Print this article

Alex Boethius and J.B. Ward-Perkins: Etruscan and Roman Archi­
tecture. The Pelican History of Art — Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1970.
From A.W. Lawrence’s ‘Greek Architecture’ of 1957 to the
present volume, and including these, only six deal with architecture
only. This distinction is an assessment of the crucial character of
the architectural periods dealt with. Of such really key periods,
perhaps the most important in the line of progenitors of our own
architectural thinking, the Italian quattro- and cinquecento are still
in the preparatory stage. If deferment is a measure of importance,
the penultimate place allotted to Roman and pre-Roman Italic
architecture involves a value judgment with which one can only
agree.
Not surprisingly in our environment-conscious times, the co­
authors chosen are both well known for their interest in planning
and urban design. Dr Boethius has given in his part of the work,
which carries the story from earliest beginnings to the dawn of the
Augustan age, a running commentary on town design which is not
only most welcome and necessary, but also stands in pleasant
contrast to the comparative (and nearly complete) neglect that was
displayed by the author of the first purely architectural book in the
series, A.W. Lawrence’s ‘Greek architecture’.
The discussion begins with late Neolithic times, and gives only a
slight sketch of Bronze Age developments, though, as we shall see,
these may found to be of extreme importance. The Archaic centuries
(for reasons better than more convenience we apply the terms of
Greek history to contemporary Italic history too) are o f course
entirely under Etruscan sway. The difficult thing to decide is just
how great the Greek share in this archaic Etrusco-ltalic architecture
was. The problem o f the later. Late Republican direct influence of
Greece is the one which engages the author’s attention above all else,
but the nature of the ‘consuetudo Tuscanica’ is not very autochtho­
nous either, and if we call it an Etruscan synthesis as against the
absorption of Hellenistic art later, which should properly be called
the Roman synthesis, both are palpably absorption phenomena and
beset with all the theoretical difficulties of these. The author, it
seems, accepts a shade too readily Vitruvius’ thesis of the Tuscan
‘consuetudo’ as a well-fused entity. It may well be argued that
precisely because pre-Hellenistic Italic and Roman architecture were
still very much a conglomerate, with sometimes conflicting elements
still disrupting it, the enthusiastic acceptance of successive further
54
Grecifying practices was made easier. Structurally, according to the
author, little has been added to the stock-in-trade of Italic by the
Etruscans, a view somewhat contrary to the hitherto accepted one,
namely that vaulting was an Etruscan contribution. Also in town
planning, the author finds little to distinguish, in spite of many
quoted examples of ancient views to the contrary, a ‘grown’ type of
Etruscan city from its Archaic Greek counterpart. He finds the most
original Etrusco-Italic element of the Tuscan style in the atrium-type
houseplan and the wide-fronted, high-podiummed temple, both with
strong axial possibilities. This is certainly not contemporary Greek,
but is it as unquestionably Etruscan as the author suggests? First of
all, the non-frontality of the temple position is mainly Doric, and
predominantly Mainland. Ionic detail as well as orientation shows
much more frontal emphasis (quite apart from the axial position of
the altar which is observed throughout the Greek world); the
comparatively non-canonic acceptance of more than six columns
in front, and the deep spatial richness of the entrance porch ;are
also strong frontal factors, and it is interesting to note that even
Archaic Doric in Magna Graecia and Sicily displays similar tenden­
cies, though the peristyle character is still impeccably preserved.
This, we nay take it. is a very early influence of the Italic environ­
ment upon Greek colonial architecture. It is not the only thing they
have in common, and at variance from Mainland Doric. The Italic
manner demands, and often gets, a multiplicity of temples in any
given town, three being apparently the canon; and while there is no
real archaeological evidence for this observance, there is evidence
of triple cellas with a common front porch, something which helps
to explain the greatly extended frontal width, and thus frontal
emphasis, of the Tuscan temple. Multiple cellas do not occur in
Greek temples, but close coordination to temples of comparable
importance does occur, very clearly, in the Western colonies: they
jume in parallel pairs in Paestum and Selinus (emphatically there)
and at Akragas they form an end-to-end chain. These are certainly
no imported (.reck suggestions. One is forced to admit a certain
vciy Fi i jo md powerful stock o f 'I ta lic ’ ideas at woik in archaic and
even early C lassic times, including the Greek colonies. The question
is, where does this originate? Just as a suggestion, we may revert
now to the undoubtedly strong Bronze Age ‘koine’ of tholos-dromos
tombs which links Italy with Greece and, indeed, with the whole
Mediterranean
an undoubtedly early manifestation of axiality,
eclipsed on the Mainland to virtual extinction, less so in the East,
55
and perhaps least subdued in Italy - which would explain its
ultimate come-back in such vigorous manner in the latter two
areas. Admittedly, contributory evidence from the history of
religious cults may be difficult to marshal. But another intriguing
coincidence comes to mind too: the unexplained syndromic occur­
rence of curvilinear architectural forms (vaults for instance, and/or
curvilinear plan shapes) with axiality. Guido v. Kaschnitz-Weinberg
has suggested that cave architecture is the origin of frontality,
since caves have only their fronts as exterior expression. It may be
useful to think of this obvious truth in our context.
The author’s main concern, however, is the ‘consuetudo Italica’
in its Hellenized version, in which he sees the most truly Roman
power to create fusion. He naturally connects it with the eastward
expansion of Roman power in the second century BC, but also notes
its coincidence with the invention of Roman concrete, the ‘opus
caementitium.’ This latter was more of a gradual development, from
early rubble work ( ‘caem entum ’ means unhewn stone, and NOT our
own ‘cement’!) by increasing the proportion of mortar until it
predominated, and necessitated the erection of timber framework
first, from which the author concludes that this was a proper field for
Roman ability to ‘organise the carpenters'. It seems however that
another aspect may be more important: not the skilled work of the
carpenters but the unskilled work of hordes of slaves which was
ultimately the factor that made Roman concrete at all possible, and
it was the abundance of slaves from wars that is at the bottom of it
all. Seen in this light, the concrete ‘revolution’ looks more like a re­
lapse into lazier ways of thinking rather than a revolutionary sharpen­
ing of wits: a problematical peice of ‘progress'. This view seems more
in harmony with what we know and how we evaluate the other
events of the period, generally a decline of free institutions and free
habits of thinking. And the sudden emergence of tremendous axial
schemes should be seen in this context.
The greatest of these, the sanctuary of the Fortuna Primigenia
was erected on the hillside overlooking the town of Praeneste, a
place developed by Sulla for his veterans of Eastern campaigns,
and obviously modelled on, though far surpassing them in accuracy
and dogmatic correctness, such schemes as the Asklepieion at Kos
and the sancturary of the Athana Lindea, both in the Rhodian orbit.
(These in. turn are the near-axial interpretations of the general hill­
side monumentality of Pergamene planning.) The author deals with
these instances of axiality as identical in principle with what was to
be expected from the frontal possibilities of Italic temple archi­
tecture. But there is a distinct difference between these land-em­
bracing open schemes, and the 'intimate' axiality of the templeforum relationship, or even more the axiality of the atrial house plan.
Pergamon-based axiality has tew points of contact with the interior
axial schemes which were to dominate the later Roman scene so
completely: the most obvious of these contact points is the theatre,
potentially an axial arrangement ever since the 5th century BC Dion­
ysian drama, out increasingly ‘interior,’ just as the axial development
of agorai also goes hand in hand with ever increasing visual intro­
version. The great Greek precedent for this ‘interior axiality’ is the
Didymaion near Miletus, an Ionic masterpiece — but whatever we say
about it, it seems that all roads, even from Rome and its axiality,
lead back to the Eastern shores of the Aegean! If the Italics were not
the creators of either type of axiality, they certainly provided a very
fertile ground for both o f them.
In his chapters on the Augustan and post-Augustan architecture
of pagan Rome, Dr Ward-Perkins also stipulates a ‘revolution’ — that
of Hadrian, or rather his architects. He sees in the suddenly desired
complexity o f vault forms a departure into spatial architecture made
possible solely by the development of more assurance in concrete,
a revolutionary dissatisfaction with the enforced serenity of Augustan
Classicism and its orthodoxy in marble; and, strange as it may seem,
Hadrian’s Rococo fancy at Tivoli does have, in spite o f its obvious
pleasure-garden-for-the-rich character, that kind of canon-breaking
quality which comes nearer to the workings of a free mind. Each
self-sufficient unit of the Tivoli villa is axial in and within itself,
while they all maintain completely free, non-axial exterior relations.
It was this ease of setting that distinguished it, and such follow-ups
as the Villa at Piazza Armerina in Sicily, from the oppressive thor­
oughgoing multiple axialities of the whole and parts o f Diocletian’s
military palace at Spalato. It is Dr Ward-Perkin’s greatest contribut­
ion to have revealed, by his impartial treatment of even hitherto
obscure provincial focal points of Roman architecture, how it all lost
its Imperial coherence but produced a vital and fruitful provincial
"koine’ from which further development could start — not unlike the
story of spoken languages.
I. V. Par so It.
57