How to Study Architecture Charles H. Caffin 1177 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of How to Study Architecture
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: How to Study Architecture

Author: Charles H. Caffin

Release date: December 2, 2019 [eBook #60830]
Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60830

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO
STUDY ARCHITECTURE ***

Contents.
Glossary
Index

Bibliography
List of Illustrations
(In certain versions of this etext [in
certain browsers] clicking on the
image will bring up a larger
version.)
(etext transcriber's note)

HOW TO STUDY ARCHITECTURE

HOW TO
STUDY ARCHITECTURE
BY
CHARLES H. CAFFIN
Author of “How to Study Pictures,” “The Story
of French Painting,” “The Story of Dutch Painting,”
“The Story of Spanish Painting,” “Appreciations
of the Drama,” “Art for Life’s Sake,” etc.

AN ATTEMPT TO TRACE THE EVOLUTION OF
ARCHITECTURE AS THE PRODUCT AND EXPRESSION
OF SUCCESSIVE PHASES OF CIVILISATION
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1917

Copyright, 1917
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author gratefully acknowledges the critical assistance given to him
on certain points by Professor William H. Goodyear, W. Harmon Beers and
William Warfield; and his indebtedness to Caroline Caffin for compiling the
index and to Irving Heyl for several architectural drawings. For some of the
illustrations he has put himself under obligations to the following
publications, through the courtesy of the Librarian of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art—“Histoire de l’Art,” by Perrot et Chipiez; “Assyrian
Sculptures,” by Rev. Archibald Paterson; “Monuments Modernes de la
Perse,” by Pascal Coste; “Ruins of the Palace of Diocletian at Spalato” by
R. Adams, and “The Annual of the British School at Athens.”

CONTENTS

Book I
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER PAGE
I Preliminary Considerations 3
II Primitive Structures 13

Book II
PRE-CLASSIC PERIOD
I Egyptian Civilisation 25
II Egyptian Architecture 38
III Chaldæan, Assyrian and Babylonian Civilisation 56
IV Chaldæan, Assyrian and Babylonian Architecture 65
V Persian Civilisation 74
VI Persian Architecture 80

VII Minoan or Ægean Civilisation 88
VIII Minoan or Ægean Architecture 95

Book III
CLASSIC PERIOD
I Hellenic Civilisation 105
II Hellenic Architecture 116
III Roman Civilisation 147
IV Roman Architecture 163

Book IV
POST-CLASSIC PERIOD
I Early Christian Civilisation 187
II Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture 193
III Muhammedan, also Called Saracenic Civilisation 212
IV Muhammedan Architecture 220
V Early Mediæval Civilisation 232
VI Early Mediæval or Romanesque Architecture 241

Book V
GOTHIC PERIOD
I Later Mediæval Civilisation 263
II Gothic Architecture 270
III Gothic Architecture in France 281
IV Gothic Architecture in England and Wales 287
V Gothic Architecture in Germany, the Netherlands, and
Spain 301
VI Gothic Architecture in Italy 310

Book VI
THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD
I Renaissance Civilisation 319
II Renaissance Architecture in Italy 338

III Renaissance Architecture in Italy—Continued 357
IV Renaissance Architecture in France 375
V Renaissance Architecture in Germany, the Netherlands,
and Spain 391
VI Renaissance Architecture in England and American
Colonial Architecture 410

Book VII
POST-RENAISSANCE PERIOD
I Classical and Gothic Revivals 435
II The Modern Situation 454
Glossary: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U,
V, W, Z 479
Index: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V,
W, X, Z 497

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE
Stonehenge. Salisbury Plain, England 12
Section and Plan of Treasury of Atreus 12
Teocalli or “House of God,” at Guatusco 12
Section of Pyramid 38
Modelsof Mastabas 38
Types of Egyptian Columns 38
Temple-Tomb of Rameses II at Abou-Simbel 38
Plan of Ramesseum 38
Model of Hypostyle Hall at Karnak 39
Peripteral Sanctuary, at Philæ 39
Temple of Edfou. Entrance to Hypostyle Hall 39
Example of Carved Decoration 39
“Sargon’s Castle.” Conjectured Restoration 66
Part of “Lion Frieze” and “Frieze of Arches” 66

Details of Wall Decoration at Koyunjik 67
Tomb of Darius I, Persepolis 80
Palace of Darius I, Persepolis. Conjectured Restoration 80
Type of Persian Columns 81
Hall of One Hundred Columns, Persepolis. Conjectured
Restoration 81
The Palaces of Persepolis. Conjectured Restoration 81
Wall Decoration in Palace of Cnossus 94
Lion Gateway at Mycenæ 94
Plan of Acropolis of Tiryns 94
Part of Staircase in Palace of Cnossus 95
Council Chamber, with Gypsum Throne, Palace of Cnossus 95
Some Temple Plans—Hellenic 116
Hellenic Orders (Columns and Entablatures) 116
Roman Orders (Columns and Entablatures) 116
Model of the Acropolis 116
Model of the Parthenon (restored) 116
The Parthenon 117
Temples at Pæstum 117
Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, Athens 117
Temple of Nike Apteros, Athens 117
Portico of the Caryatides, Erechtheion 117
Detail of Ornament—Hellenic 117
Statues in the Round of Persephone and Demeter from the East
Pediment of the Parthenon 117
Figures in High Relief from Procession of Worshipers. Frieze of
the Parthenon 117
Plan of House of Pansa, Pompeii 117
Plan of Theatre of Dramyssus 117
Roman Forum, Conjectured Restoration 162
Maison Carrée, Nîmes 162
Arch of Constantine 162
Pantheon, Rome 162

Section of the Pantheon 162
Colosseum, Rome 162
Section of Colosseum 162
Basilica of Constantine 163
Roman Vaulting; from Baths of Diocletian 163
Gothic Vaulting; from Salisbury Cathedral 163
Theatre of Orange, France. Conjectured Restoration 163
Plan of Theatre of Orange, France. Conjectured Restoration 163
Porta Aurea—Golden Gate—Palace of Diocletian 163
Pont-du-Gard, Aqueduct Near Nîmes 163
Peristyle and Court of the House of the Vettii 163
Wall Paintings in the House of the Vettii 163
S. Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna 192
S. Apollinare-in-Classe, Ravenna 192
Church of Kalb-Lauzeh, Syria 193
Church of Turmanin, Syria 193
Tomb of Galla Placidia 202
Interior of San Vitale, Ravenna 202
Diagram Showing Pendentives 202
Section of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, Constantinople 202
Section of S. Sophia, Constantinople 202
Diagram showing how a dome rests on eight piers enclosing an
octagon, by niches or squinches 202
Exterior of S. Sophia, Constantinople 203
Interior of S. Sophia, Constantinople 203
Plan of S. Sophia, Constantinople 203
Plan of S. Mark’s, Venice 203
Exterior of St. Mark’s, Venice 203
Mosque of El Azhar, Cairo 220
Suleimaniyeh or Mosque of Suleiman 220
Arcades of the Mosque, now Cathedral, of Cordova 220
Court of the Lions, Alhambra, Spain 220

Palace of Ispahan, Persia. Conjectured Restoration of Pavilion of
Mirrors and Gardens 221
College of Shah Hussein, Restoration; Ispahan, Persia 221
Mosque of Akbur, Futtehpore-Sikri, India 221
Taj Mahal, Agra, India 221
Pisa Cathedral, Campanile and Baptistry 240
Interior of Pisa Cathedral 240
S. Ambrogio, Milan 240
S. Michele, Pavia 240
The Certosa, or Church of the Carthusian Order, Pavia 240
Church of Vézelay, France 240
Church of Abbaye-aux-Dames, Caen 240
Remains of the Church of Cluny Abbey 240
Church of the Apostles, Cologne 241
Doorway of Salamanca Cathedral 241
Anglo-Saxon Tower, Earl’s Barton, Northamptonshire 241
Iffley Church, near Oxford 241
S. John’s Chapel, Tower of London 241
Nave of Durham Cathedral 241
Peterborough Cathedral 241
English Romanesque Detail 241
Sculptured Details from Amiens Cathedral Doorway 270
Skeleton Structure, showing method of vaulting, by means of
pointed arch, and concentration of thrusts and counter-thrusts 270
Gothic Detail 270
Gothic Detail 270
Gothic Detail 270
Gothic Detail 271
Gothic Detail 271
Gothic Detail 271
Exterior and Interior Views of Lichfield Cathedral Showing the
Nave Widening 271
Notre Dame, Paris, Plan 280

Amiens Cathedral, Plan 280
Amiens Cathedral 280
Notre Dame, Paris 280
Rouen Cathedral 280
Rheims Cathedral 280
Interior of Notre Dame Cathedral 281
Interior of Amiens Cathedral 281
Interior of Rheims Cathedral 281
Hôtel de Bourgtheroulde, Rouen 281
House of Jacques Cœur 281
Sainte Chapelle, Paris 281
Nave of Norwich Cathedral 286
Salisbury Cathedral, Interior 286
York Minster, West Façade 286
Lincoln Cathedral 286
Wells Cathedral, West Façade 287
Winchester Cathedral 287
Henry VII’s Chapel, Westminster 287
Westminster Hall, Timber Roof 287
Strasburg Cathedral 300
Ratisbon Cathedral 300
Town Hall of Munster 300
Cathedral of S. Gudule, Brussels 300
Cologne Cathedral 300
Cloth Hall of Ypres 300
Town Hall, Louvain 301
Town Hall, Brussels 301
Mechlin Cathedral 301
Antwerp Cathedral 301
Toledo Cathedral 301
Burgos Cathedral 301
Siena Cathedral, Interior 310
San Miniato, Florence; Marble Façade 310

Cathedral of Florence and Campanile 310
Doge’s Palace, Venice 310
Siena Cathedral, Campanile attached 311
Orvieto Cathedral, West Façade 311
Milan Cathedral 311
Milan Cathedral, Interior 311
Pazzi Chapel, S. Croce, Florence 338
Santa Maria Novella, Florence 338
Strozzi Palace, Florence 338
Caprarola Palace 338
Gvimane Palace, Venice 339
Basilica Vicenza 339
Doge’s Palace, Venice; Renaissance Portal 339
S. Maria della Salute, Venice 339
Riccardi Palace, Florence 356
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 356
Ca d’Oro, Venice 356
Vendramini Palace, Venice 356
Farnese Palace, Rome 356
Court of the Farnese Palace 356
Capitol Palaces, Rome 357
Library of S. Mark, Venice 357
S. Spirito, Florence 357
S. Andrea, Mantua 357
S. Peter’s, Rome 357
Interior of S. Peter’s, Rome 357
Château de Blois. Gothic part built by Louis XII 374
Maison François I, Paris 374
Château de Blois. Part added by Francis I 374
Château de Chambord 374
Luxembourg Palace 375
Plan showing growth of Louvre 375
Pavilion de l’Horloge, Louvre 375

Castle of Heidelberg 390
Another View of the Heinrichsbau 390
Bremen City Hall 390
Pellershaus, Nüremburg 390
Antwerp City Hall 390
Liège, Court of Palais de Justice 390
College of Santa Cruz, Valladolid 391
Court of the Casa de Zaporta 391
Court of the College of Alcala de Henares 391
Elevation and Plan of uncompleted Palace Charles V 391
The Escoriál 391
Plan of The Escoriál 391
Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire 410
Banqueting Hall, Whitehall 410
Haddon Hall, Derbyshire 410
Haddon Hall; the Long Gallery 410
S. Paul’s Cathedral, London 411
S. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, London 411
Old Charlton, Kent 411
Georgian Chimney piece and overmantel 411
Christ Church, Philadelphia 428
Home of the Poet Longfellow, Cambridge, Mass. 428
Washington’s Home at Mount Vernon 429
Another Southern Colonial example, Montgomery, Ala. 429
La Madeleine, Paris 436
S. George’s Hall, Liverpool 436
Panthéon, Paris 436
Arc de l’Etoile, Paris 436
Opera House, Paris 436
State House, Boston 436
Capitol at Washington 436
City Hall, New York 437
St. Thomas, New York 437

Houses of Parliament 437
Plan of the Houses of Parliament 437
Scotland Yard 454
Woodburn Hall, New Windsor, N. Y. 454
Trinity Church, Boston 454
County Buildings, Pittsburg 454
The Breakers, Newport, R. I. 454
Detail of residence of Mr. Thomas Hastings, Westbury, Long
Island 454
Schiller Theatre Building, Chicago 455
Woolworth Building 455
Steel Cage Construction. Scene in lower New York 455

BOOK I

HOW TO STUDY
ARCHITECTURE
CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting share the distinctive title of the Fine
Arts, or, as the Italians and French more fitly call them, the Beautiful Arts;
the arts, that is to say, of beautiful design. They are known by their beauty.
By their beauty they appeal to the eye and through the eye to the mind,
stirring in us emotions or feelings of pleasure—a higher kind of pleasure
than that which is derived solely from the gratification of the senses—the
kind which is distinguished as æsthetic.
The term æsthetic is derived from a Greek word, meaning perception.
Originally it described the act of perceiving “objects” by means of the
senses—“objects” meaning anything that can be perceived through the
senses. But the term æsthetic has come to have another meaning, especially
in respect to sense-perceptions derived from seeing and hearing. It means
that the perception gives us pleasure, because it stirs in us a sense of beauty.
It may do so without any conscious activity on the part of our mind. We
may be absorbed in the delight of the sensation; or it may appeal to our
mind—to our memory or imagination—in such a way as to set us thinking
and feeling not only about the immediate “object” but also about something
which our mind associates with it.
For example: by simple sense-perception we discover that one tree is
taller than another, or that one tree is an elm, another a silver birch. Our
perception may stop there; but not if we are in a mood to contemplate. Then
the perception that one tree is taller than the other may be followed by the
feeling that the taller tree gives us more satisfaction. It may seem to us to be

a better proportioned tree: its parts are more pleasingly related to the whole
mass; or it may seem to be in a fitter relation to the spot it occupies and to
the other “objects” near it. Again, having ascertained by pure sense-
impression that one tree is an elm and the other a silver birch, we may find
ourselves thinking about the qualities of difference presented by the two
trees. With what splendid assurance the elm trunk rears up! How
majestically the branches radiate from it and bear their glorious masses of
abundant foliage! On the other hand, how dainty are the stems and branches
of the silver birch, how delicately graceful the sprays of tiny leaves! “How
sensitive!” perhaps we say. For to our imagination the slender tree may
seem to be endowed with senses that respond to every movement of the air,
to every glancing of the sunlight.
In all these cases we have gone beyond mere sense-perception. We are
no longer interested only in the “object.” Our interest has become
subjective. We are interested in the subject not the object of the verb, to
perceive—the subject who perceives, in this case, ourself; how the thing
affects oneself; how it stirs in one a sense of beauty. By this time our
thoughts may have been withdrawn from the concrete object and have
passed on to “abstract” ideas, suggested by the object. It is grandeur of
growth, as embodied in the elm, fragile tenderness, as expressed in the
birch, that absorb our thought; and the wonder also how qualities so
different can survive the rude shocks of nature, and find, each its special
function in the scheme of nature’s beauty.
In thus feeling external objects through our own experience of life and
our own sense of beauty, we are employing the sense-perception that is
specially called æsthetic. And it is in the degree to which objects of
architecture, sculpture, or painting have the capacity of stimulating this
æsthetic appreciation that they properly belong in the company of the Fine
Arts.

Architecture is the science and art of building structures that, while in
most cases they serve a useful purpose, are in all cases designed and built
with a view to beauty. Their motive is beauty as well as utility.
In certain instances, as, for example, the triumphal arch, the motive may
seem to have been solely one of beauty. On the other hand, when we recall
that the arch was erected as a memorial to some great man or some great

exploit—the Arch of Titus, for example, commemorating this general’s
capture of Jerusalem—the imposing dignity of the structure, by compelling
attention and exciting admiration, would actually serve the purpose for
which it was erected.
Indeed, the distinction which people are apt to draw between the useful
and the beautiful is not necessarily so sharp as is supposed and is largely
founded upon ignorance or a mistaken attitude toward life. The tendency to
be satisfied with the utility of a thing and to regard beauty as a fad,
impractical and wasteful, shows that, although our civilisation may have
progressed in some respects, it has fallen back in others. For there is
nothing more surely certain in the history of human progress, than that,
while primitive man had to exercise his ingenuity in providing for the
necessities of life and in the making of tools, implements, utensils, and so
forth to achieve his needs, he was not satisfied that his work should be
merely useful. He had a mind to make it pleasing in shape and by means of
ornament. And this attention to beauty grew as men grew in civilisation,
becoming most conspicuous as their civilisation reached its highest point;
and continued through the ages, until machinery began to replace the
individual craftsman.
For the individual craftsman, responsible for making a thing from start to
finish, must, if he is worth a hill of beans, take a personal pride in making it
as well as he can. As the Bible relates of the Supreme Creator, “And God
saw everything that he had made and, behold, it was very good.” And the
craftsman, so long as he is free to create out of his own knowledge and his
own feeling, must be able to feel this, because there is an instinct in him, an
imperative need of his own nature, that he shall be proud of his work. It is a
wonderful fact of human nature that when it works freely, putting forth all
its capacities, it is prompted by this instinct, not only to make useful things
but also to make them well and as beautiful as may be.
But gradually machinery took away the workman’s control of his work.
He ceased to design, lay out, and carry through all the details of his work to
a finish. He has come to be intrusted with only a part of the operation, and
that is performed under the control of a machine that turns out the work
with soulless uniformity. The craftsman has degenerated into a repeater of
partial processes; he has become the servant of a machine; a cog in a vast
mechanical system. And, with the development of high power machines the

output of production has been increased, until quantity rather than quality
has tended to become the ambition of the system.
It has followed as a logical result of this taking away from millions of
men and women the privilege of being individual craftsmen, creators of
their own handiwork, that they have grown indifferent to the quality of the
work turned out; taste, which means the ability to discriminate between
qualities, has diminished and a general indifference to the element of beauty
has ensued.

Of all the Fine Arts, Architecture is closest to the life of man. It has been
developed out of the primitive necessity of providing shelter from the
elements and protection against the assaults of all kinds of aggressors. And
chief among the aggressors against which primitive man sought to defend
himself were the mysterious forces of nature which his imagination pictured
as evil spirits. To ward off these and to enlist the support of kindly spirits
represented a necessity of life that developed through fetish worship into
some positive conception of religion. This need was embodied in structures,
which, originating in the selection or erection of a single stone, gradually
became composed of an aggregation of stones variously disposed, in heaps,
in geometric groups of single stones, or in the placing of stones horizontally
upon two or more vertical supporting stones.
In these crude devices to mark the burial places of dead heroes and to
provide for the necessities of religion, primitive man used the stones as he
found them, with a preference for those of enormous size, to ensure
permanency. Meanwhile, in the huts that he erected for the living, it is
reasonable to suppose that, when available, the more perishable material of
timber was employed. And here, again, he would use at first the smaller
limbs, planting them in the ground in a circle or square and drawing them
together at the top, so that they took the shape of a heap of stones; and
covering them with skins, so that they became the prototype of the tent.
Then gradually he would employ stouter timbers, planting them upright and
keeping them in place at the top with horizontal timbers. On these would be
laid transverse beams to form a roof; the spaces between the beams, as
between the uprights of the walls, being filled in with wattles of twigs or
reeds and rendered still more impervious to weather by a coating of clay or
mud.

The efforts of primitive builders, it is true, are rather of archæological
than of architectural significance, yet they have this much to do with
architecture, that in them are to be discovered the rudiments of the art. For
by the time that man had superimposed a stone horizontally upon two
vertical ones, he had hit upon the principle of construction, now variously
styled “post and lintel” or “post and beam” or “trabeated,” that is to say,
“beam” construction. The embryo was conceived that in the fulness of time
would be developed into the trabeated design of the Egyptian temple and
the column-and-entablature design of Classic architecture. From the
colossal, monolithic form, still preserved, for example, in Stonehenge, there
is a direct progression to the highly organised perfection of the Parthenon.
It is this fact that makes the study of architecture so vitally interesting.
Its evolution has proceeded, stage by stage, with the evolution of
civilisation. Having its roots in necessity, it has expressed the phases of
civilisation more directly and intimately than have the other Fine Arts;
while the comparative durability of the materials in which it has been
embodied has caused more of its records to survive. Even out of the
fragments of architecture it is possible for the imagination to visualise
epochs of civilisation long since buried in the past; while the memorials that
have been preserved in comparative integrity stand out through the misty
pages of history as object lessons of distinct illumination.

Accordingly, one purpose of this book represents an attempt to study the
evolution of architecture in relation to the phases of civilisation that it
immediately embodied; to find in the monuments of architecture so many
“sermons in stone”—discourses upon the character, conditions of life, the
methods and the ideals of the men who reared and shaped them.
And this involves the second purpose, that we shall try to study
architecture as it actually evolved in practice. Remembering that it
originated in the need of making provision for certain specific purposes, in
a word, that its motive primarily was practical, moreover, that from the first
it has been the product of invention, we will try to study it in relation to
man’s gradual mastery of material and the processes of building. We will
regard architecture in its fundamental significance as the science and art of
building; tracing, as far as is possible, the stages by which man has met the
problems imposed upon him by the purpose of the structure and by the

conditions of the material available; how he gradually surmounted the
difficulties of building, step by step improving upon his devices and
processes and thereby creating new principles of construction, and, further,
how the practical operations of one race and period were carried on,
modified, or developed by other races, under different conditions and in
response to differences of needs and ideals.
And, while thus studying architecture as the gradual solution of practical
problems of construction we will also keep constantly in mind the stages by
which as man’s skill in building progressed, so also did his desire to make
his structures more and more expressive of his higher consciousness of
human dignity. How age after age built not only to meet the needs of living
but also to embody its ideals of the present and the future life; how hand in
hand with growing skill in workmanship was evolved superior achievement
in artistic beauty.
Our methods of study shall follow, as far as possible, the architect’s
order of procedure. Given a site and the commission of erecting thereon a
building for a specific purpose, the architect first concerns himself with the
plans: the ground plan, and, if the building be of more than one story, the
several floor plans. He lays out in the form of a diagram the lines that
enclose the building and those that mark the divisions and subdivisions;
indicating by breaks in the lines the openings of doors and windows and by
isolated figures the position of columns or piers which he may be going to
use for support of ceilings and roofs. The disposition of all these particulars
will be determined not only by the purpose of the building, but also by the
character of the site and by the nature of the materials and method of
construction that the architect purposes to employ.
Then, having acquired the habit of thinking of a building as having
originated in a plan, we will follow the building as it grows up out of the
plan, taking vertical form in what the architect calls the elevation, or, when
he is speaking specifically of the outside of the building, the façades.
Sometimes we shall study one of the diagrams, which he calls a section,
when he imagines his building intersected by a vertical plane that cuts the
structure into two parts. The one between the spectator and the cutting plane
is supposed to be removed, and thus is laid bare the system of the interior
construction-work.

In studying the exterior of a building, therefore, we shall keep in mind
the interior disposition, arising out of the planning, and acquire the habit of
looking on the outside of a building as logically related to the interior. The
design of a building will come to mean to us not a mere pattern of façade,
arbitrarily invented, but an arrangement of vertical and horizontal features,
of solid surfaces and open spaces, that has grown out of the interior
conditions and proclaims them.
In a word, we shall regard a work of architecture as an organic growth;
rooted in the plan, springing up in accordance with constructive principles;
each part having its separate function, and all co-ordinated in harmonious
relation to the unity of the whole. For we shall find that unity of design is a
special element of excellence in architecture; a unity secured by the
relations of proportion, harmony and rhythm established between the
several parts and between the parts and the whole. And, since architecture is
primarily an art of practical utility, all these relations are equally determined
by the principle of fitness; in order that each and every part may perform
most efficiently its respective function in the combined purpose of the
whole edifice. For this is the first and final criterion of organic composition.

STONEHENGE. SALISBURY PLAIN, ENGLAND
Primitive Use of Post and Beam Construction. Pp. 8, 16

SECTION AND PLAN OF “TREASURY OF ATREUS” TEOCALLI OR “HOUSE OF
At Mycenæ. Example of “Tholos” or Bee-Hive Construction. GOD”
P. 14 At Guatusco, Costa Rica. P. 20

CHAPTER II

PRIMITIVE STRUCTURES

The various remains that exist of prehistoric structures, though scattered
widely over different parts of the world, present a general similarity of
purpose and design.
The earliest examples of domestic buildings are the lake-dwellings
which have been discovered at the bottom of some of the Swiss lakes, as
well as in other countries both in the Eastern and Western hemispheres.
They consist of huts, rudely constructed of timber, erected on piles,
sometimes in such numbers as to form a fair-sized village. Their purpose
was apparently to afford security against sudden attacks of enemies, the
danger of wild beasts and snakes and the malaria and fever of the swampy
shores, while bringing the inhabitants nearer to their food supply and
offering a crude but ready means of sanitation. The system still survives
among the natives of many tropical countries and has its analogy in the
boat-houses that throng the Canton River in China.
More important, however, archæologically as well as in relation to the
subsequent story of building, as it gradually developed into the art of
architecture are: the single huge stone, known as a Menhir; the Galgal or
Cairn of stones piled in a heap; the Tumulus or Barrow, composed of a
mound of earth and the Cromlech.

The single stone seems to have been regarded as an object of veneration
and a fetish to ward off evil spirits. It may have been the primitive origin of
the Egyptian obelisk, the Greek stele and the modern tombstone. From the
galgal and barrow may have been developed the pyramids of Egypt and the
truncated pyramid which we shall find to be the foundation platforms of
temples in various parts of the world while the cromlech is the prototype of
temples.
Two stones were set upright and a third was placed upon the top of them.
This represents in rudimentary form the so-called “post and beam” principle
of temple construction. Sometimes two or four uprights were surmounted
by a large flat stone. It had the appearance of a gigantic table and is called a
Dolmen. It is conjectured that this was a form of sepulchral-chamber, in
which the corpse was laid, being thus protected from the earth that was
heaped around the stones into a mound. If so, the Dolmen is the origin of
the sepulchral chamber that was embedded in the Egyptian pyramid.
Meanwhile, an intermediary stage between the highly developed
pyramids and the primitive dolmen is represented in the Altun-Obu
Sepulchre, near Kertsch in the Crimea. Here the mound is faced with
layers of shaped stones, with which also the chamber and the passage
leading to it are lined. The ceilings of both are constructed of courses of
stone, each of which projects a little beyond the one beneath it, until the
diminishing space is capped by a single stone. In the angle of masonry thus
formed is discoverable the rudimentary beginning of the arch.
It is also convenient here to note, though it anticipates our story, the
more elaborate example of this principle of roofing which is shown in the
so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenæ in Greece. In this instance,
moreover, there is a farther approximation toward the arch, since the
projections of the stones have been cut so as to present a continuous line.
And these contour lines are slightly concave and meet at the top in a point,
for which reason this class of tomb is known as bee-hive.
Another form of this method of angular roofing is seen in an Arch at
Delos, which is part of a system of masonry that is known as Cyclopean,
after the name of the one-eyed giant whom Ulysses and his followers
encountered in Sicily, during their return from Troy. For the masonry is
composed of large blocks of unshaped stone, the interstices of which are
filled in with smaller stones. Here, too, the actual arch is composed of a

repetition of huge, upright monoliths, supporting a series of single blocks,
set up one against the other at an angle.
While, however, these primitive forms of roof construction prefigure the
later development of the true arch, the student is warned in advance that
they represent rather a feeling of the need of some such method of
construction than any approach to a solution of the problem. For the latter,
as we shall find later, consisted in discovering how to counteract the thrust
of the arch; its tendency, that is, to press outward and collapse; whereas in
the primitive construction this danger was evaded by embedding the roof in
a mass of masonry or earth that made lateral strains impossible. The system,
in fact, was more like that employed in shoring up the excavations in
modern tunnelling and mining.
Meanwhile, this rude method of spanning an opening with more than
one piece of stone was the primitive germ of the later development of arch,
vault, and dome construction, just as the placing of a single horizontal stone
on two upright ones is the prototype of columns and entablature. Thus the
instinct of man, in earliest times, reached out toward the two fundamental
principles of architectural construction.
The most interesting examples of primitive structure are the so-called
Cromlechs, of which that of Stonehenge, in England, is the best preserved.
The unit of this and like remains is the “post and beam” formation,
composed of a block of stone, supported on two uprights. In the case of
Stonehenge this formation was repeated so as to form a continuous circle
one hundred feet in diameter. Within this was a concentric circle, composed
of smaller slabs, which enclosed a series of five separate post and beam
structures on a horse-shoe plan. The latter is repeated by another series of
slabs and in the centre stands the flat altar stone. Seventeen stones of the
outer circle, varying from sixteen to eighteen feet in height, are still
standing and in part connected by their beam slabs.
This impressive memorial stands on Salisbury Plain, eight miles north of
the cathedral city of Salisbury, in the neighbourhood of which are many
barrows. Was it then the temple of a burying place of mighty chieftains or
was it erected in memory of some great victory in honour of the dead
heroes and the nation’s god? According to Geoffrey of Monmouth (A.D.
1154) who is supposed to have compiled much of his history from Celtic

legends, Stonehenge is a Celtic Memorial, erected to the glory of the Celtic
Zeus.
Rhys, in his “Celtic Heathendom,” accepts the probability of this
account and adds: “What sort of temple could have been more appropriate
for the primary god of light and of the luminous heavens than a spacious
open-air enclosure of a circular form like Stonehenge? Nor do I see any
objection to the old idea that Stonehenge was the original of the famous
temple of Apollo in the island of the Hyperboreans, the stories about which
were based in the first instance most likely on the journal of Pytheas’
travels.” Pytheas was a Greek navigator and astronomer of the second half
of the fourth century B.C., who was a native of the Greek colony of Massilia
(Marseilles) and visited the coasts of Spain, Gaul, and Britain.
Situated some twenty miles to the north of Stonehenge is the Abury or
Avebury monument. Its remains comprise two circles, formed of menhirs,
which are enclosed within a large outer circle of monoliths, about 1250 feet
in diameter. This was further surrounded by a moat and rampart, which
suggest that the structure may have served at once the purposes of a place
of assembly and a stronghold.
At Carnac, in the old territory of Brittany, in France, are the remains of
about 1000 menhirs, some of which reach a height of 16 feet, disposed in
parallel straight rows, forming avenues nearly two miles long. They are
unworked blocks of granite, set in the ground at their smaller ends. The
neighbourhood also abounds with tumuli, dolmens, and later monuments
that belong to the Polished Stone Age.
Furthermore, remains of such monuments as we have been describing
are found in Scandinavia, Ireland, North Germany (in Hannover and the
Baltic Provinces); also in India and Asia Minor, in Egypt, on the northwest
of Africa and in the region about the Atlas Mountains. This fact, assuming
that the monuments are of Celtic origin, testifies to the wide-spread
migrations of this important branch of the Indo-European family which in
prehistoric times swept westward in successive waves. It is known that this
race also overflowed into Northern Italy and Spain. That none of their
monuments of the Rough Stone and Polished Stone ages exist in these
countries seems to point to the migration thither having been made at a later
period.

From the time that the Celtic race finds its way into recorded history it
has been recognised as pre-eminently characterised by artistic genius. The
rude menhirs, under the combined influences of Christianity and art were in
time replaced by Stone Crosses that in form closely approximate the
thickset simplicity of the monolith, but are embellished with carved
ornament. And the latter in its detail is evidently akin to the motives of
decoration found upon the weapons and earthenware of the Bronze Age,
combined with the interlace of lines, suggested by the example of weaving,
and the use of motives derived from plant forms. These same principles of
decoration were applied to the metal-work in which the Celt excelled and
later to the decorated manuscripts in which he reached so high a degree of
artistry. The Celtic artists in time also introduced human and animal figures
into their designs, but always treated them solely as motives of decoration
and never with the purpose of representing them naturally.
The prevalence of these decorative motives in ancient Asiatic and
European ornament may have been due to the extended migrations of the
Celts. But not necessarily; for they are equally to be found in the primitive
ornament of the South Sea Islanders, North American Indians, and the
inhabitants of Peru, Mexico, and Central America. Primitive man, in fact,
shows a tendency to similarity of motives and methods at corresponding
stages of his evolution.

In the last three countries have been discovered some of the most
remarkable remains of the Polished Stone Age and the Bronze Age. For it
was to this stage—after how many centuries of development is only a
matter of conjecture—that the mighty nations of the Incas, Aztecs, and
others had attained, when the Spanish invaders in the sixteenth century
overcame them and wiped out their civilisations.
Hitherto the most famous example has been the ruins of Cuzco, the
imperial city of the Incas in Peru, which was captured by Pizarro; but the
exploration of Professor Hiram Bingham has recently unearthed, also in
Peru, Machu Picchu, a city of refuge, perched almost inaccessibly on the
heights of the Andes. It is the belief of the explorer that this is the
traditional city of Tampu Tocco, to which a highly civilised tribe retreated,
when they were hard pressed by barbarian enemies and from which, legend
says, they descended later to conquer Peru and found the city of Cuzco,

under the leadership of “three brothers who went out from three windows.”
Now Tampa means a place of temporary abode and Tocco means windows;
and in the principal plaza of this newly discovered city has been found a
temple with three windows.
Thus it is possible that it was actually a deserted city at the time of the
Spanish invasion, held in reverence as the cradle city of the Incas. Anyhow,
it escaped the knowledge and the ravages of the Spaniards and retains to-
day its primitive state, unmixed with the additions of any subsequent
civilisation.
It occupies an immense area, only rivalled by that of Cuzco, and is
constructed of stones, many of which weigh several tons, hewn into shape
with stone hammers. Large portions of the mountain sides are built up with
terraces, which were used for agricultural purposes and suggest an analogy
with the “hanging gardens” of Babylon. No less than a hundred flights of
steps connect the various parts of the city, which is divided into wards or
“clan groups” by walled enclosures, enclosing houses and sometimes a
central place of worship. The typical design of the houses is much like that
of an Irish cabin—a ground story and a half story with gabled ends, each
pierced by a small window. The wooden roofs have disappeared, but the
stones, bored with a hole, to which the timbers were lashed, are still in
place. In the burial caves bronze objects of fine workmanship have been
discovered.
Among other noted remains of early buildings is the Teocalli or “House
of the God” of Guatusco in Costa Rica. It shows a truncated pyramid of
masonry, rising in steps, the top forming a platform on which the temple
stands. A still more important example of this form of structure must have
been the Teocalli of Tenochtitlan, the ancient name of Mexico City. Built
about 1446, it was destroyed by the Spaniards and part of its site is now
occupied by the Cathedral. According to accounts it comprised a truncated
pyramid, measuring at the top, which was 86 feet from the ground, 325 by
250 feet. In the ascent it was necessary to pass five times round the
structure by a series of terraces. On the platform were several ceremonial
buildings, the terrible image of the god Huitzilopochtli, supposed to be the
one that is now in the Museum of Mexico City, and the sacrificial stone.
Upon the latter were sacrificed immense numbers of human victims; report
saying, though no doubt with exaggeration, that at the dedication of the

temple seventy thousand were slaughtered to appease the sanguinary
appetite of this hideous idol.
The exteriors of the latest remains of Central America and Mexican
primitive civilisation are embellished with ornament, the motives of which
exhibit curved and rectangular meanders and interlacings, derived from the
example of weaving and plaiting, as well as vegetable and animal forms.
Often, as in the Casa de Monjas in Yucatan, the ornament is so profuse
that it obscures the character of the structure, while the forms are fantastic
and extravagant and in some instances horribly grotesque. Their intention
apparently was to strike awe into the spectator.
Most of what we have been studying in this chapter comes under the
head of archaeology rather than of art. Nevertheless, since it represents the
gradual approach of civilisation toward the artistic conception, it is well
worth attention.

BOOK II

PRE-CLASSIC PERIOD

CHAPTER I

EGYPTIAN CIVILISATION

The most ancient civilisation known to us is that of Egypt, and the
knowledge of it is mainly derived from its architectural remains and the
sculpture, painting, and inscriptions with which they are decorated. In
addition, there are the records written upon papyri, the Biblical books of
Exodus, and the history of Manetho, an Egyptian priest, who lived about
250 B.C. By this time Egypt had been subdued by Alexander the Great and
had passed under the rule of the Ptolemies. So Manetho wrote in Greek, but
only fragments of his work have survived, through quotations made from it
by Eusebius, Josephus, and other historians.
It is from all these materials that scholars have endeavoured to piece
together some sort of connected history of the period covered by Manetho;
the difficulty being increased by the fact that the Egyptian system of
chronology reckoned by dynasties and computed the time by the years of
the reigning sovereign, beginning anew with each succession. Furthermore,
the inscriptions omit references to any interruptions that occurred in the
sequence of the dynasties; recording only the periods of Egyptian
supremacy and leaving out those in which the country suffered from the
domination, short or long, of foreign conquerors.
Accordingly, while Manetho names the first ruler of the First Dynasty as
Menes, there is nothing but the conjecture of scholars as to the date; and the
latter has been variously estimated as from 3892 to 5650 years before
Christ.

It will be a help at the outset to summarise the Dynasties under two
heads: (A) those of Independent Egypt; (B) those of Subject Egypt.
A. Dynasties of Independence.
1. I-X—The Ancient Empire; Capital, Memphis in Lower Egypt. Lasted
about 1500 years.
2. XI-XIII—The Middle Empire, or First Theban Monarchy; Capital,
Thebes in Upper Egypt. Lasted about 900 years.
3. XIV-XVII—Hyksos Invaders occupy Lower Egypt; the Egyptian
princes rule as vassal princes in Upper Egypt: from 400-500 years.
4. XVIII-XX—The New Empire or Second Theban Monarchy. The
Great Epoch of Egyptian power and art. Lasted about 600 years and
ended about 1000 B.C.
B. Dynasties of Subjection.
5. XXI-XXXII—The Period of Decadence under various foreign rulers;
sometimes called the Saitic Period, because the first conquerors, the
Libyans, made their capital at Sais. Lasted from about 1000-324 B.C.
6. XXXIII—The Ptolemaic Period of Greek rule, following the
Conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great; 324-31 B.C.
7. XXXIV—The Roman Rule: Egypt a Province of the Roman Empire;
31 B.C. to 395 A.D. At the latter date it became a part of the Eastern
Roman Empire.
In 389 the emperor, Theodosius, issued an edict proclaiming that
Christianity was to be recognised as the religion of Egypt. In consequence
of this change all knowledge of the old form of writing gradually
disappeared and the antiquities of Egypt remained a sealed book for some
fourteen centuries.

The commencement of the modern interest in Egypt, as a mine of
historical, archæological, and artistic lore, dates from Napoleon Bonaparte’s
invasion, for he took with him a body of savants to explore the topography
and nature of the country and its antiquities. The results of their labours
were published in 1809-13 in twenty-five volumes, illustrated with 900
engravings.
Meanwhile, in 1799, Captain Boussard, an engineer under Bonaparte,
had discovered in the trenches a tablet of black basalt, inscribed with three

kinds of writing, one of which was Greek. From the name of the village
near which it was found it is called the Rosetta Stone and is now in the
British Museum. Various attempts were made to decipher through the Greek
the other two scripts, which were, respectively, hieroglyphic and the
demotic or popular writing-form of ancient Egypt.
Finally, the clue was discovered by the French scholar, Champollion. He
found there had been three kinds of characters which represented successive
developments of one system of writing: that in the hieroglyphic each letter
was represented by a picture-form; that in the hieratic or priestly writing,
these forms were represented in a freer and more fluent way, which was
further simplified in the demotic characters, used generally by the scribes.
Two of these had been repeated as nearly as possible in the Greek text. It is
out of this discovery that Egyptology, or the science which concerns itself
with the writing, language, literature, monuments, and history of ancient
Egypt, is being gradually developed. Yet the subject is still involved in great
uncertainty, owing to the difficulty in discovering principles of grammar, so
that the translations of one scholar vary from those of others and all reach
only the general sense, without assurance of accuracy.

The civilisation of a country is always largely determined by its
geographical character and the latter, in the case of Egypt, is of exceptional
significance. Herodotus called Egypt the “Gift of the Nile.” The great river
created it and has continued to preserve it. For the country comprises a
narrow strip of soil varying from 4 to 16 miles in width, bordering the two
sides of the stream, and extending in ancient times, as far as the second
cataract, a distance of some 900 miles; approximating, that is to say, the
distance from New York to Chicago or from London to Florence. It is
bounded by rocky hills, and, as it reaches the Mediterranean, fans out into a
delta of flat lands, the various streams being kept in place by dykes. The
only thing that has saved this country from being swallowed up in the desert
is the annual rise of the river, succeeding the tropical rains in the interior
and the melting of the snow in the mountains of Abyssinia. This floods the
lowlands and leaves behind an alluvial deposit, so richly fertile that the soil,
warmed by constant sunshine, yields three harvests annually. Meanwhile, it
is a remarkable fact that the records of ancient times tally with those of to-
day, both showing that the amount of the rise varies but little from year to
year.

Before considering how these natural features of the country affected the
civilisation of its inhabitants, a fact is to be noted. At the point of time when
Manetho commenced his history of the Egyptians, variously estimated from
about 4000 to about 6000 years before the Christian Era, they appear as a
people already possessed of a high degree of civilisation, surrounded by
inferior races. An immense interval of progress separates them from the
earliest conditions that we considered in the previous chapter. By what
stages did they reach this footing of superiority and through what length of
time; moreover, what was the origin of their race? To these questions of
profound interest there is no answer forthcoming. Some recent scholars are
disposed to believe that the civilisation of Egypt, as we first meet with it,
had been preceded by a still more remote civilisation in Babylonia; but as
yet they have not shaken the accepted view that priority in civilisation
belongs to the Land of the Nile. So far as knowledge exists, civilisation
appeared first in Egypt and by a wonderful combination of circumstances,
continued up to historic times.
The tenacity of the civilisation of the Egyptians is a counterpart of the
tenacity of character of the people, as a result primarily of their natural
surroundings. Within the limits of Upper and Lower, that is to say of
Southern and Northern Egypt, the Nile has no tributaries. Consequently,
there was at first no urge to the inhabitants to push outward; and every
inducement to cling to their own strip of territory. Moreover, since the
periodic river floods were constant, there was every inducement, nay almost
necessity, that they should cling to the methods by which they had learned
to utilise them. Hence, conservatism was forced upon them and became
ingrained in their character and institutions. It was further encouraged by
their isolation; for the adjoining country was desert, meagrely occupied by
nomad tribes. Accordingly, that tendency of every nation to consider itself
the salt of the earth and especially favoured of the gods seemed justified
abundantly in their case.
Again, their dependence on the Nile early taught them the habit of noting
the seasons, while the necessity of husbanding the water in reservoirs and
by irrigation made them skilled in engineering and generally resourceful.
And these characteristics of method and constructiveness were reflected in
the social organisation.
The King was the supreme head of the whole system, descendant of the
Sun-god, Ra, the individual embodiment of the nation’s greatness, while

beneath him the people were divided into the official class, middle class,
and slaves. The first included generals, high-priests, officers, physicians,
overseers, district-chiefs, judges, master-builders, scribes, and many others
—officialdom being spun like a web over the life of the people. The middle
class, composed of merchants, traders, ordinary priests, artisans, free
working potters, carpenters, joiners, smiths, and agriculturists, enjoyed
many of the privileges of the upper classes, but were not permitted to erect
tombs, though their place of burial might be marked by a stele with
inscriptions. The slaves were mere hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Title to all land, except that attached to the temples, was vested in the
King and the land was worked for the State by slaves or let out at an annual
rental. In connection with this subject compare the story of Joseph,
especially Genesis xli.
Each administrative department had its own troops—or, to use the
modern word, corvée—of slaves, under an overseer who kept tally of work
done and rations distributed. It was the troop, not the individual, that
constituted the unit. Agriculturists ranked higher than the artisans; although
the work of the latter was highly esteemed. The weavers made baskets,
mats, and boats of papyrus leaves and produced linen of the finest quality as
well as coarser grades. The carpenter, notwithstanding the scarcity of
timber, did creditable work with the simplest kind of tools. Little variation
was attempted by the potters in the forms of vessels, which were crude but
often finished with fine glazes. The metal workers used gold, silver, bronze,
iron, and tin; silver exceeding gold in value. Whence they procured tin is
unknown, but the other metals came from the mines of Sinai and Nubia.
The processes of agriculture were of the simplest. The plough was
formed of a sharpened stake, dragged by oxen; the crops were cut with
sickles, and the grain was winnowed by casting it in the air, after which it
was stored in large, tunnel-shaped receptacles, filled from the top by a
ladder. While the Egyptians prided themselves on their immense herds of
cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and asses, the shepherds, living in the remote
marshes, were “an abomination unto the Egyptians” (Genesis xlvi, 34).
Their recreations included the hunting of wild animals with dogs, while
the men were armed with lasso and spear and occasionally a bow and
arrows. In the marshy districts birds were brought down with a boomerang
or caught in nets and traps. The people indulged in wrestling matches,

gymnastics, ball-playing, quoits, and juggling, while work was performed
to the accompaniments of music and singing, and music and dancing
enlivened the feasts. The instruments comprised the flute and a kind of
whistle, the guitar, harp, and lyre, the last two having sometimes twenty
strings.
The school, “bookhouse” or “house of instruction,” was presided over by
a scribe and attended by children of all classes. The curriculum included
orthography, calligraphy, and the rules of etiquette, together with practice in
the technical work of the department for which the children were being
trained.
The uniform male garment for all classes was an apron fastened around
the loins. To this in early times the King added a lion’s tail and the noble a
panther-skin. In the Middle Empire the apron took a pointed, triangular
shape in front and became longer, while by degrees a single apron gave way
to a short, opaque under-apron with a long, transparent one over it. The
short apron, however, continued to be the sole garment of the priest. In
time, the costume of the King included garments covering the upper part of
the body, a practice which dates from the Eighteenth Dynasty, when the
vigorous Queen Hatasu adopted the male costume. The uniform dress of
women was a transparent robe hung from the shoulders by straps and
reaching from the breasts to the ankles. In later times it was supplemented
with a sleeved or sleeveless mantle.
These, and countless other particulars of daily life, are pictured with
precise details, in coloured carvings and in paintings on the walls of tombs,
so as to continue after death, for the benefit of the Ka or double, the
conditions which the deceased had been accustomed to in life. This Ka was
believed to be separate from the body, mind, or soul of the individual; an
independent spiritual existence which, as long as it was present, ensured
“protection, life, continuance, purity, health, and joy.” Hence the care with
which provision was made to induce it to remain with the individual when
dead. For continuance of life after death was the cardinal principle of
Egyptian religion. It was the spiritualised expression of the people’s intense
conservatism; and the preservation of the body as a mummy and the taking
of measures to ensure that the Ka would abide with it or, at least, visit it
frequently, were the chief duties of the priesthood. The homes of the living,
therefore, were considered of less importance than those of the dead; and,
while few traces remain of dwellings or even of palaces, Egypt abounds

with Tombs. These are the memorials of individuals, while the Temples
embody the pride and glory of the national, collective life. Indeed, it would
seem that during life the individual, except only the King, who represented
the union of all, was regarded simply as a factor in the collective
organisation of the community, the splendour and power of which was
visualised in the Temples.
Hence the importance which was attached to size and beauty of colour in
the Temple architecture. Evidence shows the Egyptians were not an
intellectual race. That is to say, they were not given to speculation; nor did
they carry their mathematical or scientific studies beyond the point at which
they were needed for material and practical purposes. And equally devoid
of abstract qualities was their imagination. It conceived of “better” in terms
of “bigger,” and “best” in terms of “biggest.” Through all their centuries of
civilisation they did not progress beyond the crude stage of finding
sufficient satisfaction in constructing or possessing “the biggest thing on
earth.” And the biggest was constructed by sheer force of numbers of slave-
workers, at an immense human sacrifice. It has been computed that every
stone in the huge Temples cost at least one life.
Accordingly, the distinguishing features of their Temple architecture are
colossal height and the spreading out over vast areas, as succeeding kings
added to the original building another Court or Hall to demonstrate the
grandeur of his reign.
And, to repeat once more, it was the conservatism, characteristic of the
race, that encouraged this repetition of motives, while at the same time
establishing conventionalised forms for the details. Individuality of artistic
expression was curbed by the canons of form that the priests had laid down
and enforced age after age. Meanwhile, in the scenes of life with which they
decorated the walls, some latitude was allowed the painters and sculptors in
the direction of naturalistic representation; and it was increased when, in
later times, the influence of Cretan civilisation penetrated to Egypt.

We will conclude with a brief summary of the part played by the several
Dynasties in the art which is discussed in the following chapter.
It is to be noted that no inscriptions survive from the first three
Dynasties; but that with the Fourth commence the records which have been
recovered from the Tombs or Mastabas.

To Snofru (Greek Soris, as given by Manetho) is attributed the stepped-
pyramid at Sakkarah, while the four pyramids at Gizeh are known by the
names of their builders Khufu or Cheops; Khafra or Chephren, and
Menkara or Mycerinus. The Sixth Dynasty closed with the reign of Queen
Nitocris, who is supposed to have faced with granite the Pyramid of
Menkara, in which it is believed her funeral chamber was constructed. After
her reign a period of darkness intervened during which the power of the
monarchy was gradually developed, until, with the beginning of the
Eleventh Dynasty, the Government was established in Thebes.
The Kings of the Middle Empire, Usertesen I, II, and III, signalised their
rule by reaching out beyond the limits of Lower and Upper Egypt. They
conquered Ethiopia to the south and opened up trade to the eastward with
Syria, and recovered possession of the mines of Sinai. Temples were built
and great public works of irrigation carried out, while changes were
inaugurated in writing and education. The process of development seems to
have been continued even during the Hyksos usurpation. For these Asiatic
invaders, whose race and origin are unknown—the term Hyksos meaning
Shepherd Kings or Bedouin Chiefs—confined their occupation to Lower
Egypt, while the Egyptian Kings continued to govern Upper Egypt as vassal
princes.
It was an attempted interference with Egyptian self-rule that precipitated
the expulsion of the Hyksos. The latter’s chief had demanded of the “Prince
of the South” that he abandon the worship of Ra-Ammon for that of the
Hyksos god. A refusal led to war which was brought to a successful end by
Amasis or Ahmes I, first King of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
With the commencement of the New Empire Egypt entered upon an era
of prosperity and power that were reflected in the grandeur of her art. It
corresponded in Egyptian history to the age of Pericles in Athens; the
Imperial Epoch of Rome, and the High Renaissance of the sixteenth century
in Italy. Amenophis subdued the Libyans to the westward of the Delta. His
successor, Thothmes I, carried conquest as far south as the third cataract
and annexed the land of Cush as a province. Having thus consolidated
authority in the neighbourhood of Egypt, he invaded Palestine and Syria as
far as the Euphrates. His daughter, Queen Hatasu, fitted out an expedition to
the land of Punt (South Arabia) and brought back incense, wood, and
animals, such as the dog-headed ape; all of which is duly recorded on the
walls of her temple at Deir-el-Bahri. But the acme of power was reached by

her half-brother, Thothmes III; for this monarch made fifteen expeditions,
in the course of which he reduced the rising power of the Hittites and made
himself master of the countries west of the Euphrates and south of Amanus.
His two successors managed to hold together this great empire; but in time
these foreign entanglements necessitated frequent expeditions.
By the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty the federation of the Hittites had
been consolidated and Seti I advanced against them, claiming a victory
which was at least not final, for they threatened his successor, Rameses II,
who, however, made a treaty of peace with them and married the daughter
of the Hittite king. Rameses II also invaded Palestine and afterwards
penetrated as far as the Orontes. He reigned sixty-six years and it has been
estimated that half the buildings in Egypt bear his cartouche; although in
many cases he probably followed the practice of adding his own cartouche
to buildings already existing.
It was during the reign of his son, Meneptah, that the Hebrew Exodus is
supposed to have taken place; an event that indicates the weakening of the
central authority, which was continued under this king’s successors. Finally,
during the reign of Rameses III, of the Twentieth Dynasty, mercenaries
were not only employed but allowed to settle in the country and during the
remainder of the Rameseide Dynasty the monarchs became the tools of
mercenaries and priests. Thus set in the decadence of power and art, which
marked the Saitic Dynasty.
Then followed a short period of Persian domination, which was so
hateful to the Egyptians that they welcomed Alexander as a liberator. He
appointed as king one of his generals, Ptolemy, in whose family the
succession continued through sixteen rulers of the same name. During this
period Egypt became an intellectual centre, its splendid library being the
nucleus of scholarship. It was by order or at least permission of Ptolemy
Philadelphos, about 270 or 280 B.C., that the Hebrew scriptures were
translated into Greek by seventy scholars, whence the version is known as
the Septuagint. The Ptolemies signalised their rule by the restoration of the
old temples and monuments, which had suffered from the havoc of
invasions.
After the victory of Augustus Cæsar at Actium in B.C. 31 and the death of
Cleopatra the following year, Egypt became, as we have already noted, a
Roman province.

CHAPTER II

EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE

The remains of monumental architecture in Egypt afford a remarkable
opportunity of studying the development from primitive types of structure.
The earliest, which comprise the pyramids, mastabas, and two examples of
temples, represent developed forms of the tumulus and dolmen, while the
later temples, which began to appear in the Twelfth Dynasty, exhibit their
origin in the primitive hut of the country.

THE ANCIENT EMPIRE

Great Sphinx.—Meanwhile among the earliest monuments, of uncertain
date and origin, is the Great Sphinx of Gizeh. It is the prototype of the
sphinxes that were afterwards used to form avenues of approach to the
temples, being distinguished from the Greek type of Sphinx by the fact that
the recumbent lion body is wingless and carries a male instead of female
head and bust. The heads of the later sphinxes represented portraits of the
reigning kings, the conception symbolised in the whole figure being the
royal power. An inscription, however, upon a small temple, which was
erected between the paws of the Great Sphinx in the Eighteenth Dynasty,
records that it was made in honour of Harmachis, one of the forms of the
Sun-god, Ra.
Hewn out of the living rock, it faces eastward, as if on guard over the
pyramids and the entrance to the Nile Valley. The dimensions, when the
sand was cleared from

SECTION OF PYRAMID MODELS OF MASTABAS
Showing King’s Chamber, Queen’s Chamber and a From the Metropolitan Museum of
Third One Below. P. 40 Art, N. Y. P. 40

TYPES OF EGYPTIAN COLUMNS

Bell or Campaniform Hathor-headed Lotus Bud: Upper from Beni Hassan
P. 52

TEMPLE-TOMB OF RAMESES II AT ABOU-SIMBEL.
P. 45

PLAN OF RAMESSEUM OR TEMPLE-TOMB OF RAMESES II
Near Deir-el-Bahri. Showing Pylons, Two Forecourts with Colonnades; Hypostyle Hall or
Hall of Columns, and the Sanctuary and Ritual Chambers. Type of all Egyptian Temple
Plans. P. 46

MODEL HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK
Showing Construction and Decoration. P. 51

PERIPTERAL SANCTUARY
Surrounded on Four Sides by Columns. At Philæ. P. 53

TEMPLE OF EDFOU
Entrance to Hypostyle Hall. Method of Admitting Light in Ptolemaic Period. P. 54

Example of Carved Decoration P. 48

the body in the nineteenth century, were found to be: length, 189 feet;
height, 66 feet. The face, which was originally painted red, has lost part of
the nose and beard, as the result of being used as a target by the Mameluke
cavalry.
Pyramids.—The Pyramids, numbering over a hundred, were the
sepulchres of the kings of the first twelve Dynasties. Some, for example, the
one at Sakkarah, attributed to Senefrou of the Third Dynasty, are of the
form known as stepped-pyramids, their sides ascending in six bold steps;
there is one at Dashour which slopes steeply from the ground and then
breaks to a gentler slope; but the usual type is an unbroken pyramid on a
square base.
Three of these, situated at Gizeh, are of surprising size and known by the
names of their builders: Cheops or Khufu; Chephren or Khafra, and
Mycerinus or Menkara; all of the Fourth Dynasty. The largest of these, that
of Cheops, known as the Great Pyramid, is 482 feet high, with a side length
of 764 feet. It is, in fact, 150 feet higher than St. Paul’s Cathedral, 50 feet
higher than St. Peter’s, while it covers an area nearly three times that of the
latter.
The evolution of the pyramid form has been traced from the method of
burial. In prehistoric times the body was laid in a square pit which was
roofed over with poles and brushwood, covered with sand. The kings of the

First Dynasty lined the pit with wood. Later a wooden chamber with a beam
roof was erected within the pit, descent to which was by a stairway on one
side. Still later, the whole was covered by a pile of earth, held in place by
dwarf walls. Then, in the Third Dynasty, the earth was replaced by a mass
of brickwork with a sloping passage leading down to the mummy chamber,
and subsequently stone was employed. The completed development is
represented in the pyramids of Gizeh.
They are constructed of limestone upon a foundation of levelled rock
and were originally finished on the outside with massive blocks of polished
stone. The entrance is on the north side by a passage, which first descends
and then rises to the principal chamber, which contained the king’s
sarcophagus. This was lined on the east and west sides with immense
stones, supporting several layers of horizontal blocks, crowned with a
gable, formed of stones, which are so placed that they exert no thrust upon
the stones below. A similar gable formed the ceiling of the Queen’s
Chamber, which is situated at a lower level, while at a still lower level is a
third chamber.
The statues and sculptured reliefs, discovered in the pyramids and
mastabas of the Fourth to Sixth Dynasties, exhibit not only a highly
developed skill in the cutting of hard and soft stone, and ivory and wood
and in beating copper but also remarkable expression of character. The
minute statuette in ivory of Cheops, though the face is only about a quarter
of an inch in length, is a portrait of extraordinary force, and the life-size
figure of Chephren, carved in hard diorite, is equally distinguished for its
serenity and power. The character of all the sculpture, even of low-reliefs of
everyday scenes, is but little naturalistic, being impressed with a certain
grandeur, as of something inevitable and immutable.
The earliest example of wall-painting appears at Sakkarah in the
Pyramid of Onas, the last king of the Fifth Dynasty; where, amid the record
of ritual observances, is depicted the grinding of the god’s bones to make
bread.
Mastabas.—From the methods of burial were also developed the type of
the mastabas or tombs of the royal family, priests, and chieftains, which
were erected at Sakkarah, near Memphis, during the Fourth, Fifth, and
Sixth Dynasties. The name is derived from the Arabian term for a bench,
the familiar type of which is a seat, supported upon boards that slope

inward. Similarly the tomb has a flat roof and battered, or inward sloping,
walls of masonry. It is entered usually on the east side, by a passage that
descends to the Chamber of Offering, which contains, to hold the offerings,
a sculptured table. Near it a vertical pit, or well, from forty to fifty feet
deep, is sunk in the solid rock, communicating with the mummy chamber.
Another hidden chamber, often connected with the Chamber of Offering, is
known as the Serdab, which was intended to serve as a home for the
deceased’s Ka or “double.” It contained a statue of the deceased and
sometimes a model of his home and representations of his occupations
during life. Thus, in the Mastaba of Thy, with a view to inducing the Ka to
overlook the break that has occurred in the life of the deceased, the reliefs
depict harvest operations, ship-building scenes, the arts and crafts of the
period, the slaughtering of sacrificial animals and Thy himself traversing
the marshes in a boat.
Sphinx Temple.—Akin to the mastaba is the earliest type of temple,
such as the so-called Sphinx Temple, which although near the Great Sphinx
is now attributed to Chephren. Partially excavated out of rock, it is T shaped
in plan, with two rows of square piers in the longitudinal portion and one
row in the transverse, supporting the stone beams of the roof. The piers are
monoliths of polished granite, while the interior walls are veneered with
slabs of alabaster. The whole was embedded in a rectangular mass of
masonry. Another temple of the Fourth or Fifth Dynasty is represented as
restored in a model in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

FIRST THEBAN MONARCHY OR MIDDLE EMPIRE

With the removal of the seat of government from Memphis to Thebes
commenced the First Theban Monarchy or Middle Empire, comprising the
Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Dynasties. Abydos and Beni Hassan now
became the place of tombs.
Two types of tomb distinguish this period. One, frequently found at
Abydos, consists of a pyramidal structure with a cubical porch on one side,
entered by an arched portal. The latter feature proves that the Egyptians
were familiar with the principle of the arch, although they did not employ it
in their monumental buildings. It appears later in the elliptical barrel-
vaultings which crowned the long tunnel-like cellars that Rameses I (The
Great) erected for the storage of grain. The above mentioned tombs were

structural, whereas those of the second type were excavated in the vertical
rock-wall that forms the west bank of the Nile; their entrance thus being
toward the east. At Beni Hassan is a group of thirty-nine such tombs which
show a marked progress in architectural design.
The front of each presents a porch, composed of columns supporting a
cornice, the latter being surmounted by a row of projections or dentils that
resemble the ends of beams. The shafts of the columns are polygonal, with
eight, sixteen, or thirty-two faces, and are surmounted by a square abacus.
It has been conjectured that these columns may be the prototype of the
Doric column and accordingly their type has been designated as proto-
Doric. Meanwhile the columns inside the tomb exhibit a stage in the
development of the lotus column; the motive of their design having been
derived from a post around the top of which had been fastened the
decoration of a cluster of lotus buds. The interior walls of these tombs are
decorated with pictorial scenes, executed in red, yellow, and blue.
Obelisks.—To the Twelfth Dynasty belongs the earliest Obelisk still in
position; that of Usertesen I, in the necropolis of Memphis, its companion
having fallen. For these developed forms of the monolithic menhir,
regarded by the Egyptians as symbols of royalty and of the Sun-god, Ra,
were placed in pairs, usually before the entrance of a temple. Their design
was of great refinement, the taper being regulated very carefully in
proportion to the width and height. The top was crowned with a small
pyramid which in certain instances, at any rate, was capped with metal. The
sides of the shaft were given a slight convex curve, or entasis, to offset the
effect of concavity which they might have produced if rectilinear, and also
to relieve the rigidity of the design. It is one of the instances which prove
that the Egyptians understood and practised the principle of asymmetry, or
deviation from strictly geometrical formality—a subject we shall study
more fully in Hellenic and Gothic architecture.
The two obelisks now known as Cleopatra’s Needles, one of which is
on the Thames Embankment, London, the other in Central Park, New York,
were removed from Heliopolis to Alexandria by the Romans. They were
originally erected by Thothmes III of the Eighteenth Dynasty, whose half-
sister, Queen Hatasu, numbered among her achievements the completion
and erection of an obelisk, 100 feet high, in the short space of seven
months.

From this period of the Middle Empire survive the fragments of three
temples. Amid the ruins of Bubastis have been found examples of the type
of clustered lotus columns, while portions of polygonal columns,
discovered among the ruins of the Great Temple at Karnak, have been
identified as belonging to a temple of the Twelfth Dynasty. The evidence
which these remains afford of the fact that such columns were employed in
actual construction as well as in rock-cut form, has been corroborated by
the recent discovery of a sepulchral temple on the south side of the Temple
of Deir-el-Bahri—to be mentioned later—of which it is the prototype. For
the earlier was reached by steps that led up to a solid mass of masonry,
which in the opinion of some authorities was crowned by a pyramid. It was
surrounded by a peristyle, composed of an outer range of square piers and
an inner one of octagonal columns.
It is surmised, in fact, that during the Middle Empire, which was a
period of great development in the arts of peace, many of the architectural
problems were worked out in temples, afterwards destroyed, to make way
for the superior developments that were achieved under the Second Theban
Empire.

SECOND THEBAN EMPIRE OR NEW EMPIRE

No architectural monuments mark the period of Hyksos usurpation. But
the expulsion of the invaders and the restoration of the power alike of the
monarchy and of the national religion produced an outburst of patriotic
ardour that was fostered by rulers of exceptional greatness. The Eighteenth,
Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties are brilliant with the prowess and
architectural creations that are associated with such names as Thothmes,
Amenophis, Queen Hatasu, Seti and Rameses.
The Tombs of the New Theban Empire comprised both the structural
and the excavated types. The rock-cut royal tombs are distinguished by the
extent and complexity of their shafts, passages, and chambers, designed to
baffle the efforts of any possible marauder, while notwithstanding the
darkness which fills all the spaces, the walls are brilliantly decorated with
coloured reliefs for the propitiation of the Ka. In contrast with the interior is
the extreme simplicity of the entrance, of which the main features are the
majestic colossal seated figures of the Monarch, which take the place of the

statue within the tomb. The grandest example is the Temple-Tomb of
Rameses II at Abou Simbel.
An exception to this external simplicity is the Temple-Tomb of Queen
Hatasu at Deir-el-Bahri, which, however, presents a combination of the
structural and excavated types, for projecting from the face of the rock was
an extensive portico, from which steps seem to have descended to a terrace
bounded by a peristyle and communicating by another flight of steps with
the lower ground—an impressive architectural ensemble, designed,
apparently, for ritual ceremonies.
The most magnificent examples of the purely structural Tomb are the
Ramesseum or Tomb of Rameses II, near Deir-el-Bahri, and that of
Rameses III at Medinet Abou. They may have been rivalled by the
Amenopheum or Tomb of Amenophis III, of which, however, scarce a
trace remains except the colossal seated figures, fifty-six feet high, of the
King and his Queen. The former is known as the “Vocal Memnon,” a name
given to it by the Greeks, after that of the son of Eos (Dawn), because of the
legend, that when the statue was smitten by the rays of the rising sun, it
gave forth a sound as of a broken chord.
The Ramesseum is a sepulchral temple and its plan, involving a
sanctuary and ritual chambers, a hall of columns entered between pylons,
and forecourts, presents the typal form of Temple plan.
Temples.—The New Theban Empire was the great age of Temple
Building. It is characteristic of the conservatism of the Egyptians not only
that the style of their monumental architecture was evolved from the rude
primitive hut-construction but also that it preserved features of the latter,
even though the necessity for them no longer existed. And so persistent was
the adherence to these features, now transformed into elements of beauty,
that they were continued even in the later temples, built during the period of
Roman domination.
It has been suggested that the origin of the style can be discovered in the
modelled and sculptured reliefs of the house of the deceased, found in the
earliest rock-cut tombs. The house represents a developed stage of the still
earlier hut, the character of which was determined by the scarcity of wood.
Instead, therefore, of employing poles, connected by wattled twigs or reeds
and covered with mud, the Egyptians fashioned the alluvial deposit into
bricks, dried in the sun, which they laid in horizontal courses, each layer

projecting inwards, until the walls met at the top. Gradually this beehive
form of construction was modified in the better class of dwellings, by the
adoption of a square plan and the use of the trunks of palm trees to form the
lintel of the door and to support a flat mud-covered roof. The
representations at Gizeh show that bundles of reeds were used to reinforce
the angles of the structure and were also laid along the top of the walls, so
as to form a rolled border, corresponding to what is later called a torus.
This, through the weight of the roof, had a tendency to be forced outward,
so that it formed what was practically a concave cornice along the top of the
wall. Hence the so-called cavetto cornice which is one of the marked
distinctions of the Egyptian monumental style. Moreover, while the sun-
dried bricks acquire a hardness and compactness, they are unable to sustain
much pressure, so that it was necessary to make the walls thicker at the
bottom than at the top. From this resulted the batter of the walls, which is
another distinctive characteristic of the Egyptian style. Further, owing to the
intense heat, windows were dispensed with and the walls in consequence
were unbroken except by the entrance. To this day the houses of the poorer
classes are built as of old and present the rudiments out of which was
developed the style of the stone-built temples, so vastly impressive in the
embodied suggestion of elemental grandeur and eternal durability.
From the outside were visible only the walls and portal of the
rectangular temple enclosure. The walls sloped backward, like the glacis of
a fortification. A clustered torus moulding, as of reeds bound together at
intervals, so as to produce alternate hollows and swells, ran up each of the
angles of the masonry and along the top of the walls, where it was
surmounted by a cavetto cornice, terminating in a square moulding. A
similar finish crowned the entrance door and its flanking pylons. The door,
framed at the sides and top with squared blocks of stone, frankly
proclaimed the post and beam principle that also governed the interior
construction of the temple.
The door was flanked by pylons, each a truncated pyramid with oblong
base; the form, in fact, of a hut grandiosely enlarged into a decorative
feature of immense impressiveness. Set into its walls were rings to hold
flag-staffs, and the surface of the pylon, like that of the walls, was
resplendent with coloured reliefs, extolling the prowess of the King who
had erected the temple. His statue flanked the doorway, in front of which
soared two obelisks, while the roadway that led to the temple was

embellished with an avenue of sphinxes. These avenues were of great
length, the one from Karnak to Luxor extending a mile and a half.
On the lintel over the door was the winged globe, symbol of the Sun’s
flight through the sky to conquer Night. Other symbolic ornaments adorned
the jambs and the various cornices, while historic pictures, recording the
achievements of the monarch’s rule, covered the surfaces of walls and
pylons. All were executed in the same way as the symbolic ornament and
the pictures in honour of the deity, which covered the walls, columns,
beams, and ceiling of the interior of the temple. The forms were either cut
down in very low relief or enclosed by incised lines, the edges of which on
the side nearer to the form were slightly rounded, in order to give a sense of
modelling. In both cases the designs were filled in with the primary colours,
blue, red, and yellow. Thus the decoration, derived from the method of
drawing patterns in the mud of a wall while it was still damp, was inset, its
higher parts being in the same plane as the wall’s surface—a method
distinctively mural which also maintained the avoidance of projections.
This avoidance of projecting members, except in the cornice, was a marked
characteristic of the Egyptian use of the post and beam principle, as
compared with the use of it by the Greeks and Romans.
The essential feature of the temple within the enclosure was the
sanctuary of the deity to whom the temple was dedicated, around which
were grouped chambers for the service of the priests in connection with the
ritual. Entrance to this Holy of Holies and its subsidiary cells was through a
hypostyle hall, so called because its ceiling of slabs of stone was supported
upon stone beams that rested upon columns. The latter, to withstand the
weight of the superincumbent mass, were of great girth and closely ranged,
so that an effect as of the depths of a forest was produced, rendered more
mysterious and apparently limitless by the dim and fitful light. This
penetrated through clerestory windows, covered with pierced stonework
and set in the sides of the central portion of the roof, which, supported on
higher columns, rose above the side roofs, as the nave of a Gothic cathedral
rises above the level of the aisles. When one recollects that the interior was
completely covered with symbolic ornament and pictures, one can imagine
no mode of lighting better adapted to produce a phantasy of effect, to
preclude distinctness of vistas and promote a suggestion of limitless
immensity, according with the idea of the eternal continuity of the soul’s
existence, on which the religion of the Egyptians was founded.

The only approximation in architecture to the mysterious grandeur of the
hypostyle hall, leading to the sanctuary, is the nave and aisles and choir of a
Gothic cathedral. But the latter presents a great difference, since it was
arranged for the congregational service of crowds of worshippers and,
partly for this reason and partly because it was a product of the
comparatively sunless north, it is flooded through its numerous and large
stained-glass windows more abundantly with “dim religious light.”
It remains to note the approach to this hall through an open court which
was surrounded on two or three sides by a colonnade or peristyle, while an
avenue of columns frequently led through the centre from the main entrance
of the pylons to the portal of the hall.
This combination of Court, Hall, and Sanctuary with its Chambers,
already present in the Ramesseum, formed the essential of every temple
plan, even during the period of Roman occupation. But while the nucleus of
the plan was organically complete, unity of effect was abandoned in actual
practice owing to the additions made to the original temple by successive
kings, who would contribute another hall of columns or another court and
sometimes erect another temple as an annex. The most remarkable example
of this gradual accretion of additional features is to be found at Karnak; a
group of temples in honour of the Sun-god Ra-Ammon, the building of
which extended throughout the period of the New Empire.
Temples of Karnak.—The nucleus of the scheme was the granite
sanctuary and chambers erected by Usertesen I of the Twelfth Dynasty. In
the Eighteenth Dynasty Thothmes I added to the west front of this a
columned hall with pylon entrances, surrounding the interior wall with
Osirid statues, seated statues of Osiris, the wise and beneficent ruler of the
Second Dynasty, who after his death was honoured as the King of the Dead
in the nether world. Later a third pair of pylons was built by Rameses I; and
this was utilised as one of the sides of the Great Hypostyle Hall begun by
Seti I and completed by Rameses II. It communicated through another pair
of immense pylons with the Great Court of Sheshonk.
In the northwest corner of the latter Seti II of the Nineteenth Dynasty
erected a small temple, while, protruding into the court on the opposite side
was the temple of Ammon, built by Rameses III of the Twentieth, who also
built the adjacent temple of Chons, connected with the main group of

buildings by an avenue of Sphinxes. It was from this temple that the long
avenue of sphinxes, already mentioned, extended to the Temple of Luxor.
Meanwhile, during the Eighteenth Dynasty, Thothmes III had erected at
some distance to the eastward of Usertesen’s original sanctuary, a large hall
and adjoining chambers. These are supposed to have been his palace,
though it is urged to the contrary that they offered but little accommodation
for the retinue of servants and officials which distinguished an oriental
court, besides being gloomy as a residence. Possibly, however, Thothmes
under the spell of religious feeling may have used this palace for occasional
occupation, even as Philip II of Spain built a palace in connection with a
monastery, a school of priests and a great church and mausoleum—the
aggregate of functions represented in the Escoriál.
The climax of the architectural ensemble at Karnak is Seti’s Great
Hypostyle Hall, the most imposing example known of post and beam
construction. It is 338 feet wide with a depth of 170. A double row of six
mighty columns 70 feet high and nearly 12 in diameter support the central
nave, on each side of which the flat roof is supported by 61 columns, each
about 42 feet high and 9 wide. The capitals of the taller columns are of the
so-called bell type; those of the lower ones, lotus bud.
Column Types.—Reference already has been made to the lotus-bud type
of columns found in the interior of some of the tombs at Beni Hassan.
These represented a conventionalised design as of four buds with long
stems bound around a circular post. The later columns, however, of the
lotus-bud type were no longer only a decorative feature but had to support
the immense weight of the beams and ceiling slabs, consequently the
diameter was increased to about one sixth of the height. The capital
suggests either one bud with numerous petals crowning a smooth circular
shaft or a cluster of buds and stalks bound at intervals with rows of fillets;
the design in both cases being more conventionalised than in the early
examples.
The bell, or campaniform type is distinguished by a smooth shaft
crowned with a conventionalised single blossom of the lotus, the petals of
which flare or curve outward so as to resemble the shape of an inverted bell.
Another example of the flaring capital is that of the palm column, the
fronds of which are bound by fillets to a smooth shaft. It is a type that
appears in the later temples and was varied by the architects of the

Ptolemaic period, who substituted for the palm other motives derived from
river plants.
An exceptional form, which appears in Temples of Isis, as at Denderah,
Edfou, and Esneh, is the so-called Hathor-headed column, which has a
cubical capital, embellished on each side with a face of the goddess and
surmounted by a miniature temple. The latter takes the place of the impost
block which in the other types of column sustains the weight of the beam
and protects the carving of the capital.
In certain instances the columns were superseded by piers with
rectangular shafts, which sometimes were unadorned in their impressive
simplicity, at other times ornamented with lotus flowers and stalks or heads
of Hathor. In the so-called Osirid pier a colossal statue of the god projects
from the face of the pier, being the only example of a feature added to a pier
or column for purposes solely of symbolic ornament and without any
structural function.

Next to Karnak in magnificence and extent is the neighbouring Temple
of Luxor. Another important example of the period is the temple erected at
Abydos by Seti I dedicated to Osiris and other deities. In consequence it is
distinguished by seven sanctuaries, ranged side by side and roofed over
with horizontal courses of stonework, each of which projects inward over
the one below it, until they meet at the top, the undersides being chiselled
into the form of a vault.
A few examples are found of the peripteral type of temple, consisting of
a cella or sanctuary, surrounded on the four sides by columns. In one
instance—the temple erected by Amenophis III at Elephantine—the
columns are confined to the front and rear, while at the sides are square
piers. These structures are small, and, in two cases, at Philae, are
unaccompanied by a cella; which suggests that they were used as waiting
places in connection with the adjoining temples.

PTOLEMAIC AND ROMAN PERIODS

During the period of political decadence the building of temples
declined, but it was renewed under the rule of the Ptolemies and continued
during the Roman occupation. While, notwithstanding foreign domination,
the Egyptian type was in the main adhered to, an important change of detail

was adopted in the manner of lighting the hypostyle hall. The light was
admitted from the front, over the top of screen walls, which were erected
between the columns to about half their height. A celebrated example is at
Edfou, the most perfectly preserved temple of this period, which also
conforms most closely to the old type. For in other instances there was a
growing tendency to introduce novelties of detail, characterised by greater
elaboration and ornateness. It is signally represented in the Temple of Isis
on the island of Philae, for here the shape of the site has produced
irregularities in the planning of the various buildings, which enhances the
general picturesqueness of the whole group. Unfortunately, in consequence
of the erection of the Assouan Dam, these temples at Philae are submerged
for the greater part of the year.
How far the Egyptians studied orientation, or the placing of a temple
with reference to the points of the compass, is uncertain. But there are
grounds for supposing that in some cases they orientated the principal
entrance toward the sun or a certain star, the exact position of which on
some particular day would indicate to the priests the exact time of year.

Palace and Domestic Architecture.—Of palace architecture the only
conjectured remains are the buildings erected in the rear of the Temple of
Karnak by Thothmes III and the pavilion of Medinet Abou on the west bank
of the Nile at Thebes; the unsuitability of which as royal residences has
already been noted.
A clue to the laying out of a town and the character of domestic
buildings has been found at Tel-el-Amarna and at Kahun, in the Fayoum.
On the latter site Petrie discovered the walls of a town which was erected
for the overseers and workmen employed in the construction of the pyramid
of Illahun (2684-2666 B.C.) and abandoned after the completion of the
work. The streets ran at right angles; and the houses were built around open
courts, whence the light was derived, for there were no windows giving on
to the streets. The houses varied in size from the one room hut of the
labourer to the group of rooms with their own court occupied by the
overseer, while a still larger group in the centre of the town was the
residence of the governor.
From these remains and from pictures of “soul houses,” found in the
tombs, it is concluded that the houses of the richer classes corresponded to a
Roman villa; consisting that is to say of detached buildings built within

enclosures, which were surrounded on the interior with colonnades and
were laid out with groves, fishponds, and other ornamental features. The
material employed in the walls and buildings was sunburnt brick which was
overlayed with stucco decorated in bright colours. The walls in the case of
the residences were carried up through two or three stories with windows in
the upper ones and a verandah under the flat roof. The latter, constructed of
timbers, supporting smaller beams, filled in with mud, was reached by a
staircase in the rear. When the rooms exceeded nine feet or so in width,
their ceilings were supported by columns or posts.

CHAPTER III

CHALDÆAN, ASSYRIAN, AND BABYLONIAN CIVILISATION

Rooted deep in the recesses of the past was the ancient civilisation that
flourished in Mesopotamia. Some latest scholars are disposed to believe
that it even preceded the civilisation of Egypt, with which it has some
features in common. For this strip of territory, extending from near the
Persian Gulf in the south to the mountainous country of Armenia in the
north, is an alluvial plain, made and nourished by its rivers—the Tigris on
the east and the Euphrates on the west. The latter is a shallow stream,
except at the annual flood, when it sweeps over the low banks and
innundates the flat lands. Thus the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, like the
Egyptians, early learned to control the river with drains and dykes and to
construct canals and systems of irrigation. And on a par with their
engineering prowess became their achievements in building.
Like Egypt also, Mesopotamia came to have its upper and lower
kingdoms. The former, the Biblical Padan-Aram, became associated with
the history of the Assyrians; the latter, the Plain of Shinar, with that of the
Chaldæans and Babylonians. It was the lower or southern part that seems to
have been first occupied, by a people apparently of non-Semitic stock,
whose origin is unknown. Named by different scholars Akkadians or
Sumerians, they were an unwarlike race which early attained a considerable
degree of civilisation. Their chief city was Babylon, whence the country
derived the name of Babylonia. It is supposed that these people invented the
cuneiform system of writing, which was later employed by the Babylonians

and Assyrians, while its use spread to the other nations from Persia to the
Mediterranean.
This wedge-shaped script was in its origin a form of pictorial or
ideographic writing and developed its peculiar character from the fact that
the writing was done on tables of soft clay. Pressure was needed to make
the marks and accordingly the stylus came to be formed of three plane
surfaces, meeting at a point like the angle of a cubic triangle. As the system
grew the ideogram from merely picturing the object was used to denote the
first syllable of its name and then by degrees to denote that syllable in
whatever word it might occur.
The clue to the reading of the cuneiform script was discovered in 1802
by a German, Georg Friedrich Grotefind, whose work was carried farther
by Christian Lassen of Bohn. Meanwhile, the Englishman, Henry
Rawlinson had mastered the secret through a study of Persian cuneiform
script. Thus an immense mine of knowledge was opened up to the scholars,
for the kings of Babylonia and Assyria kept most extensive records, not
only of their wars and personal prowess in the chase, but also of
commercial transactions, while many of them epitomised the history of past
periods. For example, it is from one of these records, made by Napa-haik,
the last native king of Babylonia (555-538 B.C.), that we get the earliest date
of the so-called Akkadians. For he caused it to be written that, while he was
restoring an ancient temple at Sippar, he found among the foundations a
record of Sargon I—not to be confused with the later Assyrian king of the
same name—which dated back 3200 years before its discovery. Moreover,
an Assyrian scribe makes this Sargon relate of himself that he was born in
secret, exposed as an infant in a basket of rushes on a river, rescued and
brought up by a shepherd, chosen the leader of a band in the mountains and
finally became a king. It would be interesting to know the date of this
record, but presumably it was after the Jews had been carried captive to
Assyria.

The prosperity of this early race and its unwarlike character invited
invaders. For, it is in this particular that the fortunes of Mesopotamia
differed from those of Egypt. While the latter was isolated by great deserts
and its people in early times were neither disturbed from the outside nor
tempted to stray beyond their borders, the deserts surrounding Mesopotamia

were broken up with frequent spots of fertility. On these subsisted nomad
tribes of Semitic origin, which early must have looked with covetous eyes
upon the superior abundance of the river-enclosed lands. Thus the non-
Semitic inhabitants became involved with Semitic peoples: Chaldæans,
Elamites, and Assyrians.
Fortunately it is not necessary for our purpose to attempt the difficult
task of unravelling the stages of this obscure story. A few particulars will
suffice.

The Chaldæans appeared in the South and established a capital at Ur of
the Chaldees, extending their sway over what was called later Babylonia.
But so far from crushing the original inhabitants, they seem to have
assumed toward them the attitude of protectors. They were the strong men,
as it were, that kept the house armed against aggression, while the peaceful
occupants continued to pursue their industries and arts. Thus ensued that
period distinguished as the Early Chaldæan (about 2250 to 1110 B.C.)
which produced those treasures of art, especially in glazed pottery, that
recent exploration has been discovering.

And just as this older civilisation was respected by the warlike
Chaldæans, so also it was borrowed and imitated by the warlike Assyrians
who gradually gathered power in upper or northern Mesopotamia. They
founded a city and called it Assur, after their national god, in whose honour
they erected a temple in 1820 B.C. This is the first definite date of this
people, based on the authority of King Tiglath-Pileser (about 1120-1100
B.C.), who relates that, while restoring the temple, he found the ancient
record of its founding. It is significant of the general attitude of the
Assyrians toward the civilisation of Babylonia that they also borrowed the
latter’s national god, Marduk. The first extensive records of the Assyrians
are derived from the “library” of this Tiglath-Pileser, found among the ruins
of Assur. They describe his wars and hunting expeditions and how he killed
with his own hands ten elephants and nine hundred and twenty lions. This
monarch, by the capture of Babylon, brought to a conclusion the rivalry that
had existed since the fifteenth century B.C. between Assyria and the
Chaldæan-Babylonian kingdom. We may date from his reign, namely about
1110 B.C. the supremacy of the Assyrian Empire which lasted until 606 B.C.

Meanwhile, the city of Nineveh, now marked by the mounds of
Koyunjik and Nebi Yanus had been in existence as early as 1816 B.C. A
palace was erected there by Shalmaneser I (1330 B.C.) and at some date
unknown a temple to Ishtar. She was the goddess of Love and War and in
her voluptuous aspect corresponds to Ashtoreth or Astarte of the Syro-
Phœnicians. This cult characterised her shrine at Nineveh, while in her
warlike aspect she was worshipped at Arbela.
For a time the prestige of Nineveh waned, as Assurnazar-pal (885 B.C.)
and Shalmaneser II erected palaces at Nimroud, the ancient Calah. The
latter monarch was the first, so far as known, to come in conflict with Israel.
He conquered Ahab and exacted tribute from Jehu.
With Tiglath-Pileser III (also called Pul by the Hebrews) who carried a
portion of Northern Israel into captivity (2 Kings xv), began the period of
Assyria’s greatest glory. The last dynasty commences with Sargon (722-705
B.C.) who built himself the famous palace at Khorsabad. He conquered
Samaria and carried the whole of northern Israel into captivity, replacing
them with men “from Babylon and from Cuthah and from Ava and from
Hamath and from Sepharvaim” (2 Kings, xvii, 24). This allusion to Babylon
is significant. It points to Sargon’s policy of reducing the rival power of the
city, which was destroyed by his son and successor, Sennacherib. It was the
latter who “came up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them,”
afterward suffering the loss of his army in the siege of Jerusalem, as
chronicled in 2 Kings, xviii, xix; though this disaster is not mentioned in the
cuneiform records. He revived the grandeur of Nineveh, which was added
to by his son Esarhaddon (680-668 B.C.). This monarch’s reign represented
the high-water mark of Assyrian supremacy. Among his exploits was the
conquest of Egypt, whereby he added to his titles that of “King of Kings of
Lower and Upper Egypt and Ethiopia.” He was also a great builder,
restoring Babylon and erecting for himself a superb palace at Nineveh, the
materials for which were supplied by twenty-two subject kings.
Under his son Asurbanipal, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks (668-626
B.C.), the last of the Sargon Dynasty, Assyrian prosperity reached its
culmination. Being, as he said, “endowed with attentive ears,” Asurbanipal
was inclined to the study of “all inscribed tablets” and caused the collecting
and re-editing of the whole cuneiform literature then in existence. A great
part of his “library” has been recovered from the ruins of Koyunjik and is
now in the British Museum.

In the year following this monarch’s death Nabopolassar (625-604 B.C.)
who seems to have been the Assyrian vice-roy of Babylonia, entered into
alliance with the Medes and through their help destroyed the supremacy of
the Assyrians and became the first king of the New Babylonian Empire.

His son, Nebuchadnezzar, or Nebuchadrezzar, conquered Jerusalem and
carried its inhabitants captive to Babylon. To him this city owed its final
magnificence. Occupying both banks of the Euphrates, it was now
surrounded by two fortified walls, the outer one being fifty-five miles in
circumference, with a height of 340 feet and a thickness of 85. It was
further protected by 250 towers and pierced with a hundred gates of brass.
Numerous temples adorned the city, the grandest being that of the national
god, Marduk (Merodach). Near this was the royal palace, now represented
by the ruins of Al Gasr, “the Castle.” Sloping down from it to the river were
the terraced gardens laid out by the king for the pleasure of his Median
wife, Amytis. They are better known as the hanging gardens of Semiramis,
from the Greek account that attributed various Oriental wonders to this
mythical queen. Nebuchadnezzar also restored the temple of Nebo in a
suburb of Babylon, now called Borsippa. This famous shrine was
constructed in the form of a stepped-pyramid and from its seven terraces
was called “The Temple of the Seven Spheres of Heaven and Earth.”
Included in Assyrian temples was frequently a tower, and the one belonging
to this temple of Nebo is assumed to have been associated with the story of
the “Tower of Babel” (Genesis xi).
Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son, Nabonidus, whose eldest
son, Belshazzar, was co-regent with him and governor of South Babylon.
This is the cuneiform record, which varies from that of Daniel (Chapter v),
who makes Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar and last king of
Babylonia. In 538 B.C. Cyrus the Great took Babylon by storm and the
country passed under the Persian rule. Darius I razed the fortified walls and
Xerxes stripped the temples of their golden images and treasure. The city
fell into decay, until in 300 B.C. much of it was demolished to provide
material for building the neighbouring city of Seleucia. By the time of Pliny
(23-72 A.D.) the once proud city was a place of desolation.

While the Assyrians and Babylonians were religious peoples, their
temples were insignificant, as compared with those of the Egyptians nor
have they left any tombs of architectural importance. Their religion was of
an eminently practical kind, devoted to securing benefits in this world and
concerned little with a future life. Thus their gods were representative of
natural phenomena or of their own pursuits: gods of the sun, moon, the
heavens, earth (Bel), weather; of water and canals, the chase, war, invention
of writing and literature; and unfriendly gods of pestilence and fire.
As may be seen in their sculptures, they valued the qualities of energy
and physical prowess. Their kings are not represented, like those of Egypt,
as of slim, svelte figure, or wrapped in monumental composure. They are
giants of exaggerated muscular development, engaged in conflict with wild
beasts of corresponding strength. They were mighty captains of war and in
times of peace, mighty hunters and builders.
While Assyria borrowed its culture from Babylonia, the character of the
two nations was very different. Babylonia was a country of merchants and
agriculturists; Assyria, an organised camp. The latter’s dynasties were
founded by successful generals; while in Babylonia it was always a priest
whom a revolution raised to the throne and the king remained to the last a
priest under the control of a powerful hierarchy. The Assyrian King, on the
contrary, was an autocratic general, supported in earlier times by a feudal
nobility and, from the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III, by an elaborate
bureaucracy. In each country there was a large body of slaves.
In Assyria education was confined to the ruling class; whereas in
Babylonia every one, women as well as men, learned to read and write.
Most of the Babylonian cities and temples had their libraries and the genius
of the people displayed itself most characteristically in literature. Among
works which have been discovered, whole or in fragments, were the “Epic
of Gilgamesh,” consisting of twelve books each of which recounts an
adventure in the hero’s career; another epic, that of the Creation, and the
“Legend of Adapa,” the first man. In astronomy and astrology the
Chaldæans and Babylonians from early times were adepts; observatories
being attached to the temples from which reports were regularly submitted
to the King. They were also skilled in mathematics and mechanics. For
example, a glass lens, turned on a lathe, was discovered by Layard at
Nimroud, among the remains of glass vases which bear the name of Sargon.

While the Chaldæans in time had become mingled with the Babylonians,
so that the latter name was used to designate both peoples, the term
Chaldæan came to be used in a special sense. The “Wisdom of the
Chaldæans” continued to be recognised, and it was probably to the pure
race of Chaldæans that the priests, “astrologers” and “magicians” belonged.
And their distinction as wise men even survived the overthrow of Babylon.
In all likelihood they were Chaldæans, those “Wise men from the East,”
who saw and interpreted the star and followed it to Bethlehem.

CHAPTER IV

CHALDÆAN, ASSYRIAN, AND BABYLONIAN ARCHITECTURE

Brick Construction.—In its principal features and general character of
construction, the architecture of each of these three civilisations is similar,
being based upon the methods that originated with the Chaldæans. These
methods were the direct result of the geographic and climatic conditions of
the country they inhabited. For Lower Mesopotamia, Babylonia proper, is
an alluvial plain, interrupted by a single ridge of limestone hills which were
sparsely covered with small trees, especially the scrub-oak. Timber and
stone were scarce, while everywhere clay abounded. Accordingly, the chief
material of construction was brick, shaped in wooden moulds and sun-
dried. The limited amount of fuel permitted only the making of burnt bricks
for special purposes: namely, the facing of the structures and the paving of
the floors. And these superior bricks or tiles were frequently glazed and
decorated with ornament in bright colours.
Meanwhile, in Upper Mesopotamia, Assyria proper, the ground was
comparatively arid and plentifully supplied with limestone. Yet such was
the habit of the Assyrians to imitate the Southern kingdom in matters of
civilisation, that they also relied upon sun-dried brick for construction, and
employed glazed earthenware for decoration. In time, however, they came
to employ stone for facing as well as for the sculpture, which was a
characteristic decorative feature of the palaces.
Platforms.—We shall see presently how the fierce heat affected the
principles of architectural construction, noting in advance the means taken
to provide against the periodical inundations due to the torrential rains and
the overflow of the Tigris. From earlier times all important buildings were

erected upon platforms, constructed of sun-dried bricks and faced with fired
bricks or stone, the walls having a batter, that is to say, sloping inward.
Approach to the summit was either by flights of steps or an inclined
roadway that paralleled the wall—technically known as a ramp.
Intersecting these mounds or platforms was a system of arched culverts,
designed, as in modern railroad embankments, to carry off the water.
In course of time, as buildings fell into decay or were replaced with
newer ones by later builders, the height of the mound increased. The result
is that the plain of Babylonia for 220 miles is studded with immense
mounds, some of them a mile in diameter and attaining 200 feet in height,
crowned with the remains of towns. Beneath these, the modern explorer,
cutting down into the interior of the mound, comes upon successive stages
of foundations, representing the remains of various epochs.
Temple at Nippur.—The earliest example, so far disclosed, is a temple
at Nippur, which bears a close resemblance to the oldest pyramid in Egypt,
Medum, before the latter had been faced. It is on the principle of the
stepped-pyramid, consisting of several stories, each of which sets back from
the one below it, while the walls of all have a batter. The terraces on one
side are of extra width to allow for the stairways. This old type of stage-
temple, called in the East ziggurat (holy mountain), derived probably from
the ancient custom of worshipping in “high places,” was still preserved in
the famous

“SARGON’S CASTLE,” NEAR KHORSABAD
Conjectured Restoration. P. 67

PART OF “LION FRIEZE” AND “FRIEZE OF ARCHERS”
Executed in Glazed Tiles. P. 72

DETAILS OF WALL DECORATION AT KOYUNJIK
Showing (Left) the Handling of a Colossal Bull Statue; and (Right) That the Assyrians Used
Some Form of Dome-Roofs

Temple of Nebo, rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar at Borsippa. Only four
stages of the latter survive, but a record discovered in the ruins shows that
the original number was seven, dedicated to the seven planets and decorated
with the colours sacred to each. The ground story of this temple was 272
feet square and 45 feet high, while the total height of the structure was

about 160 feet. It is noteworthy that the tomb-pyramid of Medum also
consisted of seven stories.
In a ziggurat at Tello, opened up by the French savant, de Sarzac, was
discovered a magnificent collection of statues of diorite—a mixture of
granite, felspar and hornblende—dark grey in colour—which is now in the
Louvre. One of these, which has lost its head, represents a certain Gudea,
priest-king and architect of Lagash. He is seated and carries on his lap a
tablet, on which a fortified enclosure is engraved, while in the corner appear
a dividing scale and a stylos.
Sargon’s Castle.—The oldest palace remains have been discovered at
Nimroud, the ancient Calah. They belong to the palace of Assur-nazar-pal
(885-860 B.C.). Ten miles to the northeast, at Khorsabad, the French
explorer P. E. Botta, discovered in 1843 the remains of a tower and palace,
which subsequent excavations have proved to be the ruins of Dur-
Sharrukim, “Sargon’s Castle,” built by Sargon as a royal residence (705-702
B.C.). The remains of the palace, being the most extensive of those hitherto
explored, can be studied as a type of Assyrian palace architecture.
The platform on which the palace stood, constructed of sun-dried bricks
and faced with cut stone, reaches the immense size of nearly a million
square feet, raised forty-eight feet above the surrounding level country. The
total platform, therefore, measured about 23 acres, as compared with the 3½
acres occupied by the Capitol at Washington, or the 8 acres occupied by the
Houses of Parliament in London. Making allowance for the fact that the
Assyrian Palace did not extend over the whole of the platform space, its
actual dimensions must have been approximately twice as large as the
Houses of Parliament and four and a half times those of the Capitol.
Leading up from the level on the northeast side appears to have been a
double ramp, for the use of chariots and for general service, while the state
entrance was at the southeast by a double flight of steps. These mounted to
a terrace that extended the whole length of the palace front, some 900 feet.
In the centre of this façade was the principal gate, which was small in actual
size, but flanked by two tower-like projections of masonry. These, for the
moment, may recall the pylons that flanked the entrance to an Egyptian
temple. But the latter stately structures, built with a batter and crowned with
a cavetto cornice, were designed for monumental dignity. On the other
hand, the towers of Sargon’s Castle were pierced near the top with loop-

holes and surmounted by battlements. They were designed to serve the
purpose of warlike defence and suggest appropriately that the entrance is
not only to a palace but also to the castle or stronghold of a feudal chieftain.
The same suggestion is prolonged in the battlemented walls, free of
windows and only occasionally pierced with loopholes, which seem to have
surrounded the entire structure.
Gateway.—The towers were embellished with a notably structural
decoration, a system of rectangular panelling, filled with semi-circular
shafts. The ornamental details were derived from the Chaldæan use of
glazed tiles, decorated with rosettes, palmettes, lotus-flowers and the
guilloche or repeat of intertwined bands, arching round a central button.
Similarly decorated is the archivolt which surrounds the arch of the
entrance, the latter being a barrel- or semi-circular-vaulted passageway,
carried right through the thickness of the walls.
Colossal Bulls.—In Egypt the entrance to the temples was made solemn
and magnificent by colossal statues of the monarch. Here, the beholder
must have been filled with awe by the colossal monsters that stood as
guardians of the portal, projecting from the side-posts of the gateway and
ranged in pairs at the foot of each tower. These monsters, which are now in
the British Museum, fitly embody the warlike ideals of the Assyrian nation.
They loom up in height to twelve feet. Their bodies are those of bulls,
mighty in bulk and thews; yet they are quick to attack, having eagle’s
wings, while dominating them is the head of a man, large-eyed, thick-
lipped, square of jaw and hairy, implacably sensual and cruel.
The modeling of these monsters is for the most part as broad as a Barye
bronze; though minute detail is attained in the sculpturing of the beards,
hair and head-dresses. But, while their treatment is in the main naturalistic,
their motive is not representation of nature, but the representation of an idea
through natural suggestion. Accordingly, each embodiment has five legs;
the two forelegs, planted side by side, being supplemented by another in the
act of walking; so that whether the monster be viewed from the front or the
side, the full significance of the legs is emphasised—the forelegs
representing firmly established power; the side view showing the legs in
free and powerful movement.
No Columns.—The arched entrance leads into a large open court that
corresponds to the great court of an Egyptian temple, although here the

sides are not embellished with colonnades. For, nowhere in Assyrian
architecture has the column been found as a structural member. The single
example which has been excavated, measured only three feet four inches in
height and, it is conjectured, was used for a pavilion, possibly to support an
awning. The absence of columnar construction in the early buildings of the
Lower Kingdom is easily accounted for by the scarcity of stone; and the
northern builders in dispensing with columns were only following their
usual habit of imitation.
No Windows.—Meanwhile, another reason for the absence of columns
may be found in the fierce heat of Mesopotamia, against which colonnades
would prove no protection. The same cause explains the absence of
windows in Assyrian palaces, for none have been found or shown in any of
the bas-reliefs. It has been considered possible that such light as was needed
was admitted through terra-cotta pipes or cylinders, for many of the latter
have been come upon in the ruins and this method is still employed in the
East for the lighting of domes.
?Barrel Vaults?—Another feature of the interior construction was the
immense thickness of the walls, which varied from nine to twenty-five feet
in solid brickwork. The object may have been to secure additional coolness,
but this reason will scarcely afford a complete explanation of the extreme
measurement. It is significant that the latter occurs in the halls of state
which are also distinguished by their great length of 150 feet as compared
with the width, 30 feet. When the narrow width of the halls is considered in
relation to the immense thickness of the walls, it seems reasonable to
conclude that the latter were intended to support the downward strain of
barrel-vaulted ceilings. Additional probability is given to this conclusion by
La Place’s discovery of great blocks, curved like the soffits of a vault,
which had apparently fallen from a height. Moreover, in a bas-relief found
by Layard in Koyunjik some of the buildings are shown to be roofed on the
outside by domes. Accordingly, it is now the generally accepted belief that
the usual style of ceiling employed by the Assyrians, was the barrel-vault.
The origin of the latter may be found in the culverts by which the
mounds were drained; but how, considering the scarcity of timber, it was
possible to construct vaults of thirty feet span, is purely a matter of
conjecture. It has been suggested that, while timber was costly, slave-labour
was cheap, and it is possible that temporary structures of brick were erected
as an underpinning to support the vault while in process of construction. On

the other hand, we shall note later on that the architects of Gothic
cathedrals, in countries where timber was scarce, adopted the method of rib-
vaulting. Can it be possible that this invention was anticipated by the
Assyrians?
Decorations.—The walls of these halls of state were decorated up to a
height of nine feet with sculptured slabs of delicate white alabaster or
brilliantly yellow limestone, on which traces of paint have been discovered.
As in the case of the Egyptian temples, scenes of everyday life, as well as of
war or hunting, are represented, with a vividness that shows how closely
nature had been studied by the sculptors, who, however, were more intent
upon representing the spirit of the scene and preserving the feeling of
decoration than in imitating nature.
Thus, when they represented an archer, stretching his bow, neither the
string nor the arrow was allowed to cut the lines of the figure. Both were
shown as if the hand which held them were on the opposite side of the
body. It is needless to say that this could not have been due to ignorance or
negligence on the part of the sculptor, who otherwise proved his knowledge
and observation of nature; but was a deliberate kind of conventionalisation,
adopted, like the five legs of the colossal bulls, for a well-considered
purpose—perhaps, not to interfere with the action of the figure.
Above the dado of sculpture the walls were embellished with glazed
tiles, decorated with winged figures of the King, and occasionally with
animals, especially lions, framed with borders of rosettes. The usual colours
were yellow, blue, green, and black. Coloured tiles also, as well as slabs of
alabaster, formed the paving of the floors, which, in the case of smaller
rooms, were formed merely of stamped clay, covered, no doubt, while in
use, with mats or rugs.
Wall paintings of figures and arabesques seem to have been an
exceptional form of decoration, found at Khorsabad only in the larger
rooms of the harem.
Yet for all this brilliance of decoration, the effect of the interiors must
have been one of subdued richness. The imagination, indeed, pictures the
vast palace with its labyrinth of seven hundred rooms, surrounding three
sides of the entrance court, where the glare of sunshine would be pitiless, as
a sort of subterranean arrangement of tunnel-like passages and chambers.

Their distribution can be studied in the ground plan restoration. There
were three groups, each disposed around its own central court. On the left
of the main court lay the harem, with its separate provision for four wives,
while on the opposite side was accommodation for the service, including
kitchen, bakery, wine cellars, and stables. Fronting the main entrance were
the King’s suite of rooms and the quarters of his official staff, beyond which
were the halls of state. In the open space, adjoining the royal rooms, rose
the ziggurat, or terraced temple, the three lower stories of which still exist,
connected by a winding ramp.
The conception that one gathers of this huge pile is, externally, of a
stronghold, somewhat forbidding; internally, of a crypt-like maze, offering
perhaps comfort, but little beauty—the lair of the absolute monarch of a
race to whom the market-place and fields of battle and hunting represented
the chief ideals of existence.

CHAPTER V

PERSIAN CIVILISATION

The name Iran, by which the Persians still call their country, preserves the
origin of their race. They were Aryans, as distinguished from the Semitic
peoples; a branch of the race which migrated from the country now called
Southern Russia and Turkestan into the rich lands of the South. One branch
pushed on to the Ganges and became identified with India; the other settled
about the Indus, whence they gradually pushed their way westward. This
branch comprised many tribes which in time developed into peoples.
The most powerful of these at the period when the Aryans first came into
conflict with the Semitic race, was the Medes, who occupied the northern
part of the west side of what is now Persia, while the Persians, who rose to
supremacy later, occupied the southern part. This western division of the
country, separated by a desert from the eastern, entirely differs in character
from Mesopotamia.
For a distance of 50 miles from the Persian Gulf it is flat, swampy, and
unhealthful. Then it rises to a system of mountain ranges that average five
thousand feet in height, broken up with valleys, lakes, and countless
streams. It was a country admirably adapted to rear a hardy and industrious
race of men and fine breeds of cattle and horses. The Aryans seem to have

always been cattle breeders, from which fact is supposed to be derived the
reverence of the cow, which still exists in India. They were also great lovers
of the horse and it was not until after 1700 B.C. when advanced posts of the
Aryan migration came in touch with the Semitic nations of the West, that
the horse made its appearance in Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece. But, while
the bas-reliefs of the Egyptians after this date show the horse used only in
chariots, its general use among the Persians was for riding purposes. So the
love of the modern Aryan races for the horse and horse exercise is an
inherited instinct that knits them like their language to their earliest
ancestors.
Of the Assyrian Kings, Shalmaneser II was the first to come in conflict
with the Medes, and from this date (836 B.C.), the Medes are frequently
mentioned in Assyrian records as paying tribute. Finally, in 626 B.C., the
fortunes of war began to be reversed. The Median King, Cyaxares, as we
have seen in a previous chapter, formed an alliance with Nabopolassar that
resulted in the ousting of the Assyrian domination from Babylon and the
establishment of the New Babylonian Empire. The Medes followed this up
by a vigorous campaign against Assyria which resulted, in 606 B.C. in the
taking and destruction of Nineveh. New capitals were built at Susa and
Ecbatana and the sway of the Medes extended over Northern Mesopotamia,
Armenia, and Cappadocia.
Then in 550 B.C. the Median supremacy ceased. Cyrus, King of Persia, of
the clan Achæmenian, rebelled against his suzerain, Astyages, the son of
Cyaxares, conquered him in battle and became the founder of the Persian
Empire. He captured Babylon in 538 B.C. and gradually extended his sway
from the Indus River to the Ægean Sea and the borders of Egypt. In his
homeland of Persia he founded the city of Pasargadae, the modern
Murghab, where he built himself a palace and a tomb. For it was here that
his Persians, urged on by their women-folk, had struck the final blow that
conquered the Medes. Accordingly, each king of the Achæmenian dynasty
was here, in the temple of the warrior goddess, invested with the garb of
Cyrus and partook of a meal of figs, terebinth, and sour milk; and,
whenever he visited the city, gave a gold piece to every woman.
Darius I, fourth of the Achæmenian dynasty, founded Persepolis, about
forty miles northeast of the modern Shiraz, commenced building the famous
palace and constructed for himself a tomb. Xerxes I added a palace and a
tomb of his own, while tombs also were built by Artaxerxes III and Darius

II. But, while Persepolis remained the favourite resort of the Persian Kings,
it was too remote a spot to be the seat of government, which continued to be
divided between Babylon, Susa, and Ecbatana.
Meanwhile, under Xerxes I the Persian power came into conflict with
the Hellenic and was worsted in the battles of Platæa and Thermopylæ and
the sea-fight at Salamis. Henceforth the advance of the Persian Empire was
checked; dissensions began to weaken it; the central authority relapsed into
feebleness, with lurid intervals of cruelty, until finally it succumbed to the
rising tide of Macedonian conquest. In 331 B.C. Alexander the Great crushed
the army of Darius III near Arbela; took in turn the cities of Babylon, Susa,
and Ecbatana and stripped them of their treasure, finally capturing
Persepolis, and setting fire to it.
This act of vandalism has been variously explained. One story, which
forms the subject of Dryden’s “Ode to Saint Cecilia’s Day,” had it that the
wanton act was instigated by the courtezan, Thais. Another story is that it
was an act of revenge for the destruction of Greek temples by Xerxes I;
while still another relates that in this destruction of the very heart of Iran,
Alexander wished to impress the Oriental imagination with the absoluteness
of his supremacy.
After being subject to the rule of the successors of Alexander and to the
domination of the later Parthian Empire, Persia once more became an
empire under the Sassanian Dynasty, Ctesiphon being one of its chief cities.
In the seventh century A.D. it was conquered by the Saracens and entered
into the Mohammedan civilisation, which we shall discuss in a later chapter.

The rapid rise of the Persian power was due to the hardiness of this
mountain race and its highly organised preparation for war. Every Persian
able to bear arms was bound to serve the King: the great landowners on
horseback, the commonalty on foot. The army, therefore, unlike those of the
Oriental nations it encountered, was composed of cavalry as well as
infantry; and, while the latter, armed with bows, kept the enemy at a
distance and harassed them with storms of arrows, the cavalry, operating on
their flanks and rear, completed the rout. It was only when the power had
become unwieldy by its very vastness, that this method of warfare proved
useless against the Greek hoplites and the massed formation of the
Macedonian phalanx.

In its beginning the Persian system was a beneficent feudalism. The
nobles, excused from personal cultivation of the soil, were pledged to
appear at Court as frequently as possible. Their children were brought up in
company with the princes “at the Gate of the King,” instructed in riding,
hunting, and the use of weapons, educated to the service of the State and a
knowledge of the law, as well as to the commandments of religion. Under
Darius, who completed the vast structure of empire which Cyrus had
founded, the organisation of government and society was on broad and free
lines; an empire established in righteousness, following the precepts of
Zoroaster.
It is concluded from various testimony that this great prophet of the
Aryan peoples lived about 1000 B.C. He taught that in this world there is a
continual conflict between the Powers of Good—Light, Creative Strength,
Life, and Truth—and the Powers of Evil—Darkness, Destruction, Death,
and Deceit. At the head of the Good Powers is the Great Wisdom
Ahuramazda, whose helpers are the six powers of Good Thought, Right
Order, Excellent Kingdom, Holy Character, Health, and Immortality. At the
head of the Evil, Ahriman. Midway between these Powers is Man, who has
to make his choice on which side he will take his stand. He is called to
serve the Powers of Good; to speak the truth and fight a lie; to obey the
command of law and true order; to tend his cattle and fields; to practise the
Good and True in thought, word, and deed, and to keep from pollution the
elements of the earth, water, and particularly fire. For Zoroaster preserved
the old Aryan belief in the element of fire. Altars were erected upon the
hills, tended by fire-kindlers, who were the ministers of the true religion
and the intermediaries between God and man.
Moreover, Zoroastrianism was a proselytising religion. Ahuramazda,
whom king and people alike acknowledged, had given them dominion
“over the earth afar, over many peoples and tongues.” Yet, while they felt it
to be their destiny to rule the whole world, the Persians believed that it was
the will of Ahuramazda that they must govern it aright. Hence they treated
the conquered with clemency and employed their leaders as administrators
and generals. Cyrus, for example, permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem
and restored to them the temple vessels of gold and silver which had been
taken by Nebuchadnezzar.
Thus, the religion of Iran had to do with practical life, this world and the
joy thereof, and moral conduct; and as long as it retained its character of

plain living and high thinking—of which the simple coronation ritual of the
kings was symbolical—the Empire continued strong. Luxury, however,
gradually crept in; the Persian Kings vied with the Kings they had
conquered in magnificence of living and slowly but surely the strength of
the Empire was sapped.
Cruelty also became part of the Persian religion, as indicated by remains
of human sacrifices taken from ash-heaps that stood beside Zoroastrian
altars. This also caused a degeneration to devil-worship, which in some
localities survives to-day.

CHAPTER VI

PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE

Combination of Style.—In the days before their supremacy the
Persians, as agriculturists and breeders of cattle and horses, preserving their
simple existence, had no desire or need of monumental architecture. But
when Cyrus had overthrown the domination of the Medes, made himself
master of Mesopotamia and extended his conquests to the shores of the
Ægean Sea, he too was minded to immortalise in architecture the might of
the Persian Empire. Accordingly, as his race had no traditions in building,
he borrowed from the methods and styles of the nations he had conquered.
Thus Persian architecture represents a mingling of Median, Assyrian,
Asiatic Greek and, in a small degree, Egyptian.
The boyhood of Cyrus was spent at the court of Astyages the Mede, so
that the Median palaces at Susa and Ecbatana were familiar to him. Those
of the latter city, according to Polybius consisted of porticoes and hypostyle
halls, the columns being of cedar or cypress, overlaid with plates of silver.
These have long since disappeared, and the remains which now exist at
Ecbatana are of columns of stone, which are supposed to be part of the
restoration of the palace under the Persian Kings. For the substitution of
stone for wood in the columns distinguishes everywhere the Persian
architecture.

Tombs and Palaces; No Temples.—The remains of Persian architecture
comprise tombs and palaces. The

TOMB OF DARIUS I
Excavated in the Mountain Side, Persepolis. P. 82

PALACE OF DARIUS I, PERSEPOLIS
Conjectured Restoration. Of Which the Tomb Façade Was an Imitation. P. 82

TYPES OF PERSIAN COLUMNS P. 83 HALL OF ONE HUNDRED COLUMNS, PERSEPOLIS
Conjectured Restoration. P. 85

THE PALACES OF PERSEPOLIS
Conjectured Restoration. P. 84

Zoroastrian religion had no use for temples made with hands. Its temple
was the universe; the floor of it the mountain tops of Persia from which
countless altars, tended continually by the Fire-Kindlers, sent up flames in
worship of the element of Fire. Meanwhile it was the desire of every
Persian Monarch whom war and government obliged to be absent so much
from the homeland, that, when they died, their bodies should be brought
home “to the Persians.” Accordingly, when Cyrus erected a palace at
Pasargadae, the modern Marghab, he also built himself a Tomb, which
still exists.
Its style is a singular mixture of Assyrian and Asiatic Greek. Built of
large blocks of white polished marble, it consists of a platform of seven
steps, on the top of which is a small shrine or cella, rectangular in plan,
covered by a pitched roof that terminates in the front and rear, in a gable-
end or pediment. It is, in fact, a Greek temple of very rudimentary
simplicity, mounted on a ziggurat. The ruins show that the tomb was
surrounded on three sides by colonnades.
Following the Assyrian precedent, the Palace of Cyrus occupied a
platform, of about 40,000 square feet, which still exists and is known to the
natives as “The Throne of Solomon.” But here the terrace is of natural rock,
faced round the sides with cut stone walls distinguished by the beauty of the
masonry. It is the earliest instance known of the so-called drafted masonry,
of which a magnificent example is found in the terraces of Herod’s temple

at Jerusalem. It represents a method of cutting, which leaves the surface of
the block of stone rough-hewn, as when it left the quarry, but dresses the
edges to a “draft,” or smooth, bevelled surface.
Such scanty remains as have been found suggest that Cyrus’s palace was
of the simplest kind, including a central hall, the roof of which was carried
by two rows of stone columns, thirty feet high, with porticoes in antis. The
latter is a feature borrowed from Greek-Asiatic temple-building; the term,
in antis, being used when the columns of the portico are set between the
prolongation of the side walls of the main building.
It is, however, from the remains of the group of buildings at Persepolis
that the magnificence of Persian architecture can be best appreciated. Here,
again, is a terrace of natural rock; but of vast size, covering an area of about
one million six hundred thousand square feet. This, like the terrace of the
Escoriál of the Spanish Kings, projects from the foot of a rocky mountain
side. The Escoriál includes a royal mausoleum, built within the confines of
the palace; but, at Persepolis, three tombs, one of them unfinished, are
excavated behind the palace in the mountain wall. Two are supposed to be
the resting places of later kings, Artaxerxes II and III, while the unfinished
one is that of Arses, who reigned only two years.
Meanwhile the Tomb of Darius I, the founder of Persepolis, has been
identified as one of four tombs, eight miles distant from the palace. These
also are excavated in the mountain side, and at such a height from the
bottom of the valley, that they corroborate the account which Ctesias, the
Greek historian of Persia, gives of the tomb of Darius, that it was on the
face of a rock and only to be reached by an apparatus of ropes. The three
other tombs of this group are ascribed to Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I, and Darius
II.
The Tomb of Darius I is of special interest because it bears upon its face
a sculptured representation of the palace which he built at Persepolis. This
mode of decorating a tomb was probably derived from the Lycians, whose
custom it was to face their rock-cut tombs with a representation of the
house which the deceased had occupied while alive. Meanwhile, there is
little doubt that the Lycians derived the idea of the rock-hewn tomb from
Egypt.
The sculptured front of Darius’s tomb shows the portico of the palace,
and above it, upon the roof, the monarch himself upon his throne. The latter

is an immense cube, the face of which is decorated with an upper and a
lower row of warriors, or perhaps, tribute-bearers, while the corners are
buttressed with baluster-shaped columns, surmounted by bulls’ heads. The
monarch stands before the altar, with hands uplifted in worship of the sun
and moon. This recognition of the religion of the Babylonians and
Assyrians is characteristic of the Persian attitude toward conquered nations,
and recalls Cyrus’s proclamation to these nations, guaranteeing them their
life and property and designating himself the favourite of their own sun-
god, Marduk, Bel-Merodach.
The lower part of the façade of the tomb represents the portico of
Darius’s palace. The four columns are set in antis, but we have to imagine
the second row of columns as well as the windows which flanked the door,
and, like the latter, were constructed, as the ruins of the palace shows, with
monolithic jambs and lintels.
The columns suggest two considerations: first, the use of them, as
compared with the entire absence of the structural column in Assyrian and
Babylonian architecture, and, secondly, the peculiar design of their capitals.
The use was derived through the Medes probably from Asiatic-Greek
models; but the form of the capital is peculiar to Persian architecture. It is
composed of the head and forelegs of two recumbent beasts, which have
been called bulls, but bear much more resemblance to horses, and when
they have a horn, to the unicorn, a fabled creature that early legend
attributed to India. It was identified with strength and fleetness and might
well have been used symbolically by a race that derived from the same
Aryan source as the Indians; while the use of the horse in decoration would
come naturally to a nation of horse-lovers. It is also noticeable that these
beasts are embellished with trappings that suggest harness.
However this may be, the tomb carving shows between the heads, the
ends of the beams that support the cornice and roof. As these are not found
in the case of the columns at Persepolis, it appears that the roofs of the
palaces were constructed of wood, which perished in the fire of Alexander.
It has been remarked that the character of this whole portico, taken in
connection with the wooden columns at Pasagardae, suggests that the style
of Persian palace architecture was derived originally from a primitive
wooden construction. But, while this may be true, its development into
stone construction was not affected by the Persians themselves. They

employed Asiatic-Greek workmen whose style of temple-building, like that
of the Mainland-Greeks, shows the traces of primitive wood construction.
Before leaving this tomb, there is one other feature to be noticed;
namely, that the lintel of the doorway is surmounted by a cavetto-cornice,
decorated with rows of conventionalised lotus-petals, derived through
Lycia, from Egypt.
The restored plan of the platform of palaces at Persepolis exhibits a
monumental approach on the west side, formed of a double flight of marble
steps, set in double ramp. The steps are 22 feet wide, with a rise of 4 inches
and a tread of 15, so that they could easily be mounted by horses. The stairs
led to a terrace, paved, as was the whole platform, with marble, in the
centre of which was the entrance gate, or, to use the later classic term, a
Propylæa. This was square in plan, with a portal, front and rear, flanked by
winged bulls, while the ceiling was supported by four columns. Its walls,
like those of the other buildings, built of sun-dried bricks or rubble
masonry, set with clay mortar, have long since crumbled into ruins.
The earliest palace of the group is that of Darius I, to the portico of
which we have already alluded. Its plan shows a room, right and left of the
portico, in which may have been stairs leading to the roof; then a square
hypostyle hall of sixteen columns, set in rows of four, with various
chambers, along the sides and at the end.
In one building, the Hall of a Hundred Columns, the roof was carried
by ten ranges of ten columns; for the hall, as indeed were all the halls at
Persepolis, was square in plan. This can scarcely have been a mere
coincidence. Is it fanciful to imagine that a people, trained in
Zoroastrianism, found in the principle of the square a fitting symbol of
“Creative Strength” and “Right Order”?
But the most important building at Persepolis, “one of the most
stupendous relics of antiquity,” is the great Palace of Xerxes. Elevated on a
terrace of its own, twenty feet high, which was ascended on the north side
by four flights of steps, it occupied an area of one hundred thousand square
feet, more than double that of the Great Hall at Karnak, and larger than that
of any Gothic cathedral in Europe, Milan and Seville alone excepted. Two
rows of six columns supported each of the three porticoes, and six times six
the ceiling of the Hall: in which combination one may perhaps detect a

symbol of the Six Helpers of Ahuramazda, “the spiritual Wise One” or
“Great Wisdom.”
The columns, including base and capital, rose to a height of 65 feet,
which may be compared with the 69 feet of the central nave columns in the
Hall of Karnak. The latter, however, had a diameter of 12 feet, and were
separated by intervals of scarcely twice that width; while those in Xerxes’
palace were set at a comparatively far greater distance from one another and
measured in diameter only about 5 feet. Moreover, instead of a minimum of
light percolating through a clerestory as at Karnak, the light and air
streamed freely through the windows in the walls of Xerxes’ palace, so that
in every respect the impression produced by the two halls must have been
very different.
The grandeur of Karnak was weighted down with mystery and awe,
while Xerxes’ “lordly pleasure house” was an exalted symbol of the
Zoroastrian belief in the joy of life. For in addition to the grandeur of its
structural features, the imagination must picture the accompanying gladness
of marble floors, water basins, fountains, and flowers, and varicoloured
rugs and hangings. The walls, also, may have been resplendent with
brilliantly enamelled tiles as in Xerxes’ other palace at Susa, where the
French explorer, M. Dieulafoy, discovered the magnificent frieze of archers,
a frieze of lions, and other decorations executed in bright-coloured enamels
on concrete blocks. That Xerxes spared no pains to render his palace at
Persepolis as superb as possible may be inferred from the columns in the
hall and north portico. For in them the double capital of beasts does not rest
directly on the fluted shafts, but is supplemented by two lower members;
the first a curious arrangement of scrolls or volutes, the second a sort of
conventionalised calyx of the lotus, beneath which, in bell-like form, is a
conventionalisation of pendant leaves. In the volutes a suggestion of the
Ionic capital has been detected, while the lower points to an Egyptian
origin.
This medley of motives has a certain decorative value, but lacks the
supreme beauty of architectural relationship between the parts and the
whole. That is to say, the use of the various parts has not been regulated by
constructive logic, necessity, or fitness; but represents a purely whimsical
and arbitrary multiplication of motive. The student may assure himself of
this by comparing the Persian column with the Doric Order. In the latter he

may observe a superior quality of fitness in the relationship of the parts and
of the sense of an inevitable logical growth in the composition as a whole.
The fantastic elaboration of the columns at Persepolis, as well as the
general conglomeration of motives in Persian architecture, points to the fact
that the latter was the work of foreign artists, imported from various parts of
the great Persian Empire. It represents the character of the empire—a
variety in unity; a unity, however, not of natural growth, but one that,
having no artistic traditions of its own, puts the world under tribute to
supply motives for the exploitation of its magnificence.

CHAPTER VII

MINOAN OR ÆGEAN CIVILISATION

So far our study of ancient civilisation and architecture has been fairly
consecutive. We have now to break the continuity of the story and take a
leap back into a remote past and explore the origins of a civilisation which
was a forerunner of that of Greece. This civilisation had been called
“Mycenæan” because its existence was first brought to modern knowledge
by Schliemann’s discoveries in Mycenæ. But subsequent exploration has
proved that the civilisation was far spread and that Mycenæ was not even
the centre of it.
One of the most astonishing results of recent exploration is the
knowledge of a civilisation that developed without break from the polished
stone age and reached its highest point contemporaneously with the New
Empire in Egypt; ending, that is to say, about 1000 B.C. Not the least
interesting feature of the discovery is that it throws a new light on the
civilisation of prehistoric Greece.
The classical writers of Greece pointed to Mycenæ and Tiryns in Argolis
as being the principal evidence of a prehistoric civilisation, which was
assumed to belong to the Homeric period or even farther back to a rude
heroic beginning of Hellenic civilisation. This opinion continued to be held
by scholars until A.D. 1876. In this year, however, Dr. Schliemann, opening
up the graves which are just inside the Lion Gateway of the citadel at
Mycenæ, came upon a quantity of objects which proved the high state of
civilisation to which the prehistoric inhabitants of the city had attained.
Furthermore, they corresponded in character to the vases and gold, silver,

and bronze objects which, three years earlier, he had dug from the ruins of
the “Burnt City” (Troy) at Hissarlik in the Troad. These objects from the
peninsula of Peloponnesus and the mainland of Asia Minor were not only
similar in character but also of a fabric and decoration which differed from
those of any known art. But a relation between the objects of art described
by Homer and these “Mycenæan” treasures was generally allowed.
In 1884-1885 Schliemann and Dörpfeld, exploring the ruins of Tiryns,
came upon a building which offers the most complete example in Greece of
a palace of the “Mycenæan” age, belonging to a period probably between
1400 and 1200 B.C. During the subsequent years of the nineteenth century,
when exploration was extended to other parts of the Peloponnesus and
Northern parts of Greece, dome or beehive tombs, such as had been found
at Mycenæ, were discovered in Attica, Thessaly, and elsewhere. By degrees,
exploration was carried beyond the mainland of Greece to the Ionian
Islands and the islands of the Ægean, particularly to Cyprus and Crete and
the mainland of Asia Minor. This resulted in further discoveries of objects,
related in a common family, distinct from that of any other art division.
Meanwhile, objects of similar character were met with in Egypt, Italy,
Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain.
Finally, the culmination of all this mass of corroborative evidence was
reached by the explorations of Dr. A. J. Evans, at Cnossus in Crete, which
have been followed up by explorations in Phæstus, and other Cretan sites.
The net result is to establish the knowledge that Crete was the centre of a
civilisation which had dealings with Egypt and Mesopotamia and extended
to the sea-coast of Asia Minor and Phœnicia, the other islands of the Ægean
Archipelago, the Ionian Islands, and the mainland of Greece and spread its
offshoots along the west shores of the Adriatic, into Sardinia and Spain and
took deep root in Sicily. To the far-extending ramifications of this
civilisation has been given the comprehensive name of Minoan or Ægean.
In a most remarkable way the discoveries in Crete have corroborated the
Greek legends of the Cretan King Minos. It is conjectured that a Minos may
have been the founder of a dynasty and that the name passed into a title of
all the rulers, corresponding to the title, Pharaoh, in Egypt. Scholars,
therefore, have given the name Minoan to the civilisation of Crete; dividing
it into Early, Middle, and Late Minoan.

In the Early Minoan Period, represented in the contents of early tombs
and dwellings and such objects as stone vases and seal-stones, there is
evidence that the Cretans had already reached considerable cultivation and
had opened up communications with the Nile Valley. The date of this period
is conjectured to have centred around 2500 B.C., and to have corresponded,
roughly speaking, with the earlier of the Egyptian dynasties. Most
remarkable of Dr. Evans’s discoveries was the finding in 1900 of whole
archives of clay tablets in the palace of Cnossus, which prove that the
Cretans had a highly developed system of hieroglyphics and lineal script
2000 years before the time when the Phœnicians introduced writing into
Greece. Incidentally, this knowledge corroborates the statement of the
historian Diodorus, that the Phœnicians did not invent letters, but only
altered their forms.
The Middle Minoan Period centres round 2000-1850 B.C., and
corresponds with the Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt. It was the age of the
earliest palace building. Already appears the beginning of a school of wall-
painting, while a manufactory of fine faience was attached to the palace at
Cnossus.
The Late Minoan Period covers the period of the Hyksos usurpation in
Egypt and reached its own culmination about the time of the Eighteenth
Dynasty when the New Egyptian Empire or Second Theban Monarchy
commenced. We have already noted the appearance in Egypt of this Cretan
influence, inducing a habit of naturalistic representation in place of the old
conventionalised forms of sculpture and painting. To this late Minoan
period belongs the greatest development of palace building, as seen at
Cnossus, Phæstus, and Tiryns, while the painting on walls and vases
becomes more free and animated than anything of the kind in Egypt.
Toward 1400 B.C. a period of decline becomes apparent in Cretan art,
which is reflected all over the Ægean area. The conclusion is that the
islands and mainland of Greece had been invaded by less civilised
conquerors, who, having no cultivation of their own, adopted the art they
found and spoiled it. Probably they came from the North of Greece and
were precursors of the later “Hellenes.”
Finally, about 1000 B.C., the palace at Cnossus was again destroyed,
never again to be rebuilt; and at the same time the “Bronze Age” of Minoan
and Mycenæan civilisation came to an end. It fell before a nation,

barbarous, but possessed of iron weapons; probably the tribes which later
Greek tradition and Homer knew as Dorians. Then followed a period of
several centuries of unrest, as, successively, Achaæn, Æolian, and Doric
migrations came from the North through the mainland of Greece and the
islands of the Ægean, while an Ionian migration from Armenia spread to the
west shore of Asia Minor. Finally, when the Ægean area emerges into
history, it is dominated by Hellenes.
The Ægean Archipelago has been called the ancient bridge between the
civilisations of the East and West, and the imagination pictures Crete at the
southern end of it, within easy distance of three continents and engaged in
peaceful intercourse with all; the head of a maritime confederacy of sea-
rovers who planted their trading stations throughout the Mediterranean,
their art everywhere following their trade. She herself was protected from
aggression by her island walls; while the outposts of culture on the
mainland of Greece—Mycenæ and Tiryns—were compelled to erect their
palaces within citadels.
From the fact that no remains of Minoan and Mycenæan temples have
been found, but only shrines within the precincts of the palaces, it has been
concluded that, as in Assyria and Babylonia, the monarchs were also
priests. Evidence points to the principal Minoan divinity being a kind of
Earth Mother, who was associated with a satellite god. One part of her
religious attributes survived in the later Aphrodite, the other in Rhea, the
mother of the Olympian Zeus. While images of the deity were made as
early as 2000 B.C. the principal objects of worship, or fetishes, in the
Minoan age were natural objects: rocks and mountain peaks, trees, and
curiously shaped stones, and even artificial pillars of wood and stone.
Sometimes, as in the famous instance of the Lion Gate at Mycenæ, the
fetish object—here a pillar—was guarded by animals.
A special form of fetish for the two principal divinities was that of the
double axes: one double-headed axe above another on the same handle. “It
has been discovered,” says the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition),
“that the great Minoan foundation at Cnossus was at once a palace and a
sanctuary of the Double Axe. We can hardly any longer hesitate to
recognise in this vast building, with its winding corridors and subterranean
ducts, the Labyrinth of later tradition. It is difficult, also, not to connect the
repeated wall-paintings and reliefs of the palace, illustrating the cruel bull
sports of the Minoan arena, in which girls as well as youths took part, with

the legend of the Minotaur, or Bull of Minos, for whose grisly meals Athens
was forced to pay annual tribute of her own sons and daughters.” Actual
figures of a monster with a bull’s head and man’s body have been found on
seals in Crete, and evidence points to these bull sports being part of a
religious ceremony.
Even the smaller houses were of stone, plastered within, while the
palaces suggest a luxurious mode of living; being richly decorated, with
separate sleeping apartments and large halls, fine stairways, bath-chambers,
windows, folding and sliding doors, and remarkably modern arrangements
for water supply and drainage. The furniture included thrones, tables, seats,
constructed of stone or plastered terra-cotta; a great variety of cooking
utensils and vessels of all sorts from stone wine jars, ten feet high, to the
tiniest ointment-holders.
Ladies, in curiously modern costumes, formed a favourite subject both
for wall-decoration and miniature painting; many of the latter showing
groups with architectural and landscape surroundings, done with
remarkable spirit and naturalness.
The clay tablets are almost exclusively concerned with inventories and
business transactions, and prove that a decimal system of numeration was
used.
Next to Cnossus the most important sources of knowledge concerning
this ancient civilisation have been Hissarlik, Mycenæ, Phæstus, Hagia
Triada, and Tiryns.

WALL DECORATION IN PALACE OF CNOSSUS
Showing Male and Female Bull-Fighters. P. 93

LYON GATEWAY AT MYCENÆ PLAN OF THE ACROPOLIS OF TIRYNS
P. 98 P. 100

PARTS OF STAIRCASE IN PALACE OF CNOSSUS
P. 96

COUNCIL CHAMBER WITH GYPSUM THRONE
In Palace of Cnossus. P. 96

CHAPTER VIII

MINOAN OR ÆGEAN ARCHITECTURE

In so far as the prehistoric remains of Minoan or civilisation belonged to the
Polished Stone Age and Bronze Age, they are in the phase of development
that is represented in the Peruvian remains of the city of Machu Picchu.
Meanwhile, in its active consciousness of beauty as a motive, the Minoan
reached a perfection within the limits of its possibilities that carried it far
beyond the Peruvian.
This may have been partly due to the influence of the neighbouring
civilisation of Egypt, and also to the fact that the people of the Ægean area
mixed freely in their roving life with one another and with outside peoples,
so that there was a free-trade in ideas, and the seed which they planted grew
and multiplied. But it must also have been due to something inherent in the
race itself. What the race was has not been determined. So far, the
examination of skulls and bones in Cretan tombs has established only the
fact that the race, while showing signs of mixture, belonged on the whole to
the dark, long-haired “Mediterranean race,” whose probable origin lay in
Mid-Eastern Africa. The main interest of this is to discredit an Asiatic
source for Minoan civilisation. It is apparent from its achievements in
engineering and the arts and industries that it was a race of great
intelligence, with an active interest in life that led it to strive for the beauty
as well as the conveniences of living.
Palace of Cnossus.—The palace of Cnossus occupies an area of about
six acres, surmounting the debris of human settlements, which go back, it
has been estimated, to a distance of from 12,000 to 14,000 years before the
Christian era. The remains show that the palace formed a hollow square,
constructed around a central court. The principal entrance was upon the
north, though what appears to have been the royal entrance was upon the
west, opening on to a paved court.
The west wing contained a small council chamber, or office, in which
was found a throne, made of gypsum in a design curiously Gothic, around
which were lower stone benches. The walls of this chamber were decorated
with sacred dragons represented in a Nile landscape. They were executed,
like the other paintings found in these Cretan palaces, in fresco; that is to
say, in water colours mixed with some gelatinous medium, laid on the still
damp plaster, so that as the latter dried the colour became incorporated in

the actual material of the walls. To this council chamber was attached a
bathroom, probably for ritual purposes.
Near it was also discovered a small shrine, containing figures and reliefs,
exquisitely fashioned in faience, one of which shows a snake goddess and
her votaries; this being one of the aspects of the chief divinity. The walls
and pillars of these chambers are repeatedly decorated with the sign of the
Double Axe, while miniature frescoes on the walls exhibit pillared shrines,
with double axes stuck into some of the wooden pillars.
For the remains of the palace itself show that the pillars used in this
construction were of wood, rounded like posts. The circular sockets still
remain in the stonework and a comparison of the top and bottom ones
shows that the pillar tapered downward, the diameter at the bottom being
six-sevenths of the top one.
Another feature of this west wing is a series of eighteen magazines or
storerooms which contained quantities of clay documents and great stone
jars. The latter are decorated with horizontal bands, connected by diagonal
ones, like the straw work on a modern ginger jar. This design, wrought upon
the stone surface of these colossal jars, is an interesting memento of one of
the primitive methods of clay modelling. For, before the invention of the
potter’s wheel, the method of shaping, almost universally adopted, was one
of the three following: (1) scooping out from a ball of clay; (2) or coiling, in
which the clay was rolled out into thin ropes, which were coiled round and
round upon one another and then smoothed over; (3) or the building up of
the form upon a shape of basket-work or matting.
A large bathroom was discovered in the northwest corner of the
quadrangle but the actual residential quarters seem to have occupied the
east wing. There are the remains of a Megaron, or great hall of state,
approached directly from the central court, near which were found painted
reliefs, illustrating scenes of the bull-ring, with female as well as male
toreadors. These and other reliefs, some of which also commemorated
incidents of bull-fighting, were not carved upon the stone, as in the
Egyptian temples, or executed in tiles, as in Assyrian or Persian temples,
but applied to the wall with hard plaster. This method, known as gesso
work, was used later in Byzantine decoration and by the Italians of the
Renaissance, for decorative details; by Pinturricchio, for example, in the
Borgia apartments of the Vatican. It has been revived by modern mural

decorators; John S. Sargent, for instance, employing it in some of his panels
in the Boston Public Library.
To the south of the great hall a staircase, of which three flights and traces
of a fourth are still preserved, descended to a series of halls and private
rooms. Attached to one of these, identified as the “Queen’s Megaron,” was
a bathroom, decorated with frescoes of flying fish. The drainage system in
this part of the palace includes a water-closet and is of a complete and
modern kind.
The character and features of this palace are repeated on a smaller scale
in those discovered at Phæstus, Hagia Triada, and other spots in Crete, and
resemble in the main those of Mycenæ and Tiryns.
A glance at the map of ancient Greece shows that these last two cities,
situated at the north of the rich plain of Argolis, commanded the approaches
to the peninsula of the Peloponnesus; Mycenæ occupying a strategic
position on the highroad; Tiryns, on the sea. They were equally important in
resisting invasion from the North across the Isthmus of Corinth, and in the
struggle for supremacy that was waged between Argolis and the
Peloponnesus. Accordingly, the distinguishing feature of each city was that
it occupied an acropolis, the natural strength of which was increased by
fortifications built with irregular blocks of stone of great size, in the style
known as Cyclopean.
Mycenæ.—Those at Mycenæ surrounded an area which is roughly
triangular in plan, the main entrance being through the above mentioned
portal of the Lion Gate. Its side posts and lintel are composed of monoliths
and surmounted by the famous lion-relief, which fills the triangular space
formed by the gradual projection of the stones of the wall. The pillar or
fetish-post corresponds to the alabaster columns, now in the British
Museum, which flanked the entrance of the Treasury or Tomb of Atreus,
just outside the Lion Gate.
The shaft of these columns is without a base and tapers slightly to the
bottom. Ornamented with bands of repeated chevrons, which alternately are
plain and embellished with flutings, it supports a cushion or echinus,
decorated with plain and spiral bands, on which rests a square plinth or
abacus. It comprises, in fact, the features which in later times were
simplified into the Doric column.

The tomb itself is a subterranean chamber, of the style known as beehive
or in Greek, tholos. Its circular plan has a diameter of nearly 50 feet, and
the domed ceiling, commencing at the floor and formed of inwardly
projecting courses of stone, rises to about the same height. It leads into a
small square chamber and is itself approached by a horizontal avenue, 20
feet wide and 115 feet long, the sides of which are of squared stone, sloping
upward to a height of 45 feet.
A trace of this subterranean beehive method seems to survive in some of
the rock-hewn tombs at Myra, in Lycia. Here the façade represents the
front of a house, which is clearly of primitive wood construction. In later
instances it is composed of Ionic columns and cornices. In the older
examples the entrance is surmounted by a gable, which frequently takes the
curves of the beehive.
Intermediate between these Lycian Tombs and the Minoan structures are
certain rock-cut tombs in Phrygia which recall the Lion Gate. The façade
comprises a cornice supported by columns, above which is a gable,
occupied by colossal lions. At Arslan, one of these pediments shows two
lions, in this instance not rampant, which support a central pillar. Inside,
however, two rampant lions flank a nude human figure.
At Mycenæ are earlier tombs than that of Atreus, which consist simply
of a deep shaft lowered into the rock. These are situated just inside the Lion
Gate, the area which they occupy being enclosed by two concentric circles
of thin slabs, set up on end with others laid across the top of them. It is a
feature that in its attenuated form seems to recall Stonehenge. Dr.
Schliemann reached the conclusion that these were the graves which were
shown to Pausanias, as being those of Agamemnon, Cassandra, and her
companions.
On the summit of the Acropolis at Mycenæ are the remains of a palace,
similar to, but less extensive than, that of Tiryns, which we may therefore
examine in preference.
Tiryns.—The palace of Tiryns, which probably dates to a period
between the fourteenth and twelfth centuries B.C., seems to have combined
the luxuriousness of the residence of an Oriental king with the feudal state
of a mediæval baron and his crowd of retainers. The acropolis is of oval
shape, with its long axis north and south, surrounded by immense ramparts
of Cyclopean masonry, from 30 to 40 feet in thickness, while the outside

height was about 50 feet and that of the inside 10 feet from the level of the
ground. In certain parts chambers were embedded in the thickness of the
wall, and round its inner side ran a colonnade, supported by wooden posts.
The area thus enclosed was divided into three successive levels, of
which the highest was excavated by Schliemann and Dörpfeld, 1884-1885.
The plan shows the entrance situated on the west side, away from the sea,
which probably was once fitted with a gateway similar to that at Mycenæ.
The approach passes between massive walls to another gate, whence it
proceeds to a propylæa, with rooms for the guard. This opens into a
forecourt, from which another propylæa gives approach to the actual palace.
The first feature of the Palace is a court bounded on three sides by a
post-supported colonnade. An altar or sacrificial pit is in the same position
as that occupied by the altar of Zeus in a later Greek house. It may be
possible in this connection to see evidence that the principal deity on the
mainland of Greece was already, unlike that of Crete, a male; perhaps a
terrible prototype of the later benignant Zeus, to whom human sacrifices
were made, as to the hideous Mexican divinity, Huitzilopochtli.
On the north side of the court a portico, succeeded by a vestibule, gives
access to the Megaron. In the centre of this is the hearth, a feature not
needed in the warmer climate of Crete and therefore not found in the
palaces of that island. Four columns supported the roof, the centre of which
may have been raised to allow openings for light and smoke escape.
Adjoining the sleeping chambers on the west side of this hall is a bathroom,
about 12 feet by 10 feet, the floor of which is composed of a single slab of
stone, sloped so that the water drained out through a pipe in the wall.
Another group of buildings, supposed, though without authority, to be
the women’s quarters, lies to the east of the great hall, from which,
however, it is completely cut off by a solid wall; it is entered by two
circuitous passages, one leading from the first propylæa, the other from a
postern gate in the western rampart. Here again the plan shows an open
court, without an altar, from which a vestibule admits to a smaller megaron.
The floors of the megara are of stucco, incised with a series of lines,
coloured blue and red, while the walls are decorated with frescoes as in the
palace at Cnossus, one of the best preserved paintings showing a bull-fight
scene. On the other hand, the palace of Tiryns shows part of a frieze of

alabaster, sculptured in relief with rosettes and interlacing patterns and
studded with jewel-like pieces of blue glass or enamel.
The walls to a height of about three feet above ground were of stone,
above which they were continued with sun-dried bricks; the upper story
being probably of wood, with roofs of stamped earth. The doorways, though
sometimes of wood, were more usually constructed of monoliths. Bronze
cup-like sockets, let into the stone thresholds, show that the doors revolved
upon a pivot.
It is agreed that while the palace of Tiryns represents the general
character of a royal house, as it is pictured in the Homeric poems, it is a
mistake to look in it for an explanation of details of arrangement.

BOOK III

CLASSIC PERIOD

CHAPTER I

HELLENIC CIVILISATION

The use of the term Hellenic can be traced back to the seventh century B.C.
It was the name under which the various streams of migration—Achæan,
Æolian, Dorian, and Ionian—merged their differences in the proud
recognition of a common race.
The date and extent of these migrations are clouded with obscurity; but
certain points are clear. The Ionians came from Armenia and settled in Asia
Minor and the adjacent islands, while the other three penetrated into Greece
from the shores of the Baltic. The Achæan was the first to arrive and had
maintained a long civilisation before the later migration of Æolians and
Dorians. The Dorian invasion seems to have been especially aggressive and
after fastening a hold upon the mainland of Greece extended to the Ægean
Archipelago, overrunning Crete and wresting supremacy of the
Mediterranean from the Minoan Sea-Kings about 1000 B.C.
Hellenic, however, never implied a national bond. The Hellenes were
never united as one people under one government. Hellas was a congeries
of independent states which even allowed their colonies, from the first,
complete self-government. The bond which loosely held them together was
the common sense of superiority to all other races; and as their civilisation
developed, a common pride in its glory, not that this was sufficient to
prevent continuous rivalry and frequent warfare between states and cities.
Consequently, there is properly speaking no such thing as Greek history;
nor would it be profitable for our purpose to trace the rise and decline of the
several states. It is better to consider Hellenism as a principle, the more or

less common ideal of a people, not confined to Hellas, but spread over the
littoral of the Mediterranean; wherever Hellenes settled—a race of mariners
and merchants, thinkers and artists, who lifted themselves to so high a pitch
of civilisation, that it became a source of inspiration to all subsequent
culture.
In the Minoan and Mycenæan Age the political system was a monarchy
that combined the functions of high priest and commander-in-chief. In the
Homeric Age there were still kings who led their armies and acted as the
intermediaries of the gods, but their power was controlled by a Boule, or
consulting assembly. With the Dorians the rule of kings passed to that of
oligarchies, chosen from one or more of the noble classes whose claim to
government was founded on birth and the ownership of land. They were
associated with a Boule, representative of the privileged classes, while the
priestly functions were exercised by magistrates, who, however, were
drawn from the aristocracy.
In many parts of Hellas the oligarchies gave way to “tyrannoi.” These
are not to be understood in the sense that our word “tyrant” has. They were
a step in the evolution of popular government, inasmuch as they were a
means of breaking up the exclusive authority of the privileged classes. To
consolidate their own power, the tyrannoi sought the favour of the populace
and made concessions in the direction of popular government. Accordingly,
while some of the tyrannoi were succeeded by a return to the oligarchies, in
more cases they prepared the way for a democratic form of government.
In order to take religion out of the exclusive domain of the aristocracy,
the tyrants established popular cults. Peisistrates, for example, tyrant of
Athens, is thought to have established the Great Dionysiac festival and
raised the Panathenæa to the position of the chief national festival of the
Athenian State. Everywhere the tyrants were the patrons of literature and
the arts. To Peisistrates is attributed the first critical edition of the text of
Homer, while under the encouragement of himself and his successors (the
Peisistratids) which lasted from 560-511 B.C. architecture and sculpture also
progressed to a degree that made possible their grandeur in the “Great Age.”
He is also said to have encouraged Thespes, the Attic poet, to impersonate
characters and thus convert the narrative poem into dramatic form, laying
the foundation of Greek drama.

Peisistrates also gave the people a constitution, extended the power of
Athens by alliances, and increased its commerce. With the fall of the
Peisistratids the rule of the many (hoi polloi) was assured. The government
of Athens became democratic.
It is to be noted that while there were various forms of democratic
government in Hellas, all differed from our modern conception of
democracy. The latter is based upon the principle of doing away with
privilege, while the Greek form implied privilege, although it enlarged its
area. No foreigner could acquire citizenship, which also was denied to
native-born inhabitants who were of foreign extraction, on either the
father’s or the mother’s side. Furthermore, the Greeks regarded labour as a
disqualification for political rights, and almost all unskilled labour and most
of the skilled was performed by slaves. The latter, however, were well
treated and not only enjoyed personal liberty but also the opportunity of
becoming prosperous.
Again, the government under the Hellenic democracy was not
representative. The citizen body was so small that all could meet in the
Ecclesia and register their vote directly on any question. Appointment to
office was by lot and not election, and accordingly the number of citizens
who held at one time or another big or little offices included a great
majority of the whole body. The result of this was an intimacy on the part of
all the citizen body with the machinery of government and the pros and
cons of every question as it arose. They voted with intelligence and their
votes counted directly; a system which helped immensely to cultivate their
intellectual keenness.
The two Persian invasions, the first under Datis and Artaphernes (490
B.C.) in the reign of Darius I, the second by Xerxes in person (480-479 B.C.),
had proved the need of closer co-operation among the Hellenic States, and
the Delian League was formed under the leadership of Athens and with
Athens as the “predominant partner.” An annual tribute was paid by all the
member-states for the maintenance of a fleet. Athens was the treasurer and
the fleet was mainly Athenian, while the commanders were entirely so. The
power thus concentrated in Athens gave her so marked a supremacy that
Pericles used the League to form an Athenian Empire. This lasted about
thirty years (461-430 B.C.), during which period Athens reached the
culmination not only of her power but also of her magnificence. For
Pericles spent the money, contributed by the allies for common defence, in

beautifying the Acropolis; the excuse being that in doing so he was giving
glory to Athena, who was the patron goddess of the League. Pericles also
encouraged literature and counted among his friends three of the greatest
Greek writers—Sophocles, Herodotus, and Thucydides.
But the power of Athens incited the envy of the other states, which
ranged themselves with Sparta. In the Peloponnesian wars, the supremacy
of Athens was broken and the Athenian Empire was succeeded by a Spartan
Empire, which in time succumbed to the Theban Hegemony. Finally Hellas
was conquered by Philip of Macedon and passed into the Macedonian
Empire, established by this king and enlarged by his son, Alexander the
Great.
Through all these struggles Athens, though despoiled of her supremacy,
played a big part until she was conquered by Philip at Chæronæa, in 338
B.C. The latter date is adopted as the end of the Great Age which had lasted
since 480 B.C., including within its circumference the age of Pericles.
Besides its triumphant achievements in architecture and sculpture, the Great
Age comprised in drama the names of Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and
Aristophanes; in history, Herodotus, Thucydides; in oratory, Demosthenes;
in philosophy, Aristotle and Plato. Meanwhile, the century preceding it had
produced, among the poets, Anacreon and Sappho; and, as representatives
of mathematics, astronomy, geography, and metaphysics, Thales,
Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaximander, and
Hecatæus of Miletus.
It is significant that none of these last named poets and thinkers
belonged to the mainland of Hellas, but to the islands and cities of the
Ionian group or to the adjacent Cyclades. And what is true of literature is
equally true of architecture and sculpture. In fact during the fifth century
B.C. and also the three preceding centuries, culture had been more developed
in Ionia than in Attica. For, through its commerce with the East, Ionia
reached a high state of prosperity and borrowed something of Eastern
luxuriousness as well as Eastern thought and art ideals, just as in turn the
East borrowed from it. Miletus was for a long time the wealthiest and most
luxurious of Hellenic cities, rivalled only by Sybaris on the gulf of
Tarentum; one of the flourishing cities of the so-called Magna Græcia in the
south of Italy.

Similarly Corinth under the rule of her tyrants, Cypselus and his son
Periander (657-581 B.C.), had enjoyed a period of great prosperity. She
extended her trade from Asia Minor and Egypt to Magna Græcia in the
west, and was also a great industrial centre, famous for its pottery, metal
work, and other decorative crafts. Moreover, it was reported to have
“invented” painting.
These brief references serve to emphasise two points: first, the wide
spread of Hellenic culture; and, secondly, the variety that it exhibited. The
most cherished sentiment in Hellas, as we have remarked, was that of
autonomy. Even under the hegemonies and empires, individual cities and
colonies were permitted self-government and, as its corollary, self-
development. Hence the variety in unity that characterised Hellenic culture.
The unity was strengthened and the variety diffused throughout the whole
by the Festival-contests which were held at regular intervals. These
originated in local religious festivals, which in time were thrown open to
competitors from all parts of Hellas.
The oldest and the greatest was the Olympic Festival, held in the valley
of the river Alphæus in Elis, which was celebrated at intervals of four years.
The event became so important in the life of Hellas that the interval of four
years between one celebration and the succeeding one, called an Olympiad,
became the measure for computing time, the first Olympiad being reckoned
as 776 B.C. Originally the festival was held in honour of Hera, to whom a
temple—the earliest as yet known in Hellas—was dedicated, 1000 B.C.
Later the chief honour was paid to the Olympian Zeus. His temple, which in
time contained the celebrated chryselephantine statue of the god by
Pheidias, stood in a sacred grove, the Altis, which was adorned with statues
of the successful athletes, made by the most famous sculptors. The sacred
enclosure was surrounded by walls and colonnades, adjoining which, on
one side, were the gymnasium, palæstra, and baths for the use of the
athletes, whose training in the sacred precincts lasted for ten months, before
they could compete in the stadium. The latter adjoined the Altis on the east
side.
From all parts of Hellas, states and cities vied with one another in
furnishing competitors and, as the date of the Festival approached, heralds
proclaimed throughout the Hellenic world the “Truce of God” under which,
for the time being, warlike operations were suspended and safe conduct was
guaranteed to all visitors to Olympia.

The influence of Sparta had regulated the character of the contests of
endurance: running, leaping, wrestling, boxing, to which in time was added
chariot racing. But as the spirit of culture spread the Olympian and the other
festivals included musical contests, while the poet declaimed his verses and
the painter showed his work for the pleasure and profit of the assembled
multitudes.
The Olympic festival, in fact, was the supreme realisation of the Hellenic
ideal: perfection of physical development, joined to highest intellectual
development and the finest development of the senses. It was an ideal that
involved the possible perfection of the whole man, a harmony of body,
senses, and intellect—the Hellenic ideal of Beauty.
Olympia, wrote Lysias, is “the fairest spot on earth,” and, surely, in the
loveliness of its natural setting, in the embellishments which the architect
and sculptor had added, in the glory of the youthful vigour of the
competitors and the inspiration of poets and musicians, and, not least, in the
joyous enthusiasm of the spectators was realised, as perhaps nowhere else
at any time, the Beauty of Life; the idea, as Plato taught, that the Good is
the Beautiful, the Beautiful the Good.
Such was the Hellenic ideal. And an ideal, need one add, is not an aim
that is actually achieved but one beyond our capacity to achieve wholly, that
yet gives continuous incentive to higher and nobler effort. This ideal of the
possible perfection of man in all his parts is the highest to which man has
ever aspired and the Hellenes of the Great Age came the nearest to
achieving it. Hence their example has become to succeeding ages Classic.
Having this ideal, the Hellenes translated it as far as possible into visible
form. No athlete could compete at Olympia unless his body and his
character were free from blemish; no statue or temple must be erected
except as the finest possible expression of organic perfection.
For the beauty involved in the Hellenic ideal is organic beauty.
Everything about Olympia, as everything about a Hellenic Temple, must
perform its function in the organic beauty of the whole.
Further, it is to be noted that in the pursuit of this ideal the Greeks did
not rely upon the feeling of the senses, nor yet upon the judgment of the
intellect; but upon a union of the two. They submitted the inspiration of the
senses to processes of reason. In a word, they intellectualised their
sensations. It is this which has made the expression of their ideal Classic.

It is not necessary for our present purpose to trace the ebb and flow of
the influence of this ideal through the centuries. But we may observe that
while the Romans despoiled Hellas of her works of art and imitated, as far
as they could, the externals of her ideal of beauty, the Arabs, Moors, and
Saracens in later years more intimately imbibed its spirit and gave their own
expression to it. Italy, however, in the latter half of the fifteenth century and
during the sixteenth, came nearer than any other nation to both the spirit
and the form of Hellenic culture. For her scholars and artists were more
inclined to emulate than to imitate the example of the Greeks and tried to
incorporate the Hellenic ideal into their own lives.
On the other hand, the Classical revival which began toward the end of
the eighteenth century and has continued intermittently to our own day, has
for the most part made the mistake of imitating instead of emulating. Artists
have tried to copy the form, without imbibing the spirit. But form so used is
like the letter that killeth; without the spirit that giveth life.
Meanwhile, there are indications that the world to-day is going to
approach nearer to the Hellenic ideal than ever before and in some respects
to better it. For there was a flaw in the latter. It despised labour and denied
workmen a share in government. Its democracy was merely an extended
aristocracy and, since those privileged to share in it received payment while
filling office, it has been said that “the majority of the Athenian citizens
were salaried paupers.” On the other hand, the theory, at least, of modern
society is the honourableness of labour, and one of the best recognised
problems of to-day is the shaping of conditions in order that labour may in
truth be honourable—a blessing and not a curse, enhancing the beauty of
the worker’s life instead of starving it. In fact, the modern world in adopting
anew the Hellenic ideal of the beauty of the whole life is going to carry it
further, to include the whole life of the whole community.
Moreover, our hope in being able to revive the Hellenic ideal and even to
carry it farther consists in the fact that the foundation of our progress, as of
the Greek, has again become reason, and reason established on a wider and
firmer basis, owing to the immense development of modern science. And,
while science encompasses every field of human thought and activity, its
tendency is more and more directed to promoting the health and happiness
of life. It is aiming anew at the Hellenic ideal of physical, moral and mental
perfection, not confined to a few, but embracing whole communities and
peoples.

There was a further flaw in the Hellenic system. It relegated women to
an inactive position in the public affairs of life. Women were excluded even
as sight-seers from the Olympic Games. The Greek worshipped the physical
in woman, but refused development of her intellectual faculties. Their ideal
was, in fact, centred in a single sex; it could not breed and perpetuate itself.
But to-day the idea is spreading that this is a woman’s as well as a man’s
world, and that to approximate to the ideal of human perfection needs the
full, free, and independent co-operation of the woman and the man.
In conclusion let us note how in one respect the Hellenic ideal still
transcends our own. There was a logic in the Greek, to which we have
hardly yet attained. It practically amounted to this that “a tree is known by
its fruits.” If a thing is good physically, morally, and mentally, it must
naturally manifest its goodness so that it can be appreciated by the senses.
Beauty must be made visible and audible. The possibility of the ideal must
be made familiar to all, in literature, song, dance, drama, and the arts of
beautiful design.
To the Greeks æsthetics, the study of what is appreciated as beautiful by
the senses, was not a separate department of life, as it is apt to be with us,
but only another aspect of morality and religion. It was the natural and
inevitable expression of the inward spirit of the ideal. How could a man’s
life reach its highest possibility if it did not love and seek after beauty; how
could a city be truly great unless it were manifestly beautiful?
One can hardly imagine a Hellen, who wished to retain any reputation
for intelligence, asserting, as many people are satisfied and even seem
proud to do in these days: “I don’t know anything about art, but I know
what I like.” To this it is on record that an artist retorted, “And so does a
cow.” Which would have been the sort of retort that a Hellen might have
made to the speaker, whom he would at once determine was a person of low
intelligence.
For Greek art, as we have already said, was not an expression solely of
the senses; but of the sensations guided by the intellect; and it was just as
much a part of a Greek’s intellectual training to know and understand and
feel—in a word, appreciate—art, as it was to fit himself for other services to
the State. Yet, do not forget it, the Hellenes were a race of traders and
manufacturers, like the backbone of our communities to-day.

CHAPTER II

HELLENIC ARCHITECTURE

We have noted in the previous chapter that Hellenic art, like Hellenic
culture generally, was a product of the senses guided by the intellect—the
expression of intellectualised sensations. To his crude sensations the artist
applied very much the same process that the modern scientist has applied to
crude oil, until, through experiments guided by observation and reasoning,
he has developed refined oil, which gives the purest and intensest possible
illumination. Thus the Hellenic artists, through generations, refined upon
the forms of their architecture, to create a unity, distinguished by fitness,
proportion, harmony and rhythm, until they brought it to the highest degree
of expressional capacity; appealing alike to feeling and to reason. It reached
its highest expression in the temple, the supreme monument of the
community’s civic consciousness.
The developed form of the Hellenic Temple resembled the Egyptian in
being a product of the “post and beam” principle of construction; but
differed in its purpose that the outside rather than the inside should present
superior dignity of design. The chief feature of the latter was the Order, as it
is called in Hellenic and Roman architecture, or combination of columns
and entablature. It might be confined to a portico at the entrance or
supplemented by another portico in the rear, or still further extended by a
colonnade that surrounded all

SOME TEMPLE PLANS P. 120

HELLENIC ORDERS

ROMAN ORDERS

MODEL OF THE ACROPOLIS
(Right) Roman Gateway at Propylæa; (Left) Erechtheion. Adjoining Remains of Early Temple
of Athenæ; Beyond Is the Parthenon; Back of the Latter, Temple of Rome and Augustus

MODEL OF THE PARTHENON
(Restored)

THE PARTHENON
P. 140, ETC.

TEMPLES AT PÆSTUM
Poseidon, at the Right. P. 125

CHORAGIC MONUMENT TEMPLE OF NIKE APTEROS
Of Lysicrates, Athens. P. 131 Athens, “Wingless.” Notice Looping Fillets in Capitals. P. 141

PORTICO OF THE CARYATIDES. ERECHTHEION
Ionic Architrave and Cornice; no Frieze. P. 141

DETAIL OF ORNAMENT
In Order from Below: Anthemion, Bead-and-Spool, Egg-and-Dart, Bead-and-Spool, Heart-
Leaf. P. 132

STATUES IN THE ROUND OF PERSEPHONE FIGURES IN HIGH RELIEF
AND DEMETER From the Procession of Worshipers. Frieze of
From the East Pediment of the Parthenon. P. the Parthenon. P. 135
135

PLAN OF HOUSE OF PANSA, POMPEII
Entrance From R. Leading To E. the Atrium, with Impluvium in the Center. F. Peristyle
Enclosing a Small Garden or Fish Pond. B. Living Rooms, Triclinium to the Right. C. Kitchen
Quarters. Sleeping Apartments A. and Opening on the Courts. Plan Ends on Left with Portico,
Opening onto Garden. P. 181

PLAN OF THEATRE OF DRAMYSSUS
One Hundred Feet to One Inch

four sides of the cella or domos, house of the god, in which case it is called
a peristyle.

The emphasis of the order as a constructive and decorative feature has
been traced back by some students to the Dorian people’s primitive custom
of worshipping in groves. The religious ceremonies, which included a
procession of the worshippers, would be conducted amid the trees
surrounding the altar or shrine, and in time a roofing of cross pieces
thatched with boughs may have been attached to the trees. Accordingly,
those who adopt this view suggest that when the use of a grove was
succeeded by a constructed temple, the original feature was the peristyle.
And possibly there is a commemoration of this in the peristyle of the
Parthenon, where a procession of worshippers of the goddess is represented
in the sculptured frieze that embellishes the outside of the walls of the cella
—thus embodying in the most highly developed form of Hellenic temple its
origin in primitive religion.
The character of the form seems to have originated in wood
construction, certain features of which—to be referred to later—were
retained after stone or marble was employed and were translated into details
of decoration. The gradual transition to materials of construction, less at the
mercy of fire, is hinted at by Pausanias, a Greek geographer and writer on
art of the second century B.C., in his description of the Heraion or Temple
of Hera (Juno) at Olympia, the oldest known example of a Doric Temple,
attributed to 1000 B.C.
The cella wall, he says, was constructed of sun-dried bricks on a lower
course of stonework, but the entablature was still of wood, covered with
terra-cotta. One wooden column was still standing in the opisthodomos, but
elsewhere as the wooden columns decayed they had been replaced by stone
ones; the design of their capitals showing that the work of restoration lasted
from the sixth century to Roman times. The roof was covered with tiles.
The cella was divided into a central nave and side-aisles by two rows of
columns for the support of the roof, and the aisles were intersected by small
screen walls; thus forming alcoves, corresponding to the side-chapels of a
Gothic cathedral. In one of these alcoves German explorers in 1878
discovered the Hermes of Praxiteles, which is probably the only marble
statue in existence that was actually wrought by the hands of one of the
great sculptors.
Early Doric Examples.—The Dorian migration pushed down through
Macedonia and Thessaly into the peninsula of Greece and spread through
the islands of the Ægean as far as Crete, afterward planting colonies at

Pæstum and other sites in Southern Italy and at Syracuse, Selinus, and
Agrigentum in Sicily. Throughout all this wide area they carried their
particular style of Order—the Doric. In developing it, they brought into
play what has been judged their distinguishing trait of character—sense of
proportion.
The earliest known examples of Doric temples, built originally of stone,
are at Corinth and that of Phœbus Apollo on the island of Ortygia, at the
entrance to the harbour of Syracuse. In these, which are attributed to the
seventh century B.C., the columns are monoliths with widely projecting
capitals, and set so close together that the intercolumniation was less than
one diameter of the column. For the early Greeks appear to have been
distrustful of the bearing capacity of stone as compared with wood.
Belonging to the sixth century are the colossal Temples of Zeus at
Selinus and Agrigentum and the Temple of Poseidon (Neptune) in
Pæstum. In the last the columns are composed of sections or “drums,” and
there are still in position in the cella the smaller columns, superimposed on
the main ones for the support of the roof.
The temples of the fifth century are distinguished by increased
refinement in the matter of proportion and details and by superior skill and
workmanship. They include the Temple of Athene (Minerva) on the island
of Ægina; the so-called Theseum, supposed to have been dedicated to
Heracles (Hercules), in Athens; and the Temple of Zeus which forms one
of the group of temples at Olympia. It is the most complete temple-group
yet discovered, and was the scene of the religious ceremonies in connection
with the Pan-Hellenic Games.
With the second half of the fifth century began the supremacy of Athens
in the affairs of Hellas under the rule of Pericles, which enabled her as
custodian of the Hellenic treasury to undertake the beautifying of the
Acropolis. This culminated in the Parthenon, the noblest example of the
Doric style and, as Mr. A. D. F. Hamlin writes, “the most faultless in design
and execution of all buildings erected by man.”
Following, apparently, the tradition of worshipping in groves, the
Dorians placed their temples in a temenos, or enclosure in which were other
shrines, altars, and treasuries. Whether this temenos was on a hill-top, as in
the case of the Acropolis in Athens and the site of the temple-group in
Agrigentum, or in a valley on sloping ground as at Delphi, the

irregularities of the ground were taken advantage of in the disposition of the
buildings. Thus was created an ensemble in which art and nature united,
while in the case of a level site, as at Olympia, Delos, and Pæstum, the
temples were grouped in picturesque irregularity.
Temple Plans.—The nucleus of the temple plan was the naos,
containing the statue of the deity. Adjoining it were other chambers,
connected with the ritual of worship; and this aggregate of naos and
chambers, enclosed within walls, is known as the Cella.
It was approached from the front, which faced the east, by a covered,
columned vestibule, open at the sides, called the pronaos. This was often
repeated at the rear under the name of epinaos, or, as the Romans called it,
posticum.
The pronaos was entered through a portico. When the latter was
composed of columns, set between the prolonged sides of the cella, the type
of plan was called in antis.
When the side-walls were not prolonged, but terminated in pilasters,
known as antiæ, and the supporting members of the front façade were
solely columns, the type was called prostylar or prostyle.
If, under the same conditions the portico was repeated at the rear, the
type was called amphi-prostylar or amphi-prostyle.
If the whole were surrounded by a colonnade or peristyle the type was
peripteral; while if a second row of columns were added on each side, as in
the great Temple of the Olympian Zeus, erected in Athens during the
Roman occupation, the type was dipteral. The external aisle, formed by the
colonnade on each side was known as the pteroma.
Where there was no peristyle, but columns, known as false or engaged,
were built into the wall of the cella, the type was pseudo-peripteral.
There are also to be mentioned the octagonal plan, as seen in the Tower
of the Winds in Athens; the circular peripteral plan of the Tholos at
Epidauros and the examples of irregular planning presented by the
Erechtheion and Propylæa.
The type was further distinguished by the number of columns—four, six,
eight, or ten—composing the portico, as, respectively, tetrastyle, hexastyle,
octostyle, and decastyle.

Thus the Parthenon is octostyle peripteral; Temple of Poseidon,
Paestum, hexastyle peripetral; of Jupiter Olympios, Atucus, octostyle
dipteral; of Apollo, Bassæ, in antis.
Temple Form.—The cella, or chamber for the god, was built originally
of wood; later of sunburnt bricks on a lower course of stonework, the whole
being coated with a thin layer of stucco, as is found to have been the
practice also in later Doric temples in Sicily and Italy, where the material
was soft stone. To protect it from the damp of the ground as well as to
dignify it, the cella was raised on a platform, approached by steps.
On the top of the walls was laid a framework of timber sills, crossed by
transverse beams, on which stood posts to hold the ridge-piece, from which
the rafters sloped to the sills, so that the roof which was of wood, covered
with sunburnt brick and later by tiles, formed eaves to protect the cella from
the roof-rain.
The next step to add dignity to the entrance would be to prolong the
gable end in front and support it by posts, so as to form a porch or portico.
At first the weight of this might be chiefly carried by an extension of the
side walls. Then a superior effect of lightness and dignity would be given to
the portico by omitting the support of the sides and substituting posts;
while, for further embellishment, a similar portico might be extended from
the rear of the cella.
Then, in the search for dignity and also to give more protection from
weather to the walls of the cella, the eaves of the roof would be further
prolonged outward and made to rest on sills that were supported by a series
of posts. In this way the cella was completely surrounded by a colonnade or
peristyle.
As the use of stone or marble was adopted, the platform became the
stylobate, which was approached by three steps, carried along the entire
length of all the sides. The cella was built of marble or stucco-covered
stone, and marble or stone took the place of the sills and beams of the roof,
but the latter continued to be constructed of wood, supported by small
columns resting on the capitals of larger ones. The outside sheathing of the
roof was of terra-cotta or marble tiles. Unlike the roof of an Egyptian
temple which was raised in the centre to admit clerestory windows, that of a
Hellenic temple had an uninterrupted slope. Whence then was the light
derived for the interior?

Lighting.—Since all roofs, being of wood, have perished, the
explanations that have been attempted are purely conjectural. A remark by
Vitruvius, the Roman architect and author of ten books on architecture,
regarding the Temple of Zeus at Athens that it was hypæthral (open to the
sky) has led to a suggestion that part of the roof may have been open, as in
the case of the Pantheon in Rome. But, at the time he wrote, the cella was
exposed because Sulla had carried off to Rome some of the supporting
columns. Another Roman writer, Strabo, describes the decastyle Temple of
Apollo near Miletus as hypæthral, but gives as the reason the enormous
size of the cella, in which precious groves of laurel bushes grew. So, it is
purely a surmise that the portion of the roof may have been omitted and that
the temples were hypæthral.
Another theory, founded upon the discovery in a temple at Bassæ of
three marble tiles, or thin slabs, pierced with holes about 18 inches by 10, is
that some five of these, let into each side of the roof, would have lighted the
interior amply without admitting much rain. Again, the use of marble tiles
has afforded a suggestion that, Parian marble being very translucent, the
light might have penetrated through. James Fergusson, on the other hand,
conjectured that a trench was let into each side of the roof; but this would
have needed drains to carry off the water and no sign of a system of
drainage has been found in any temple. Other authorities, however,
maintain that it was only through the open doorway that light was admitted,
which owing to the clear atmosphere of Greece and the reflection from the
marble pavement, would be sufficient.
The Orders.—In Hellenic architecture there are two fully developed
Orders—or combinations of Columns and Entablature—the Doric and the
Ionic. To these are usually added a third, the Corinthian, which, however,
though invented by the Hellenic artists, did not receive its full development
as an independent order until employed by the Romans. The principal
members of the classic column are the capital, shaft, and, except in the
Doric order where the shaft was set directly on the stylobate, the base.
Doric Column.—It is possible that the Dorians took the character of
their column originally from the example of Minoan architecture. For in a
fresco at Cnossos appear the façades of three temples with columns, and the
representation of the latter corresponds with the facts discovered in the
actual remains of the palace. The columns are of wood, and have no base,
since the shaft is let into a socket in the masonry. It is crowned by a torus,

or circular cushion with a half-round edge, on which rests a square block,
the abacus. The shaft differs in one respect, it narrows downward; whereas
all Hellenic columns taper upward. The reason assigned for the Cretan
practice is that the tree-trunk was inverted so that it might retain the sap.
All these features are reproduced in stone in the columns of the doorway
of the Tomb of Atreus at Mycenæ, which has been already mentioned. The
shafts of these columns are decorated with chevrons, whereas the Greeks in
their best examples never decorated the shaft, nor, in fact, any other part of
the structure that carried the chief strains.
Upon this crude type the Dorian architects continually improved until
they had evolved an order of the most subtle refinement. In the earlier
examples the diminution upward of the shaft is more pronounced than in
the Parthenon, where the diameter at the bottom is 6 feet 3 inches and at the
top 4 feet 9 inches, which gives a diminution of slightly over one quarter of
the lower diameter. The shaft, except in one or two temples that were not
completed, was always fluted. The flutes usually numbered twenty, and
were elliptic in section, meeting in a sharp edge or arris, thus differing from
the flat-edged fillet that separated the flutings of the Ionic and Corinthian.
In order to correct the optical illusion, suggested in a diminishing shaft, that
the contours are concave, they were made slightly convex, the swell of this
entasis, as the convex is called, being greatest at about one-third of the
distance from the bottom.
As the shaft nears the capital, it is encircled by a narrow groove or
annula. At the top of the shaft is a series of annulæ, some of which are cut
in the shaft and others in the lower member of the capital, the echinus, so
that the shaft appears to project in a necking, into which the capital is set.
The echinus is a circular cushion with an eccentric curve; a curve, that is to
say, that is not part of a circle. (Compare by contrast the semi-circular curve
of the torus.) Upon the echinus sets firmly the abacus, a square block with a
side measurement the same as the diameter of the echinus.
The height of the column varied in its proportion to the lower diameter.
In the Temple of Poseidon, at Pæstum, the height is four times the
diameter; in the later example of the Parthenon nearly five and a half
times, while in the Temple of Jupiter Nemæus it is six and a half times.
The intercolumniation, or space between the columns, also varies. In the
older temples it was about one diameter of the column, the space between

the angle columns being always less; while in the case of the Parthenon the
distance varies from one diameter to 1.24; this being an instance of
deviation from geometrical regularity to be referred to later.
It remains to mention the antæ. These were flat, right-angled columns,
projecting slightly from the wall of the pronaos at the corners, facing the
end columns. While they correspond to the latter, they differ in three
respects. The shaft did not taper and was set on a small base, while the
capital was distinguished by different mouldings. For the mouldings
suitable to a free-standing column, supporting actual weight were felt to be
unsuited for a member attached to a wall, whose functions were decorative.
Doric Entablature.—The principal members of the entablature are the
architrave or supporting member, the frieze or decorative member, and the
cornice or protecting member.
The architrave, as its name implies, “the chief beam” of the entablature,
rests immediately upon the abacus; its edge corresponding neither with that
of the abacus nor with the top edge of the shaft, but so adjusted to both as to
ensure a feeling of complete stability. The architrave was usually plain[1]
and crowned with a projecting fillet, called the tænia, which beneath the
triglyphs, is supplemented by a lower fillet, known as the regula. On the
under side of the latter were six studs, which recall perhaps the wooden
pegs with which the ends of the beams in primitive construction were
fastened.
The frieze is a vertical surface, composed alternately of triglyphs and
metopes. The triglyphs, so called because they are divided into three
vertical channels, represent the ends of the primitive longitudinal sills of the
cella roof; and a recollection of the woodworker’s craft was still preserved
in the chamfer or hollow of their outer edges. The function of the triglyphs
was to support the cornice. Generally they were set above and between the
columns, but at each end of the entablature one adjoins the corner, thereby
increasing the effect of stability.
The space between the triglyphs, called the metope, was originally left
open, except for a wooden shutter to keep out birds. But in the most
elaborate examples of later date the metope was decorated with sculpture in
high relief. Those of the Parthenon contained groups, representing fights
with Centaurs, Amazons, and Trojans.

Above the frieze was the cornice, which, as a protection from the drip of
the roof, projected to a distance, about one-third of the diameter of a
column. Its chief members were a vertical band, known as the corona, and
an under-part, the soffit. The latter sloped down under the corona at about
the same angle as the slope of the roof, and was decorated above each
triglyph and metope with a mutule or square block, studded with eighteen
guttae, or drops, a device that recalls the method of making fast the ends of
the rafters with wooden pegs.
The cornice was carried up the two sloping edges of the roof, but here
distinguished by an additional feature, the cymatium or gutter. The triangle
or gable thus formed by the three cornices was called the pediment. It was
embellished at the top and ends with small pedestals, acroteria, on which
stood figures or conventional ornaments.
In a Doric temple the corona, on the sides of the building was without a
cymatium, but studded instead with ante-fixae, ornaments of terra-cotta or
marble, placed opposite the end of each tile-ridge of the roof. The latter, as
we have already noted, was covered with tiles of marble or terra-cotta, and
finished at the top with ridge-tiles.
The mere reading of these details is dry enough. They should be read
with an eye on the examples illustrated but also with a mind constantly alert
to think out the function and appropriateness of each feature. For the
principle of Hellenic construction was that every member should perform a
special function. The architect’s logic would not permit him, as we say, to
send a boy on a man’s errand or waste a man by employing him at boy’s
work, still less to confuse the responsibility for the function between two or
more members. Accordingly, the student who is reading intelligently will
assure himself at each step as to what particular responsibility was laid
upon each member and how appropriately it was fitted to its function.
Ionic Order.—From the grandiose simplicity of the Doric order we pass
to the slenderer and more graceful and decorated order of the Ionic. It is
almost like passing from a masculine to a feminine type: from a reflection
of the severe discipline of the old Dorian, as perpetuated by the Spartans, to
the more pleasure-loving and elegant life of the wealthy Ionians; from the
grave influence of the Olympian Zeus, chief god of the Dorians, to the
grace of the youthful Apollo and Artemis, beloved of the Ionians.

For the Ionic order, as the name implies, was developed by the Asiatic
Hellenes whose migration from Armenia has been already noted. From
them the Greeks of Europe borrowed it. Among the earliest known
examples are a Temple of Apollo at Naucratis, in Egypt, and the archaic
Temple of Artemis, at Ephesus, both belonging to about 560 B.C. The
remains of the latter are in the British Museum. They include two capitals,
inscribed with the name of Crœsus, who is known to have contributed to the
temple.
As in the Doric order, the Ionic temple rested on a stylobate of three
steps, but the column is also provided with a base. The latter was usually
composed of two tori, of semi-circular profile, separated by a concave
moulding or scotia. Sometimes, as in the Erechtheion at Athens, the base
stood upon a square, flat base-block, or plinth. Frequently the tori were
embellished with horizontal flutings or the interlacing wave-lines, called
guilloche.
The Ionic shaft was proportionately higher than the Doric, being from 8
to 10 diameters in height as compared with the 4⅓ to 7 of the Doric.
Consequently, the entasis was less. The intercolumniation was sometimes as
much as two diameters. The shaft was incised with twenty-four narrow
flutings, separated by flat-edged fillets.
The capital usually commenced with a narrow convex moulding, called
the astragal, which was often enriched with the alternate bead and spool
ornament. Above this was the echinus, decorated with the egg-and-dart
pattern. But the echinus is only partly visible, since it is encroached upon by
the main feature of the capital, a fillet that passes across the face and at the
sides winds inward upon itself, forming a volute, which projects beyond the
echinus. Above this was a low abacus, enriched with ornament, on which
set the architrave.
In some instances, as in the Erechtheion, the fillet forms a looping
curve, the volute is enriched with intermediate fillets and the necking is
decorated with the anthemion ornament.
The Ionic capital presented awkward features which the ingenuity of the
architects never quite succeeded in disguising. In the first place the abacus
projected beyond the face of the architrave which from the side view
offered an unsightly appearance. Secondly arose the problem of treating the
volutes of the corner columns, so that the effect might be symmetrical on

both sides of the building. This was solved by converting the side end of the
capital into another face, the adjacent volutes at the corner being brought
out at an angle of forty-five degrees. This results in an awkward
arrangement at the back where two half-volutes intersect each other at right
angles.
The Ionic architrave consists of two or more fasciæ, or vertical faces,
projecting one over the other. This recalls the original wooden construction
and suggests that the Ionians used planks, while the Dorians used a single
beam. It was crowned with small mouldings, frequently enriched with
ornament.
Above this was the frieze, sometimes left plain, at other times enriched
with sculptured reliefs. It was joined by a moulding to the cornice.
The latter, in the simpler form adopted by the Athenians, consisted of a
plain corona, a fillet of bead-and-spool ornament, a row of egg-and-dart
moulding, and the cymatium or gutter, which was often embellished with
lion heads.
In Asiatic-Ionic examples, however, the cornice was more elaborate: a
row of narrow blocks or dentils, crowned with a carved fillet, being inserted
beneath the corona, while, further, the cymatium was embellished with a
repeat of the anthemion decoration. This style is distinguished by the term
Ornamented Ionic.
The origin of the dentil may probably be traced to the Lycian Tombs,
where they are represented by the ends of the beams of the roof or gable.
The volute appears as a decorative feature on the façade of the so-called
Tomb of Midas in Phrygia. It also occurs as a decorative feature in
Assyrian art and is found in the capitals of the small columns of a pavilion
represented in the reliefs at Khorsabad. The motive of the spiral is also
found in Mycenæan jewelry. Professor William H. Goodyear in his
“Grammar of the Lotus,” suggests that the volute may have originated in
successive variations of the Egyptian lotus patterns.
The Doric and Ionic orders were sometimes combined in the same
building, as in the Propylæa.
Corinthian Order.—The Corinthian order represents a still further
advance in ornateness, which however by the Hellenic architects was
confined to the capital of the column. For the base and shaft of the columns
and the entablature followed the Ionic order. The embellishment of the

capital may have been derived from the old custom of attaching metal
ornaments or actual foliage to altars and pedestals; and it may be possible to
trace the growth of the Corinthian style from the Ionic in the repeat of
palmettes that occurs below the volutes in the capitals of the east portico of
the Erechtheion. On the other hand, the general bell-form of the capital
may have been derived from Egyptian lotus capitals.
The Corinthian order was used by the Athenians only in their smaller
structures[2] and reached its most refined form in the Choragic Monument
of Lysicrates in Athens. Here the flutings of the shaft terminate at the top
in leaves that curve outward. Above them is a band that may have been
covered with a bronze collar, from which spring a row of small lotus leaves.
Then come eight beautiful acanthus leaves, between each of which is an
eight-petalled rosette, suggesting a lotus-flower. They are surmounted at the
corners by stalks of the acanthus, partly sheathed with leaves, that turn over
with a spiral and form scrolls to support the abacus. The latter in the
Corinthian order has concave sides.
The details vary so much in Hellenic examples of Corinthian capitals
that, as we have already noted, the type had not yet been developed into an
independent order. Its final development was worked out by the Romans, to
whom its magnificence especially appealed.
Ornament.—The acanthus plant belongs to Southern Europe and the
warmer parts of Asia and Africa. The common species found throughout the
Mediterranean, has large, deeply cut, hairy leaves. As a decorative motive
the Greeks first reproduced it in metal and then carved it in stone, using it
with particularly fine effect on the upright form of tombstone known as
stela. While they conventionalised the leaves, they preserved the character
of vigorous and at the same time graceful growth. They gave a sharpness to
the tips of the leaves that distinguishes their use of it from the Roman.
The anthemion ornament is often called the “honeysuckle pattern” from
its resemblance to that flower. But it is supposed to be a conventionalisation
of the flower of the acanthus, while related as a decorative motive with the
forms of the Egyptian lotus and the Persian palmette.
The egg-and-dart border presents a repeat in which the form of an egg,
set in a concave oval, alternates with a vertical bar that may or may not
terminate below in a more or less pronounced arrow-tip. It permits the most

subtle treatment of the planes of the egg, and of the contrast between the
smooth surfaces and the sharpness of the other details.
The bead-and-spool repeat explains itself. It shows a variation,
according as the conventionalisation was derived from a spool that is
wound or that is unwound.
The heart-leaf, also sometimes called the lily-leaf, is a remarkable
instance of the closeness with which the Greek artist studied nature and of
the imagination he displayed in simplifying the natural form into a
convention, while at the same time preserving the principles of its
construction.
Projections.—Unlike Egyptian architecture, the Hellenic is
distinguished by the number and importance of its projections; which may
be compared to the lines, angles, and curves which constitute the features of
a human face and give it expression. They are the means by which the
architect engraves upon his buildings expressive designs of light and shade.
We have already spoken of the projections involved in the column and
entablature, but may now specifically enumerate the various types of
moulding that these involve; noting at the same time the particular
ornament that was employed on each, if it were decorated. For such was the
logic and refinement of the Hellenic taste that it adopted motives of
ornament that corresponded to the planes of the surfaces of the moulding.
Thus, when the moulding took the form of the cyma recta—a curve
outward growing into a curve inward—Hogarth’s “line of beauty”—the
decorative feature applied to it was the anthemion, whose curves have a
corresponding direction. On the other hand, for the reversed form of
moulding, known as the cyma reversa where the inward precedes the
outward curve, they used the heart-leaf. Again, the moulding known as
ovolo, in which the contour of an egg is followed, is enriched with the egg-
and-dart.
The fillet, a small band used to separate the other mouldings, was usually
left plain; as also were the simple hollow, called cavetto, and the deep
hollow which separated the two tori in the base of columns. When the torus
was embellished, the motives used on the semicircular surface were the
interweave or plait, known as guilloche, or rows of leaves, tied with bands,
so that the moulding resembled a wreath. Another small, separating

moulding was the bead, which in contour approaches a circle, and, when
decorated, received the bead-and-spool enrichment.
The distinction of the Hellenic use of all these mouldings and
enrichments was the extreme delicacy of the cutting, which the hardness of
the marble permitted and the clear sunshine helped to reveal; so that it has
been said that “while the Hellenes built like Titans, they finished like
jewellers.” But this did not involve a finicking precision, for it was but an
instance of the feeling for proportion and choice relation of parts to one
another that embraced the whole building.
Organic Relations.—The height of the building was thoughtfully
proportioned to the length and width; the height of the shaft of the column
was considered in relation to the diameter. Similar care was expended on
the proportions of the several members of the capitals and entablature, and
the intercolumniation bore relation to the lower diameter of the shafts. In
every particular, great or little, the effort was to create a unified impression
of organic harmony and rhythmical relations.
Now the term organic is primarily used of the living bodies of animals
and plants, the parts of which are not only connected but perform certain
functions in relation to the well-being of the whole. And it is an extension
of this idea that the Hellenes applied to the geometrical harmony on which
their architecture was based. They considered the functions of each part—
the amount of support it gave or strain it had to sustain and so forth; and
having made provision for this as constructors, they were consistent to the
principle also in their æsthetic consideration as artists. They modified the
sculptural decoration according to the function of the parts; giving least to
those whose function of support was most important and increasing the
quantity and the boldness of the curving as the structural strain diminished.
Thus the shaft of the column was free of any carving except the fluting,
which, however, served the purpose of channels to carry the rain water and
helped to preserve the mass from decay. The capital in the Doric style was
not enriched with ornament, and similarly plain, with very few exceptions,
was the architrave. Meanwhile, sculptured figures in high relief were
introduced into the metopes which originally had been openings, while the
tympanum or flat surface of the pediment received groups of figures in the
round. This increased boldness of relief, accompanied by foreshortening of
the figures, was adopted to offset the diminishing effect that their greater

distance from the spectator’s eye would otherwise have suggested.
Moreover, in the sculptures, as in the carving of the mouldings, the varying
quantities of light were considered. The mouldings on the outside of a
temple in full sunlight were differently planned from those in the interior;
and the shadow cast by the cornices was taken into account in graduating
the relief of the sculptures in the metopes and pediments.
Nor was the actual work done by artists, but under their supervision by
pupils and masons. From the records of payments made to the sculptors
who worked on the Erechtheion it appears that they were ordinary masons,
some of them not even citizens, who were paid for each figure the sum of
60 drachms, or 12 dollars!
Finally, the decoration of a Greek Temple comprised not only sculpture,
but also painting. A large part of every Doric temple was covered with
strong, bright colours, while certain prominent details were treated with
elaborate patterns. The figures of the sculpture also were painted and
relieved against a background of contrasted colour.
It has been discovered that the triglyphs were painted blue and the
metopes red and that the mouldings were decorated with ornament in red,
blue, green, and gold. The walls and the columns were probably stained
yellow or buff, perhaps by the use of wax melted on the surface (encaustic).
Asymmetries or Refinements.—It might seem that, in the various
particulars we have noted, Hellenic intellect and feeling had exhausted the
possibilities of refinement. But there is yet another instance, which was first
revealed by the detailed measurements of Hellenic temples made
independently by two Englishmen, Francis Cranmer Penrose and John
Pennethorne, and by a German architect, Joseph Hoffer. The results were
published in 1838 and in 1851, and have been corroborated by other
students. They are known as architectural “refinements” or “asymmetries.”
It had been assumed that, since the form of the temple type was
apparently symmetrical, it also involved absolute symmetry of details; that
geometrical regularity and mathematical accuracy were the necessary and
natural conditions of the architectural design. By those investigators,
however, it was discovered that though the principles of geometry and
mathematics were the foundation of the planning and designing, regularity
and accuracy were purposely avoided; and that so far from the details being
symmetrical they exhibit intentional asymmetries.

One of these irregularities is the substitution of curved for straight lines.
We have already mentioned the entasis or swell in the vertical contour of
the column—a fact not observed by modern architects until 1810; but
curvature is also found in the horizontal lines of the stylobate and the
architrave, frieze, and cornice, and in the gable lines of the pediments. And
since these were discovered other variations of equal importance and
significance have been found.
“In the Parthenon, for instance,” (the quotation is from the writings of
Professor William H. Goodyear) “surfaces or members which are set true to
perpendicular are most exceptional. Perhaps the end walls are the only
exception. All the columns lean inward about three inches in thirty feet
toward the centre of the building. The side walls lean inward. The antæ, or
flat pilasters at the angles of the ends of the walls, lean forward one unit in
eighty-two units. The faces of the architrave and frieze lean backward,
whereas the acroteria, the face of the cornice and the face of the fillet
between architrave and frieze lean forward. Furthermore, the columns and
capitals of the Parthenon are of unequal size, and the widths of the metopes
and the intercolumnar spacings are also unequal.”
The discovery of these variations was pooh-poohed by architects who
had been trained to believe that “correct” architecture depended upon
geometrical regularity and mathematical accuracy. They dismissed them
lightly as “mason’s errors.” But this will not hold for three reasons. Firstly,
these asymmetries only occur in the finest examples, where the design and
the details are of superior refinement and the skill of the masons most
unmistakable. Secondly, the number of variations increases pro rata with
the superiority of the design, reaching their maximum in the Parthenon.
And, thirdly, in cases which are unquestionably due to mason’s errors the
amount of the variation is practically negligible. Is it likely, for example,
that the masons who brought the two ends of the Parthenon within one
quarter of an inch of being exactly equal in width, would have been so
careless as to let the presumably horizontal lines curve up four inches on the
sides of the buildings and two inches at its ends? Or, again, would they have
committed so flagrant an error as giving the stylobate a convex curve
upward, since it necessitated a corresponding curve to the base of each
column, a most difficult and delicate operation of cutting? The perfect
adjustment of these two curves, by the way, is one of many arguments
against the theory that these variations were caused by settlements in the

foundations or, in the case of the Parthenon, by the explosion which
wrecked it in 1687, when it was being used by the Turks as a powder
magazine.
The fact having been established that these variations were intentional,
how are they to be explained? A generally accepted explanation of the
curvatures in place of straight lines has been that they were intended to
correct an optical effect of curvature in the opposite direction. Thus, if the
contour of a column shaft were a straight line, it would appear to the eye to
curve inward; similarly, the horizontal lines of the stylobate and entablature
would appear to sag downward. Accordingly, the “refinements” were
designed as optical corrections of optical effects of irregularity; in other
words, geometrical effect is supposed to have been sought by departures
from geometric fact.
This, however, would not explain the other variations that have been
noted. Moreover, it is contradicted even in the case of curvatures by a
discovery of Professor Giovannoni of Rome, that the façade of the Temple
at Uri has a curvature in plan.[3] The columns, that is to say, are not set to a
straight line but to a curve which is concave to the exterior; consequently
the entablature is correspondingly curved, the effect of which to the eye as
it looks up is the very one that it was explained the architects strove to
avoid—a sag downward from the ends. In this case they deliberately
designed the façade to produce the effect.
This explanation of optical corrections, then, as well as others, have been
proved erroneous by Professor William H. Goodyear, who has made a life-
long study of the subject and carried his investigations also into Gothic
architecture, in which, as we shall see, he has discovered numerous
instances of refinements and asymmetries. His explanation, supported by a
wealth of conclusive evidence which is set forth in his “Greek
Refinements,” is that the motive was æsthetic. The refinements were
modulations designed to please the eye by avoiding the inartistic effects
produced by formal monotony. They were planned to do away with the
monotony and rigidity that result from geometrical regularity and
mathematical accuracy and to introduce a suggestion of elasticity. They
imparted to the structure something of the irregularity that characterises
organic growth. It is because, with rare exceptions, they are not found in
modern classical buildings, that the latter appear by comparison so stiff and
formal.

These asymmetries, in fact, were intended to offset the liability of the
beauty’s becoming “faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead
perfection, no more.”

With few exceptions the Hellenic temple was oriented; its four sides
facing exactly the four points of the compass, the principal entrance being
on the east. It opened into the cella which was usually divided into what
may be called a nave and side aisles by two rows of columns which carried
smaller columns that supported the pitch of the roof. Where the cella was
narrow, as in the Temple of Apollo Epicurios (“The Helper”) at Bassæ,
near Phigaleia, the rows of columns were replaced by half-columns,
attached to projections from side walls. The cella was occupied by the
statue of the deity, which in the case of the Parthenon was the Athene
Parthenos, the Maiden Athene, one of the most renowned works of Phidias.
The draped figure of the goddess was represented standing, armed with
helmet, spear and shield, supporting in one hand a Wingèd Victory. The
statue was about forty feet high and of the kind known as
“chryselephantine,” the draperies and accessories being of gold plates, the
flesh parts ivory, with precious stones inserted in the eyes.
Behind this statue was the entrance to a small room, situated between the
cella and the opisthodomos, an exceptional feature from which the name of
the temple was derived. It was the Parthenon proper, or Virgin’s Chamber,
which seems to have been used as a treasury. Its ceiling was supported by
four Ionic columns.
The Ionic order in conjunction with the Doric was also employed in the
Propylæa or monumental gateway of the Acropolis. This masterpiece of
Mnesicles presents an irregularity of plan, exhibiting the Hellenic
architect’s readiness to adapt his design to the peculiarities of the site.
While Doric columns mark the exterior, Ionic were used in the interior to
dignify the central passageway. A similar use of this order for interior
embellishment was adopted by Ictinus, the chief architect of the Parthenon,
in his otherwise Doric design of the Temple of Apollo Epicurios.
On the other hand, the Ionic order was employed on the exterior of the
Erechtheion, another work of Mnesicles also irregular in plan. It occupies a
sloping site on the Acropolis, where an older temple, burnt by the Persians,
had stood. Spoils of the Persian conquest were preserved in it with other

relics, held in special veneration. The nucleus of the design is a cella
without colonnades (apteral), the sanctuary of Athena Polias (the City’s
Guardian) and of Erechtheus (a mythic hero of the Athenians) and the
Ocean-god, Poseidon. The exterior is distinguished by two Ionic porticoes,
and by a third, a smaller one, in which the columns are replaced by
caryatides, six draped female figures whose heads support the architrave.
All these figures face south, the three to the west resting their weight on the
right legs; the three eastern on the left—in each case the outer legs—thus
giving to the outer contour of their bodies the effect of entasis.
Another Ionic example on the Acropolis is the Temple of Athene Nike
(Victory), known as the Temple of Nike Apteros; the term “Wingless,”
however, not describing the statue of the goddess but, as used above, the
style of the design—without colonnades.

Theatres.—Only second in importance to the Hellenic temples were the
theatres. Both served as memorials of the ancient traditions of the race and
as an incentive to higher citizenship. For the drama, which had its origin in
religious observances, was a civic institution, maintained by the state and
free to all citizens.
The origin of the Greek drama is to be found in the primitive worship of
Dionysos, the god of productiveness, and to the last the Greek stage and
auditorium perpetuated in their form some trace of their religious origin.
The nucleus was an altar consecrated to Dionysos. In earliest times each
family may have erected its own altar, presided over by the father of the
family as priest. Later each community would have its official priest, and on
the god’s feast-day all the villagers would move in procession to the
common altar, headed by the priest and a choir of singers, trained by him.
The altar reached, the priest would mount the pedestal, surrounded by the
choir, while the body of worshippers disposed themselves around the spot.
The priest would recite the greatness of the god and at intervals the choir of
voices would chant the dithyrambic song, moving around the altar and
accompanying the song with rhythmic movement of body and limbs.
From this root of a religious drama in time grew successive stems. The
prowess of some hero would be adopted as a theme. At first the priest, or it
may be some wandering poet, would narrate the story; later he would treat
it in the first person, impersonating the hero, sometimes engaging in
dialogue with the chorus. Still later, other personages in the story would be

separately impersonated, and so the scope of the dramatic representation
developed.
Meanwhile the affair still maintained a semi-religious character; the
place of presentation was still around the altar of Dionysos and the chorus
was retained, taking its part in the action with explanation and comment,
still delivered, however, in dithyrambic measure and with accompaniments
of rhythmic gesture. The platform of the altar being limited in space, the
dialogue was usually confined to two actors at a time, though a third was
sometimes allowed. If there were other characters involved, these actors
would often “double” the parts; disguising themselves by change of
costume, especially by the use of masks. This demanded some kind of a
screen behind which the actors could change their costumes and also wait
until their presence was required. Skins hung upon poles would at first
serve the purpose, or a skene or tent, from which we derive our word scene,
might be used. Whichever it were, it would interfere with the view of the
action from the back and so draw the audience to the “front.”

The most important remains of Hellenic theatres are the Theatre of
Dionysos,[4] cut out of the side of the Acropolis, and the theatre at
Epidauros, in Argolis, Greece. The plan of the theatre of Dionysos is that
of a semi-circle, the ends of which are prolonged for a short distance in a
direction at right angles to the front of the skene. Within the horseshoe was
the circular orchestra, still whole at Epidauros, in which the main action
was carried on by actors and chorus. A different plan is given by the Roman
architect, Vitruvius. It is to be noted, however, that Vitruvius lived in the
reign of Augustus, by which time what was pure Hellenic had become
modified by foreign influences into Hellenistic. He relates, for example,
that in his time the height of the logeion or speaking platform—the stage of
to-day—was from 10 to 12 feet. In earlier times, including probably the
period of the Classic drama, the logeion was the platform around the altar,
supplemented possibly by a platform two or three feet high extending
across the front of the skene, from which, at certain points in the play, some,
at least, of the actors spoke. This platform, being in front of the scene and
enclosed at the sides by projections of the latter, was called the proskenion,
from which is derived our word proscenium with its different meaning.

By the time that the Hellenic theatre had evolved into a permanent
structure, the skene, originally a temporary screen, took the form of an
architectural background, some ten feet high, with a central door for the
entrances of the actors. But the idea of the original screen was perhaps
retained in the row of columns which stood a little in front of the skene, and
could be used, if needed, for the hanging of curtains or even of painted
cloths. Meanwhile, the roof of the portico, which extended from the
columns to the skene, could be utilised by the actors at certain stages of the
drama.[5]
The interest of the discussion raised by Vitruvius’ description consists in
the question how far the actors mingled with or were separated from the
chorus, which continued to occupy the orchestra or circle on the floor of the
auditorium, corresponding to the place of the orchestra stalls in a modern
theatre. The orchestra of a Greek theatre was originally the sole “stage,” but
gradually, as the dramas involved more complexity of scenes, the actors
would vary their position between the orchestra and the proscenium; and
later, in Hellenistic times, as the religious origin of the drama was forgotten
and the use of a chorus began to fall into abeyance, the use of the
proscenium would increase.
Finally, when the Romans began to imitate the Greek drama, they
dropped the chorus; the acting was confined to the proscenium, and the
orchestra no longer needed for the play, became a part of the auditorium,
reserved for distinguished spectators. The Roman theatre, in fact, like our
own, represented the complete separation of the audience and the stage.
Odeion.—Supplementing the theatre was the Odeion or concert hall,
which was constructed on the same general lines but distinguished by the
addition of a roof for acoustic purposes. The oldest known is the Skias at
Sparta, so called from its roof resembling the top of a parasol. The Odeion
of Pericles, which served as a model for subsequent halls, was built on the
southeastern slope of the Acropolis, its roof being made in imitation of the
tent of Xerxes and constructed of the masts of Persian vessels, captured at
the battle of Salamis. The most magnificent example, however, was erected
A.D. 162 on the southwest slope, by a wealthy citizen, Herodes Atticus, in
memory of his wife. Its ceiling is said to have been composed of beams of
cedar, carved with ornament, while decorations in the form of paintings and
other works of art embellished the interior, which had accommodation for
eight thousand persons.

CHAPTER III

ROMAN CIVILISATION

Such empire as Hellas achieved was succeeded by the Roman Empire. The
earlier, as we have seen, was an empire loosely founded on kinship of race,
ideals, and character, and on common interests of commerce. It was an
empire of individualism; preserving the individuality of cities and their
individual states, producing a few men of rare individuality and, as it spread
throughout the Mediterranean, planting colonies which maintained their
independence both against the Motherland of Hellas and the people in their
immediate surroundings. It was, from the first, an empire of the spirit and,
as such, survived its physical dissolution and has maintained its dominion
over the human mind even to the present time.
On the contrary, the Roman Empire, in so far as it succeeded, was an
empire of constructive organisation. It grew, cell by cell, each added cell
becoming gradually impregnated with the life-principle of the earliest one,
so that every part of the unwieldy body was an organic part of the whole.
Thus, in time, each independent city and its adjoining community, alien
races and huge slices of foreign territory, became gradually absorbed into
the practical system of government that originated with the little settlement
of Latins which first occupied the Palatine Hill and then extended its
authority over the seven hills of Rome. Part after part became absorbed into
the system of the Lex Romana and enjoyed the benefits of the Pax Romana.
The Roman citizenship, judiciously extended over the whole empire,
carried with it substantial rights and equally substantial duties. The
provinces of the empire contributed men of learning, generals, and
statesmen to the central government. In time some of the provinces, notably
those of Spain and Southern France, became more characteristically Roman
than Rome herself. They had absorbed her system and her culture, and, far
removed from the petty intrigues which convulsed the capital, reached a
degree of civilisation that represented the finest product of the Roman ideal;
an ideal that included individual uprightness, a sense of service and self-
sacrifice for the common weal, and a high regard for order. It was a
practical ideal, little concerned with abstractions, not devoted to excessive
refinement, but centred on the effectual accomplishment of the individual
and collective requirements of everyday life.

It is true that this ideal was never fully achieved. This is only to say that
the ideal was truly human and therefore at the mercy of human chances and
weaknesses. Moreover, that it was really an ideal; a principle of life, that is
to say, which by reason of its bigness was only possible of partial
achievement. And if the Romans failed in achieving theirs, they failed
nobly, and with sufficient success to have left behind them a legacy of law
and order and constructive principles of government that, like the cultural
ideals of the Hellenes, survive to the present time.
And the Roman Empire played a part in the progress of the world, more
immediately necessary than that of Hellas. The latter’s Empire of Spirit was
in advance of its age. The world outside of the scattered outposts of Hellas
was too rude, too backward in the very necessaries of life, to accept its
message of beauty. Recognising this, the Hellenes called all other races and
nations barbarians and held aloof from them. The Romans, on the contrary,
absorbed the aliens, instilled into them the rudiments of their own
civilisation, while taking advantage of any good trait in the people
themselves, so that they helped them to rise out of themselves to a higher
plane of living. In a lawless world they became the great exponents of
order, the upbuilders and engineers of a system of organised society, and so
firmly did they lay the foundations and so strongly did they build that,
although subsequent hordes of barbarians overthrew the dominion of the
empire of Rome and laid waste many of the visible signs of her building,
the destroyers were gradually absorbed into her system and became its
continuers.
Therefore, when we consider the Romans specifically in relation to
architecture, we look back to them as tireless and prodigious builders,
constructors, and engineers, whose sense of beauty in architecture, as well
as their aspirations in all branches of higher culture, were derived from the
Hellenes. Their respect for the latter was such that so long as possible they
tried to treat them as an independent power, with whom they could pursue
the mutual advantages of commerce. Gradually, however, the tangle of
politics made absorption necessary, and after a series of invasions Hellas
herself became a province of the Roman Empire.
War, in those days, as for centuries after, involved the barbarous practice
of looting, and the Romans, with their shrewd instinct for acquiring what
they most needed for their own development, bore back home in increasing
quantity the treasures of architectural and sculptural art. Later, as the power

of Hellas dwindled, Rome became the centre to which Hellenic artists and
scholars flocked.
The conquest of Hellas and gradual absorption of a part of her culture
occupied the second century before the Christian era and the earlier years of
the first. By this time, however, Rome herself had become a prey to the
rivalries of political factions, beginning with the conspiracy of Sulla and
ending with the civil war that followed upon the assassination of Julius
Cæsar. The latter’s great-nephew, Octavianus, in conjunction with Marc
Antony, conquered Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in Macedonia and
Octavianus assumed authority over the West, while Antony established
himself as ruler in the East. But his infatuation for Cleopatra raised the
suspicion in Rome that he intended to marry her and make himself despot
of an Oriental empire with Alexandria as its capital. War was declared
against him as a national enemy and he was defeated at Actium, B.C. 31. The
authority of Octavianus was now supreme. Republicanism, as a practical
form of government, was dead. Conditions demanded one-man rule and
Octavianus, in B.C. 27, resigned his office as Triumvir and received from the
Senate the title of Augustus, which hitherto had been reserved for the gods.
During this period of struggle the Hellenic influence had been rapidly
growing. The sons of the ruling class had Greek tutors; many studied in the
schools of Athens and Rhodes, and Roman writers began to emulate the
Greek authors. Cæsar published his Commentaries on the Gallic War and on
the Civil War; Sallust wrote on the Conspiracy of Catiline and the
Jugurthine War and Cornelius Nepos compiled biographies of eminent men.
Cicero published under the name of “Philippics” the speeches which he
made against Antony in the Senate, as well as “Letters” to various friends
on the topics of the times, while Lucretius composed in verse a treatise on
the “Nature of the World” and Varro was the author of an encyclopædic
work relating to the history, geography, agriculture, law, literature,
philology, philosophy, and religion of the Romans. To Varro also had been
assigned by Julius Cæsar the collection of a public Library of Greek and
Roman writers.
The enthusiasm for literature was encouraged by Augustus and his
minister, Mycæenas, who saw in it a means of allaying the bitterness of
party strife. To this, the “Augustan” or “Golden Age,” as the writers called
it in flattery of their patron, belong Horace, Livy, and Virgil.

In an effort also to lead the people back to the honourable simplicity of
their forefathers, Augustus revived the ancient religious ceremonies and
restored the temples. He became chief pontiff and, being regarded as the
son of the deified Julius—in reality, his great-nephew—was treated almost
as a divinity in Rome and deified by the provincials who built temples in
his honour.
It was in the Augustan Age that Roman architecture virtually
commenced and its developments are associated with Imperial rule. Of the
period immediately preceding the new era Mommsen writes as follows:
“There was in the world as Cæsar found it much of the noble heritage of
past centuries and an infinite abundance of pomp and glory, but little spirit,
still less taste and least of all true delight in life. It was indeed, an old
world; and even the richly gifted patriotism of Cæsar could not make it
young again.”
Rome, the heart of the Empire, was corrupt. The ruling class coveted
pensions from the public exchequer to be spent on luxurious living; while
the mass of the populace clamoured for “panem et circenses”—feeding and
shows at the public charge. To satisfy their hunger both classes would have
taxed the provinces. But among the chief duties of the emperors were the
development of the resources of the provinces and the protection of the
frontiers; and, while the best of the emperors performed these functions
from high motives, even the worst found it politic to court the growing
power of the provinces. Thus, the main vitality of the empire was in its
extremities, and, although the emperors beautified Rome, they also
encouraged public works of utility and beauty in the provinces. To this end
a law was passed, permitting municipalities to receive bequests and gifts
from private individuals. In the liberality with which wealthy provincials
enriched their communities, Dr. Ferrero, the latest historian of Rome, has
seen a parallel to the munificent public gifts of American millionaires.
Accordingly, this great era of Roman building left its impress not only
upon Italy, but in Greece and northward as far as the Danube, in Asia
Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, along the whole Northern coast of Africa,
and in Spain, France, and Great Britain as far as the Firth of Forth. It was
distinguished not only by the magnitude of the operations but also by their
character.

Whereas in Egypt the architectural works had consisted of temples and
tombs; and in Hellas these had been supplemented by theatres and odeia;
while Assyria and Persia left their memorials in palaces, those of the Roman
Empire embraced all of these types and many more. The Romans applied
architecture to the practical needs of everyday life, and reinforced it with
engineering. They overlaid the Empire with fine trunk-roads, many of
which survive to-day; constructed sewers; spanned rivers with bridges;
conveyed water in countless miles of aqueducts; erected fora and market-
places, triumphal arches, temples, palaces, villas, baths, basilicas, theatres,
and hippodromes; providing alike for the necessities of life, the needs of
government, and the amusements and luxuries of living.
To accomplish so prodigious an amount of building the Romans
systematised the methods of construction in regard to both the labour and
the material. The labour was mainly of an unskilled kind, including soldiers
of the legions, slaves, and subjects liable through debt or other causes to
statute labour. This employment of unskilled labour was made possible by
the Roman habit of carrying the principle of repetition of motives to its
utmost limit, and also by the methods of construction which they invented.
This was the extended use of concrete. During the Republic the Romans
had followed the Greek method of building with large blocks of stone,
unconnected with mortar. Their practical spirit, however, urged them to
make a more economical use of materials and instead of composing the
walls entirely of blocks of stone or marble, they used these or bricks as a
facing, filling in the thickness of the wall with small fragments of stone
mixed with lime or mortar.
They had been led to this practice by the existence of pozzolana, a
volcanic product of clean, sandy earth, found in Rome and in greater
quantities at Pozzuoli on the Bay of Naples, which, when mixed with lime,
formed a concrete of exceptional hardness, strength, and durability.
Material, approximating the properties of pozzolana and lime, was
procurable in all parts of the Empire. Accordingly the use of this method of
construction gave a similarity to Roman building everywhere.
While the chief, and almost sole building material in Greece was marble,
the geological formation of Italy supplied stone as well as marble and
plentiful supplies of clay, which was converted into terra-cotta or bricks.
The bricks were of two shapes: either square, from 1 to 2 feet in size and 2

inches thick or triangular in plan and of about 1½ inches in thickness. The
latter were especially used for the facing of the walls, their pointed ends
being driven into the concrete to form the smooth surfaces, while at the
corners the points projected. In Rome itself the following materials were
available: travertine, a hard limestone from Tivoli; tufa, a volcanic
substance of which the hills of Rome are mainly composed; and peperino, a
stone of volcanic origin from Mount Albano.

While Roman architecture was developed under the stimulus of Greek
art and culture it probably owes its origin to the example of the Etruscans.
The origin of this race is uncertain, but its own traditions ascribe it to
Lydia in Asia Minor, whence it may have passed during that general
migration from Hellas into Italy about B.C. 1000. It was for long the
dominant power in Italy, extending at various times over a territory that
reached from the Tiber to the Apennines, and southward into Campania.
This gave the Etruscans command of the Tyrrhenian Sea and made them
commercial rivals of the Carthagenians. Their enmity toward the rising city
of Rome would be natural and some authorities believe that the reign of the
Tarquin kings was a period of Etruscan domination. Then the Romans
expelled the tyrants, established a republic of their own, and by degrees
wore down the power of the Etruscans, who had become enervated through
increase of luxury. Their civilisation long antedated that of the Romans. The
earliest remains of art, found in Etruria, are now believed to have been
imported from Hellas; but the tombs have revealed a quantity of later art
objects which prove this people to have been skilful in the modelling and
colouring of terra-cotta, in mural paintings, jewellery, and household
adornments.
“The houses of the earliest period, to judge by the burial urns, known
from their shape as ‘hut-urns,’ were small single room constructions of
rectangular plan, similar to certain types of the capanne used by the
shepherds to-day. Probably the walls were wattled and the roofs were
certainly thatched, for the urns show plainly the long beams fastened
together at the top and hanging from the ridge down each side.”
(Encyclopædia Britannica, “Etruria.”) Tombs erected even later than the
fifth century B.C. were cut in imitation of a most simple form of post and
beam construction. The elements of the decoration, such as capitals,

mouldings, rosettes, patterns, etc., were borrowed from Greece, Egypt, and
elsewhere.
The architectural remains comprise tombs, city walls, gateways, bridges,
and aqueducts, the walls of which are remarkable for their cyclopean
masonry, while the general character of the construction resembles the early
work of Tiryns and Mycenæ.
No example remains of Etruscan temples, but Vitruvius has described
them. The plan was nearly square and the cella was divided into three
chambers, since it was in groups of three that the Etruscans worshipped
their deities. The columns represented in rude form the Doric order, set so
far apart that it is concluded they were surmounted by beams of timber. A
further distinction of the Etruscan temple, adopted by the Romans, was the
replacing of the stylobate by a podium. This was a continuous pedestal or
low wall on which the columns were carried. It was approached in front by
a flight of steps, enclosed between the prolongation of the side-walls of the
podium. The most famous example was the Temple of Jupiter on the
Capitoline Hill, dedicated B.C. 509, which contained three chambers, for the
statues of Jupiter, Minerva, and Juno. It was destroyed by fire B.C. 83, and
rebuilt by Sulla, who brought over for the purpose some of the Corinthian
columns from the temple of Zeus Olympius in Athens. (See p. 122.)
Until recently the great sewer, or “Cloaca Maxima,” of Rome,
constructed about B.C. 578, has been attributed to the Etruscans and
considered a proof that they introduced the use of the arch to the Romans.
But in 1903, when excavating the Forum, Commendatore Boni proved that
the drain was originally uncovered and that the arch, which consists of three
rings of voussoirs, each 2 feet 6 inches high, was added at the end of the
Republic. “Thus the honour, not of discovering the arch, for it was known
in the East, as we noted, but of popularising its use, does not belong to the
Etrurians, though they did use it at a comparatively late time for city gates,
as at Volterra.” (Encyclopædia Britannica, “Etruria.”)

Following Augustus, the emperors under whom Roman architecture
chiefly flourished were: Nero (A.D. 54-69), Vespasian (69-79), Trajan (98-
117), Hadrian (137-138), Septimus Severus (193-211), Caracalla (211-217),
and Diocletian (284-305). By Constantine (306-337) were inaugurated two
changes of policy, which affected the destinies of the world. For by granting

toleration to all religions he raised Christianity to equal footing with
paganism and thus paved the way for the power of the Church; and in
establishing his capital at Byzantium took the first step in the partition of
the Empire into East and West. Aided by his vigorous efforts, architecture,
which had declined, enjoyed a measure of revival, in which, as we shall see
later, the Church began to play a conspicuous part.
With the commencement of the fifth century, A.D., began the irruption of
Barbarians. Attila’s Huns swept like a scourge over Europe, while the
German tribes conquered the provinces in turn and occupied them. In 455
Rome was sacked by the Vandals. In 476 Odoacer was proclaimed by his
troops King of Italy, and thus the Western part of the Empire was finally
separated from the Eastern. This is the date selected to mark the “Fall” of
the Roman Empire. Meanwhile the steady decline of the power of the
emperors had been long in process and was accompanied by a
corresponding increase in the power of the Popes. Henceforth, during the
“Dark Ages” of civil confusion, the influence and authority of the Church
were the chief sources of social as well as religious organisation.

The Roman ideal of civilisation received its most characteristic
architectural expression in the several fora, beginning with the oldest—the
Forum Romanum. From ancient times it was the heart of the city; the centre
of civil activity; the scene of some of the most stirring incidents in the
growth of Rome; in later times the nucleus of the pomp and pride of the
Empire. Here at some time was erected a cylindrical monument in three
tiers, the Umbilicus or Navel of Rome, and hard by it stood the Milliarium,
a marble column, sheathed in bronze and inscribed with the names and
distances of the chief cities on the great trunk-roads that radiated throughout
the Empire from the thirty-seven gates of Rome.
Between these two monuments extended a platform, decorated with the
bronze beaks of conquered vessels and hence called the Rostra, from which
any citizen could speak who had aught to say concerning the commonweal.
For it faced the Comitium or open space, which from earliest times had
been the meeting place of the General Assembly of the people. It is true that
the voice of the people was too often dominated by the Patrician class
whose Curia or Senate House overlooked the Comitium; but the Comitium

continued to represent, at least, the theory of Roman Government and to be
the veritable nucleus of the Roman Forum.
Since the Forum embodied the ideals and the progress of Rome, its
architectural aspects were continually changing throughout the more than
one thousand years of Rome’s vicissitudes. But without attempting to
follow these changes—many of which are shrouded in obscurity—let us try
to picture the Forum in its general aspects and particularly as the
embodiment of the Roman ideal.
The ancient citadel was the Capitoline Hill on which in early times had
been erected the temple already mentioned to the three divinities of Male
and Female Power and of Wisdom—Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. It
corresponded to the Acropolis of Athens and her Parthenon. But whereas
the Parthenon was the nucleus of the Hellenic ideal, as embodied in
architectural glory—the embodiment of an ideal, detached and lifted up
above the common life—the formal grandeur of Rome descended from the
Capitoline Hill and occupied the low ground that separated it from the
Palatine, so that it might identify itself with the practical, everyday ideals of
the city.
And, first, for the purely practical. The southern side of the Forum was
in early times bordered with the tabernæ or wooden booths of the butchers
and other produce merchants, while on the north were the shops of the gold-
and silversmiths, and money changers. The Forum, in fact, was the central
market of Rome and came to be its financial centre, and, as a necessary
result, the centre also of legal and judicial procedure. In later times, as the
volume and intricacies of business increased, the tabernæ were replaced by
basilicas, which included halls of justice and of exchange for merchants.
Meanwhile, let us try to picture the Forum as the embodiment of Roman
ideals.
It was bounded on both sides by the Via Sacra, or Sacred Way; the two
forks uniting near the foot of the Palatine Hill, around which the Sacred
Way continued to its junction with the Appian Way. Its stones were sacred
because they had been trod by the countless hosts of Rome’s victorious
armies, returning in triumphal procession to pay their homage to the deities
of Male and Female Power and of Wisdom upon the Capitol.
As the soldiers swept out of the Appian Way, they would skirt the spot,
where in later times arose the Colosseum, and the roadway was spanned by

the Arch of Constantine, and a little farther on by the Arch of Titus. From
this the road advanced in an easterly direction and then turned north.
Then from earliest times two objects would greet the victors’ eyes. Upon
the right stood the arch of two-headed Janus, god of gates and doors. It was
all but a certainty that its two doors would be standing open; for, although
this army was returning victorious, there were others almost continuously
engaged on the frontiers of the empire. So the soldiers, glutted with fighting
and hungry for the sight of their loved ones, would turn more eagerly to the
left, where rose the circular temple of Vesta, guardian of the home and
hearth. It was the symbol of the ideal of sane and simple home life, on
which the greatness of Rome was founded, and as the Vestal Virgins
thronged the steps of their convent or atrium, hard by the temple, the eagles
would be lowered and every bronzed warrior would salute the maiden
priestesses, who, in their absence, had kept perpetually alive the sacred fire.
Just beyond this spot in later times Cæsar Augustus erected a Triumphal
Arch. Meanwhile, from Rome’s early days the victorious hosts would next
defile past the Temple of Castor and Pollux, memorial of the victory gained
at Lake Regillus with the help of these twin gods. Close by it came to be
erected the Temple of Cæsar, in front of which the great Julius caused a
rostrum to be placed, from the steps of which the oration over his dead body
was spoken by Marc Antony.
At this spot the veterans would enter the Forum proper, welcomed by the
cheers of the merchants; in old times, from the fronts of their booths and
later from the porticoes of the Basilica Æmilia on the right and the Basilica
Julia on the left. Then, both early and late in Rome’s history, would be
reached the ancient Temple of Saturn, god of seed growing and the bounties
of the soil, a god of meaning to the soldiers, for many a veteran had been
left behind in distant lands, planted upon farms that were to consolidate the
power and prosperity of the Empire. Moreover, in some of the chambers of
the Temple, which formed the official Treasury of Rome, a part of their
spoils of war would be deposited.
The procession by this time is filing past the Comitium, filled with
enthusiastic crowds, while orators welcome it from the rostra and the
Senators are ranged in ranks upon the steps of the Curia. The roar of
welcome is still in the ears of the host as it begins the ascent of the Capitol,
passing under the Arch of Septimus Severus, if the date be after A.D. 203.

Midway of the ascent, it passes the Temple of Concord, memorial of the
termination of the internecine struggle between the Patricians and the Plebs;
skirts the Tabularium, wherein the archives of the Empire were preserved,
and finally reaches the summit of the Capitol.
Let us take one glance back before the picture fades. The scene is superb
but not without confusion. The Romans paid no attention to orientation;
consequently there is little uniformity in the placing of the several
structures. They vary not only in size and design, but also in the direction
which they face. In the contracted space the various edifices seem crowded.
Indeed, the conjectured restoration of the Roman Forum and vicinity
suggests rather a medley of magnificence.
But even in this respect the character of this heart of Rome, lying
between the Capitoline and Palatine hills, symbolised the magnificent
variety of elements that composed the Empire. One may find some parallel
to Rome’s confusion of appearances in the variety and, for the most part,
lack of an organic lay-out in the modern London, the present mother-city of
an Empire, founded, like the Roman, upon commerce, and like it in having
grown, cell by cell, transcending it, however, not only in size but in
grandeur. For the policy of the British Empire has gradually evolved
beyond the Roman, substituting for the process of absorption the principle
of free, self-governing dominions.

Courtesy A. S. Barnes & Co. from “A History of Art,” by William H. Goodyear
CONJECTURED RESTORATION OF THE FORUM ROMANUM

Looking N. E. to the Capitol. On Left, Temple of Castor and Pollux and the Basilica Julia.
Right, the Curia. At the End, Temple of Vespasian

MAISON CARRÉE: NÎMES
Engaged Columns on Cella Wall (Pseudo-Peripteral) Columns Surmount the Podium. P. 169

ARCH OF CONSTANTINE
Entablature, Broken Round Columns. Note Decorative Use of Lettering. P. 178

PANTHEON, ROME
P. 171

SECTION OF PANTHEON

COLOSSEUM, ROME
P. 174

SECTION OF COLOSSEUM
Showing the System of Vaulting and Piers

BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE
Showing the Barrel-Vaulted Ceilings. P. 178

ROMAN VAULTING GOTHIC VAULTING
From Baths of Diocletian. Note Absence of From Salisbury Cathedral. Note Curve in
Transverse Rib and Doming. P. 166 Ridge Between Groins. P. 272

THEATRE OF ORANGE, FRANCE
Conjectured Restoration. Note Raised Stage, Architectural Scene and Ceiling Roof,
Orchestra Reserved for Magistrates and Notables

PLAN OF THEATRE OF ORANGE
Conjectured Restoration. P. 176

PORTA AUREA
Golden Gate, Palace of Diocletian, Spalato, Dalmatia. P. 180

PONT-DU-GARD; AQUEDUCT NEAR NÎMES
P. 183

PERISTYLE AND COURT OF THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII

With Garden and Sculptured Objects Restored to Their Original Arrangement. P. 181

WALL PAINTINGS IN THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII

CHAPTER IV

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE

The Romans enlarged the scope of architecture in the direction of the art of
the engineer. While Hellenic architecture had been an expression of the
faculties of reasoning and of taste, co-operating in a singular harmony,
Roman architecture was the product of reasoning stimulated by a practical
sense and an extraordinary energy and audacity. In place of excessive
refinement and sense of proportion, it is distinguished by variety, vastness
of scale and exuberance of decorative detail. While every part of a Greek
temple was constructional, having its distinct function in contributing to the
stability as well as adornment of the whole structure, the Romans, as we
have noted, had a uniform system of building in which they applied the
structural details of the Greeks, very largely in the way of added
embellishment.
Their aptitude for borrowing and adapting is apparent in their orders of
columns and entablatures.
Roman Orders.—In the first place, they borrowed from the Etruscans
the so-called Tuscan order. This had a rudimentary Doric form; the column
being seven diameters in height; the shaft unfluted and tapering toward the
capital, while the entablature was simpler, having no triglyphs, mutules, or
guttæ.

In borrowing from the Hellenes, the Romans made little use of the Doric
order. When it is used, as in the form of engaged columns in the Theatre of
Marcellus, the height of the columns was increased in proportion to their
diameters; the shafts were either smooth or channelled with semicircular,
instead of the subtler, elliptic flutings, separated by narrow fillets; a base
was added and modifications were made in the details of the capital. The
architrave did not overhang the face of the column and was reduced in
height; the triglyphs were used in the frieze only over the centre of the
columns, even at the angles, while the cornice was lighter, with dentils
sometimes taking the place of mutules. The Doric, in fact, did not appeal to
the Roman taste for rich decoration, and, in so far as it was used, was
degraded in style.
The same is true of the Roman adaptation of the Ionic order. Simpler and
more commonplace curves replace the extreme refinement of the volutes
and the fillet of the latter was carried invariably across the top of the
echinus or cushion, while the ornamentation of the entablature was more
profuse. The best use of this order is found in the upper story of the
Theatre of Marcellus; the worst, on the eight remaining columns of the
Temple of Saturn in the Forum Romanum.
The Corinthian order, of which no type sufficiently definite to constitute
an order had been evolved by the Greeks, was fully worked out by the
Romans, with the assistance of Greek artists, and became the favourite
expression of their taste for richness. The shaft was either smooth, as in the
early example of the Pantheon (B.C. 27), or fluted as in the great temple of
Castor and Pollux; the heights in these two cases being respectively 9¾ and
10 diameters. A special base was designed, consisting of tori, scotia, and
fillets, resting on a square plinth.
The inverted bell of the capital was surrounded by an upper and lower
row of acanthus leaves, which differ from the Hellenic forms in being
blunter at the tips. Above the rows of leaves projected the stalks, or
“caulicolæ,” which terminated in spirals, both in the centre of each face and
at the angles of the abacus. The four sides of the latter are concave and
decorated in the centre with a rosette. In the more sumptuous examples
further enrichment of ornament was added to the capital, while the capitals
of the Temple of Castor and Pollux present a unique instance of the
central spirals being interlaced.

The Corinthian architrave in Hellenic usage consisted, it will be
remembered, of three bands, as in the Ionic order. The Romans frequently
embellished the middle one with a version of the anthemion motive. They
also added enrichments to the bed mould beneath the frieze. The latter was
frequently carved with acanthus scrolls, grotesque figures, and ox-skulls,
and garlands. The cornice was also enriched with carved ornament, of
which the most characteristic were modillions or brackets, which appear to
support the cornice.
The Composite order was an invention of the Romans and possibly
suggested by the capitals of the Erechtheion in Athens, where the Ionic
spirals appear above a necking carved with anthemion ornament. The
capital of the Composite order consisted in the upper part of Ionic spirals,
often richly decorated with foliage, and in the lower of two rows of
acanthus leaves, as in the Corinthian order, which was followed also in the
other details of the column and entablature.
The mouldings in Hellenic architecture are distinguished by the
refinement of the contours, in Roman by the richness of carved ornament.
The anta, which appears in Greek temples at the corners of the cella
walls was developed by the Romans into the pilaster. This was a square
pier, projecting about one-sixth of its width from the wall; used either to
divide up and decorate the wall surfaces, or to serve as a “respond” to a
column. It was frequently fluted and corresponded with the column in its
details.
Arch-Vaulting.—The Romans did not invent the arch, but generalised
its use and elaborated it into vaulting, thus introducing into architecture an
element of construction capable of endless application and lending itself not
only to utility but also to variety and magnificence. In doing so they were
assisted by their discovery of the use of concrete. By means of supports and
sheathings of rough timber, temporarily erected, they were able to cast their
arches or vaultings in any form and practically of any size. The concrete
“set” quickly and the arch or vaulting thus became a solid mass, which
exerted but little thrust and covered the space with the rigidity of a lid or
cup.
Such method of construction lessened the tendency of the arch or
vaulting to exert a lateral strain or thrust which occurs when the arch is
composed of voussoirs or, similarly, separate blocks of stone or brick are

used in the vault. It tended to concentrate the strain on the vertical supports.
Yet the Romans, though concentration of strains was a chief principle of
their building, took no chances in the matter of stability and also distributed
the strains. For example, the nave vaulting of a basilica would be reinforced
by aisle vaulting, which was carried on walls that were either at right angles
or parallel to the nave. But owing to the method of concrete construction
and to the facility with which it could be employed, the Romans were able
to erect vaults over buildings of complex plan and spaces of great size.
The vaultings were of three kinds:
1. The semicylindrical vault, called also the wagon-headed vault or
barrel vault.
2. The cross or groined vault.
3. The dome or semidome.
The semicylindrical vault was a continuous arch spanning an oblong
space, a corridor, and sometimes a curved passageway.
The cross or groined vault was used over square spaces, its weight being
carried at the four angles. It was formed by the intersection at right-angles
of two semicylindrical vaults. When employed over long apartments or
corridors, the ceiling was divided into a series of square compartments or
bays, each covered by a cross-vault. Since the vaulting in each case was
carried upon the corner supports, these became piers, and the wall spaces in
between them, being thus relieved of the pressure of the vaulting, could be
utilised for the openings of doors and windows. Moreover, a square space
could be subdivided into bays, rendering it possible to vault a large area
with no interruption to the floor-space except that of the piers.
The dome was used for covering circular spaces, and when the space is
small the covering is called a cupola or little cup. Semidomes were
employed over recesses.
The finest existing example of a Roman dome is that of the Pantheon,
which, however, affords an exception to the usual method of construction.
For here, instead of being composed of concrete, thus forming a solid shell,
the dome, so far as it has been examined, is found to be built of bricks, laid
in almost horizontal courses.
It is to be noted that the so-called “pendentive” dome, supported by
arches over a space, square in plan, is not found in strictly Roman buildings
and was a development of the Byzantine architects.

The Romans also employed flat roofs and ceilings. In certain of the baths
so much iron has been found amid the debris, that it is supposed the roofs
were constructed with a framework of this material, fitted together with T
joints. Otherwise the ceilings were made of crossed beams, dividing the
space into coffers. The exterior of the roofs was covered with a sheathing of
terra-cotta tiles or, as in the original roof of the Pantheon, of bronze gilded
plates, which now are replaced by lead.

Vault and Wall Decoration.—Sheathing was also applied to the
exterior and interior of the whole structure, forming, as it were, a garment
of decoration. In the case of vaulting, the interior decoration was composed
of stucco coffering; square, hexagonal, or octagonal panels, inclosed within
raised framework that was arranged in a geometrical pattern. Sometimes the
coffering was replaced by mosaics; which were of two kinds.
1. Opus tessellatum formed of tesseræ or cubes of marble or glass,
arranged in patterned designs that often included figures.
2. Opus sectile, in which the tesseræ were cut into various shapes, to
form the pattern, as in marquetrie. A rich kind, made of red and green
porphyry, was distinguished as Opus Alexandrinum.
At other times the vaulting and walls were covered with hard plaster,
wrought to a fine surface, which was polished and frequently embellished
with mural painting.
The walls were also overlaid with slabs of coloured marble, in the
selection and treatment of which the Romans took a notable pride.
Further, both the exterior and the interior walls were relieved with
carved decoration, which took the form of pilasters, arches, mouldings, and
panels, encrusted with arabesques. These and the other embellishments
could be so easily applied to the concrete shell, that Roman decoration had
a tendency to become profuse and over-elaborated. Whereas in Hellenic
architecture every decorative detail was an intrinsic part of the structure,
Roman decoration was something added after the structure was completed.
It was, in effect, like clothing, fitted to the form of the body, and varying in
design and sumptuousness according to the taste and purse of the wearer.
Since architecture generally was an expression of pomp, pride, and power,
it was inevitable that the richness of decoration should frequently run to
extravagance.

To the lay-student, at least, the actual forms of Roman architecture are of
less interest than the uses to which they were put. For the Roman genius
was displayed in practicalness; in the resourcefulness with which it
extended the scope of architecture to serve the necessities and ideals of life.
Hence the temple-form has ceased to occupy the chief attention; the truly
monumental character of Roman architecture is distributed over a variety of
achievements of magnificence and utility.
Temple Plans.—The plan of the Roman temple was circular, polygonal,
or rectangular; the last being the most usual type. The best preserved
example is the so-called “Maison Carrée” at Nîmes in Provence, which
was erected during the reign of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138). Its form is of the
favourite kind: pseudo-peripteral, that is to say, the columns which surround
the sides and end are not detached from but built into the walls of the cella.
The portico has a deep projection, supported by ten detached columns. As
usual in a Roman temple the stylobate is replaced by a podium, in this case
about twelve feet high, which projects in front, enclosing the entrance steps.
The columns are of the Corinthian order, 32 feet in height, supporting an
entablature which measures 8 feet to the lower angles of the pediment. The
frieze is bored with holes, in which it is supposed the letters of an
inscription were fixed, and the cornice is richly decorated.
Another very interesting example at Nîmes is the so-called Temple of
Diana, which probably was a nymphæum, or structure for flowers, statuary,
and fountains, attached to some thermæ. The plan shows a central chamber,
flanked by two passages; the exterior walls being devoid of columns.
Meanwhile, the interior walls of the central chamber have a series of
detached columns, supporting an entablature from which spring the curves
of the barrel-vaulted ceiling. The outward thrust of the latter is offset by the
continuous vaulting of the side-passages. It is probable, as we shall see, that
this arrangement furnished a type for many of the Romanesque churches of
Southern France.
Of the circular temples the best known examples are the Temple of
Mater Matuta in Rome, the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, and the Pantheon.
Nothing but a few fragments remain of the Temple of Vesta in the Forum
Romanum. The first named, situated in the Forum Boarium, is peripteral,
consisting of a cylindrical cella, 28 feet in diameter surrounded by a circular
colonnade of 20 Corinthian columns, 34 feet 7 inches high; the whole
standing on a podium raised 6 feet from the ground. In the case of the

Temple of Vesta at Tivoli the Corinthian columns, 18 in number, are 11 feet
lower. “The reason for this difference,” writes Professor Banister-Fletcher,
“is instructive. The Temple of Mater Matuta, placed in a low, flat situation,
has columns of slender proportion in order to give it the required height;
whereas the Tivoli example, placed on the edge of a rocky prominence and
thus provided with a lofty basement, has columns of sturdier proportions.”
A further difference is found in the foliage decoration of the capitals of the
two temples; those of the Temple of Mater Matuta having pointed leaves
of the Hellenic type of acanthus, while in the Temple of Tivoli the Roman
type is adhered to.
The most famous circular example, as well as the most impressive of
Roman temples to the modern mind, is the Pantheon. Investigation has
proved that the circular part or Rotunda occupies the site of an earlier
nymphæum, on the south side of which, in the reign of Augustus, B.C. 27,
Agrippa erected a temple, consecrated to the Divinities of the Julian house
under the name of Pantheum (“all-holy”). Hence the inscription on the
frieze of the present portico: “M. Agrippa L. F. Cos. tertium fecit.” This
temple, which, from Pliny’s account seems to have had a dome, was
destroyed in the great fire in A.D. 80.
The present edifice was built by Hadrian, A.D. 120-124. The Rotunda
occupies, as we have said, the site of an ancient nymphæum, the floor of
which, however, was raised 8 feet. Agrippa’s portico was removed from the
south to the north side and set up with a front of 8 columns instead of 10.
There are 16 in all. The portico is supported by 16 Corinthian columns,
each a granite monolith 42½ feet high, with marble Corinthian capitals. The
tympanum was originally filled with bronze reliefs, representing a
gigantomachia, or battle of the gods and giants.
The walls of the rotunda, which are of solid tufa concrete, faced with
thin bricks, are nearly twenty feet thick. This mass was partly to support the
dome and partly to admit of eight recesses, opening from the interior. One
forms the entrance, while three of the others are semicircular in plan and the
remaining four rectangular. The exterior walls, carried far above the spring
of the dome, was veneered with porphyry and marble and enriched with
Corinthian pilasters and sculptured ornament, a considerable part of which
still exists.

Meanwhile, it is the interior of the building that presents the chief
impressiveness. Here the walls, which originally were faced with precious
Oriental marbles, extend to a height of only two stories, crowned by the
vast dome, which in the interior has a height equal to its diameter—one
hundred forty-two and one-half feet. It is embellished with coffers, which in
order to assist the perspective effect are foreshortened, diminishing in width
as they ascend. Thus the gaze is carried up with a sweep to the central
aperture at the summit, an open circle twenty-seven feet in diameter, the
sole source of light to the interior. “One great eye opening upon Heaven—
by far the noblest conception for lighting a building to be found in Europe.”
It is as if the soaring imagination of the architect could brook no limit to its
vision and must incorporate with his vault the firmament itself. In this
magnificent audacity men have seen a symbolic reference to the ancient
worship of Jupiter, the god of gods, beneath the open vault of heaven.
Meanwhile, the architect may have derived the idea from the old
nymphæum with its court open to the sky. And of the two, some will prefer
to believe the latter, seeing in it a beautiful illustration of how the artist can
and sometimes will use the requirements of practical conditions as an
inspiration to the creativeness of his own imagination.

From structures circular in plan, we may pass to those in which the plan
had the form of an ellipse, or comprised as its chief feature portions of a
circle. In the first class belong the amphitheatres and to the latter the
various circuses and theatres.
The prototype of all these was the Hellenic Theatre, in the construction
of which the architect took advantage of a sloping site.
The Romans, on the other hand, with their general use of arch and
vaulting, were independent of natural assistance and usually built their
circuses and amphitheatres and theatres in the open.
Circus.—The Roman circus was an adaptation of the Hellenic Stadium,
which, however, was used chiefly for athletic games, while the Circus was
employed for horse and chariot races. The oldest was the Circus Maximus,
situated between the Palatine and Aventine; but the one of which most
remains have been preserved is the Circus Maxentius, near the tomb of
Cæcilia Metella on the Appian Way. Its plan presents a long rectangle
terminating at one end in a semicircle. Surrounding this were tiers of marble

seats, supported by raking vaults and an external wall of concrete. At the
square end were situated the Carceres or stables and down the centre of the
rectangle ran a spina or barricade, with a meta or post at each end to mark
the turning points. “To graze the meta” was a Roman saying for the taking
of great chances. The course was seven times round and on the top of the
spina were oval objects, one of which was removed on the completion of
each lap of the race.
Amphitheatre.—The most magnificent of the amphitheatres was the
Flavian, known since the eighth century as the Colosseum, probably from
the colossal statue of Nero which once adorned it. Its plan is elliptical, the
main axis being about 615 feet and the shorter about 510 feet; while the
arena, which is oval, is 281 feet long by 177 feet wide. The number of
spectators that it could accommodate has usually been stated as 87,000; but
the calculation is now said to have been based on a misapprehension of the
records and has been corrected to 45,000 seats and standing room for 5000.
The exterior comprises four stories. The three lower are composed of
arches supported by intermediate piers which are ornamented with columns,
respectively, of the Tuscan, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. The fourth story,
which, when the amphitheatre was completed in A.D. 82, appears to have
been of wood, presents a wall adorned with Corinthian pilasters. Between
these, projecting from the cornice, were corbels, pierced to hold the poles
that sustained the velarium or awning. The imposing character of the
exterior is due not only to the structure’s immense size, but to the difference
in unity secured by the application of the three orders, and to the
magnificently sweeping lines of the entablatures.
The interior shows the arena surrounded by a smooth wall, above which
the seats rise in concentric tiers to the height of two stories. Here they are
bounded by a wall, through which are entrances to the seats while it also
acted as a parapet to the upper gallery. The fourth story formed a continuous
peristyle. The whole area for spectators was called the cavea.
The place of honour was the circle nearest to the arena, called the
podium, in which sat the Emperor, senators, principal magistrates, Vestal
Virgins, and the provider or “Editor” of the show. In the amphitheatre at
Nîmes seats in the podium were also assigned to the various guilds, whose
names are still inscribed upon the seats with the number of places reserved
for each.

The principle of construction adopted in the Colosseum, as may be seen
from the plan, is that of wedge-shaped piers, radiating from the arena to the
exterior. These were connected by vaults which ran downward toward the
centre and also in concentric rings, forming passageways to all parts of the
cavea. The system is one of concrete vaulting resting on piers of the same
material, the latter being reinforced by tufa where the pressure was greater
and in the parts of greatest strain by blocks of travertine, four feet thick,
sheathed with brick work. “The supports have been calculated at one-sixth
of the whole area of the building.”
Theatre.—The form of the Roman theatre grew directly out of that of
the Hellenic, but was modified to suit the change which had come over the
character of drama. The religious origin of the Hellenic drama had been
completely left behind. There was no longer any pretence of a chorus;
accordingly the circular space of the orchestra, which had been used by it,
was now filled with seats, reserved for persons of distinction. It became, in
fact, that part of the auditorium which we still distinguish as the orchestra
seats.
Already, in later Hellenic drama, the action of the principal players,
which originally had been confined to the orchestra, had extended more and
more to the slightly raised platform in front of the proskenion. It was
therefore but another step to limit the action to the platform, which, now
that the orchestra was filled with spectators, was raised higher from the
floor, and, to accommodate the players, was made broader. The separation
of the actors from the audience was complete.
The proscenium now became a background, built up to represent a
façade of several stories, embellished with pilasters and engaged arches and
with niches holding statues. The remains of such a permanent “scene” are
found in the Theatre of Orange, in Southern France, where what we now
call the stage is 203 feet wide and 45 feet deep, framed in at the ends by
return walls at right angles to the proscenium. Near the top of the walls are
two tiers of corbel stones, pierced to receive flag-staffs that supported the
velarium.
Baths.—Public baths, thermæ, were as necessary a feature of Roman
cities as the amphitheatre. Rich citizens, like Mæcenas and Agrippa, set the
fashion of building them, and it was followed by emperors seeking to
ingratiate themselves with the populace. For the charge for admission was

only a quarter of an as—about one quarter of a cent or half a farthing; and
even this was waived by certain emperors.
The principal Thermæ in Rome were those of Agrippa, Nero, Titus,
Domitian, Commodus, Caracalla, Diocletian, and Constantine. Many of
them assumed immense proportions; the ground plan of the Baths of
Caracalla, for example, occupying a square quarter of a mile. Besides the
actual bathing conveniences, which included hot water baths, vapor baths,
cooling chambers and plunges, there were rooms for ball-playing,
gymnasiums, colonnades, libraries, theatres, and open courts with shade
trees.
From two of the sides of the Baths of Caracalla projected long
exhedras, or semi-circular recesses, furnished with benches, which are
supposed to have been the meeting places for the discussion of philosophy
and poetry. In fact, the great thermæ were the clubs of the period; the resort
of all classes, offering cleanliness to the poor, luxury to the rich, and
healthful exercise and opportunity of cultured intercourse between those
who desired it. And the highest skill was represented in making the walls of
the various chambers and reservoirs impervious to moisture, in conducting
and heating the water, and in providing flues for hot air.
Basilica.—Equally characteristic of Roman life were the Basilicas.
These structures seem to have been intended at first to relieve the
congestion of business in the various fora and to afford quiet as well as
protection from the weather, for the transaction of business. The earliest in
Rome was erected B.C. 184 by Porcius Cato; hence called the Basilica
Porcia. Then followed the Basilica Fulvia, Basilica Æmilia, and Basilica
Julia, the last being the largest of the five which existed during the reign of
Augustus. In A.D. 112, Trajan built the great Basilica Ulpia in connection
with his forum, and some two hundred years later was erected the vaulted
Basilica of Maxentius or Constantine on the Via Sacra. In all there came
to be some twenty basilicas in Rome alone.
One great interest of the basilica halls consists in the fact that from them
were derived the plan and form of the early Christian churches. It has been
conjectured that the plan of a basilica was derived from that of a Greek
temple, the cella walls being replaced by ranges of columns, opening into
the peristyle where in turn the columns were replaced by side walls. The
colonnades thus became aisles to the central nave; the vestibule being

retained at one end and later to be called a narthex, while at the opposite
end an apse projected. Here in the Roman basilica were the seats of the
quæstor and his assessors, occupied in early Christian basilica churches by
the bishop and presbyters.
The interiors of the Roman basilicas present two types of treatment. In
the Basilica of Constantine, for example, the nave columns were attached
to great piers which supported groined vaults, the thrust of which was
sustained by walls at right angles to the piers. These walls divided each
aisle into three bays, corresponding to the three bays of the nave, and over
each aisle-bay was a barrel-vault, which, being at right angles to the nave,
served as extra support to the nave-vaults. Light was admitted through
windows in the side walls of the aisles and also through windows in the
upper part of the nave, above the aisle vaults.
On the other hand, in the interior of the Basilica Ulpia a range of
columns, supporting an entablature, took the place of the piers on each side
of the nave. On the entablature rested another range of columns,
surmounted by another entablature, above which walls, pierced with
windows, were carried up to carry the flat, coffered ceiling. Both tiers of
nave columns opened into the aisle, which correspondingly had two stories,
the upper crowned with a flat ceiling.
Arches, Columns of Victory.—The magnificence of Rome and other
cities was further displayed in the Triumphal Arches and Columns of
Victory erected in honour of emperors and conquerors. The arch was of two
types: the single arch and the three-arched. A famous example of the former
is the Arch of Titus, which commemorated the capture of Jerusalem, A.D.
70. Examples of the three-arched type are those of Septimus Severus, and
of Constantine in Rome, and the Arch at Orange. The façades were
adorned with columns of the Corinthian or Composite orders, partially or
wholly detached, supporting a broken entablature—one, in which the
uniformity of projection is interrupted by a projection over each capital.
Above it is a top-story, known as the attic. The soffit of the arch was richly
coffered and the wall spaces embellished with low-reliefs, representing
incidents of triumph, while the attic bore upon its face an inscription and
was surmounted by statues or a four-horse triumphal chariot (quadriga).
The most famous of all the pillars of victory is Trajan’s Column,
erected in connection with his Basilica. It is a column of the Roman Doric

order, mounted upon a lofty pedestal, the height over all being 147 feet. The
shaft, 12 feet in diameter at the base, encloses a spiral staircase of marble,
while its exterior is decorated with a spiral band, 800 feet long and 3½ feet
wide, carved with reliefs, representing incidents in Trajan’s victorious
campaigns against the Dacians. It stood originally in a court of the Basilica
Ulpia, from the several galleries of which the sculpture could be viewed.
The statue of Trajan which originally adorned the summit of the pillar has
been replaced by a bronze statue of St. Peter.
A special pillar of imperial times was the Rostral Column, erected in
commemoration of a naval victory and decorated with the bronze beaks or
prows taken from the enemy’s ships.
Palaces.—Augustus set the example of building himself a palace,
choosing the Palatine Hill, to which successive emperors, particularly
Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and Septimus Severus, made additions
of increasing splendour. Nothing remains but ruins, which, however, show
that the principal apartments were as follows: the Tablinum or throne-room;
Basilica, or hall of justice; Peristylium or rectangular garden-court,
enclosed with colonnades; Triclinium, or Banquet Hall; Lararium or
domestic temple for the household gods and the Nymphæum.
A remarkable example is the Palace of Diocletian at Spalato,
Dalmatia, built A.D. 300. The plan, rectangular in shape and covering an
area of 4½ acres, about the same, in fact, as that of the Escoriál in Spain,
seems to have been laid out on the lines of a Roman camp. A square tower
occupies each of the corners, while three of the sides were pierced with
entrances, flanked by octagonal towers, which were distinguished as the
“golden,” the “iron,” and the “bronze” gateways. From these extended
colonnaded roads which met in the centre, thus dividing the area into two
northern sections, probably used by the principal officers of the household
and the guests, and a large southern portion reserved for the imperial palace,
and two temples. One of these was dedicated to Æsculapius; the other,
circular in plan, to Jupiter.
The architecture was of a somewhat debased character, but offers certain
interesting features of transition to the later style of the Romanesque. Thus,
in the northern gateway an entablature is not employed, and the arches rest
directly on the capitals of the columns.

Domestic Buildings.—The domestic architecture comprised three
forms: the domus, or city residence of the well-to-do; the insula, or city
tenement house, and the rich man’s country house or villa.
The last term comprises the house and its accompaniments of beautifully
laid-out grounds and gardens. On a colossal scale of magnificence was the
Villa of Hadrian erected at Tivoli, where the whole area amounted to
seven square miles. It included, besides the usual palace apartments, a
gymnasium, thermæ and theatre, disposed amid terraced gardens, peristyles,
ornamental water-basins, and fountains.
Some idea in miniature of the luxurious villa of the Romans is to be
gained from the various villas excavated in the summer resort of Pompeii,
such as the House of Pansa and the House of Vetius. It comprised a
rectangle bounded on three sides by narrow streets and on the fourth by the
garden. The lower story contained shops, opening on to the streets, as in the
case of many modern hotels. The principal entrance to the house itself was a
portico through which the visitor passed into an oecus or reception room.
On the right of this were the quarters of the kitchen and on the left was the
triclinium or dining-room for use in cold weather. The reception-room led
into a peristyle court open to the sky, with covered colonnades that afforded
protection from the sun, while the rain was caught in an impluvium or
central cistern. On one side of the court extended a row of cubicula or
sleeping apartments, another row of which lined one side of the atrium.
This also was an open court, furnished with an impluvium, and protected
from the weather on its sides by the extended eaves of the adjacent roofs.
The atrium was the public reception place in which the owner of the house
interviewed his clients and transacted business. Accordingly it had a
separate entrance from the street.
The walls of the principal apartments were decorated with paintings,
many of which involved architectural features; the floors were laid with
mosaics and the timber ceilings were probably painted and gilded, their
roofs being constructed of terra-cotta. The blocks of dwellings, called
insulæ, seem to have anticipated our modern apartment and tenement
houses, for they were carried up through many stories and housed numerous
families. It is probable that they involved few conveniences, as we
understand them to-day; the important necessity of water, for instance,
being met by public fountains, which supplied drinking water, and by the
public baths that made provision for cleanliness and health.

Bridges, Aqueducts.—Among the great public works achieved by the
Romans were roads, aqueducts, and bridges; and, although these were,
strictly speaking, engineering masterpieces, the use of the arch in the last
two brings them within the scope of architectural grandeur. The visible
signs, and indeed the symbol of Roman civilisation, were the roads which
pushed their way forward to the limits of the Empire, as far as possible with
a directness that swerved aside from no obstacle, and with a solidity of
foundation that in many parts of the world survives to-day. And a
corresponding solidity allied with the dignity of simplicity of design
characterised the bridges. The best preserved in Italy is the five-arched
Bridge of Rimini, while impressive examples are found in the favoured
province of Spain; at Cordova, for instance, and Toledo.
The Romans were lavish users of water, for purposes of luxury as well as
necessity. They understood the simple hydraulic law that water will rise in
pipes to its own original level and applied the system in their buildings. But
since pipes of lead and bronze were costly and none too durable, they
dispensed as far as possible with their use, conveying the water in lofty
aqueducts, with a fall, as Vitruvius recommended, of 6 inches in 100 feet,
so that the water was delivered from a height at the spot it was needed. The
channel, constructed of concrete, lined with cement, was conducted upon a
series of concrete arches, faced with brick; the arches being of immense
height and sometimes in several tiers. The Anio Novus, constructed A.D. 38,
was sixty-two miles in length and entered Rome on arches carried over the
Aqua Claudia, which was erected at the same time and is still one of the
water supplies of Rome. The finest existing example, however, is the so-
called Pont-du-Gard, near Nîmes, which forms part of an aqueduct
twenty-five miles long. For a distance of about 900 feet it is composed of
three tiers of arches, crossing the valley 180 feet above the River Gard.

In conclusion, the genius of the Roman architect consisted in his faculty
of organisation, which enabled him to take the principles of Hellenic
architecture and apply them to a great variety of requirements. What his
architecture lost in refinement, it more than gained in flexibility and
resourcefulness, while creating for itself a distinction of structural grandeur.
It refertilised the Hellenic which had threatened to become a barren style
and produced a style that not only was richly competent to serve the needs
of its own time, but has proved capable of being further developed to new

needs. It involved principles that had their influence on Romanesque and
consequently on Gothic architecture, became the source from which
Renaissance architecture was evolved, and, even in our own day, are still
capable of new and active service.

BOOK IV

POST-CLASSIC PERIOD

CHAPTER I

EARLY CHRISTIAN CIVILISATION

As the power of Rome waned and the Empire became disintegrated, the
force of Christianity increased and spread and the organisation of the
Church became consolidated. The immediate followers of Christ looked for
their Lord’s reappearance as a Jewish Messiah. Paul, however, taught that
there was no distinction in the sight of Christ between Jew and Gentile and
treated Christianity as a philosophic system of ethics, applicable to all races
and conditions of rich and poor. His view prevailed and Christianity became
a great proselytising force.
Its idea of a universal brotherhood appealed especially to the multitude,
while men and women of the highest classes were attracted by its ideals of
better and purer living. For the period was one of social unrest and of havoc
of old faiths and standards of conduct. Profligacy was sapping the vitals of
the state and of society, and the need of new moral ideals was insistent. “No
one thing about Christianity commended it to all, and to no one thing did it
owe its victory, but to the fact that it met a greater variety of needs and met
them more satisfactorily than any other movement of the Age.”
Its growth was further facilitated by the proselytising zeal of its
adherents. Christianity spread not only throughout the Roman Empire in
Europe, but also fastened upon Asia Minor and North Africa, taking firm
root especially in Egypt, the intellectual centre of the Empire, and extending
even to the Germanic tribes which were to become the conquerors of Rome.
Its power, moreover, was strengthened by its organisation. In the
beginning each congregation had been independent. It had its officers,

deacons, who cared for its poor; elders or presbyters, who, as the council of
the church, looked after its interests; and its overseer, episcopus, or bishop,
the chief of the presbyters. In course of time, as the church of a given city
sent out branches to neighbouring towns and rural districts, the bishop of
the parent community came to have authority over a group of
congregations. In time the bishops of a province learned to look for
guidance to the highest religious officer of the provincial capital, who
acquired the high importance of a “Metropolitan.” And above him in
dignity were the “Patriarchs” of such cities as Antioch and Alexandria,
while the Bishop of Rome was acquiring the greatest influence. “In brief,
the government of the Church was becoming a monarchy.” (Botsford.)
Constantine, recognising the advantage of allying himself with such an
organisation, issued in 313 the Edict of Milan, which placed all religions on
an equal footing. Furthermore, to set at rest the dissensions which were
threatening to disrupt the organisation of the Church, he summoned a
council of the representatives of all the great branches of the Church to
meet in Nicæa, to decide upon a creed which should be acceptable to all.
For with the growth of the Church, Christianity had become encumbered
with doctrines that hardened into dogmas, and by this time a controversy
was raging over the rival dogmas upheld by two officers of the Church in
Egypt, Athanasius and Arius. Both held that Jesus Christ was the Son of
God, but Arius maintained that He had proceeded from the Father and was
therefore second to the latter, while Athanasius proclaimed the absolute
equality of the Father and the Son. The Council of Nicæa pronounced the
latter doctrine to be orthodox and branded the Arian as heresy. The Nicene
Creed, in which the orthodox was embodied, was accepted in the West, but
in the East, the Arian dogma continued to be held.
Apart, however, from its bearing on this question, the Council of Nicæa
was an event of profound importance. This first Œcumenical Council, or
Council representative of the whole Christian world, not only was an object
lesson of the widespread power of the Church, but also exalted the clergy to
a high position of spiritual authority amid the temporal distractions of the
time.
Constantine, upon his deathbed, accepted the Christian faith. Some fifty
years later Theodosius made Christianity the sole religion of the state and
the pagan temples were closed.

By degrees the spiritual power of the Church was reinforced by the
temporal. The beginning of this change is sometimes dated from the act of
the Frankish king, Pepin, to whom the Pope appealed to stem the attack of
the Lombards, then pushing south from their possessions in Northern Italy
and threatening Rome. Pepin drove them back and handed over a
considerable slice of territory to the Pope, to swell the so-called “Patrimony
of St. Peter.” The latter, from this time on, became a source of increasing
wealth, which enabled the Popes to maintain armies and play the part of
princes in the world of politics.
Meanwhile, the temporal power of the Western Church, centred in the
Papacy, had been helped by Constantine’s removal of the capital of the
Empire to Constantinople. Two circumstances contributed to the change. By
this time the Senate had lost even the semblance of authority, and the real
source of government was in the consent of the armies. Secondly, the
frontiers chiefly threatened were the eastern ones. Constantine accordingly
selected as the site of a Nova Roma, the ancient Greek city of Byzantium.
It, too, had its seven hills, occupying a promontory between the Golden
Horn and the Sea of Marmora, a spot defended, as well as beautified, by
nature and already an important gateway of commerce, both by sea and
land, between Europe and the East. Constantine planned the new city of
Constantinople on extensive lines and set an example of magnificent
building that was continued by his successors; so that Constantinople
continued for a thousand years to be the Eastern bulwark of European
civilisation, until it was conquered by the Moslems in 1453.
Among the results of this change of the capital was, firstly, that the
Empire gradually separated into East and West; secondly, that
Constantinople became the centre of culture, and, as darkness settled down
upon the West, the almost sole refuge of learning and the arts. In the
beginning Roman architects directed the character of the new city, but even
then the artisans who executed the work were either Byzantines or Greeks,
attracted to the new city from various parts of Hellas and Asia Minor. In
consequence architecture and the other arts gradually became impressed
with a new character, which, for convenience’ sake, is styled Byzantine. It
represents, in the case of architecture, a mixture of Roman, Greek, and
Oriental; and involved, as we shall see, the treatment of old principles in a
new spirit of invention.

The change was encouraged by the contact of Byzantium with Eastern
and African civilisation. For as the Western Empire declined in power, the
Eastern grew; extending its sway in Asia, where it came into conflict with
the Parthians and Persians, and along the northern littoral of Africa. The
Metropolitan Bishop of Byzantium became to the Eastern Churches what
the Metropolitan Bishop of Rome was to the Western; and exercised a
spiritual headship over the Coptic Church in Alexandria, the Syrian Church
in Antioch, the Nestorian Church in Ctesiphon, and the Armenian in Asia.
Over this widely spread area religious art flourished, coloured in each
locality by racial influences, all of which influences in a measure reacted
upon the capital city of Byzantium.
Meanwhile, in the West, the Church was labouring to reorganise a settled
condition of society by assisting the consolidation of authority. A case in
point is the welding of the Frankish tribes into some semblance of a nation.
By 486 they had found a great leader in Clovis, who led them across the
Rhine, conquered the Romans at Soissons, and proceeded to extend his
sway over Gaul. To consolidate his power he married Clotilda, a princess of
the Burgundian Goths, and accepted her faith of Christianity. It chanced that
she professed the orthodox belief, unlike the majority of the Burgundians
and the other German tribes at this time in Gaul, who were Arians.
Consequently the Roman Church threw the weight of its influence on the
side of Clovis and helped him to found a monarchy in France that endured
under the title of Merovingian, so called from Merovech, the grandfather of
Clovis.
In time the vigour of the Merovingian kings declined, until the actual
power was wielded by the steward of the royal household, the Mayor of the
Palace. Gradually this office became hereditary in a dynasty of rulers
known as Carolingian or Charles Dynasty. The first great Charles was
Mayor Charles, surnamed Martel or the Hammer; the last, Charlemagne, or
Charles the Great. The former derived his name from the crushing blows he
inflicted upon his enemies, particularly the Saracens, the followers of
Mohammed, who by this time (732) had replaced the Vandals along the
north coast of Africa, conquered the Visigoths in Spain, and were
threatening France. Charles met them at Poictiers or Tours, and in a
complete victory saved Christianity to Europe.
Charles remained simply Mayor; but the title of King was assumed by
his son, Pepin, who was first elected by the Franks and then anointed by the

Church, thus ascending the throne with the consent of the Pope. We have
already noted how he repaid the debt. He was succeeded by his son
Charlemagne, whose dream was to found an empire upon the ruins of the
Roman. It was fulfilled to the point that he extended Frankish sway over
Germany, as far as the Elbe, and into Italy. In the last named country he
conquered the Lombards and signalised the completeness of the conquest
by assuming the iron crown of Lombardy. On Christmas Day, A.D. 800, as
he was kneeling at prayer in the Church of St. Peter in Rome, Pope Leo III
crowned him Emperor of the Romans.
It was the aim of Charlemagne to establish his government on Roman
lines, to which end he reintroduced Roman laws and methods of civilisation
and ordained that Latin should be the official language. The city selected as
his capital was Aachen—Aix-la-Chapelle.

S. APOLLINARE NUOVO, RAVENNA
Showing Classical Columns and “Impost”: Mosaics; Arch of Triumph and Apse. P. 201

S. APOLLINARE-IN-CLASSE, RAVENNA
Exterior of Apse. Detached Campanile. P. 201

CHURCH OF KALB-LAUZEH, SYRIA
Showing Apse, Wooden Roof, Supported by Small Columns on Corbels; Round Arches on
Piers. P. 200

CHURCH OF TURMANIN, SYRIA
Rudiments of Subsequent Romanesque and Gothic Treatment of West Front. P. 200

CHAPTER II

EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE

When the “Peace of the Church” had been proclaimed by Constantine and
Christians were able to worship openly, the age of church-building
commenced, the Emperor himself setting a lead. After the edict of

Theodosius, making Christianity the State religion, many of the pagan
temples were adapted to the purposes of the Christian ritual, or their
columns and decorative features were appropriated for the building of new
churches. The former practice accounts for the preservation of the
Parthenon, Erechtheion, and the Temple of Theseus at Athens. An instance
of the method of conversion is to be traced in the Cathedral of Syracuse,
Sicily, which occupies the site of an ancient temple. Walls were built
between the Doric columns of the peristyle, while the walls of the cella
were pierced so as to communicate with the peristyle, which thus served as
aisles. Another instance is that of a temple in Aphrodisias, in Caria, Asia
Minor, where the walls of the cella were entirely removed, and walls were
built outside the peristyle to form aisles, while to increase the length of the
nave the front and rear portico columns were set in line with the others.
Basilican Plan.—These changes coincided with the general adoption of
the basilica plan in the case of new buildings. For the early Christian
churches show very little regard for the appearance of the exterior.
Attention was concentrated on the interior, in fitting it for ritual worship
and in beautifying it, and to both these objects the basilica plan most readily
contributed.
The earliest example in Rome of a church so planned is that of St. John
Lateran, which, however, has been completely remodelled by subsequent
additions. The next in point of time was the Cathedral Church of St.
Peter, erected near the spot in which the saint was martyred in the circus of
Nero. It was torn down in 1506 to make room for the present cathedral
commenced by Julius II; but the appearance of its principal façade is known
from Raphael’s mural painting “Incendio del Borgo,” in the stanze of the
Vatican, and there is a record of its plan. The latter shows that the basilica
building was approached by an atrium, surrounded by either colonnades or
arcades, enclosing a rectangular space, open to the sky and having a
fountain in the centre. With the water the worshippers sprinkled themselves,
a symbol of purification still preserved in the “holy-water” vessel, placed
inside the entrance of Roman Catholic churches.
The end arcade, abutting on the church proper, was used by penitents
and called the narthex. The body of the church was divided, as in the
basilica halls, into central nave and side aisles—the latter sometimes
double. Across the end of the nave extended the bema or sanctuary,
corresponding to the space raised and enclosed for litigants and lawyers in

the basilica. Its ends projected beyond the line of the main building,
forming rudimentary transepts, which may have been used as sacristies for
the robing of the clergy and the preservation of the sacred vessels and other
ritual objects. The central part of the bema was elevated and occupied by
the altar which was surmounted by a baldachino or canopy, supported on
four columns. Behind the altar was the apse, lined with seats; those of the
Roman assessors being now occupied by the presbyters, while the centre
one of the quæster or praetor became the bishop’s throne. For the
transference of the latter to the side of the choir was of later date.
The officiating priest stood behind the altar, facing the congregation and
the east. For as yet the main façade was not the western, a fact of interest
when we recall that while the Hellenic architects built facing the four points
of the compass and made the chief entrance on the east, the Romans were
indifferent to the matter of orientation.
In certain instances as that of S. Clemente, in Rome, the
accommodation for the choir projected from the bema into the nave. It was
enclosed with low screen walls called Cancelli (whence was derived the
word chancel); the side walls projecting to afford space for two reading
desks, or ambones; respectively, the Gospel ambo and the Epistle ambo.
Treatment of Columns.—There were two ways of treating the columns.
In the earlier type of churches, the aisles were spanned by arches, while
those of the nave supported an entablature. But this necessitated a narrow
intercolumniation, considerably obstructing the view. Accordingly, the
practice ensued of placing the columns further apart and surmounting them
with arches. The first example of this use of arcades in a nave is believed to
occur in the northern gallery of the Palace of Diocletian in Spalato,
Dalmatia. Both methods continued to be employed and were sometimes
combined in the same building. Over the entablature or arches, as the case
might be, was a high stretch of wall, rising above the level of the aisle roof,
pierced with a row of clerestory windows. The nave and aisles terminated in
arches, that of the former, the principal entrance to the sanctuary, being
called the Arch of Triumph. The roofs were of timber; that of the nave
rising to a ridge and finishing at each end in a gable, while a slope from
below the clerestory covered the side aisles. The construction work of the
roofs was usually hidden in the interior by flat ceilings, beamed and
coffered.

The decoration of the interior included the use of antique columns,
which were sometimes adapted to their new place by cutting down or
removing the bases. The walls above the nave arcading or entablature were
adorned with mosaics, which also embellished the space above the Arch of
Triumph and the semi-dome of the apse. The floors were covered with
geometric patterns of marble sliced from columns and other antique
fragments.
The principal examples of basilican churches, still existing in Rome, are
St. Paul-without-the-walls, S. Clemente and S. Maria Maggiore. The
first named is of modern construction, completed in 1854, but preserves the
plan and dimensions of the older church which was destroyed by fire in
1823. It had been begun in 380 by Theodosius, on a plan closely following
that of the old St. Peter’s, except that the transepts of the bema project less
and the atrium was abandoned, leaving only the narthex. Its construction
and embellishment were continued by other emperors and by many popes,
the munificence of the latter being commemorated in a series of portrait
medallions of the popes which extends in a band above the arcade-arches
on each side of the nave. The wall space above them is veneered with rare
marbles, enclosing panels filled with paintings representing incidents in the
life of St. Paul. Amid the somewhat extreme sumptuousness of the interior a
feeling of the older character of a basilican church is preserved in the
mosaics of the fifth century which adorn the arch of triumph, and in those
of the apse which date from the early part of the thirteenth century.
S. Maria Maggiore presents an original basilican plan of nave and
single aisles, from each of which during the Renaissance was built out a
square side chapel, surmounted by domes, giving the plan the form of a
cross. But the interior of the nave dates from the time of Sixtus III in the
fourth century and shows on each side a series of Ionic columns, supporting
an entablature. Above this, as also over the arch of triumph, are mosaics of
the fifth century.
The Church of S. Clemente is notable for the retention of the atrium
and also for the termination of the aisles in apses, a feature which suggests
Byzantine influence.
Circular and Polygonal Plans.—In addition to the basilican buildings
of this period were some which involved a circular or polygonal plan,
suggested probably by the circular temples and tombs of the Romans. They

were applied in the early Christian era both to tombs, which in some cases
were afterward converted into churches, and to baptistries. The latter were
independent buildings, so called from their use at first solely for the
sacrament of baptism. In later times, however, it became the custom to
place the font inside the church; yet as late as the eleventh century was
erected the famous Baptistry of Florence, in which even to this day every
child born within the city is baptised.
The examples in Rome of circular or polygonal buildings are the
Baptistry which forms part of the group of buildings of S. John Lateran,
the Tomb of S. Constanza, the daughter of Constantine, which was
converted into a church in 1256, and the church of S. Stefano Rotondo.
The general character of the Roman tomb was a circular mass,
superimposed on a square podium. The cylindrical mass was sometimes
decorated with pilasters, supporting an entablature, and occasionally was
surrounded by a peristyle, while its roof was apt to be conical.
In early Christian architecture this principle of construction was
developed. The peristyle was enclosed by outer walls, and the lower part of
the walls of the cylindrical mass was replaced by columns. Thus, in the
Baptistry of S. John, which has been called the Baptistry of Constantine,
the conical roof is supported by a circle of eight columns, in two stories.
The Tomb of S. Constanza has a dome which is supported on twelve
pairs of granite columns, while the wall of the circular aisle is inset with
sixteen recesses, alternately apsidal and rectangular in shape, one of the
latter being opened through to form the entrance. The sarcophagus of the
saint which formerly occupied one of the niches, is now in the Vatican
Museum. Its sides are carved with genii gathering grapes—a motive which
is also represented in the mosaics that adorn the vaulting of the church’s
circular aisle.
S. Stefano Rotondo, though much reduced from its original size, is said
to be still the largest circular church in existence. The wall of the cylinder,
surmounted by a wooden conical roof, is supported on a circular
entablature, carried by antique columns. It was surrounded, when built by
Simplicius in the fifth century, by double circular aisles, covered by a
sloping roof. The latter was supported by columns and arches, while the
external wall was decorated with pilasters. Traces of these are still apparent;
otherwise the outer aisle has disappeared and the present exterior represents

the walling up of the spaces between the columns. This was done by
Nicholas V in the fifteenth century, by which time the edifice, once richly
decorated with marble veneers and mosaics, had fallen into decay. Its lateral
walls are now covered with horribly naturalistic scenes of martyrdom,
executed at the end of the seventeenth century.

Syrian Examples.—Syria has disclosed to explorers—of whom the late
Marquis of Vogüé and Dr. H. C. Butler of the American Archæological
Expedition have been the foremost—a number of interesting monuments,
both civic and religious, erected between the third and eighth centuries.
While details of moulding and ornament appear to have been copied from
those of Roman remains, the methods of construction were worked out by
the builders themselves. They seem to have retained the Phœnician
preference for using the largest stones that could be quarried, transported,
and put in place. Thus, arches were frequently carved out of a single stone,
and when voussoirs were used, they were either few in number or, if
numerous, of great height and depth. Large slabs of stone were also
employed for roofing, especially in houses. In imitating antique details the
architects appear to have had little if any feeling for their constructional
origin or meaning; the capital and half the shaft of a column, for example,
being carved out of one piece of stone, while the remainder of the shaft and
the base were cut out of another. On the other hand, they developed for
themselves certain fine features of construction, as for instance, in the
arcading of their basilican churches, in which the columns were sometimes
replaced by large rectangular piers, carrying arches of great width. An
example of this impressive method is found in the interior of the Church of
Kalb-Lauzeh. This corresponds with the larger Church of Turmanin, the
western façade of which shows a very independent spirit of design. It has a
broad arched entrance, flanked by two square towers, connected over the
doorway by an open gallery, constructed with columns.
A corresponding inventiveness marked their use of the basilican plan. A
fine example is the large Church of S. Simeon Stylites at Kalat-Seman.
The nucleus of the plan is an octagonal court, open to the sky, in the centre
of which stood the pillar on which the saint spent thirty years of his life.
This court forms the intersection or crossing of four rectangular wings,
arranged in shape of a cross, each one of which has a basilican form, the
nave and aisles of the eastern one terminating in apses.

Another very interesting plan occurs in the Cathedral at Borah. It
presents a circle inscribed in a square, in the angles of which are apsidal
recesses projecting from the circle. Moreover, from the east side of the
square project three short rectangles, terminating in apses, which suggest
the prolongation of the nave and aisles that have been interrupted by the
circle. Nothing but the foundations of this church remain. Meanwhile, the
Church of S. George at Esrah shows a similar plan and is surmounted by a
high elliptical dome. It is conjectured that these two churches were the
prototypes of S. Sergius, Constantinople, and S. Vitale at Ravenna, which
will be discussed later, and of many corresponding churches of Byzantine
architecture.
Ravenna.—In the development of early Christian architecture a very
interesting part was played by Ravenna. For this city, situated on the
Adriatic (though the sea has since receded to a distance of six miles), was
the chief port by which the trade of Constantinople or Byzantium entered
Italy. Accordingly some of the tombs and churches present a fusion of
Byzantine and Syrian influences with Roman. The change from the
basilican type is especially marked in the character of the plan and by the
adoption of domes.
Thus the Baptistry of Ravenna is an octagonal structure, surmounted by
a dome of hollow tiles. The Tomb of Galla Placidia is cruciform in plan
with a lantern raised over the crossing or intersection of the arms of the
cross. The lantern is pierced with four windows and surmounted by a dome,
supported on pendentives—a method of construction, peculiarly Byzantine,
which will be considered presently.
When Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostro-Goths and ruler of
Northern Italy, selected Ravenna as his capital, he built the Church of S.
Apollinare Nuovo, importing twenty-four marble columns from
Constantinople and employing Byzantine artists and artisans. The plan is
basilican, though the atrium and apse have been removed by subsequent
alterations, but the interior is richly embellished with Byzantine mosaics.
The latter also adorn the larger basilican Church of S. Apollinare-in-
Classe, so called from its being situated near the port. Its columns also are
distinguished by the peculiarly Byzantine feature of the impost block, to be
described later.

After the death of Theodoric in 536 the Emperor Justinian, having
through his general, Belisarius, routed the Goths from the country, made
Ravenna the political capital of Italy, under the authority of an exarch. Then
was built, probably as Court Church, the famous example of Byzantine
influence, the Church of S. Vitale. We will return to this after a
consideration of what is involved in the Byzantine style.
Byzantine.—The term Byzantine is applied to the style of architecture
gradually developed in Byzantium after Constantine, in A.D. 324, transferred
the capital of the Roman Empire to that city. Its distinctive features are the
use of brick and stone in place of concrete; the use of imposts in connection
with columns and arches; the character of the carved ornament applied to
surfaces and, most important of all, a system of covering rectangular spaces
with domes. It reached its highest point of development under the Emperor
Justinian, between the years 527 and 565.
The style was the result of evolution; a product of the combination of
principles of construction derived from Roman, Early Christian and Syrian
architecture, and from the traditional methods of the Iran builders of
Assyria; affected in matters of decoration by the luxurious taste of the
Orient.
The favourite material of Byzantine builders was brickwork; the bricks
being one and one-half inches in thickness, like the Roman, and laid
between layers of mortar of similar thickness. In the case of cornices the
bricks were moulded to the required contours and when used for the shafts
of columns were circular in outline. The mortar was composed of sand,
lime, and crushed pottery, tiles, or bricks. Except in the case of marble
columns which were cut and put in place by masons, the whole of the
preliminary work was done by bricklayers who constructed the entire
“carcass” of the building. When this

FROM THE INTERIOR OF SAN VITALE, RAVENNA
Showing the “Impost” above Column, and Decoration.
Pp. 202-204, 207

TOMB OF GALLA PLACIDIA, RAVENNA
P. 201

DIAGRAM SECTION OF SS. SERGIUS
Showing How the AND BACCHUS,
Pendentives, CONSTANTINOPLE
Resting on Four Showing Fluted or Melon-
Angles of a Square, Shaped Dome, Supported on
Provide a Circular Eight Arches and
Base for the Dome. “Squinches.” Note Lights
P. 205 Round Dome. P. 206

SECTION OF S. SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE
Showing Pendentive Dome. P. 207. Small Diagram, at Right, Shows How a Dome Was Made to
Rest on Eight Piers Enclosing an Octagon, by Niches or Squinches.

EXTERIOR OF S. SOPHIA
Showing the Immense Buttresses That Sustain the Thrust of the Dome. Minarets Added Later
Are of Characteristically Turkish Type. P. 207

INTERIOR OF S. SOPHIA
Showing Pendentives and Three of the Dome Arches (Two of Which Are Closed and Pierced
with Lights). Note also Ring of Lights Round Neck of Dome. Pp. 202, 205, 207

PLAN OF S. PLAN OF S. MARK’S,
SOPHIA VENICE
P. 208 P. 209

EXTERIOR OF S. MARK’S, VENICE
Showing Gothic Details Imposed on Byzantine Design. P. 209

had dried and settled, the masons and the decorators completed the work,
by overlaying the walls, domes, and pediments of the interior with marble
or mosaics.
The floors were paved with richly coloured marbles, in opus sectile or
opus Alexandrinum. Marble, also, cut in thin veneers and arranged so that
their veining produced symmetrical designs, was applied to the walls.
Marble, again, but incised with carved ornament, covered the soffits of the
arches, the archivolts, and spandrels, while the vaulting was resplendent
with mosaics, composed of figures and ornaments, executed in enamelled
glass upon a background of gold or blue or, more rarely, pale green.
Colour was pre-eminently the motive of the interior decoration and to
this end carved work was subordinated. The ornament was in very low
relief, spreading over the surface in intricate patterns, that suggest the
delicate enrichment of lace. Mouldings were replaced by bands of mosaic
or marble, carved or smooth. The chief motive of the carved ornamentation
was the mingling of the acanthus and anthemion. The treatment of both was
rather Hellenic than Roman; the foliage having pointed ends; but it was
deeply channelled and drilled with deep holes at the springing of the leaves.
In fact, the use of the drill as well as the chisel was characteristic of
Byzantine carving and emphasises the suggestion of the ornament being

raised rather than, as in Roman decoration, applied. Corresponding to the
general flatness of the ornament is the constraint of the contours of the
mouldings, suggestive of Asiatic languor and in marked contrast to the
vigorous profiles of classic architecture. The impression, indeed, of the
whole scheme of decoration is rather one of soft richness, as carving melts
into colour and colour deepens and glows and finally passes into the gold or
depths of azure of the vaulting.
When the supply of antique columns was exhausted the Byzantine
architects began to imitate them, but soon departed from the classic type. In
certain cases the capital retained something of its derivation from the Ionic
or Corinthian styles; but gradually a new type was evolved, which was
distinguished by being convex to the outside rather than concave. The
motive appears to have been to give additional support to the arch, for
which purpose an impost was, as the name implies, “placed upon” the
capital. It consists of a block, which projects beyond the edges of the capital
to fit the extra thickness of the wall and may represent, as has been
suggested, the survival of a part of the architrave of the discarded
entablature. In the decoration of the capitals the foliage was sometimes
enclosed in frames of interlace, or the latter took the form of a basket, on
which birds are perching.
Pendentive Dome.—We have now to consider the most characteristic
feature of Byzantine architecture—the Dome. Briefly, in the 200 years that
divided Justinian from Constantine the Byzantine architects perfected a
principle of dome construction by which they crowned a square plan with
the circle of a dome.
The Romans confined their domes to circular or polygonal buildings.
Meanwhile they had worked out the construction of groined vaulting upon
four supports. The Byzantine achievement was to make four supports carry
a dome. It was accomplished by developing the element of construction—
the pendentive.
We have already noted the bas-relief found at Koyunjik, which shows
that the Assyrians understood the crowning of small square buildings with
domes. While actual examples have perished, the tradition of this
construction seems to have survived in the East. For in the third century
A.D., when the Persians established the Sassanian Empire under the impulse
of a movement that sought to restore the ideals and habits of the old

national life, the builders erected domes in the palaces of Serbistan and
Firuzabad.
The method they adopted was to bridge each angle of the square, at
some distance below the top, with a small arch. On these they erected two
small arches that projected beyond the face of the original arch and
accordingly extended the width of the bridge. They continued this process
of superimposing tier upon tier of arches, until the bridge was level with the
top of the square, by which time the latter was transformed into an octagon.
Then, by inserting a corbel or bracket in each angle of the octagon and
taking advantage of the thickness of the masonry, they were able to adjust a
dome to the structure. This system of dome-support, we shall find, was
adopted in Gothic architecture, where the arches are called squinches.
Another method of dome-support, found in the Mosque of Damascus
and frequently employed in the churches of Asia Minor, was to bridge the
angle with a semi-circular niche.
Meanwhile what the Byzantine architects developed was a geometrically
exact system of converting the square into a circle by means of concave
triangular members that are specifically called pendentives.
The character and function of a pendentive may be readily grasped by a
practical experiment. Cut an orange into two hemispheres. Lay the flat of
one on four reels, placed at the four angles of a square, inscribed within the
circle. These reels represent the piers on which the pendentives are to be
constructed. Now by four perpendicular incisions of the knife cut off the
segments of the hemisphere that project beyond the square. The lateral
spaces between the piers will now be spanned by four arches. Finally, a
trifle above the top of the arches, make a horizontal cut, removing the upper
part of the hemisphere. The rind which remains represents the four
pendentives. The flesh inside of it may be likened to the timber centering
used in the construction of the pendentives and, now that the latter are
completed, may be removed. Remove also the flesh from inside the upper
part of the hemisphere. It will then be a hollow cap, which you can replace
on the top of the pendentives. You now have an instance of a dome and
pendentives included in a single hemisphere. More usually, however, the
architect makes the curve of the dome different from that of the
pendentives. Frequently, too, to give the dome superior distinction, he

constructs a cylindrical wall on the circle of the pendentives, and on this
drum, as it is called, elevates his dome.
Scientifically stated: “If a hemisphere be cut by five planes, four
perpendicular to its base and bounding a square inscribed therein, and the
fifth parallel to the base and tangent to the semi-circular intersection made
by the first four, there will remain of the original surface only four
triangular spaces bounded by arcs of circles. These are called pendentives.”
(Professor Hamlin.)

The first church built by Justinian was SS. Sergius and Bacchus in
Constantinople. The part dedicated to the latter saint—a small basilica—
was destroyed by the Turks. The remainder presents the plan of a rectangle
enclosing an octagon on which rests a dome of a curious, fluted, melon
shape.
A few years later was erected the church of S. Vitale in Ravenna,
probably as the Court Church. Its plan is an octagon within an octagon; the
inner one being surmounted by a dome.
The domical arrangement of both these churches may have been
originally derived from the Pantheon, modified by the example in Rome,
of what is called the Temple of Minerva Medica, though it was probably a
nymphæum. This building is decagonal with niches projecting from nine of
the sides, while the tenth provides the entrance. The dome, of concrete
ribbed with tiles, is built over an inner decagon of ten piers carrying ten
arches. These in turn support a decagonal drum, pierced with windows, the
angles at the top being filled in with rudimentary pendentives. The same
principle of construction reappears in both S. Sergius and S. Vitale; the
dome of the latter being composed, for the sake of lightness, of
earthenware, amphora-shaped pots, the bottom of one being fixed in the lip
of another. It is sheathed on the outside with a wooden roof.
This Church of S. Vitale became the model on which Charlemagne
based his domical church at Aix-la-Chapelle, which was built as a royal
tomb, A.D. 796-814, and was afterward used as the crowning-place of the
Emperors of the West.
S. Sophia.—Finally, the pendentive system was fully developed in
Justinian’s church in Constantinople dedicated to the Holy Wisdom—

Hagia Sophia, called, though erroneously, S. Sophia. It marks the highest
development of the Byzantine genius for domical construction.
The architects were Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus, who
began the work in 532 and finished it in 537. The plan shows four mighty
piers, 25 feet square, set at the angles of a square of 107 feet. These support
four arches and intermediate pendentives of noble height, the apex of the
dome being 175 feet from the pavement. For the original dome, having
collapsed in 555, was replaced by a higher one, lighted by the introduction
of forty circular-headed windows around the spring of the curve; an
arrangement not only excellent in admitting light to the interior, but also as
wonderfully impressive in its way as the single eye of the Pantheon. Rows
of small circular headed windows are also pierced in the screens which fill
in the north and south arches.
Abutting on the east and west arches of this central mass are semi-
domes, supported upon the central piers and two others. And from these
project, as in S. Sergius and S. Vitale, small semicircular domes, sustained
by an upper and lower story of arcades. Thus was created a vast oval-ended
hall, 267 feet long by 107, from every part of which the summit of the dome
is visible.
Outside this central feature are two side-aisles, each having two stories,
separated from the nave by arcading and formed of a series of columns and
vaulting. As in all Early Christian and Byzantine churches which have
upper and lower galleries, the former were occupied by women
worshippers. The outer walls on the north and south sides, as the plan
shows, are reinforced by immense buttresses, 25 feet wide and 75 long,
which appear on the outside of the buildings like huge pylons. On the inside
they are pierced with arches on each story. These buttresses withstand the
thrust of the dome which is reinforced on the east and west by the semi-
domes.
The edifice, which occupies practically a square, is approached on the
west side by a narthex of magnificent proportions, 200 feet long by 30
wide, which is divided like the aisles into an upper and lower story. So far
“the plan resembles that of S. Sergius, if the latter were cut in half and a
dome on pendentives inserted over the intervening square and the whole
doubled in size.” In front of the narthex, however, extends a second one,
opening, as in some of the basilican churches, into an atrium.

The exterior walls are faced with alternate courses of brick and stone and
the domes, all of which are visible, are covered with a sheathing of lead.
S. Mark’s, Venice.—S. Sophia is a marvel not only of construction but
also of unity of design. It is in this respect, among others, that it is superior
to S. Mark’s in Venice, which was erected by Byzantine builders at the end
of the eleventh century. Venice, like Ravenna, was in close touch with
Constantinople and when she determined to build a cathedral to her patron
saint, to replace an earlier basilican church destroyed by fire, it was natural
that she should look to that city for the character of the design as well as for
artists and artisans to execute it. The actual model was the Church of the
Holy Apostles, in Constantinople, founded by Constantine, rebuilt by
Justinian, and destroyed by the Turks in 1463 to make room for the mosque
of Sultan Mahomet II.
The plan is a Greek cross, that is to say, a cross with the four parts of
practically equal length, grouped around a central square. Each of the five
divisions is crowned by a dome, supported on pendentives and reinforced
by transverse barrel vaults. The transept and choir domes are slightly
smaller than the ones over the crossing and the nave, because of the
restrictions of space caused by the chapel of S. Isadore in the north transept,
the Ducal Palace on the south, and the retention of the apse of the ancient
basilica. Originally all the domes were sheathed externally with lead, but at
a later date were covered with the lead-sheathed wooden lanterns now
existing. With their high-pitched curves and ornamental terminals they
represent a serious deviation from the true Byzantine style.
A similar departure from the latter is exhibited in the west façade. This
was completed in the fifteenth century and involves a curious mixture of
Orientalism and fanciful Gothic with features, such as the clusters of
columns in two tiers, flanking the five entrances, which serve no structural
purpose and have no architectural justification. They are purely picturesque.
But S. Mark’s was the city’s shrine, to which each succeeding century
added some embellishment and often with more zeal than discretion.
It is the interior rather that commands our admiration. For
notwithstanding certain distractions, even here, of later debased styles of
mosaic, enough of the tenth and eleventh century embellishments remain to
dignify the decoration. And in no other building in the world is there so

marvellous an ensemble of coloured marbles, alabaster, and glass mosaics;
or such subtleties, delicacies, and complexities of light and shadow.

Greece and Russia.—In Greece and Russia the Byzantine has continued
to be the official style of the Greek Church. In Russia, however, many
fantastic elements have been introduced, particularly the bulbous form of
the domes.
As an example of domestic Byzantine architecture may be mentioned the
Monastery of Mount Athos on a promontory of Saloniki, overlooking the
Ægean Sea.
“In Armenia are also interesting examples of late Armeno-Byzantine
architecture, showing applications to exterior carved detail of elaborate
interlaced ornament, looking like a re-echo of Celtic M.SS. illumination,
itself, no doubt, originating in Byzantine traditions.” (Hamlin.)

CHAPTER III

MUHAMMEDAN, ALSO CALLED SARACENIC CIVILISATION

The introduction at this point of Muhammedan or Saracenic architecture
unfortunately breaks the continuity of the evolution of Early Christian and
Byzantine architecture into the Romanesque and thence into the Gothic.
Accordingly, some writers reserve this chapter until the end of their book,
treating it as an independent interlude.
That method, on the other hand, has the disadvantage of not giving the
subject its proper place in the sequence of history; and since an important
motive of the present volume is to represent the growth of architecture as
the product of changing conditions of civilisation, it seems more in
accordance with this aim to let the conditions govern the order in which the
architectural phases are presented. So, in the inevitable choice between two
evils of arrangement we will select that which, from our point of view,
seems to be the least.
For it is true that Muhammedan or Saracenic civilisation represents but
an interlude in the progress of Christian civilisation. What, however, would
have been the outcome, if Charles Martel, in 732, had not crushed the
advance of the Muhammedans into France? They might have fastened upon
the latter as they had upon Spain, the north of Africa, Egypt, Syria. From

France they might have descended upon Italy, and gradually drawn tighter
the circle of their conquest until the Western as well as the Eastern Empire
was entirely in their grasp. It needs but a little effort of imagination to
realise that on the issue of the battle of Poictiers hung the fortunes of
Europe; the survival of European civilisation and possibly the continuance
of Christianity.
In fact, what was trembling in the balance was the extension of a new
and vigorous power over a social order that, except in the Frankish
kingdom, had grown more and more disintegrated and feeble. For in the
decline of Rome even her conquerors had been involved; the various other
Gothic nations in adapting the decay of her system had been corrupted by it.
The only unifying and uplifting force that glimmered amid the general
prostration was that of the Church, which might have been engulfed in
Islamism if the Franks had not prevailed at Poictiers.
For in the present day we associate Islamism with the unprogressive
nations, whereas in the eighth century it was the symbol of progressiveness.
Its spiritual ideal was, at least, as high as that of Christianity; while its
intellectual and material ideals were superior to those of Europe.
Shall we speak of Saracenic civilisation or Saracenic architecture as
some do, or follow the example of others who substitute the term
Muhammedan? The former word was probably derived from the Latin
Saraceni, which was employed by the Romans to designate the Bedouins
who roamed a part of the Syro-Arabian desert, and committed depredations
on the frontier of the Empire. In the Middle Ages Saracen came to be used
as a general term for Moslems, especially those who had penetrated into
Spain. This latter use is too narrow, while the general use conveys no
meaning.
Muhammedan, on the other hand, implies a follower of Muhammed or
Mahomet, and it was the oneness of faith that first united the Arab
tribesmen and in time gave a uniformity of ideal to their spread of conquest
from the Pillars of Hercules to Northern India. While the character of the
civilisation varied throughout this vast empire, being coloured by local and
racial characteristics that reacted on the styles of architecture, it was
everywhere impregnated with one belief. There is no god but Allah and
Muhammed is his prophet.

Muhammed was born about 570 in Mecca, in the Arabian peninsula; a
place hitherto of little importance, which had a cube-shaped sanctuary, the
Kaaba, enshrining a Black Stone. It was the token or fetish of some god of
nature; for some kind of nature worship, including the worship of the Sun,
Moon, and Earth seems to have been the traditional religion of Arabia.
Meanwhile, Judaism had penetrated into the country and Christianity had
followed. Each figured in Muhammed’s imagination as a world religion.
Both professed one God. One had its prophets; the other, its Messiah, and
both its book of inspired revelation.
Accordingly, when the vision of Muhammed embraced the idea of
founding at once a new nation and a new religion, he borrowed from both
Judaism and Christianity and proclaimed himself the new prophet or
Messiah of the one God and made known the New Revelation, which was
embodied in the Koran. The faith of Islam, as preached by Muhammed and
practised by him and his followers, was essentially one of proselytising by
force. “The sword,” he taught, “is the key of Heaven and Hell. A drop of
blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, avails more than two
months of fasting and prayer. Whoso falls in battle his sins are forgiven. At
the Day of Judgment his wounds shall be resplendent with vermilion and
odoriferous as musk, and the loss of limbs shall be supplied by angels’
wings.”
Muhammed’s self-imposed task of subjugating and uniting Arabia for
the Arabians was begun after his flight from Mecca to Medina, the
celebrated Hejira (Arab hijra) which occurred on the Jewish Day of
Atonement, Sept. 30, A.D. 622. The further work of conquering the countries
on which the Arab tribes had been dependent, Syria, Abyssinia, Persia, was
continued by his followers.
Of great importance in the history of architecture was the conquest of
Persia (632-651), for here the Muhammedan influence developed a style
that was distinguished by fine structural as well as aesthetic qualities and
generally developed a beautiful revival of the various arts of decorative
design. And it was Persian Muhammedan that strongly influenced the
architecture of India, where Muhammedan conquest was established about
A.D. 1000.
Meanwhile, the Arabic Muhammedans had founded a dynasty under the
Ommayads with its capital in Damascus and a later one under the Abassids,

whose most celebrated caliph was Haroun-el-Raschid of Bagdad, made
famous by the “Thousand and One Nights.” Conquest was extended
westward, gradually comprising Egypt, the north of Africa, Sicily, and
Spain.
In 1453 the Crescent displaced the Cross in Constantinople.
Yet, notwithstanding the divisions of the Muhammedans and the
immense distances separating them, a unity not only religious but also
intellectual was maintained. The Muhammedans learned rapidly from the
peoples they conquered and established for the diffusion of learning a sort
of university system of travelling scholarships. Aided by Arabic as the
universal language of learning, students journeyed from teacher to teacher,
from the Atlantic to Samarcand, gathering hundreds of certificates. The
education was designed to turn out theologians and lawyers; but theology
included studies in metaphysics and logic, and the canon law required a
knowledge of arithmetic, mensuration, and practical astronomy.
Technical education was maintained by gilds who perpetuated the
“mysteries” of the craft through a system of apprenticeships. And it is to be
noted that there was no distinction made between so-called arts and so-
called crafts. The gild-system covered all kinds of constructive work from
engineering to the making of a needle, and if the work permitted elements
of beauty and decoration these were, as a matter of course, included. Hence
the proficiency and inventiveness and exquisite perfection of workmanship
displayed by the Muhammedan craftsmen.
But their Koran enjoined a literal obedience to the Mosaic law against
“the making of any graven image, or the likeness of anything that is in
Heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth.”
Accordingly, there were no sculptors or painters in the full sense of the
term; only decorators of moulded, engraved, or coloured ornament, the
motives of which were confined to conventionalised flower and leaf forms
and to geometric designs of practically endless variations of the straight line
and curve, in meander, interlace, and fret, into which they often wove texts
from the Koran or the sacred name of Allah. It is to these designs by Arab
artists, influenced to some extent by Byzantine, that the term arabesque was
first applied.
Meanwhile it was the practice of Muhammedanism to absorb as far as
possible the traditions of each nation it conquered. Gradually, therefore, the

strictness of its orthodoxy was modified. In Persia, for example, the
representation of animals was permitted in the arts of design, and the
representation of human beings followed.
Similarly, the architectural style of each locality was affected by the
previously existing architecture. The examples which remain are chiefly of
mosques, tombs, houses, and palaces.
The word mosque comes to us through the French mosquée; the Spanish
equivalent is mesquita, while the Arabs call the “place of prostration”—
masjid. The nucleus of every one is the mihrab or niche in a wall, indicating
the kibleh or direction of the Great Mosque at Mecca, with its shrine, the
Kaaba. Beside the mihrab was a pulpit, mimbar, for preaching, and
sometimes in front of it, for the reading of the Koran, stood a dikka or
platform raised upon columns. Shelter for the worshippers was provided by
arcades, which in the immediate vicinity of the mihrab were often enclosed
with lattice work, thus forming a prayer-chamber—maksura. The size of the
mosque was indefinitely enlarged by the addition of more arcades,
surrounding usually an open court, in the centre of which, as in the atrium
of the Early Christian basilicas, was a fountain for ritual ablution.
The tomb was usually distinguished by a dome and during the lifetime of
its founder served the purpose of a pleasure-house; corresponding
somewhat to the Roman nymphæum, and, as in the case of the Taj Mahal,
set in the midst of a beautiful system of gardens, water-basins, and terraces.
In his house also the Muhammedan jealously guarded his domestic
privacy. He followed the Romans in leaving the exterior of his house plain,
while centering all its luxury and comfort around an open interior court.
Special quarters were provided for the women and the seclusion of their
lives within the harem led to two features which are characteristic of
Oriental houses, the balcony and the screen. That the occupants might take
the air, balconies were built out from the walls both of the court and the
exterior; and screened with lattice work, on the designs of which great skill
and beauty were expended.
The palaces represented the extension of the house-plan by the addition
of halls of ceremony. Sometimes, as in the case of the Alhambra, they
combined the character of a citadel, and were always generously supplied
with water, as well for the ablutions enjoined in the Koran, as for purposes
of beauty. The Arabs, in fact, readily learned the Roman methods of

engineering and hydraulics and in their houses and cities and in the
irrigation of land carried the system to a high degree of perfection.
The system by which learning and culture circulated throughout the
Muhammedan world was illustrated in the spread of the arts of design.
Persia, for example, was a centre of the ceramic art, and wherever the
Muhammedan civilisation spread, the art of pottery was revived and took
on new and distinctive splendour. Enamel colours of the purest tones and
finest translucence were developed and the glazes were distinguished by
extraordinary lustre. They were lavished not only on vessels of practical
service but also on tiles for the decoration of walls.
With equal originality the Muhammedan artists developed the metal
crafts both in the direction of tempering the metal and in its decoration;
introducing and carrying to a wonderful pitch of perfection the engraving,
encrusting and inlaying of the surfaces with ornamental designs; a process
known as damascening, since Damascus was the earliest important centre of
the craft.
Further, in weaving they developed a corresponding skill and feeling for
design. Rugs and carpets, laid on the floor or spread over doorways, were
the chief furnishing of a Muhammedan home, while a small rug was carried
by the worshipper or his servant to the Mosque to protect his bare feet while
he prayed. These “prayer rugs” were frequently embellished with a
representation of a mihrab, enclosed in borders bearing Koran texts, and
were of silk of finest weave; that is to say, with an extraordinary number of
knots to the square inch. There is a fragment of silk weave in the Altman
collection at the Metropolitan Museum, of Indian craftsmanship, each
square inch of which embraces 2500 knots.
In a way, however, the very exquisiteness of Muhammedan
craftsmanship prepared the way for its decay. It originated in the limitation
of motives permitted to the decorator, who in consequence had to satisfy his
love of perfection by resort to delicacies and intricacies of design beyond
which there was no further possibility of creative invention.

CHAPTER IV

MUHAMMEDAN ARCHITECTURE

The Koran prescribed that every believer when praying should face toward
Mecca. This could be done as readily in the open desert as in a building, so
the early mosques were probably of little importance. It was only as the
Arab tribesmen extended their conquests to the neighbouring civilisations
and came in touch with the temples of antiquity and the churches of the
present, that they began to raise handsome places of worship for their own
religion.
As Muhammedanism spread eastward through Syria to Persia and later
to India and westward into Egypt, along the northern shore of Africa into
Spain and finally occupied Constantinople and Turkey, it absorbed much of
the civilisation of each country and employed the constructive methods, the
workmen, and the materials which it found ready to hand. Consequently,
the architectural expression of Muhammedanism, while retaining
everywhere certain essential characteristics, varies locally. It offers notable
distinctions according as it is found in Syria, Persia, India, Egypt, Spain,
and Turkey.
Mosque of Mecca.—The Great Mosque of Mecca, called by Moslems
the Haram El Masjid el Haram, or Baisullahi el Haram, the “House of God,
the Prohibited,” represents a succession of additions, extending from early
Muhammedan times to the middle of the sixteenth century. It comprises an
enclosure, 300 yards square, the walls of which are pierced with nineteen
gateways and

MOSQUE OF EL AZHAR, CAIRO
Showing Egyptian Types of Minarets

SULIEMANIYEH OR MOSQUE OF SULIEMAN
Follows Style of S. Sophia. Note the Surrounding Cloisters and Type of Minarets. P. 228

ARCADES OF THE MOSQUE, NOW CATHEDRAL, OF CORDOVA, SPAIN
Note Extensions of Columns to Support Upper Arches. Pp. 221, 224

COURT OF THE LIONS, ALHAMBRA

CONJECTURED RESTORATION OF THE PAVILION OF MIRRORS, AND GARDENS
Of the Palace of Ispahan

RESTORATION OF COLLEGE OF SHAH HUSSEIN: ISPAHAN
Showing Arcaded Front and Lofty Central Gateway; also Bulbous Form of Dome. P. 229

MOSQUE OF AKBUR, FUTTEHPORE-SIKRI
Note Gateway, Arcades and Series of Little Domes. P. 230

TAJ MAHAL, AGRA
Erected by Shah Jehan as a Tomb for His Wife. In Distance the “Pearl Mosque”, Another of
His Monuments. P. 230

embellished with minarets. The chief sanctuary is the Kaaba, so called from
its resemblance to a cube, of about 40 feet measurement, to the outside of
which, on its southeast angle, is affixed the sacred Black Stone, the chief
object of veneration. The shrine is surrounded to a depth of 20 yards by
successions of colonnades with pointed arches.
Arcades.—These arcades, affording protection to the worshippers, are a
feature common to all mosques; the direction of the arcades being usually at
right angles, though occasionally parallel to, the wall of the mihrab—the
niche which points toward Mecca. For columns the early Muhammedan
builders relied upon what they found in the buildings which they replaced

or remodelled; mixing the styles Egyptian, Roman, and Byzantine, and
bringing their different sizes to conformity by setting blocks upon the
capitals. To resist the thrust of the arches, wooden tie-beams were built into
the masonry at the spring of the arches, and utilised for the hanging of
lamps and lanterns. As these became a recognised feature of mosques, the
beams were retained even after the skill of the builders had made them
unnecessary as ties.
Domes.—The roofs are flat, constructed of timber, and on the inside
coloured and gilded. A dome frequently crowns the maksura or prayer
chamber, and the tomb of the saint, when the latter is included in the sacred
precincts. Almost always the dome surmounts a square plan and to
accommodate the latter to the circle the Muhammedan architects invented a
method of construction that corresponds to the Byzantine pendentive. In
principle it goes back to the ancient method of bridging over a space by
setting the stones on each side of it in layers that project over one another
until the two sides meet at the top. The Muhammedan builders filled in the
corners of the square with tiers of projecting brackets or corbels with niches
between them. At first they placed corbel above corbel and niche above
niche, but in time alternated them, so that the niches in one tier were astride
of the corbels in the tier below them. This method of filling in the angles of
the square, so as to bring the latter to a circle, came to be known as
“stalactite” work and from being used as a constructive expedient was
developed into a system of decoration that was frequently extended over the
whole ceiling of the vault.
The exterior of the dome was seldom spherical, as in Byzantine
architecture, but took the form of the pointed, or the ogee, or the horseshoe
arch. It was built, either of brickwork in horizontal courses, covered inside
and out with plaster; or, in later mosques, of horizontal layers of stone,
engraved on the exterior with horizontal patterns. Windows were frequently
ranged round the lower part. In some old tombs of the thirteenth century, as
that of Sheik Omar, inside the East Gate of Bagdad, the dome is pineapple
shaped.
The walls were built of local materials and decorated either with stone or
brick in alternate courses, or with plaster, inset with precious stones or
veneered with glazed tiles.

Minarets.—A distinctive feature of the mosque was the minaret, a lofty
tower of lighthouse form, from the balcony of which the muezzin
summoned the faithful to prayer. While the minarets show a general
similarity of character, the details vary in different countries. Thus, in Persia
they rise from a circular base and are crowned by a round cap; in
Constantinople the base is round, octagonal, or square and the top is
finished with a cone; while in Cairo the top is flat. The shafts vary from
circular to polygonal, and are usually divided into three tiers of balconies—
though the Persian is generally distinguished by one—carried round the
shaft and supported by corbels, which in some instance are embellished
with stalactite ornament.
During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the mosques
became an aggregation of buildings, including the tomb of the founder,
residences for priests, schools and hospitals. They correspond, in fact, to
mediæval monasteries, and the evolution of their styles presents a certain
parallel to the contemporary evolution of Gothic architecture.

Syria.—Among the existing mosques in Syria are those of El-Aksah on
the Temple platform at Jerusalem and of El-Walid in Damascus, both of
which are planned like a basilica. Also on the Temple platform is the Dome
of the Rock, misnamed the Mosque of Omar, the central feature of which
is a circular space, crowned by a dome, which was rebuilt by Saladin in
1189.

Egypt.—In Egypt one of the oldest is the Mosque of Amru in Cairo, in
which the square open court is surrounded by arcades, set at right angles to
the mihrab and supported by columns taken from Byzantine and Roman
buildings. Somewhat similar in plan is the Mosque of Tulun, where,
however, the arcades run parallel to the mihrab wall and the wide pointed
arches are supported upon massive piers.
Then follow, during the period that corresponds to the development of
Gothic architecture, the Mosque of Kalaoom; that of Sultan Hassan,
which is cruciform in plan; that of Sultan Barbouk, celebrated for its
minarets and the beauty of the dome over the founder’s tomb; and the small
but richly decorated Mosque of Kait-Bey. In the prayer-chamber (maksura)
of the last-named appears, besides the stalactite embellishment of the
mihrab, a distinctive decoration of the arches. In one case the arches are

composed of voussoirs alternating in colour; in the other the alternation is
still further emphasised by the interlocking shapes into which the voussoirs
are cut, so that they fit together with the variety and the exactness of a
Chinese puzzle.

Spain.—Spain offers a very favourable opportunity for the study of
Muhammedan architecture. The Mosque of Cordova, begun by the Caliph
Abd-el-Rahman in 786, was enlarged by successive additions, until it
presents the appearance of a forest of columns and arches, apparently of
unlimited extent. There are said to be 860. The arcades are in two tiers, the
upper arches being supported on posts which are placed on the capitals of
the lower ones and at the same time form abutments to the lower arches. In
most cases the arches are of horseshoe form; but elsewhere, as in the
vestibule to the mihrab chamber the upper horseshoe arches surmount a tier
of cinquefoil or five-scalloped ones, and the posts on which they abut are
faced with attached columns. A remarkable additional feature is the
interlacing between the upper and lower arches of portions of multifoil
arches; so arranged that they appear to bridge over the space between the
alternate lower column and at the same time to spring over the capitals of
the intermediate upper column. The arrangement is a striking instance of the
Arab invention in the use of repetition of motive, a use, in this case,
governed by constructive reasonableness as well as imposed by the desire
for subtlety of elaboration.
The Mosque of Cordova is second in size to the Great Mosque of
Mecca. Though the superb adornments of mosaics and red and gold ceilings
have suffered from decay and restoration and its vista of arcades is blocked
in parts by the coro (choir), erected when the edifice was converted into a
cathedral, it is still a marvellous memorial of Cordova’s supremacy as the
most learned, cultured, and prosperous caliphate in Islam.
In Toledo there is nothing approaching the magnificence of the Mosque
of Cordova. Among the remains are the churches of S. Cristo de la Luz
and Santa Maria la Bianca, which are mosques converted to the Catholic
ritual.
At Seville beside the much renowned Alcazar or Castle, is the
celebrated tower, Giralda, so named from the weather vane (giradillo), a
figure of Faith with a banner, some 305 feet from the ground. It surmounts
the Renaissance top of three stories, added in 1568 to the old tower, which,

as an altarpiece in the cathedral shows, originally terminated in battlements.
These suggest that the building was erected as a watch tower or, may be, as
a symbol of power. Its plan is a square of 45 feet, the walls being about 8
feet thick, built of material from Roman and probably Visigothic remains.
Its surface is pierced by twenty windows, many of which are subdivided by
columnettes, and embellished with sunken panels, enriched with
arabesques. The Giralda is under the special protection of SS. Justa and
Rufina—a fact commemorated in the above-mentioned picture and in
another by Murillo, now in the Provincial Museum. It was used as a model
for the design of the tower of the Madison Square Garden, New York.
The Alhambra, Granada, represents the best preserved as well as the
most perfect example of the Moorish-Arabic genius. It was a fortress-
palace, much of it built on the brink of the rock, the steep slopes of which
were used to construct the lower stories of baths, offices, and guardrooms.
The exterior has no impressiveness, though the original grouping of walls
and roofs must have been highly picturesque. Its halls, chambers, and
remains of a mosque are clustered about two rectangular courts or patios,
which are joined like the two parts of an “L”—the “Court of the Alberca”
and the “Court of the Lions.” From one of the ends of the Alberca Court
projects the “Hall of the Ambassadors”; from the other the “Hall of the
Tribunal,” while the long sides of the Court of Lions open respectively into
the “Hall of the Abencerrages” and the “Hall of the Two Sisters.”
The “Court of the Lions” is so called from the fountain in its centre, an
immense marble basin supported upon twelve lions, which form a
remarkable exception to the Muhammedan rule against representing the
image of any living thing. Both these Courts are arcaded, the columns, set
singly or in pairs, or groups, exhibiting, as do all the columns in the
Alhambra, distinctive features in their capitals, which are separated by a
high necking from the shaft.
It is, however, in the interior of the halls that the decoration reaches its
finest pitch and nowhere more than in the “Hall of the Two Sisters,” which
formed the culminating feature of the harem quarters. The name is supposed
to have been derived from two slabs of marble in the pavement but may
well have been suggested by the window, which occupies a bay and is
divided by a small column and two arches into two lights. The walls, above
a high wainscot of lustred tiles, are encrusted with flat moulded arabesques,
representing a delicate lacelike tracery of leafy vines and tendrils, still

tinctured with the red, blue, and gold that formerly enriched them. The
arabesques melt into the stalactite embellishments which completely cover
the hollow of the dome; created, as it seems, by giant bees, whose cells
hang down like grape-clusters in an endless profusion of exquisite intricacy.
Time was when this unsurpassable delicacy of magnificence glowed with
gold touched into a thousandfold diversity of tones, by the light of hanging
lamps.
As an expression of the Arabic genius in the direction of subtlety this
represents finality. It embodies the culture of a race that in its learning as in
its art had been devoted to the exaltation of details; and embodies also the
latent instinct of a desert-wandering race whose eye had been little
habituated to varieties of form, but saturated with colour and in the watches
of the night had been long familiar with the mystery of vaulted sky, sown
with star-clusters and hung with the jewelled lamps of planets. It was
characteristic also of the Oriental fondness of abstraction that revels in
subtleties and loves to merge itself in the contemplation of the infinite. It is
the kind of decoration that being denied the reinforcement of nature was
bound to evolve sterility.

Turkish.—When the Seljuk Turks, after occupying many parts of the
Byzantine Empire, finally took Constantinople, they converted S. Sophia
into a mosque, and more or less closely followed its style in the mosques
they themselves erected.
Thus the Suleimaniyeh or Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent,
repeats the central dome and the two apses of the Christian building,
preserving also the flatness of the dome-form. It is approached by a fore-
court, surrounded on all its sides by cloisters, roofed with a succession of
smaller domes, and embellished at the angles with minarets. These have
circular shafts terminating in sharply pointed cones. In the garden of the
mosque are the octagonal, dome-crowned tombs of the founder and his
favourite wife, Roxelana.
The Ahmedizeh, or Mosque of Ahmed is square in plan, with a central
dome, flanked by four apses, the angles being filled in with four smaller
domes. The interior is lined with coloured tiles, while that of the
Suleimaniyeh is veneered with marble.
The public fountains are distinctive features of the city. In one near S.
Sophia, for example, the water-basin, octagonal in shape and covered with a

dome-like grille of ironwork, is enclosed in an octagon of arches that
support a sloping roof which extends in wide eaves and is surmounted by a
dome.

Persia.—In point of time Persia enters early into the Muhammedan
conquest, but we have reserved the consideration of it until later, because
she did not reach the height of her renewed splendour in the arts until the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and then contributed to the Muhammedan
art of India.
When Muhammedanism extended to Persia, it came in touch with the
decaying Sassanian empire that from A.D. 226 to 641 had withstood the
power of Rome and extended its sway nearly to the gates of India. The
remains of its architecture consist chiefly of palaces such as those at
Serbistan, Firuzabad, and Ctesiphon. In these, with an inventiveness of
their own and on a great scale, the builders combined elements of Assyrian
and Roman architecture—square, domed chambers, barrel-vaulted halls,
and portals formed of huge arches, elliptical or horseshoe in shape.
The direct evidence of this style on the earliest Muhammedan buildings
has disappeared owing to the devastation of the Mongol invasion under
Genghis Khan; but the Sassanian influence is conjectured from the later
architecture which grew up after A.D. 1200. Important examples are to be
found in Bagdad, Teheran, and Ispahan. Among the memorials in the last
named city is the Great Mosque, which has an open court, surrounded by
two-storied arcades. Its special features include portal-arches, rising above
the highest of the adjoining walls; vaulted aisles, bulbous-shaped domes,
and minarets of peculiar elegance. The walls are decorated with enamelled
tiles.

India.—Persian-Muhammedan architecture, probably because of the
Sassanian influence, was superior to the Arabian-Muhammedan in
constructive elements and represents more fully a developed style. Many of
its elements reappear in Indian-Muhammedan architecture, which by the
beginning of the fifteenth century was developing a style distinguished
alike by the grandeur of the whole and the structural meaning of the details.
The finest example of this early period is the Jama Musjil (Principal
Mosque), at Ahmedabad, which Shah Ahmed reconstructed out of a Hindu

temple. The Hindu influence is still apparent in the massive detached pillars
that buttress the chief entrance.
The style reached its full development of structural logic, dignity, and
beauty under the Mogul dynasty (1526-1761). By this time the
Muhammedan architects had developed a method of dome support,
different both from the Byzantine and the Arabic pendentive, which
combined corbels, ribs, vaulting surfaces, and corner squinches. The last
named are arches placed diagonally at the angles to bring the square to an
octagonal, which was the favourite form of plan adopted for tombs. Of
these the most imposing is the Tomb of Mahmud at Bijapur.
A noble example of the earlier Mogul style is the Mosque of Akbar at
Futtehpore-Sikri. Especially noteworthy are the southern and western
gateways. They tower up with emphatic assertion and yet with a finely
proportioned relation to the flanking arcades. This is due in a great measure
to the arches of the arcades being repeated with more elaborate detail in the
recess of the gateway, where also an upper tier of arches balances the
architrave of the arcades. These tiers of arches, leading up to the semi-dome
of the ceiling give a contrast of grace to the sterner lines of the exterior
arch, and introduce gradations of refinement into its monumental scale.
The later example, Taj Mahal, Agra, erected by Shah Jehan (1627-
1658) is distinguished by less force and a greater delicacy and refinement.
Though it is said to have been designed by a French or Italian architect, it is
regarded as the last word of beauty in Indian-Muhammedan architecture
and one of the most beautiful architectural monuments in the world.
This royal tomb, used as a ceremonial hall during its founder’s lifetime,
stands upon a marble platform, 18 feet high and 313 feet square, at the
corners of which spire up minarets of circular, that is to say, of Persian
design. The building occupies a square plan of 181 feet, from which the
corners have been removed; the façades being composed of two tiers of
deeply recessed arches, interrupted by four monumental portals, which
correspond, though with greater refinements of proportion and detail, to
those of the Mosque of Futtehpore-Sikri. The central dome of bulb-form
rises upon a lofty drum to a height of 80 feet with 58 feet diameter, and is
balanced by four small domes, supported on columns. The material of the
whole is white marble, enriched with carvings and inlays of jasper,
bloodstone, and agate. The Taj Mahal, as exquisite as it is imposing, is set

like an immense jewel in an enchanting scheme of garden-planning that
includes terraces, lakes, fountains, and foliage.

CHAPTER V

EARLY MEDIÆVAL CIVILISATION

The period of architecture to which this chapter forms an introduction is
from A.D. 1000 to 1200. It is usually known as the Romanesque period
because the architecture in certain structural particulars represented a return
to Roman methods. But the application of the principles varied in different
parts of what had been the Roman Empire under the influence of local
conditions; according as the locality was Northern Italy, or Northern or
Southern France, or England, or the Rhine Provinces of Germany.
On the other hand, when we come to consider the social and political
conditions, the word Romanesque is too narrow. It was, it is true, a period
of gradual reconstruction of order upon the ruins of the Roman Empire and
one of the forces that made for order was the partial revival by
Charlemagne of Roman Law. The latter became a model by which the slow
process of organising society anew could shape itself. So far, at least, the
social tendency of the period was Romanesque. But after all, this was only a
detail of the new order, and by no means the most significant.
Indeed the attempt to revive an empire was in itself reactionary and
opposed to the spirit of the time. For the latter was groping toward the
organising of independent nationalities. The millions who had overwhelmed
the Roman Empire possessed a certain kinship of race and language; but
they were divided into tribal units which clung to their separate identities,
the more so as the difference of localities in which they settled increased
their separateness. Thus the movement of the time was a slow change from
tribal to national unity, and the gradual construction of a social and political
order, suited to their racial instinct of independent freedom. The advance
was much more rapid in social than in political order. For centuries the
independent and adventurous spirit of the various peoples was to keep them
embroiled in constant warfare, postponing the settlement of national
landmarks. Back of this political chaos, however, was a steady and sure
growth in social order, which, indeed, was largely assisted by the necessity
of self-preservation.

While popes, emperors, kings, dukes, and counts were fighting in
colossal or petty rivalries, the “honest man,” as the saying is, “came into his
own.” The merchants grew in importance, the craft-gilds consolidated their
strength, and the cities became oases of comparative order. It was an age
distinguished by the growth of “communes”; that is to say, of burgs,
boroughs, and cities, possessing certain rights of self-government and
immunity from indiscriminate taxation. Not that these privileges escaped
infringement. The fight for them had to be perpetually maintained and the
fortunes of the commune varied from time to time. Yet the seed of self-
government was sown, to stay in the soil of every Teutonic nation.
The rise of the commune was partly due to the Feudal system, which had
its origin in the “fee” or tenure in land. As the system came to be worked
out, the tenant held in fief from an overlord, who in turn held from some
more powerful overlord and so on up to the King. When the latter went to
war, the word was passed down and each overlord had to bring his quota of
men, which he made up from the levies of the overlords below him. It thus
became an automatic method of raising an army, of which the lowest knight
with his few followers was the unit. On the other hand, the ease with which
the method could be put in operation and the need of constant preparation
for it, maintained a condition of warlike feeling, that in the absence of a
great war broke out in jealousy and strife among the several constituent
parts of the system.
It was to guard against the inevitable miseries of this constant turmoil
that the merchants and artisans built their homes and shops around some
burg or castle, to the lord of which they looked for protection, walls of
defence being gradually built around the city, until it became fortified with
the castle as a citadel. The benefits were mutual. Commerce and trade could
be pursued in comparative peace, while the lord in return for his protection
would receive a portion of the profits to finance his various expeditions or
intrigues. To consolidate their influence the merchants formed themselves
into merchant gilds, while the citizens established craft-gilds in the various
trades.
Thus gradually both commerce and trade spun a network of peaceful
activity and comparative stability over the otherwise troubled world,
knitting together its remotest parts. For while the agricultural population
was tied to the soil, and passed with its transfer from one owner to another,
the condition of commerce and to some extent of trade was fluent.

Merchants travelled and had their agents in distant countries; and even the
artisan might move from place to place and enroll himself for the time
being in the local gild of his craft. And the merchants became also the
bankers of their time: those of Lombardy, for example, loaning money to
kings as well as to other merchants; the memory of which is preserved in
“Lombard Street,” in London’s financial centre.
These merchants had become wealthy by trading in the merchandise
from the East and increased their wealth by distributing the merchandise
throughout the West. Milan, therefore, speedily grew in importance because
she commanded the roads leading over the passes of the Alps. Thence the
chief stream of commerce led at first through Provence. Later, German
cities like Augsburg and Nuremburg, became powerful and prosperous on
the road to such northern ports as Lübeck and Hamburg, while the Rhine
became the highway of commerce to Bruges, Ghent, and Brussels.
The gilds perpetuated what came to be called the “mystery” of their
crafts by organisations which combined a system of apprenticeship with
what we know to-day as a trade-union. One of these was the gild of masons
from which Freemasonry derived. It included various grades from the
ordinary worker of stone and marble, through the men skilled in carved
work, up to the few who were capable of designing and supervising the
construction. And although the tradition that these mason-gilds travelled
from place to place has been discredited, it is still allowed that some of
these master-masons or architects, as we call them to-day, must have
acquired a fame which caused them to be engaged by other cities than their
own.
Meanwhile, there was another great influence operating in the interests
of social order—that of the Church. Many bishops occupied positions
corresponding to that of a feudal lord and some even went to war at the
head of their troops. The cathedrals, like the castles, became the nuclei of
cities. Moreover, the Religious Orders were increasing in numbers and in
influence, both spiritual and temporal. There had been a widely held
expectation that the end of the world was to come in 1000 B.C. After the
fateful date had passed, people breathed more freely with a fresh zest of life
and thankfulness to Heaven; and the Church generally and, in particular, the
Religious Orders, put themselves at the head of this great revival. They
became the leaders of a great popular religious and civic enthusiasm that
found expression especially in church and cathedral building.

The earliest Order, the Benedictine, had been founded by S. Benedict in
the sixth century and spread through the west of Europe, obtaining firm
hold in England. The Cluniac Order, with its headquarters in the Abbey of
Cluny in the Department of Saone et Loire, France, was established in 909
and in 1080 S. Bruno founded the Carthusian Order, whose chief monastery
in France was the Grande Chartreuse, near Grenoble. A little later came the
Cistercians, and the Augustinian Orders, while the twelfth century saw the
founding of the Dominican Order of Preaching Friars and the following
century the establishment of the mendicant order of Franciscans. Nor does
this summary complete the list. The orders rivalled one another in the
number and efficiency of their monasteries, which were the centres not only
of religion but also of learning, art, and economic life, affording guest-
houses for travellers and serving as hospitals, schools, and colleges.
The monastery was usually erected around a square enclosure still called
in England a “close,” surrounded by cloisters. On one side of it adjoined the
Church or Minster which, if it were cruciform, extended its transept along
one side of the cloister, while the nave occupied another. Along the opposite
side of the enclosure ran the refectory, or common feeding-room of the
brotherhood, while the fourth side was occupied with dormitories. Grouped
around this plan were the abbot’s lodging, guestrooms, school, and
dispensary, the bake-house and granaries, fishponds, gardens, and orchards.
And in some quiet room where the light was favourable, certain of the
brothers plied the task of scribes and illuminators. Happy the monastery
that could boast a master-miniaturist or one who was of surpassing merit as
a master-mason. Down to the thirteenth century “Architecture was practised
largely by the clergy and regarded as a sacred science.”
The influence of monkish architects may have had much to do with the
change of the cathedral or church plan from basilica to cruciform, which is
characteristic of this period. The clergy continued to be separated from the
laity and the extra accommodation needed for the monks of a large
monastery caused the apse to be replaced by a chancel, which was raised by
several steps from the level of the nave. It contained the stalls for the monks
and was divided from the nave by a screen (cancellus), which was
surmounted by a gallery or loft, in which the rood (cross) stood.
This rood-loft could be utilised for sacred tableaux which were given for
the edification of the people at certain festivals. At Christmas, for example,
the choirboys, playing the part of angels, would sing from it the chant of

Peace and Good Will, while a representation of the Manger and the
Kneeling Shepherds was displayed upon the top of the chancel steps. For
the Church recognised the power of drama to affect the imagination, and in
time the tableaux developed into “Passion Plays” and “Mystery Plays.” In
fact the nave of the church or cathedral was treated as the meeting place for
the laity and was used for a variety of secular purposes in connection with
the life of the community, while the towers could be used, if necessary, for
watch towers and for the safe storing of treasure.
Further among the circumstances that made a more ordered and more
human condition of society was the code of chivalry, demanding of all
knights or “fully armoured and mounted men,” a high sense of honour,
gallantry in battle and peace, and courtesy to women. Charlemagne had
gathered round him twelve “paladins” or paragons of knightly virtue, and
the fame of their example inspired to deeds not only of valour but of courtly
grace. Thus, in Provence, Spain, and Northern Italy there flourished the
graceful art of the Troubadour, which was paralleled in the Danube
provinces by that of the Minnesingers. The troubadours, originally of noble
birth, including princes in their ranks and one king, Richard the Lion-
Hearted, invented and sang songs to music of their own composing, thus
setting a model for the wandering troubadours and minstrels who later
travelled professionally from castle to castle, not overlooking, we may be
sure, audiences of people that might be gathered in the churches.
Chivalry was turned to shrewd account by the Church. It could not curb
the instinct of fighting but could direct it and did so by enjoining upon
knightly penitents a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Such expeditions grew in
number and size, travelling armed for protection on the journey, and out of
them came the Crusades for the recovery of the Holy Spots in Palestine
from the Moslem. These were far from being unmixed blessings to the
people, but at least they diverted for a time the turbulence and left the cities
freer opportunity of growth. And many a noble on returning home, would
build the church or chapel that he had vowed, determined, perhaps, that it
should rival in beauty some example he had seen upon his wanderings.
In view even of the few particulars summarised above, how is it possible
to relegate this period to “The Dark Ages” or even to dismiss it as
negligible, summing it all up as part of the Middle Ages, between the fall of
Rome and the revival of a knowledge of Classic learning and art in the
fifteenth century? It is to the Italians of the Renaissance that we owe this

distortion of history. Properly speaking there was no Renaissance or
Rebirth; but at least from the time of Charlemagne onward a steady growth
in civilisation, and how vigorous it was, notwithstanding the many setbacks,
due to the continuing confusion, may be gathered from the architecture of
the period.
It is well to bear in mind that after the death of Charlemagne his empire
gradually fell apart. A German empire extended from the Rhine to the
Danube and was in constant conflict with the Popes to exert its sway over
Northern Italy; the growth of the communes or free cities being perpetually
disturbed by siding with one or other of the contestants—the Imperial or
Ghibelline and the Papal or Guelph.
France, meanwhile, was not yet a united nation. The kings of the House
of Capet held only the so-called Ile de France or Royal Demesne, extending
from Paris to Orleans, and were surrounded on all sides by independent
Duchies and Countships, with which they were constantly at war. The
Duchy of Normandy had been established to the north by Rollo and in 1066
his descendant, William, conquered England.
These distinctions of territory help to explain the variations of the
Romanesque architecture, as it grew up, respectively, in Northern Italy, the
Rhine Provinces, Ile de France, Southern France, Normandy, and Norman
England.

PISA CATHEDRAL, CAMPANILE AND BAPTISTRY
Pp. 244, 247

INTERIOR OF PISA CATHEDRAL
Showing a Glimpse of the Neck of the Dome Supported on Corner Arches, That Take the Place
of Pendentives. P. 246

S. AMBROGIO, MILAN
Early Example of Rib-Vaulting. P.240

S. MICHELE, PAVIA
Showing Rudimentary Division of West Front and Use of Arcading. P. 251

THE CERTOSA, OR CHURCH OF THE CARTHUSIAN ORDER, PAVIA
Romanesque with Renaissance Lantern and West Façade. P. 313

CHURCH OF VÉZELAY, FRANCE
Early Example of Groin-Vaulting Replacing Barrel-Vaulting. P. 253

CHURCH OF ABBAYE-AUX-DAMES, CAEN
Early Example of Clerestory and of Sexpartite Vaulting. P. 254

REMAINS OF THE CHURCH OF CLUNY ABBEY
Which in the Twelfth Century Was the Intellectual Center of Europe. Pp. 236, 253

DOORWAY OF SALAMANCA CATHEDRAL
Showing Part of the Beautiful Dome over the Crossing. P. 260

CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES, COLOGNE
Note the Arcading Embellishments and Grouping of the Towers. P. 259

ANGLO-SAXON TOWER IFFLEY CHURCH,
Earl’s Barton, NEAR OXFORD
Northamptonshire. P. 255 P. 257

ST. JOHN’S CHAPEL, TOWER OF LONDON
P. 255

NAVE OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL
Note the Girth of Piers and Chevron Ornament. Vaulting, Earliest Example in England,
Completed 1133. P. 256

PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL
P. 256

ENGLISH ROMANESQUE DETAIL

CHAPTER VI

EARLY MEDIÆVAL OR ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE

Romanesque is the term applied to the architectural style of the early
Middle Ages which prevailed from 1000 to 1200. It manifests considerable
variety, according to locality, but at the same time a distinct character
common to all branches, in that it embodied a return to certain Roman
principles of construction, modified more or less by early Christian and
Byzantine methods. It represents a stage in the evolution of Gothic
architecture.
In such localities as the North of Italy and Provence, where Roman
remains were plentiful, the Romanesque architecture made free use of
antique columns and details. But in the Rhine Provinces, the North of
France, and England, the lack of such materials and of skilful workmen

encouraged the substitution of the pier for the column and caused the latter
to be of simpler and in many cases ruder design. Necessity, in fact,
compelled the adoption of new forms. Moreover, the desire of the Church to
build permanently led to the use of stone in place of inflammable timber,
especially in the building of the roofs. Accordingly, the use of vaulting was
revived.
It was out of the application of these necessities of construction that the
Romanesque style was evolved.
Chevêt.—The basilica plan became gradually modified. The nave and
aisles were retained, but the chancel, with or without an apse, was carried
farther back and the length of the transepts prolonged, so that in time the
cruciform plan prevailed and acquired a symbolic significance. A special
feature, gradually introduced, was the chevêt which formed an ambulatory
around the sides of the choir and the semi-circle of the apse, and could be
divided up into chapels dedicated to individual saints.
Vaulting.—In the earlier examples the nave was covered with a barrel-
vault, the thrust of which was sustained in the first place by strengthening
the nave walls by the omission of clerestory windows and, secondly, by the
weight of barrel-vaults over the side aisles, their thrust, in turn, being
sustained by thickening the outer walls and keeping the windows small. As
a further reinforcement of the walls, projecting piers of masonry were built
into them, which in time became features of the external decoration.
Gradually the barrel-vault was superseded by groin vaults; at first in the
aisles and later over the nave as well. The groin vaulting over the aisles
represented, as in Roman times, the intersection of two semicircular vaults.
But since the nave was usually twice the width of the aisles, each of the
nave bays would be oblong in plan. Accordingly two of these were included
in one square bay, which took in two of the nave arches and corresponded
to two aisle bays.
In some instances a shaft was carried up from the intervening pier on
each side of the nave, supporting an intermediate transverse arch, so that the
vaulting became sexpartite, or divided into six compartments. Whether the
bay were six part or four part, the curve of all the groins—longitudinal,
transverse, and diagonal—were semicircular. Accordingly, since the
diagonals had a longer diameter, their curves rose above the others. This
variation was met by giving a concave or domelike surface to each of the

compartments, so that the workmen were able to adjust the stones to the
differences of the curves.
Rib-vaulting.—While this was possible in the actual operation of
placing the stones, it would have needed exceedingly delicate calculation to
build timber centering adjusted in advance to these domelike surfaces.
Moreover, the ponderousness of the dome nave vaulting had made the use
of timber centering extremely costly, even where timber was plentiful;
while in districts sparsely supplied the cost had been prohibitive.
Consequently, the ingenuity of the builders devised a system of construction
that reduced the need of timber centering to a minimum. This was the
system known as rib-vaulting. Briefly, it consisted in spanning the space—
longitudinally, transversely, and diagonally—with preliminary arches of
masonry, thus forming a skeleton frame composed of what are known as
ribs. Each of these ribs, being comparatively light, could be constructed on
a single moveable and expansible piece of centering, called a cerce. When
the ribs had set, they offered sufficient support to hold up the doming of the
compartments while it was being laid.
To some extent this method of construction had been anticipated by the
Romans who in certain instances built preliminary transverse ribs to act as
permanent centerings of the vault, in the masonry of which the ribs were
buried from sight. The reintroduction of this device and its further
development, as above described, originated with the Lombard architects.
This has been definitely determined by the English architect, Arthur
Kingsley Porter, who has proved that the adoption of the system was
prompted by the scarcity of wood in this locality. From Italy it spread to
France, where it made its appearance in the Ile de France about 1100 or
some 60 years after its adoption in Lombardy. It was at first employed
purely as a necessary constructive expedient. Later its æsthetic possibilities
came to be recognised, and the rib was developed by the Gothic architects
into an element of great beauty, one of the characteristic features of the
Gothic style.
Meanwhile, the use of vaulting by the Romanesque architects affected
the character of the exterior. Mention has already been made of the masonry
piers and the massive outside walls, pierced with small windows. For the
further support of the vaulting-thrust towers were freely used. While in Italy
the campanile was frequently detached from the main edifice, the towers in
western and northern Romanesque churches became elements of

prominence in the design. A pair frequently flanked the apse or four rose in
the angles of the transepts and choir, while another pair, sometimes
connected by a gallery, flanked the west end. A tower or dome might also
surmount the crossing of the nave and transepts. The towers were square,
polygonal, or circular, divided into stories which were pierced with
windows or embellished with arcades. They were crowned, like the nave
and aisles, with an exterior sloping roof.
Arcading.—The arcading, which now became a favourite method of
embellishing walls, was of two kinds; either being open and permitting a
passageway at the back of them, or with columns and arch mouldings
attached to the wall, in the manner known as blind arcading. Another
feature for strengthening as well as embellishing the wall was the use of
masonry piers, which, resting on a plinth, projected from the wall only as
far as the width of the cornice.
The exteriors, in fact, were no longer, as in early Christian churches,
plain and almost barn-like, but assumed a varied picturesqueness that,
however, was distinguished by a fine structural unity.
The arch, whether used in interior or exterior arcading or for the tops of
doors and windows, was round; usually semicircular but occasionally
stilted, the ends of the semicircle, that is to say, being raised on
perpendicular lines. The later introduction of the pointed arch, it may be
added, marks the transition from Romanesque to Gothic.
A characteristic development of the Romanesque style is the treatment of
the doors and windows. The jambs or sides were carried back in a series of
angular recesses, which were filled with small columns, whose abaci
frequently united in a continuous moulding. In many cases the angular
recesses of the jambs were prolonged around the arch.
The shafts of columns were decorated with fluting, which might be
perpendicular, spiral, or barred like trellis-work. The capitals, except when
antique Corinthian or Ionic columns were utilised, display a variety of
embellishments, sometimes influenced by Byzantine examples, at other
times representing an original working out of foliage motives, often rude in
treatment, but, especially in the German work, vigorously decorative.
In the nave arcading, that is to say the series of arches on each side of the
nave, the supports consisted of square piers, to the faces of which columns
were attached. From two of them sprang the arches; a third supported the

vaulting of the aisles, while a fourth was run up to a higher level to carry
the vaulting of the nave.

Italian Romanesque.—Since the Romanesque style was coloured by
the locality in which it appeared, it is necessary to study examples of it as
they are found respectively in Italy, France, the Rhine Provinces, Spain, and
England.
The Italian examples are conveniently subdivided into those of Northern,
Central, and Southern Italy, or, more specifically, into the examples found
in the districts north of the River Po, between the Po and the Tiber, and
south of the latter. Of these the northern, to be considered later, are the most
important, since they show, as we have noted, a more adventurous spirit in
the matter of construction.
Central Italy.—On the other hand, the builders of Central and Southern
Italy still followed the simple basilican plan and retained the wooden roofs
and, in consequence, clerestory windows. They raised, however, in many
cases the level of the choir and placed a crypt chamber beneath it; which
sometimes, as in S. Miniato, Florence, is open to the nave. But their
inventiveness was displayed rather in the details of decoration. Central Italy
being rich in marbles, the use of this material for embellishing the exterior
and the interior with bands and geometric designs was carried to such a
perfection as virtually to constitute a style. The most beautiful example is
that of S. Miniato, where, too, the open woodwork of the roof has been
restored to its original colouring of gold, green, blue, and red.
Another notable example of this developed style of decoration is
presented at Pisa, in the group of buildings comprising the Cathedral,
Campanile, and Baptistry. Here the façades are embellished—one might
almost say composed, for the embellishment is applied so constructionally
—with tiers of blind arcades or of open arcades of red and white marble.
Those of the Baptistry received in the fifteenth century additions of Gothic
canopies and traceries, but the front of the Cathedral and the circular
Campanile retain their original character. The Baptistry, also circular in
plan, is crowned by an outer hemispherical dome, through which penetrates
a conical dome, which in the interior is supported on four piers and eight
columns. The influence of Byzantine workmen is seen here as well as in the
dome which crowns the crossing of the Cathedral. The transepts of the latter
are prolonged beyond the basilica plan and terminate in apses.

The Campanile, which comprises eight stories embellished with
arcading, is known as “The Leaning Tower,” since it inclines from the
perpendicular about 13 feet in a height of 179, the greatest inclination being
in the ground story, after which there is a slight recovery toward the
perpendicular. It was begun in 1174 and completed in 1350. Vasari, the
historian of Italian artists, writing some 200 years later, ascribes this lean to
a settlement of the foundations. His explanation, though occasionally
disputed, had been generally accepted, until the investigations of Professor
William H. Goodyear, in 1910, established the fact that the inclination was
intentional and provided for from the start of the work.
The tower is constructed of an exterior and an interior cylinder of
masonry, the space between them being occupied by a spiral staircase. The
steps of the latter were individually measured by Professor Goodyear, who
has set forth the results in a Bulletin of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and
Sciences (Jan. 21, 1911). Briefly, they show that the treads of the steps vary
in height and that they incline sometimes toward the inner wall, sometimes
toward the outer. In this way they tend to create a balance of strains on the
whole structure, which is further secured by increasing the strength of the
inner walls, where the inclination is inward. That the careful calculation
involved in this was not due to an afterthought or the necessity of
remedying the effects of a settlement is proved by the fact that the
inclination begins at the lowest step.
Why then was this design adopted? Professor Goodyear furnishes the
answer in two subsequent Bulletins. Reduced to briefest terms it is this: The
Pisan Baptistry also has an inclination from the normal, both perpendicular
and horizontal. Thus, in the south façade there is an inclination in the
horizontal lines of 2 feet 2 inches toward the choir. Meanwhile, the vertical
lines of the west façade are perpendicular to this slope and, consequently,
the front inclines inward toward the nave. And these are only instances of a
number of asymmetries that occur throughout the cathedral, all of which are
proved to have been intentional in the original design.
Further, the asymmetries at Pisa bear a close analogy to the numberless
asymmetries that appear in S. Mark’s, Venice. The latter was built by
Byzantine workmen, who therein followed the Oriental and the Hellenic
dislike of formal mathematical regularity; and it is the Byzantine tradition
again which in this respect, as in other details of decoration, domes and so
forth, influenced the Romanesque group of buildings at Pisa. The order in

which they were erected is, the Cathedral, Baptistry, and Campanile; so that
in the Leaning Tower the architects merely carried the principle of
asymmetry to an extreme pitch.
The influence of Pisa is found in S. Michele and S. Martino in Lucca,
and in the Cathedral of Pistoia.

South Italy.—The most important Southern examples are found in
Sicily, which in the tenth century was overrun by the Saracens, who in the
following century were routed by the Normans. Consequently, the
Saracenic influence is mingled with the Byzantine in the Cathedral of
Monreale, near Palermo. The plan is basilican, with apses at the eastern
ends of the nave and aisles. The choir is raised. The arches of the nave are
pointed but not recessed, and are supported on columns, with Byzantine
capitals. The aisle walls have a dado of white marble, twelve feet high,
inlaid with borders, composed of porphyry, while the arches and clerestory
of the nave are embellished with mosaics of biblical subjects, framed in
arabesque borders. Of a sombre richness of colour, they display the
Byzantine characteristic of severity of design, and impart to the interior a
solemn grandeur.

North Italy.—It is in Northern Italy, particularly in the Lombard
churches, that the constructional development is most marked. For, while
the plan remained basilican, only occasionally showing well-defined
transepts, the architects devoted their energies to the problem of vaulting. A
notable instance is San Ambrogio, Milan, which is an early example of the
use of ribs in vaulting. The original church, erected in the ninth century, had
wooden roofs; but in the rebuilding the nave was divided into four square
bays, and immense piers were constructed to carry the diagonal, transverse,
and longitudinal ribs.[6] Of corresponding massiveness are the transverse
ribs, while to support the strain on the longitudinal ribs intermediate piers
were introduced with an upper and a lower tier of double arches. These
open into the two stories of the groin-vaulted aisles, which are given this
treatment in order to act as buttresses to the thrust of the nave vaults. This
compelled the omission of clerestory windows, thus adding to the
sombreness of effect. Indeed the whole suggestion is one of ponderousness.
It is the work of men experimenting with a new method of construction and
intent for the present on achieving stability. The combination of the latter

with dignity of height and the grace of lightness was yet to be developed in
the Gothic treatment of the ribs.
The west end is approached by a narthex, opening into an arcaded
atrium.
In the external decoration of the triple apse of the east end appears the
rudimentary principle of the open arcade. The walls above the semi-dome
and beneath the wooden exterior roof are crowned with a cornice,
composed of arches supported upon corbels, the space between each being
penetrated with a niche. This produces a series of deep shadows, in contrast
with which the actual construction of the corbels assumes a lightness of
effect. It was the preliminary step to the substitution of small detached
columns for the corbels and the development of external arcading.
The open arcading in its full development appears in the west façade of
S. Michele, Pavia, where it serves its characteristic purpose of
constructively lightening the effect of the cornice of the roof. In this
instance, as in many of the Lombard façades, the nave and aisles are
included in a single gable, their interior separation being marked upon the
exterior by masonry piers. Into this façade also, as in the older part of the
exterior of San Ambrogio, are set pieces of earlier sculptured ornament.
These exhibit a strange mingling of grotesque animals with Scandinavian
interlaces and Byzantine features—a notable fact, since they correspond
with the sculptured ornament found on some of the Rhenish churches. This
suggests that Lombard workmen were employed in Germany and that they
brought back with them some of the German taste for symbolism in
ornament.
In the west front of the Cathedral at Piacenza, we find the same use of
single gable and masonry piers, but the cornice arcade is supplemented by
two horizontal bands, that mark the division of the aisles into two stories.
Moreover, each of the three entrances is embellished with a two storied
porch, supported on columns that rest on recumbent lions. Over the nave
porch the wall is penetrated by a characteristically Romanesque feature—a
rose or wheel window. A comparison of this façade with the elaborate ones
of Central Italy illustrates the preference of the Lombard architects for
organic disposition of decoration rather than decoration for the sake of
decoration.

An important feature of North Italy is the Campanile. Intended, it is
supposed, as a symbol of power, it is usually detached from the church, and
square in plan. The walls are simply treated, being reinforced often with
masonry piers, but interrupted with as few windows as possible, while the
top is marked by one or two stories of arcaded windows and is crowned
with a pyramidal or conical roof.

FRENCH ROMANESQUE

The map of France at the end of the tenth century shows the Royal
Domain, the Ile de France, a dense forest with Orleans, the city of learning,
at one end, and at the other, Paris, the city of the future—hemmed in on all
sides by counties and duchies over which the Capetian King held little more
than nominal suzerainty. For the purpose of architectural study these
territories may be divided into north and south, on a line with the River
Loire. Thus, to the north belong the Ile de France, Normandy, and Brittany;
to the south, Provence, Aquitaine, Anjou, and Burgundy.
Everywhere the builders were intent upon the problem of vaulting; but
were influenced in the south by local conditions. In Provence, for example,
the seat of Roman civilisation, not only does classical influence appear in
the details, but the vaulting is of the old Roman kind. Notre Dame,
Avignon, is a well-known instance. And the barrel-vaulting was continued
throughout the neighbouring Duchy of Aquitaine. Here, however, another
influence intervened. The district had close commercial relations with
Venice, Ravenna, and Byzantium, and it is reflected in the domical vaulting
of many of the churches.
S. Front, Perigeux, for example, resembles S. Mark’s, Venice, in having
the plan of a Greek cross, surmounted by five pendentives. The arches,
however, are pointed; of great depth, resting on piers, pierced with
passages. In the cathedral of the neighbouring city, Angoulême, a Latin
cross is substituted for the Greek in plan. The aisleless nave is surmounted
by three stone domes, roofed on the exterior. Over the crossing rises another
dome, visible outside, which is raised upon a drum that is pierced with
pointed windows, disposed in pairs. The southern transept is still crowned
with a tower, its fellow to the north having been destroyed in 1568.
This building served as a model for the Abbey of Fontevrault in Anjou.

In Burgundy the most renowned of the numerous monastic
establishments was the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny. Until the building of
the present S. Peter’s, its abbey church was the largest and most
magnificent in Christendom. The plan was a basilica with double aisles, the
east end terminating in a chevêt (shě-vay´); that is to say, an apse
surrounded by a circular aisle, divided into chapels; in this case five in
number. The nave was arcaded with pointed arches and spanned by an
immense barrel vault. Groined vaulting, on the other hand, is supposed to
have covered the aisles.
Groined vaulting takes the place of barrel-vaulting in the nave of the
Church of Vézelay, and was also used in the ante-chapel, erected some
thirty years later. But by this time the builders, in order to reduce the thrust,
adopted a pointed section for the ribs—the first instance in France of the
pointed groined vault, which was successfully developed later by the Gothic
architects.
It is to be noted that the early vaulting, erected by the Clunisian
architects, compelled the abandonment of the clerestory windows. The
thrust of the great barrel vault of the nave was sustained either by high side
aisles with either transverse or groined vaults over the bays, or by barrel
vaults over the aisles, which in turn were supported by the massive outer
walls. For the use of the flying buttress had not yet been adopted.
Meanwhile, the northern climate demanded the additional light provided
by a clerestory, and the architects of Normandy applied themselves to the
problem. It was to be solved later in Gothic architecture by the use of
pointed groin vaulting, but, pending this discovery, a method of vaulting
was employed which is known as sexpartite. For the square bay was crossed
in the centre by another transverse arch, which, when cut by the two
diagonals, produced a plan of six parts. This, however, necessitated two
narrow skew vaults, meeting in the centre, which was awkward in
appearance. The method is illustrated in S. Etienne, the great church of the
Abbaye-aux-hommes and La Trinité of the Abbaye-aux-Dames, both in
Caen. These and other churches of Normandy such as the Abbey church of
Mont-St. Michel, are characterised by an adventurous spirit as well as logic
of design, marking a distinct progress toward the Gothic.

ENGLISH ROMANESQUE OR NORMAN

The audacity and resourcefulness of the Norman builders found
extensive opportunity after the conquest of England. But few remains
survive of Anglo-Saxon architecture, and they suggest that the buildings
were of a rude kind. They were constructed of rubble work, reinforced with
engaged piers and ashlar masonry at the corners, arranged in what is called
“long and short” courses. The columns were short, stumpy cylinders
crowned with one or two square blocks, and the details of doorways and
windows were roughly hewn with an axe, though in the case of certain
belfry windows, jambs of baluster shape, seem to have been turned upon a
lathe. The openings were either round-topped, suggesting a clumsy copy of
the Roman style or else triangular, as if perpetuating a form of timber
construction. The plan of the church appears to have been of the simplest,
representing an oblong nave, separated by an arch from the smaller oblong
of the chancel; the latter being lower than the nave and, on the inside,
approached by two or three descending steps. The arrangement seems to
have been derived from the example of the Celtic churches, as also was the
habit of erecting towers, which, however, are not circular as in Ireland, but
square without buttresses. One example of such a tower exists at Earl’s
Barton, Northamptonshire, in which occur balustered windows.
The Normans, therefore, had a free field for their architectural enterprise
and, while they immediately commenced the erection of castles to overawe
the country, they also erected monasteries and cathedrals, designed to
surpass in size and magnificence the ones in Normandy. While following
the latter in a general way, the English examples were characterised, on the
one hand, by a more massive and picturesque treatment, and, on the other,
owing probably to the scarcity of skilled labour, by simpler and less refined
details.
The capitals of columns, for instance, were usually of the cubic-cushion
form, as may be seen in S. John’s Chapel in the Tower of London. The
piers were often round and frequently clustered with columns, the round
arches being recessed and framed with round mouldings. The latter, in the
case of doorways and windows, were enriched with ornament carved in zig-
zag, chevrons, billets, and beaked heads. The plan was apt to be longer than
that of the French churches, and the elevations were proportionately lower.
Vaulting was, for the present, confined to smaller churches and the side
aisles of the larger; but the nave walls of the cathedrals were built
sufficiently massive to support the vaulting which in some cases was

subsequently added. The clerestory windows were set toward the outer part
of the wall, the remaining space being occupied by a passageway, which, in
front of the windows was screened from the nave by three arches.
While the Norman style, as the English-Romanesque is usually called in
England, appears in many cathedrals, the character of it has been greatly
modified by later additions. But the finest example still existing is that of
Durham; next to which come Peterborough and portions of Norwich. The
tower above the crossing, which became a distinction of English cathedrals
and is so imposing a feature of Durham, was added much later. But the
original nave (1096) is a remarkable example of massive Norman
construction, the round piers having a diameter nearly equal to the span of
the arches and being channelled with flutings and spirals. The vaulting was
completed in 1133 and is said to be the earliest example of Norman vaulting
in England. Another notable feature of Durham Cathedral is the so-called
Galilee chapel, which, in imitation of the ante-chapel in Caen, takes the
place of a porch at the west end. It was used by penitents.
At Peterborough the nave, only second to Durham as an example of
Norman at its finest, is still covered with the original wooden ceiling,
divided into lozenge shapes and painted. It is believed to be the oldest
wooden roof in England. The Norman parts of Norwich Cathedral are the
long, narrow, aisleless nave, the transepts, and the choir with its chevêt of
chapels. Ely, again, has Norman nave and transepts; Bristol, a Norman
chapter house; Oxford, nave and choir; Southwell, Norman nave, transepts,
and towers; Winchester, transepts and towers; while Worcester has a
Norman crypt, transepts, and circular chapter house. The last named is the
only one of this design in England. Original Norman work is also to be
found in the transepts at Canterbury, while the narrowness of its choir is
due to the preservation of two Norman chapels.
In England the interior wall spaces and vaulting were decorated with
paintings, for in this branch of decorative work the Normans found no
scarcity of skill, since the Anglo-Saxon school of miniaturists, originally
started by Celtic missionaries, had attained a high degree of proficiency,
and now developed the principles of missal-painting into the larger and
freer scope of mural decoration.
A good example of the small Norman church is that of Iffley, near
Oxford. Especially interesting is the west front. In the larger examples this

feature underwent change with the introduction of the pointed arch; but here
is a distribution of the gabled end into three well defined and excellently
proportioned stories, pierced, respectively, with a doorway, circular
window, and an arcade of three windows. All are deeply recessed and
enriched with characteristic moulding, and the effect, while a trifle barbaric,
is vigorously decorative.

RHENISH ROMANESQUE

In the Rhenish Provinces is found the most fully developed Romanesque
style, characterised by the fewest local differences. When, during the years
768-814, Charlemagne built his royal tomb-church, which with subsequent
Gothic additions is now the Cathedral of Aix-le-Chapelle, he adopted the
plan of S. Vitale in Ravenna and imported classic columns. Moreover, the
Rhine Provinces possessed many remains of Roman architecture. Later they
became closely allied by commerce with Northern Italy and seem to have
employed the services of Lombard architects.
All these circumstances tended to make Rhenish Romanesque resemble
that of Northern Italy. On the other hand, it developed a style more
constructively adventurous, vigorous, and picturesque; while at the same
time it was on the whole more systematically organised than the French. It
was, however, about fifty years behind the latter in its development which
began late and continued longer.
A typical example of the earlier period of Rhenish Romanesque is the
Cathedral at Worms (1110-1200). Its design shows features that are
characteristically Rhenish: an apse at both the west and east end, flanked in
each case by two towers; the use of transepts at the west end as well as the
east (the eastern ones being here omitted), the erection of octagonal lanterns
over both crossings, and entrances on the north and south sides instead of
the west.
The exterior exhibits a well-defined orderliness and picturesqueness. The
walls are reinforced with projecting piers and pierced with deeply recessed,
round-arch windows. Noticeable also is the effective use of corbel arcades
beneath the gable ends of the roofs and in various string courses, while the
richer emphasis of open arcades is applied with equal discretion and
effectiveness. Another noteworthy feature in the towers is the use of

dormers to embellish the conical or octagonal roof, which in effect are
rudimentary spires.
Other early representative cathedrals are those of Spires, Treves, and
Mayence while to the later period belongs the Church of the Apostles,
Cologne (1220-1250). It offers a varied application of the same features in
a singularly perfect design. The transepts and choir present a cluster of three
apses round a low, octagonal lantern. The nave is short, twice the width of
the side aisles and has western transepts and a square western tower.
Especially fine are the exterior embellishments of the apses, consisting of
two stories of blind arcading, surmounted by open arcades beneath the roof,
while a corresponding sense of proportional dignity characterises the
grouping of the eastern towers and lantern and the solitary distinction of the
western tower. Here, as in three other examples of triapsal churches in
Cologne—S. Maria-in-Capitol, S. Martin, and S. Cunibert—the domical
vaulting is supported by squinches or pendentives.
The earliest example of nave vaulting is found in the Cathedral of
Mayence, closely followed in the Cathedrals of Spires and Worms and the
abbey church at Laach.

SPANISH ROMANESQUE

In Spain great impetus was given to cathedral building by the recapture
of Toledo from the Moors in 1085. In architecture, as in painting, the
Spaniards seem to have sought their artistic impulses from abroad, since the
most important example of their early Romanesque style—the Cathedral of
Santiago de Compostello—is a modified copy of S. Sernin, at Toulouse,
Aquitaine. The plan is a Latin cross with aisles not only flanking the nave
but also carried round the transepts and choir apse in the manner of the
French chevêt. The aisles are groin-vaulted, while a lofty barrel vault covers
the nave, and an octagonal lantern crowns the crossing.
A special feature of Spanish Romanesque, also derived apparently from
Aquitaine, is the beauty of the dome, which covers the crossing, as in the
old Cathedral of Salamanca, the Collegiate Church at Toro and the
Cathedral of Zamora. They are circular in the interior and octagonal on
the outside with large turrets in the angles of the octagon. The interior dome
is carried upon pointed arches, between which and the spring of the vault, in
the case of Salamanca, are two tiers of arcaded windows. For the admission

of light the arrangement is excellent, while the general character of these
domes, covered on the outside with a low, steeple-like roof of stone, is
admirably monumental.
Another characteristic Spanish feature, met with in some churches, as for
example, that of San Millan, Sagovia, is an open cloister, on the outside of
the aisle, from which doors open into it.
Carved ornament was rather sparingly applied, and except in minute
details suggests no Moorish influence.

BOOK V

GOTHIC PERIOD

CHAPTER I

LATE MEDIÆVAL CIVILISATION

The change in architectural style, known as the Gothic, which began in the
twelfth century and reached its full development in the thirteenth, represents
so wonderful an expression not only of constructive genius but also of
spiritual aspiration that one would fain peer through the mist of the past to
discover the kind of civilisation that produced it. The general conditions
that shaped the civilisation we have already noticed in the chapter on Early
Mediæval Civilisation. There we recognised the threefold influences of the
power of the Church, the extension and growing importance of Commerce,
and the results of the various Crusades. And these still continued to be the
motive forces of the later and fuller civilisation.
Prominent among the causes of the confused conditions in Western
Europe was the multiplicity of rival authorities; which it had been
Charlemagne’s dream to subordinate to a centralised authority, emulating
that of the Roman Empire. But, while his attempt at temporal domination
failed, the more spiritual dominion exercised by the Church proved to be a
unifying agency. Through the influence which she exerted over conscience
and consequently over the actions of men through the Sacraments of
Confession and Penitence, she was able in considerable measure to curb the
license of feudalism. Furthermore, by allying herself with the growing
power of the burgher classes in cities and standing as the champion of the
defencelessness of the lower classes in cities and country, she became the
great adjuster of the fearful social inequalities of the period.

Her policy was one of checks and counter-checks. She could not subdue
the forces that made for disorder; but could and did restrain them. Thus her
support of the burghers built up a new force in the community that, through
trade and commerce, made for stability and set up the constructive arts of
peace as a make-weight against the destructive conditions that the
internecine strife of the nobility engendered. And these last she further
checked by utilising the enthusiasm for Crusades, which had been first
stirred by the missionary zeal of Peter the Hermit in 1096. This first
expedition, under Godfrey de Bouillon, resulted in the capture of Jerusalem
from the Arabs and the establishment of a Christian Kingdom in Palestine.
The six other Crusades, terminating with the second expedition of Louis IX
(St. Louis) of France in 1270, failed to recover Jerusalem which had been
recaptured by the Arabs. But in the course of them a Latin kingdom had
been established in Constantinople under Count Baldwin of Flanders and a
kingdom also had been formed in Cyprus. It is unnecessary to attempt to
follow these various expeditions in detail, the more so that they represented
only incidents in what had become a perpetual progression of movement
toward the East. It is the effect of this that really concerns us here.
The effect may be studied in relation to the spirit that was stimulated,
and to the economic and educational influence involved. The Church
originally favoured the Crusades as a means both of diverting the savagery
of the fighting class from internecine strife to distant warfare and of
intensifying religious faith and feeling. While it was not strong enough to
crush the fighting spirit, it could consecrate it to some kind of an ideal, and
thereby succeeded in tempering the stupid savagery of feudalism with the
finer spirit of chivalry. An idealism of knighthood was encouraged that
reverenced women, protected the weak, redressed the wrongs of the
oppressed, and wedded to the courtesies of life a fervour of religious faith.
Amidst the ugliness of the times there sprang up the blue flower of an ideal
of beauty that affected in some measure both the spiritual and the social life.
How real and intense was the spirituality of the times may be gathered from
its excesses, as evidenced in the cruelties of the Crusade against the
Albigenses for their heresies, and in the pathetic tragedies of the Children’s
Crusades. In 1212 a French shepherd boy, named Stephen, induced
thousands of boys to follow him to Marseilles, promising to lead them dry-
shod through the sea to Palestine, and a boy of Cologne, named Nicolas, led
an army of twenty thousand children toward Italy. Such of the French

children as reached Marseilles were kidnapped and sold to slavery in Egypt,
while the German host perished from privations, leaving only a memory
that is preserved in the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
In the wake of military expeditions to the East there followed the
adventurers of commerce. Trade routes were opened up, the earliest of
which and for a long time the most important was by way of Venice, over
the Brunner Pass and up the Rhine to Bruges. And commercial relations
meant the continual passing backward and forward of persons in the
pursuits of peace and, in consequence, a growing intercourse between the
members of different nationalities. The old isolation of the western and
northern nations was gradually removed, and the individual’s narrow
horizon became broadened by travel, his restricted ideas of life enlarged and
enlightened by contact with the alien and superior culture of the East. For it
was in Constantinople and among the Arabs in Asia Minor, Syria, and
Egypt that secular learning at this period flourished.
Accordingly, as a result of the Crusades, Western Europe indulged a taste
for foreign travel, which stimulated a prodigious adventurousness that
operated in the things of the spirit and the intellect as well as in the material
conduct of life. Geography, for example, began to arouse a practical
interest. It changed the attitude of men’s minds to the outside world,
opening up new paths of travel by land and sea and, equally, new
conceptions of the possibilities of the world and of life. The interest also in
Crusades aroused the desire to record them and an impetus was given to
historical writings, which, partaking largely of romance, led to a renewed
interest in such old romances as those of the Knights of the Round Table of
the Arthurian Legend and of Charlemagne’s Paladins.
A most significant testimony to the character of the civilisation of the
thirteenth century is afforded by the voluminous writings of Vincent of
Beauvais, who held the post of “reader” in the monastery of Royaumont, on
the Oise near Paris, which was founded by Louis IX. His work, written in
Latin and entitled the “Speculum Universale” or “Universal Mirror,” is an
encyclopædia of the knowledge of the Middle Ages; a mirror, in fact, of the
mind of the age of great cathedral building. It is divided into three parts: the
Speculum, respectively, Naturale, Doctrinale, and Historiale; to which a
Speculum Morale was added by another hand, being mainly a compilation
from the works of Thomas Aquinas and other contemporary writers.

The “Speculum Naturale” has been described as a gigantic commentary
on the first chapter of Genesis. It opens with an account of the Trinity, and
of the attributes and orders of angels; proceeds to discuss our own world,
light, colour, the four elements, and Lucifer and his fallen angels. Then it
proceeds to the phenomena of time, the motions of the heavenly bodies, and
the wonders of the sky in thunder, dew, rain, and so forth. Thence it treats of
dry land, seas, and rivers, agricultural operations, precious stones, plants,
fruits, not omitting their use in medicine. Other chapters discuss birds,
fishes; another domesticated and wild animals, serpents, bees, and insects,
the seasons, and the calendar. Then man is dealt with, his anatomy, his
organs, and five senses, and the phenomena of sleep, dreams, ecstasy,
memory, reason, and so forth.
The “Speculum Doctrinale,” intended as a practical manual of
knowledge, covers the subjects of grammar, logic, rhetoric, including a
Latin vocabulary of some six thousand words; discusses the virtues and
gives, under the head of “economic art,” directions for building, gardening,
and agriculture, while under the head of “mechanical art,” it describes the
work of weavers, smiths, armourers, merchants, hunters, sailors, and
generals. Then, after prescribing rules for the preservation of health, it
proceeds to mathematics, under which it includes music, geometry,
astronomy, astrology, and weights and measures. And here it is noteworthy
that the author displays an acquaintance with the Arabic numerals.
The “Speculum Historiale” begins with the creation of the world and
continues a sacred and secular narrative down to the conversion of
Constantine to Christianity. The “origines” of Britain are discussed and the
story carried on to Mahomet and Charlemagne, after which comes a history
of the First Crusade, a dissertation on the Tartars, and, finally, a short
narrative of the earlier Crusade of St. Louis. One chapter is devoted to
miracles. The history is largely composed of quotations from a variety of
available sources, sacred and secular, which include Greek, Hebrew, and
Arabic writers—known to the author through popular Latin versions—
Eusebius, Seneca, Cicero, Ovid, Julius Cæsar, the Early Fathers of the
Church, and the Mediæval writers, Sigebert de Gembloux, a Belgian
Chronicler (1030-1112), and William of Malmesbury (1095-1142). The last
named, an English monk of the Abbey of Malmesbury, wrote “De Gestibus
Regum Anglorum,” a history of the English Kings, and a continuation,

entitled “Historia Novella,” bringing the story down to 1142—works which
have formed the basis of subsequent histories of England.
Mirrored in this compendium is the mind of the Middle Ages, that
realised its dreams and needs in the most imaginative, daring, and grandly
constructive type of building that the world had ever seen—that of Gothic
Architecture. It was a mind at once practical and transcendental; grappling
alike with the actualities of life and with the mysteries of the universe;
hungry for knowledge, uncritical in appetite, accepting the miraculous as
simply as it accepted the wonder of the world that was opening out to its
eager vision with an immensity of promise. It was the mind of a giant
youth, still exulting in the glow of growth; audacious in courage, of
vaulting imagination, with thews and sinews that achieve prodigiously. In
the pursuit of abstract knowledge the age was prone to expend itself on
subtleties, to entangle itself in sophistries, to lose itself in merest
speculation. But when it grappled with the problems of building, this
weakness was transformed into strength. Then it displayed a faculty of
reasoning, apt, direct, and original, and a readiness in the practical
application of mathematical principles. Of these, however, it was not bent
on giving a scientific demonstration; it was satisfied to employ them in the
pursuit of beauty. And its feeling for beauty, as we shall see later, was of
extraordinary subtlety, expended upon relieving the structure of formality
and imparting to it the variety and elasticity of a living growth.
Nor was it only in this indirect way that the “Speculum Universale” was
reflected in Gothic architecture. Its chapters were represented in sculptured
illustrations upon the exteriors of the cathedrals, particularly around the
portals, in order that all who came and went might see and learn. The
statues and reliefs at Chartres comprise some two thousand figures, while
Amiens presents another memorable example.
Thus the Gothic Cathedral was not only the House of God; it was also
the House of Man—the civic centre of his religious, social, moral, and
intellectual life.

CHAPTER II

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE

I

The term Gothic, with the suggestion of “barbarian,” was applied by men of
the Renaissance to Mediæval Art. Unlike the term Romanesque, it is not a
name that defines. Hence an attempt has been made to substitute the word,
ogival, from the French ogive, which is applied to the curve of the pointed
arch—a distinguishing feature of the Gothic style. But in our own language,
at least, Gothic has become so embedded that it is more convenient to
preserve it.
We understand by it that style which was developed out of Romanesque
about 1150 and continued to flourish until the development and spread of
the Renaissance style.
The change which is represented in Gothic is due to several causes: (a)
development of vaulting ribs; (b) the general use of the pointed arch; (c)
reapplication of the Roman principle of concentration of vaulting strains
upon four points; (d) the development of a buttress system to reinforce the
main parts of the strain, and (e) the development of window openings both
as to their size and ornamentation.
Periods of Gothic.—The period of Gothic covers the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. The variations which it presented in
these several centuries are often characterised by the changes in the
treatment of the windows. Thus, in France, they have been divided

SCULPTURED DETAIL
From Doorway of Amiens Cathedral. P. 269

SKELETON STRUCTURE
Showing the Method of Vaulting, by Means of the Pointed Arch, and the Concentration of
Thrusts and Counter Thrusts. P. 273

GOTHIC DETAIL.

GOTHIC DETAIL

GOTHIC DETAIL

GOTHIC DETAIL

GOTHIC DETAIL

Hall of Weare Gifford, Devonshire, England
GOTHIC DETAIL

By Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum of Arts
INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR VIEWS OF LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL
Showing the Nave Widening. The Piers Are Set on a Straight Line, and at Each End of the
Nave Are Perpendicular up to the Clerestory. Meanwhile the Piers in Between Lean Outward
with Increasing Inclination Toward the Center of the Nave. P. 280

into: Primary, or Thirteenth Century style; Secondary, or Fourteenth
Century, often called Rayonnant from the wheel tracery of the rose
windows; Tertiary, or Fifteenth Century, called Flamboyant from the flame-
like shapes of the window spaces. On the other hand, in England, the
divisions are: Thirteenth century or Early English; Fourteenth century or
Decorated, because of the increased elaboration both of window tracery and
rib vaultings; Fifteenth century or Perpendicular, owing to the
predominance of vertical members in the tracery of the windows.
The chief fountain-source of the early Gothic development was the Ile de
France, whence the new ideas were carried, largely by monastic activity and
especially that of the Cistercian order, to England, Germany, Italy, and
Spain. In each of these countries their application was coloured by local
conditions and England in particular produced a series of buildings,
characterised by originality of treatment and grandeur of design.
Nevertheless, it is recognised that French Gothic is pre-eminent, not only
for the logic and skill with which structural problems were solved but also
for sublimity of design, especially in the interiors, and for the sense of
proportion that distinguishes the best examples. English Gothic, however, is
a noble second.
Before enumerating some of the famous examples of French Gothic, we
may summarise the principles and devices more or less common to all
Gothic.
Romanesque had substituted equilibrium in place of the inert stability of
the Roman architecture. The thirteenth century architects added to
equilibrium elasticity.
They achieved this by a development of the concentration of strains,
which the Romans had invented or applied in the support of groin-vaulting
on four piers, and the Romanesque architects had further developed by the
system of rib-vaulting.
Pointed Arch.—The Gothic was structurally evolved out of the rib
vaulting and the pointed arch. In the first place, while the Romanesque

architects used the rib system solely as a convenience of building, the
architects of the Ile de France, adopting it for the same purpose, became
conscious of its further possibilities in the direction both of construction and
of beauty. The rib, no longer a crude arch of masonry, was constructed of
mouldings that made it a feature of beauty, enhanced by the increased
height and the finer sweep of line that the skill and taste of the French
architects achieved.
In this they were helped by the substitution of the pointed for the semi-
circular arch. Not only are the curves of the pointed arch more beautiful, but
they lent themselves also to a more daring method of building. By means of
them the tops of the longitudinal and transverse arches could be lifted to the
level of the diagonal ones, so that the filling in of the massives or spaces
between the ribs, was simplified. Moreover, the strain of the pointed arch
was more directly downward, which brought the main pressure down upon
the piers. Advantage was taken of this by clustering small columns around
the piers, so that each column carried its own rib, bringing the ribs and
columns into a structural harmony and creating a continuous effect of
soaring growth from the floor up to the summit of the vaulting. And this
effect could be enhanced by the opportunity which the rib construction
allowed of lifting the vaulting higher, and so affording space for ample
clerestories.
Buttresses.—Meanwhile the lateral strain or thrust of the pointed arch,
though less than the vertical, had to be sustained, and this was done by
developing the buttress. These were of two kinds: abutting, as the name
implies, either on the nave wall or on the outer walls of the aisles and
chevêt. In both cases they were a development of the masonry piers with
which the Romanesque architects reinforced the walls. When the buttresses
were attached to the outer walls of the aisles and chevêt, they were
connected with the nave wall by arches which sprang across the intervening
space, and in consequence are known as flying buttresses.
Sometimes these buttresses were practically vertical, at other times they
descended in offsets or steps, increasing in width toward the ground.
Further to increase their resistance they were frequently surmounted by
finials or pinnacles. The buttress, in fact, was not only a structural member
of great importance, but one of the characteristic elements of beauty in the
design.

Concentration of Counter-thrusts.—By the time these two principles
—the concentration of thrusts and the counter-thrusts—had been thoroughly
worked out, as they were in the thirteenth century, the Gothic architects had
extended to the whole edifice what the later Romanesque architects had
done for the vaulting. As the latter had been constructed on a framework of
ribs, so now the essential structure of the whole edifice became a frame or
skeleton, self-supporting, with its strains distributed throughout, as in the
muscular system of the human body, and in the “steel cage” construction of
modern buildings.
This enabled the Gothic architects to erect loftier and larger buildings
and at the same time lighter in appearance, compared with which the
Romanesque seem squat and heavy. The French showed a preference for
lofty interiors; the English for length of vista, the proportionate loss of
height being offset on the exterior by the extra height of the towers and
spires.
Another result of the framework system of structure was that the
intervening wall-spaces, relieved of strain, could be fully utilised for
openings, especially for windows, so important in the duller climate of the
north. The clerestory became an important feature of the Gothic cathedral;
so also the triforium, or gallery round the nave, which, pierced in the
thickness of the wall, separated the clerestory and arcade arches. Further,
the windows in all the outer walls took on a new importance.
Windows.—The windows, in fact, became another of the distinguishing
characteristics of Gothic architecture and the variety in their treatment
marks the several centuries of its development. At first there was the plain
lancet (spear-headed) window, the top of which was composed of two
segments of a circle meeting at one point. The segments were inscribed
about a triangle, which was either equilateral or isosceles. In the case of the
equilateral triangle, whose base was equal to the sides, the distance of the
point of the arch from the spring of the curves was equal to the width of the
window. On the other hand, in the case of the isosceles triangle, if the base
were longer than the sides, the point of the arch dropped lower, while, if the
base were shorter, the arch was higher than its width—the true lancet.
Such plain openings, or lights, were used either singly or in pairs; and in
time two were included within one lancet opening, the space above the
heads of the lights being filled with a round or quatrefoil light. In this case

the upper part or tracery had the appearance of having been cut out of one
slab or plate of stone, and the pattern in consequence was called plate-
tracery. Later, when the number of lights in a window was increased, the
tracery above them was elaborated into various geometric designs,
technically known as bar-tracery. Still later, when the architects had
completely solved all the structural problems and the only advance could be
made in further elaboration of details, the geometric forms were abandoned
for more flowing designs, which are called in French Gothic Flamboyant;
in English, Decorated.
It is to be noted that the change in the treatment of the windows was
reflected in the carved ornamental details of other parts of the edifice;
especially in the canopies over niches and the embellishment of gables,
doors, choir-screens, wall-panelling, finials, and spires. These in the
Flamboyant period (fifteenth century) reached a degree of lace-like
elaborateness, that, while beautiful in itself, tends to obscure the actual
structural elements; thereby marking the decadence of the Gothic style.
This phase was represented in English Gothic by a gradual stiffening of
the tracery into rigid forms and barren repetitions. Because of the insistence
on rectangular motives it is known as Perpendicular.
The windows were decorated with stained glass, the most beautiful
remains of which are to be found in the Cathedral of Chartres. They show a
prevalence of blue and violet tones and are composed of small pieces of
glass, joined by leading. This French method was also imitated in England,
as in the early windows of Canterbury; but by degrees an English style was
adopted, in which the pieces of glass were much larger, and the subject
consisted of large figures beneath traceried canopies, in imitation of the
carved work of the sculptors.
In the decoration of columns the French long preserved the Corinthian
type, but in place of the acanthus, used foliage forms studied directly from
nature. The forms at first were freely conventionalised; but by degrees, as
the skill of the carver increased, became more and more naturalistic and
thereby less finely decorative. The corresponding progress in England is
from conventionalised nature to frankly naturalistic imitation and thence to
a somewhat dry and barren conventionalism.
Sculpture.—A conspicuous feature of Gothic decoration is the figure
sculpture. It was used with profusion, especially in France, where the

monumental treatment of the west fronts gave freest scope for the
multiplication of niches, filled with statues. The deeply recessed portals, for
example, were flanked with tiers of figures, which were also prolonged into
the recessed planes of the arched top, while the lunette, or half-moon space
between the arch and the horizontal top of the door, was filled with reliefs
of the Saviour or Madonna. Meanwhile, figures beneath canopies stretched
in a band across the upper part of the façade, or stood singly in niches that
penetrated the surface of buttresses; until, in time, every vantage point,
whether within or without the edifice, was enriched with statues. The
noblest period of this efflorescence was the thirteenth century, when the
French “imagers,” particularly, attained a remarkable balance between truth
to nature and decorative convention. The statues seem to have grown into
human shape out of the very material of the edifice and retain its character.
With increasing cleverness, this magnificent conventionalisation passed into
naturalistic imitation and the statues seem to be something added for
elaboration’s sake.
Contrast to Classic.—Gothic architecture, though it developed through
Romanesque and Early Christian out of Roman, presents an almost
complete contrast to Classic style. It is an expression of many
individualities rather than of conformity. Plans are more or less uniform;
generally basilican in France, cruciform in England. But the superstructure,
while embodying certain common features, exhibits the freedom of
individual treatment, as each city or monastery vied with others in a mighty
effort to excel.
A cathedral embodies such miracles of audacity and aspiration, that one
scarcely looks in it for that complete harmony of proportion which
distinguishes a Classic temple. The latter was the product of men who had
ceased to believe in the deities they professed to honour and had made a
religion, according as they were Hellenes or Romans, of abstract perfection
or of systematised order.
Gothic cathedrals, on the other hand, were the material and spiritual
expression of intense religious devotion and of civic pride and freedom.
They were the memorials, not of old nations in the decline of their political
and social ideals, but of young races, struggling toward nationalism and
fired with the splendour of dawning aspirations. No level line of
entablature, resting upon columns ever so stately, could embody such
elevated enthusiasm. It must mount into the sky, with soaring lines and

vaulting arches, spires and pinnacles, ever straining upward; giving voice to
the grandeur of concerted uplift. Some of the cathedrals grew up from
ground to ridge roof and towers under the guiding mind of one architect;
more represent the continuous growth of the community; but in either case
embody in their variety and organised complexity the Soul of the Crowd.
For one must not think of them only as temples of worship. They
embraced also the functions now distributed in schools and libraries. They
were the shrines of the culture of their day, in which the truths of religion,
legends of saints, and the mysteries of belief were unfolded in sculpture,
paintings, and stained glass.

Asymmetries or Refinements.—In order to ensure their monopoly the
gilds of masons of the Middle Ages jealously preserved the secrets of their
art. Accordingly, there are no written treatises of the period. Moreover, with
the advent of the Renaissance the Gothic was held in contempt and the
indifference to it continued until about the middle of the nineteenth century.
Then, in the renewed enthusiasm for Mediæval architecture, buildings were
studied, measurements taken, and plans of the old churches and cathedrals
were drafted. But the surveyors, having measured the distance between one
pair of piers on opposite sides of the nave and between two piers on one
side, plotted the plan as if these measurements were uniform throughout the
whole nave. In this and in other matters they assumed that the design was
symmetrical. The contrary, however, in the case of many churches and
cathedrals, has been proved by the recent researches of Professor William
H. Goodyear, whose work in connection with Hellenic, Byzantine, and
Romanesque refinements or asymmetries has been noted already.
His researches, which have covered most of the Gothic edifices of Italy,
many of the most important churches and cathedrals in France, and some in
England, prove that the “mysteries” of the Mediæval gilds included
asymmetrical refinements. The most important deviations from mechanical
formality are as follows:
1. Widening of the Nave in a vertical direction. Where this occurs, each
side of the nave leans outward; three methods being employed, though not
more than one appears in a given church. In one case, there is a continuous
and absolutely straight outward inclination from floor to vaulting. In
another, the outward inclinations recede from floor to vaulting in delicate
vertical curves. In the third, the piers are perpendicular up to the arcade

capitals, where the inclination begins and is continued in straight lines
through the triforium and clerestories. In this last case, the angle, formed by
the two lines, produces in the large scale of the building the effect of a
curve.
The widening in all cases tends to offset the perspective illusion of
vertical lines converging toward the vaulting; but also appears to have been
preferred for other aesthetic reasons.
Instances of continuous widening in straight lines are found in the
Cathedral and Church of St. Ouen, in Rouen. Continuous widening
combined with vertical curvature occurs at Canterbury; while the
perpendicular pier, combined with inclined vaulting-shafts, triforium and
clerestories is found in Amiens and Rheims.
2. Horizontal Curvature in Plan. Where this occurs, one of five methods
is adopted.
In the first, the piers are set on parallel curves, which consequently are
convex to the nave on one side and concave to the nave on the other. In the
second, both curves are concave to the nave, which thus widens slightly
from both ends toward the centre. In the third, both curves are convex to the
centre. In the fourth, the curves are parallel, but reverse their direction at or
near the choir, in the form of an attenuated S, or “Hogarth’s line of beauty.”
In all the above instances the curves start at the bases of the piers and
continue in the triforium, clerestory and roof parapets; in certain cases
being also repeated in the outer aisle walls.
The fifth system is connected with a special phase of the Widening. For,
in this case, the piers are set on a straight line and with the triforium and
clerestory are perpendicular from floor to ceiling. That is to say, at the west
end and the crossing; but, in between, from both ends, the piers gradually
lean outward with an increasing inclination toward the centre of the nave.
Thus result curves, concave to the interior, which, however, since the bases
of the piers are on straight lines, are found only in the triforium, clerestory
and parapet walls. Lichfield Cathedral presents an example; Rheims
another, but with a difference. For while the widening in Lichfield begins at
the pavement, that of Rheims starts at the arcade capitals.
3. So-called Perspective illusions. These were intended to emphasise the
effect of the choir and generally to increase the suggestion of size and
distance. This was accomplished in three ways.

a. By making the nave arcade and the outside walls converge toward the
choir.
b. By lowering the height of the arches as they approach the choir.
c. By reducing the width of the arches as they approach the choir.
The result of all these asymmetries is to create an impression of
elasticity in place of rigidity; an impression, in fact, of life; of the flexible,
varied movement of organic growth.

PLAN OF AMIENS PLAN OF NOTRE DAME
The Perfect Plan of French Gothic

Both Plans Are Basilican and Have Double Aisles and Chevêts. But in Amiens Note the Series
of Apses and Their Complicated Vaulting. The Nave Vaulting of Notre Dame Has Six Divisions
in Each Double Bay; That of Amiens Is Treated in a Single Bay with Four Divisions by Means
of Groin Ribs and Pointed Arches. P. 281

NOTRE DAME, PARIS
Early Type

AMIENS CATHEDRAL
Transition to Rayonnant

RHEIMS CATHEDRAL
Upper Part Marks Transition to Flamboyant

ROUEN CATHEDRAL
Flamboyant

INTERIOR OF NOTRE DAME
Note the Classic Capitals. P. 281, ET SEQ.

INTERIOR OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL
Note the Increased Sense of Elasticity, Grace and Soaring. P. 281, ET SEQ.

HOTEL DE BOURGTHEROULDE, ROUEN
Late Fifteenth Century. Note Hexagonal Tower

INTERIOR OF RHEIMS CATHEDRAL

HOUSE OF JACQUES CŒUR
Now the Palais de Justice, Bourges. P. 286

SAINTE CHAPELLE, PARIS
Owing to the Size of the Windows, the Wall Spaces Are Virtually Piers, Supporting the
Vaulting. P. 285

CHAPTER III

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE

The Early French Gothic dates from about 1150 to 1275. It is the period in
which most of the great cathedrals were created and in most instances with
money contributed by the laity. Roughly speaking it begins with Notre
Dame, in Paris, and ends with the Cathedral of Amiens.
Notre Dame, Paris, and Amiens.—The plan of Amiens is regarded as
the typical example of French cathedrals. Comparing it with that of Notre
Dame one observes that, while both are of the basilican type, the latter is
distinguished by having double side aisles enclosing the entire nave, choir,
and chevêt. The only other example of this is the Cathedral of Bourges. In
Notre Dame the transepts do not project beyond the aisles. Further, in the
vaulting of the nave the system is still one of square bays, embracing two
aisle bays, having six divisions in the vaulting. In Amiens, however, the
groin rib and pointed arch have taken the place of the sexpartite plan and
the bays are oblong. The elasticity of this later system simplified the
vaulting of the curved aisle of the chevêt, whereas in Notre Dame the
awkwardness of the rhomboidal spaces was ingeniously evaded by dividing
each into nearly equal triangles, which could easily be vaulted. Note in both
plans the disposition of the buttresses in the outer walls. It is interesting to
know that the area of Notre Dame is about equal to that of the Hypostyle
Hall at Karnak, while that of Amiens is smaller, but the height of its nave is
140 feet as compared with 80 at Karnak.
West Fronts.—In all French cathedrals a special feature of the exterior
is the West Front, and a comparison of that of Notre Dame may well be
made with the façade of Amiens, which marks the transition to the second
style, the Rayonnant, and with that of Rheims, the upper part of which
marks the transition to the third style, Flamboyant. The design of all three is
constructively the same—a development of the Romanesque twin towers,
connected by an arcade, while a rose or wheel window is placed above the
central recessed door. The spires, which were intended to crown the towers,
were never built. How they would have affected the appearance may be
gathered from a comparison of the West Front of Cologne Cathedral—a
cathedral that is “completely French in plan, uniting in one design the
leading characteristics of the most notable French Churches.” (Hamlin.)
It is in the West Front of Notre Dame that the structural purport of the
design is most definitely pronounced. When we study the vertical elements
of the design, we note the division of the façade into three vertical masses
corresponding with the interior divisions of nave and double aisles. The

division is made by the buttresses which sustain the longitudinal strain of
the interior arcades and the outer walls and insure the stability of the
towers. And this stability is also associated with a suggestion of upward
growth, due to the three setbacks in the profile of the buttresses; which
setbacks, it is to be noted, correspond to the three main horizontal divisions
of the façade.
The lowest is distinguished by massive simplicity; an effect of solid
masonry, the thickness of which is emphasised by the deeply recessed door
arches, while its simplicity is finely contrasted with the ordered distribution
of the sculptured enrichments. Greater diversity characterises the second
horizontal division. The openings present a varied patterning of light and
shade, while the arcading lends a lightness of effect, echoing also the
ordered repetition of the band of figures below, and at the same time
involving variety according as the arcade is seen against the sky or is felt as
a breastwork of the towers. Lastly, there is a reassertion of the vertical
direction in the masses and coupled openings of the towers.
And if the contrast of these several divisions delights us, what is to be
said of the balance that correlates these vertical and horizontal features,
these various values of form, of plain and ornamental work, of light and
shade, into a harmonious unity? It is the product of structural logic and
grandeur of feeling; and compared with the reserve of its nobility the west
front of Amiens, even the still finer one of Rheims, may seem less
impressive. In these, it will be noted, the depth of the door recesses is
increased by a pronounced offset in the lower story of the buttress, into
which the sculptured jambs of the doorways merge, while the projection
thus contrived is crowned with a canopy in the nature of a porch. How does
the division at Amiens of the second story into two compare with the simple
unity of the one in Notre Dame? Or how does the latter’s arcade compare
with the corresponding band at Rheims of figures in arcaded niches,
surmounted by ornate canopies?
The answer will depend on one’s individual temperament; perhaps also
on one’s mood. It may seem to some that in Notre Dame the variety in unity
is worked out with more consciousness of the principles to be applied,
whereas in the other two façades there is a suggestion of freer and more
individual treatment.

So much for the exteriors of these cathedrals. It is, however, when we
compare the interior of Notre Dame with that of Amiens, that we see in
what direction French Gothic was travelling. In the case of Amiens, it is as
if some power had pulled the older form upward into a slenderer, more
elastic fabric; less massive, possibly less stately, but also less inert,
infinitely alive in its inspiring growth, with grace of movement as well as
dignity. Notre Dame is still, as it were, anchored to the comparative
ponderousness of the Romanesque style. The round columns with capitals
of the Corinthian type still follow the model, though not the proportions, of
the Roman. Their effect of dumpiness is further increased by the projecting
half-round pilaster column that supports the main member of the vaulting
shaft. On the other hand, the clustered piers at Amiens are slender, loftier in
proportion to width; while a simple logic of structural purpose is apparent
in the three-quarter attached shafts which carry the arches and aisle-vaults,
and the main shaft of the nave vaulting rises uninterruptedly from the
ground. The pier, in fact, operates as an abutting support to the members,
which actually sustain the arch and vaulting, and their relation to the pier is
asserted by the continuous abacus which binds all lightly but firmly
together. A corresponding logical simplicity distinguishes the four-part nave
vaulting at Amiens, where the pressure is concentrated equally on all the
columns in succession without the need of intermediate ones to carry the
added transverse rib.
Other great examples of the thirteenth century are the cathedrals of
Laon, Chartres, Rouen, Beauvais, Auxerre, Bourges, and Le Mans—the
last especially celebrated for its superb chevêt and flying buttresses—and
the Collegiate Church of S. Quentin.
Sainte Chapelle.—The problem of concentration of strains was most
triumphantly solved in the Sainte Chapelle (1242-1247) or Royal Chapel, in
Paris, in which the Gothic system of construction may be said to have
reached complete maturity. Here the vaulting is carried on buttress-piers,
and the spaces between the latter are entirely filled with windows, 15 feet
wide and 50 high. The structure below the vaulting is literally a framework,
a lantern for the display of the stained glass; “a great translucent tabernacle
merely ribbed and braced with stone.”
The influence of Sainte Chapelle affected French construction for half a
century and was developed to its furthest possible point in S. Urban at
Troyes, begun in 1260.

Second Period.—This cathedral represents the transition into the second
period of French Gothic, which may be roughly placed at 1275 to 1375. The
principles of construction could be carried no further and the style began to
turn in on itself, the designers expending their invention on elaboration of
ornament. This period is called in France the Rayonnant, from the raylike
traceries that were introduced into the rose-windows and from the
prevalence of circular forms in windows generally. The façade of Amiens is
one of the best examples of the style.
Third Period.—By degrees the Rayonnant style passed into the so-
called Flamboyant, which lasted until the introduction of the Renaissance
style early in the sixteenth century. In it the principles of design were
gradually sacrificed to the multiplication of decorative details. Constructive
imagination disappeared in a maze of skilful elaboration. The transition
from Rayonnant to Flamboyant is shown in the upper part of the west front
of Rheims. Some of the finest memorials of this period’s maturity are to be
found in Rouen: namely the nave and central tower of the Church of S.
Ouen; the west portals of S. Maclou and the façade of the Cathedral, the
last being a late example in which the very material of the stone seems to
have dissolved into lace. Other instances are the church of S. Jacques at
Dieppe, S. Wulfrand at Abbeville and the façade of the Cathedral of
Tours.
Secular Gothic.—Gothic architecture was not confined to cathedrals
and churches. Monasteries, hospitals, civic buildings, houses, and castles
were erected in profusion, especially during the fifteenth century, though
few survive to the present day. But a strikingly picturesque monument is the
monastery of Mont-St.-Michel, of thirteenth century design, which clusters
around the base of the Abbey Church, which was built in the eleventh
century and remodelled in the sixteenth. Among the hospitals is that of
Chartres. Rouen possesses a fifteenth century example of civic architecture
in the Palais de Justice. The home of a great merchant prince of the same
century is preserved in the House of Jacques Cœur at Bourges, while the
east wing of the Château de Blois represents military architecture at the
commencement of the sixteenth century.

SALISBURY CATHEDRAL
Note the Four-Part Rib-Vaulting of the Nave, and the Liernes in the Vault at the Crossing. P.
294

NAVE OF NORWICH CATHEDRAL
Romanesque up to the Vaulting: the Latter an Example of Fan-Vaulting. P. 295

YORK MINSTER. WEST FAÇADE
The Finest in England. Lower Part Early Decorated; Upper Late Decorated; Towers,
Perpendicular. P. 298

LINCOLN CATHEDRAL
Note Screen Effect of West Façade. Western Towers Are Romanesque up to Ridge of Roof;
Perpendicular Above. P. 298

WEST FAÇADE OF WELLS CATHEDRAL
P. 298

WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL
Beautifully Situated in Its Close. P. 288

HENRY VII’S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER
Example of Stellar and Pendant Vaulting. Pp. 294, 295

TIMBER ROOF, WESTMINSTER HALL
Pp. 296, 297

CHAPTER IV

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND AND WALES

The three periods of the Gothic style in Great Britain, corresponding
broadly to the Primary, Rayonnant, and Flamboyant, of France are the Early
English, Decorated, and Perpendicular.
While the two later phases are distinguished, as in France, by the
character of the decorative details, they also involved in England a certain
development of constructive principles, particularly in the matter of
vaulting, and, as a result of this, in the shape of arched openings.
Periods.—The Early English style, also known as Lancet, First Pointed,
Early Plantagenet, or Thirteenth Century, lasted approximately from 1189 to
1272, covering the reigns of Richard I, John, Henry III, and Edward I.
The Decorated, also known as Geometrical or Curvilinear, Middle
Pointed, Later Plantagenet, or Fourteenth Century, comprises the reigns of
Edward II, Edward III, 1307-1377.
The Perpendicular, also called Rectangular, Late Pointed, or Fifteenth
Century, extends from 1377 to 1558, including the reigns of Richard III,
Henry VII, and Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary. It continued, that is to
say, through the period of the Reformation and Dissolution of Monasteries,
until it gradually became mixed with elements borrowed from the
Renaissance style. The style which prevailed from Henry VII to Mary is
sometimes specially designated Tudor.
Unlike the French cathedrals, which were mostly erected for the secular,
that is to say non-monastic, clergy with funds provided by the laity, the
English were frequently attached to a Benedictine or Augustine monastery.
In consequence they retain some of the features of a monastic
establishment, especially the cloisters and chapter-house, or room for the
transaction of business by the bishop’s or abbot’s chapter (council).
According to the circumstances of their founding, the English cathedrals
are divided into three classes.
Three Classes of Cathedrals.—I. Thirteen cathedrals of the Old
Foundation, which being served by secular canons, underwent no change of

control at the Reformation. Though not attached to monastic buildings they
have chapter-houses and in some cases cloisters. They include: in England,
Chichester, Exeter, Hereford, Lichfield, Lincoln, S. Paul, London,
Salisbury, Wells, York; and, in Wales, Bangor, Llandaff, St. Asaph’s, and
St. David’s.
II. Cathedrals of monastic or New Foundation; so called because they
were originally attached to monasteries and at the dissolution of the latter
by Henry VIII were re-established under chapters of dean and canons. They
include seven, originally attached to Benedictine Houses—Canterbury,
Durham, Ely, Norwich, Rochester, Winchester, Worcester, and one
Augustine foundation—Carlisle. Further, they comprise the following
churches, converted into cathedrals by Henry VIII—(Benedictine):
Chester, Gloucester, Peterborough; (Augustine): Bristol and Oxford.
III. Cathedrals of Modern Foundation, converted Churches,
Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Ripon, St. Albans,
Southwark, Southwell, Truro, Wakefield.

Comparison with French.—The study of English cathedrals is more
complicated than that of French, owing to the long period over which their
construction extended. Additions were made as funds permitted and to meet
the growing needs of the community, or restorations replaced earlier
buildings that had collapsed, as some did, or had been destroyed by fire.
Accordingly, each example is more or less an epitome of all the phases of
the Gothic style; often combined with Norman (Romanesque) and also with
fragments of Anglo-Saxon architecture. They are in a very full sense an
expression of the nation’s growth.
English cathedrals differ from the French in being lower, longer, and
narrower. The extreme length of the plan is in France seldom more than
four times the width, whereas in England it sometimes reaches six times.
The square east end is characteristic; the transepts project further; these are
seldom double aisled and have few side chapels; the plan is inclined to
cruciform, and a prominent feature is a central tower over the crossing,
sometimes surmounted by a spire. The choir is proportionately longer and
occasionally projects into the crossing or even a little way into the nave. At
the east end of it is the presbytery or sanctuary; beyond which is a
retrochoir, containing an ambulatory or procession passage, one or more
chapels to saints and a Lady Chapel, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. The

arcading is more closely spaced than in French Cathedrals and generally the
relation of the parts is less large in character. The triforium in many cases is
highly elaborated; in some it is noticeably reduced and occasionally
omitted.
The doorways are often placed on the north and south sides and provided
with porches. The windows, in the Early English Period, are either of
simple lancet form, used singly or grouped in pairs or threes, united over
the top by tracery; or the lights terminate at the top in trefoils or cinquefoils,
a heading rare in France known as cusps. Plate tracery is comparatively rare
in England, and the tracery of the Decorated Period is of a geometric
character. Gradually the tracery becomes more flowing, including lines of
double curvature, which somewhat resembles the French Flamboyant.
Finally in the Perpendicular Period, the pointed arch of the window
becomes flattened until it reaches the slight curve of the so-called four-
centre arch. The window is divided up into many lights (nine in King’s
College Chapel, Cambridge) by vertical mullions, which in the larger
examples are reinforced by horizontal transoms, thus producing parallel
rows of cusped lights, surmounted in the heading by small replicas of the
latter in several tiers—an arrangement somewhat rigid and monotonous.
The mouldings are generally richer and more varied than in French
cathedrals, and, owing to their being nearer to the eye, are wrought to a
greater refinement of finish.
Ornament.—The characteristic ornament of the Early period is the
“dog-tooth” used profusely in hollow mouldings. The foliage is
conventionalised, crisply carved in bold curving and curling masses, known
as “stiff-leaf foliage,” which in the case of capitals sometimes projects
beyond the abacus. The flat surfaces of the walls are often diapered.
In the Decorated Period the characteristic ornament of hollow mouldings
is the “ball-flower”; but the “four-leaf flower” is frequently used. By
degrees other motives of ornament were drawn from ivy, oak, and vine
leaves; and the treatment grew more and more naturalistic.
In the Tudor period the special ornament is the Tudor rose, two
concentric layers of five petals, symbolising the union of the Houses of
York and Lancaster. Other frequent motives are the portcullis and, in
reference to the continued claim of the English kings to the throne of
France, the fleur-de-lys. The traceries of the windows were repeated in the