CHAPTER II.
ART.
Romangenius was somewhat inventive, but it was exercised only in pandering to sensual gratification. There the plow, the pen, and the chisel were all in the hands of slaves. No free-souled Plato enchanted appreciative throngs in the umbrageous walks of a Latin Academy, nor was there a Demosthenes to wave the stormy democracy into a calm from some sunny hill-side. Very few artists of Roman blood possessed talents which might have been symbolized by a precious ring on their finger, such as Pliny says was worn by Pyrrhus, in which nature had produced the figure of Apollo and the nine muses. At their birth, the gods of power may have descended to offer gifts, but it is certain the gentler graces did not attend.
In reviewing the arts of Rome, as in the corresponding chapter on the productions of Greece, we will first consider their architecture, and then the subordinate departments of plastic and pictorial works. Roman, Greek, and Egyptian architecture are to be viewed as constituting but one vital and continuous trunk; each having grown out of its predecessor, and the last destined to produce yet another and, perchance, a nobler growth.
The Romans were not originally an art-loving people, and never did any thing valuable of that kind for themselves. From the time of their foundation down toB.C.167, they were entirely dependent upon the inhabitants of Etruria, and upon the Greeks from that time till their dominion was past. They began by conquest, and employed such talents as they could best subdue. The architecture which the Etruscans are supposed to have brought with them from Asia Minor, derived thither from Assyria, was employed as the most powerful principle of support, and the most facilemeans of extension. By means of this, the whole city was undermined by drains, inclosed with cuneiform stones, and immense fabrics rose on the seven hills. Vastness of size, and the absence of elegance, characterized their monuments from the first. A debased type of Doric was their favorite style in the early period, as in the great temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which was adorned with figures prepared by the Tuscans in baked clay, or terra-cotta, and, when finished, sent to Rome. The use of the arch no doubt introduced a new and valuable principle of construction, and of great utility when consistently employed. But, unfortunately, the Greek outlines were still adhered to mainly, and imposture from the very outset ever characterized monumental art in the hands of the Roman race. False entablatures were fabricated; the arch, as a constructive element, was concealed; and as the real formation of the building could not be shown, sham features and fanciful ornaments were multiplied for the vile ends of disguise. During the great age of Grecian art, not a single specimen of concave roofing, scarcely a sloping jamb, was produced; if any approach to either was found, it was never in the pure Doric, but only in the semi-Pelasgic Ionic order. It shows how much more Rome was Etruscan than Greece Pelasgic, that it was left to that inartistic people to create domical buildings, and to carry them to the degree of perfection they did in their circular peristylar temples, and more especially in the Pantheon. That edifice, the great masterpiece and symbol of its age, and which has never been excelled, is at the same time the most striking exemplification of the vicious innovation made by combining rectilinear and circular forms. The Greeks never built round temples. The choragic monument of Lysicrates, and tower of the Winds, were mere playthings, produced at the latest period of architectural excellence; but even these were fine specimens of original invention and truthful execution. It was not at Athens, but at Rome, that architects endeavored to enhance their reputation, by secreting the real features of their work.
But when the arch is made the life of the whole building, standing out in all its boldness and majesty, the work is infinitely nobler than when accompanied by the incongruous Grecian mask. The original Etruscans had the independence so to use the grand principle they were the first properly to appreciate, and the creationsof their hands are of the greatest intrinsic worth. Their roads and bridges, tombs and city walls, cloacæ and tunnels are so extraordinary that, after twenty-five centuries, they remain unsurpassed even by their gigantic conquerors. They drained marshes, cultivated barren plains, and brought Italy from a savage state to that degree of civilization which enabled the Romans to profit by, more than the great originals who prepared the field of their first occupancy, and then were displaced. Such is necessarily the history of human progress, when excellence of a given kind is made to yield to some other superior force, but which in turn will succumb to the same law, and contribute to the greatest good of the greatest number in the end.
It is interesting to reflect on the contrast which existed between the architectural principle of two great primordial people in almost simultaneous developement. At a time when her existence was scarcely known to the refined republics of Greece, the barbarian state on the banks of the Tiber began to employ the mightiest of mechanical discoveries, through the means of which vast spaces were roofed in with stone or brick, while, through ignorance or contempt of it, the most glorious temples of Pentelic marble remained exposed to shower and sun, or were imperfectly sheltered by a covering of wood. The sewers of Rome were a vast improvement in practical mechanics over the structures at Athens; and if Etruscan genius had been permitted to work out completely its own ideas, a simple, noble, and majestic style would doubtless have been developed. As it was, their rudest works announced the fundamental principles of excellence and consistency which belonged not to edifices of greater ambition; and Rome had the honor of transmitting a prolific germ under the westering sun, where it arose and justly claimed to be considered the noblest offspring of the human mind.
When the principle of mutual support was hit upon, and the arch sprang self-balanced from impost to impost, the Roman was put in possession of an immense advantage over the restricted capacities of the Greek entablature. He was no longer tied to the width or length of quarried blocks, put in vertical or horizontal positions, but could bend more pliant materials in yet firmer construction upward and outward to an illimitable extent. In its usethey soon became the best builders the world had ever seen, and the worst architects. The magnitude of their great works, and boldness of execution, the vastness of design and mechanical skill, displayed in their existing monuments, compel us to admire the constructive talent of Rome, as Greece taught us to revere inventive genius. Unyielding energy and graceful elegance are brought into striking contrast. On the one hand, we behold the same iron greatness, indomitable will, and union of physical with moral vigor, combined with indifference to intellectual beauty, which bent alike the material and political world beneath the yoke of old Rome. On the other hand, in the Grecian temple shines the purest product of mind, perfect in symmetry, chaste in ornament, and resplendent with all the attractions of immortal youth. The best and only satisfactory works of the Romans are those we usually classify under the head of engineering; such as roads, bridges, aqueducts, and fortifications, and these are projected on a scale, and executed with a solidity, worthy of the greatness of their empire. But in architecture properly so called, nothing of their creation is to be admired but the colossal mass, and its constructive extravagance.
As the idea of the beautiful is a principle divinely positive in the arts and life of the Greeks, so greatness defined everything in the Roman contest for supremacy, and was the central point around which developed all the historical impressiveness of their character. Of all arts architecture most admits of artificial beauty, which they could not confer, and therefore they made it only great. Chaste elegance, that genuine sense of the artist, was never born in the Roman mind; but they possessed uncommon force of nature, and best succeeded in stamping on their fabrics the air of undaunted firmness in the struggle of rude reality. The Roman style is rugged even to uncouthness, but it has the redeeming quality of actually speaking the mind of its authors, the whole course of whose history was indomitable will. The conquest of the world, and not the perfection of art, was their destiny; not the sudden achievement of a few assaults, the results of which should perish with their fortunate leaders, but the gradual advance of a single one, through many champions, destined through all vicissitudes to universal empire. From the first moment Rome appears on the political stage, this one great mission is manifest in all her action and arts. Neverwas greatness more truly national, but it was in diametrical contrast to the glory of the Grecian race. Individuals stood forth among the latter, in every separate department of intellectual proficiency, which rendered each a distinct model; but at Rome, with a longer list of great men than any other nation, their personal being is lost in that of the state. Camillus, Curius, and Scipio had no aim or aspiration of their own; they existed but to fortify and extend the commonwealth in their own generation, and to transmit the like calling to their successors. Rome only had a personal existence; her bravest children might perish, but herself the eternal, was unaffected; others, to whose fortunes she was equally indifferent, would arise to take their places in the continuous battle of seven centuries to attain the subjugation of the world. It was for Rome alone of all nations to return thanks to a vanquished general for not having despaired of the republic. She never could produce or appreciate mere art and beauty, and whatever of elegant refinement the Augustan age finally possessed was a borrowed gift which the holders knew not how to exercise.
Of those states which were grouped around the Mediterranean sea, Greece was certainly the intellectual mistress; but the Romans, by situation and race, inherited from them all whatever had before been accumulated in Asia and Africa, amalgamated the diversified elements into one empire of brute force, and thus opened the way for a more glorious progress. As a political phenomenon she stood alone, an empire aggregated out of discordant materials; not a mere conquest, like that of Alexander, to fall to pieces at the death of him who created it, but a coerced combination, substantiated by steadiness of purpose, and energy in administration, that half awed, half conciliated, its subjects in their bonds, and which caused the empire, externally, to cohere long after its heart had become corrupt, and the system was rotten to the core. The wealth of Rome could purchase, and her power could compel, the arts of conquered nations; and her political relations enabled her to accumulate in the metropolis those treasures which purer hands had created, and which her love of ostentation rendered it desirable she should possess. But we believe there is not extant one single passage of a Roman author, that shows a knowledge of what true art is, or what are its legitimate uses. From the fall of Carthageto the age of Constantine, not one general effort to achieve a noble end dignifies the annals of that belligerent people; but sickening scenes of domineering vice succeed each other, till the mind shrinks from the revolting picture. As long as they could live in idleness, or struggle in battle, as long as the streets were filled with pageants, and amphitheatres reeked with martyr-blood, they cared not what new tribe was butchered by their master, or how the so-called liberties of Rome were trampled upon. It is vain to expect beautiful art to flourish under such auspices. One shudders at the thought that those servile, bloody hands could fashion forms of representative excellence, or that minds which revelled in such scenes could admire its creations when exhibited before them.
In attempting to estimate correctly the architecture of Rome, or any of her correlative arts, we must apply a mode of criticism which is entirely inapplicable to those styles of which we have hitherto treated. In Greece, we can contemplate an artistic work with the same unmingled delight we feel when studying a work of nature; but, in Rome, there is no one building on which we look with unqualified pleasure, none in which imperfections are not obvious to the most uncritical eye. In every instance, the destroying hand of time has been merciful, in hiding defects, and concealing vulgarities, so that the chief attractions that remain are the result of his hallowing touch, and the halo of association which spreads around excrescences that, in their nakedness, would shock and disgust us. When their artists attempted an exalted range of invention, they wandered into exaggerated forms of Titanic strength, and here their loftiest flight was terminated. They were blinded to the path of spiritual beauty, and in striving to storm heaven, and compel divinity, they failed in all their presumptuous endeavors. That which was born and slowly nurtured on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates, suddenly sprang into its manhood of superlative worth in Greece, and perished at Rome in decrepitude and crime.
Under the reign of the first Tarquin, Rome was fortified, cleansed, and somewhat embellished. The low grounds about the Forum were drained, which prepared the way for the second Tarquin to construct that Cloaca Maxima, which was every way a masterly work. Servius Tullius enlarged the city, and completed the templeof Jupiter Capitolinus,B.C.508. As the name imports, it stood on the Mons Capitolinus, and embraced four acres of ground. It was twice destroyed, and twice rebuilt on the same foundation, by Vespasian, and Domitian. It is impossible now to trace the architecture of the Romans during the three hundred and sixty-three years which transpired between the time of their last king, and the subjugation of Greece by that people, in the year B.C. 145. But many of their grandest structures yet remain, and there is no great difficulty in estimating their comparative value.
The Doric order of the Greeks had degenerated sadly in style and design, before the Romans began to build; besides, it was utterly unsuited to their use, since they had neither sculpture nor painting with which it should be completed and adorned. But it was in keeping with their inartistic character to adopt what they could not comprehend, and yet further degrade its already attenuated columns into a closer resemblance to the wooden posts of their Etruscan teachers. No specimen of the Ionic order probably existed in Italy, anterior to the epoch of Roman superiority, and the imitation of it was, therefore, not attempted till a late period. In the times of imperial voluptuousness, however, they did use it to some extent, and succeeded in degrading that delicate type of art more grossly even than they did the sturdy Doric. Nothing could be more lean and ungraceful than the Ionic order became in the hands of Roman builders, who, having no skill of their own as architects, were successful only in defacing what departed genius had produced.
One of the first things the Romans borrowed from Greece was their Corinthian order; but we neither know when it was introduced into Rome, nor can we trace its history from the time it was lost under Alexander the Great, during the three hundred years that transpired before its reappearance in the age of Augustus. To the purposes of a people who were as unable to appreciate as to execute the Doric, or even the lighter, but not less elegant, Ionic, the richness of the Corinthian was admirably adapted. The plan of a building, after that order, required little thought, and its execution necessitated still less. No delicate spirals, sculpture, or painting, was requisite, but every thing was purely mechanical, and such as any stone-mason could execute. The pillars could belengthened, or shortened, at will, the intercolumniations made wide or narrow, and be placed at angles, or used in interiors with equal facility. No wonder, therefore, that this order became a favorite with the Romans; and though it was brought from Greece, and at first executed by imported Attic genius, they so modified its features as to give them a thoroughly Roman aspect, and in the temple of Jupiter Stator left the most perfect specimen of monumental art Rome ever produced. From bad to worse they proceeded, and blended their degraded Ionic, or Corinthian styles, into the hideousness of their Composite order. For them to make one harmonious whole out of two realms of artistic excellence, was not to be expected; they could only combine, without uniting, and join incongruous parts, while not one joint was concealed. To fit two into one, as the Greeks had elaborated one out of two, required invention and taste, of which the Romans had neither; therefore, in all their architecture, they have left some grand works of talent, but not one monument that attests the presence of creative and delicate genius.
Rome arrived at the zenith of architectural science, such as it was, under the reign of Augustus, as Athens attained infinitely superior honors under Pericles. But, with the single exception of Trajan, not one epoch after that great exponent of his age was marked by structural magnificence erected by Romans. When Virgil, Homer, Cicero, and Livy, were publishing their works, the metropolis was graced with a number of gorgeous temples; but the decline of letters and arts soon followed, and architecture, especially, sunk to the last degree.
The Parthenon and the Pantheon, those two great types of their respective ages, might be compared on the score of magnificence, but they were utterly devoid of resemblance as masterpieces of art. The quadrangular portico of the latter may be presumed to have been intended to signify the union of architectural powers; without some such reason the rectilinear front would not have been stuck before a circular edifice, and the egregious anomaly can be accounted for on no more plausible ground. That Rome bore the arts, as she did the spoils, and even the gods of conquered nations, to her own haughty abode, is true; but it is not less evident that she was destitute of all the arts and elegances of high civilization till she importedthem from Greece, and that she had neither definite principles, nor correct artistic conceptions, of her own.
The celebrated temple of all the gods to which we have just referred, is supposed to have been erected in the time of the Republic, and that the portico was appendedA.D.14, by Agrippa. Of all the temples of the Romans, the Pantheon is by far the most original and typical, and as a rotunda it is unmatched in the ancient world. There is a simplicity about its proportions, the height being exactly equal to the width, and in the mode by which it is lighted through a single aperture in the roof, which gives it a character of grandeur that redeems the clumsiness of detail, which would nearly spoil any edifice less grand in conception. That majestic dome is the only Roman structure extant that has power to carry the mind beyond the imperial mass of crime out of which tower the splendors of the Augustan age, and tells us of that grand old Republic whose glory elicited the worth and illuminated the figures of subsequent history.
Vespasian and his son Titus cumbered the city, and astonished the world by such masses of building in amphitheatres and baths as will probably never again be reared. The Coliseum, so named, according to some, from its gigantic dimensions, but in the more probable opinion of others, from its proximity to a colossal statue of Nero, is said to have seated 109,000 persons at one time, to view at their ease the bloody sports of the arena. The probability of this astonishing fact will appear not only from its enormous height and great number of ascending stages, but especially from the fact that it covers nearly six acres of ground. As the Pantheon was the type of the first half of the Augustan age, so does the Coliseum represent the later period, and was a fit arena for the degenerate progeny of a brute. It is the best type of the Roman style, containing at once all its beauties and defects. In size and splendor, it comported with the empire at its culminating height, and the purpose for which it was built rendered it the favorite building of the metropolitan city in the days of its greatest glory. Even now its ruins appear as eternal as the Roman name, and present us a more adequate picture of the times in which they stood unimpaired than the pages of Livy or Tacitus. Despite our better judgment, they awe us into admiration of the greatness of that martial people,though, in fact, few buildings were ever more tasteless in design, or more faulty in execution.
Standing within that immense fabric, one cannot but feel that Rome, as mistress of the world, with unlimited wealth and power, and a proud feeling of conscious pre-eminence, beyond all other nations had the greatest means of cultivating the liberal arts. On the foundation laid in Greece, she might have built models of usefulness for the world to a boundless extent; but, as it was, she only altered what she had neither the capacity nor disposition to improve, and advanced only in the path of degradation till the lowest depth was reached.
The Marmertine prison, begun by Ancus Martius, and completed by Servius Tullius, yet remains nearly perfect, and is a good example of primitive masonry. In the time of the Republic, the Appian road, used to this day, was commenced by Appius Claudius Cæcus. The Forums of Julius Cæsar, of Augustus, of Nerva, and of Trajan, were adorned by many of the noblest structures in Rome. But the most useful works were exterior to the city, such as those wonderful engineering structures, the aqueducts. Of these, the Appian, Martian, and Claudian were most celebrated. The last-mentioned, completed by the emperor Claudius,A.D.51, and yet in existence, is forty-six miles in length; for thirty-six, it runs under ground; and a series of lofty arches, six miles in length, forms a noble feature in the Campagna, still supplying the city with pure water. That commenced by Quintus Martius, B.C. 145, was also an astonishing undertaking, upwards of sixty miles in length, comprising three separate channels conveying water from different sources, and partly carried on an arcade of seven thousand arches, seventy feet in height. Neither were these colossal works confined to the seat of empire alone, but were executed in the remoter West as well, as at Segovia, Metz, and Nimes. As one sees this vast supply of pure water still poured from the Sabine hills through the ancient aqueducts, he feels how superior were the republican contributions to the true greatness of Rome, compared with all the imperial and later works.
It should be particularly observed that the Romans emulated only the pictorial half of Greek design; and this they greatly increased, regarding the refinements of propriety as virtues tooinsipid to be admired. They were evidently pleased with the columnar ordinance of a Greek temple, but had no affinity with the instinctive sense of propriety so prominent in Athenian architects, and could not understand the true purpose of a colonnade. They did not look at pillars, entablatures, and pediments as expressions, but simply as physical substances, which in their combinations formed a picturesque object, which could be used in a scenic display of sensual magnificence. Impelled by an insane passion for decoration, the architects of the Augustan age emblazoned the imperial city with a thousand monumental errors which in due time subsided into effete grossness, and became the compost to nourish an entirely new and superior type of art. Such is the wisdom and goodness of Providence!
Another class of national monuments clearly indicate how the Romans were differenced from the Greeks. The history of the latter speaks of valor, power, and conquests, as well as that of the former people. Where are her architectural monuments of conquered countries and captured spoils? She had them, but they were mere temporary trophies constructed of wood. With glorious Greece, the day of triumph was the day of magnanimity, and in the presence of great art, which ought never to be desecrated in the forms of self glory, she was willing to let the songs of victory dwindle speedily into silence. But the Romans were actuated by entirely opposite feelings. In a Greek portico columns are native to the occasion as the flower to its parent soil; but in a triumphal arch as constructed by the Romans, the columns support nothing that is necessary, nor are they in the slightest degree constructive, but are forced in with every thing else to typify national ostentation. Outward symbols, and inner panels of bas-relief cut in precious marbles, as uncouthly executed as the architectural members, illustrate the triumphal procession of a conqueror, leading vanquished captives in chains. If you would clearly read the lessons of art, that most legible commentary on national character, ascend reverently the Propylæum in presence of the sculptured Parthenon, and then go scan the monstrous arches of Titus, Septimus Severus, and Constantine.
The final expression of eastern beauty was embodied in the immense temple of Diana at Ephesus. Ctesiphon designed it aboutB.C.366, all the Asiatic colonies of Greece contributing to the expense of its erection. It was four hundred years in progress, and was burned by Eratostratus, with the object of immortalizing his name, on the same night that Alexander was born. Then began the age of martial greatness and artistic deterioration which ended not till Christianity came to gaze on the desecrated relics of Judea at Rome, and passed yet further west through the arches of paganism to originate more aspiring and glorious shines.
The triumphal monuments raised to commemorate the conquests of Titus, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Severus, and Constantine, together with the Trajan, Antonine, and Theodosian columns, bear the principal compositions of national sculpture; and these, it is believed, were mostly executed by Greeks. The coerced hand must perform its task, and the results were made to breathe the spirit of war, conquest, and universal dominion. But in vain do we search for one graceful figure or attractive charm. They are mere military bulletins carved in stone, petrified paragraphs of ostentatious success, gross in conception, and pernicious in sentiment. They owe no inspiration to the muses, and can claim neither epic dignity nor dramatic force. The principal groups are mobs of Romans, as insensible to beauty as the armor they bear, and dealing death to their equally barbarian foes, or driving them in chains to the mount Capitoline. Subjects are often chosen still more unfit for art, such as soldiers felling timber, carrying rubbish, driving piles, building walls, working battering-rams, or dragging victims to mortal torture. The expression of their heads is so ferocious and savage, as to excite the deepest compassion for the weaker combatants who might fall into their hands.
If we would know the source of all Roman art, plastic as well as monumental, we must visit the shores of venerable and plundered Hellas, with Pausanias and Strabo for our guides. Despite desolating domestic wars, the inroads of barbarian hordes, and the hostilities of Macedonian and Roman conquerors, innumerable remains of ancient art are still there to be found. But, as Cicero says, that at Syracuse, after the temples had been plundered by the hand of Verres, those who guided travellers showed them not what still existed there, but enumerated what had been taken away, so the contemplation of what had been preserved from thosetimes, and what has since been brought to light, reminds us of the infinitely greater affluence which, in the age of bloom and vigor, had adorned the plains and glorified the cities of Greece. Mummius completed the conquest of that landB.C.146, the same year that Carthage was razed to the ground, and plundered more works of art than all his predecessors put together. He destroyed many works through ignorance, and his soldiers were seen playing at dice upon one of the most precious pictures of Aristides. When Octavius won the victory at Actium, he enlarged the temple of Apollo upon that promontory, and expressed his gratitude by dedicating the statue of Apollo, by Scopas, in a temple at Rome, on the Palatine hill. His declaration that he had found Rome of brick, and would leave it of marble, Augustus probably hoped to realize after that mode of procedure. Nero threw down the statues of victors in Greece out of envy, and illustrated his own taste by gilding a statue of Alexander, by Lysippus. Imperial vanity and infamous extravagance may be further estimated by his having had his portrait painted one hundred and twenty feet high, while he wrested five hundred statues from Delphi alone to adorn his Golden House. The amount of sculpture accumulated at Rome must have been immense. Marcus Scaurus decorated his temporary theatre with three thousand statues. Two thousand were taken from the Volscians; Lucullus captured many; and, after the conquest of Acaia, Mummius filled the city. Three thousand were added from Rhodes, and not fewer from Olympia, beside a multitude from Delphi and Athens. The imperial palaces and baths of Dioclesian and Caracalla, mausolea of Augustus, and of Hadrian, were stored with vast treasures stolen from rightful proprietors, or executed by inferior sculptors, beside rows of plastic art which lined the Flaminian way. But neither their abundance nor magnificence could produce that vivid impression on the refined which never failed to result from the study of pure taste and skill in their native home.
Literature and art were never primary pursuits with the Romans, but secondary only and subordinate, adopted without fervor, and employed for their one great intent, the extension and consolidation of a martial empire. The honors which Greece bestowed on artists and authors, Rome gave only to soldiers of high or low degree.The former was forced into a provincial relation to the latter, but Rome was never more than a mental and artistic colony to the intellectual people thus reduced to political subjection. Grecian invention continued its admirable productions under the emperors of the new West, and at the same time furnished them literature, science, philosophy, religion, and the arts. Menelaus and Patrocles, Antigone and Hæmon, Pætus and Arria, Orestes and Electra, the Toro Farnese, and Laocoon, were sculptured between the middle of the Roman Republic and the last of the Cæsars. Before the lowest debasement of art had arrived, some few tolerable basso-relievos were also produced from Homer and the ancient tragedians, and were among the latest creations of free and legitimate art. Then came the cumbrous pediments, imperial statues, consular portraits, gems and coins, wrought by the dependent Greek, to feed the impious ambition or ignorant vanity of his insolent master during the latter ferocities of the empire.
When the great depositories of art in Greece and her western colonies fell under the control of the Romans, the villas of the rich in the metropolis and chief cities were converted into great halls of art. Earlier, martial Rome, which, according to the expression of Plutarch, knew no ornaments but arms and spoils, furnished to the unwarlike and luxurious spectators no pleasing or unalarming spectacle. "To melt brass, and breathe into it the soul of art, or to create living forms in marble," the Roman had not learned. "His art was government and war." Etrurian artists had furnished him with what religion required, of wood or clay, sufficient for all the devotional sensibility he possessed. But after Marcellus had turned the rude minds of the citizens to the admiration of the works he obtained by conquest over Syracuse, all military leaders became anxious to add splendor to their triumphs by trophies of art. Thus, in the course of a century, most of the finest art extant traveled to Rome, at first a metropolitan decoration, but anon, an ambitious ornament to private dwellings. At length, the common soldier learned to despise the temples of the gods; to confound what was sacred with what was profane; to covet fine sculptures and rich furniture, and to nourish a mercenary ambition, which became a new pretext for violence in war, and extravagance in peace. As in the Republic, Lucullus and others regarded themasterpieces of the Greeks as the fairest embellishments of their rural mansions, so the imperial Cæsars grasped at all within reach, and never had enough. Soon there dwelt in Rome as many statues as men; and the treasures disinterred in modern times at Tibur and Tusculum, on the Alban Mount, at Antium, and elsewhere in the neighborhood of the original seat of power, indicate that the surrounding region was not less rich than the capital itself. But a profound sense of art was never created at Rome, and, notwithstanding all the variety of excellence they brought together from afar, not one distinguished Roman artist lives on the record of fame.
History testifies that the carrying away works of art appeared as robbery of sanctuaries in mythological times, as base plundering in the Persian invasions, and to be excused only on the score of pecuniary want in the Phocian war. But under the Romans, this became a regular recompense, which they appropriated on account of their victories. For instance, when Corinth was destroyed by the army under Lucius Mummius, its most precious treasure of sculptures and paintings was preserved. These he resolved to send to Rome; but the orders which he issued on the occasion curiously illustrate the artistic taste and capacities of the age. "If any of these spoils," he said to those who were to transport them, "be lost or injured, you shall repair or replace them at your own expense." The successors of Augustus sometimes patronized sculpture, but no native merit was produced. Nero, somewhat educated in art by his tutor, Seneca, ordered a statue of himself, a hundred and ten feet high, to be cast by Zenodorus, and virtually stole at one time five hundred statues from Delphi, among which, as is supposed, were the Apollo Belvidere and Fighting Gladiator. According to Winklemann, the encouragement which the Antonines gave to the arts was only that apparent revivescence which is the precursor of death. Under the brutal Commodus, the arts, which the school of Adrian had freely nourished, sunk, like a river which is lost in a subterranean channel, to rise again further on with a wider and richer flow.
Down even to the reigns of Julian and Theodosius, Greek artists continued to repair to their mother country to copy the two great masterpieces of Phidias, his Jupiter at Elis, and his Minerva atAthens. And it is pleasing to see how Horace entered into the spirit of ancient art, when he declared to his friend Censorinus that he would give him all the riches of the world, provided he had but the chief productions of Parrhasius and Scopas. Cicero also entered into like feelings, when he desired to collect together the works of Greek artists, declaring that this was "his greatest delight." He tells his friend Atticus that if he had but his collection he should exceed Crassus in riches, and would despise all the villas and territories that might be offered to him. The real love of art in the vain orator, however, was very moderate, as he was afraid to be held by the judges as a connoisseur.
The public games of Greece were peaceful and intellectual, adapted as much to invigorate moral strength as to develop manly beauty. Those of Rome were exhibitions, not of mental, but of physical energy, and were both sanguinary and brutalizing. The former were often theatrical to an exalted degree, but never amphitheatrical, as was always the case with the latter. The tragic feeling of Greece is represented by the sculptured grief of Niobe, that of Rome by the death-struggles which distort the features and muscles of Laocoon. The latter work, together with the Tauro Farnese, the Dying Gladiator, the Gladiator of Agesias, and several kindred works, were all executed in the Augustan age, some of them at a late period. The Meleager and Mercury of the Vatican, the Venus of Capua, and the Ludovisi Mars, must also be regarded as the productions of Greek art, so modified as to please Roman taste. What a radical change was wrought in sculpture, in its westward progress, is best exemplified in the colossal Nile and Tiber of the Vatican and Louvre. It is obvious that these representations of river-gods are based on that original Greek type which was so nobly embodied in the Ilissus of the Parthenon; the general reclining attitude is the same, but the whole motive of the art is altered; new symbols and accessories are added, to express an inferior idea in more copious but less eloquent language. The same general statement applies to the numerous allegorical figures which are preserved in Italian galleries, with the collateral illustration of Roman coins.
Augustan art was formed from Greek models, in the same time and mode as Augustan literature, with one important exception.The latter was engrafted on an original stock of ballad-poetry, the process of adaptation being their own work; but Greek art was transferred rather than engrafted, the cultivation of the exotic being entrusted to strangers and hirelings. Augustan letters were formed by the Romans themselves, Augustan sculptures by Greek artists working under Roman dictation. The monuments of Rome afford the best examples on a great scale of the historic style of sculpture peculiar to that people, which is valuable in reference to their portrait art, a collateral department, such as biography is to general history. The series of busts in the Vatican, the Capitol, the Museo Borbonico, and at Florence, show how successfully this class of art was cultivated down to a very late period of the empire. The Roman sarcophagi form a distinct order of monuments, and are also of the later period. The bas-reliefs with which they are decorated generally, are borrowed from Greek myths, such as the story of Niobe, but in treatment, the delicate wisdom of the original is gradually ignored.
When Greece fell, there were but three superior artists, Lysippus the sculptor, Apelles the painter, and Pyrgoteles the gem-engraver. The first introduced a new style of art, which foretokened the age already begun. He made his figures larger than life, and the huge instead of the beautiful followed evermore, till the empire of force had in turn perished. A hundred colossi of the sun arose in the single island of Rhodes, the most famous of which, by Chares of Lindus, was completedB.C.280. The imposing group of Dirce and the Bull, executed by artists born at Tralles, is another expression of that time. But the most significant symbol of the Augustan age and its spirit is that famous work made by three Rhodian sculptors, the Laocoon. It was probably executed about the time of Titus, as Pliny first saw it in the palace of that emperor, and referred to it as a novelty. In that group, violent action and intense suffering are shown in the same instant simultaneously; we pity the younger son, tremblingly hope for the elder, and despair of all three as that horrid shriek rings from the distorted mouth of the father, maddened by agony into a forgetfulness of his own offspring writhing with him in serpent-folds, and fatally crushed by the meshes of a living net. What the transcendent statue by Phidias was to the majestic Jupiter of Homer, the sculpturedLaocoon was to the description by Virgil, but in a very inferior degree. From the time the haughty dwellers on mount Capitoline had been obliged to adopt old Etruscan statues to perpetuate their own historical events, the Romans never excelled in noble art. It was a characteristic fact, that Clodius, after the banishment of Cicero, on the ruins of his palace dedicated to Liberty a statue which in its primary use had represented a Bœotian courtesan. To the end, that rough race never possessed the enlightened eyes, purged of their blinding film, like those of Diomed, to discern the fine texture of celestial forms, or to admire their charms.
Roman painting will require but a brief notice. Early in the Augustan age, easel-painting was neglected, and wall-decoration came into special favor, as the handmaid of luxury. In the time of Vespasian, according to Pliny, painting was a perishing art, and with the most splendid colors nothing worth speaking of was produced. Scenography, originally derived from Asia Minor, was cultivated at Rome, by Ludius. He executed, as room decorations, villas and porticoes, artificial gardens, parks, streams, canals, and marine views, enlivened with comical figures in all sorts of rural occupations. The perspective theatrical paintings, by which the Greek drama was illustrated, gradually extended the art of landscape, since it increased the demand for a deceptive imagination of inanimate objects, such as buildings, woods, and rocks. This was imitated by the Romans, and transferred from the playhouse to their halls adorned with pillars, where the long surfaces of the wall were at first covered with pictures in small, and afterwards with wide prospects of towns, shores of the sea, and extensive pastures upon which the cattle are feeding. In the time of the later Cæsars, landscape painting became a distinct branch; but, according to the specimens preserved to us in Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiæ, these pictures of nature were more allied to private villas and artificial gardens, than to broad views of the open country.
In the age of Hadrian, painting flourished to a limited degree. Ætion made a composition of Alexander and Roxane, with Erotes busied about him in the king's armor, which Lucian greatly admired. But painting continued to sink into a mere daubing of colors, and was commonly an occupation of slaves to adorn walls in the most expeditious manner, according to the caprice of tastelesstyrants. Foreign artists were often employed servilely to copy the old masters; while the purity of native taste was exemplified in one of the annual ceremonies at Rome, which consisted in fresh painting the statue of Jupiter, in the capitol, with bright vermilion. The time delighted in tricks of all kinds. In the golden house of Nero, a Pallas, by Fabullus, was admired, which looked at every one who directed his eyes toward her; and the picture of the tyrant himself, one hundred and twenty feet high, on canvass, is justly reckoned by Pliny as one of the fooleries of the age.
Ancient coins throw much light upon Roman art. They make us feel the reality of great events connected with the rise and fall of the empire more vividly than any written records. The annual coinage, bearing the names and portraits of leading personages, indeed, formed the most legible and enduring "state gazette," continued without interruption from Pacuvius,B.C.200, who was an artist as well as poet, down to the fifth century. In this department of Roman art, as in every other, the progress of growth, decline, and decay, is distinctly marked. The last coins, like the last temples, statues, and pictures, foretokening Gothic art, were as marked features of transition, as those which were stamped on Grecian genius as it migrated into Rome. Starting from the heart of the Etruscan nation, which was partly of an oriental derivation, art in the Augustan age ran through its second cycle, correspondant to that of the Periclean, showing that the evolution which in Greece had been illustrated in consummate statues, was strictly normal, and the same which in Etruria, at the outset, dawned in drawings upon vases. The strong influence which Assyria had thrown over some parts of Lydia, in Asia Minor, was carried far west by the Etruscans, who quitted that district and settled in the north-west of Italy. They were celebrated workers in clay and bronze; and the ornaments and figures wrought by them on these materials are identical with the figures upon the bronze bowls and plates recently discovered by Mr. Layard at Nineveh. The Etruscans were well acquainted with agriculture, as well as many other practical arts, and knew how to work the iron of Elba. Thus it was that Providence placed the formative element of the Augustan age at the right time and in the right place to execute its mission under the wisdom of a divine intent.
When the appropriate field had been cleared, and all fitting agencies were prepared, the advent of Christianity rendered possible the full development of the human soul, and a corresponding improvement of noble art. The preliminary throes of a heavenly birth transpired under the last decay of paganism, the impressions of which are preserved in the primitive sculptures, mosaics, and illuminations of the yet persecuted church. In the catacombs under Rome are numerous works of the late Augustan period, not to be exceeded in interest by any other remains of past ages. Many entire days may be well spent in that sanctuary of antiquity, where Paganism and Christianity confront each other engaged in mortal conflict. Great numbers of the vestiges of that struggle and auspicious triumph have been taken from the subterranean chapels and tombs, and are now affixed to the walls of the Vatican, where they furnish abundance of enjoyment and reflection to one studious of the great unfoldings of the divine purpose in human progress. These "sermons in stones" are addressed to the heart, not to the head; and possess great value from being the creation of the purest portion of the "catholic and apostolic church" then extant. In all the Lapidarian Gallery, there are no prayers for the dead, nor to the apostles or early saints; and, with the exception of such relics as "eternal sleep," "eternal home," etc., not one expression contrary to the plain sense of Scripture. This is the more remarkable when it is known that the catacombs remained open during half of the fifth century.
That Mosaic should be popular with the Romans was natural, since their thoughts, mythology, social and philosophical systems, exhibited only one vast composition made up of precious fragments plundered from the East, and maintained in a gorgeous form on their grand system of forcible compact and consolidated union. Pliny states that Scylla was the first Roman who caused stone-laid work to be produced, aboutB.C.80. Many elegant spoils from Greece were deposited in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and were probably adopted as decorations, which created in the minds of luxurious and ostentatious patricians an anxiety for other magnificent embellishments, and thus occasioned Mosaic. The most noble specimen of it now extant is the splendid pavement of the Pantheon, the historical worth of which is commensurate with itsgreat superficial extent. Porphyry, Giallo Antico, and Pavonazzetto are the principal marbles employed, and they are arranged simply in round and square slabs. Fine fragments have been found in the Baths of Caracalla, and are preserved, with numerous other specimens, in the great Mosaic depository of the Vatican. The most generally known, and by far the most exquisite example of this art still existing, is the picture usually called "Pliny's Doves." It is in the museum of the Capitol, and represents a metal bason, on the edge of which four doves are sitting; one of them is stooping to drink, and not only the shadow cast by it, but even the reflection of part of the head in the water, is beautifully shown. The vast accumulation of precious material after each campaign greatly enhanced the passion for Mosaic decoration, and it was copiously produced till the end of the second century. The church early adopted this art for sacred symbolic purposes, and during the mediæval period, carried it to the highest perfection. The only specimen of primitive work now extant, is the curious incrustation which lines the vaulting of the Baptistery erected by Constantine, dedicated to Santa Constanza, and which represents a vine covering, as it were, the whole roof.
Illuminated books were known to the pagan Romans, and were at a later period made in a most attractive style by Christian zeal. In the time of Pliny, written volumes were decorated with pictures; and Dibdin refers to a collection of seven hundred notices by Varro, of eminent men, illustrated by portraits. This book appears to have been seen by Symmachus at the end of the fourth century, who speaks of it in one of his letters. The Vatican Virgil has but little ornament; and of enriched initials, or ornamental borders, the early Latin MSS. have none. In the fifth century, a great improvement began, which will be noticed in its proper place. The process of laying on and burnishing gold and silver appears to have been familiar to the oriental nations from a remote antiquity. There is no instance of its use in the Egyptian papyri, yet it is not unreasonable to believe that the Greeks acquired the art from the East, and conveyed it westward with all other elements of artistic worth. Among the later generations of that people, the usage became so common that the scribes or artists in gold constituted a distinct class. The luxury thus introduced to the Romans was augmentedby writing on vellum, stained of a purple or rose color, the earliest instance of which is recorded by Julius Capitolinus, in his life of the emperor Maximinus the younger, to whom his mother made a present of the works of Homer, written on purple vellum, in letters of gold. This was at the commencement of the third century. Thence a rapid decline succeeded until, under the auspices of rising Christianity, this beautiful art rose to the highest point. Before the fourth century ended, St. Jerome tells us its use was more frequent, but always applied to copies of the Bible, and devotional books, written for the libraries of princes, and the service of monasteries.
Thus have we briefly sketched the arts of that people who, at all periods, and in every form, have built out of ruins. A band of robbers found on the banks of the Tiber a city abandoned by its builders, and which they chose to inhabit. But outcasts as they were, they brought few women with them, and these they took by violence from the peaceful Etruscans. No attractive house, nor ample temple, was erected by the Romans for five hundred years, so barbarous was the genius of the people. Corinth and Syracuse, two most magnificent cities, left no impression on their conquerors; their drinking vessels were of gold, while their temples and deities were of uncouth stone, or brittle clay. Nero built an immense palace, gilded in the most costly manner throughout. But the masters of the world, trembling to enter it, commanded its destruction, and removed the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Scopas and Lysippus, of Apelles and Zeuxis, and, in a fearful conflagration, poured forth torrents of precious metals from its ceilings, its arches, and its architraves, in order to construct out of its scathed kitchens and stables a bath and amphitheatre for the Roman people. They did less in their city than in their colonies, for the ultimate welfare of humanity. The most majestic and solid specimen of engineering was the bridge with which they spanned the Danube; and the grandest of their works was the wall they erected against the Caledonians. AboutB.C.200, the Chinese completed their immense wall, to fence themselves in; and the Romans would fain ward the northern barbarians off. But Providence, leaving the effete East to its chosen isolation, with irresistible movement sweeps outward on the broad current of progressive civilization, and lifts the curtain of a new act in the still more glorious West.