DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.57734#0126
of variety in the profile thereof found unusual ex-
pression.
Avaricious as Tiberius was said to be, he must,
nevertheless, have found himself compelled to con-
tinue the buildings undertaken by his lavish prede-
cessors in the style of the luxurious period in which
he lived; while, in view of the superabundance of sta-
tuary, together with the costly materials, the in-
crustations of the interior with gold, bronze and
marbles, the costliness of the paintings which distin-
guished this architectural age, the palaces on Capreae
must have stood at the height of the times and have
been monuments of imperial splendor.
The palace of a Roman emperor had not, like
a modern princely castle, in addition to a few state-
apartments, some 500 rooms expressed externally by
innumerable windows only. Instead thereof, a few vast
halls and apartments sufficed, together with a limited
number of smaller chambers, for the needs of the
ruler of the world (for the time-being). But these
few areas were fitted out with the choicest splendor;
the most distant races were compelled to furnish
the costliest kinds of marble and of wood for the
requirements of the emperor, and the greatest masters
required to hold their arts at his disposal.
One has but a very faint idea of the development
of pomp in ancient Rome — even with Canina’s grand
work on “Re-constructed Rome”, the Via Appia and
Adrian’s Villa before him. One stands astounded, too,
before the artistic luxury presented to us in the few
remains left to us of the provincial City of Pompeii,
particularly in its latest epoch, namely just before its
destruction. Although the streets of Pompeii were both
dirty and worn out by traffic — like those of the
Naples of to-day — the interiors of the better classes
of houses concealed high-class splendours and a mass
of works of high art, while even in the smaller habi-
tations art on a more modest scale had found a home.
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