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of Macedon, and the Doric portico at Athens; the altitudeof the former being only thirty-eight minutes, and that ofthe latter forty minutes, or two-thirds of the bottom dia-meter. In the remains of Roman buildings, the architravesare low, being in most cases betjveen two-thirds and three-fourths of a diameter. The lowest architrave in thesej remains is that of the theatre of Marcellus at Rome , which

i is only half a diameter. This proportion has been generally

i followed in the Doric order by the modern restorers of an-

j cient architecture. What relates particularly to the forms

j and parts of the architrave of each particular order will be

I seen under the heads of Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian ,

j and Rohan orders.

The soffits of the ar hitraves of Grecian buildings arealways found to exceed he upper diameter of the columns;but in the Roman they are equal.

In the Saxon and early Norman styles of architecture,arches rise from the capitals of the pillars, instead of beinglinteled by the architrave as in the Egyptian, Grecian, andRoman buildings: this is one of the most striking differ-j ences between ancient architecture and the styles afterwardsj practised in the middle ages.

! Architrave of a Door , a collection of members sur-j rounding the aperture, of a section similar to the architravesj of the Ionic, Corinthian , and Roman orders. The head or

j lintel is called the traverse, and the sides the jambs. Vitru-

1 vius calls the jambs antepagmenta, and the. head or traversel supercilium. In the remains of +he edifices at Balbec andPalmyra, and in the palace of Diocletian at Spalatro, thearchitrave jambs are often flanked with consoles, which givesan apparent support to the cornice, and the cornice frequentlyrests upon the traverse, without the intervention of thefrieze; but the flank pilasters under the consoles are scarcelyto be met with among ancient ruins, though practised by themodern Italians , and represented in their works. This ishowever an improvement, as it diminishes the apparentweight of the top, by spreading out the lower part. Theproportion of the architrave to the aperture, in ancientedifices, varies greatly: the usual proportions given by themoderns is from one-seventh, to one-sixth part of the open-ing. When the architrave jambs are flanked with pilastersand consoles, the breadth may be one-seventh of that of theaperture, and the breadth of the pilasters two-thirds of thatof the architrave; but when it is unaccompanied with theseornaments, it ought not to be less than a sixth part of thebreadth of the aperture.

In the ruins of Roman and Grecian buildings the archi-trave rests upon the floor, and has no flanking consoles; butin-the ruins of Balbec they are supported by plinths.

When there is too much surface of naked wall on eachside of the architrave jambs, the sides of the architrave maybe flanked trith pilasters and consoles, in order to reduce thenaked, and proportion it to the dressings of the front. Thedressing of an aperture may be heightened by adding a cor-nice, or a cornice and frieze, as the space above will admit;and if the space above requires further diminution, the alti-tude of the dressing may be still further increased, by sur-mounting the cornice with a pediment. When the materialof the architrave is stone, the jambs are either built inheights corresponding to the courses of the naked of thewall, or if stones can be procured, each jamb is made of oneentire piece, or sometimes in two or three, according to thedifficulty of raising them from the quarry.

When they are coursed with the work, every alternatestone should be a bond-stone, and, if the jambs are in oneheight, or not coursed, every alternate stone in the altitude, of the naked, adjoining each architrave jamb, should be a

bond-stone : the fewer pieces the architrave jamb consists of,the more beautiful will the work appear, therefore one ispreferable to several.

In the arched apertures of ancient buildings, the jambs areseldom or never moulded as an architrave, but the arch isfrequently ornamented with members of an architrave sec-tion : these members are called the archivolt, which alwaysrests upon imposts. The imposts project in most cases fromthe naked of the wall, and in a few cases form the capitalof pilasters upon the jambs.

Architrave, in joinery, is one constructed of wood.Architraves may be wrought out of a solid piece of wood ;this, however, would be attended with a waste of bothstuff and time. The best method is to glue it up in two ormore longitudinal pieces, as may be judged proper from the jcombination of its parts. For a full description of thismethod, see Joinery.

Architrave Cornice, is an entablature which consists ofan architrave crowned with a cornice, without the interven-tion of the frieze. There are few ancient examples wherean architrave cornice is supported by columns or pilasters :

the only ones which we can recollect are, that on the inside

of the portico of the Pantheon, and the entablature of thethird order of the Colosseum at Rome (if it may be so called)and that supported by the caryatides of the temple of Pan- 1drosus at Athens : the imposts of the arch of Septimius jSeverus are also formed like an architrave cornice. The iremains of antiquity exhibit many instances where the |dressings of rectangular apertures are finished with archi- |trave cornices, as in the temples of Erectheus at Athens, !

Vesta at Rome , and in other ruins exhibited in Adam’s \

Spalatra, and in Wood’s Balbec and Palmyra. j

Architrave Jambs. See Architrave of a Door . i

ARCH I VAULT. Nee Archivolt.

ARCHIVE , an apartment wherein the records or chartersof a state or community are preserved, in order to be con- j 1suited occasionally. j

The w r ord cornes from the Greek apyaiov, which signifies |that part of their temples in which the public treasury was ! 'deposited. Colleges and monasteries had all their archives ;but that of the Romans was restricted to the temple ofSaturn in particular. ,

ARCIIIVOLT, a collection of members on the faceof an arch, adjacent to, and concentric with the intrados, !supported upon the imposts. The word is derived from jthe French archivolte, which signifies the same thing as jarcus volutus. |

The archivolts in Roman and Grecian edifices are formedupon the face of the arch, with their section perpendicularto the curve of the intrados and the wall, and similar infigure to that wrought on the face of an architrave ; the !intrados being, in most cases, the surface of a cylinder, and, ■in some few cases, that of a cone. In the latter ages of the iRoman empire, arches with archivolts were substituted jinstead of the horizontal entablature, by supporting thearches upon the capitals of columns as imposts. This inno-vation gave birth to that style of building most commonlyknown by the name of Gothic, and forms one of the most 1characteristic features of this style of building. The archi-volts of Saxon edifices were at first very similar to those of ■the. Romans, but in process of time, the pillars becameclustered with small columns, and each shaft of the clusteredpillar had its separate capital ; therefore, in order to makethe bottom extremities of the arch bear equally on the topsof the pillars, it became necessary to form the archivolt indeep recession from the soffit, rather in a conical than acylindrical surface. The archivolt was separated into several