were subservient
to line; pure Greek and purest Roman, Gothic and early Renaissance,
the best of the Louis, Directoire and First Empire, Chippendale, Adam,
Sheraton and Heppelwhite.

The bad styles are those where ornamentations envelop and conceal line
as in late Renaissance, the Italian Rococo, the Portuguese Barrocco
(baroque), the curving and contorted degenerate forms of Louis XIV and
XV and the Victorian--all examples of the same thing, _i.e._: perfect
line achieved, acclaimed, flattered, losing its head and going to the
bad in extravagant exuberance of over-ornamentation.

There is a psychic connection between the _outline_ of furniture and
the _inline_ of man.

Perfect line, chaste ornamentation, the elimination of the superfluous
was the result of the Greek idea of restraint--self-control in all
things and in all expression. The immense authority of the law-makers
enforced simple austerity as the right and only setting for the daily
life of an Athenian, worthy of the name. There were exceptions, but as
a rule all citizens, regardless of their wealth and station, had
impressed upon them the civic obligation to express their taste for
the beautiful, in the erecting of public buildings in their city of
Athens, monuments of perfect art, by God-like artists, Phidias,
Apelles, and Praxiteles.

CHAPTER XV

CONTINUATION OF PERIODS IN FURNITURE

From Greece, culture, borne on the wings of the arts, moved on to
Rome, and at first, Roman architecture and decoration reproduced only
the classic Greek types; but, as Rome grew, her arts took on another
and very different outline, showing how the history of decorative art
is to a fascinating degree the history of customs and manners.

Rome became prosperous, greedy, powerful and imperious, enslaving the
civilised world, and, not having the restraining laws of Greece, waxed
luxurious and licentious, and chafed, in consequence, at the austere
rigidity of the Greek style of furnishing.

We know that in the time of Augustus Caesar the Romans had wonderful
furniture of the most costly kind, made from cedar, pine, elm, olive,
ash, ilex, beach and maple, carved to represent the legs, feet, hoofs
and heads of animals, as in earlier days was the fashion in Assyria,
Egypt and Greece, while intricate carvings in relief, showed Greek
subjects taken from mythology and legend. Caesar, it is related, owned
a table costing a million sesterces ($40,000).

But gradually the