Roman Architecture

In the fourth chapter the topic is Roman Architecture. I found it absolutely amazing and I was completely inspired by the many details. I also very intrigued by the history behind Roman Architecture. Not only is influential, but it is inspiring. Surprisingly I found out that the first Roman architects were priests. The religious leaders wanted a location were they could say that "whatever happens here is a sign from the gods". They would just declare a space for the gods and the place's dimensions for their ritual of worship. For the most part, the Romans were taught to build with solid materials during this primitive stage to form their visions.

The Romans learned most of their architectural techniques by the Etruscans and the Greeks. They utilized natural materials to form plaster and brick to make their structures. The Romans also connected each building with a network of streets. Once Ancient Rome became a dominating world power, a revolution in architecture began. It was the explosion of being freed from customs that brought this architectural rebirth and was inspired by Greece. One of the architectural techniques that came into use by experimentation was the arch and vault. This renewed architecture art also was the origin of the amphitheater, monumental avenue, and public baths. (Roman Architecture)

Roman columns, it is sometimes said that the arch originated with the Romans. This should be differently stated; the arch itself they did not originate, but they applied it with great skill and success to various works of utility, and made it a universal feature in civil buildings. Their triumphant use of the arch was reached, however, in the dome of the Pantheon, which edifice may in a sense be claimed as an example of a new style of architecture. Its simple grandeur has not been surpassed. Its style demanded the invention of appropriate details, which the Romans failed to produce; but the Pantheon and the ruined Temple of Peace were the two Roman edifices which indicated the progress of the Romans towards the invention of an architecture distinctively their own

Naturally, domestic architecture first claims the attention of any people. The earliest houses of the Romans were essentially Etruscan; and for a long time, a portion of every house being consecrated to the god or spirit worshipped by the family, there was no thought of a temple or special home for the deity. That the Etruscans first erected temples and sepulchral chambers is proved by the term "Tuscanic," applied to the oldest house and temple architecture in Latium, as well as to the statues in baked clay, to which we have referred, which were known as "Tuscanic works. The earliest Roman dwellings were the most simple habitations that could be imagined after the tent. Built of wood, with a pointed roof, covered with straw, or a sort of primitive shingle, they consisted of one square apartment with an aperture in the top, which admitted a little light and afforded an exit for the smoke, while directly beneath it, in the ground, was a hole for carrying off the rain. (History of Roman Architecture)

Roman temples, as one studies the Roman temples, of which the Pantheon is the only worthy representative remaining, he is sadly disappointed in finding how little absolutely satisfactory knowledge of them can be gained. For example, in the case of the Temple of the Capitoline Jupiter, we find that no connected and intelligible account of this great national temple exists; and no fragment of it remains, to our absolute certainty. From many writers we gather interesting references to the temple and its possessions, but these writers disagree. Not in the main fact that here was a most important, magnificent, and enormously wealthy shrine, dedicated to the great Jove, but in their accounts of its details; as when Livy says that the statue of Jupiter was the work of Turianus, an Etruscan sculptor, and Pliny records that it was made by Volca of Veii. These disagreements are not of vital importance; but one has a sensation of being cheated when he spends his time to read one authority only to be contradicted by another. As this temple was more than once destroyed and rebuilt, both sculptors may have made statues of its deity; but there is so much of legend about it that no clear-cut idea of it can be formed. (Ancient Rome Architecture)

Roman theatres The small number of theatres in Rome, and the absence of any that could be considered fine, is a surprise to the student of Roman architecture, especially when the importance and beauty of Greek theatres is considered in connection with the fact that the Greeks were the artistic models of the Romans. The estimation of those who worked for money, either with brain or hands, was so far from honorable, that actors, singers, etc., were denounced, and were incapable of voting in the burgess assembly or serving in the burgess army. Moreover, the police magistrates were especially severe against them, and the urban magistrates could legally imprison or inflict bodily punishment upon actors at any