Sec. 3. It seems probable, then, that the identity between the two buildings is mainly an identity of name, and that Christian builders, in seeking for suitable arrangements for public worship, may have borrowed some details from the arrangements of the secular basilica. It is natural, however, to look for the origin of a religious plan in buildings devoted to religious purposes. The Roman temple supplied no help for the plan of buildings which were required for public worship. Of recent years, it has been customary to assume that the Christian basilica took its form from the inner halls of the private houses of those wealthy citizens who embraced Christianity in its early days. Such halls may have been used for Christian services; and if their plan was adopted for the Christian basilica, the mature state of the basilican plan at its first appearance can be explained. The _atrium_ or entrance hall of the house is represented on this hypothesis by the forecourt of the basilica; the peristyle, or colonnade round the inner room, becomes the aisles and the space screened off at the entrance for those not entitled to take full part in the service; the colonnade at the further end survives in the arcaded screen which existed, for example, in old St Peter's at Rome; the apse takes the place of the _tablinum_, where the most sacred relics of family life were preserved; and the transept, which is found in some of the early Roman basilican plans, represents the _alae_, or transverse space, which existed between the _tablinum_ and the main body of the hall. But these close analogies are the result of an assumption by no means certain. It is always probable that the basilican plan had its origin in a plan originally aisleless. Some, intent on its religious source, explain it as a development of the plan of the Jewish synagogue. Others, regarding assemblies of Christians for public worship as, in their essence, meetings of persons associated in common brotherhood, have derived the basilica directly from the aisleless _scholae_ which were the meeting-places of the various confraternities or _collegia_ of ancient Rome. In these there is an apse at one end of the building; and, if we imagine aisles added by the piercing of the walls with rows of arches and columns, we have at once the essential features of the basilican plan. Each theory has its attractions and its difficulties; and to none is it possible to give unqualified adherence. It may be stated, as a tentative conclusion, that the basilican plan probably had its origin in an aisleless form of building, and thus pursued a course directly opposite to the development of the secular basilica. But it seems clear that, in many details of the plan, especially as we see it in Rome, the peristyled hall was kept in mind; while in two features, the arrangement of the apse and the occasional appearance of galleries above the aisles, the secular basilica was taken into consideration.