Roman cities in Italy and Dalmatia . fthe opinion that these magnificent gateways arenot Roman at all but are remnants of the pre-Roman Etruscan city. Both the architectureand sculpture of Etruria in the fourth centurymust be enriched by these two masterpieces. Perusia was already, in the fifth and sixth cen-turies, one of the league of twelve principalEtruscan cities. It was not among the earhest;perhaps it was the latest accession, facing as itdoes the Umbrian cities across the Tiber, andholding part of the land recently wrested fromthe Umbrians. Though archaic works of artpoint to it as a h
Roman cities in Italy and Dalmatia . fthe opinion that these magnificent gateways arenot Roman at all but are remnants of the pre-Roman Etruscan city. Both the architectureand sculpture of Etruria in the fourth centurymust be enriched by these two masterpieces. Perusia was already, in the fifth and sixth cen-turies, one of the league of twelve principalEtruscan cities. It was not among the earhest;perhaps it was the latest accession, facing as itdoes the Umbrian cities across the Tiber, andholding part of the land recently wrested fromthe Umbrians. Though archaic works of artpoint to it as a highly civilized center in the sixthcentury, the contents of the necropolis and thecity itself show that its period of greatest ma-terial and artistic prosperity extended from thefourth to the second century It seems notto have been affected by the incoming tide ofRoman supremacy which left it free to pursue itsnormal course. The colossal circuit of walls, in beautifully laidtcourse-masonry, and showing splendidly in the 7/0. ^^. ei CJ rv o -t-J oo • i-H (1( Plate XXIV ROMAN CITIES 131 neighborhood of both the Porta dAugusto andthe Porta ]Marzia, may be of the fifth century;but from the style of the gates, I should hardlyplace them earlier than the fourth. My exami-nation of what remains of the Etruscan gatesnow called Porta Eburnea and Porta San Sev-ero, almost entirely rebuilt in the ^Middle Ages,showed that they followed exactly the same struc-tural methods as the better preserved PortaAugusta and Porta ]Marzia, so they need bemerely mentioned here as part of the generalscheme, and I shall concentrate on the two lattergates. These gates make us feel that in the fourthcentury Perusia, like other great cities ofEtruria and Umbria, was monumentally andartistically more advanced than Rome. We mustnot imagine for a moment that such gates couldhave existed in Rome at any time before perfectly plain Janus gateway of the cityof Aquinum and the equally plain ear
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectarchitectureroman
