pre-Augustan buildings in Rome. The ladies of the capital frequently worshipped there, for the goddess, they believed, would teach them how to conceal their defects from men.

  To these and a hundred other temples in the classic rectangular style the architects of Rome added several circular temples, which revealed a new mastery of the problems presented by a dome. Tradition derived this type from the round hut of Romulus, religiously preserved on the Palatine for many centuries. Almost as old was the pretty Aedes Vestae, or House of Vesta, near the Temple of Castor and Pollux; its circular cella, faced with white marble, was enclosed by handsome Corinthian columns, and its roof was a dome of gilded brass. Adjoining it was the Palace of the Vestals—eighty-four rooms built cloisterwise around a peristyled court, the Atrium Vestae. The Pantheon was not yet a circular temple; as built by Agrippa it was rectangular, but had a circular plaza before it; Hadrian’s architects raised over this space the round temple and mighty dome which are still among the bravest works of man.

  3. The Arcuate Revolution

  Rome was greater in her secular than in her sacred architecture. For here she could escape the bondage of tradition and unite engineering with art—utility and power with beauty and form—in a manner all her own. The principle of Greek architecture had been the straight line (however delicately modulated as in the Parthenon): the vertical column, the horizontal architrave, the triangular pediment. The principle of specifically Roman architecture was to be the curve. The Romans wanted grandeur, audacity, size; but they could not roof their vast buildings on rectilinear and trabeate principles except by a maze of impeding columns. They solved the problem with the arch, usually in its rounded form; with the vault, which is a prolonged arch; and with the dome, which is a rotated arch. Perhaps Roman generals and their aides had brought from Egypt and Asia a growing familiarity with arcuate shapes, and had reawakened early Roman and Etruscan traditions long overwhelmed by orthodox Greek styles. Now Rome employed the arch on so great a scale that the whole art of building took from this form a new and lasting name. By laying a web of brick ribs along the lines of strain before pouring concrete into the wooden frame of the roof, the Romans developed the articulated vault; by crossing two cylindrical or barrel vaults at right angles they produced a network of ribs and groins that could sustain a heavier superstructure and bear more lateral thrust. These were the principles of Rome’s arcuate revolution.

  It was in the great baths and amphitheaters that the new style reached its completion. The baths of Agrippa, Nero, and Titus were the first of a long series that culminated in the Baths of Diocletian. They were monumental buildings of concrete faced with stucco or brick, and rising to majestic heights. The interiors were richly decorated with marble and mosaic pavements, varicolored columns, coffered ceilings, paintings, and statuary. They were equipped with dressing rooms, hot and cold baths, an intermediate room of warm air, swimming pools, palaestras, libraries, reading rooms, research rooms, lounges, and probably art galleries. Most of the chambers were centrally heated by large clay pipes running under floors and within the walls. These thermae were the most spacious and sumptuous public buildings ever erected, and they have never been equaled in their class. They were part of that socialism of recreation with which the principate excused its growing monarchy.X

  This same paternalism built the greatest theaters in history. Those of Rome were much fewer but larger than those of modern capitals. The smallest was that which Cornelius Balbus built in the Field of Mars (13 B.C.), seating 7700; Augustus rebuilt Pompey’s theater, seating 17,500; he completed another, named for Marcellus, seating 20,500. Unlike Greek theaters, these were walled, and the stands were supported by arched and vaulted masonry instead of resting on the slope of a hill. Only the stage was roofed; but often the audience was sheltered from the sun by a linen awning (velarium), which in Pompey’s theater covered a space 550 feet wide. Over the entrances were boxes for dignitaries and magnates. Some stages had curtains which, when the play began, were not raised aloft, but lowered into a groove. The stage was elevated some five feet. Its background usually took the form of an elaborate building which, extending from wing to wing, helped the actors to throw their voices out over the immense audiences. Seneca speaks of “stage mechanics who invent scaffolding that goes aloft of its own accord, or floors that rise silently into the air.”32a A change of scene was effected by revolving prisms, or by moving a set into the wings or into the loft, thereby exposing the next. Acoustics were aided by sinking hollow jars into the floor and walls of the stage.32b The auditorium was cooled by rivulets of water running along the passages; sometimes a mixture of water, wine, and crocus juice was conducted by pipes to the highest tiers and thence scattered over the audience as a perfumed spray.32c Statues adorned the interior, and large pictures were painted as scenery. Probably no theater or opera house in the world today could equal the size and splendor of Pompey’s.

  More popular still were the circus, the stadium, and the amphitheater. Rome had several stadiums, used chiefly for athletic contests. Horse or chariot races, and some spectacles, were presented at the Circus Flaminius in the Field of Mars, or, more usually, at the Circus Maximus as rebuilt by Caesar between the Palatine and Aventine hills. This was an immense ellipse 2200 feet long and 705 feet wide, with wooden seats on three sides for 180,000 spectators.33 We may judge the wealth of Rome by noting that Trajan rebuilt these seats in marble.

  By comparison the Colosseum was a modest structure, seating only 50,000. Its plan was not new; the cities of Greek Italy had long since had amphitheaters; Curio, as we have seen, composed one in 53 B.C.; Caesar built another in 46, Statilius Taurus another in 29 B.C.. The Flavian Amphitheater, as Rome called the Colosseum, was begun by Vespasian and finished by Titus (A.D. 80); the architect’s name is unknown. Vespasian chose as its site the lake in the gardens of Nero’s Golden House, between the Caelian and Palatine hills. It was constructed of travertine stone in an ellipse 1790 feet around. Its external wall rose 157 feet and was divided into three stories, the first partly supported by Tuscan-Doric, the second by Ionic, the third by Corinthian, columns, with an arch in each intercolumnar space. The main corridors were roofed with barrel vaults, sometimes crossed in the style of medieval cloisters. The interior was also divided into three tiers, each upheld by arches, divided into concentric rings of boxes or seats, and cut by stairways into cunei, “wedges.” The aspect of the interior today is that of a mass of masonry into which some giant artisan has cut the arches, passages, and seats. Statues and other decorations adorned the whole, and many rows of seats were in marble. There were eighty entrances, two of them reserved for the emperor and his suite; these entrances and the exits (vomitoria) could empty the gigantic bowl in a few minutes. The arena, 287 by 180 feet, was surrounded by a fifteen-foot wall topped with an iron grating to protect brutes from beasts. The Colosseum is not a beautiful building, and its very immensity reveals a certain coarseness, as well as grandeur, in the Roman character. It is only the most imposing of all the ruins left by the classic world. The Romans built like giants; it would have been too much to ask that they should finish like jewelers.

  Roman art had taken over in eclectic confusion the Attic, Asiatic, and Alexandrian styles—restraint, immensity, and elegance; it never quite combined them into that organic unity which is one requisite of beauty. There is something Oriental in the crude strength of the typically Roman buildings; they are awe-inspiring rather than beautiful; even Hadrian’s Pantheon is a structural marvel
rather than an artistic whole. Except in certain moments, as in the Augustan reliefs and the glass, we must not look here for delicacy of feeling or refinement of execution; we must expect an engineer’s art that seeks the perfection of stability, economy, and use, a parvenu’s infatuation with immensity and ornament, a soldier’s insistence on realism, a warrior’s art of overwhelming force. The Romans did not finish like jewelers because conquerors do not become jewelers. They finished like conquerors.

  Without doubt they created the most influential and fascinating city in history. They made a plastic, pictorial, and structural art that every man could understand, and a city that every citizen could use. The free masses were poor, but in some measure they owned much of the wealth of Rome: they ate the corn of the state, they sat at almost no cost in the theaters, the circuses, the amphitheaters, and the stadiums; they exercised, refreshed, amused, and educated themselves in the baths, they enjoyed the shade of a hundred colonnades, and walked under decorated porticoes that covered many miles of street and three miles in the Field of Mars alone. Never had the world seen such a metropolis. At its center a tumultuous Forum busy with business, resounding with oratory, alive with empire-shaking debates; then a ring of majestic temples, basilicas, palaces, theaters, and baths, in a profusion without parallel; then a ring of humming shops and teeming tenements; still another ring of homes and gardens, again with temples and public baths; and last of all, a circle of villas and estates pushing the city into the countryside and binding the mountains with the sea: this was the Rome of the Caesars—proud, powerful, brilliant, materialistic, cruel, iniquitous, chaotic, and sublime.