ROMAN ARCHITECTURE

THE Roman fact of Roman architecture was in stabilityof structure dissociate from form and from any de­fined structural system. It was the stability of rigidity, ofinertia--of concrete. Rome realized the possibilities of thismaterial and made its employment general throughout theempire. That she should do so was characteristic, and therewas nothing better for her engineering purposes. It wascheap in itself and in the unskilled labor which could handleit; it was flexible--plastic--and might be turned to manyuses; above all, it was solid. Form was not inherent in it,but any form might be modeled from it by pouring it intothe desired mould. It had the strength which Rome re­spected, a strength that might underlie any shaping thatRome fancied.

From: A Background to Architecture
Book by Seward Hume Rathbun; Yale Unviersity Press, 1926. 395 pgs.