DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.44946#0017
General Preface to Division II.
V
passing importance. Roman architects in these Asiatic provinces, or perhaps better,
Syrian architects under Roman sway, were far freer in their handling of the art of the
period than were the Imperial architects of the Capital. They treated the classic orders
with a freedom more like that shown in the architecture of the Renaissance, and employed
Roman construction and classic ornament in ways that were not dreamed of in Italy
before the sixteenth century. We meet European critics who characterize the architecture
of the Roman period in Syria as debased, and indeed there are monuments that merit
such criticism; but, on the other hand, we find delicate bits of decorative details in
Syria that are fully as refined as the best work of the period in Rome. And there
are in this Syrian architecture under Roman rule, examples of clever adjustment of
ornamental details to the exigences of construction that far surpass anything of the same
sort found in Rome. The employment of a major and a minor order, or the use of
orders on three different scales, as exemplified in such buildings as the Propylaea of
Gerasa and Philadelphia, the application of the classic entablature to an archivolt,
which seems to have originated in Syria, the superposition of niches adorned with
colonettes and entablatures, the breaking of pediments, the combining of curved with
right-lined surfaces, all manifest greater skill in the manipulation of architectural details
than is shown in any extant Roman buildings in Europe. These effects may be
beautiful or not, according to the taste of the critic, but they are not debased, except
in the sense that all Roman architecture is a debasement of Greek; for they show
inventive genius, active talent, and no tendency to servile reproduction of pre-existing
forms. There are other critics who are prone to judge the architecture of the Roman
period, as if the monuments in Italy and in Southern France were the only existing
examples of their time, who take the concrete cross-vaults of the Baths of Caracalla,
and the stone tunnel-vaults of the Temple of Diana at Nimes, as the crowning works
of Roman vaulting, and omit from their discussions the cross-vaults built of dressed
stone without mortar, that builders of the Roman period constructed in Syria. M. Choisy 1
gives a diagram, and a very brief description of the Roman dome, set on pendentives
and built entirely of dressed stone laid dry, that is to be seen in the baths at Djerash.
He recognizes in it a forerunner of the Byzantine dome; but this is only one of the
many monuments in Syria which show what complete mastery the Syrian builders of
the time had attained in stone vaulting and in stereotomy.
Classical architecture had flourished in Syria much longer than in Rome; it had
known three centuries of development in the hands of Oriental master builders, and it
is probable that the Romans learned much from the buildings of Xenainos, the architect
of Antioch under Seleukos Nikator, and from the work of Ptolemy’s architects at
Philadelphia, after their conquest of Syria. Trajan’s great architect, Apollodoros, came
from Damascus, and I have no doubt that Syria contributed as much to Rome in
architecture as she did in religious cults. Syria may be regarded as one of the sources
of Roman architecture, and it may be assumed that the architecture of the Roman
period, in Syria itself, kept in advance of the art in Rome because of the advantage
in its point of departure.
It is a great pity that so little remains of the Hellenistic architecture of the
Seleukid kingdom in Syria, that Antioch has been so completely annihilated, and that
L'Art de batir chez les Byzantins^ A. Choisy, Paris, 1883. pp· 88 90, figg. 104·) IO5, Pl· XV·
V
passing importance. Roman architects in these Asiatic provinces, or perhaps better,
Syrian architects under Roman sway, were far freer in their handling of the art of the
period than were the Imperial architects of the Capital. They treated the classic orders
with a freedom more like that shown in the architecture of the Renaissance, and employed
Roman construction and classic ornament in ways that were not dreamed of in Italy
before the sixteenth century. We meet European critics who characterize the architecture
of the Roman period in Syria as debased, and indeed there are monuments that merit
such criticism; but, on the other hand, we find delicate bits of decorative details in
Syria that are fully as refined as the best work of the period in Rome. And there
are in this Syrian architecture under Roman rule, examples of clever adjustment of
ornamental details to the exigences of construction that far surpass anything of the same
sort found in Rome. The employment of a major and a minor order, or the use of
orders on three different scales, as exemplified in such buildings as the Propylaea of
Gerasa and Philadelphia, the application of the classic entablature to an archivolt,
which seems to have originated in Syria, the superposition of niches adorned with
colonettes and entablatures, the breaking of pediments, the combining of curved with
right-lined surfaces, all manifest greater skill in the manipulation of architectural details
than is shown in any extant Roman buildings in Europe. These effects may be
beautiful or not, according to the taste of the critic, but they are not debased, except
in the sense that all Roman architecture is a debasement of Greek; for they show
inventive genius, active talent, and no tendency to servile reproduction of pre-existing
forms. There are other critics who are prone to judge the architecture of the Roman
period, as if the monuments in Italy and in Southern France were the only existing
examples of their time, who take the concrete cross-vaults of the Baths of Caracalla,
and the stone tunnel-vaults of the Temple of Diana at Nimes, as the crowning works
of Roman vaulting, and omit from their discussions the cross-vaults built of dressed
stone without mortar, that builders of the Roman period constructed in Syria. M. Choisy 1
gives a diagram, and a very brief description of the Roman dome, set on pendentives
and built entirely of dressed stone laid dry, that is to be seen in the baths at Djerash.
He recognizes in it a forerunner of the Byzantine dome; but this is only one of the
many monuments in Syria which show what complete mastery the Syrian builders of
the time had attained in stone vaulting and in stereotomy.
Classical architecture had flourished in Syria much longer than in Rome; it had
known three centuries of development in the hands of Oriental master builders, and it
is probable that the Romans learned much from the buildings of Xenainos, the architect
of Antioch under Seleukos Nikator, and from the work of Ptolemy’s architects at
Philadelphia, after their conquest of Syria. Trajan’s great architect, Apollodoros, came
from Damascus, and I have no doubt that Syria contributed as much to Rome in
architecture as she did in religious cults. Syria may be regarded as one of the sources
of Roman architecture, and it may be assumed that the architecture of the Roman
period, in Syria itself, kept in advance of the art in Rome because of the advantage
in its point of departure.
It is a great pity that so little remains of the Hellenistic architecture of the
Seleukid kingdom in Syria, that Antioch has been so completely annihilated, and that
L'Art de batir chez les Byzantins^ A. Choisy, Paris, 1883. pp· 88 90, figg. 104·) IO5, Pl· XV·