256 ROMAN PAVEMENTS. 



of the Grotta Dipinta, an Etruscan tomb near Bomarzo, 12 

 miles east of Viterbo. " Drawn on the wall in red and black 

 pigments is a large jar out of which two serpents with forked 

 tongues are rising. In the same tomb was contained the 

 sarcophagus now in the British Museum, of temple shape, with 

 a pair of serpents in knotted coils on the roof" ; and the writer 

 suggests that it was the sepulchre of an augur. 



We are not, however, compelled to believe that the Durngate 

 Street pavement lay in the house of a priest. If we witness the 

 outburst of flowers, the egress of serpents from an amphora, we 

 see auspicious tokens of springtide, of summer, of solar heat and 

 terrestrial response. 



Asymmetry. Symmetry, as understood and practised by the 

 ancient Egyptians and by the first Greeks, was drawing by 

 absolute rule and measure, making all things commensurate to a 

 fixed scale. Decoration was done by stencilling, and the human 

 stature was divided into a number of equal parts say, into 19, of 

 which the head occupied 3, the trunk 7, and the lower limbs 9. 

 This made profile necessary, and foreshortening was impossible. 



Revolt against rigid form began early. Pliny remarked that 

 the Latin language had no name for that kind of symmetry 

 which Lycippus (B.C. 330) observed in his new and untried 

 method of modifying the squareness of the ancient statues ; and 

 that it was a common saying of his that, while others made men 

 as they were, he made them as they appeared to be.* That is to 

 say, he did not care for their measuring right as long as they 

 looked right. 



A careful examination of the best of the old Mosaics will 

 reveal to us a constant effort to escape from strict geometrical 

 form. Their design was in the artist's mind, and was not copied 

 from a pattern prepared at an architect's office. 



* Non habet Latinum nonaen symmetria, quam diligentissime custodivit, nova 

 intactaque ratione quadratas veterum staturas permatando : vulgoque dicebat, 

 ab ilhs factos quales essent, homines, a se quales viderentur esse. Plin. 

 XXXIV., 7. 



