CHAPTER XIV

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GREEK AND ROMAN ORNAMENT.

Greek ornament—as found on the carved mouldings, friezes, acroteria, antifexes, and capitals, or, as in the painted variety, found on vases, plain mouldings, bands, plates, and other surface decorations, or incised on the bronze cistæ and mirrors—was of a severe and refined order, almost all of which had its birthplace in Egyptian and Assyrian forms, that in the first instances were used in a symbolic sense, but under the hands of Greek artists had lost all their former meaning, and were developed and partly transformed into a wealth of purely æsthetic forms.

[Illustration: Fig. 310.—Greek Frets.]

The simplest forms were frets or the so-called key pattern (Figs. 310, 311, and 315).

The word meander is sometimes applied to the Greek frets; this is not correct, as the word implies a curved line, not a rectangular one.

[Illustration: Fig. 311.—Greek Carved Fret.]

The guilloche, snare-work, or cable ornament, is used on flat bands, and also as the decoration of torus mouldings (Figs. 312 and 313).

[Illustration: Fig. 312.—Treble Guilloche Ornament.]

The Greeks used the honeysuckle pattern in an endless variety of forms both in carving and in painting, examples of which are at Figs. 314 and 315.

The ivy was used very much in borders of their painted vases (Fig. 316).

The ogee moulding was usually decorated with the water-leaf and tongue ornament, and the ovolo with the characteristic egg and tongue, and the round fillets with beads and reels. A fine example of this group of decorated mouldings comes from the Temple of Minerva Polias at Athens (Fig 317).

[Illustration: Fig. 313.—Double Guilloche.]

An elongated type of the egg and tongue comes from the Erectheum (Fig. 318).

[Illustration: Fig. 314.—Anthemion (carved), from Apollo Epicurius.]

The Greeks seldom used large scrolls in ornament; an exception is the scroll ornament from the roof of the Lysikrates monument, and in the Corinthian cauliculi or volutes (see Fig. 302).

The Greek variety of acanthus foliage is seen in the capital from the same monument.

[Illustration: Fig. 315.—Greek Border with Fret Bands.]

Roman architectural ornament was simply Greek with a few variations, not always improvements. It was less refined, but in some cases, especially in the examples of large acanthus scrolls on friezes, panels, and pilasters (Fig. 319), and in their large capitals, the ornament was designed with great skill and virility. They used the softer-leaved variety of acanthus—the mollis—while the Greeks used the spinosus, or prickly-leaved variety.

[Illustration: Fig. 316.—Greek Ivy Meander Border.]

The decorations of the Roman mouldings were less elegant than those of the Greeks, owing to the contours being segments of circles where the Greeks used forms like conic sections, and the execution was less artistic in the Roman mouldings (Figs. 320, 321, 322).

[Illustration: Fig. 317.—Decorated Mouldings from the Temple of Minerva Polias; Ogee Ovolo, and Beads.]

[Illustration: Fig. 318.—The Ovolo, with Egg and Tongue, from the Erectheum.]

The domestic architecture of Greece is guessed at by the remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which, though Roman provincial cities, were in style and decoration a fair reflection of Greek art. The remains of the art found in these cities have been styled Greco-Roman. The destruction of Pompeii was in the year A.D. 79.

[Illustration: Fig. 319.—Ancient Roman Panel, Florence.]

[Illustration: Fig. 320.—Ovolo and Astragal Mouldings; Roman.]

[Illustration: Fig. 321.—Ogee and Fluted Cavetto Moulding; Jupiter Tonans.]

The general arrangement of a Roman house was rectangular in plan, with, and sometimes without, a vestibule in front. The front door opened on a passage called the _prothyrum_ which led to the _atrium_, an open court

## partly roofed; the opening was in the centre, and was called the

_impluvium_; exactly under it in the floor was a tank called the _compluvium_; this received the rain water. In large houses the atrium roof was supported by columns, then the atrium was sometimes called the _cavædium_, at the end of which opened out three rooms the larger and central one was called the _tablinum_, and the two side ones _alæ_; these were the rooms where the family records, documents, histories, deeds, &c., were kept. A passage led from the atrium to the principal private reception-room, called the _peristylium_, which had a roof

## partly open to the sky. This room was the finest in the house, and was

richly decorated with rare marbles, bronzes, and fresco paintings where the owner was wealthy. Round the peristyle were arranged the smaller rooms, such as the parlours called _exedræ_, the chapels _lararia_, and the picture galleries _pinacothecæ_. Kitchens and other offices were behind, as also were the various sleeping-rooms. Some of the rooms were badly lighted, and had to depend for the light from the doors or artificial light, but in some cases windows, rather small in size, were placed high up in the walls.

[Illustration: Fig. 322.—Ogee Decorated, and Astragal; Jupiter Stator.]

The walls of the Pompeian houses were richly decorated in strong colouring, where vermilion, black, green, and orange predominated. The subjects were figure groups, animals, birds, and grotesques of all kinds, encased in fantastic architectural framings (Fig. 323). Sometimes a dead wall of the yard would be painted elaborately to represent a garden. Sculpture also decorated the apartments, the floors were in mosaic, and the ceiling richly panelled and decorated. Roman, Greek, and Pompeian ornament will again be noticed in the second volume under the minor arts of these countries.

[Illustration: Fig. 323.—Mural Painting from Pompeii.]

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