The Romans [antikvár]

THE ROMANS. 61. The design of the Greek temple, in its highest perfection, was, as we have seen, a gradual development of the dwelling-house. This simple, necessary, and logical growth of artistic perfection would be looked for in vain in Roman sacred architecture. The numerous indigenous and foreign elements observable in the general development of that nation have produced a variety of forms in their sacred edifices which makes the methodical evolution of a purely artistic principle, like that of Greek architecture, impossible. It is true that all the forms of the Greek temple described by us also occur among the Romans ; at the same time essential differences occur, owing to the above-mentioned mixture of indigenous and Greek elements in the national life of the Romans. In speaking of the architecture of the Roman temple we therefore shall have to consider three points—viz., firstly, the requirements of the original Italian religion ; secondly, the introduction of Greek forms ; and, lastly, the reciprocal influence of Roman taste and culture on the forms borrowed from the Greeks, and the modification of the latter resulting therefrom. Concerning the religious ideas of the old Italian tribes, we have to bear in mind that their notions of the Deity did not approach the human type as nearly as did those of the more artistic Greeks. The rational and reflecting Romans considered the gods as the rulers of human affairs and the prototypes of human virtues. Even the names of thé old Italitin deities were identical with those of the particular phases of moral and physical life protected by them ; hence the symbolism and want of individuality of type in Roman mythology. The notion of the god as an idealized man into which the Greeks had developed