ILLUSTRATED HANDBOOKS OF ART HISTORY
OF ALL AGES
ARCHITECTURE
CLASSIC AND EARLY CHRISTIAN
BY PROFESSOR T. ROGER SMITH, F.R.I.B.A.
AND
JOHN SLATER, B.A., F.R.I.B.A.
THE PARTHENON AT ATHENS, AS IT WAS IN THE TIME OF PERICLES, circa B.C. 438.
ILLUSTRATED HANDBOOKS OF ART HISTORY
ARCHITECTURE
CLASSIC AND EARLY CHRISTIAN
BY T. ROGER SMITH, F.R.I.B.A.
Professor of Architecture, University Coll. London
AND
JOHN SLATER, B.A., F.R.I.B.A.
ATRIUM OF A ROMAN MANSION.
LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET
1882.
[All rights reserved.]
LONDON. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
PREFACE.
This handbook is intended to give such an outline of theArchitecture of the Ancient World, and of that of Christendomdown to the period of the Crusades, as, withoutattempting to supply the minute information requiredby the professional student, may give a general idea ofthe works of the great building nations of Antiquityand the Early Christian times. Its chief object has beento place information on the subject within the reach ofthose persons of literary or artistic education who desireto become in some degree acquainted with Architecture.All technicalities which could be dispensed with havebeen accordingly excluded; and when it has been unavoidablethat a technical word or phrase should occur,an explanation has been added either in the text or inthe glossary; but as this volume and the companion oneon Gothic and Renaissance Architecture are, in effect,two divisions of the same work, it has not been thoughtnecessary to repeat in the glossary given with this partthe words explained in that prefixed to the other.
In treating so very wide a field, it has been felt thatthe chief prominence should be given to that greatsequence of architectural styles which form the linksof a chain connecting the architecture of modern Europewith the earliest specimens of the art. Egypt, Assyria,and Persia combined to furnish the foundation uponwhich the splendid architecture of the Greeks was based.[viii]Roman architecture was founded on Greek models with theaddition of Etruscan construction, and was for a timeuniversally prevalent. The break-up of the RomanEmpire w