Architecture: Classic and Early Christian. T. Roger Smith
Struts, props.
Stupa, in Indian architecture, a mound or tope.
Stylobate, a series of steps, usually those leading up to a Classic temple.
Taas, a pagoda.
Tablinum, in a Roman house, the room between the atrium and the peristyle.
Talar, in Assyrian architecture, an open upper story.
Tenoned, fastened with a projection or tenon.
Tesselated, made of small squares of material, applied to coarse mosaic work.
Tetrastyle, with four columns.
Thermæ, the great bathing establishments of the Romans.
Topes, in Indian architecture, artificial mounds.
Trabeated, constructed with a beam or beams, a term usually employed in contrast to arches.
Triclinium, in a Roman house, the dining-room.
Triglyph, the channelled feature in the frieze of the Doric order.
Tumuli, mounds, usually sepulchral.
Typhonia, small Egyptian temples.
Velarium, a great awning.
Vestibule, the outer hall or ante-room.
Volutes, in Classic architecture, the curled ornaments of the Ionic capital.
Voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones of which arches are made.
N.B. For the explanation of other technical words found in this volume, consult the Glossary given with the companion volume on Gothic and Renaissance Architecture.
The Temple of Vesta at Tivoli.
ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
ARCHITECTURE may be described as building at its best, and when we talk of the architecture of any city or country we mean its best, noblest, or most beautiful buildings; and we imply by the use of the word that these buildings possess merits which entitle them to rank as works of art.
The architecture of the civilised world can be best understood by considering the great buildings of each important nation separately. The features, ornaments, and even forms of ancient buildings differed just as the speech, or at any rate the literature, differed. Each nation wrote in a different language, though the books may have been devoted to the same aims; and precisely in the same way each nation built in a style of its own, even if the buildings may have been similar in the purposes they had to serve. The division of the subject into the architecture of Egypt, Greece, Rome, &c., is therefore the most natural one to follow.
But certain broad groups, rising out of peculiarities of a physical nature, either in the buildings themselves or in the conditions under which they were erected, can hardly fail to be suggested by a general view of the subject. Such, for example, is the fourfold division to which the reader’s attention will now be directed.
All buildings, it will be found, can be classed under one or other of four great divisions, each distinguished by a distinct mode of building, and each also occupying a distinct place in history. The first series embraces the buildings of the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Greeks, and was brought to a pitch of the highest perfection in Greece during the age of Pericles. All the buildings erected in these countries during the many centuries which elapsed from the earliest Egyptian to the latest Greek works, however they may have differed in other respects, agree in this—that the openings, be they doors, or be they spaces between columns, were spanned by beams of wood or lintels of stone (Fig. 1). Hence this architecture is called architecture of the beam, or, in more formal language, trabeated architecture. This mode of covering spaces required that in buildings of solid masonry, where stone or marble lintels were employed, the supports should not be very far apart, and this circumstance led to the frequent use of rows of columns. The architecture of this period is accordingly sometimes called columnar, but it has no exclusive claim to the epithet; the column survived long after the exclusive use of the beam had been superseded, and the term columnar must accordingly be shared with buildings forming part of the succeeding series.
Fig. 1.—Opening spanned by a Lintel. Arch of the Goldsmiths, Rome.
The second great group of buildings is that in which the semicircular arch is introduced into construction, and used either together with the beam, or, as mostly happened, instead of the beam, to span the openings (Fig. 2). This use of the arch began with the Assyrians, and it reappeared in the works of the early Etruscans. The round-arched series of styles embraces the buildings of the Romans from their earliest beginnings to their decay; it also includes the two great schools of Christian architecture which were founded by the Western and the Eastern Church respectively—namely, the Romanesque, which, originating in Rome, extended itself through Western Europe, and lasted till the time of the Crusades, and the Byzantine, which spread from Constantinople over all the countries in which the Eastern (or Greek) Church flourished, and which continues to our own day.
Fig. 2.—Opening Spanned by a Semicircular Arch. Roman Triumphal Arch at Pola.
Fig. 3.—Openings Spanned by Pointed Arches. Interior of St. Front, Périgueux, France.
The third group of buildings is that in which the pointed arch is employed instead of the semicircular arch to span the openings (Fig. 3). It began with the rise of Mohammedan architecture in the East, and embraces all the buildings of Western Europe, from the time of the First Crusade to the revival of art in the fifteenth century. This great series of buildings constitutes what is known as Pointed, or, more commonly, as Gothic architecture.
The fourth group consists of the buildings erected during or since the Renaissance (i.e. revival) period, and is marked by a return to the styles of past ages or distant countries for the architectural features and ornaments of buildings; and by that luxury, complexity, and ostentation which, with other qualities, are well comprehended under the epithet Modern. This group of buildings forms what is known as Renaissance architecture, and extends from the epoch of the revival of letters in the fifteenth century, to the present day.
The first two of these styles—namely, the architecture of the beam, and that of the round arch—are treated of in this little volume. They occupy those remote times of pagan civilisation which