Whilst drawing inspiration from their Greek heritage, the Romans rethought it completely. In the area of decorative sculpture, the Corinthian order was the most widely used. The oldest building with Corinthian columns on the exterior is the monument to Lysicrates in Athens, which dates from around BC. But the history of the Corinthian capital as a form dates back even further, probably to the late fifth century. Hellenistic architects often hesitated to use Corinthian capitals in conjunction with the Ionic or Done orders. But despite its ancient history, the Corinthian was the preferred Roman order. The buildings now accepted as the starting point of Roman Corinthian date from the period between the death of Julius Caesar and approximately 25 BC. Three of these structures are widely known for their architectural features: the temple to Julius Caesar in the Roman Forum (42—29 BC), the Regia restored by Domitius Calvinus around 36 BC, and the Augustan Temple of Apollo on the Palatine, begun in 36 and dedicated in 28 BC. The first and third of these are Corinthian buildings with well- preserved capitals. The entablature of the Regia consisted of au architrave divided into two horizontal bands and crowned with a plain moulding. The continuous frieze was decorated with garlanded ox-skulls or bucrania. The cornice had dentils and modillions below the corona, while the flat surfaces between the modillions were decorated with low-relief floral motifs. A fourth building, the Temple of Saturn (about 20 BC), should be mentioned as well in this context, as it was almost certainly Corinthian in style when built. In all these buildings, the presence of modillions arranged at regular intervals below a projecting corona is an essential feature, hallmark of the origins of Roman Corinthian. The history of architectural decoration after the Battle of Actium (31 BC) and throughout the Augustan period is marked by a departure from the purity of the Classical orders and a taste for opulence and variety of detail. This light-hearted approach signalled the beginnings of the Roman style, as witnessed by the triumphal arch at Rimini, erected on the Via Flaminia in 27 BC. Of the different types of Roman capital, those sculpted with human figures are highly characteristic. Their origins can be traced back to Classical and Hellenistic Greece, and they became extremely popular in Southern Italy in the fourth century BC. They were subsequently taken up by Roman artists and produced in a great variety of forms: as portrait—bases in Provence, sculpted with the foreparts of animals (pro- tomes) in the Temple of Mars Ultor, and carved with continuous reliefs in the so—called Antonine baths in Carthage. Some of these capitals are of the highest quality, deserving of a place alongside statues and reliefs in the history of Roman sculpture. The capital in the Pigna Courtyard in the Vatican comes from the city baths built by Severus Alexander around 227 AD. It is carved with sporting scenes featuring a boxer, a gymnast and others.