Will probably be well, prior to starting this newspaper, to subject. The word structure is so extensively and so used that one may well hardly endeavor to employ that determined the limit of its app. It is difficult eliminate from architecture the factor of usefulness, this really is larger in a few structures than in others. predominates, and then individuals are disposed to call ent. But buildings is exclusively the art of style composition, plus the term could possibly be applied to structures though they might have no claim to beauty of detail, evidence, in the composition and dimensions of their that their contractors had a maintain appearances, and aimed at producing an effect of dignity and style to the character of the batiment. It is with this sense that individuals shall ponder over it.
The aqueducts of Rome have been amply and extensively treated by writers in ancient and modern times. They’ve been the subject of the most careful study of civil and hydraulic technicians ever since both of these sciences had been first designed. Books and papers have been completely written upon them from the point of view of the engineer and of the archaeologist, from Frontinus, the Curator Aquarum of the Chief Trajan, for the famous archaeology of our day time. Architectural writers have either omitted most reference to all of them or have described them simply to say that they don’t properly are part of the system domain. Yet wherever stone is attired and put in frequent or symmetrical courses, the elements of system evidence, any building through which string programs which the availabilities are symmetrically disposed, theory of structure and is consequently to buildings, and exactly where mouldings and decorative employed in connection with shaped meets the needs of even the most succinct, pithy of the art.
The earliest in the Roman aqueducts that were built above earth, could provide many, in the event not all, of these elements, the first of them, belonging to the his party era, was not only built of the most carefully cut and fitted blocks of rock, but contained a series of piers and rebattu, designed with the utmost regard to symmetry and proportion, was relieved by simply projecting line courses, in which these were required to break the monotony of the surface and give end and character to the design, and was embellished at intervals with carved mouldings. Later, underneath the Empire, we find patterns wrought in pebbles of different colours to embellish the rebattu and the part of the water conduit, and mouldings manufactured by allowing methods of brick to project and cutting these people into a ideal form. To put it briefly, the architecture of the best Roman period can be well studied from a great examination of the aqueducts alone. Here we may study the dry, cut stonework which will characterized the republican period, the tangible, faced with rock or packet, of the Empire, or style as illustrated in the ratios of mass and space, and in the enrichment of buildings through the researched dis- placement of elements.
The Roman architects when they built for delight drew after Greek art to supply decorative details, and hidden the true mother nature of their construction by a scam of entablatures and col- umns. After they built for electricity they were no more bound to employ imported schmuck and depended upon their very own native sense of symmetry and portion and upon the use of straightforward mouldings or perhaps of color to secure a adequately pleasing effect. The aqueducts are thus perhaps the many truly national struc- tures erected by Romans, basic, truthfully strength, without the pretence of articles or ornamental entablatures. In this paper, consequently , we shall prevent those helpings of the aqueducts that partake of a festal or monumental nature, such as the Porta Principale, the Apertura San Lorenzo, and the Posture of Dolabella, for these depend upon the ordinary executive details for effect, and shall confine our study to the aqueduct itself.
The aqueducts in the Romans might be divided into three general groupings, according to the materials of which they may be constructed. This classification may be the more convenient for the reason that it adjusts very nearly to their chronological arrangement. The earliest of these ancient monuments that demonstrate any architectural character was built totally of cut stone, set dry in regular classes, it is republican moments, having been started 144 M. C. and finished in the near future thereafter. Through the early Disposition the Romans continued to hire tufa and peperino slice and put in a similar manner, although with somewhat less treatment and accurate. The greatest of all the Roman aqueducts was and so constructed underneath the Emperor Claudius. But also under Augustus it had end up being the custom to develop the smaller aqueducts, and those inside the provinces, of concrete confronted with a revetment of stone laid in courses or in the form of opus reticulatum. Some of the most beautiful speci- mens of aqueduct structures were thus constructed.
Nevertheless this custom made did not get for any great length of time. Beneath Nero the first and finest with the brick-faced aqueducts was constructed. This period is well known as the best for brickwork. From this period aqueducts, in Italy for least, seem to have been produced invariably with brick facing, and all the repairs upon the elderly aqueducts had been carried out in brick, down to the reign of Alex- ander Severus, under whom the last from the great aqueducts was constructed. It will therefore be seen the fact that periods of classification terme conseillé slightly, whether we make the division purely chlronological, or according as the aqueducts were made of free natural stone, of concrete floor faced with or of concrete and stone. It is not possible in a newspaper of this figure to take up all the aqueducts constructed in the Both roman domain. We need to therefore choose only the many characteristic good examples, wherever discovered, to demonstrate the three classes of aqueducts mentioned.
