Architecture Classic and Early Christian   By: T. Roger Smith (1830-1903)

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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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 the Architecture of the Ancient World, and of that of Christendom down to the period of the Crusades, as, without attempting to supply the minute information required by the professional student, may give a general idea of the works of the great building nations of Antiquity and the Early Christian times. Its chief object has been to place information on the subject within the reach of those persons of literary or artistic education who desire to become in some degree acquainted with Architecture. All technicalities which could be dispensed with have been accordingly excluded; and when it has been unavoidable that a technical word or phrase should occur, an explanation has been added either in the text or in the glossary; but as this volume and the companion one on Gothic and Renaissance Architecture are, in effect, two divisions of the same work, it has not been thought necessary to repeat in the glossary given with this part the words explained in that prefixed to the other.

In treating so very wide a field, it has been felt that the chief prominence should be given to that great sequence of architectural styles which form the links of a chain connecting the architecture of modern Europe with the earliest specimens of the art. Egypt, Assyria, and Persia combined to furnish the foundation upon which the splendid architecture of the Greeks was based. Roman architecture was founded on Greek models with the addition of Etruscan construction, and was for a time universally prevalent. The break up of the Roman Empire was followed by the appearance of the Basilican, the Byzantine, and the Romanesque phases of Christian art; and, later on, by the Saracenic. These are the styles on which all mediæval and modern European architecture has been based, and these accordingly have furnished the subjects to which the reader's attention is chiefly directed. Such styles as those of India, China and Japan, which lie quite outside this series, are noticed much more briefly; and some matters such, for example, as prehistoric architecture which in a larger treatise it would have been desirable to include, have been entirely left out for want of room.