The History of Rome, Book I eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 382 pages of information about The History of Rome, Book I.

The History of Rome, Book I eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 382 pages of information about The History of Rome, Book I.
of those recently discovered at Praeneste, have been, exactly like the —­thesauroi—­of Orchomenos and Mycenae, roofed over with courses of stone placed one above another, gradually overlapping, and closed by a large stone cover.  A very ancient building at the city wall of Tusculum was roofed in the same way, and so was originally the well-house (-tullianum-) at the foot of the Capitol, till the top was pulled down to make room for another building.  The gates constructed on the same system are entirely similar in Arpinum and in Mycenae.  The tunnel which drains the Alban lake(18) presents the greatest resemblance to that of lake Copais.  What are called Cyclopean ring-walls frequently occur in Italy, especially in Etruria, Umbria, Latium, and Sabina, and decidedly belong in point of design to the most ancient buildings of Italy, although the greater portion of those now extant were probably not executed till a much later age, several of them certainly not till the seventh century of the city.  They are, just like those of Greece, sometimes quite roughly formed of large unwrought blocks of rock with smaller stones inserted between them, sometimes disposed in square horizontal courses,(19) sometimes composed of polygonal dressed blocks fitting into each other.  The selection of one or other of these systems was doubtless ordinarily determined by the material, and accordingly the polygonal masonry does not occur in Rome, where in the most ancient times tufo alone was employed for building.  The resemblance in the case of the two former and simpler styles may perhaps be traceable to the similarity of the materials employed and of the object in view in building; but it can hardly be deemed accidental that the artistic polygonal wall-masonry, and the gate with the path leading up to it universally bending to the left and so exposing the unshielded right side of the assailant to the defenders, belong to the Italian fortresses as well as to the Greek.  The facts are significant that in that portion of Italy which was not reduced to subjection by the Hellenes but yet was in lively intercourse with them, the true polygonal masonry was at home, and it is found in Etruria only at Pyrgi and at the towns, not very far distant from it, of Cosa and Saturnia; as the design of the walls of Pyrgi, especially when we take into account the significant name ("towers"), may just as certainly be ascribed to the Greeks as that of the walls of Tiryns, in them most probably there still stands before our eyes one of the models from which the Italians learned how to build their walls.  The temple in fine, which in the period of the empire was called the Tuscanic and was regarded as a kind of style co-ordinate with the various Greek temple-structures, not only generally resembled the Greek temple in being an enclosed space (-cello-) usually quadrangular, over which walls and columns raised aloft a sloping roof, but was also in details, especially in the column itself and its
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The History of Rome, Book I from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.