and cornice: the space between the caps is occupied by a panel, all which parts are in bronze.
A large wooden frame, composed of a series of mouldings, which are one foot seven inches
and seven tenths wide, encloses six (not five as represented by Messrs. Taylor and Cresy),
bronze " latrated" panels, thus admitting air into the interior of the building and keeping
up a ventilation, even when the doors are closed. If these several parts are in their original
state would one portion be of wood ? Are the profiles of the mouldings, whether of the cornice,
the caps, or the bases of the same character, as in other ancient monuments ? Do not the
corona and cavetto of the cornice bespeak a less remote period of art ? Do they agree with the
profiles of the bronze gates themselves, which are worthy of a Greek origin ? These impressions
lead to the conclusion, that the restorers of the Pantheon, guided by some example now no
longer in existence, adopted the doors and latrated panels over them from some ancient
monument, and filled up the vacant space by an arrangement, such as we now see it.
It will be perceived that the faces of the doors are composed of thin plates of metal,
and that the paneling on the inside and outside somewhat differ, as reason would suggest-
for when the doors are thrown open the inner face folds back against the wall, and when closed
the gates of course could only be seen from under the portico, consequently the inside is
plainer than the out. The rosettes and studs are certainly somewhat capricious, and are not
composed in that severe style, which pervades the rest of the doors; they may possibly be
modern.* The great projection of the ogee moulding to the small panels beyond the face of the
panel itself tempts me to think, that originally there may have been a string of pearls within
the ogee, as in the door from the temple of Remus, illustrated in the following plate.
PLATE XX.
BRONZE DOOR FROM THE TEMPLE OF REMUS-ROME.
This bronze door exists in a church in the Campo Vaccino, dedicated by Pope Felix iv
to Saints Cosmo and Damiano, and which is generally supposed by Antiquarians to have
been the ancient temple of Remus, situate in the fourth region of ancient Rome, but the
floor of which has been raised some feet to suit the accumulation of ruins and soil, which
now leaves the ancient level of the Roman Forum twenty or thirty feet below the surface of the
Campo Vaccino.      This is a most valuable example, as being       incontestibly antique - the
contour of the mouldings and design of the bead prove it a work of the purest ages of architecture,
if not of Grecian origin. The centre panel consists of a single plate of bronze, in this respect
differing from the door of the Pantheon ; the margin also is put together in a different manner,
as the plan beneath shews. The rosettes, which I have figured, no longer exist, but their position
is evident from the holes by means of which they were fastened to the styles, and their size
was ascertained by the surface, which they covered, being rougher than the part, which was
exposed and seen: an elegant panel from top to bottom, five inches four tenths wide, and
which seems to be the replum of Vitruvius, covered the meeting joint of the centre styles.
It is worthy of remark that neither in this nor in the Pantheon door, do the ancients appear
acquainted with the rebated joints used by the moderns.
0 Cicero, in his sixth oration against Verres, already quoted p. 9, accuses him, that he did not hesitate to take the golden
knobs, or bosses from the doors (of the temple of Minerva at Syracuse) which were numerous and heavy, not that he delighted
in their beauty but in their weight.