Extracts from feveral letters concerning the Roman antiquities, and the temples of the ancients.

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FTER all the wonders that have been related of the temples of Jupiter Olympius, Diana of Ephefus, Serapis, &c. it may well be queftioned, if, upon the whole, thofe ancient edifices furpaffed the modern churches in grandeur and riches. To determine the point, it will be neceffary to take a view of the temples built in the plains, and thofe erected in great cities.

Traverse the open countries of Greece, Peloponnefus, and the adjacent Mles, and you will every where meet with little edifices, faid to be temples; fome half in ruins, others in tolerable good condition, without any thing material to diftinguish them; no external ornaments, moft of them brick, and the best of them finished in a dome or roof, ornamented with some flight fculpture. A few indeed there are furrounded with groves, confecrated by fuperftition, or defigned to fhade the worshippers of the idol; all of them placed in defarts, uninhabited, except by here and there a hermit, who makes it his whole ftudy to amuse travellers with fables. It is not therefore among thefe ftructures that you are to look for the magnificence of the Grecian temples.

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The Romans, who were also accustomed to erect temples in the country, derived all their deities, celeftial, terreftrial, and infernal, from Greek origin. There was not

a fingle canton of Attica, or Theffaly, where fome metamorphofis had not been wrought, or fome divine combat happened. Thefe exploits ferved to extend fuperftition, and multiply the monuments that were to perpetuate it. But the Romans, who were the petty imitators of the Greeks, fell short of their masters in the dimenfions of their infulated temples.

It may perhaps be faid, that we give the name of temples to edifices, which in ancient times were never confidered as fuch; but without entering into a difcuffion, let it fuffice, that the buildings we are speaking of, were facred and public; ftill retaining their first furniture of itatues, altars, and tripods. We meet with nothing more effential to the ceremonious part of worship among the larger temples of Athens and Corinth. If no other structures were to be comprehended in the denomination of temples, but those whofe extent is to be measured by acres and ftadia, it must be admitted that Rome herfelf, the city of all the Gods, had no more than three; thofe of Jupiter Capitolinus, of Peace, and the Pantheon. Thefe are the only ones that were above the ordinary fize; the last still subfifting, is but 144 feet in diameter. Time has alfo fpared the temple of Fortuna Virilis, and of Vesta: the one is an oblong fquare, the other round: the Pantheon will hold them both.

We know to what heights the bold imaginations of the ancient

architects afcended, in their profane edifices, as theatres, baths, and Bafilicæ. But we must examine their city temples, to know if they did as much in honour to their Gods.

Most of the antiquarians, who have treated of ancient temples, have been more curious in defcribing their magnificence, than in fixing their dimenfions. In what they have faid upon this head, we have difcovered two marks of inaccuracy, out of which has arifen the falfe idea that has prevailed of the facred edifices of Greece and Rome. 1. They apply to temples in general, what appertained only to fome particular ones. 2. They diftinguish not between the temple and its appendages. They tell us, that in the front of thefe temples, there was always a fpacious court, called the Area, where merchants vended the neceffaries for facrifices, offerings, and libations; that there was befides a fountain, for purifying the facrificators and victims; that from the Area you paffed into a court called Atrium; thence to the Veftibulum, and then into the body of the building, named Cella, where were the Gods, altars, &c. This Cella confisted of three principal divifions: the Bafilica, anfwering our nave; the Adytum, like our fanctuary; and the Tribunal, where ftood the ftatue of the deity whofe name the temple bore. They speak of the Penetrale and Sacrarium, and are not a little perplexed about the diftribution of these several parts. If this description holds good of the temple of Diana Ephefea, or of Jupiter Olympius, it cannot of moft of the reft.

Ancient Rome was of immenfe extent; but confidering the great

number of temples contained within it, we must suppose it at three times as large as it really was, if all those temples were furnished with Porticoes, Prodromi, &c. It is certain, that during the first fix centuries of Rome, the temples were no larger, nor more magnificent, than the houses of the citizens, which were but of one floor; their poverty would admit of no more. Such at leaft, was the state of things before the Romans made conquefts in Greece. Pliny affures, that in the 662d year of the city, there was not a marble column in any public edifice; at which time the temple of the Feretrian Jupiter was but fifteen feet in length. Fortune was one of the deities moft honoured by the Romans; the worship of Vefta was held moft facred, and what I have remarked of the temples of these. goddeffes, which are ftill ftanding, may fuffice to moderate the ideas of thofe, who have not seen them, as to their extent.

The revolution in the govern, ment under Julius Cæfar, brought about a general one in the arts; which, till then, were the concern only of a few opulent citizens, as Craffus, Lucullus, Pompey, &c. The temples of the Gods were the first public structures where magnifi cence fucceeded meannefs, and brick was converted into marble; yet the facred buildings increafed but little in fize. The great men built more for themselves than for the Gods; they enlarged their palaces; they erected aqueducts, baths, and the Forum.

We are not to rely upon the report of architects, concerning the facred monuments of antiquity. Frequently led by prejudice, they

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are too fparing of criticism in their obfervations; they too readily imagine beauties in the antique; and, in reprefenting ruins, when they meet not with all that their fancy fuggefts, they are apt to add fomething of their own. Palladio, for inftance, who has defigned the temple of Fauftina, fays, that though he could difcover no ornaments within it, yet it must certainly have been enriched with very magnificent ones; and fo takes his crayon and sketches niches, ftatues, and pedestals, and then cries out, fuch was the infide of the temple of Fauftina ! He goes ftill further, and the heat of his compofition, in the front, and on the right and left, he adds grand porticoes, without recollecting, that he encroached on the temple of Rhemus, which flood but ten paces from the other, and without confidering that he barred up the paffage of the triumphers, who proceeded to the Capitol along the via facra.

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The temple of the Olympian Jove at Athens, we are told, was more than four stadia in circumference; that is, above two thousand four hundred feet: be it fo. let us make the fame diftribution of this fpace as the ancients did, and we shall have a juft idea of its real fize. In this circle must be included, a monument, facred to Saturn and Rhea, a wood, ftatues without number, and Coluffuses as enormous as thofe at Rhodes, all which must reduce Jupiter's temple to the fize of an ordinary houfe, as we fhall fee hereafter it really was. What then fhall we fay of the Greek temples, in which were libraries, gymnafia, and baths? Why doubtlefs, that they we facred villæ, but no temples.

M. le Roi's Ruins of the Monuments of Greece, lately published, have given me the fatisfaction of finding examples fufficient to juftify my notions, as to the magnitude of the ancient temples. According to this gentleman's dimenfions, the columns of the Pantheon of Hadrian, one of the vastest monuments of Greece, were fcarce above fixteen feet high, though not formed out of one block. Thofe at Rome in the Campo Vaccino, in the forum of Nerva, and in that of Pallas, arę ftill fhorter, though of feveral pieces; yet as thefe ferved for decorations of public places, it is natural to think they were of fome of the largest proportions.

Perhaps it will be urged that they placed feveral orders one above another, which, was, indeed, the case in fome temples of Greece. Paufanias mentions only two or three of thefe; which, in fo exact and attentive a traveller, is a convincing proof that the double order was rare. Vitruvius does not affert it of the Hypæthrum, and affigns temples of that form, to no lefs deities than Jupiter, Calus, and the fun.

By entering into thefe particulars, I pretend not to inform the connoiffeurs, but to give an account of fuch works as I think neceffary towards forming a juft idea of the ancient temples. Their structure differing fo widely, from that of our churches, that the one can by no means lead us to an exact knowledge of the other. Whoever has feen St. Sulpice at Paris, but not St. Roch, may pretty nearly imagine the compofition, form, and diftribution of the latter church, from a bare knowledge, that it is fomewhat less than the former: but fuch degrees of comparifon will be infufficient between

between the ancient and the modern. It will give very little fatisfaction to obferve, that all antiquity never produced any thing of a facred building, fo vaft as St. Peter's at Rome; a reason should also be given, why it did not, nor could do

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I am fufficiently apprifed of what ftrikes the imagination, and raises it to fuch romantic heights, whilft we attend to the descriptions of ancient temples: it was the prodigioes number of columns they were enriched with, that inchants us. How can we avoid believing an edifice to be extremely vaft, that is fupported by a hundred, or a hundred and fifty pillars? We have feen Gothic churches, with not above forty or fifty, wide enough to lofe ourselves in. How vaft then, we fay, muft the temples have been, which had twice or thrice that number? The miftake of the fancy arifes from this, that it places within the body of the temple, or in the Cella, that which really ftood without it. It fhould be noted, in general, that this Cella was the leaft object of the old architects care; they never began to think about it, before they had diftributed and adorned the exterior, because that was to be the proof of genius, tafte, and magnificence. The grand was not then eftimated by the number of fquare feet contained in the area, which the wall inclofed, but from their outworks, of an hundred and twenty columns, as thofe of Hadrian's Pantheon, or of thirty-fix only, as of thofe of the temple of Thefeus. From the ruins of Athens it even appears, that the richness and extent of the outworks were fometimes the very cause of contracting the Cella,

within a narrower space than might have been otherwife allotted it.

What I have been laft obferving, refpects temples of an oblong fquare, the most ufual form. They did not keep altogether to the fame rules in their rotundo's, or circular temples; fome were furrounded with pillars, without any portico to the entrance; fuch are the temples of Vefta, at Rome and Tivoli; others had porticoes before them, without any encircling columns, an inftance of which we meet with in the Roman Pantheon, the most fuperb and vast monument of that form, which perhaps the ancients ever erected; of this latter form of circular temples Vitruvius makes no mention; and, to the former, he affigns a diameter of the length of one column only, with its capital and base, so that nothing of a grand extent could ever take place here.

But to ftrengthen my proofs of the small extent of the ancient temples; I will, in the first place, bring that of Jupiter Olympius at Athens, as an example. According to M. le Roi, the Cella was no more than fix toifes wide, and fomething exceeding fixteen in length Obferve now, to what a fmall matter is an edifice reduced, which has been affirmed to be no less than four stadia in circumference! Take notice too that this was an Hypæethrum, or open at top. Hadrian's Pantheon was twenty toifes long, by lefs than fourteen wide. Paufanias affigns the height of fixty-eight feet to the temple of Jupiter of Olympia, and makes it two hundred and thirty feet long, and ninety-five wide. From the length and breadth we muft deduct thofe of the ailes, Prodromus, and Opisthodomus, taking

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the height from the ceiling, and not from the angular vertex of the Faftigium; and then this temple will, at moft, be upon an equality with many churches in Rome and Paris, built about two centuries ago, in the taste of the Greek architecture; but nothing to compare with our Gothic cathedrals, in point of spacious magnitude.

If we come from Greece to Rome, and examine the temple of Vespafian, we shall find that it was really grand. And, if the tafte of the artichecture had been anfwerable to the capacity and richness of it, Athens itfelf could not have fhewn any thing beyond it; but the architect aiming, perhaps, at fomething new, was, it must be allowed, bold in his defign, but left it quite deftitute of graces. Its length, of three hundred and forty feet, befides the portico, with a breadth of two hundred and fifty, set it plainly above, all the modern churches of France or Italy, except St. Peter's; but it ftill falls fhort of many Gothic ones. What added much to the majesty of the ancient temples, was their high elevation above the fubjacent plain, with an easy afcent to their porticoes by a flight of five, feven, or nine broad stairs, which always disjoined them from every profane building, and gave the diftant eye a full view of their form and ornaments on every fide; the number of bronze and marble statues, which decorated the avenues and infide of the porticoes, the profufion of gilt work, and the allegoric groups in the front, all combining to form a mafs, which carried gravity without heaviness; grand, but not gigantic. Thofe rich and elegant compofitions, charm us even in the graver's reprefentations: what effect then

muft they not have produced on the minds of those who had the infinitely greater advantage of viewing them on the fpot, in their own precious materials!

After what has been faid concerning the temples of the ancients, it is natural to confider the buildings called churches, which fucceeded them, after Chriftianity began to take place of Paganifm. These buildings, during a long period of time, wanted both the elegance and the riches of the ancient temples, and it is those only which have been erected fince the fifteenth century, that can be confidered as models either of proportion of ornament. The feveral changes, however, which thefe buildings have fuffered in their figure, ftructure, and decoration, is a fubject that feems not altogether unworthy of attention.

To mark the gradual progrefs of any art, from its firft rudiments to its perfection, is extremely pleafing, but we are much more ftruck when we fee this art difappear at once, as if by a ftroke of inchantment: when, not even the idea of perfection remains, when the most obvious and eafy rules are forgotten, the moft natural principles neglected, and the most rude and disgusting heaps thrown together, while models of beauty and propriety were every where to be seen in the buildings of former times.

It is difficult to conceive by what ftrange fatality it could happen, that the architects of the fifth and fixth centuries, in all parts of Europe, rejected, as if by common confent, the Greek and Roman manner, chofe to fet up pillars more like the Doric, the heaviest of the three Grecian orders, than any other. They faw in the frizes of regular itructures,