like the baths of Caracalla. Yet who has copied the
Flavian amphitheatre; who erects an edifice after the style of the
Thermae? All artists, however, copy the Parthenon. That, and not the
colossal monuments of the Caesars, reappears in the capitals of Europe,
and stimulates the genius of a Michael Angelo or a Christopher Wren.

The flourishing period of Greek architecture was during the period from
Pericles to Alexander,--one hundred and thirteen years. The Macedonian
conquest introduced more magnificence and less simplicity. The Roman
conquest accelerated the decline in severe taste, when different orders
began to be used indiscriminately.

In this state the art passed into the hands of the masters of the world,
and they inaugurated a new era in architecture. The art was still
essentially Greek, although the Romans derived their first knowledge
from the Etruscans. The Cloaca Maxima, or Great Sewer, was built during
the reign of the second Tarquin,--the grandest monument of the reign of
the kings. It is not probable that temples and other public buildings in
Rome were either beautiful or magnificent until the conquest of Greece,
after which Grecian architects were employed. The Romans adopted the
Corinthian style, which they made even more ornamental; and by the
successful combination of the Etruscan arch with the Grecian column they
laid the foundation of a new and original style, susceptible of great
variety and magnificence. They entered into architecture with the
enthusiasm of their teachers, but in their passion for novelty lost
sight of the simplicity which is the great fascination of a Doric
temple. Says Memes:--

"They [the Romans] deemed that lightness and grace were to be attained
not so much by proportion between the vertical and the horizontal as by
the comparative slenderness of the former. Hence we see a poverty in
Roman architecture in the midst of profuse ornament. The great error was
a constant aim to lessen the diameter while they increased the elevation
of the columns. Hence the massive simplicity and severe grandeur of the
ancient Doric disappear in the Roman, the characteristics of the order
being frittered down into a multiplicity of minute details."

When the Romans used the Doric at all, they used a base for the column,
which was never done at Athens. They also altered the Doric capital,
which cannot be improved. Again, most of the Grecian Doric temples were
peripteral,--surrounded with pillar