architectura

• I Lit., * Cic. Off. 1, 42, 151; Vitr. 1, 1; 1, 3.—
• II Trop., of historical representation: Specus ipsa quā concameratur architecturā! Plin. 11, 24, 28, § 82.

• architectus, the art of building, architecture.

ARCHITECTU´RA(ἀρχιτεκτονία, ἀρχιτεκτονική), in its widest sense, signifies all that we understand by architecture, and by civil and military engineering: in its more restricted meaning, it is the science of building according to the laws of proportion and the principles of beauty. In the former sense, it has its foundation in necessity: in the latter, upon art taking occasion from necessity. The hut of a savage is not, properly speaking, a work of architecture; neither, on the other hand, is a building in which different and incongruous styles are exhibited side by side. An architectural construction, in the artistic sense, must possess not only utility, but beauty, and also unity: it must be suggestive of some idea, and referable to some model.

The architecture of every people is not only a most interesting branch of its antiquities, but also a most important feature in its history, as it forms one of the most durable and most intelligible evidences of advancement in civilization. If the Greek and Roman literature and history had been a blank, what ideas of their knowledge, and power, and social condition would their monuments have still suggested to us! What a store of such ideas is even now being developed from the monuments of Asia, Egypt, and America!

The object of the present article is to give a very compendious account of the history and principles of the art, as practised by the Greeks and Romans. The details of the subject will be, for the most part, referred to their separate and proper heads. The lives of the architects will be found in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

It is well observed by Stieglitz that architecture has its origin in nature and religion. The necessity for a habitation, and the attempt to adorn those habitations which were intended for the gods, are the two causes from which the art derives its existence. In early times we have no. reason to suppose that much attention was paid to domestic architecture, but we have much evidence to the contrary. The resources of the art were lavished upon the temples of the gods; and hence the greater part of the history of Grecian architecture is inseparably connected with that of the temple, and has its proper place under TEMPLUMand the subordinate headings, such as COLUMNAunder which heads also the different orders are described.

But, though the first rise of architecture, as a fine art, is connected with the temple, yet, viewed as the science of construction, it must have been employed, even earlier, for other purposes, such as the erection of fortifications, palaces, treasuries, and other works of utility. Accordingly, it is the general opinion of antiquaries, that the very earliest edifices, of which we have any remains, are the so-called Cyclopean works, in which we see huge unsquared blocks of stone built together in the best way that their shapes would allow; although it can be proved, in some instances, that the rudeness of this sort of work is no sufficient proof of its very early date, for that it was adopted, not from want of skill, but on account of the object of the work and the nature of the materials employed. (Bunbury, On Cyclopean Remains in Central Italy, in the Classical Museum, vol. ii.) [MURUS] The account of the early palaces cannot well be separated from that of domestic architecture in general, and is therefore given under DOMUS; that of erections intended, or supposed to be intended, for treasuries, will be found under THESAURUS

In addition to these, however, there are other purposes for which architecture, still using the term in its lower sense, would be required in a very early stage of political society; such as the general arrangement of cities, the provision of a place for the transaction of public business, with the necessary edifices appertaining to it [AGORA, FORUM ], and the whole class of works which we embrace under the head of civil engineering, such as those for drainage [CLOACA, EMISSARIUS ], for communication [VIA, PONS ], and for the supply of water [AQUAEDUCTUS]. The nature of these several works among the Greeks and Romans, and the periods of their development, are described under the several articles. Almost equally necessary are places devoted to public exercise, health, and amusement [GYMNASIUM, STADIUM, HIPPODROMUS, CIRCUS, BALNEUM, THEATRUM, AMPHITHEATRUM ]. Lastly, the skill of the architect has been from the earliest times employed to preserve the memory of departed men and past events; and hence we have the various works of monumental and triumphal architecture, which are described under the heads FUNUS, ARCUS, COLUMNA.

The materials employed by the architect were marble or stone, wood, and various kinds of earth, possessing the property of being plastic while moist and hardening in drying, with cement and metal clamps for fastenings: the various metals were also extensively used in the way of ornament. The details of this branch of the subject are given in the descriptions of the several kinds of building.

The principles of architectural science are utility, proportion, and the imitation of nature. The first requisite is that every detail of a building should be subordinate to its general purpose. Next, the form of the whole and of its parts must be derived from simple geometrical figures; namely, the straight line, the plane surface, and regular or symmetrical rectilinear figures, as the equilateral or isosceles triangle, the square or rectangle, and the regular polygons ; symmetrical curves, as the circle and ellipse; and the solids arising out of these various figures, such as the cube, the pyramid, the cylinder, the cone, the hemisphere, &c. Lastly, the ornaments, by which these forms are relieved and beautified, must all be founded either on geometrical forms or on the imitation of nature.

To this outline of the purposes and principles of the art, it only remains to subjoin a brief sketch of its history, which Hirt and Müller divide into five periods: the first, which is chiefly mythical, comes down to the time of Cypselus, 01. 30, B.C. 660 (Müller brings this period down to the 50th Olympiad, B.C. 580): the second period comes down to the termination of the Persian war, Ol. 75. 2, B.C. 478 (Müller brings it down to Ol. 80, B.C. 460): the third is the brilliant period from the end of the Persian war to the death of Alexander the Great, Ol. 114, B.C. 323 (Müller closes this period with the death of Philip, Ol. 111, B.C. 336): the fourth period is brought down by Hirt to the battle of Actium, B.C. 31, but by Müller only to the Roman conquest of Greece, B.C. 146 ; the latter division has the convenience of marking the transition from Greek to Roman architecture: Hirt's fifth period is that of the Roman empire, down to the dedication of Constantinople, A.D. 330; while Müller's fifth period embraces the whole history of Roman architecture, from the time when it began to imitate the Greek, down to the Middle Ages, when it became mingled with the Gothic: Hirt's division requires us to draw a more definite line of demarcation than is possible, between the Roman and Byzantine styles, and also places that line too early.

The characteristics of these several periods are developed under the articles which describe the several classes of buildings: they are therefore noticed in this place with the utmost possible brevity. Our information respecting the first period is derived from the Homeric poems, the traditions preserved by other writers, and the most ancient monuments of Greece, Central Italy, and the coast of Asia Minor. Strongly fortified cities, palaces, and treasuries are the chief works of the earlier part of this period; and to it may be referred most of the so-called Cyclopean remains; while the era of the Dorian invasion marks, in all probability, the commencement of the Dorian style of temple architecture. The principal names of artists belonging to this period are Daedalus, Euryalus, Hyperbius, Docius, and some others. In the second period the art made rapid advances under the powerful patronage of the aristocracies in some cities, as at Sparta, and of the tyrants in others, as Cypselus at Corinth, Theagenes at Megara, Cleisthenes at Sicyon, the Peisistratids at Athens, and Polycrates at Samos. Architecture now assumed decidedly the character of a fine art, and became associated with the sister arts of sculpture and painting, which are essential to its development. The temples of partiticular deities were enriched and adorned by presents, such as those which Croesus sent to the Pythian Apollo. Magnificent temples sprung up in all the principal Greek cities; and while the Doric order was brought almost, if not quite, to perfection, in Greece Proper, in the Doric colonies of Asia Minor, and in Central Italy and Sicily, the Ionic order appeared, already perfect at its first invention, in the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The ruins still existing at Paestum, Syracuse, Agrigentum, Selinus, Aegina, and other places, are imperishable monuments of this period. Nor were works of utility neglected, as we see in the fountain of the Peisistratids at Athens, the aqueduct at Samos [AQUAEDUCTUS], the sewers (ὑπόνομοι) and baths (κολυμβήθρα) at Agrigentum. To this period also belong the great works of the Roman kings. The commencement of the third and most brilliant period of the art was signalized by the rebuilding of Athens, the establishment of regular principles for the laying out of cities by Hippodamus of Miletus, and the great works of the age of Pericles, by the contemporaries of Pheidias, at Athens, Eleusis, and Olympia; during its course every city of Greece and her colonies was adorned with splendid edifices of every description; and its termination is marked by the magnificent works of Deinocrates and his contemporaries at Alexandria, Antioch, and other cities. The first part of the fourth period saw the extension of the Greek architecture over the countries conquered by Alexander, and, in the West, the commencement of the new style, which arose from the imitation, with some alterations, of the Greek forms by Roman architects, to which the conquest of Greece gave, of course, a new impulse. By the time of Augustus, Rome was adorned with every kind of public and private edifice, surrounded by villas, and furnished with roads and aqueducts; and these various erections were adorned by the forms of Grecian art; but already Vitruvius begins to complain that the purity of that art is corrupted by the intermixture of heterogeneous forms. This process of deterioration went on rapidly during the fifth period, though combined at first with increasing magnificence in the scale and number of the buildings erected. The early part of this period is made illustrious by the numerous works of Augustus, and his successors, especially the Flavii. Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, at Rome and in the provinces; but from the time of the Antonines the decline of the art was rapid and decided. In one department, a new impulse was given to architecture by the rise of Christian churches, which were generally built on the model of the Roman Basilica. One of the most splendid specimens of Christian architecture is the church of St. Sophia at Constantinople, built in the reign of Justinian, A.D. 537, and restored, after its partial destruction by an earthquake, in 554. But, long before this time, the Greco-Roman style had become thoroughly corrupted, and that new style, which is called the Byzantine, had arisen out of the mixture of Roman architecture with ideas derived from the Northern nations. It is beyond our limits to pursue the history of this and later styles of the art.

Of the ancient writers from whom our knowledge of the subject is derived, the most important is, of course, Vitruvius. The following are the principal modern works on the general subject:--Winckelmann, Anmerkungen über die Baukunst der Alten, 1762; Stieglitz, Archäologie der Baukunst, 1801, and Geschichte der Baukunst, 1827 ; Hirt, Baukunst nach den Grundsätzen der Alten, 1809, and Geschichte der Baukunst bei den Alten, 1821; Müller, Handbuch der Archäologie der Kunst, 1825; the various works of travels, topography, and antiquities, such as those of Stuart, Chandler, Clarke, Dodwell, &c., all the most important of which will be found cited by the authorities referred to; and, for Central Italy, Müller's Etrusker, and Abeken's Mittelitalien vor der ömischen Herrschaft.

(ἀρχιτεκτονία, ἀρχιτεχτονική). (I.) Greek.—Of the earliest efforts of the Greeks in architecture we have evidence in the so-called Cyclopean Walls surrounding the castles of kings in the Heroic Age of Tiryns, Argos, Mycenae, and elsewhere. They are of enormous thickness, some being constructed of rude, colossal blocks, whose gaps are filled up with smaller stones; while others are built of stones more or less carefully hewn, their interstices exactly fitting into each other. Gradually they begin to show an approximation to buildings with rectan gular blocks. The gates let into these walls are closed at the top either by the courses of stone jutting over from each side till they touch, or by a long straight block laid over the two leaning side-posts. Of the latter kind is the famous Lion Gate at Mycenae (q.v.), so called from its two lions standing with their forefeet on the broad pedestal of a pillar, and remarkable as the oldest specimen of Greek sculpture.

Among the most striking relics of this primitive age are the so-called θησαυροί (treasuries, usually subterranean) of ancient dynasties, the most considerable being the treasure-house of Atreus at Mycenae. (See Mycenae.) The usual form of these buildings is that of a circular chamber vaulted over by the horizontal courses approaching from all sides till they meet. Thus the vault is not a true arch. The interior seems originally to have been covered with metal plates, thus agreeing with Homer's descriptions of metal as a favourite ornament of princely houses. (See Domus.) An open-air building preserved from that age is the supposed Temple of Heré on Mt. Ocha (now Hagios Elias ) in Euboea, a rectangle built of regular square blocks, with walls more than a yard thick, two small windows, and a door with leaning posts and a huge lintel in the southern side-wall. The sloping roof is of hewn flag-stones resting on the thickness of the wall and overlapping each other, but the centre is left open as in the hypaethral temples of a later time.

From the simple shape of a rectangular house shut in by blank walls we gradually advance to finer and richer types, formed especially by the introduction of columns detached from the wall and serving to support the roof and ceiling. Even in Homer we find columns in the palaces to support the halls that surround the court-yard and the ceiling of the banqueting-room. The construction of columns (see Columna) received its artistic development first from the Dorians, after their migration into the Peloponnesus about B.C. 1000, next from the Ionians—and from each in a form suitable to their several characters. If the simple, serious character of the Dorians speaks in the Doric order, no less does the lighter, nimbler, and more showy genius of the Ionian race appear in the order named after them. By about B.C. 650, the Ionic style was flourishing side by side with the Doric.

As it was in the construction of temples that architecture had developed her favourite forms, all other public buildings borrowed their artistic character from the temple. (See Templum.) The structure and furniture of private houses were, during the best days of Greece, kept down to the simplest forms. About B.C. 600, in the Greek islands and on the coast of Asia Minor, we come across the first architects known to us by name. It was then that Rhoecus and Theodorus of Samos, celebrated likewise as inventors of casting in bronze, built the great Temple of Heré in that island, while Chersiphron of Cnosus in Crete, with his son Metagenes, began the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the world, which was not finished till one hundred and twenty years after. In Greece Proper a vast temple to Zeus was begun at Athens in the sixth century B.C. (see Olympieum), and two more at Delphi and Olympia—one of the Corinthian Spintharus, the other by the Elean Libon. Here, and in the western colonies, the Doric style still predominated everywhere. Among the chief remains of this period, in addition to many ruined temples in Sicily, especially at Selinus and Agrigentum, should be mentioned the Temple of Poseidon at Paestum (Posidonia) in South Italy, one of the best preserved and most beautiful relics of antiquity. The patriotic fervour of the Persian Wars created a general expansion of Greek life, in which architecture and the sister art of sculpture were not slow to take a part. In these departments, as in the whole onward movement, a central position was taken by Athens, whose leading statesmen, Cimon and Pericles, lavished the great resources of the state at once in strengthening and beautifying the city. During this period arose a group of masterpieces that still astonish us in their ruins, some in the forms of a softened Doric, others in the Ionic style, which had now found its way into Attica, and was here developed into nobler shapes. The Doric order is represented by the Temple of Theseus; the Propylaea (q.v.), built by Mnesicles; the Parthenon (q.v.), a joint production of Ictinus and Callicrates—while the Erechtheum (q.v.) is the most brilliant creation of the Ionic order in Attica. See Athenae.

The progress of the drama to its perfection in this period led to a corresponding improvement in the building of theatres. A stone theatre was begun at Athens even before the Persian Wars, and the Odeum of Pericles served similar purposes. How soon the highest results were achieved in this department, when once the fundamental forms had thus been laid down in outline at Athens, is shown by the theatre at Epidaurus, a work of Polyclitus, unsurpassed, as the ancients testify, by any later theatres in harmony and beauty. Another was built at Syracuse before B.C. 420. Nor is it only in the erection of single buildings that the great advance then made by architecture shows itself. In laying out new towns, or parts of towns, men began to proceed on artistic principles, an innovation due to Hippodamus of Miletus. See Theatrum.

In the fourth century B.C., owing to the change wrought in the Greek mind by the Peloponnesian War, in place of the pure and even tone of the preceding period, a desire for effect became more and more general, both in architecture and sculpture. The sober Doric style fell into abeyance and gave way to the Ionic, by the side of which a new order, the Corinthian, said to have been invented by the sculptor Callimachus, with its more gorgeous decorations, became increasingly fashionable. In the first half of the fourth century arose what the ancients considered the largest and grandest temple in the Peloponnesus, that of Athené at Tegea, a work of the sculptor and architect Scopas. During the middle of the century another of the “seven wonders,” the splendid tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus, was constructed. (See Mausoleum.) Many magnificent temples arose in that time. In Asia Minor, the temple at Ephesus, burned down by Herostratus, was rebuilt by Alexander's bold architect Dinocrates. In the islands the ruins of the Temple of Athené at Priené, of Apollo at Miletus, of Dionysus at Teos, and others, even to this day offer a brilliant testimony to their former magnificence. Among Athenian buildings of that age the Monument of Lysicrates (q.v.) is conspicuous for its graceful elegance and elaborate development of the Corinthian style. In the succeeding age, Greek architecture shows its finest achievements in the building of theatres, especially those of Asiatic towns; in the gorgeous palaces of newly built royal capitals; and in general in the luxurious completeness of private buildings. As an important specimen of the last age of Attic architecture may also be mentioned the Tower of the Winds at Athens. See Andronicus.

(II.) Etruscan and Roman.—In architecture, as well as sculpture, the Romans were long under the influence of the Etruscans, who, though not possessing the gift of rising to the ideal, united wonderful activity and inventiveness with a passion for covering their buildings with rich ornamental carving. None of their temples have survived, for they built all the upper parts of wood; but many proofs of their activity in building remain, surviving from various ages, in the shape of tombs and walls. The latter clearly show how they progressed from piling up polygonal blocks in Cyclopean style to regular courses of squared stone. Here and there a building still shows that the Etruscans originally made vaultings by letting horizontal courses jut over, as in the ancient Greek θησαυροί above mentioned: on the other hand, some very old gateways, as at Volterra and Perugia, exhibit the true arch of wedge-shaped stones, the introduction of which into Italy is probably due to Etruscan ingenuity, and from the introduction of which a new and magnificent development of architecture takes its rise. The most imposing of ancient Italian arch building is to be seen in the sewers of Rome constructed in the sixth century B.C. See Cloaca.

When all other traces of Etruscan influence were being swept away at Rome by the intrusion of Greek forms of art, especially after the conquest of Greece in the middle of the second century B.C., the Roman architects kept alive in full vigour the Etruscan method of building the arch, which they developed and completed by the inventions of the cross-arch (or groined vault) and the dome. With the arch, which admits of a bolder and more varied management of spaces, the Romans combined, as a decorative element, the columns of the Greek orders. Among these their growing love of pomp gave the preference more and more to the Corinthian, adding to it afterwards a still more gorgeous embellishment in what is called the Roman or Composite capital. Another service rendered by the Romans was the introduction of building in brick. A more vigorous advance in Roman architecture dates from the opening of the third century B.C., when they began making great military roads and aqueducts. In the first half of the second century they built, on Greek models, the first basilica, which, besides its practical utility, served to embellish the Forum. Soon after the middle of the century appeared the first of their more ambitious temples in the Greek style. There is simple grandeur in the ruins of the Tabularium (q.v.), or Record Office, built B.C. 78 on the slope of the Capitol next the Forum. These are among the few remains of Roman republican architecture; but in the last decades of the Republic simplicity gradually disappeared, and men were eager to display a princely pomp in public and private buildings; witness the first stone theatre erected by Pompey as early as B.C. 55. Then all that went before was eclipsed by the vast works undertaken by Caesar—the Theatre, Amphitheatre, Circus, Basilica Iulia, Forum Caesaris with its temple to Venus Genetrix. These were finished by Augustus, under whom Roman architecture seems to have reached its culminating-point. Augustus, aided by his son-in-law Agrippa, a man who understood building, not only completed his uncle's plans, but added many magnificent structures—the Forum Augusti with its temple to Mars Ultor, the Theatre of Marcellus with its Portico of Octavia, the Mausoleum, and others. Augustus could fairly boast that “having found Rome a city of brick, he left it a city of marble.” The grandest monument of that age, and one of the loftiest creations of Roman art in general, is the Pantheon (q.v.), built by Agrippa, adjacent to, but not connected with, his Thermae, the first of the many works of that kind in Rome. This structure is remarkable as being the only ancient building in Rome of which the walls and arches are now in a complete state of preservation. It was erected by Agrippa in B.C. 27, the original inscription being still retained upon the architrave of its porch. The Pantheon is a circular structure 146 feet and 6 inches in height and inner diameter, with a portico 103 feet long composed of sixteen Corinthian columns, 46 feet in height. Inside the portico at the entrance are two niches which once contained the colossal statues of Agrippa the builder, and of Augustus Caesar. The walls of the building, which are 19 feet thick, support a dome or cupola of vast dimensions, constructed of concrete. At the vertex of the cupola is an opening nearly 30 feet in diameter, lighting the interior.

A still more splendid aspect was imparted to the city by the rebuilding of the old town burned down in Nero's fire, and by the “Golden House” of Nero, a gorgeous pile, the like of which was never seen before, but which was destroyed on the violent death of its creator. The immense and complicated structure, or rather mass of structures, known as the Palace of the Caesars, formed one of the most striking achievements of Roman architectural genius. (See Palatium.) It was, as Professor Lanciani puts it, a labyrinth of “endless suites of apartments, halls, terraces, porticoes, crypts, and cellars,” having its main approach on the Via Sacra. At its arched entrance was a magnificent quadriga cut from a single block of white marble by Lysias. Beyond was a peristyle of fifty-two fluted columns adorned with a host of exquisite statues representing the Danaïdae, and adjacent to a great library. The magnificence of the palace as a whole may be conjectured from a simple summary of the treasures which we know to have been lavished upon the mere vestibule—a hundred and twenty columns of marble and bronze, statuary, bas-reliefs by Bupalus and Anthermus, a quadriga in gilded bronze, exquisite ivory carvings, hundreds of medallions in gold, silver, and bronze, immense collections of gold and silver plate, gems and cameos, and a colossal bronze statue of Augustus, fifty feet in height. (See Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, ch. v.).

Of the luxurious grandeur of private buildings we have ocular proof in the dwelling-houses of Pompeii, a petty country town in comparison with Rome. The progress made under the Flavian emperors is evidenced by Vespasian's amphitheatre, known as the Colosseum, the mightiest Roman ruin in the world; by the ruined Thermae, or Baths, of Titus, and by his triumphal arch, the oldest specimen extant in Rome of this class of monument, itself a creation of the Roman mind. But all previous buildings were surpassed in size and splendour when Trajan's architect, Apollodorus of Damascus, raised the Forum Traianum with its huge Basilica Ulpia and the still surviving Column of Trajan, besides other magnificent structures, including libraries, a great temple, a two-storied gallery, and a triumphal arch. The Basilica had five halls, the central one being 27 yards long, and the whole structure 61 yards wide. It was paved with slabs of rare marble. Only a part of this Forum has yet been excavated, but enough has been brought to light to justify the vivid description of Ammianus Marcellinus (xvi. 10), whose account refers to the time of the emperor Constantine's visit to Rome in the year 356. No less extensive were the works of Hadrian, who, besides adorning Athens with many magnificent buildings, bequeathed to Rome a Temple of Venus and Roma, the most colossal of all Roman temples (see p. 763), and his own Mausoleum (q.v.), the core of which is preserved in the Castle of St. Angelo. While the works of the Antonines already show a gradual decline in architectural feeling, the Triumphal Arch of Severus ushers in the period of decay that set in with the third century. In this closing period of Roman rule the buildings grow more and more gigantic—witness the Baths of Caracalla, those of Diocletian, with his palace at Salona (three miles from Spalatro) in Dalmatia, and the Basilica of Constantine, breathing the last feeble gasp of ancient life. But outside of Rome and Italy, in every part of the enormous Empire to its utmost barbarian borders, bridges, numberless remains of roads and aqueducts and viaducts, ramparts and gateways, palaces, villas, marketplaces and judgment-halls, baths, theatres, amphitheatres, and temples, attest the versatility, majesty, and solidity of Roman architecture, most of whose creations only the rudest shocks have been able to destroy. See Reber, Hist. of Ancient Art, Eng. trans. (N. Y. 1883); Lübke, Geschichte der Kunst, vol. i. (new ed. 1891); Fergusson, Hist. of Architecture, vol. i. (new ed. 1891); and balneae; domus; palatium; templum.