Nunc licet esquiliis habitare salubribus atque,Aggere in Aprico Spatiari, quo modo tristes.Albis informem spectabant ossibtis agrum.
[Footnote: HoraceSat.i. 8.]
Near these gardens Virgil lived, also Propertius, and probably Horace. The Esquiline, once a plebeian quarter, seems to have been selected by the literary men, who sought the favor of Maecenas, for their abode. Ovid lived near the capitol, at the southern extremity of the Quirinal.
[Sidenote: Mausoleum of Augustus.]
Among the other buildings which Augustus erected, should not be omitted the magnificent Mausoleum, or the tomb of the imperial family at the northern part of the Campus Martius, near which lay the remains of Sulla and of Caesar, and which remained the burial-place of his family down to the time of Hadrian. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.] He also brought from Egypt the obelisk which now stands on Mount Citorio, and which was placed in that receptacle for monuments—the Campus Martius.
[Sidenote: Imperial palace.]
Tiberius did but little for the improvement of his capital beyond erecting a triumphal arch, in commemoration of the exploits of Germanicus, on the Via Sacra, and establishing the Praetorian Camp near the Servian Agger. Caligula extended the imperial palace, and began the Circus Neronis in the gardens of Agrippa, near where St. Peter's now stands.
[Sidenote: Claudian aqueduct.]
Claudius constructed the two noble aqueducts, the Aqua Claudia and Arno Novis,—the longest of all these magnificent Roman monuments,—the latter of which was fifty-nine miles in length, and some of its arches were one hundred and nine feet in height.
Nero still further extended the precincts of the imperial palace, and included the Esquiline. The great fire which occurred in his reign, A.D. 65, and which lasted six days and seven nights, destroyed some of the most ancient of the Roman structures surrounding the Palatine, and very much damaged the Forum, to say nothing of the statues and treasures which perished. But the city soon arose from her ashes more beautiful than before. The streets were laid out on a more regular plan and made wider, the houses were built lower, and brick was substituted for wood.
[Sidenote: The Imperial Palace.]
The great work of Nero was the construction of the Imperial Palace on the site of the buildings which had been destroyed by the fire. He gave it the name of Aurea Domus, and, if we may credit Suetonius, [Footnote: Suet.Ner., 31.] its richness and splendor surpassed any other similar edifice in ancient times. It fronted the Forum and Capitol, and in its vestibule stood a colossal statue of the emperor, one hundred and twenty feet high. The palace was surrounded by three porticoes, each one thousand feet in length. The back front of the palace looked upon the artificial lake, afterwards occupied by the Flavian Amphitheatre. Within the area were gardens and vineyards. It was entirely overlaid with gold, and adorned with jewels and mother-of-pearl. The supper rooms were vaulted, and the compartments of the ceiling, inlaid with ivory, were made to revolve and scatter flowers upon the banqueters below. The chief banqueting-room was circular, and perpetually revolved in imitation of the motion of the celestial bodies. There are scarcely no remains of this extensive palace, which engrossed so large a part of the city, and which covered the site of so many famous temples and palaces, and which exhausted even the imperial revenues, great as they were, even as Versailles taxed the magnificent resources of Louis XIV., and St. Peter's obliged the Popes to appeal to the contributions of Christendom.
[Sidenote: Temple of Peace.]
The next great edifice which added to the architectural wonders of the city, was the temple built by Vespasian after the destruction of Jerusalem, which he called the Temple of Peace. It was adorned with the richest sculptures and paintings of Greece, taken from Nero's palace, which Vespasian demolished as a monument of insane extravagance. In this temple were deposited also the Jewish spoils, except the laws and veil of the temple.
[Sidenote: Falvian Amphitheatre.]
[Sidenote: The Colosseum.]
But the great work of this emperor, and the greatest architectural wonder of the world, was the amphitheatre, which he built on the ground covered by Nero's lake, in the middle of the city, between the Velia and the Esquiline. For magnitude it can only be compared with the pyramids of Egypt, and its remains are the most striking monument we have of the material greatness of the Romans. Though not the first of the amphitheatres which were erected, its enormous size rendered the erection of subsequent ones unnecessary. It was here that emperors, senators, generals, knights, and people, met together to witness the most exciting and sanguinary amusements ever seen in the world. It was built in the middle of the city, with a perfect recklessness of expense, and could accommodate eighty-seven thousand spectators, round an arena large enough for the combats of several hundred animals at a time. It was a building of an elliptical form, founded on eighty arches, and rising to the height of one hundred and forty feet, with four successive orders of architecture, six hundred and twenty feet by five hundred and thirteen, inclosing six acres. It was built of travertine, faced with marble, and decorated with statues. The eighty arches of the lower story formed entrances for the spectators. The seats were of marble covered with cushions. The spectators were protected from the sun and rain by ample canopies, while the air was refreshed by scented fountains. The nets designed as a protection from the wild beasts were made of golden wire. The porticoes were gilded; the circle which divided the several ranks of spectators was studded with a precious mosaic of beautiful stones. The arena was strewed with the finest sand, and assumed, at different times, the most different forms. Subterranean pipes conveyed water into the arena. The furniture of the amphitheatre consisted of gold, silver, and amber. The passages of ingress and egress were so numerous that the spectators could go in and out without confusion. Only a third part of this wonderful structure remains, and whole palaces have been built of its spoils. [Footnote: Dyer,Hist. of the City of Rome, p. 245. Gibbon, chap. 12. Montaigne,Essays, in. 6. Lipsius,de Amphitheatro.]
[Sidenote: Rebuilding of the Capitol.]
[Sidenote: Arch of Titus.]
Another great fire which took place A.D. 80,—the same in which Titus dedicated the Colosseum,—and which raged three days and nights, destroyed the region of the Circus Flaminius, including some of the finest temples of the city, and especially on the Capitoline, and created the necessity for new improvements. These were made by Domitian, who rebuilt the Capitol itself with greater splendor on its old site, and erected several new edifices. Martial speaks with peculiar admiration of the Temple of the Gens Flavia. [Footnote: Martial,L., ix. Ep. 4, 35. ] He also erected that beautiful arch to his brother Titus which still remains one of the finest monuments of the imperial city. The Odeum, a roofed theatre, was erected by him, capable of holding twelve thousand people. He also made many additions to his palace on the Palatine—so lofty, that Martial, his flatterer, described it as towering above the clouds, and Statius compared the ceiling to the cope of heaven.
[Sidenote: Forum Trajanum.]
[Sidenote: Basilica Ulpia.]
No great improvements were made in the city until Trajan commenced his beneficent and splendid reign. His greatest work was the Forum which bears his name, to which allusion has been made, eleven hundred feet long, in the centre of which was that beautiful pillar, one hundred and twenty-eight feet high, which is still standing. The Forum, the Basilica Ulpia, and the temple dedicated by Hadrian to Trajan, were all parts of this magnificent structure, one of the most imposing ever built, filled with colossal statues and surrounded with colonnades.
[Sidenote: Temple of Venus and Rome.]
[Sidenote: Mausoleum of Hadrian.]
[Sidenote: Hadrians Villa.]
None of the Roman emperors had so great a passion for building as Hadrian, who succeeded Trajan A.D. 117. He erected a vast number of edifices, and in his reign Rome attained its greatest height of architectural splendor. The most remarkable among the edifices which he built was the Temple of Venus and Rome, facing on one side the Colosseum, and the other the Forum, on the site of the Atrium, or the golden house of Nero. This seems to have been one of the largest of the Roman temples, erected on an artificial terrace five hundred feet long and three hundred broad. It was surrounded with a portico four hundred feet by two hundred, and another portico of four hundred columns inclosed the terrace on which the temple was built, the columns of which were forty feet in height. The roof was covered with bronze tiles. Ammianus Marcellinus classes this magnificent temple with the Capitoline Temple, the Flavian Amphitheatre, and the Pantheon. The next greatest work of Hadrian was the Mausoleum, which is now converted into the Castle of St. Angelo, built on a platform of which each side was two hundred and fifty-three feet in length. From the magnificent colonnade which supported the platform on which it was built, and the successive stories supported by arches and pillars, between which were celebrated statues, this circular edifice, one hundred and eighty-eight feet in diameter, must have been one of the most imposing edifices in the city. After eighteen centuries, it still remains a monument of architectural strength, and it served for one of the strongest fortresses in Italy during the Middle Ages. I pass by, without notice, the villa this emperor erected at Tivoli, the ruins of which are among the most interesting which remain of that great age.
[Sidenote: Column of Marcus Aurelius.]
[Sidenote: Arch of Septimius Severus.]
[Sidenote: Baths of Caracalla.]
Under Hadrian Rome attained its greatest splendor, and after him, there was a progressive decline in the arts, since the public taste was corrupted. Still successive emperors continued to adorn the city. Marcus Aurelius, the wisest and best of all the emperors, erected a column similar to that of Trajan, to represent his wars with the Germanic tribes, and this still remains; he also built a triumphal arch. Septimius Severus erected the most beautiful of the triumphal arches, of which the Arc de Triumph in Paris is an imitation; and Caracalla built one of the greatest of the Roman baths, which, with the porticoes which surrounded it, formed a square of eleven hundred feet on each side—so enormous were these structures of luxury and utility, designed not only for the people as a sanitary measure, but for places of gymnastic exercises, popular lectures, and the disputations of philosophers. The Pantheon was merely an entrance to the baths of Agrippa. The baths of Trajan covered an area nearly as great. But those of Caracalla surpassed them all in magnificence. Nothing was more striking to a traveler than the painted corridors, the arched ceilings, the variegated columns, the elaborate mosaic pavements, the immortal statues, and the exquisite paintings which ornamented these places of luxury and pleasure. From amid their ruins have been dug out the most priceless of the statues which ornament the museums of Italy—the Farnese Hercules, the colossal Florae, the Torso Farnese, the Torso Belvidere, the Atreus and Thyestes, the Laocoon, beside granite and basaltic vases beautifully polished, cameos, bronzes, medals, and other valuable relics of ancient art. To supply these baths new aqueducts were built, and the treasures of the empire expended. Those subsequently erected by Diocletian contained three thousand two hundred marble seats, and the main hall now forms one of the most splendid of the Roman churches.
[Sidenote: Temples and Palaces.]
[Sidenote: General aspect of the city.]
[Sidenote: What a traveler would see in a walk.]
[Sidenote: The Via Sacra.]
[Sidenote: The Velabrum.]
[Sidenote: The Fora.]
[Sidenote: View from the summit of the Capitoline Hill.]
[Sidenote: Gardens of Lucullus.]
[Sidenote: The Subura.]
[Sidenote: Circus Maximus.]
[Sidenote: View of Rome from the Capitol.]
Such is a brief view of the progress of those architectural wonders which made Rome the most magnificent city of antiquity, and perhaps the grandest, in its public monuments, of any city in ancient or modern times. What a concentration of works of art on the hills, and around the Forum, and in the Campus Martins, and other celebrated quarters! There were temples rivaling those of Athens and Ephesus; baths covering more ground than the Pyramids, surrounded with Corinthian columns and filled with the choicest treasures, ransacked from the cities of Greece and Asia; palaces in comparison with which the Tuileries and Versailles are small; theatres which seated more people than any present public buildings in Europe; amphitheatres more extensive and costly than Cologne, Milan, and York Minster cathedrals combined, and seating eight times as many people as could be crowded into St. Peter's Church; circuses where, it is said, three hundred and eighty-five thousand spectators could witness the games and chariot-races at a time; bridges, still standing, which have furnished models for the most beautiful at Paris and London; aqueducts carried over arches one hundred feet in height, through which flowed the surplus water of distant lakes; drains of solid masonry in which large boats could float; pillars more than one hundred feet in height, coated with precious marbles or plates of brass, and covered with bass-reliefs; obelisks brought from Egypt; fora and basilicae connected together, and extending more than three thousand feet, in length, every part of which was filled with "animated busts" of conquerors, kings, and statesmen, poets, publicists, and philosophers; mausoleums greater and more splendid than that Artemisia erected to the memory of her husband; triumphal arches under which marched in stately procession the victorious armies of the Eternal City, preceded by the spoils and trophies of conquered empires,—such was the proud capital— a city of palaces, a residence or nobles who were virtually kings, enriched with the accumulated treasures of ancient civilization. Great were the capitals of Greece and Asia, but how preeminent was Rome, since all were subordinate to her. How bewildering and bewitching to a traveler must have been the varied wonders of the city! Go where he would, his eye rested on something which was both a study and a marvel. Let him drive or walk about the suburbs, there were villas, tombs, aqueducts looking like railroads on arches, sculptured monuments, and gardens of surpassing beauty and luxury. Let him approach the walls— they were great fortifications extending twenty-one miles in circuit, according to the measurement of Ammon as adopted by Gibbon, and forty- five miles according to other authorities. Let him enter any of the various gates which opened into the city from the roads which radiated to all parts of Italy—they were of monumental brass covered with bass- reliefs, on which the victories of generals for a thousand years were commemorated. Let him pass up the Via Appia, or the Via Flaminia, or the Via Cabra—they were lined with temples and shops and palaces. Let him pass through any of the crowded thoroughfares, he saw houses towering scarcely ever less than seventy feet—as tall as those of Edinburgh in its oldest sections. Let him pass through the varied quarters of the city, or wards as we should now call them, he finds some fourteen regions, as constituted by Augustus, all marked by architectural monuments, and containing, according to Lipsius, a population larger than London or Paris, guarded and watched by a police of ten thousand armed men. Most of the houses in which this vast population lived, according to Strabo, possessed pipes which gave a never-failing supply of water from the rivers which flowed into the city through the aqueducts and out again through the sewers into the Tiber. Let him walk up the Via Sacra—that short street, scarcely half a mile in length—and he passes the Flavian Amphitheatre, the Temple of Venus, and Rome, the Arch of Titus, the temples of Peace, of Vesta, and of Castor, the Forum Romanum, the Basilica Julia, the Arch of Severus, and the Temple of Saturn, and stands before the majestic ascent to the Capitoline Jupiter, with its magnificent portico and ornamented pediment, surpassing the facade of any modern church. On his left, as he emerges from beneath the sculptured Arch of Titus, is the Palatine Mount, nearly covered by the palace of the Caesars, the magnificent residences of the higher nobility, and various temples, of which that of Apollo was the most magnificent, built by Augustus of solid white marble from Luna. Here were the palaces of Vaccus, of Flaccus, of Cicero, of Catiline, of Scaurus, of Antonius, of Clodius, of Agrippa, and of Hortensius. Still on his left, in the valley between the Palatine and the Capitoline, though he cannot see it, concealed from view by the great temples of Vesta and of Castor, and the still greater edifice known as the Basilica Julia, is the quarter called the Velabrum, extending to the river, where the Pons Aemilius crosses it— a low quarter of narrow streets and tall houses where the rabble lived and died. On his right, concealed from view by the Aedes Divi Julii and the Forum Romanum, is that magnificent series of edifices extending from the Temple of Peace to the Temple of Trajan, including the Basilica Pauli, the Forum Julii, the Forum Augusti, the Forum Trajani, the Basilica Ulpia, more than three thousand feet in length and six hundred in breadth, almost entirely surrounded by porticoes and colonnades, and filled with statues and pictures—on the whole the grandest series of public buildings clustered together probably ever erected, especially if we take in the Forum Romanum and the various temples and basilicas which connected the whole together—a forest of marble pillars and statues. He ascends the steps which lead from the Temple of Concord to the Temple of Juno Moneta upon the Arx or Tarpeian Rock, on the southwestern summit of the hill, itself one of the most beautiful temples in Rome, erected by Camillus on the spot where the house of M. Manlius Capitolinus had stood. Here is established the Roman mint. Near this is the temple erected by Augustus to Jupiter Tonans and that built by Domitian to Jupiter Gustos. But all the sacred edifices which crown the Capitoline are subordinate to the Templum Jovis Capitolini, standing on a platform of eight thousand square feet, and built of the richest materials. The portico which faces the Via Sacra consists of three rows of Doric columns, the pediment is profusely ornamented with the choicest sculptures, the apex of the roof is surmounted by the bronze horses of Lysippus, and the roof itself is covered with gilded tiles. The temple has three separate cells, though covered with one roof; in front of each stand colossal statues of the three deities to whom it is consecrated. Here are preserved what was most sacred in the eyes of Romans, and it is itself the richest of all the temples of the city. What a beautiful panorama is presented to the view from the summit of this consecrated hill, only mounted by a steep ascent of one hundred steps. To the south is the Via Sacra extending to the Colosseum, and beyond it is the Appia Via, lined with monuments as far as the eye can reach. Little beyond the fora to the east is the Carinae, a fashionable quarter of beautiful shops and houses, and still further off are the Baths of Titus, extending from the Carinae to the Esquiline Mount. This hill, once a burial-ground, is now covered with the house and gardens of Maecenas, and of the poets whom he patronized. It is not rich in temples, but its gardens and groves are beautiful. To the northeast are the Viminal and Quirinal hills, after the Palatine the most ancient part of the city—the seat of the Sabine population. Abounding in fanes and temples, the most splendid of which is the Temple of Quirinus, erected originally to Romulus by Numa, but rebuilt by Augustus, with a double row of columns on each of its sides, seventy-six in number. Near by was the house of Atticus, and the gardens of Sallust in the valley between the Quirinal and Pincian, afterwards the property of the emperor. Far back on the Quirinal, near the wall of Servius, were the Baths of Diocletian, and still further to the east the Pretorian Camp established by Tiberius, and included within the wall of Aurelian. To the northeast the eye lights on the Pincian Hill covered by the gardens of Lucullus, to possess which Messalina caused the death of Valerius Asiaticus, into whose possession they had fallen. In the valley which lay between the fora and the Quirinal was the celebrated Subura,— the quarter of shops, markets, and artificers,—a busy, noisy, vulgar section, not beautiful, but full of life and enterprise and wickedness. The eye now turns to the north, and the whole length of the Via Flaminia is exposed to view, extending from the Capitoline to the Flaminian gate, perfectly straight, the finest street in Rome, and parallel to the modern Corso. It is the great highway to the north of Italy. Monuments and temples and palaces line this celebrated street. It is spanned by the triumphal arches of Claudius and Marcus Aurelius. To the west of it is the Campus Martius, with its innumerable objects of interest,—the Baths of Agrippa, the Pantheon, the Thermae Alexandrinae, the Column of Marcus Aurelius, and the Mausoleum of Augustus. Beneath the Capitoline on the west, toward the river, is the Circus Flaminius, the Portico of Octavius, the Theatre of Balbus, and the Theatre of Pompey, where forty thousand spectators were accommodated. Stretching beyond the Thermae Alexandrinae, near the Pantheon, is the magnificent bridge which crosses the Tiber, built by Hadrian when he founded his Mausoleum, to which it leads, still standing under the name of the Ponte S. Angelo. The eye takes in eight or nine bridges over the Tiber, some of wood, but generally of stone, of beautiful masonry, and crowned with statues. At the foot of the Capitoline, toward the southwest, are the Portico of Octavius and the Theatre of Marcellus, near the Pons Cestius. Still further southwest, between the Capitoline and the Aventine, in a low valley, are the Velabrum and the Forum Boarium, once a marsh, but now rich in temples and monuments, among which are those of Hercules Fortuna and Mater Matuta. There are no less than four temples consecrated to Hercules in the Forum Boarium, one of the most celebrated places in Rome, devoted to trade and commerce. Beyond still, in the valley between the Palatine and the Aventine, is the great Circus Maximus, founded by the early Tarquin. It is the largest open space inclosed by walls and porticoes in the city. It seats three hundred and eighty-five thousand people. How vast a city, which can spare nearly four hundred thousand of its population to see the chariot-races! Beyond is the Aventine itself. This also is rich in legendary monuments and in the palaces of the great, though originally a plebeian quarter. Here dwelt Trajan, before he was emperor, and Ennius the poet, and Paula, the friend of St. Jerome. Beneath the Aventine, and a little south of the Circus Maximus, west of the Appian Way, are the great baths of Caracalla, the ruins of which, next to those of the Colosseum, made on my mind the strongest impression of any thing that pertains to antiquity, though these were not so large as those of Diocletian. The view south takes in the Caelian Hill, the ancient residence of Tullus Hostilius. The beautiful Temple of Divus Claudius, the Arch of Dolabella, the Macellum Magnum,—a market founded by Nero,—the Castra Peregrina, the Temple of Isis, the Campus Martialis, are among the most conspicuous objects of interest. This hill is the residence of many distinguished Romans. It is covered with palaces. Among them is the house of Claudius Centumalus—so high, that the augurs command him to lower it. It towers ten or twelve stories into the air. Scarcely inferior in size is the house of Mamura, whose splendor is described by Pliny. Here also is the house of Annius Verus, the father of Marcus Aurelius, surrounded with gardens. But grander than any of these palaces is that of Plautius Lateranus, theegregioe Lateranorum oedes, which became imperial property in the time of Nero, and on whose site stands the basilica of St. John Lateran,—the gift of Constantine to the bishop of Rome,—one of the most ancient of the Christian churches, in which, for fifteen hundred years, daily services have been performed.
[Sidenote: Population.]
[Sidenote: Number of houses.]
Such are the objects of interest and grandeur which strike the eye as it is turned toward the various quarters of the city. But these are only the more important. The seven hills, appearing considerably higher than at the present day, as the valleys are raised fifteen or twenty feet above their ancient level, are covered with temples, palaces, and gardens; the valleys are densely crowded with shops, houses, baths, and theatres. The houses rise frequently to the tenth platform or story. The suburban population, beyond the walls, is probably greater than that within. The city, virtually, contains between three and four millions or people. Lipsius estimates four millions as the population, including slaves, women, children, and strangers. Though this estimate is regarded as too large by Merivale and others, yet how enormous must have been the number of the people when there were nine thousand and twenty-five baths, and when those of Diocletian could accommodate three thousand two hundred people at a time. The wooden theatre of Scaurus contained eighty thousand seats; that of Marcellus would seat twenty thousand; the Colosseum would seat eighty-seven thousand, and give standing space for twenty-two thousand more. The Circus Maximus would hold three hundred and eighty-five thousand spectators. If only one person out of four of the free population witnessed the games and spectacles at a time, we thus must have four millions of people altogether in the city. The Aurelian walls are now only thirteen miles in circumference, but Lipsius estimates the circumference at forty-five miles, and Vopiscus nearly fifty. The diameter of the city must have been eleven miles, since Strabo tells us that the actual limit of Rome was at a place between the fifth and sixth milestone from the column of Trajan in the Forum—the central and most conspicuous object in the city except the capitol. [Footnote: Strabo, lib. v. ch. 3.] Even in the sixth century, after Rome had been sacked and plundered by Goths and Vandals, Zacharia, a traveler, asserts that there were three hundred and eighty-four spacious streets, eighty golden statues of the gods; sixty-six large ivory statues of the gods; forty-six thousand six hundred and three houses; seventeen thousand and ninety-seven palaces; thirteen thousand and fifty-two fountains; three thousand seven hundred and eighty-five bronze statues of emperors and generals; twenty-two great horses in bronze; two colossi; two spiral columns; thirty-one theatres; eleven amphitheatres; nine thousand and twenty-six baths; two thousand three hundred shops of perfumers; two thousand and ninety-one prisons. [Footnote: St. Ampere,Hist. Romaine a Rome.] This seems to be incredible. "But," says Story, "Augustus divided the city into eighteen regions: each region contained twenty-two vici; each vicus contained about two hundred and thirty dwelling-houses, so that there must have been seventy-five thousand houses; of these houses, seventeen thousand were palaces, or domus. If each contained two hundred persons, (and four hundred slaves were maintained in a single palace,) reckoning family, freedmen, and slaves, we have three millions four hundred thousand people, and supposing the remaining fifty-eight thousand houses to have contained twenty-five persons each, we have in them one million four hundred and fifty thousand, which would give an entire population of four millions eight hundred and fifty thousand." If Mr. Merivale's estimate of seven hundred thousand is correct, then the Colosseum would hold nearly one in six of the whole population, which is incredible. Indeed, it is probable that even four millions was under than above the true estimate, which would make Rome the most populous city ever seen upon our globe. Nor is it extravagant to suppose this. The city numbered, according to the census, eighty thousand people in the year 197; and in 683 it had risen to four hundred and fifty thousand. Is it strange it should have numbered four millions in the time of Augustus, or even six millions in the time of Arelian, when we bear in mind that it was the political and social centre of a vast empire, and that empire the world? If London contains three millions at the present day, and Paris two millions, why should not a capital which had no rival, and which controlled at least one hundred and twenty millions of people? So that Pliny was not probably wrong when he said, "Si quis altitudinem tectorum addat, dignam profecto oestimationem concipiat, fateatur qui nullius urbis magnitudinem potuisse ei comparare." "If any one considers the height of the roofs, so as to form a just estimate, he will confess that no city could be compared with it for magnitude."
[Sidenote: The monuments which survive.]
[Sidenote: Games of Titus.]
Modern writers, taking London and Paris for their measure of material civilization, seem unwilling to admit that Rome could have reached such a pitch of glory and wealth and power. To him who stands within the narrow limits of the Forum, as it now appears, it seems incredible that it could have been the centre of a much larger city than Europe can now boast of. Grave historians are loth to compromise their dignity and character for truth, by admitting statements which seem, to men of limited views, to be fabulous, and which transcend modern experience. But we should remember that most of the monuments of ancient Rome have entirely disappeared. Nothing remains of the Palace of the Caesars, which nearly covered the Palatine Hill; little of the fora which, connected together, covered a space twice as large as that inclosed by the palaces of the Louvre and Tuileries with all their galleries and courts; almost nothing of the glories of the Capitoline Hill; and little comparatively of those Thermae which were a mile in circuit. But what does remain attests an unparalleled grandeur—the broken pillars of the Forum; the lofty columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius; the Pantheon, lifting its spacious dome two hundred feet into the air; the mere vestibule of the Baths of Agrippa; the triumphal arches of Titus and Trajan and Constantine; the bridges which span the Tiber; the aqueducts which cross the Campagna; the Cloaca Maxima, which drained the marshes and lakes of the infant city; but above all, the Colosseum. What glory and shame are associated with that single edifice! That alone, if nothing else remained of Pagan antiquity, would indicate a grandeur and a folly such as cannot now be seen on earth. It reveals a wonderful skill in masonry, and great architectural strength; it shows the wealth and resources of rulers who must have had the treasures of the world at their command; it indicates an enormous population, since it would seat all the male adults of the city of New York; it shows the restless passions of the people for excitement, and the necessity on the part of government of yielding to this taste. What leisure and indolence marked a city which could afford to give up so much time to the demoralizing sports! What facilities for transportation were afforded, when so many wild beasts could be brought to the capital from the central parts of Africa without calling out unusual comment! How imperious a populace that compels the government to provide such expensive pleasures! The games of Titus, on its dedication, last one hundred days, and five thousand wild beasts are slaughtered in the arena. The number of the gladiators who fought surpasses belief. At the triumph of Trajan over the Dacians, ten thousand gladiators were exhibited, and the emperor himself presides under a gilded canopy, surrounded by thousands of his lords. Underneath the arena, strewed with yellow sand and sawdust, is a solid pavement so closely cemented that it can be turned into an artificial lake on which naval battles are fought. But it is the conflict of gladiators which most deeply stimulates the passions of the people. The benches are crowded with eager spectators, and the voices of one hundred thousand are raised in triumph or rage as the miserable victims sink exhausted in the bloody sport.
[Sidenote: Roman triumphs.]
But it is not the gladiatorial sports of the amphitheatre which most strikingly attest the greatness and splendor of the city; nor the palaces, in which as many as four hundred slaves are sometimes maintained as domestic servants, twelve hundred in number according to the lowest estimate, but probably five times as numerous, since every senator, every knight, and every rich man was proud to possess a residence which would attract attention; nor the temples, which numbered four hundred and twenty-four, most of which were of marble, filled with statues, the contributions of ages, and surrounded with groves; nor the fora and basilicae, with their porticoes, statues, and pictures, covering more space than any cluster of public buildings in Europe, a mile and a half in circuit; nor the baths, nearly as large, still more completely filled with works of art; nor the Circus Maximus, where more people witnessed the chariot races at a time than are nightly assembled in all the places of public amusement in Paris, London, and New York combined— more than could be seated in all the cathedrals of England and France; it is not these which most impressively make us feel that Rome was the mistress of the world and the centre of all civilization. The triumphal processions of the conquering generals were still more exciting to behold, for these appeal more directly to the imagination, and excite those passions which urged the Romans to a career of conquest from generation to generation. No military review of modern times equaled those gorgeous triumphs, even as no scenic performance compares with the gladiatorial shows. The. sun has never shone upon any human assemblage so magnificent and so grand, so imposing and yet so guilty. And we recall the picture of it with solemn awe as it moves along the Via Sacra and ascends the Capitoline Hill, or passes through the theatres of Pompey and Marcellus, that all the people might witness the brilliant spectacle. Not only were displayed the spoils of conquered kingdoms, and the triumphal cars of generals, but the whole military strength of the capital. An army of one hundred thousand men, flushed with victory, follows the gorgeous procession of nobles and princes. The triumph of Aurelian, on his return from the East, gives us some idea of the grandeur of that ovation to conquerors. "The pomp was opened by twenty elephants, four royal tigers, and two hundred of the most curious animals from every climate, north, south, east, and west. These were followed by one thousand six hundred gladiators, devoted to the cruel amusement of the amphitheatre. Then were displayed the arms and ensigns of conquered nations, the plate and wardrobe of the Syrian queen. Then ambassadors from all parts of the earth—all remarkable in their rich dresses, with their crowns and offerings. Then the captives taken in the various wars, Goths, Vandals, Samaritans, Alemanni, Franks, Gauls, Syrians, and Egyptians, each marked by their national costume. Then the Queen of the East, the beautiful Zenobia, confined by fetters of gold, and fainting under the weight of jewels, preceding the beautiful chariot in which she had hoped to enter the gates of Rome. Then the chariot of the Persian king. Then the triumphal car of Aurelian himself, drawn by elephants. Finally the most illustrious of the Senate, the people, and the army closed the solemn procession, amid the acclamations of the people, and the sound of musical instruments. It took from dawn of day until the ninth hour for the procession to pass to the capital, and the festival was protracted by theatrical representations, the games of the circus, the hunting of wild beasts, combats of gladiators, and naval engagements. Liberal donations were presented to the army, and a portion of the spoils dedicated to the gods. All the temples glittered with the offerings of ostentatious piety, and the Temple of the Sun received fifteen thousand pounds of gold. The soldiers and the citizens were then surfeited with meat and wine. The disbanded soldiery thronged the amphitheatre, and yelled their fiendish applause at the infernal games,— the gorged robbers of the world, drunk in a festival of hell," [Footnote: Henry Giles.]—a representation of war as terrible as war itself, compensating to the Roman people the massacres which they could not see.
If any thing more were wanted to give us an idea of Roman magnificence, we would turn our eyes from public monuments, demoralizing games, and grand processions; we would forget the statues in brass and marble, which outnumbered the living inhabitants, so numerous that one hundred thousand have been recovered and still embellish Italy, and would descend into the lower sphere of material life—to those things which attest luxury and taste—to ornaments, dresses, sumptuous living, and rich furniture. The art of working metals and cutting precious stones surpassed any thing known at the present day. In the decoration of houses, in social entertainments, in cookery, the Romans were remarkable. The mosaics, signet rings, cameos, bracelets, bronzes, chains, vases, couches, banqueting tables, lamps, chariots, colored glass, gildings, mirrors, mattresses, cosmetics, perfumes, hair dyes, silk robes, potteries, all attest great elegance and beauty. The tables of thuga root and Delian bronze were as expensive as the sideboards of Spanish walnut, so much admired in the great exhibition at London. Wood and ivory were carved as exquisitely as in Japan and China. Mirrors were made of polished silver. Glass-cutters could imitate the colors of precious stones so well, that the Portland vase, from the tomb of Alexander Severus, was long considered as a genuine sardonix. Brass could be hardened so as to cut stone. The palace of Nero glittered with gold and jewels. Perfumes and flowers were showered from ivory ceilings. The halls of Heliogabulus were hung with cloth of gold, enriched with jewels. His beds were silver, and his tables of gold. Tiberius gave a million of sesterces for a picture for his bed-room. A banquet dish of Drusillus weighed five hundred pounds of silver. The cups of Drusus were of gold. Tunics were embroidered with the figures of various animals. Sandals were garnished with precious stones. Paulina wore jewels, when she paid visits, valued at $800,000. Drinking-cups were engraved with scenes from the poets. Libraries were adorned with busts, and presses of rare woods. Sofas were inlaid with tortoise-shell, and covered with gorgeous purple. The Roman grandees rode in gilded chariots, bathed in marble baths, dined from golden plate, drank from crystal cups, slept on beds of down, reclined on luxurious couches, wore embroidered robes, and were adorned with precious stones. They ransacked the earth and the seas for rare dishes for their banquets, and ornamented their houses with carpets from Babylon, onyx cups from Bythinia, marbles from Numidia, bronzes from Corinth, statues from Athens—whatever, in short, was precious or rare or curious in the most distant countries. The luxuries of the bath almost exceed belief, and on the walls were magnificent frescoes and paintings, exhibiting an inexhaustible productiveness in landscape and mythological scenes, executed in lively colors. From the praises of Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, and other great critics, we have a right to infer that painting was as much prized as statuary, and equaled it in artistic excellence, although so little remains of antiquity from which we can form an enlightened judgment. We certainly infer from designs on vases great skill in drawing, and from the excavations of Pompeii, the most beautiful colors. The walls of the great hall of the baths of Titus represent flowers, birds, and animals, drawn with wonderful accuracy. In the long corridor of these baths the ceiling is painted with colors which are still fresh, and Raphael is said to have studied the frescoes with admiration, even as Michael Angelo found in the Pantheon a model for the dome of St. Peter's, and in the statues which were dug up from the ruins of the baths, studies for his own immortal masterpieces.
Thus every thing which gilds the material wonders of our day with glory and splendor, also marked the old capitol of the world. That which is most prized by us, distinguished to an eminent degree the Roman grandees. In an architectural point of view no modern city approaches Rome. It contained more statues than all the Museums of Europe. It had every thing which we have except machinery. It surpassed every modern capitol in population. It was richer than any modern city, since the people were not obliged to toil for their daily bread. The poor were fed by the government, and had time and leisure for the luxuries of the bath and the excitements of the amphitheatre. The citizen nobles owned whole provinces. Even Paula could call a whole city her own. Rich senators, in some cases, were the proprietors of twenty thousand slaves. Their incomes were known to be 1000 pounds sterling a day, when gold and silver were worth four times as much as at the present day. Rome was made up of these citizen kings and their dependants, for most of the senators had been, at some time, governors of provinces, which they rifled and robbed. In Rome were accumulated the choicest treasures of the world. Her hills were covered with the palaces of the proudest nobles that ever walked the earth, Rome was the centre, and the glory, and the pride of all the nations of antiquity. It seemed impossible that such a city could ever be taken by enemies, or fall into decay. "Quando cadet Roma cadet et mundus," said the admiring Saxons three hundred years after the injuries inflicted by Goths and Vandals. Nor has Rome died. Never has she entirely passed into the hands of her enemies. A hundred times on the verge of annihilation, she was never annihilated. She never accepted the stranger's yoke—she never was permanently subjected to the barbarian. She continued to be Roman after the imperial presence had departed. She was Roman when fires, and inundations, and pestilence, and famine, and barbaric soldiers desolated the city. She was Roman when the Pope held Christendom in a base subserviency. She was Roman when Rienzi attempted to revive the virtues of the heroic ages, and when Michael Angelo restored the wonders of Apollodorus. And Roman that city will remain, whether as the home of princes, or the future capitol of the kings of Italy, or the resort of travelers, or the school of artists, or the seat of a spiritual despotism which gains strength as political and temporal power passes away before the ideas of the new races and the new civilization.
* * * * *
The most valuable book of reference for this chapter is the late work of Dr. Dyer, author of the article "Roma" in Smith's Dictionary. In fact this chapter is a mere compilation of that elaborate work, ("History of the City of Rome,") which may be said to be exhaustive. Mabillon and Montfaucon—two French Benedictines—rendered great service in the seventeenth century to Roman topography. Edward Burton and Richard Burgess wrote descriptions of Roman antiquities, now superseded by the writings of those great German scholars, who made a new epoch of Roman topography—Niebuhr, Bunsen, Platner, Gerhard, and Rostell, who, however, have succeeded in throwing doubt on many things supposed to be established. One of the most learned treatises on ancient Rome is the celebratedHandbuchof Becker. Stephano Piale and Luigi Canina are the most approved of the modern Italian antiquarians.
[Relocated Footnote:
[Sidenote: Mausoleum of Augustus.]
[Sidenote: Those who were buried in it.]
"This enduring structure, which survived the conflagrations, the wars, and the anarchies of fifteen hundred years, consisted of a large tumulus of earth, raised on a lofty basement of white marble, and covered on the summit with evergreens in the manner of a hanging garden. On the summit was a bronze statue of Augustus himself, and beneath the tumulus was a large central hall, round which ran a range of fourteen sepulchral chambers, opening into this common vestibule. At the entrance were two Egyptian obelisks, fifty feet in height, and all around was an extensive grove divided into walks and terraces. The young Marcellus, whose fate was bewailed by Virgil, was its first occupant. Here was placed Octavia, the neglected wife of Antony, and Agrippa, the builder of the Parthenon, and Livia, the beloved wife of Augustus, and beside them the first imperator himself. Here were the poisoned ashes of the noble Germanicus, borne from Syria; here the young Drusus, the pride of the Ciaudian family, and at his side the second Drusus, the son of Tiberius. Here reposed the dust of Agrippina, after years of exile, by the side of her husband, Germanicus; here Nero and his mother, Agrippina, and his victim, Britannicus; here Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and all the other Caesars to Nerva. Then the marble door was closed, for the sepulchral cells were full."—Story'sRoba di Roma.]
In my enumeration of the external glories of the Roman world, I only attempted to glance at those wonders which were calculated to strike a traveler with admiration. Among these were the great developments of Art, displayed in architecture, in statuary, and in painting. But I only enumerated the more remarkable objects of attraction; I did not attempt to show the genius displayed in them. But ancient art, as a proud creation of the genius of man, demands additional notice. We wish to know to what heights the Romans soared in that great realm of beauty and grace and majesty.
[Sidenote: Origins and principles of art.]
[Sidenote: Fascinations of art.]
[Sidenote: Development of art.]
[Sidenote: Glory of art.]
The aesthetic glories of art are among the grandest triumphs of civilization, and attest as well as demand no ordinary force of genius. Art claims to be creative, and to be based on eternal principles of beauty, and artists in all ages have claimed a proud niche in the temple of fame. They rank with poets and musicians, and even philosophers and historians, in the world's regard. They are favored sons of inspiration, urged to their work by ideal conceptions of the beautiful and the true. Their productions are material, but the spirit which led to their creation is of the soul and mind. Imagination is tasked to the uttermost to portray sentiments and passions. The bust is "animated," and the temple, though built of marble, and by man, is called "religious." Art appeals to every cultivated mind, and excites poetic feelings. It is impressive even to every order, class, and condition of men, not, perhaps, in its severest forms, since the taste must be cultivated to appreciate its higher beauties, but to a certain extent. The pyramids and the granite image temples of Egypt must have filled even the rude people with a certain awe and wonder, even as the majestic cathedrals of mediaeval Europe, with their imposing pomps, stimulated the poetic conceptions of the Gothic nations. Art is popular. The rude savage admires a gaudy picture even as the cultivated Leo X. or Cardinal Mazarini bent in admiration before the great creations of Raphael or Domenichino. Art appeals to the senses as well as to the intellect and the heart, and is capable of inspiring the passions as well as the loftiest emotions and sentiments. The Grecian mind was trained to the contemplation of aesthetic beauty in temples, in statues, and in pictures; and the great artist was rewarded with honors and material gains. The love of art is easier kindled than the love of literary excellence, and is more generally diffused. It is coeval with songs and epic poetry. Before Socrates or Plato speculated on the great certitudes of philosophy, temples and statues were the pride and boast of their countrymen. And as the taste for art precedes the taste for letters, so it survives, when the literature has lost its life and freshness. The luxurious citizens of Rome ornamented their baths and palaces with exquisite pictures and statues long after genius ceased to soar to the heights of philosophy and poetry. The proudest triumphs of genius are in a realm which art can never approach, yet the wonders of art are still among the great triumphs of civilization. Zeuxis or Praxiteles may not have equaled Homer or Plato in profundity of genius, but it was only a great age which could have produced a Zeuxis or Praxiteles. I cannot place Raphael on so exalted a pinnacle as Luther, or Bacon, or Newton, and yet his fame will last as long as civilization shall exist. The creations of the chisel will ever be held in reverence by mankind, and probably in proportion as wealth, elegance, and material prosperity shall flourish. In an important sense, Corinth was as wonderful as Athens, although to Athens will be assigned the highest place in the ancient world. It was art rather than literature or philosophy which was the glory of Rome in the period of her decline. As great capitals become centres of luxury and display, artists will be rewarded and honored. The pride of a commercial metropolis is in those material wonders which appeal to the senses, and which wealth can purchase. A rich merchant can give employment to the architect, when he would be disinclined to reward the critic or the historian. Even where liberty and lofty aspirations for truth and moral excellence have left a state, the arts suffer but little decline. The grandest monuments of Rome date to the imperial regime, not to the republican sway. When the voice of a Cicero was mute, the Flavian amphitheatre arose in its sublime proportions. Imperial despotism is favorable to the adornment of Paris and St. Petersburg, even as wealth and luxury will beautify New York. When the early lights of the Church were unheeded in the old capitals of the world, new temples and palaces were the glory of the state. Art was the first to be revived of the trophies of the old civilization, and it will be the last to be relinquished, by those whom civilization has enriched. Art excites no dangerous passions or sentiments in a decaying monarchy, and it is a fresh and perpetual pleasure, not merely to the people, but to the arbiters of taste and fashion. The Popes rewarded artists when they crushed reformers, and persecuted inquiring genius. The developments of art appeal to material life and interests rather than to the spiritual and eternal. St. Paul scarcely alludes to the material wonders of the cities he visited, even as Luther was insensible to the ornaments of Italy in his absorbing desire for the spiritual and moral welfare of society. Art is purely the creation of man. It receives no inspiration from Heaven; and yet the principles on which it is based are eternal and unchangeable, and when it is made to be the handmaid of virtue, it is capable of exciting the loftiest sentiments. So pure, so exalted, and so wrapt are the feelings which arise from the contemplation of a great picture or statue, that we sometimes ascribe a religious force to the art itself, while all that is divine springs from the conception of the artist, and all that is divine in his conception arises from sentiments independent of his art, as he is stimulated by emotions of religion, or patriotism, or public virtue, and which he could never have embodied had he not been a good man, rather than a great artist, or, at least, affected by sentiments which he learned from other sources. There can be no doubt that, through the vehicle of art, the grandest and noblest sentiments may be expressed. Hence artists may be great benefactors; yet sometimes their works are demoralizing, as they appeal to perverted taste and passions. This was especially true in the later days of Rome, when artists sought to please their corrupt but wealthy patrons. The great artists of Greece, however, had in view a lofty ideal of beauty and grace which they sought to realize without reference to profit, or worldly advantage, or utilitarian necessities. Art, when true and exalted, as it sometimes is, and always should be, has its end in itself. Like virtue, it is its own reward. Michael Angelo worked, preoccupied and wrapt, without the stimulus of even praise, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination gave form and reality. Art is therefore self-sustained, unselfish, lofty. It is the soul going forth triumphant over external circumstances, jubilant and melodious even in poverty and neglect, rising above the evils of life in its absorbing contemplation of ideal loveliness. The fortunate accidents of earth are nothing to the true artist, striving to reach his ideal of excellence,—no more than carpets and chairs are to a great woman pining for sympathy or love. And it is only when there is this soul-longing to reach the excellence it has conceived for itself alone that great works have been produced. The sweetest strains of music sometimes come from women where no one listens to their melodies. Nor does a great artist seek or need commiseration, if ever so unfortunate in worldly circumstances. He may be sad and sorrowful, but only in the profound seriousness of superior knowledge, in that isolation to which all genius is doomed.
[Sidenote: Great artists labor from inspiration.]
We have reason to believe that the great artists of antiquity lived, as did the Ionic philosophers, in their own glorious realms of thought and feeling, which the world could neither understand nor share. Their ideas of grace and beauty were realized to the highest degree ever known on earth. They were expressed in their temples, their statues, and their pictures. They did not live for utilities. When art became a utility, it degenerated. It became more pretentious, artificial, complicated, elaborate, ornamental even, but it lacked genius, the simplicity of power, the glory of originality. The horses of the sun cannot be made to go round in a mill. The spiritual must keep within its own seclusion, in its inner temple of mystery and meditation.
[Sidenote: Grecian art consecrated to Paganism.]
[Sidenote: Greatness and beauty of Grecian art.]
[Sidenote: Grecian admiration of art.]
Grecian art was consecrated to Paganism, and could not therefore soar beyond what Paganism revealed. It did not typify those exalted sentiments which even a Gothic cathedral portrayed—sacrifice; the man on the cross; the man in the tomb; the man ascending to heaven. Nor did it paint, like Raphael, etherial beauty, such as was expressed in the mother of our Lord, her whom all generations shall bless,regina angelorum, mater divinae gratiae. But whatever has been reached by the unaided powers of man, it reproduced and consecrated, and it realized the highest conceptions of beauty and grace that have ever been represented. All that the mind and the soul could, by their inherent force, reach, it has attained. Modern civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists of Pagan antiquity in those things which pertain to beauty and grace. Grecian artists have been the schoolmasters of all nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. How far they themselves were original we cannot decide, although they were probably somewhat indebted to the Assyrians and Egyptians. But they struck out so new a style, and so different from the older monuments of Asia and Egypt, that we consider them the great creators of art. But whether original or not, they have never been surpassed. In some respects their immortal productions remain objects of hopeless imitation. In the realization of ideas of beauty which are eternal, like those on which Plato built his system of philosophy, they reached absolute perfection. And hence we infer that art can flourish under Pagan as well as Christian influences. We can go no higher than those ancient Pagans in one of the proudest fields of civilization; for art has as sincere and warm admirers as it had in Grecian and Roman times, but the limit of excellence has been reached. It is the mission of our age to apply creative genius to enterprises and works which have not been tried, if any thing new is to be found under the sun. Nor was it the number and extent of the works of art among the Greeks and Romans, nor their perfection, which made art so distinguishing an element of the old civilization. It was the spirit of the age, the absorption of the public mind, the great prominence which art had in the eyes of the people. Art was to the Greeks what tournaments and churches were to the men of the Middle Ages, what the Reformation was to Germany and England in the sixteenth century, what theories of political rights were to the era of the French Revolution, what mechanical inventions to abridge human labor are to us. The creation of a great statue was an era, an object of popular interest—the subject of universal comment. It kindled popular inspirations. It was the great form of progress in which that age rejoiced. Public benefactors erected temples, and lavished upon them the superfluous wealth of the State. And public benefactors, in turn, had statues erected to their memory by their grateful admirers. The genius of the age expressed itself in marble histories. And these histories stand in the mystery of absolute perfection—the glory and the characteristic of a great and peculiar people.
[Sidenote: Principles of art.]
[Sidenote: Devotion of the Greeks for Art.]
Much has been written on those principles upon which art is founded, and great ingenuity displayed. But treatises on taste, on beauty, on grace, and other perceptions of intellectual pleasure, are not very satisfactory, and must be necessarily indefinite. In what does beauty consist? Do we arrive at any clearer conceptions of it by definitions? Whether beauty, the chief glory of the fine arts, consists in certain arrangements and proportions of the parts to a whole, or in the fitness of means to an end, or is dependent on associations which excite pleasure, or is a revelation of truth, or is an appeal to sensibilities, or is an imitation of Nature, or the realization of ideal excellence, it is difficult to settle and almost useless to inquire. "Metaphysics, mathematics, music, and philosophy have been called in to analyze, define, demonstrate, and generalize." [Footnote: Cleghorn,Ancient and Modern Art, vol. i. p. 67.] Great writers have written ingenious treatises, like Burke, Alison, and Stewart. Beauty, according to Plato, is the contemplation of mind; Leibnitz maintained it consists in perfection; Diderot referred beauty to the idea of relation; Blondel asserted it was harmonic proportions; Peter Leigh speaks of it as the music of the eye. Yet everybody understands what beauty is, and that it is derived from Nature, agreeable to the purest models which Nature presents. Such was the ideal of Phidias. Such was it to the minds of the Greeks, who united every advantage, physical and mental, for the perfection of art. Nor could art have been so wonderfully developed had it not been for the influence which the great poets, orators, dramatists, historians, and philosophers exercised on the inspiration of the artists. Phidias, being asked how he conceived the idea of his Olympian Jupiter, answered by repeating a passage of Homer. We can scarcely conceive of the enthusiasm which the Greeks exhibited in the cultivation of art. Hence it has obtained an ascendency over that of all other nations. Roman art was the continuation of the Grecian. The Romans appreciated and rewarded Grecian artists. They adopted their architecture, their sculpture, and their paintings; and, though art never attained the estimation and dignity in Rome that it did in Greece, it still can boast of a great development. But, inasmuch as all the great models were Grecian, and appropriated and copied by the Romans,— inasmuch as the great wonders of the "Eternal City" were made by Greeks,—we cannot treat of Roman art in distinction from Grecian. And as I wish to show simply the triumph of Pagan genius in the realm of art, and most of the immortal creations of the great artists were transported to Rome, and adorned Rome, it is within my province to go where they were originally found.
"Tu, regere imperio populos, Romane, memento!Hae tibi erunt artes."
[Sidenote: Art first impressive in achitecture.]
The first development of art was in architecture, not merely among the Greeks, but among the older nations. Although it refers, in a certain sense, to all buildings, yet it is ordinarily restricted to those edifices in which we recognize the principle of beauty, such as symmetrical arrangement, and attractive ornaments, like pillars, cornices, and sculptured leaves.
The earliest buildings were houses to protect men from the inclemencies of the weather, and built without much regard to beauty; but it is in temples for the worship of God, that architecture lays claim to dignity. It was the result of devotional feelings; nor is there a single instance of supreme excellence in art being reached, which was not sacred, and connected with reverential tendencies. In the erection and decoration of sacred buildings there was a profound sentiment that they were to be the sanctuaries of God, and genius was stimulated by pious emotions. In India, in Egypt, in Greece, in Italy, the various temples all originated in blended superstition and devotion. Nor did the edifice, erected for religious worship, reach its culminating height of beauty and grandeur until that earnest and profoundly religious epoch which felt as injuries the insults offered to the tomb which covered the remains of the Saviour of the world. Then arose those hoary and Gothic vaults of Cologne and Westminster, the only modern structures which would probably have called out the admiration of an ancient Greek.
[Sidenote: Egyptian architecture.]
[Sidenote: Monuments of Egypt.]
[Sidenote: Temple of Carnack.]
[Sidenote: Features of Egyptian art.]
But architecture is conventional, and demands a knowledge of its system and a mind informed as to the principles on which it depends for beauty. Hence, in the oldest temples of India and Egypt, there was probably vastness, without elegance or even embellishment. But no nation ever left structures that, in extent and grandeur, can compare with those of ancient Egypt; and these were chiefly temples. Nothing remains of the ancient monuments of Thebes but the ruins of edifices consecrated to the deity—neither bridges, nor quays, nor baths, nor theatres. It was when the Israelites were oppressed by Pharaoh that the great city of Heliopolis, which the Greeks called Thebes, arose, with its hundred gates, and stately public buildings, and magnificent temples. The ruins of these attest grandeur and vastness. They were built of stone, in huge blocks, and we are still at a loss to comprehend how such heavy stones could have been transported and erected. All the monuments of the Pharaohs are wonders of science and art, especially such as appear in the ruins of Carnack—a temple formerly designated as that of Jupiter Ammon. It was in the time of Sesostris, or Rameses the Great, the first of the Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty, that architecture in Egypt reached its greatest development. Then we find the rectangular cut blocks of stone in parallel courses, and the heavy piers, and the cylindrical column, with its bell-shaped capital, and the bold and massive rectangular architraves extending from pier to pier and column to column, surmounted by a deep covered coping or cornice. But the imposing architecture of Egypt was chiefly owing to the vast proportions of the public buildings. It was not produced by beauty of proportion, or graceful embellishments. It was designed to awe the people, and kindle sentiments of wonder and astonishment. So far as this end was contemplated, it was nobly reached. Even to this day the traveller stands in admiring amazement before those monuments which were old three thousand years ago. No structures have been so enduring as the Pyramids. No ruins are more extensive and majestic than those of Thebes. The temple of Carnack and the palace of Rameses the Great, were probably the most imposing ever built by man. This temple was built of blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand feet long and three hundred wide, with pillars sixty feet in height. But this and other structures did not possess that unity of design, which marked the Grecian temples. Alleys of colossal sphinxes form the approach. At Carnack the alley was six thousand feet long, and before the main body of the edifice stand two obelisks commemorative of the dedication. The principal structures do not follow the straight line, but begin with pyramidical towers which flank the gateways. Then follows, usually, a court surrounded with colonnades, subordinate temples, and houses for the priests. A second pylon, or pyramidical tower, now leads to the interior and most considerable part of the temple, a portico inclosed with walls, which only receives light through the entablature or openings in the roof. Adjoining to this is the cella of the temple, without columns, inclosed by several walls, often divided into various small chambers, with monolith receptacles for idols or mummies or animals. The columns stand within the walls. The Egyptians had no perpetual temples. The colonnade is not, as among the Greeks, an expansion of the temple; it is merely the wall with apertures. The walls, composed of square blocks, are perpendicular only on the inside, and beveled externally, so that the thickness at the bottom sometimes amounts to twenty-four feet, and thus the whole building assumes a pyramidical form, the fundamental principle of Egyptian architecture. The columns are more slender than the early Doric, are placed close together, and have bases of circular plinths; the shaft diminishes, and is ornamented with perpendicular or oblique furrows, but not fluted like Grecian columns. The capitals are of the bell form, ornamented with all kinds of foliage, and have a narrow but high abacus, or bulge out below, and are contracted above, with low, but projecting abacus. They abound with sculptured decorations, borrowed from the vegetation of the country. The highest of the columns of the temple of Luxor is five and a quarter times the greatest diameter. [Footnote: Muller.]
[Sidenote: The Pyramids.]
But no monuments have ever excited so much curiosity and wonder as the Pyramids, not in consequence of any particular beauty or ingenuity, as from their immense size and unknown age. None but sacerdotal monarchs would ever have erected them—none but a fanatical people would ever have toiled upon them. They do not indicate civilization, but despotism. We do not know for what purpose they were raised, except as sepulchres for kings. They do not even indicate as high a culture as the temples of Thebes, although they were built at a considerable period subsequently, even several generations after Sesostris reigned in splendor. The pyramid of Cheops, at Memphis, covers a square whose side is seven hundred and sixty-eight feet, and rises into the air four hundred and fifty-two, and is a solid mass of stone, which has suffered less from time than the mountains near it. And it is probable that it stands over an immense substructure, in which may yet be found the lore of ancient Egypt, and which may even prove to be the famous labyrinth of which Herodotus speaks, built by the twelve kings of Egypt. According to this author, one hundred thousand men worked on this monument for forty years. What a waste of labor!
The palaces of the kings are mere imitations of the temples, and the only difference of architecture is this, that the rooms are larger and in greater numbers. Some think that the labyrinth was a collective palace of many rulers.
Such was the massive grandeur of Egyptian antiquities: at the best curiosities, but of slight avail for moral or aesthetic culture, they yet indicate a considerable civilization at a very remote period—proving not merely by architectural monuments, but by their system of writing, an original and intellectual people. [Footnote: Muller,Ancient Art; Wilkinson,Topog. of Thebes; Champollion,Lettres Ecrites d'Egypt;Journal des Sav.1836;Encyclopedia Britannica; Strabo.]
[Sidenote: Babylonian architecture.]
Of Babylonian architecture we know but little, beyond what the Scriptures and ancient authors allude to in scattered notices. But, though nothing survives of ancient magnificence, we feel that a city whose walls, according to Herodotus, were eighty-seven feet in thickness, three hundred and thirty-seven in height, and sixty miles in circumference, and in which were one hundred gates of brass, must have had considerable architectural splendor. The Tower of Belus, the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Obelisk of Semiramis, were probably wonderful structures, certainly in size, which is one of the conditions of architectural effect.
[Sidenote: Tyrian monuments.]
The Tyrians must have carried architecture to considerable perfection, since the Temple of Solomon, one of the most magnificent in the ancient world, was probably built by Phoenician artists. It was not remarkable for size; it was, indeed, very small; but it had great splendor of decoration. It was of quadrangular outline, erected upon a solid platform of stone, and having a striking resemblance to the oldest Greek temples, like those of aegina and Paestum. The portico of the temple, in the time of Herod, was one hundred and eighty feet high, and the temple itself was entered by nine gates thickly coated with silver and gold. The inner sanctuary was covered on all sides with plates of gold, and was dazzling to the eye. The various courts and porticoes and palaces with which it was surrounded, gave to it a very imposing effect.
[Sidenote: Early Doric monuments.]
[Sidenote: The principles of Doric architecture.]
[Sidenote: The features of the Doric order.]
[Sidenote: The Parthenon.]
Architecture, however, as the expression of genius and high civilization, was perfected only by the Greeks. Egyptian monuments were curiosities to the Greek and Roman mind, as they are to us objects of awe and wonder. And as we propose to treat of the arts in their culminating excellence chiefly,—to show what the Pagan intellect of man could accomplish, unaided by light from heaven, we turn to the great teacher of the last two thousand years. It was among the ancient Dorians, who descended from the mountains of Northern Greece eighty years after the fall of Troy, that art first appeared. The Pelasgi, supposed to be Phoenicians, erected cyclopean structures fifteen hundred years before Christ, as seen in the giant walls of the Acropolis, [Footnote:Dodwell's Classical Tour, Muller.] constructed of huge blocks of hewn stone, and the palaces of the princes of heroic times, [Footnote: Homer's description of the palace of Odysseus.] like the Mycenaean treasury, the lintel of the doorway of which is one stone twenty-seven feet long and sixteen broad. [Footnote: Mure,Tour in Greece.] But these edifices, which aimed at splendor and richness merely, were deficient in that simplicity and harmony which have given immortality to the temples of the Dorians. In this style of architecture every thing was suitable to its object, and was grand and noble. The great thickness of the columns, the beautiful entablature, the ample proportion of the capital; the great horizontal lines of the architrave and cornice, predominating over the vertical lines of the columns; the severity of geometrical forms, produced for the most part by straight lines, gave an imposing simplicity to the Doric temple. How far the Greek architects were indebted to the Egyptian we cannot tell, for though columns are found amid the ruins of the Egyptian temples, they are of different shape from any made by the Greeks. In the structures of Thebes we find both the tumescent and the cylindrical columns, from which amalgamation might have been produced the Doric column. The Greeks seized on beauty wherever they found it, and improved upon it. The Doric column was not, probably, an entirely new creation, but shaped after the models furnished by the most original of all the ancient nations, even the Egyptians. The Doric style was used exclusively until after the Macedonian conquest, and was chiefly applied to temples. The Doric temples are uniform in plan. The columns were fluted, and were generally about six diameters in height. They diminished gradually from the base, with a slight convexed swelling downward. They were superimposed by capitals proportionate, and coming within their height. The entablature which the column supported is also of so many diameters in height. So regular and perfect was the plan of the temple, that, "if the dimensions of a single column, and the proportion the entablature should bear to it, were given to two individuals acquainted with the style, with directions to compose a temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement, and general proportions." Then the Doric order possessed a peculiar harmony, but taste and skill were nevertheless necessary in order to determine the number of diameters a column should have, and, accordingly, the height of the entablature. The Doric was the favorite order of European Greece for one thousand years, and also of her colonies in Sicily and Magna Graecia. The massive temples of Paestum, the colossal magnificence of the Sicilian ruins, and the more elegant proportions of the Athenian structures, like the Parthenon and Temple of Theseus, show the perfection of the Doric architecture. Although the general style of all the Doric temples is so uniform, yet hardly two temples were alike. The earlier Doric was more massive; the latter were more elegant, and were rich in sculptured decorations. Nothing could surpass the beauty of a Doric temple in the time of Pericles. The stylobate or pedestal, from two thirds to a whole diameter of a column in height, was built in three equal courses, which gradually receded from the one below, and formed steps, as it were, of a grand platform on which the pillars rested. The column was from four to six diameters in height, with twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter supporting the entablature. This again, two diameters in height, was divided into architrave, frieze, and cornice. But the great beauty of the temple was the portico in front, a forest of columns, supporting the pediment, about a diameter and a half to the apex, making an angle at the base of about 14 degrees. From the pediment projects the cornice, while, at the apex and at the base of it, are sculptured ornaments, generally, the figures of men or animals. The whole outline of columns supporting the entablature is graceful, while the variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and capitals produce a grand effect. The Parthenon, the most beautiful specimen of the Doric, has never been equaled, and it still stands august in its ruins—the glory of the old Acropolis, and the pride of Athens. It was built of Pentelic marble, and rested on a basement of limestone. It was two hundred and twenty-seven feet in length, and one hundred and one in breadth, and sixty-five in height, surrounded with forty-eight fluted columns, six feet and two inches at the base, and thirty-four feet in height, while within the peristyle, at either end, was an interior range of columns, standing before the end of the cella. The frieze and the pediment were elaborately ornamented with reliefs and statues, while the cella, within and without, was adorned with the choicest sculptures of Phidias. The grandest was the colossal statue of Minerva, in the eastern apartment of the cella, forty feet in height, composed of gold and ivory; while the inner walls were decorated with paintings, and the temple itself was a repository of countless treasure. But the Parthenon, so regular, with its vertical and horizontal lines, was curved in every line, with the exception of the gable,—pillars, architrave, entablature, frieze, and cornice, together with the basement—all arched upwards, though so slightly as not to be perceptible, and these curved lines gave to it a peculiar grace which cannot be imitated, as well as solidity.