In architecture the native Roman gift was for the practical combined with the massive and grandiose.  The structures in which they themselves excelled were the amphitheatre, the public baths, the triumphal arch, the basilica, the bridge, and the aqueduct.  Their mastery of the arch, their excellent concrete, and their engineering genius, enabled them to produce works in this kind which had had no parallels in the Greek world.  Nor had the Greeks felt the same need for such buildings.  They had been innocent of gladiatorial shows, and they had been unfortunately too innocent of large conceptions in the way of water-supply.  When an amphitheatre or aqueduct of the Roman kind was to be found in the graecized half of the empire, it was constructed under Roman influence.  The modern may well afford to wonder at and envy the profusion of such structures in the ancient world.  How noble and at the same time how strong was the work of the Romans when they undertook to supply even a provincial town with abundant and adequate water, is manifest from such aqueducts as are still to be seen at Nimes (FIG. 1) or at Segovia.  In other architectural conceptions the Romans of the time of Nero mainly followed the Greek lead and employed Greek artists.  The architectural “orders” were Greek, with sundry Graeco-Roman modifications, particularly in the way of more ornate or fantastic Corinthian capitals; the notions of sculptural decoration were equally of Hellenic origin.  Their theatres also were of the Greek kind adapted in non-essentials to the somewhat different conditions of a Roman performance.  The Greek taste in decoration was the simpler and purer:  the Roman cultivated the sumptuous and the ornate, sometimes, with conspicuous success, often with an overloaded effect.  As Friedlander (who, however, deals with a much longer period than ours) puts the matter:  “Nowhere, least of all at Rome, was an important public building erected without the chiseller, the stucco-worker, the carver, the founder, the painter, and mosaic-maker being called in.  Statues, single or in groups, filled gables, roofs, niches, interstices of columns, staircases in the temples, theatres, amphitheatres, basilicas, public baths, bridges, arches, portals, and viaducts. . . .  Triumphal arches generally had at their summits equestrian figures, trophies, chariots of four or six horses, driven by figures of victory.  Reliefs and medallions bedecked the frieze, and reliefs or paintings the walls; ceilings were gay with stucco or coloured work, and the floors with glittering mosaics.  All the architectural framework, supports, thresholds, lintels, mouldings, windows, and even gutters were overloaded with decorative figures.”