The great administrative power governing the erection of the buildings of Rome was one of the most remarkable features connected with them. Architecture with the Romans was a means to an end, this end being the construction of edifices suiting their requirements and their desire for display. No scope was allowed for individual talent or ingenuity, unless employed in the carrying out of a distinct programme, laid down by those in power; each building forming part of a great scheme, prevailing throughout the conquered world. In Greece architectural works were produced in the different cities and states under the guidance of independent artists, with the co-operation of their fellow-citizens who were eager to attain the true principles of art; in Rome and the Roman world, art was entirely subservient to a system of politics which ran through all departments. The vast wealth which flowed into the capital from tributary provinces was the great mainstay which permitted the execution of so many vast and expensive structures, forming a collection never surpassed. Roman art corresponded with the national character, for it was coarse and ostentatious, but at the same time vast and strong. The population of Athens delighted in intellectual pursuits, in philosophy, in art; it crowded the seats on the slope of the Acropolis to enjoy the wit and satire of Æschylus and Sophocles, and the palæstra to witness the development of bodily grace and dexterity, while the Romans flocked to the Colosseum for the enjoyment of scenes of blood and carnage, to gaze upon the slaughter of captives and the anguish of animals. The force of their government, nevertheless, was unquestionable; their patriotism, unlike that of the Greeks, was unaffected by civic jealousies or party feeling; they trod rough-shod upon the nations, but they planted everywhere the imprint of their heroic civilization and made their capital the centre of the world, and left to it, for all ages, the proud appellation of the Eternal City. VI. THE EARLY CHRISTIAN STYLE. After the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity, in the fourth century, the Christians who, as a persecuted sect had hitherto held their religious observances in hiding, in the catacombs of Rome, adopted the basilica as the most convenient form of building for the purposes of their worship. The bishop occupied a throne in the apse, surrounded by the presbyters or fathers of the church, and the congregation of the faithful filled the central nave. For several centuries this plan was but little changed, the only notable additions to it being the continuation of the transept beyond the line of the walls of the nave, thus making it cruciform; the occasional substitution of double aisles, making five divisions in the body of the church, instead of the original three, and the addition of a tower or belfry.