658 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
mainly due to tradition, the whole structure was probably raised on 
a high base or podium, perhaps to lift it above the marshy ground 
common in Roman and Etruscan territory, perhaps because the first 
Roman temple had for some reason to be built overhanging the edge 
of the Capitoline mount on a substructure built upon the hillside. 
Vitruvius mentions three temples ® still standing in Rome in his day 
as specimens of what he calls the old Tuscan order, describing them 
as “clumsy, heavy roofed, low and wide,” and in another place? he 
gives his usual set of pedantic rules for reproducing such temples. 
These run to some length, and are chiefly interesting because they 
appear in the main to describe the most important temple in Rome, 
that of Jupiter Capitolinus, as it existed in his day—that is, as it 
was rebuilt by Sulla after the fire of 83 B. C., and remained until 
again destroyed by fire in the faction fight that ushered in the reign 
of Vespasian in A. D. 70. We learn that the temple was not far from 
square on plan, the width being to the depth as 5 to 6; that it had only 
one pediment, the back of the roof being hipped; that the eaves were 
very wide; that half the depth of the temple was taken up by the 
portico; that the cella, which occupied the back half, was divided 
into three in width; that the columns were of pseudo-Doric character 
with bases; and other interesting particulars. Vitruvius specifies 
wooden architraves, but does not say anything about the material 
of the eolumns. We know, however, from Pliny ¢ and the researches 
of Penrose,? that the shafts of the columns of this particular temple 
were colored marble monoliths, stolen by Sulla from the temple of 
Olympian Zeus at Athens. We know, too, that the pediment was 
crowned with a huge terra-cotta quadriga, reputed to have been 
brought in ancient days from Veil. 
But the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, of which we thus get a 
fairly complete and detailed view, was not typical of the buildings, 
nor even of the temples, of the later Republican period, but was 
obviously peculiar. Although it had been rebuilt only about half a 
century before Vitruvius wrote, a great conservatism had presided at 
the reconstruction. of a fane reputed the oldest and most sacred in 
Rome, and the light thrown upon it is chiefly of use to illuminate 
what may be called the first period of Roman architecture, before it 
came under the direct influence of Greece, or was stimulated by the 
broader outlook, the new requirements, and the wealth arising from 
foreign conquests and ever-increasing commercial activity. Some of 
these influences began to be felt soon after 200 B. C., between the end 
of the second Punic war and the final destruction of Carthage. In 
that period at least three basilicas were erected in Rome to accom- 
OWitt. JODIS By fy ¢ Pliny, XXXIV, 45. 
OW tig, IOS We @ Athen. Arch., edit. 1888. 
