of the
Doric order.

TUMULI, mounds, usually sepulchral.

TYPHONIA, small Egyptian temples.

VELARIUM, a great awning.

VESTIBULE, the outer hall or ante-room.

VOLUTES, in Classic architecture, the curled ornaments
of the Ionic capital.

VOUSSOIRS, the wedge-shaped stones of which arches are
made.

N.B. For the explanation of other technical words found in this
volume, consult the Glossary given with the companion volume on Gothic
and Renaissance Architecture.

[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI.]

[Illustration]

ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

Architecture may be described as building at its best, and when we
talk of the architecture of any city or country we mean its best,
noblest, or most beautiful buildings; and we imply by the use of the
word that these buildings possess merits which entitle them to rank as
works of art.

The architecture of the civilised world can be best understood by
considering the great buildings of each important nation separately.
The features, ornaments, and even forms of ancient buildings differed
just as the speech, or at any rate the literature, differed. Each
nation wrote in a different language, though the books may have been
devoted to the same aims; and precisely in the same way each nation
built in a style of its own, even if the buildings may have been
similar in the purposes they had to serve. The division of the subject
into the architecture of Egypt, Greece, Rome, &c., is therefore the
most natural one to follow.

But certain broad groups, rising out of peculiarities of a physical
nature, either in the buildings themselves or in the conditions under
which they were erected, can hardly fail to be suggested by a general
view of the subject. Such, for example, is the fourfold division to
which the reader's attention will now be directed.

All buildings, it will be found, can be classed under one or other of
four great divisions, each distinguished by a distinct mode of
building, and each also occupying a distinct place in history. The
first series embraces the buildings of the Egyptians, the Persians,
and the Greeks, and was brought to a pitch of the highest perfection
in Greece during the age of Pericles. All the buildings erected in
these countries during the many centuries which elapsed from the
earliest Egyptian to the latest Greek works, however they may have