days was to be an engineer, architect, and
artist! Semper, from whose translation we are quoting, remarks that
the luxurious "motive" of such an erection naturally arose from the
desire to make use of the mass of artistic materials acquired by
conquest, and the effort to reduce them to certain architectural
principles already accepted.[449]

That Alexander did not purposely destroy the Persian embroideries is
evident from the fact that Lucullus speaks of them 200 years later.

Rome accepted and adopted all the Oriental uses of hangings, in the
Temple and the house for temporary festive occasions.

By both Greeks and Romans hangings were used in triumphal processions,
covering immense moving cars or draping the temporary buildings which
lined the avenues of their progress. Also the funeral pyres which
Greece and Rome copied from Assyria were hung with splendid materials
and embroideries. Without describing one of these awful erections, it
is impossible to give any idea of how much artistic treasure was
thrown into the flames which consumed the remains of a great man. The
funeral pyre dedicated by Alexander to his friend Hephaestion recalls
that erected by Sardanapalus in one of the courts of his own palace,
on which he perished, surrounded by his wives and his treasures.
Hephaestion's catafalque was built of inflammable materials, 250 feet
high, raised in many stories, and hung with pictorial tapestries,
painted and embroidered. Each story was adorned with images of ivory
and gold. In the upper story were enormous hollow figures of Sirens,
filled with singers, who chanted the funeral odes.[450] It is to be
hoped that they were released before the conflagration.

The records of such extravagant funeral ceremonies teach us how much
of human thought, how much of art and beauty which had helped to
civilize the world, were torn from the places they were intelligently
designed to decorate, heaped up by the conquerors, and as ruthlessly
spent and destroyed for the boast of a day.[451]

Christian Rome adopted the traditions of Pagan decoration, and
introduced them in her worship, processions, and shows. A great
religious procession like that of the "Corpus Domini" in our own
times, has reminded us of a Roman triumph. The baldachini and the
banners; the torches; the streets, festooned with draperies; even the
Pagan emblems, which have been converted into Christian symbolism--all
these were the echoes of classical days; but