ROMAN ORNAMENT.
THE real greatness of the Romans is rather to be seen in their palaces, baths,
theatres, aqueducts,
and other works of public utility, than in their temple architecture, which
being the expression of a
religion borrowed from the Greeks, and in which probably they had little
faith, exhibits a corre-
sponding want of earnestness and art-worship.
In the Greek temple it is everywhere apparent that the struggle was to arrive
at a perfection
worthy of the gods. In the Roman temple the aim was self-glorification. From
the base of the
column to the apex of the pediment every part is overloaded with ornament,
tending rather to dazzle
by quantity than to excite admiration by the quality of the work. The Greek
temples when painted
were as ornamented as those of the Romans, but with a very different result.
The ornament was so
arranged that it threw a coloured bloom over the whole structure, and in
no way disturbed the
exquisitely designed surfaces which received it.
The Romans ceased to value the general proportions of the structure and the
contours of the
moulded surfaces, which were entirely destroyed by the elaborate surface-modelling
of the ornaments
carved on them; and these ornaments do not grow naturally from the surface,
but are applied
on it.  The acanthus leaves under the modillions, and those round the bell
of the Corinthian
capitals, are placed one before the other most unartistically.  They are
not even bound together
by the necking at the top of the shaft, but rest upon it.  Unlike in this
the Egyptian capital,
where the stems of the flowers round the bell are continued through the necking,
and at the same
time represent a beauty and express a truth.
The fatal facilities which the Roman system of decoration gives for manufacturing
ornament,
by applying acanthus leaves to any form and in any direction, is the chief
cause of the invasion
of this ornament into most modern works.   It requires so little thought,
and is so completely a
manufacture, that it has encouraged architects in an indolent neglect of
one of their especial
provinces, and the interior decorations of buildings have fallen into hands
most unfitted to supply
their place.
In the use of the acanthus leaf the Romans showed but little art. They received
it from the
Greeks beautifully conventionalised; they went much nearer to the general
outline, but exaggerated
the surface-decoration.  The Greeks confined themselves to expressing the
principle of the foliation
of the leaf, and bestowed all their care in the delicate undulations of its
surface.
The ornament engraved at the head of the chapter is typical of all Roman
ornament, which
consists universally of a scroll growing out of another scroll, encircling
a flower or group of leaves,
This example, however, is constructed on Greek principles, but is wanting
in Greek refinement.
In Greek ornament the scrolls grow out of each other in the same way, but
they are much more
delicate at the point of junction.  The acanthus leaf is also seen, as it
were, in side elevation.
The purely Roman method of using the acanthus leaf is seen in the Corinthian
capitals, and in the
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