Sic IV. (.-ii. III. TEMPLES. 309 base is in its place, — nor can any of its columns be traced to any other buildings. This part, therefore, of the arrangement is very prob- lematical, and I should be rather inclined to restore it, as Palladio and the older architects have done, with a corridor of ten small columns in front of each of the cells. If we could assume the plan of this temple to have been really peripteval, as supposed, it must liave been a building worthy of the imperial city and of the magni- ficence of the emperor to whom its erection is ascribed. More ]»erfect and more interesting than any of these is the Pantheon, which is undoubtedly one of the finest temples of the ancient world. Externally its effect is very much destroyed l)y its two parts, the circular and the rectangular, being so dissimilar in style and so incon- gruously joined together. The })or- tico especially, in itself the finest which Kome exliibits, is very much injured by being ])refixedto a mass which overpowers it and does not harmonize Avith any of its lines. The pitch, too, of its pediment is perhaps somewhat too liigh, but, notwithstanding all this, its sixteen cplumns,the shaft of each composed of a single block, and the simple grandeur of the details, render it perliaps the most satisfactory ex- am] )le of its class. The pillars are arranged in the Etruscan fashion, as they were originally disposed in front of three-celled temples. As they now stand, however, they are added unsymmetrically to a rotunda, and in so clumsy a fasliion that the two are certainly not part of the same design and do not belong to the same age. Either it was that the portico was added to the pre-existing rotunda, or that the rotunda is long subsequent to the jiortico. Unfortunately the two inscriptions on the portico hardly help to a solution of the difiiculty. The principal one states that it was built by M. Agrippa, but the " it "may refer to the rotunda only, and may have been put there l)y those who in the time of Aurelius' repaired the temple which had fallen into decay from age." This hardly could, under any circumstances, be predicated of the rotunda, Avhich shows no sign of decay during the last seventeen 100. I'lau of Paiitlit'ou at Kome, Scale lou ft. to 1 in. ' IMP. C.ES. M. AVKELIA'S ANTONINVS. P.VPTVM CVM OMNI CVLTV RESTITVER- Pivs FELIX AVG. TRiB. POTEST V. COS. 1 VNT. Isabelle, "Edifices Circulaires," PROCOS. PANTIIEVM VETVSTATE COR- [ p. -37, pi. xii.
