ile people
of Greece and its dependencies.

[Illustration: Corinthian Entablature from Monument of Lysicrates]

CHAPTER III

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE

After the Golden Age of Greek architecture properly so called was over,
a kind of aftermath prevailed for some little time in the peninsula and
the outlying colonies of Greece, to be succeeded by a transition time to
which the name of the Hellenistic has been given, during which is
supposed to have been inaugurated the use of the arch and the vault,
which were in course of time to revolutionise the art of building.

It has long been customary to give to the Etruscans, an Asiatic people
who in very early times occupied a considerable portion of Italy, the
credit of the first introduction of the arch in Western Europe. It is
however now more generally believed that the Roman style of building was
an offshoot of the Hellenistic, in which the dome was certainly
employed, though no existing examples of its use can be quoted. The city
of Alexandria, founded about 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, is known
to have had four principal colonnaded streets leading from a four-arched
central building, and many are of opinion that much of the town was
built over arched cisterns. The dome may possibly have been in the first
instance introduced into western Europe as a cover for the hot baths in
which the wealthy delighted, and its form was probably the same as that
of the one preserved at Pompeii. The famous arched drain at Rome, known
as the Cloaca Maxima, so constantly referred to as the greatest
masterpiece of the Etruscans was not, it has now been proved, built
until after their subjugation and extinction as a nation. For all that
they were without doubt most skilful architects and engineers; the walls
of their cities were of cyclopean masonry and were entered from arched
gateways, a good example of which is to be seen at Volterra, constructed
of wedge-shaped stones fixed without cement. Their rock-cut tombs, such
as those at Corneto, Vulci, and Chiusi, are divided into many chambers,
the walls adorned with paintings, the roof upheld by columns, and the
facades resembling those of Egyptian temples, whilst the tumuli in which
they sometimes buried their dead are surmounted by pyramids of earth
resting on stone foundations.

[Illustration: Roman Barrel Vault]

From whatever source Roman architects got their inspiration, they very
soon absorbed all external influences and stam