The only two considerable relics of Republican architecture are the Tabularium and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, both dating from the period of Sulla. In that period, when Rome had just discovered Greek culture, when the armies of Sulla and Lucullus came home laden with Greek spoil, there was a temporary outburst of artistic activity at Rome. It was, however, entirely in the hands of foreign artists. In 143, Metellus, the victor of Macedonia, built the first marble temple at Rome in the Campus Martius. Sulla himself carried off the huge columns of the unfinished temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens to adorn the Roman Capitol. The Cyprian Greek Hermodorus was employed to construct temples and docks. The Romans had indeed their native principles of building, which from a merely constructive point of view were in advance of anything that the Greeks had evolved for themselves. Greek architecture of the best period had been almost exclusively devoted to the service of religion. Their efforts were almost limited to the perfecting of the Doric and Ionic temple, and when they had to build a secular building like the gate of the Acropolis, they were still content with a mere adaptation of Doric temple to their new purpose. Their building material was marble, and with their peculiar artistic discretion the Greeks saw that marble was at its best in the austere lines of pediment and columns. But the Romans, before they imported marble, had made a beginning with brick and cement, which require quite different methods of architecture. In prehistoric “Servian” days they had discovered or learnt from the Etruscans the use of the vault and arch, at any rate for tunnels, but it is characteristic of their artistic poverty that they had made little architectural use of these important principles. The triumphal arch seems to have been a Roman invention, and several triumphal arches were built in republican days, but unfortunately we have no information as to their style. The Sullan revival of art was purely an importation of foreign models. In the Temple of Fortuna Virilis built in 78 B.C. we see how the Romans used their imported architecture.[31] The graceful Ionic columns support nothing. They are used for ornament as the West African native uses his European clothes. The Greeks had indeed used engaged columns, as in the Erechtheum, to complete the design where there was no space for a free colonnade, but the Romans built them into their walls for the sake of ornament. This is typical. Culture was to the Greeks a vital part of their existence, to the Romans it was an embellishment. But Roman architecture, having made this effort, had relapsed again until the days of the Cæsars. There was more destroying than building in the evil days of Cicero’s prime. The selfish plutocrats were too busy building their villas to give a thought to the gods’ or the city’s adornment.