=227. Grandiose Architecture: Vast Quantities of Ornaments and Statues.=--In viewing these great public squares and buildings instantly one is impressed by a single fact--the grandiose character of the ornaments and the architecture. All the enormous public buildings are literally overladen with adornments. The architects seemed to have abhorred the idea of blank spaces. There are no reposeful vistas. Everything seems striving to be magnificent and ornate. Statues, singly or in groups, occupy all the gables, roofs, niches, intervals of columns, and even the stairways. The Triumphal Arches are surmounted by equestrian figures or by prancing four-horse chariots. Reliefs and medallions cover all the friezes. If there is any space that cannot be seized for the mounting of sculptures or at least for bas-reliefs, it can be used for painting designs in stucco or colored mosaics. Every detail down to the gutters is highly decorated. Very different, therefore, are these fora from the chaste elegance of the public places in Athens. On the other hand much of the effect is splendid as well as startling. The utilization of concrete permits the erection of vast soaring domes, often covered with gilded tiles. The elaborate Corinthian pillars before many of the buildings are often simply superb polished monoliths of colored marbles. The use of the arch (practically unknown in Greece) permits new effects often graceful and pleasing. The sculptures permitted in such public places are, of course, always of the highest order. Sometimes they are original Greek masterpieces carried as spoils to Italy. Often they are excellent copies of those masterpieces but with small variations, not inelegant, which give the reproductions a real character of their own. At every turn one sees these triumphs of bronze and marble, Apollos, Minervas, Victories, Winged Mercuries, Centaurs, Homeric Heroes, and all the legendary host of Græco-Roman mythology--now singly, now in groups. Interspersed with these gods mounted on pedestals or on the entablatures of the buildings are the honorary statues of the worthies of Rome. Hardly a great leader is absent from Romulus to the reigning Hadrian. A mere walk about the fora with an explanation of their portrait statues becomes therefore a detailed lesson in Roman history. Besides the images of the truly great and good, there are so many others of sheer mediocrities or worse that one is left wondering whether the honor of a “statue in the Forum” is so important after all. Even in old Cato’s day the abuse was such that he remarked sarcastically that “he would rather that men asked why he had _not_ a statue in the Public Square, than whisper questioning why he had one.”