Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/romanliteratureiOOburn ROMAN LITERATURE IN RELATION TO ROMAN ART ROMAN LITERATURE IN RELATION TO ROMAN ART BY THE REV. ROBERT BURN, M.A., LL.D. Glas. FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE AUTHOR OF “ ROME AND THE CAMPAGNA ” WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. lEoirbmt MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1888 The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved Richakd Clay and Sons, LONDON AND BUNGAY. PREFACE. These essays are an attempt to show the cognate character of Roman Literature and Roman Art by pointing out the National tendencies of the Romans from which they both sprang. I hope that in these short studies a new interest will be given to the study of Roman History which may be carried on further by some abler hand than mine. They have been a solace and occupation to me in many hours of sickness and enforced leisure. The vast extent of the ancient Roman Empire has naturally led me to compare it to the modern British Empire ; the same mistakes have been made and are being made by the two nations both in Literature and Art. Instances of this will doubtless occur to every thoughtful man. VI PREFACE. The illustrations are reproduced from photographs by Messrs. Walker and Boutall, and may therefore be relied upon for general correctness. The fifth Essay is reprinted, with slight alterations and new illustrations, from my larger work, Rome and the Campagna , by the kind permission of Messrs. G. Bell & Sons. R. B. Cambridge, 1888. CONTENTS TAGE INTRODUCTION I ESSAY I. ROMAN PORTRAIT SCULPTURE 3 1 ESSAY II. NATIONAL AND HISTORICAL TENDENCY . 68 ESSAY III. COMPOSITE AND COLOSSAL ART 102 ESSAY IV. TECHNICAL FINISH AND LUXURIOUS REFINEMENT ..... 1 39 ESSAY V. ROMANO-GREEK ARCHITECTURE 383 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE PARTHENON FRIEZE 4 FARNESE HERCULES 5 BATTLE OF AMAZONS 12 CONSULAR TRIUMPH 14 ROMAN CANEPHORUS l 6 ERECTHEION 1 7 RELIEF ON ANTONINE PILLAR ................. 24 MARCUS AGRIPPA ............... 3 2 CLAUDIUS . 33 yESCHINES 37 ANTONIA 43 CARACALLA ...... 46 NERO 47 DOMITIAN 50 AUGUSTUS 52 AGRIPPINA 54 ROMAN LADY 55 VESPASIAN 57 NERVA 59 CALIGULA 6 l SEVERUS 65 WOLF AND TWINS 69 TRIUMPH OF TIBERIUS - 76 SCENE IN FORUM 78 FAMILY OF CHSSARS 83 NILE 87 X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE ANTONINE APOTHEOSIS 89 JUDGMENT OF EMPEROR ..... ... 94 BURNING OF ACCOUNT BOOKS 98 TOMB OF SCIPIO I03 TOMB AT ATHENS I04 ARCH OF SKPTIMIUS SEVERUS 107 COLISEUM Ill TEMPLE OF NIKE II3 PORTA NIGRA, AT TREVES 115 CROWD ON SARCOPHAGUS 1 24 AMPHITHEATRE AT VERONA 1 34 TEPULAN AND CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCTS 135 ANTINOUS I40 HERCULES (BRONZE) I44 POMONA 147 THE WRESTLERS 151 A DANCING GIRL 1 53 POETUS AND ARRIA 160 VENUS CAPITOLINA 164 VENUS GENETRIX 1 66 APOLLO BENDING BOW 171 VENUS ANADYOMENE 175 CLOACA MAXIMA 1 92 TEMPLE AT GIRGENTI 199 TEMPLE OF SATURN 205 CAPITALS OF COLUMNS 209 ARCH OF CONSTANTINE 224 BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE 240 PORTA FURBA 268 JANUS QUADRIFRONS 279 ROMAN LITERATURE JN RELATION TO ROMAN ART ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. INTRODUCTION. To trace some of the erroneous tendencies of Roman literary and glyptic art, and to shew how they had their origin in the national character and circumstances of the Romans, is the endeavour of these essays. The prevalent emotions and the ideas of a nation are expressed in its litera- ture and in its art, and these emotions and ideas are some of them peculiar to the national character, while some are produced by the national circumstances. I shall endeavour to shew the original bent of the Roman character, and its modifications as affected by circumstances. But in order to criticize the faults into which Roman art was liable to fall we had better begin by tracing the ideal to which they aspired, and then shew how these aspirations were checked or modified. B ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. A passage from Cicero’s writings is quoted hereafter, which shews that he valued a mental ideal as the highest point to which art could reach. The Romans as well as the Greeks ascribed it to a divine inspiration. Horace distinctly says that the Greeks derived their powers of poetic art from the Muses, Graiis ingenium, Graiis dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui . — Ars Poet. 323. And we have an acknowledgment from him that the arts were introduced into Latium by the Greeks : Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes Intulit agresti Latio. — Ep. ii. 1, 156. Now what the Romans thought they themselves received from the gods and what they valued most was imperial power : Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento ; Hae tibi erunt artes ; pacisque imponere morem, Parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos. — AHn. vi. 852. The ideal in matters of taste was only derived by them from the gods through the medium of another nation. Their own notion of the highest of all things, their summum bonum , was not the beautiful, but the powerful. And this they thought they had as a nation received from heaven. INTRODUCTION. Let us take, first, imperial influences among the Romans. Roman poetic art attained its culminating point under Virgil, and it may be said that Roman sculpture rose to its grandest elevation under the Emperors Titus and Trajan. In Ovid’s adherence to strict rule and in the vagueness of Statius we see the incipient stages of imperial influence, which finally ruined Latin poetry, and in the sculpture of their busts and the arch of Severus we see the same influence degrading sculpture. To trace those influences in poetry among writers subsequent to Augustus, and in sculpture among artists subsequent to Trajan is the purpose of this attempt. Such an attempt is perhaps rash and impossible, but it lends an interest to classical literature and art which cannot be surpassed, and if it should be seen that English literature and art are passing through the same stages and are subject to the same influences as was Roman, it cannot be denied that a wish to state and to check or to modify the effect of such tendencies ought to be encouraged. It may be seen in most sculpture galleries, by comparing the Farnese Hercules (see p. 5) with the sculptured figures of the Parthenon, how the influence of imperial admiration for finish and detailed symmetry before grandeur and large idealism ruined Roman taste ; or, by comparing the busts of Brutus, Marius, or Seneca and Corbulo, with the heads 4 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. of the statues of Sophocles and Demosthenes, which last are of Greek origin, what was the strength of the imitative and historical tone of sculpture at Rome, or by comparing PARTHENON FRIEZE. the Medici Venus with the Venus of Melos, what was the sensual feeling encouraged by wealth in a great imperial nation ; or, by comparing the Laocoon with the fighting INTRODUCTION FARNESE HERCULES. Greeks and Centaurs in Greek metopes, how technical finish alone was encouraged by patronage, while beauty of ideal motive underlying was neglected. By comparing the 6 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. statue of Augustus from prima porta with those of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, we shall see how realism was encouraged ; by comparing the Roman carved caryatid figures (see p. 1 6) with the straightness of the Greek ones, how the Roman threw away the strictly architectural character of the sculptures, and yielded to his fondness for sensual gratification. It is often hastily concluded that Roman literature and Roman art are not worth our attention. The Romans, it is said, were evidently a nation devoid of the spiritual grace and noble power wherewith the Greeks earned the admira- tion of the world, by having produced everlasting types of beauty in poetry and in art. And it must be acknowledged that, from a strictly accurate artistic point of view, this is in a great measure true. But to those who inquire not only into the productive character of the people whose life they wish to understand, but also into the effects which national character and external circumstances had in alter- ing and moulding their productions, a study of Roman literature and art as the results of Roman character and Roman circumstances is very valuable. They can thus ascertain the modes in which human nature is affected in similar cases, and can give warnings, or make predictions, or shew what is hazardous in national art. The more lofty spirits among the Romans no doubt INTRODUCTION. 7 lifted themselves above the atmosphere in which they were compelled to live, because they had studied the great writers of Greek philosophy and poetry. Hence, Cicero says, as before mentioned, that more beautiful images can be conceived in the mind than seen by the eye : Sed ego sic statuo nihil esse in ullo genere tam pulchrum quo non pulchrius id sit unde illud ut ex ore aliquo quasi imago, exprimatur quod neque oculis neque auribus neque ullo sensu percipi potest cogitatione tantum et mente complectimur . — Or at. ii. 8. And he goes on in a passage which is often quoted to say that even more beautiful statues or pictures than the best which we know can be imagined in the mind. We must therefore except such men as Cicero from our general criticism of the Romans. Nor must we deny lofty aspirations to Roman poets. Horace in his Ars Poetica strikes this principal chord at once when he calls on the poet to avoid selfish pride in his own powers and to aim higher : Nec sic incipies ut scriptor cyclicus olim : “Fortunam Priami cantabo...” Quanto rectius hie, qui nil molitur inepte ! “Die mihi, Musa, virum,...” &c., &c . — Ars Poet. 136. This was always done by the artists who raised Greek art to its highest level. They began with an appeal to 8 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. their gods, and by their brilliant powers of generalisation and idealisation soared above into a supernatural region. We have elsewhere remarked that the Iliad begins, as Horace advises, with a prayer to the Muse, while the Alneid breaks this rule and throws all the weight on the poet’s shoulders, as if he were competent to bear it, and could ascend into a spiritual atmosphere without looking beyond himself. Spiritual thought as one of the highest attributes, of man is mentioned in one of Sophocles’ most beautiful choruses — ebiba^aro avepoev (frpovrjpa dvdpco7ros. — Alltig. 353* And in the majestic odes of AEschylus we have the same superhuman feeling as in the Zeus of Phidias, which inspired awe, and did not profess to do more than to lead the minds of men in an ascent towards the unattainable in might and grandeur. Who can read some of the lines of ZEschylus in the Agamemnon — Z rjva be tls 7rpo(])p'jvcos emviKia kXci^wv T evijercu (fipevcov to ivav’ tov (fipovelv (BpoTovs obtocravra tov nddeL pados Oevra Kvpicos e\€iv. — Ag. 1 72 . without feeling how the poet is humbling himself before one who is far above and superior to the children of men ? INTRODUCTION. 9 This lofty aim of poetry and art among the Greeks was not pursued far by the Romans, who contented themselves with a practical and realistic view of fine art and made their Emperor the highest ideal to which they rose. Hence Roman sculpture to a great extent employed itself in deifying men. The influence of the Christian faith at a later time gradually raised this old grovelling Roman materialism ; but sculpture among the Romans never soared high, and painting took the place of sculpture in spiritualising art. Thus there has been no great Christian sculptor to compare with the great Christian painters, and the chief development of the Christian influence on art, besides painting, has been in the great cathedral archi- tecture which has elevated and enlarged human thought in so many of the great cities of Europe. The characteristic tone of materialism which we see pervading all ancient Roman work, is diametrically opposed to this spiritual and upward tendency expressed by Gothic architecture, and we are therefore prepared to find Roman art and poetry deadening the elevated tone of Christianity for many centuries (see pp. 12 and 14). We cannot therefore look with much hope to the study of Roman literature and art as lifting us into the highest regions of the beautiful in poetry or in architecture or sculpture. But it may be possible, by taking a different to ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. point of view, to shew that there are some advantages in gaining a historical and wide survey of the subject. Some practical purposes are not recognized enough in the study of literary and artistic history. How frequently do we hear it asked, of what use the study of Greek and Latin history and language can be to those who are in- tended for the practical business of life. Yet it cannot be denied that the study of antiquity moulds and enlightens the human intellect in a manner which sometimes guards it from making serious and deadly blunders. And we are thus able to give to the unbelievers in the study of anti- quity a reply which they are not able to dispute. In the case immediately before us it will be at once allowed that the British nation has a practical and undeniable interest. When we once see that the circumstances under which Englishmen are now led to carry out great works both in literature and in art resemble those which developed and modified Roman energy, then we cannot help feeling a great interest and value in the study of this branch of Roman history. The leading trait of Roman life was austerity, which they named severitas. This is, it is true, only partially present in the British character and in a modified manner. In R ome it gave birth to an original form in literature, namely, Satire, veins of which run through most of the earlier INTRODUCTION. 1 1 Roman poetical productions, and shew themselves widely in Roman portrait sculpture. Every one will recognize the $ame national feature in the school of English satirical poetry. An allied development, that of caricature, though it does not occupy so large a space as did satire among the Romans, appears very distinctly in British national art. Another Roman characteristic, which gives a tone to Roman poetry and art is also prominent in English art namely, extreme realism or materialism, or, as it is collo- quially termed, a tendency to matter of fact. Both nations Roman and British have shewn in their poetry and art an admiration for the strictly historical rather than the legendary and mythical, and have combined these two features of art in a mode seldom found elsewhere. The mythical predominates over the historical far more in Greek than in Roman art. Compare for instance the iEginetan or the Gjolbaschi groups with those in the triumphal arch reliefs. From this realism also resulted in some measure that admiration for technical skill and finish which crippled Roman, and endangers British art. But when we consider the external circumstances which modified Roman, as they are still modifying English literature and art, more striking resemblances between the consequent national productions will be at once discerned. A vast empire has been expanded by the heroic determina- BATTLE OF AMAZONS. INTRODUCTION. 13 tion of the British nation and by their liberal readiness to share • and improve rather than to rule despotically over those portions of the earth in which they have made themselves superior to all others. But a similarly wide imperial power produced an overbearing national conceit in the Romans. It has been happily modified in the English nation to a national pride, but its effects have been felt in the conglomerate and confused features of English, as they were in those of Roman art, and it is in this direction that the simplicity of the Greek models is so correctively useful. And we must not forget the other natural consequence of imperial sway, the wealth which it places in the hands of powerful men. This produces admiration of technical skill, colossal production, and expensive outlay, which had a powerful influence on Roman, as it also has had on British art. We can make these three — national pride, confused conglomera- tion, and technical degradation, our compartments in which to arrange the effects of empire upon the Romans. No reader of Pliny or of the Roman satirists will be ignorant of their severe remarks upon all these tendencies ; and few of the present generation of Britons can forget the criticism and caricature which have been launched at the coarse exaggeration of the Iron Duke, or the golden memorial of the Prince Consort. An iron statue of Hercules was made, CONSULAR TRIUMPH. INTRODUCTION. 15 it is true, under the successors of Alexander by Alcon, a Rhodian artist of no eminence, and shews a somewhat similar degradation of Greek art But we must remember that iron was not then what it is now, just as it has been remarked that ivory and gold were not the same. This is mentioned by Pliny together with the colossal statues which abounded at Rhodes. Place the above-mentioned Iron Duke, or the Farnese Hercules, and the ill-balanced Antonine apotheosis, by the side of statuary conceived in the true Greek spirit, such as the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the Hercules epitrapezios of Lysippus, the Belvedere torso, or the memorial of Lysimachus, and the vulgar effects of imperial sway on art will be at once recognized. Other influences arising from wealth and imperial power, besides what we have called realism, conglomeration, and confusion, prevailed at Rome, as they do also in England. Patronage was one of the most powerful. We can trace this influence more distinctly in Roman poetry than in Roman plastic or pictorial art. Every Latin scholar will see at once that the dramatic poetry of the Romans is essentially matter of fact, as is their portrait sculpture and their architecture. So the Epic and Lyric poets, Horace and Virgil, have allowed their work to be largely coloured by a wish to please great men. This can of course be ROMAN CANEPHORUS. INTRODUCTION. 1 7 traced throughout their productions and need not be further insisted upon. In poetry Lucretius and Catullus are no doubt free from the taint, but Statius, Tibullus, and Ovid, and in sculpture the authors of the Laocoon, the Farnese Hercules and of the Apollos, suffer under it very severely. How does this influence affect them ? One would suppose that it shewed itself in the idealisation of their patrons’ good qualities and the omission of defects. C i8 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. But this is not the way in which the Roman mirror re- fleets. It is rather by representing defects or ugly facts or deformities as beauties. And this appears equally in their art as in their poetry. In fact the most permeating' and refracting component of the Roman character to which, we shall most frequently have to ascribe changes and modifications in the types which they adopted was the above - mentioned determined materialistic or realistic tendency of their nature. The peculiarity of this tendency in the Romans was that they imitated deformity as well as beauty. Every student of the history of art will at once recall many instances of this tendency in modern as well as in ancient times. Italian schools of art have vibrated between the two extremes of the ‘ bello ideale ’ and the ‘ brutto reale,’ as we learn from the autobiographies of Cellini, Alfieri, d’Azeglio, and from the lately-published Thoughts on Art by Giovanni Dupre. In England the names of Hogarth and the school of the pre-Raphaelites will at once occur to every one. Now one point of view from which I should wish ta survey the productions of art which the Romans left to us may be shewn by taking an illustration from natural science. In trying to account for the peculiar features of rock and mountain scenery, we have not only to consider INTRODUCTION. 19 the external effects of climate or position, but also the internal forces by which different masses of material are grouped and shaped. Thus in one of the most familiar ranges of mountain outline, that of the Alpine summits, varieties of shape are not produced more by exposure to climatic influences than by internal mineralogical consti- tuents. An experienced geologist could decide at once by a glance at the outline of a peak or subordinate rock to what kind of rock or class of formation it belongs. And in like manner typical forms can be traced in the artistic productions of nations, by which the historical student can at once infer their true classification, and can delineate the special national characteristics or external circumstances from which they have been evolved. Perhaps another illustration also taken from nature may make my meaning more clear. Every one has probably noticed in marshy districts, especially if he has travelled in the Eastern deserts or on Oriental rivers, the great distortions and. contractions or enlargements caused by what is called mirage. Now I wish to shew in what ways the mirage of the Roman character and circumstances affected the work of their poets and artists, when they tried to copy their ideal. To take a third example in which the same kind of refraction occurs. When we study Pope’s trans- lation of Homer, or in fact any translation into modern 20 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. verse of an ancient Greek or Latin poet, we can at once trace the effect of the modern mind in altering language, simile and construction, and we can discern the special effects of the translator’s surroundings. I wish then to point out some formations and classes in Roman literature and art produced under the special influences of Roman national life. Let us begin with traits of national character and then pass on to external circumstances. As we mentioned above, one distinguish- ing feature of the Roman mind is said to have been its severitas or austerity. This quality shews itself throughout Roman history. Every one will be able to call to mind austere Roman heroes whose branding judgments on. their fellow-countrymen were so strict and severe in the early times of Rome. But let us descend at once to the great period of Roman development, the Augustan period. When Horace says that examples must be drawn from life, Respicere exemplar vitae morumque jubebo Doctum imitatorem, et veras hinc ducere voces. 1 Ars Poet. 317, he is only urging what he himself saw to be one of the natural bents of Roman severitas. He employs Stoic 1 I bid the man who is learning to imitate to look at some model of life or character, and to draw life for his words from that. INTRODUCTION. 21 criticism which paints the extravagances of human life. And we can trace this feature throughout his Epistles and Satires. Quintilian says of Horace that he is acute in discerning character, ad notandos hominum mores praecipuus — Inst . Or. x. i. 94. But cynicism in Horace is even and humorously calm. His musical bore Tigellius, and his glutton Catius are touched with light and easy wit, while Juvenal would have passed by the musical pedant as not worth notice, and we know the colours in which he has painted the glutton. Horace’s Tiresias, in his amusing advice to Ulysses, draws the character of the Roman fortune-hunter in strong outlines, Leniter in spem Adrepe officiosus. — Sat. ii. 5, 47. ‘Gently proceed in hope 5 is the tone of his precepts, and he is finally content when he hears the award, ‘Let Ulysses have a fourth part Quartae esto partis Ulysses. — Id. 100. Other model figures in Horace are drawn under his characters of Ofellus, the old-fashioned Roman farmer who entertains his friends, Non piscibus urbe petitis, Sed pullo atque haedo. — Sat. ii. 2, 121. ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. and of Stertinius, who sums up his philosophy in a line, Danda est hellebori multo pars maxima avaris. Sat. ii. 3, 82. recommending the cures used for madness. Other social influences shew themselves in the great writers of the imperial times. They felt distinctly what the great social dangers were from which Roman art, both literary and plastic, could not withdraw itself — the temp- tations to multifarious enunciations and to grandiose excess by which it was surrounded. Some of them gave way to these, others resisted. The Roman empire was in the Augustan days expanding and growing at an intoxicating pace, and the crowd and hurry of the metropolis were destroying simplicity of thought and life. Hence we have many passages in Horace : At simul atras Yentum est Esquilias, aliena negotia centum Per caput et circa saliunt latus. Ante secundam Roscius orabat, sibi adesses ad Puteal eras De re communi scribae magna atque nova te Orabant hodie meminisses, Ouinte, reverti. Sat. ii. 6, 32. In Rome it was always a struggle, Luctandum in turba et facienda iniuria tardis. Sat. ii. 6, 28. INTRODUCTION. 2 3 and abroad the ‘ strenua inertia ’ was pushing people from place to place till they could not rest. Navibus atque Quadrigis petrmus bene vivere. Eft. i. ii, 29. The effects of imperial magnificence on the spirit of the Augustan age were foreseen by Horace when he wrote his cautions — Professes grandia turget . — Ars Poet. 27, Sedulitas autem stulte, quem diligit, urget Praecipue cum se numeris commendat et arte : Discit enim cities meminitqee libentius illud Qeod qeis deridet, qeam qeod probat et venerator. Eft. ii. 1, 260 against turgidity and strict exactitude in judgment. National and military and imperial pride also exercised of course a strong influence at Rome. Although Horace was well aware of the perils to which art was exposed by the world-wide dominion of Rome, yet he could not in his Odes refrain from encouraging the national pride of empire : Qeicenqee mendo terminus obstitit, Hunc tangat armis. — Od. iii. 3, 53. Virgil went still further, and was not ashamed to avow an almost menial worship of imperial power in his famous lines, relief on antonine pillar. INTRODUCTION. 2 5 Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, Credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore voltus, Orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus Describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent : Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento ; Hae tibi erunt artes. — A/i. vi. 848. Roman national glory is of course the main subject of the Ameid. The nation wearing the toga are the masters of the world, and the house of Aineas is destined by the oracle to rule in all lands. The liberal and cosmopolitan feelings produced by world-wide sway are not reconciled or advised by Virgil, and the memory of national heroes has with him only one object, that of inspiriting the militant power of their descendants and thus exalting Rome above all the world. Unbroken secular ascendency is the fate to which the prophetic genius of the Aineid looks forward, Jure omnia bella Gente sub Assaraci fato ventura resident. JEn. i x. 642. This is the final utterance of Apollo. The deification of imperial personages is, of course, a main feature in the Latin poets of the Augustan and succeeding epochs. The invisible world of faith was united by Virgil and Horace with the human figure and political powers of Augustus. This has been admirably drawn out 26 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. by Otto Jahn in his comparison of the Carmen Saecnlare of Horace with the famous statue of Augustus found at Prima Porta and now in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican. The adjurations of deities in this song — of Phoebus and Diana, Sol, Ilithyia, and the Parcae — are all associated with the Emperor Augustus, a scion of the great clan of Anchises and the blood of Venus, before whose potent sway the Mede, the proud Scythian and the Indian are trembling. In the third and fourth books of the Odes again we have many stanzas connecting the gods and the imperial dynasty : Hac arte Pollux et vagus Hercules Enisus arces attigit igneas : Quos inter Augustus recumbens Purpureo bibit ore nectar. — Od. iii. 3, 9. Caelo Tonantem credidimus Jovem Regnare : praesens divus habebitur Augustus adjectis Britannis Imperio gravibusque Persis. — Od. iii. 5, r. Te copias, te consilium et tuos Praebente divos. — Od. iv. 14, 33. Lucem redde tuae, dux bone, patriae. — Od. iv. 5, 5, Praesenti tibi maturos largimur honores. Ep. ii. 1, 15. In Virgil the divine powers of Augustus are invoked to aid the Italian farmers no less than the Roman armies. Thus we have the invocations in the first Georgic , INTRODUCTION. 27 Ignarosque viae mecum miseratus agrestes Ingredere, et v r otis iam nunc adsuesce vocari. Georg. 1, 41. And the celebrated outburst of worship put into the mouth of Anchises in the sixth book of the Aineid : Hie vir, hie est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis, Augustus Caesar, Divi genus, aurea condet Saecula qui rursus Latio regnata per arva Saturno quondam. — /Een. vi. 792. And again in the eighth book the figure of Gesar is represented on the shield of /Eneas : Hinc Augustus agens Italos in proelia Caesar Cum Patribus Populoque, Penatibus et magnis Dis, Stans celsa in puppi ; geminas cui tempora flammas Laeta vomunt, patriumque aperitur vertice sidus. Ai.n. viii. 678. The Julium sidus is the symbol of apotheosis both in Horace and Virgil. The imaginative powers of the Roman poets were feeble, and therefore we find in them a constant falling back upon real life and actual scenes or places, as well as the above mixture of the divine with the human. Direct impressions from the external world and actual life supported even Virgil and Horace, who shew plainly that they well knew the difficulty of clothing contemporary 28 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. history in a poetical dress. Virgil has recourse to the legendary in his descriptions of past history, and to the prophetic shade with which he shrouds his contemporary statements mysteriously. He brings in Evander and Anchises to avoid the prosy dryness and dulness of strict narrative. Horace shrinks from launching his river-boat on the sea — Phoebus volentem proelia me loqui Victas et urbes increpuit lyra, Ne parva Tyrrhenian per aequor Vela darem. — Od. iv. 15, 1 and lays down imperial history as the subject of the songs which will be popular : Virtute functos more patrum duces Lydis remixto carmine tibiis Trojamque et Ancliisen et almae Progeniem Veneris canemus. Od. iv. 15, 29. The poets shewed in this way that they were aware of the prosy tendencies of the national character, and that they must fly for help to ancient times and legendary stories. But the realism of the nation exhibited itself in other unmistakable traits. For instance the similes of Virgil, and still more of the later poets, when compared with those of the great Greek bards, have generally a par- ticular local reference rather than a general. When Virgil INTRODUCTION. 29 compares his defeated heroes to fallen trees, he names a particular spot where the tree was standing. When he compares the habits of the Greeks to flights of birds, the locality whence the birds come is mentioned, and so also in the case of lightning or storms. This tendency corresponds to the exact technical finish, and imitation of actual varieties of shape which a student of Graeco- Roman sculpture must have often laid down in his mind as one of its characteristics. Hence we find crowds on the Roman reliefs instead of separate figures or groups. We gather then that the principal influences of Roman character and circumstances upon their art may be roughly stated as follows. Fiist, their innate severitas and realism produced satire in poetry, biographic tendencies in history caricature, technical finish and excessive exactitude in art ; while secondly, their world-wide empire and wealth en- larged and confused both poetry and art, giving rise to a composite style in both, and a preference of quantity to quality, and of crowds to groups. Let us therefore pro- ceed to consider : h Roman portrait sculpture. II. Historical military art in the Roman empire. III. Composite and colossal art in the same. IV. Technical finish and luxurious art in the same. V. Roman architecture, its nationality, 30 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. and to indicate how these may be used to shew the general tendencies of Roman literature and art towards : 1. Ugly portraits. 2. National legends and military hosts. 3. Huge buildings and confused crowds. 4. Finished and sensual details in art. 5. Modifications in architecture. ESSAY I. ROMAN PORTRAIT SCULPTURE. SENECA gives three reasons for the creation of works of art. In the first place he says that such works may be made to be sold and to gain profitable employment ; secondly, that the artist may be endeavouring to gain reputation and fame as a man of distinguished ability ; and thirdly, that the religious uses of such works are widely extended. To these three Seneca says that Plato would have added a fourth, namely, the realisation of ideal beauty, the imitation of a model as conceived in the mind. And this was no doubt in great measure the origin of the grand models of Greek sculpture. The imaginative power of the Plellenic mind was great enough to realise the idea of abstract perfection in shape, and to employ it in imitations of the human figure. And therefore Phidias and Polycletus soared into a transcendental region, and their fancy fetched Even from the blazing chariot of the Sun A beardless youth who touched a golden lute And filled the illumined groves with ravishment. MARCUS AGRIITA. But the realistic turn of the Roman mind could not appreciate imaginary beauty, and therefore Roman poets and Roman artists contented themselves with exact ROMAN PORTRAIT SCULPTURE. CLAUDIUS. representations of the actual facts and figures of human life, and we find the Roman connoisseurs criticising Polycletus for clothing his statues in superhuman beauty. D 34 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. The Greek artist in executing a portrait statue or bust had the ideal shape before his mind of what the subject of his portrait would be like if all his defective features were corrected and remodelled. This feeling was so strong and active that a Greek artist was admired for what the Romans censured in Polycletus, and was criticised if he produced too literal a representation of any peculiarities in the features of his subject. What the Hellenic mind looked for in a portrait was something beyond the barren pleasure of a likeness. It was the ideal form of which the actual was only the shadow. As Lessing remarks in his Lao coon, this feeling was carried to such an extent that the arts were subjected to municipal regulations, recommending the artist to use imitation of nature as a means of arriving at ideal beauty, but prohibiting on pain of punishment its use for producing an exact representation of defects in shape . 1 aneiXel 6 vop os Qrjfirjcri toIs els to % eipov TrXdcracn ^lyilav to rlfiiyjia fipav . — vElian. Var. Hist. iv. 4. The Roman characteristic, on the other hand, as shewn in their portrait sculpture and in their literature, is that 1 The law threatens at Thebes that the sculptor who makes his portrait statue worse looking than the original shall suffer a fine to the amount the statue is valued at. ROMAN PORTRAIT SCULPTURE. 35 the features and the limbs of those who are represented are expected to have an exact resemblance, sometimes even caricature-like, to the original. Thus in their attempts to imitate form, as in the cases of the portrait busts or statues of Pompey, Agrippa, and Germanicus, or Claudius (pp. 32, 33), this Roman realism interferes with the shape of the limbs and spoils the ideal effect. And then the same love of real and exact imitation afterwards dresses the imperial and official statues in ornamental cuirasses and belts. Therefore it may be said that the idea underlying Roman portrait sculpture was the degradation of the divine to the human form, and when further developed, would have generated a fondness for such exhibitions as Madame Tussaud’s Gallery. Perhaps the word similitudo used by Quintilian when he criticises a sculptor 1 — Tamquam nimius in veritate Demetrius fuit et similitudinis quam pulchritudinis amantior. — xii. 10, 9 — is the special characteristic of Roman portrait sculpture. For we find this aimed at particularly, as was natural, by the collections of ancestral portraits, and it was an im- mediate consequence of the spirit in which the Roman 1 Demetrius was too particularly correct, and admired a good likeness more than a beautiful representation. 36 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. worshipped his heroic ancestors. The sculptor under the influence of this Roman spirit did not trust to his ideas of beauty or proportion, but strictly followed what he saw or what he could measure in actual existence. The idea with which the Romans regarded their portrait statues and busts may be best expressed by the English term idolatry as defined by the Jews, and forbidden in the Ten Commandments, a worship of the exact shape, even of an ugly shape, without any mental idealisation. The saying of Quintilian about Polycletus is well known as a prediction of one of the dangers into which he saw that the Romans were in danger of falling by avoiding idealisation : 1 Diligentia ac decor in Polycleto supra ceteros, cui quamquam a plerisque tribuitur palma, tamen, ne nihil detrahatur, deesse pondus putant. Nam ut humanae formae decorem addiderit supra verum, ita non explevisse deorum auetoritatem videtur. Quin aetatem quoque graviorem dicitur refugisse, nihil ausus ultra leves genas. — xii. io, 9. Prof. Sellar has remarked upon this stage of Roman history in which devotion to an individual and admiration 1 Though Polycletus excelled all others yet they think he was deficient in gravity. He added beauty to the human form, but did not give the gods an authoritative look. And he is said to have avoided the representation of old people, and to have ventured on nothing but smooth cheeks. ROMAN PORTRAIT SCULPTURE. 37 iESCHINES. of him in every respect prevailed ( Roman Poets of the Augustan Age — Virgil, p. 82) : ‘ As Augustus moulded the policy, Virgil moulded the political feeling of the future. 38 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. It is in his poems that loyalty to one man, which soon became, and till a comparatively recent period continued to be, the master force in European politics — apparently a necessary stage in the ultimate evolution of free national life on a large scale— finds its earliest expression.’ And again, ‘ Loyalty to a person appealed to the imagination with the charm of novelty, and might be justified to the conscience of the world as being, for that time and the times that came after, the necessary bond of order and civil union.’ Lysippus was one of the Greek portrait sculptors whose works were brought to Rome in great numbers. Metellus brought a number of statues representing Alexander and his followers at the battle of the Granicus, which after- wards remained in the portico of Octavia. Turmam fecit Alexandri, in qua amicorum eius imagines summa omnium similitudine expressit ; hanc Metellus Macedonia subacta transtulit Romani. — Nat. Hist, xxxiv. 64. Pliny afterwards adds that Lysippus professed his object to be not to make statues of men as they really were, but as they appeared to be. Volgo dicebat (Lysippus) ab illis factos, quales essent homines, a se, quales viderentur esse. — Id. zb. 65. He did not act strictly by measure, but followed the ROMAN PORTRAIT SCULPTURE. 39 judgment of his eye as to proportions. His Apoxyomenos is an instance of this, which Agrippa brought from Greece — Signa fecit inter quae destringentem se quem Marcus Agrippa ante thermas suas dicavit. — Nat. Hist, xxxiv. 62 — and placed in front of his thermal This work of Lysippus was most popular at Rome, and no doubt the Greek sculptors employed there imitated its style, which is very pleasing to the eye, though not according to the most natural style of beauty (p. 37). The erection of statues in honour of famous men at Rome can be traced back by the statements of Pliny, and of Cicero and Livy, to the middle of the fifth century before the Christian era (see J. J. Bernoulli, Rom. Icon. i. p. 2), and was therefore anterior to the introduction of Greek portrait statues into Rome. We can also refer to the legal phrase jus imaginum , and to the well-known custom of wax images of ancestors set up in the atrium of a Roman house, as proving how familiar such portrait busts or statues were in early times of the Roman national history. That the ancient statues were bearded shews their early date ; and the censorial decree ordering all statues which had not been placed in the forum by the state authority to be removed in the year B.c. 158, shews that the number was becoming inconvenient. 4o ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. Statuas circa forum eorum qni magistratum gesserant sublatas omnes praeter eas quae populi aut senatus sententia statutae essent. — Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxxiv. 30. A first step from the Greek idealisation of nature towards the extreme humanisation of Roman portrait sculpture was taken by Lysippus, who, in his portraits of Alexander and of other heroes, allowed their defects from symmetrical beauty to appear more plainly than the stricter criticism of the national Greek mind would have thought endurable. He was followed in this by his brother Lysistratus, who, as we are told by Pliny — Hominis autem imaginem gypso e facie ipsa primus omnium ex- pressit ceraque in earn formam gypsi infusa emendare instituit Lysi- stratus Sicyonius frater Lysippi, de quo diximus. — Nat. Hist. xxxv. 153 - first took casts in gypsum from the faces of those he wished to represent. The idealism became gradually more and more modified by alterations in the hair and in the proportions, and in later times by the introduction of head-dresses, belts, and cuirasses, ornamented historically or biographically. The purpose of the Greek artist in shaping a bust or statue was to make it impressive, while the Roman’s purpose was to render it expressive. The Greek wished to impress the mind of the spectator, the ROMAN PORTRAIT SCULPTURE. 4i Roman to express the character of the person repre- sented. The portrait busts of Marius and of Seneca are striking examples of the Roman exaggeration in personal traits of feature. The imperial fiery glance of which Cicero speaks as a characteristic of Marius — Ouodsi vultus C. Marii, si vox, si ille imperatorius ardor oculorum, si recentes triumphi, si praesens valuit adspectus . — Pro Balbo. xxi. 49— and his savage and bitter cast of countenance mentioned by Plutarch — Mcipiov Xidlvrjv tiKova ttuvv tt) Xey ofxevrj rrep'i to rjdos (rrpvcjjvoTrjTL kcu -rvLKpla TTperovaav. — Mar. ii. — are unpleasantly reproduced in the heads preserved in the Vatican and in the Munich Glyptothek. The special interest which the Romans took in the cast of countenance and bodily shape is shewn by numerous pas- sages in the popular writings of the first two centuries B.C. Thus Plutarch, who lived at the end of the first century, in his life of Pompey, begins by speaking of the attractive features which, even in his youth, rendered Pompey a popular speaker, and had something of dignityand princely bearing in them. Plutarch also says that Pompey’s hair 42 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. and eyes were said to resemble those shewn in the like- nesses of Alexander the Great — rjv tls K.CLL dvaaroXrj rr/s Kofirjs arpepa kcu rcov nep\ ra oppara pvdpcov vyporrjs tov TvpoacoTVOV Tvoiovcra paWov \eyop4vqv rj (paivopevrjv opoioTrjTa 7 rpos ras ’AXetjdvdpov tov /3acn\(a el<6vas. — Powift. ii. — but thinks that this was more talked of than really apparent, shewing that the cast of countenance was often noticed at Rome in the case of prominent statesmen. Horace also allows that breath and life are brought back to the images of great men after their death by public memorials — Non incisa notis marmora publicis, Per quae spiritus et vita redit bonis Post mortem ducibus. — Od. iv. 8 , 13 — and he claims for poetry the same power as for these memorials : Dilecti tibi Virgilius Variusque poetae ; Nec magis expressi vultus per aenea signa, Ouam per vatis opus mores animique virorum Clarorum apparent. — Eft. ii. 1, 247. Thus he places the expression of the face on a level with the character, the one as shown in statues, the other in poetry. The forehead, as we have seen, is noticed by Roman writers as a most important feature, and as the part where honour resided, and by which respect was enforced. Hence ROMAN PORTRAIT SCULPTURE. 43 ANTONIA. the Roman women, with that curious polarity which often sets the fashion in exactly the opposite direction to what would be expected, the Roman women, I say, held that a ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. narrow forehead with the hair drawn down over it was pretty and attractive (p. 43). This may be seen in remain- ing busts and coins, and is fashionable at the present time. We have in Horace the terms ‘thin,’ ‘ narrow/ ‘con- tracted,’ ‘ confined,’ all applied to frons as expressive of beauty (Hor. Od. i. 33, 5 ; Ep. i. 7, 26 ; Epod. xiii. 5 ; Sat. ii. 2, 125). This is also noticed by Lucian — A l pe xpi ron> ucppvcov etyeikK.vo'pevaL KOficu 0pa^v rep peroonoy to peT- ai\piov dv navrcov ov toctctov odvpopai a^vvpevos nep oos ivos, ov pi a^os d£v Karoicrerai ’'Aides eiaco, ''EKTopos' cos ocpeAcv Gavleiv iv ^epcrlv epfjcriv. 11 xxii. 424. Hecuba. T6KVOV, eyco deikr) tl vv fieiopai, ciiva Tralovaa , crev a.7TOTe6vr](DTOS ; o poi vvktcis re kcu rjpap ev^coX^j Kara aarv 7 reXeV/ceo, 7 racrl t uveiap , Tpoocrt re Kal Tpcofjcri Kara tvtoKlv , ol ere Ocov cos del denar’" rj yap Ke crcfai paha peya Kvdos eqa6a £coos ecov‘ vvv av Oavaros Kali M olpa Ki^avei. II. xxii. 431. COMPOSITE AND COLOSSAL ART. 1 19 Andromache. "Enrop, eye 0 dvarrjvos ‘ Irj dpa yiyvopeO ’ 01077 dpcPorepoi, av piu iv T polp Upuipov Kara dapa, avTitp eyco QrjftrjaLV xn to IlXafco) v\rj€aap. II. xxii. 477. Lucan, after reciting Cornelia’s appeal to the assassins that they should first kill her, as Pompey would be more afflicted by her death than his own, distracts our attention by speaking of the Egyptian embalmment of Pompey’s head, Tunc arte nefanda Submota est capiti tabes : raptoque cerebro Exsiccata cutis, putrisque effluxit ab alto Humor, et infuso facies solidata veneno est. viii. 688 ; then introduces an address to Ptolemy, Ultima Lageae stirpis, perituraque proles, Degener, incestae sceptris cessure sororis, Cum tibi sacrato Macedon servetur in antro, Et regum cineres exstructo monte quiescant, Cum Ptolemaeorum manes seriemque pudendam Pyramides claudant, indignaque Mausolea : Litora Pompeium feriunt, truncusque vadosis Hue illuc iactatur aquis. Adeone molesta Totum cura fuit socero servare cadaver? viii. 693; 120 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. and then announces the arrival of Cordus, who performs funeral ceremonies at some length, ending in a strange and offensive manner. In the speeches which Homer puts into the mouth of his characters we have simple affectionate sorrow and recollection of past happiness, while Lucan throughout his account of Pompey’s mourners inserts descriptions of the disgusting parts of his murder, and appeals to the feelings of his readers. Thus we lose the higher tone of grief, and come down to disagreeable and unsightly features. The Greek poet is beautiful, the Roman horrid. The extended and therefore diluted plot of the Aneid y as compared with that of the Iliad , may be quoted as an instance of the first beginnings of the influence exercised on Roman art by the wide empire of the Romans. In the Aneid we have the voyages of EEneas detailed and his visits to various places, at each of which a different scene is added to the picture. It may be said that the travels of Odysseus, as related in the Odyssey , are of the same nature. But in the Odyssey we have more a legendary tale and a less divided and extended one. By the introduction of Dido and Camilla in the Aneid a more decidedly dramatic feature is given to both the former and the latter parts of the story. The prophetic strain COMPOSITE AND COLOSSAL ART. I 2 1 also, to which the visit of ^Eneas to Hades gives utterance, carries us over vast regions and into many places and extends the prospect widely. In his descrip- tions of the combats between the Rutulians and Trojans, Virgil is more apt to stray from the exact point set before us than Homer is. For instance, the defeat of Ornytus by Camilla is enlarged by a divergent description of the hero’s clothing : Cui pellis latos humeros erepta iuvenco Pugnatori operit ; caput ingens oris hiatus Et malae texere lupi cum dentibus albis, Agrestisque manum armat sparus. An. xi. 679. The luxury of the Etruscans, which is quite foreign to the point, intrudes in another passage: At non in Venerem segnes nocturnaque be) la, Aut, ubi curva choros indixit tibia Bacchi, Exspectare dapes et plenae pocula mensae ; Hie amor, hoc studium, dum sacra secundus haruspex Nuntiet, ac lucos vocet hostia pinguis in altos. An. xi. 736. Again, an instance of additional foreign matters used as extraneous ornament may be seen in the tenth book : 122 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. Namque ferunt luctu Cycnum Phaethontis amati, Populeas inter frondes umbramque sororum Dum canit et moestum Musa solatur amorem, Canentem molli pluma duxisse senectam, Linquentem terras et sidera voce sequentem. Filius, aequales comitatus classe catervas, Ingentem remis Centaurum promo vet : ille Instat aquae saxumque undis inmane minatur Arduus, et longa sulcat maria alta carina. AHn. x. 189. The poet’s antiquarian love of old mythological legend leads him astray and induces him to waste his powers and confuse his readers by unnecessary reference to the love of Phaethon and metamorphosis of Cycnus. In the Iliad, on the other hand, the poet seldom strays beyond the plains of Troy or the Greek mainland and Ionian islands. The greater part of the fighting in the twelfth and thirteenth books is carried on at the defences raised by the Greeks to protect their ships. This is the furthest position to which the engagements move. Throughout these books the fighting is carried on by individual heroes, or in duels between pairs of heroes, seldom by any rush or move of an armed body of them. Above the whole, we have the celestial group of gods exercising a control, and interfering occasionally. We are reminded of their influence by the poet in such passages COMPOSITE AND COLOSSAL ART. as the announcement of dependence on their will at the beginning of the twelfth book — Oeoou S’ aeKrjTL tztvkto aOavarcov' to kcu ovtl noXw^povov ep.nedov rjev. II xii. 8. It is true that the gods interfere in the course of events in the ALneid, but the great council of Olympus is not ever present to the mind, seated above in the heavens, and lying “ beside their nectar.” In the later Roman epic poets the composite nature of their art becomes much more visible than in Virgil. Virgil, as we have seen, introduces foreign allusions now and then, without distracting the mind seriously, and uses the pro- phetic and historic tone in digressions only with a distinct purpose, and keeps up throughout reference to a higher power of control, similar to, though not so strong as, that of Homer. But when we examine the Pharsalia of Lucan we are confused by the variety of the chords he keeps striking, and we cannot always recognise the prominent chord which ought to pervade the whole of his work. Lucan’s purpose evidently is that of ostentatiously parading the vast extent of the philosophical, geogra- phical, and ethnological knowledge which was almost forced upon his mind by the vast imperial dominions COMPOSITE AND COLOSSAL ART. 125 of Rome. The note which we find dominating is the irresistible power of Rome. But this is ex- pressed in a lumbering and overwhelming manner, and not by fine touches, as the key-note is in Homer and Virgil. No one can deny the genius of Lucan, but the whole effect of his poem is not great, on account of the distractions caused by its composite nature. This fault is mainly produced by the circumstances under which he lived. Virgil had begun to feel the deteriorating influences of the empire, but they are only shewn slightly in his poetry as compared with that of Lucan. Let us trace out some of these ponderous catalogue-like enumerations. In the first book of the Pharsalia we have a list of prodigies given at length, extending through fifty-six lines in a dull and uninteresting manner. In the second book a detailed account of the ferocious party quarrels in Rome, extending through hundreds of lines. In the third book there is a long dull description of the siege of Marseilles, and similar merely enumerative descriptions may be read in each of the following books. Commenting on the Roman sarcophagus in the Vatican ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. 1 26 museum, which represents a battle of gods and giants, a writer in the Journal of Hellenic Studies , vol. iii. p. 329, alluding to the Pergamene frieze, and comparing it with the sarcophagus, says, “ In this last quoted Roman work there is this other similarity and this point of difference as compared with the Pergamene : a general gigantomachy is rendered, and no scenes of separate conflicts, but the giants are so banded together as actors in a common cause that individual interest is lacking.” Illustrations of the difference here mentioned between Roman and Greek art may be taken from natural scenery and growth. Who does not see more exquisite and varied beauty in the aspect of a simple tree standing by itself, or in a group of trees, than in a monotonous row of trees, all of which are growing in the exact places, and to the exact height " of each other ? Or take another example of the same kind. Is there not more various and elegant beauty in a plant of corn, or of fern, or of prairie grass, than in a field of corn, or a number of plants set in order and arranged in lines, to suit the square shape of a field or garden ? Is not a garden more beautiful when planted in groups or in an irregular manner, than when formally arranged and crowded ? Thus we find, as is natural in the later poets compared with those of the Augustan age, many more examples of COMPOSITE AND COLOSSAL ART. 27 the special influence which the wide dominion and com- plicated system of the Roman Empire had upon their minds. Each poet desirous of decorating his work has taken the same points of interest. But in the one class we have a few striking examples, combined harmoniously, while in the other we have a long, tedious, dull and monotonous reiteration. Thus we have in the first book of the Pharsalia the long list of prodigies quoted above extending over fifty-seven lines. But in the first book of the Georgies these are contracted and made much more forcible in the well-known passage beginning at line 466 and ending after twenty-three splendid lines. In the same way that melancholy catalogue of horrors in the seventh book of the Pharsalia may be contrasted with the carefully selected scenes in the second and third books of the PEneid ’ and the concise phrases at the end of the first book of the Georgies. Huic movet Euphrates, illinc Germania bellum, Vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes Arma ferunt ; saevit toto Mars impius orbe. Georg, i 509. To take another department of Epic poetry. In Homer’s description of battles we have the valour of one hero illustrated or a duel fought between two, while 128 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. in Lucan we have the advance of trained bodies of troops or of masses of men. Densis acies stipata catervis. Phars. vii. 492. Per populos hie Roma perit. Id. vii. 634. The forces of Pompey are described at unnecessary length and with almost the dullness of an army list in Phars. iii. 169 — 284, while in the enumeration of the Greek and Trojan armies in II. ii. Homer lights up his list with sparkling vigour here and there, and entirely prevents the feeling of monotony. Virgil, too, is very successful in his interesting accounts of the allies of JEne as and Turnus in the seventh and eleventh books of the Alneid. The defect in poetic art here is the same as we have before noticed in sculpture, when we compared the hosts crowded on the reliefs of the triumphal arches and the sarcophagi, with the symmetrical groups of the Parthenon, and in a less degree with those of the Nereid monument. The influence of their vast empire on the minds of the Romans may be traced not only by the composite nature of their literature and art, but in its bulk and ponderous mass. Pliny and Juvenal have pointed this out in concise sayings. In his Natural History , xxxiv. 39, Pliny speaks of colossal statues and great collections of works of art as instances of rash boldness : COMPOSITE AND COLOSSAL ART. 129 Audaciae innumera sunt exempla. — Plin. Nat. Hist, xxxiv. vn. 18. Adeo materiam conspici malunt omnes quam se nosci. — Id. xxxv. 11. 2. 1 And Juvenal also has a line expressing a well-known effect of wide wealth upon taste : Magis ilia iuvant quae pluris emuntur. — Sat. xi. 16. Colossal figures and vast collections of art were paralleled In literature by the encyclopaedic and voluminous writings of jurists and historians and poets. These are satirised by Juvenal, Namque oblita modi millesima pagina surgit Omnibus, et multa crescit damnosa papyro. Sic ingens rerum numerus iubet atque operum lex. 2 Sat. vii. 100. Dion Cassius, lxii. 29, says of the jurist Cornatus that he was banished by Nero because he had recommended the emperor not to write four hundred books in his poem on Troy, a performance which the parasites had said would be applauded by the Roman public. 1 So anxious are they that vast construction should be surveyed with wonder, rather than that they should themselves be seen. 2 For without any method they all write thousands of pages, and fill column after column of papyrus. K 130 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART Martial’s remark upon Livy’s history is that his library is too small to hold all of it. Ouem mea non totum bibliotheca capit. 1 — Efi. xiv. 1 86. The encyclopaedic character of later Roman literature and art is too well known to need many illustrations, but we may point out some of the early instances. A comparison of Virgil’s description of Hitna with that of Pindar has been a familiar subject of discussion among critics from the time of Gellius, who gives the opinion of Favorinus in the reign of Hadrian preferring Pindar. In Pindar we have a few simple masterly strokes. Fountains of fire are belched forth. Then first a cloud of smoke rises by day from the rivers of molten lava, and secondly, by night the volcano flings rocks upward which fall with a crash in the sea. ras epevyovrai piv dn\arov 7 rvpos dyvorarai pv^wv naya'i' irorapoX S’ apepaicriv piv Tvpo^eovTL poov Kcmvov aWoov’ aXX’ iv op(fivaicnv nerpas (fioLvuTa-a KvXivdopeva <£Xo£ is (3adelav (fiepei ttovtov TvkaKa avv Tvarayco. Pyth. i. 21. But Virgil overpaints the scene and gives a crowded description : 1 Why, my whole library would not hold his works. COMPOSITE AND COLOSSAL ART. 131 Horrificis iuxta tonat Aetna minis Interdumque atram prorumpit ad aethera nubem, Turbine fumantem piceo et candente favilla, Attollitque globos flammarum et sidera lambit ; Interdum scopulos avolsaque viscera montis Erigit eructans, liquefactaque saxa sub auras Cum gemitu glomerat, fundoque exaestuat imo. Alii. iii. 57. Favonius justly remarked against Virgil on the above lines that they are too wordy and elongated : Virgilius dum in strepitu sonituque verborum conquirendo laborat, utrumque tempus noctis et diei nulla discretione facta, confudit. — Gellius, xvii. 10. The tendency of the Roman poets and artists upon which we are now dwelling is shewn in Virgil’s high- . sounding words, and the complication of his smoke and flame and discharges of ashes and fragments, while we have a clear representation in Pindar of fire, smoke, lava, and volleys of stones thrown up. The addition of ornament, unnecessary display, and complicated design of which we have spoken is produced, partly by the world-wide extension of Roman thought and partly by the fancies of rich patronage. It may be illus- trated by comparing Homer’s description of the eagle appearing as an omen to the armies when about to attack K ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. 1 32 with the same scene in Virgil. In Iliad xii. 200, we have eight masterly lines : opvis yap (ref) tv ei TrjXde. TreprjcrepevaL pepaaxrLV, aleros v\jsi7reTr)s, iff dpLarepa Xaov iipyo) v, (froLvrjevTCi bpaKovra (pipcov ovvxeacn ffeXcopov , £a)6v eV aamalpovra * kciI ovnoa Xrjdero x^PPV 5 ' Ko\fse yap avrov e'xovra Kara arr]6os irapa beipfjv, IbvoOe'is oTv'ura)’ 6 5’ ano e6ev r]K6 ^a/xa^e, dXyrjcras obvurjat, pkcrco S’ iv\ KaftPaX’ opiX(o’ avToa be K.Xay£as ffirero ffvoifjs avepoto. and in Virgil, ten : Namque volans rubra fulvus Iovis ales in aethra Litoreas agitabat aves turbamque sonantem Agminis aligeri : subito cum lapsus ad undas Cycnum excellentem pedibus rapit improbus uncis. Arrexere animos I tali, cunctaeque volucres Convertunt clamore fugam, mirabile visu, Aetheraque obscurant pennis, hostemque per auras Facta nube premunt, donee vi victus et ipso Pondere defecit, praedamque ex unguibus ales Proiecit fiuvio, penitusque in nubila fugit. Al?i. xii. 247. In Virgil the simile assumes a more complicated form than in Homer. The eagle in Homer is forced by the snake he has seized whose backward twist is poetically described in two words, to drop his prey and fly away down the wind. COMPOSITE AND COLOSSAL ART. 133 But Virgil brings in a host of birds and fills the air with them, and describes their evolutions so as to draw attention to the power of a numerous body of assailants over the eagle, who is not defeated by them alone but also by the overweight of his victim, the swan which he has seized. Homer makes the scene simply striking by a few lines. The snake is whirled up aloft, and deals one deadly bite, while Virgil fills the air with screaming birds who pursue the eagle till he is tired. Other little touches are also added to the picture, the sky is red, the birds are seabirds, the swan is thrown into the river, which are not so apposite as those of Homer. But it was natural that the imperial influences which, as. we have seen, acted strongly upon Roman literature and sculpture, should exert themselves even more strongly upon their architecture. Instances of this will of course occur to every one who has visited Rome, or who has seen the wonderful display of Roman power at Verona, at El Djemm in Tunis, at Pola in Istria, or at Baalbec in Syria. These stupendous monuments of power will at once impress their history vividly upon the mind ; but perhaps it may be suggestive if we turn aside for a moment to remark upon the vast aqueducts which span the Campagna round Rome. It is often asked why the Romans spent so much wealth and labour in erecting these vast ranges of 34 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. arches, when they knew perfectly well how to conduct water in pipes, and did so within the walls of their metro- polis to a considerable extent. An answer to this question will be found directly when we see it at the point of view AMPHITHEATRE AT VERONA. from which we are now considering Roman art. When viewed in this light we shall be inclined to take what may be called “a political view.” of the construction of the COMPOSITE AND COLOSSAL ART. 135 aqueducts, as intended mainly to display imperial power, and to give employment to vast numbers of architects and workmen. A vulgar attempt to display their wealth may also be traced in Roman medallions. Alexander Severus is said to have diminished the extravagant size of the medals which Heliogabalus had made, because he thought that TEPULAN AND CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCTS. if the number of coins given was to represent the amount of imperial presents, an equal number of smaller coins would have the same value as one huge medallion . 1 Some of the medallions of the later Empire at the beginning of the fourth century are enormous in size . 2 The emperor 1 Lampred, AL Sev. 39. 2 Froehner, p. 303. 136 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. felt that it was a sign of his grandeur and wealth to present these huge masses of precious metal to high officials or to foreign sovereigns. Many medallions are struck in two metals to display the powers of the mint ; and others are decorated with ingeniously curious kinds of dots or patterns, in order to shew to what a vast extent technical skill was encouraged. Thus in the preceding pages we see how the early Roman epic in Naevius, Ennius and others, had been mainly national, whilst Virgil intermixed another element, that of mythology. Again, in the silver age these two aspects are separated. Lucan and Silius choose national subjects, the Pharsalia and the Punic wars, whilst Statius and Valerius Flaccus go back to the Argonauts and the Thebaica. Yet in each of these poets the same faults appear as in imperial Roman sculpture, shewing how the national mind was affected by empire. To take Statius. After the poet has really told his tale and exhausted his story, we have the imperial composite fashion adopted, and a twelfth book is added containing a long sequel, in which Creon’s tyranny, the sorrows of the Argive widows, and the conquest of Thebes by Theseus are expatiated upon. The Thebaid of Statius has been well described by the late Professor Conington as “ a medley of confused and exag- gerated effects, crowding disproportioned incidents and COMPOSITE AND COLOSSAL ART. 137 overdrawn or underdrawn characters within the framework of a story which may be a striking one, but which he did not invent but borrow .” 1 A want of simplicity and definite attraction to one point at a time renders the composite faults of Statius very troublesome, as though his reader were intended to hurry on from one incident to another of different character, and as though his object were to draw out a long string of unconnected facts. Thus at the beginning of the Thebaid we have the Aonian arms, the sceptre fatal to two kings, the insatiable furies, the funeral flames, the royal deaths, and the brutal carnage in city after city, following each other in an unconnected catalogue. Whether the horrible or the impious, or the extraordinary is to be most im- pressed on us we have no means of learning, and we rise from the perusal of Statius’s poetry with a confused feeling of his cleverness in locking up so many thoughts in an epigrammatic host. From this point of view Conington says of Statius : 2 “Mr. Merivale has observed with much justice that Statius is a miniature painter employed by the caprice of a patron or his own unadvised ambition on a great historical picture. 1 Conington, Miscellaneous Writings , vol. i., p. 370. 2 Ibid. p. 383. 133 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. Such exaggerations as his are indeed the fruit of weakness quite as often as of ill-regulated strength. The common- place aspects of a monstrous story may be seized by any quick apprehension, and reproduced by any fertile fancy : it is only high genius that can render them human and credible. Dryden compares Statius to his own Capaneus engaging the two immortals Virgil and Homer, and reaping the fruit of his daring. (Discourse on Epic Poetry prefixed to Dryden’s translation of the EEneid?) We would rather compare him to his own Atys, the plighted husband of Ismene, who is slain by the mighty arm of Tydeus. The love of his Theban bride leads him into war ; he challenges the champion of the field and falls at the first shock ; and he lies in death pale and bloody, yet in the pride of youthful beauty and golden armour.” ESSAY IV. TECHNICAL FINISH AND LUXURIOUS REFINEMENT. SENECA criticises severely the fondness for easily flowing sparkling literature which prevailed in his time among the Romans, and declares that it results from the self-indulgence and luxury of the times, and that genuine strength and vigour of language is sacrificed when a writer uses a brilliant phrase over and over again simply to please the ear of his readers or his audience, and to make his style attractive, not to express deep and solid thought. He compares the style of some writers to the process of shaving and pulling out all the hair which the Romans adopted. The luxurious people he means err, because they like to have their feelings* sometimes harrowed and tossed about, which is done by making literature exciting and strange, sometimes by being smoothed and softened, which latter is the common error both in literature and sculpture. ANTINOUS. TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. J41 Ad compositionem transeamus : quot genera tibi in hac dabo, quibus peccetur? Quidam praefractam et asperam probant, disturbant de industria, si quid placidius effluxit. Nolunt sine salebra esse iunc- turarn, virilem putant et fortem, quae aurem inaequalitate percutiat. Quorundam non est compositio, modulatio est : adeo blanditur et molliter labitur. 1 — Eft. 114. 15. Quot vides istos sequi, qui aut vellunt barbam aut intervellunt, qui labra pressius tondent et abradunt servata et submissa cetera parte, qui lacernas coloris inprobi sumunt, qui perlucentem togam, qui nolunt facere quicquam, quod hominum oculis transire liceat ? inritant illos et in se advertunt, volunt vel reprehendi, dum conspici : tabs est oratio Maecenatis omniumque aliorum, qui non casu errant sed scientes volentesque. 2 — Ibid. 21. Persius attacks this fault of imperial Roman literature which smoothed away all roughness in his first Satire. He represents the author as defending himself by the state- ment that symmetry is thus maintained, and verse is prevented from taking a harsh and new style. Sed numeris decor est et iunctura addita crudis. — Sat. 1. 92. Persius answers him in the lines which express his 1 In some writers you cannot call it composition, it is modulation, so softly and smoothly does it glide along. 2 They (who play these absurd tricks with their dress) wish to be looked at even if they are criticised, such is the form of speech used by Maecenas and all others whose mistakes are not made in error, but with full knowledge, and because they wish it. 142 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. distrust of such a mode of writing. I hate the lines you call pretty and neat, he says, there is nothing in them. Sed recti finemqiie extremumque esse recuso ‘Euge’ tuum et ‘ belle’ — nam ‘belled hoc excute totum, Quid non intus habet ? non hie est Ilias Atti Ebria veratro non si qua elegidia crudi Dictarunt proceres. — Sat. i. 48. The public taste, says the satirist, is wrong in demanding as it does smooth easily running lines, so jointed that the nail of the connoisseur runs easily along. Ouis populi sermo est ? quis enim, nisi carmina molli Nunc demum numero fluere, ut per leve severos Effundat iunctura unguis ? scit tendere versum Non secus ac si oculo rubricam derigat uno. 1 — Sat. 1. 63. Every student of Latin literature and art will at once recognise many passages and sculptures to which this criticism applies. For instance, in the verses of Ovid elisions are always smoother than in those of Propertius or Catullus. Ovid seldom admits the elision of a long or 1 What does the public say? What, indeed, but that now we at last have verses which flow in smooth measure, so that the critical nail runs evenly along even where the parts join. He can make a line just as if he were ruling it by a cord with one eye shut. TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. M3 doubtful syllable, except where it almost escapes notice. This sacrifice of forcible thought and expression in some of the Augustan poets and their fondness for superficial and easily intelligible though flat ideas and phrases can be often recognised. Much of the elegiac poetry of the Romans shews very plainly a love of the exquisite and smooth, as Persius calls it, a technical refinement in the even flow of their verses, and the faultless rhythm of their, metre. Many passages both in elegiac and lyric metres are well known and celebrated for their finish and regularity. What can be more perfectly level and free from any weakness both in metre and thought than Ovid’s tame story about the ride of Tarquin and his friends to find Lucretia in the second book of the Fasti ? Surgit cui dederat clarurii Collatia nomen ; Non opus est verbis, credite rebus ait.’ Nox superest : tollamur equis, urbemque petamus. Dicta placent ; frenis impediuntur equi ; Pertulerant dominos ; regalia protinus illi Tecta petunt ; custos in fore nullus erat. — Fasti , ii. 733. It flows on like an unruffled stream. The whole de- scription is without flaw ; but there is no part of it which does not seem more like exquisite needlework than HERCULES (BRONZE) TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 145 powerful design ; a tale told in smooth, elegant verse, rather than a striking and vigorous scene. The thought expressed is common, and the action disagreeable and immoral. It is more like the Theocritean harmony of song than the solemn organ tones and striking movements in Homer or Virgil. Compare with Ovid’s picture that of Ulysses and Diomede starting for their reconnaisance : To) 8’ inli ov v bn\oLcnv evi 8eivo?criv edvrijv, ( 3 av p’ ievai, Xt-neTrjv 8e kut’ clvtoQi ttovtos dpicrrovs. T olctl 8e oefjiuv r]K.€v epco8iov iyyvs 68 o 7 o IlaAAa? A dijvairj' rot 8' ovk ’l8ov o(f)OaXpoicnv vvKTa 81 op(f)valr)v, aAAa KXaytjavros aKOvaav. X aL P e 8e rw opviO' , 08 v(revs, rjpciTO 8’ ’A6r)vrj * * * * * o)s ecfiay tvxopevo 1' tg>v 8 ’ €kXv 6 UaXXas ’ASrjvr] ol 8 ’ eVft rjprjcravTO A 10s Kovprj peyaXoio, ( 3 dv p’ tpev, acre Xeovie 8vco , 8lo vvktq. peXaivav, op, cfoovov , av veKvas , 81a t’ evrea kcu peXav aipa. II. x. 272. The fine lines and exquisite detail of the Farnese Hercules or the Apollo Sauroctonos, when compared with the large surfaces and grandeur of the works of Phidias in the Parthenon sculptures, shew the same want of great thought and monumental execution. Roman art intensified the realism which had appeared in an incipient form in the works of some of the great later L 146 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. Greek sculptors. Lysippus undoubtedly imitated the human form in a closer manner than Phidias or Polycleitus or even Praxiteles, but the Grseco-Roman sculptors, under the strong influences of the imperial city, carried imitation so far that they completely separated it from any idealism of the beautiful, and did not stop till in many instances they produced what may be styled caricature. Sir J. Reynolds says of the picturesque in sculpture : — “ Sculpture is formal, regular, and austere ; disdains all familiar objects, as incompatible with its dignity ; and is an enemy to every species of affectation, or appearance of academical art. All contrast therefore of one figure with another, or of the limbs of a single figure, or even in the folds of the drapery must be sparingly employed. In short, whatever partakes of fancy or caprice, or goes under the denomination of Picturesque, however to be admired in the proper place, is incompatible with that sobriety and gravity which is peculiarly the characteristic of this art.” (Sir J. Reynolds, Discourse x. p. 188. Gosse’s edition. 1887.) And again : — “Upon the whole it seems to me that the object and intention of all the arts is to supply the natural imper- fections of things, and often to gratify the mind by realising and embodying what never existed but in the imagination.” (Sir J.' Reynolds, Discourse xiii. p. 247.) POMONA. 148 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. “ The excellence of every art must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose, and if by a false imitation of nature, or mean ambition of producing a picturesque effect or illusion of any kind, all the grandeur of ideas which this art endeavours to excite, be degraded or destroyed, we may boldly oppose ourselves to any such innovation. If the producing of a deception be the summit of this art, let us at once give up to statues the addition of colour, which will contribute more towards accomplishing this fact than all the artifices which have been introduced and probably defended, on no other principle but that of rendering the work more natural. But as colour is universally rejected, every practice liable to the same objection must fall with it.” ( Deception in Art . Sir J. Reynolds. Discourse x. p. 175.) Sir Joshua is wrong here about colour, which was slightly used by the great Greek sculptors. On the difficulty of producing a general effect in art, Sir J. Reynolds says : — “ A steady attention to the general effect takes up more time and is much more laborious to the mind, than any mode of high finishing or smoothness without such attention.” Mr. Parker says : — “To the Roman invaders the splendid display of Greek TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 149 art — the temples, the poems, and plays, the pictures and statues, — was a novel and interesting phenomenon which captivated the attention and suggested the notion of art for art’s sake ” (not for the suggestion of any ideas except that of skill). “The Roman did not trouble himself to ask whether the victor in the games had or had not won his prize fairly, or whether the god whose image was carried away would or would not be angered. Pausanias comforts himself with thinking that the disease of which Sulla died was a sign of divine vengeance, but Roman scepticism was proof against such superstition. To the Roman a Greek statue was a statue, and it was nothing more.” 1 “ It has been repeatedly said that Homer has genius and Virgil skill, and the proof which is adduced is that the latter does not permit the reader to forget him, while Homer the author is forgotten when the reader takes up the Iliadf 2 The sacrifice of grand motive idea to admiration of technical skill is exemplified in the Laocoon and in other works in which the main motive idea is pain or muscular strength . 3 1 Parker’s Nature of the Fine Arts , p. 28. 2 Ibid. p. 346 —28. 3 See Murray, vol. ii. p. 369. ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. 150 The latter of these two motives will at once remind the student of some of the figures which are to be seen in any good collection of casts of ancient sculpture. The first of these is the Farnese Hercules, as before said, in which every muscle is brought forward too prominently and is of colossal size to shew the maker’s great knowledge of human anatomy, and his perfect skill in representing it most impressively. Just as Ovid displays his clever art of stringing words together in correct metres, so do the makers of the Laocoon and of the Farnese bull and the Hercules attract attention and applause by their clever modes of grouping, and their minute knowledge of the w r ay in which the muscles expand or contract under extreme tension. So Tibullus puts the most exquisite finish on his verses, but the subject matter is trivial and ordinary in its tone. He is not equal even to Ovid in his thoughts, but in his poetical style approaches him. The versification of some of his short poems is almost perfect, but the ideas are common. He does this in the following poem : — Dicamus bona verba : venit Natalis ad aras ; Quisquis ades lingua, vir mulierque, fave. LTrantur pia tura focis, urantur odores, Ouos tener e terra divite mittit Arabs. THE WRESTLERS, 152 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. Ipse suos Genius adsit visurus honores, Cui decorent sanctas mollia serta comas. Illius puro destillent tempora nardo, Atque satur libo sit madeatque mero, Annuat et, Cornute, tibi, quodcunque rogabis. En age, quid cessas ? annuit ille : roga. Auguror, uxoris fidos optabis amores ; lam reor hoc ipsos edidicisse deos. Nec tibi malueris, totum quaecunque per orbem Fortis arat valido rusticus arva bove, Nec tibi, gemmarum quicquid felicibus Indis Nascitur, Eoi qua maris unda rubet. Vota cadunt, utinam strepitantibus ad volet alis Flavaque coniugio vincula portet Amor, Vincula, quae maneant semper, dum tarda senectus Inducat rugas inficiatque comas. Hie veniat Natalis avis prolemque ministret, Ludat et ante tuos turba novella pedes. — Tib. ii. 2 1 A comparison of the neat and compact verse of Ovid with that of Propertius will shew the difference between the technical finish of the Roman court poet and the more rugged and natural expression of one who had partly shaken off the wish to please by elegance and had thoughts which found no rest except in utterance. The Sapphic odes of Horace give us the most palpable illustration of this technical finish in the outward clothing of thought by poetry. In most of the Sapphic odes the A DANCING GIRL. 154 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. metre is strictly defined and a rigid caesura is maintained, which makes the lines monotonous. This stiff and formal movement was partly due to the strictness of the Roman character, and partly may have been a result of the national fondness for strict law, and the peculiar aptitude for accurate legal definition which was one of the most remarkable features in the Roman mind, finally developed by Justinian in his Digest. The thoughts in Roman poetry are too much con- fined by the metre, just as in sculpture the ideas suggested are small and affect details rather than whole figures. Some of the results of this strong technical spirit, as encouraged by patronage and a desire to save the trouble of thought by accurately adopting fixed rule, are to be seen in Statius. Thus in the Thebaid he introduces a book of games as a constituent part of an epic, and does not endeavour to shew that such an interlude is at all appro- priate to the action of the poem. In the twenty-sixth book of the Iliad and the fifth of the TEneid the funeral games have a definite and worthy object, to celebrate the memory of Patroclus and of Anchises, two of the great figures in the poem, but in the Thebaid all this display was without meaning, as the poet only deifies an infant in order to justify his interlude, and evidently inserts the book of TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 55 games only because he thought that his poem would not be complete without such an interlude. In order to shew what I meant by saying that Pro- pertius had partly shaken off the fashionable primness of the court poet, I will quote two of his poems. In the first we have the strict rules of metre followed by the Ovidian school broken, and simple unaffected thought expressed simply and naturally. In the second we feel the court influence. The language becomes rather more technical : Tu qui consortem properas evadere casum Miles, ab Etruscis saucius aggeribus Qui nostro gemitu turgentia lumina torques, Pars ego sum vestrae proxima militiae. Sic te servato, ut possint gaudere parentes, Nec soror acta tuis sentiat e lacrimis : Galium per medios ereptum Caesaris enses Effugere ignotas non potuisse manus, Et quaecunque super dispersa invenerit ossa Montibus Etruscis, haec sciat esse mea. — i. 21. Clausus ab umbroso qua ludit Pontus Averno Fumida Baiarum stagna tepentis aquae, Qua iacet et Troiae tubicen Misenus arena Et sonat Herculeo structa labore via, Hie, ubi, mortales dextra cum quaereret urbes. Cymbala Thebano concrepuere deo, — At nunc, invisae magno cum crimine Baiae, Quis deus in vestra constitit hostis aqua ? — 156 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. His pressus Stygias vultum demisit in undas, Errat et in vestro spiritus ille lacu. Quid genus, aut virtus? — Propertius, iv. 18. We can plainly see that although the great poets of Rome, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, and Horace, avoided monotony of rhythm and endeavoured to make their verse expressive and various, yet in every one of them this admiration of skill, strengthened by the influence of luxurious patronage, hampered more or less their efforts of natural and forcible expression. Virgil and Ovid seem to apologise for and seek to excuse their abnormal rhythms, by making use of such rhythms under the excuse of Greek words and names. Thus we have the words hyacinthus, hymenaeus, melicerta, ambrosius, and many others of similar kind used to excuse a break in regularity of metre. The easy versification of the great Roman poets is marvellous, but becomes somewhat weari- some and monotonous, whereas the varied tones of Pindar, or the beautiful changes and forcible outbursts of Homer or Sophocles, impress the mind with harmonious majesty. Seneca, in his review of Roman style, quoted above, says that it cannot be called composition, for it is really measurement, so softly and smoothly does it move along. Perhaps it must be said that Catullus is an exception to TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 57 this Roman rule of technical and metrical correctness. When we look at his lyrics we find the Sapphic metre treated with great freedom, the beautiful hendecasyllabic verse sparkling with fanciful ideas, and in his hexameters and elegiacs all the rules observed by Virgil and Ovid are set aside, as he finds that he can make his thoughts more expressive by a turn in the metre. Such lines as some in the noble fragment on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis : Euhoe bacchantes, euhoe capita inflectentes. — Catull. 64. 256. Post vento crescente magis magis increbrescunt. — 274. Ouo tunc et tellus atque horrida contremuere. Aequora. — 205 ; or in the lines addressed to his dead brother, where the metre echoes his sobs : Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale. Carm. 101. 10. are very striking. Catullus does not seek to excuse himself by using Greek words. The picture Catullus draws of Attis (Carm. lxiii.) is also one which is less cramped and bound down by the metre than any other piece of Latin 58 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. poetry. In freedom and expressive point some of the lines are equal to some of the grand Pindaric outbursts : f Ibi maria vasta visens lacrimantibus oculis, Patriam allocuta maesta est ita voce miseriter. Ubinam aut quibus locis te positam, patria, reor. Carm . Ixiii. 48, 49, 55. An extract from the writings of a scholar who studied Roman literature very completely may here be given to shew the similarity between Roman and English literature. Professor Conington in his Essay on Pope, says, “ Perhaps there is no better help towards a true appreciation of the English poetry of the eighteenth century than a knowledge of the poetry of Augustan Rome. The similarity of the two periods as phases of national literature has often been pointed out ; it would be easy, if this were the place, to pursue the parallel into detail. Now it is curious that what Walsh said to Pope is precisely the same as what Horace said to his countrymen, when he urged correctness of style upon them. Walsh tells them almost in so many words that, though they had several great poets, they never had any one great poet who was correct / 5 And again Conington says, “ The ideal which Horace so well described, his ideal poet, was most regular and yet pictorial : TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 159 Luxuriantia compescet, nimis aspera sano Levabit cultu, virtute carentia toilet : Ludentis speciem dabit et torquebitur ut qui Nunc Satyrum, nunc agrestem Cyclopa movetur. 1 Eft. ii. 2. 122. This was the service which the great writers of the Augustan age rendered to the poetry of their country. If we cannot give them the praise which was bestowed on their Emperor, that where they found brick they left marble, we may say that where they found a rude block they left a finished statue.” The Professor goes on to shew that Shakespeare when compared with Pope must be acknowledged to be less correct, though Pope may be represented in comparison with the great bard by one of Dr. Johnson’s tropes which contrasts a genius “ cutting a colossus from a rock with an artist carving heads on cherry stones.” 2 Virgil may be compared with Lucretius to shew on the one hand the smooth accurately carved statue, like the well-known portrait statues of Augustus, Tiberius, and Agrippina, and on the other a carelessness and want of 1 He will tone down what is uneven, he will smooth rough places, yet he will take away all weakness, he will act like a player on the stage who is acting now a Satyr, now a rustic Cyclops. 2 Conington’s Miscellaneous Writings , vol. i. p. 4. FOETUS AND ARRIA, TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 161 technical skill such as we see in the early Greek statuary, the Hermes Criophorus at Wilton House, assigned to Calamis, or the Penelope in the Vatican, in which the hair of the one and the fingers of the other shew a disregard of nice technical skill, and which Cicero and Quintilian would probably have called hard and rigid. Ouis enim eorum, qui haec minora animadvertunt, non intelligit Canachi signa rigidiora esse, quam ut imitentur veritatem ? Calamidis dura ilia quidem, sed tamen molliora, quam Canachi. — Cic. Brut. xviii. 70. Quint. Inst. Or. xii. 10. 7. — Sup 7 'a , Essay i. 4. An attempt of the poet may be traced throughout the lyrics of Horace to find a metre allowing variety of expres- sion and melody combined with the strict observance of law which would be required by the Roman ear. But he found that the Latin language and the Roman legal prejudice could not be made to yield the necessary elasticity. He expresses his feeling on this point in the second ode of the fourth book, where he compares Pindar to a dashing- sweeping torrent and himself to a careful bee working laboriously and neatly : Monte decurrens velut amnis . . . . . . . ruit profund o Pindarus ore. . . . Ego apis Matinae More modoque M 1 62 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. Grata carpentis thyma per laborem Plurimutn, circa nemus uvidique Tiburis ripas, operosa parvus Carmina fingo. 1 And thus, while Horace could not find that free expres- sion of thought or liberty of language would be acceptable to the Roman public, yet he knew that dexterity in hand- ling a subject, and a refined mode of expression bound by strict law, were most popular. His work became what is sometimes called Daedalean, ingenious and correct, but not expressive of grander ideas than those of secular power and wealth. See Waldstein on The Art of Phidias, appendix iv., and throughout his essays, where he asserts that the highest part of the art of Phidias was not merely to make a neat fit, as we find stated by a learned Professor. See Mahaffy’s Rambles and Studies , p. 90. The catalogue of Greek forces enumerated in the second book of the Iliad when compared with that of the Italian troops in the seventh book of the PEneid , gives us some hints of the difference in taste between a Greek and a Roman poet. In Homer we find the Greek army repre- 1 Pindar sweeps along like a torrent ; I am like a bee laboriously threading the thyme blossoms, and stringing ingenious verses together in a toilsome manner. TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 163 sented as an organic body in groups, with the same lines separating all the different members. It is true that almost every paragraph begins with the same words, proceeds with the same words, and ends with the same words : 01 S’ . . . tcSv rjpx e • • • T( p enovro. — II. ii. But here and there a striking point of the hero’s history or of his country is mentioned, as in the cases of Philoctetes, and the central point of the poem, the wrath of Achilles and the wisdom of Ulysses, and the wealth and power ot Agamemnon is mentioned. But in Virgil’s descriptive catalogues there is no grouping or variety, the description rambles about, and if there be any feature pervading it, the mention of the names of leaders and their personal history is prominent rather than the places from which the men came or their numbers. When Hippolytus is mentioned the poet runs aside into a long legend which has no particular bearing on the Italian army. The poetical finish of some of Virgil’s touches, as in the similes where he compares the Sabine troops to the waves of the sea or the ears of a cornfield, is very fine, but both these and the comparison of the troop of Messapus to a flock of swans seem rather an embellishment than a striking illustration, and the whole catalogue in Virgil may be called M 2 VENUS CAPITOLINA. TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 65 fine work, while Homers catalogue is simple and powerful. On the one side we have the powerful grandeur of the Parthenon sculpture, and on the other the confused battles of the triumphal arches and their ornamentation. The tendency of the Roman mind towards exact technical description, without consideration of motives, can be traced again in Virgil’s description of the games held by Hmeas in memory of his father. These are brought on the stage by the poet in the fifth book of the Aineid, and their characteristic features may be seen by a com- parison with the games given by Achilles as described in the twenty-third book of the Iliad. Virgil trusts more than Homer to a minute enumeration of the incidents by which each contest is attended, Homer states the reason for introducing them. Homer’s incidental events by which the encounters are affected have a simpler and less com- plicated aspect than those of Virgil. Thus in the chariot race and in the ship race and in the boxing match the Roman applauds and gives most credit to brute strength. Perhaps this is most remarkable in the boxing match, where the Herculean Entellus wins the fight from the more agile Dares. Virgil exults in* his power of painting the actual scene, Homer goes back to the occasion, and the motive idea. The lines which give most prominence and VENUS GENETRIX. TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 167 exaltation to Entellus describe his huge limbs, and the famous stroke of his fist. Et magnos membrorum artus, magna ossa lacertosque Exuit, atque ingens media consistit arena. — Alii. v. 422. Sternitur exanimisque tremens procumbit humi bos. — lb. 481. Dares is driven across the arena by his adversary’s height and strength of arm. Praecipitemque Daren ardens agit aequore toto, Nunc dextra ingeminans ictus, nunc ille sinistra. Ain. v. 456 The merits of the description in Homer depend much more upon the straightforward simplicity of the way in which the match ends by one stroke which is not parried because the other combatant has not a quick eye : KO\f/e 8e Tva.TVTT]vavTa 7v aprj'iov’ ovd’ dp ’ eri 8rjv £(TTr}Kciv. — II. xxiii. 690. This is followed by a striking simile comparing the fallen boxer to a fish thrown by the waves on the shore. Another characteristic element of the descriptions of prize fights is that the supernatural element is brought in by Homer much more than by Virgil. Apollo and Athena both take part in the encounters, just as in the Greek sculptures and reliefs the gods interfere or help, while in 1 68 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. the Roman reliefs, with few exceptions, human beings alone take part. Turning from poetry to sculpture, we find that the kind of technical art which was naturally developed at Rome by the wealth and luxury of imperial society and by the national strictness was skill in the representation of mental feelings and desires by striking groups or forms in sculptures. The Greeks, of course, imitated the defects or the pains of the human body and their effects upon its form, for instance the famous statue of a lame man, probably Philoctetes, Syracusis autem claudicantem cuius ulceris dolorem sentire etiam spectantes videntur. — Plin. Nat. Hist, xxxiv. 8, 19, or the bust of ^Esop, but they did not carry technical skill in this direction to the extent to which the Romans did in the busts of Seneca or the statues of Nero or of Commodus. Such representations would have been con- demned by the best Greek taste as barbarous. We know from Lucian that the later Greek sculptors, Demetrios and others, did make exact likeness even of deformities their aim, and in this the Roman realistic sculptors followed them : 8e et rivet 7V ctpa to vScop to emppeov eides npoyderropa, (f)d\avTiav, rjpiyvpvov rrjv avctl3o\r]V , ijvepcovepov tov Trcoycovos ras Tpixcis ivlas , eniarjpov tcis as avToctvOpco7rcp opoiov, tKeivov \eyco. — Lucian, Philopseud ., 18. TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 69 Skill in overcoming the difficulties presented by the material upon which the artist had to work must of course be mentioned here, as characteristic of the Augustan school of art. Pliny in several passages appears to think that the chief reason for admiring a group is that it has been carved out of a single block of marble. He says in speaking of a Laocoon, and of a work by Pasiletes representing a lioness teased by cupids, that the figures were cut from a single block, omnes ex uno lapide. — Plin. xxxvi. 5, 4, shewing that the technical skill of the sculptor was one of the principal objects of admiration to his eye. Besides the general tone of literature in imperial times, there was a popular practice which tended strongly to encourage the development of the feelings rather than of the understanding: I mean the general custom of recitation. In order to avoid the tedious dulness of which the satirists complain, recourse was had naturally to exciting rather than argumentative or thoughtful treatment of any subject . 1 1 For easier ’tis to learn and recollect What moves derision than what claims respect. Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 263. But a man who is over nice is apt to destroy the very thing he aims at, especially when he is trying to recommend himself by metre and art, for people are more ready to like the fanciful and to remember it than what merits their approval and veneration. 170 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. The subject itself also suffered of course, and everything like political economy, natural science, statistics, or detail of facts was excluded. Yet the Romans liked statistical details as facts without exerting their minds to draw conclusions from them. The endeavour made by Roman workers in metal to produce medallions of extraordinarily delicate work may be seen by reference to books in which Roman medallions are described. One class of medallions was that of ornaments formed for personal decoration, of which we have hundreds of different types. Some of these are dis- tinguishable by having holes bored in them for suspension, or by other modes of fastening them to the dress of the wearer. Another class was intended to shew the great powers of the artificer who could attach together parts of one medal which were of different metals. Thus we find a circle of silver ornament surrounding a centre of bronze, or a golden edge surrounding a silver coin . 1 Subjects taken from daily life were also of course, a part of what we may call technical art, which the luxury of the Romans developed in a greater degree than it had been practised by the Greeks. But still it would not be fair to the Greeks not to mention some works designed by them 1 Froehner, pp. xii. xiv. xv. APOLLO BENDING BOW 172 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. which are known to us, such as the Astragalizontes of Polycleitus or the Spinario. Fecit et quem canona artifices vocant,lineamenta artis ex eo petentes veluti a lege quadam, solusque hominum artem ipsam fecisse artis opere iudicatur ; fecit et destringentem se et nudum talo incessentem, duosque pueros item nudos talis ludentes. qui vocantur astragalizontes, et sunt in Titi imperatoris atrio. — Plin. xxxiv. 8, 19. These may be taken as instances of the knowledge the Greeks had that such representations were admired, though the mind of the Greek not having been degraded by wealth, the admirers of these were few. The figures of boys, mentioned by Pliny, were probably useful supports or ornaments. This is only a part of the large subject which may be called the individualism or love of personality which the Romans shewed in their works of art, and which led them to carry individual portraiture much further than the Greeks ever did in busts and statues. Many of these busts are exact likenesses of the original, and not ideal repre- sentations, as were those of Lysippus. This peculiarity of Roman sculpture has been made the subject of my first essay. See also above. The influence of wealth upon Roman art as compared with Greek may also be noticed in other ways. For TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 173 instance, many passages of the Aneid and Iliad , of which the following are very striking, may be observed. Homer, in II. ix. 213, gives a long description of the cooking of the heroes’ meal, beginning with the killing of the animals, the lighting of the fire, and the spitting of the joints, while Virgil only applies, in An. v. 100, two or three lines to the cooking of the meal. This indicates the desire of the poet not to shock his patrons’ aristocratic notions of a meal by going too far into particulars. Again, in the tenth book of the Aneid, Virgil has three lines describing the treasures offered to Hineas of works of silver and ingots of gold, while Homer, speaking of a similar offer, only enumerates bronze, gold, and wrought iron generally. Seneca with Stoic cynicism criticises this Roman fault : Quaerimus non quale sit quidque, sed quanti. — Ep. 115, 10 ; x and says that the number of statues and their expense was valued more than their beauty or their historical interest. It may be seen, by comparing some of the modern poets with the more early in English literature, how the imperial influence of England has affected them in the same way as it affected the Roman poets and sculptors. Take the 1 Cf. Sen. Ep. 41, 5. 174 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. following passage, describing the beauty of Iseult, from Mr. Swinburne’s Tristram and Iseult , and see how he attempts to bring out all the smaller details in many features of the woman, while those quoted from Spenser, Milton, and Wordsworth are content with single remarks which tell more than a confused catalogue. In the same way Virgil and Statius can be found to differ, and Lessing, in the Laocoon , has quoted a striking instance from a later Greek poet named Manasses, who when compared with Homer exhibits an example of the two extremes, Homer having uttered nothing in description of Helen, though Manasses has lavished many lines upon her : The very veil of her bright flesh was made As of light woven and moonbeam-coloured shade More fine than moonbeams ; white her eyelids shone As snow sunstricken that endures the sun, And through their curled and coloured clouds of deep Luminous lashes, thick as dreams in sleep, Shone as the sea’s depth swallowing up the sky’s The springs of unimaginable eyes. As the wave’s subtler emerald pierced through With th’ utmost heaven’s inextricable blue, And both are woven and molten in one sleight Of amorous colour and implicated light, Under the golden guard and gaze of noon, So glowed their aweless amorous plenilune, Azure and gold and ardent grey, made strange With fiery difference and deep interchange VENUS ANADYOMENE. 176 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. Inexplicable of glories multiform ; Now as the sullen sapphire swells toward storm Foamless, their bitter beauty grew acold, And now afire with ardour of fine gold. Swinburne’s Tristram and lse it It. Spenser says of Una: One day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way, From her unhastie beast she did alight ; And on the grass her dainty limbs did lay In secrete shadow, far from all men’s sight ; From her fayre head her fillet she undight And layd her stole aside : her angel’s face, As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright And made a sunshine in the shady place ; Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace. And again of Alma : For shee was faire, as faire mote ever bee, And in the flowre now of her freshest age ; Yet full of grace and goodly modestie That even heaven rejoiced her sweete face to see. Faerie Queene , book i. cant. iii. iv. Milton, speaking of Adam and Eve, has the followin short descriptions : His fair large front and eye sublime declared Absolute rule : and hyacinthine locks Round from his parted forehead manly hung Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad. TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 77 And of Eve : To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty ’domed. Paradise Lost , book iv. Wordsworth says of his wife : She was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight ; A lovely apparition sent To be a moment’s ornament ; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair ; Like twilight too her dusky hair ; But all things else about her drawn From Maytime and the cheerful dawn : A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay. and after some more beautiful lines, he ends with A spirit, yet a woman too. and And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light. Poems of the Imagination , viii. In a translation of Michel Angelo’s sonnets, Wordsworth says : ’Tis sense, unbridled will, and not true love That kills the soul ; love betters what is best, Even here below, but more in heaven above. Miscellaneous Sonnets , xxv. N 178 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. In connection with the above biographical and personal characters of Roman portraiture in art, we may notice the human feeling which is expressed in Roman poetical scenes. Virgil has scenes of much pathetic interest. Thus the group of Mezentius wounded by the spear of yEneas but rescued by his son Lausus, who rushes in when ^Eneas is about to stab his father, and wards off the sword-thrust, thereby saving his father but losing his own life, rises to a grand height of pathos : — i Iamque’assurgentis dextra plagamque ferentis Aeneae subiit mucronem, ipsumque morando Sustinuit. Socii magno clamore sequuntur, Dum genitor nati parma protectus abiret. jtEn. x. 797. Then after ^Eneas has killed Lausus, the picture of the wounded father Mezentius in desperate grief is touching : Nunc vivo, neque adhuc homines lucemque relinquo, Sed linquam. Simul hoc dicens attollit in aegrum Se femur, et, quanquam vis alto volnere tardat Haud deiectus equum duci iubet. Hoc decus illi, Hoc solamen erat, bellis hoc victor abibat Omnibus. Alloquitur maerentem et talibus infit : Rhoebe, diu, res si qua diu mortalibus ulla est, Viximus. — v£Vz. x. 855. We have attitudes of the body used to show feelings of the mind, just as we before had formations of the features. * TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 179 The Roman love of realistic statement of facts as seen in external nature is shown by Lucretius in his description of the Athenian plague, in which he writes with painful accuracy of the symptoms, and the hideous and filthy aspect of the patient’s body, the bloodshot eyes and ulcered throat, and fetid breath. Even the sad brow, maddened expression, compressed nostrils, and hollow temples are enumerated with Roman realism and disregard of the sickening picture thus brought into view. The poet’s imitation of Thucydides is thus rendered almost disgusting, by the Roman tendency of his mind to insist upon actual life-like pictures. Here and there, however, we must confess that Lucretius gives exquisitely artistic scenes. Most statuesque descriptions in his poem are that of the enraptured gaze of Mars on the beauty of Venus, Pascit amore avidos, inhians in te, dea, visus. De Rer. Nat. i. 36, and of the babe just born, Turn porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis Navita, nudus humi iacet infans. De Rer. Nat. v. 222. In the Capitol at Rome stood statues of all the seven kings, as we learn from Pliny, who in the same part of his Natural History gives some statements about the early history of portrait statues : N 2 8o ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. Togatae effigies antiquitus ita dicabantur. Placuere et nudae tenentes hastam ab epheborum e gymnasiis exemplaribus, quas Achilleas vocant. Graeca res nihil velare, at contra Romana ac militaris thoracas addere. Caesar quidem dictator loricatam sibi dicari in foro suo passus est ; nam lupercorum habitu tam noviciae sunt, quam quae nuper prodiere paenulis indutae. Mancinus eo habitu sibi statuit, quo deditus fuerat. — Nat. Hist, xxxiv. 5, 10. Seneca claims the credit of having advanced this department of art as due to imperial Rome : Multum egerunt, qui ante nos fuerunt, sed non peregerunt, suspi- ciendi tamen sunt et ritu deorum colendi. Ouidni ego magnorum virorum et imagines habeam incitamenta animi et natales celebrem ? Ouidni ego illos semper honoris causa adpellem ? — Eft. 64, 9. Silius Italicus gives a description of Scipio’s features as expressive of the powers of the great hero, Martia frons, facilesque comae, nec pone retroque Caesaries brevior, flagrabant lumina miti Adspectu, gratusque inerat visentibus horror. Pan. viii. 559. Plutarch also, as before remarked, in his biographical sketches of Pompey and Cicero, remarks upon their personal appearance as part of their character. He says of Pompey that he had an imperial face like Alexander , 1 and of Cicero that he was lean and fleshless, Icr^vo^ teal aaap/cos. 1 Plut. Pom. ii. TECHNICAL FINISH AND REFINEMENT. 81 Even ./Eneas is represented as pitying the rash courage of the youth, Lausus, and though he has killed him as an enemy yet he groans deeply, Ingemuit miserans graviter, dextramque tetendit, Et mentem patriae subiit pietatis imago. — JEn. x. 823. The group of Dido and her sister at the end of the fourth book of the A Eneid is not less pathetic : Sic fata gradus evaserat altos, Semianimemque sinu germanam amplexa fovebat Cum gemitu, atque atros siccabat veste cruores. Ilia gravis oculos conata attollere, rursus Deficit ; infixum stridit sub pectore volnus. Ter sese attollens cubitoque adnixa levavit Ter revoluta toro est, oculisque errantibus alto Ouaesivit caelo lucem, ingemuitque reperta. — jEii. iv. 685. Dido’s character and high spirit are painted by Virgil very powerfully. Her passionate despair and indignation is far above the wild impulse of most female characters represented in ancient poetry, as those of Medea or Phaedra. Virgil has created a heroic figure in Dido, expressed in great measure by the movements and attitudes of her body, which in pathetic situation and action equals even the lS2 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. Homeric and Attic heroines, Andromache, Penelope, or Cassandra. In the writings of Lucilius we find an early stage of some of the Roman biographical tendencies which became after- wards much more prominent in Roman literature and art. In the first place he evidently lived and spoke about some of the great men of his day. Horace describes his intimate friendship with Lselius and Scipio Africanus, and says that these two heroes used to play with him, Nugari cum illo et discincti ludere, donee Decoqueretur olus, soliti. — Sat. ii. i, 73. Scipio Africanus minor is distinguished by Lucilius with the epithet great (Lucil. xi. 10), and Laelius is called wise in the famous passage quoted by Cicero — O lapathe, ut iactare necesse est, cognitu’ cui sis In quo Laeliu’ clamores crowds ille solebat Edere compellans gumias ex ordine nostros. Fin. ir. 8, 24. ESSAY V. ROMANO-GREEK ARCHITECTURE. In the Aventine hill, under the monastery of S. Saba, there is a vast subterranean quarry, from which carts may often be seen at the present day carrying blocks of a reddish-brown stone to the various quarters of Rome, wherever new buildings happen to be in the course of erection. The stone obtained from this quarry is the harder kind of tufa, of which a great part of the hills of Rome consist . 1 It naturally became the building stone used by the first founders of Rome, and is found in all the most ancient fragments of masonry which still remain. In many places, as on the cliffs of the Alban lake, and the sides of many of the hillocks in the Campagna, this stone may be seen presenting, when partially decayed, a very considerable likeness to a 1 See Rome and the Campagna , R. Burn, 1871, chap. ii. p. 15. 184 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. wall of horizontal layers of stone. When quarried, it naturally breaks into rectangular blocks, and suggests of itself that mode of building which we find actually to exist in the earliest efforts of Roman builders. The most interesting of such primaeval relics is a fragment of wall which skirts the west end of the Palatine hill, and is assigned by M. Braun to the earliest enclosure of that hill, the so-called Roman Quadrata of Dionysius : 1 fxeya de rovrov TCKfirjpiov otl rrjs rerpayeovov Ka\ovp.evr)s'Pa>p.r)s fjv etcelvos erelxicre v, euros eariv . — ii. 65. The blocks in this wall are arranged in layers placed alternately parallel to and across the line of the wall (headers and stretchers), so as to bind the mass together firmly. No mortar is used, and the joints are fitted so accurately as to shew a more considerable knowledge of the art of masonry than we should expect at so early a period. It seems on this account questionable whether the usually received opinion as to the antiquity of this wall can be correct, and the fragments of the wall of Servius Tullius (b.C. 578 — 535) found on the sides of the Aventine and the Quirinal 1 Ann. dell Inst. 1852, p. 324; Mon. delV Inst. vol. v. tav. 39, 50; R. and C. chap. iii. pp. 34, 41. ROMANO-GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 185 hills are perhaps more deserving of attention as undoubtedly ancient works . 1 In these fragments of the Servian wall the art of building appears in a more imperfept state than in that on the Palatine. The vertical joints are not so carefully arranged, and are often allowed to stand immediately one over the other, so as to impair the solidity of the masonry. The stones are placed close against the side of the hill, and in some places the lowest layers of them are im- bedded in the natural rock. The hills of Rome and of the Campagna being mostly low, and not offering in their natural state a sufficient defence, were frequently cased in this way with walls, which either abutted immediately upon the natural rock, as on the Ouirinal, or were placed at a slight interval, which was filled up with rubble, as at Algidum near Praeneste . 2 Other specimens of these rectangular horizontal tufa walls which belonged to cities destroyed during the Regal period, and therefore of indubitable antiquity, are to be seen in the neighbourhood of Rome. Such are the walls of Apiolae destroyed by Tarquinius Priscus, situated on the right 1 R. and C. chap. iv. pp. 44, 47, 50 ; Ann. delV Inst. 1855, plates 2 Gell, Top. Rom. p. 42. XXI. -xxv. ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. 1 86 hand of the Via Appia at the tenth milestone from Rome, and of Politorium, now La Giostra, near Castel di Leva on the Via Ardeatina . 1 Bellum primum cum Latinis gessit et oppidum ibi Appiolas vi cepit. (Sc. Tarquinius). — Liv. i. 35. In the walls of Tusculum and of Ardea, and many other places in the Campagna, the same mode of construction may be seen . 2 As has been already mentioned, this style of building is the natural product of the peculiar parallel cleavage of the tufaceous rocks. Accordingly, wherever the prevailing stone of the district is other than tufa, this horizontal work is not found, and we see instead of it in the more ancient walls the polygonal, or, as it was called in Greece, the Cyclopean or Pelasgic style. It has sometimes been assumed that polygonal structure indicates a higher degree of antiquity than horizontal. This, however, is not the case ; for the style of building depends principally upon the nature of the material, and some of the polygonal walls in Latium, as those of the Temple of Fortune, built by Sulla at Prseneste, 1 Gell, pp. 87, 281 ; see R. and C. chap. xiv. 2 Ibid. Top. Rom. pp. 432, 98. ROMANO-GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 187 belong to the time of the later Republic . 1 These later polygonal walls are easily distinguishable from the earlier by the greater accuracy of the joints, and the workmanlike style of the masonry. In the most ancient walls, as in some parts of those of Medullia, Alatrium, Artena Volscorum, and Signia, the joints are filled up with small stones, while in the later polygonal masonry the stones are closely fitted and selected with great care so as to present a flat surface . 2 Of the most ancient kinds of gates, anterior to the discovery of the arch, no remains have been found at Rome ; but in the Campagna there are several curious and interesting varieties of ante-historic gateways. Sometimes, as at Olevano and Alatri, they are com- posed of a large horizontal slab placed upon two 1 See note in Dennis, Etruria , vol. ii. p. 29. Dennis acknowledges the influence of local materials on the style of masonry, but does not think that it amounts to a constructive necessity. See a paper by Mr. Bunbury in the Classical Museum , vol. ii. p. 145. 2 Gell, pp. 314, hi ; Monumenti delV Inst. 1829, plates i. ii. iii. ; Dodwell, Pelasgic Remains , p. 92. The walls of Tiryns are of this loose polygonal masonry. See Schliemann’s Ithaka und Troja , p. 108. Leipzic, 1869. Dodwell, Pelasgic Remains, p. 124; Dionigi, Viaggio in Lazio. Fragments of this kind of work are to be seen in the Via di Casciano, and at the so-called villa of Cassius near Tivoli, and also at Arpino and Ferentino. See Nibby, Analisi , tom. i. 397, iii. 226. 1 88 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. vertical side posts ; sometimes these side supports are slanted inwards, as in the gateway now to be seen at Signia ; 1 and sometimes a kind of pointed arch is formed by making each block of stone project a little beyond the one upon which it rests, till the uppermost stones meet. The most perfect specimen of this third kind of gate is found at Arpino, and closely resembles the well-known gate of Mycense. A single instance of such a mode of construction is found at Rome in the vault of the old well-house of the Capitol called the Tullianum, the lower part consisting of overlapping horizontal blocks which formerly met in a conical roof, but are now truncated and capped with a mass of stones cramped together with iron . 2 The Tullianum must therefore be considered to be the earliest specimen of building, other than simple wall constructions, now extant in Rome, and probably anterior to the Cloaca Maxima, in which we find the principle of the arch already fully developed. If we may draw an inference from the most ancient gateways of Etruria and the rest of Latium , 3 the gates of Roma Quadrata on the 1 See Aiinali delV Inst. 1829, p. 78 ; Monumenti delV Inst. tav. i. ii. iii. 2 See R. and C. chap. vi. p. 81. There is a precisely similar well- house at Burinna in Cos. See Reber, Gesch. der Bankunst , S. 222. 3 As at Volaterrse, Faesulae, and Cora : Abeken, Mittelitalien , p. 159. ROMANO-GREEK ARCHITECTURE. 189 Palatine were not bare openings in the line of wall, but consisted of a square chamber with two doors, the one opening inwards and the other outwards. It seems probable that the Temple of Janus was a modification of such a gateway chamber ; for as a part of the pomcerium these gateways would naturally be held sacred, and as the starting point of all expeditions beyond the city walls would be placed under the protection of Janus, the god who presided over the beginning of undertakings . 1 The inner door had the advantage of offering a second point of resistance to any besieging force which might have stormed the outer ; and a further means of defence was usually provided for the gate by the construction of a projecting bastion on the right-hand side, from which the unshielded side of the attacking troops might be assailed with missiles. The gates of Norba and of Alba Fucensis shew defences of this nature . 2 Of the general aspect of the city of Rome during the first years of its existence we can, of course, form only a conjectural notion. It probably consisted of an irregular collection of thatched cottages, similar to that 1 See R. and C. chap. vi. p. 87. 2 Abeken, Mittelit alien, p. 160 ; Vitruv. i. 5, 2. 190 ROMAN LITERATURE AND ART. shewn in later times as the Casa Romuli on the Palatine, among which were interspersed a few diminutive chapels, such as that of Jupiter Feretrius, which, even after its enlargement by Ancus, was not more than fifteen feet in length , 1 ere yap avrov creofcrai ap^aiov l^ros cXarrovas r/ nevre nob&v kol de