Books: The Old Roman World

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If any thing more were wanted to give us an idea of Roman magnificence,
we would turn our eyes from public monuments, demoralizing games, and
grand processions; we would forget the statues in brass and marble,
which outnumbered the living inhabitants, so numerous that one hundred
thousand have been recovered and still embellish Italy, and would
descend into the lower sphere of material life--to those things which
attest luxury and taste--to ornaments, dresses, sumptuous living, and
rich furniture. The art of working metals and cutting precious stones
surpassed any thing known at the present day. In the decoration of
houses, in social entertainments, in cookery, the Romans were
remarkable. The mosaics, signet rings, cameos, bracelets, bronzes,
chains, vases, couches, banqueting tables, lamps, chariots, colored
glass, gildings, mirrors, mattresses, cosmetics, perfumes, hair dyes,
silk robes, potteries, all attest great elegance and beauty. The tables
of thuga root and Delian bronze were as expensive as the sideboards of
Spanish walnut, so much admired in the great exhibition at London. Wood
and ivory were carved as exquisitely as in Japan and China. Mirrors were
made of polished silver. Glass-cutters could imitate the colors of
precious stones so well, that the Portland vase, from the tomb of
Alexander Severus, was long considered as a genuine sardonix. Brass
could be hardened so as to cut stone. The palace of Nero glittered with
gold and jewels. Perfumes and flowers were showered from ivory ceilings.
The halls of Heliogabulus were hung with cloth of gold, enriched with
jewels. His beds were silver, and his tables of gold. Tiberius gave a
million of sesterces for a picture for his bed-room. A banquet dish of
Drusillus weighed five hundred pounds of silver. The cups of Drusus were
of gold. Tunics were embroidered with the figures of various animals.
Sandals were garnished with precious stones. Paulina wore jewels, when
she paid visits, valued at $800,000. Drinking-cups were engraved with
scenes from the poets. Libraries were adorned with busts, and presses of
rare woods. Sofas were inlaid with tortoise-shell, and covered with
gorgeous purple. The Roman grandees rode in gilded chariots, bathed in
marble baths, dined from golden plate, drank from crystal cups, slept on
beds of down, reclined on luxurious couches, wore embroidered robes, and
were adorned with precious stones. They ransacked the earth and the seas
for rare dishes for their banquets, and ornamented their houses with
carpets from Babylon, onyx cups from Bythinia, marbles from Numidia,
bronzes from Corinth, statues from Athens--whatever, in short, was
precious or rare or curious in the most distant countries. The luxuries
of the bath almost exceed belief, and on the walls were magnificent
frescoes and paintings, exhibiting an inexhaustible productiveness in
landscape and mythological scenes, executed in lively colors. From the
praises of Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, and other great critics, we have a
right to infer that painting was as much prized as statuary, and equaled
it in artistic excellence, although so little remains of antiquity from
which we can form an enlightened judgment. We certainly infer from
designs on vases great skill in drawing, and from the excavations of
Pompeii, the most beautiful colors. The walls of the great hall of the
baths of Titus represent flowers, birds, and animals, drawn with
wonderful accuracy. In the long corridor of these baths the ceiling is
painted with colors which are still fresh, and Raphael is said to have
studied the frescoes with admiration, even as Michael Angelo found in
the Pantheon a model for the dome of St. Peter's, and in the statues
which were dug up from the ruins of the baths, studies for his own
immortal masterpieces.

Thus every thing which gilds the material wonders of our day with glory
and splendor, also marked the old capitol of the world. That which is
most prized by us, distinguished to an eminent degree the Roman
grandees. In an architectural point of view no modern city approaches
Rome. It contained more statues than all the Museums of Europe. It had
every thing which we have except machinery. It surpassed every modern
capitol in population. It was richer than any modern city, since the
people were not obliged to toil for their daily bread. The poor were fed
by the government, and had time and leisure for the luxuries of the bath
and the excitements of the amphitheatre. The citizen nobles owned whole
provinces. Even Paula could call a whole city her own. Rich senators, in
some cases, were the proprietors of twenty thousand slaves. Their
incomes were known to be 1000 pounds sterling a day, when gold and
silver were worth four times as much as at the present day. Rome was
made up of these citizen kings and their dependants, for most of the
senators had been, at some time, governors of provinces, which they
rifled and robbed. In Rome were accumulated the choicest treasures of
the world. Her hills were covered with the palaces of the proudest
nobles that ever walked the earth, Rome was the centre, and the glory,
and the pride of all the nations of antiquity. It seemed impossible that
such a city could ever be taken by enemies, or fall into decay.
"_Quando cadet Roma cadet et mundus_," said the admiring Saxons
three hundred years after the injuries inflicted by Goths and Vandals.
Nor has Rome died. Never has she entirely passed into the hands of her
enemies. A hundred times on the verge of annihilation, she was never
annihilated. She never accepted the stranger's yoke--she never was
permanently subjected to the barbarian. She continued to be Roman after
the imperial presence had departed. She was Roman when fires, and
inundations, and pestilence, and famine, and barbaric soldiers desolated
the city. She was Roman when the Pope held Christendom in a base
subserviency. She was Roman when Rienzi attempted to revive the virtues
of the heroic ages, and when Michael Angelo restored the wonders of
Apollodorus. And Roman that city will remain, whether as the home of
princes, or the future capitol of the kings of Italy, or the resort of
travelers, or the school of artists, or the seat of a spiritual
despotism which gains strength as political and temporal power passes
away before the ideas of the new races and the new civilization.

* * * * *

The most valuable book of reference for this chapter is the late work of
Dr. Dyer, author of the article "Roma" in Smith's Dictionary. In fact
this chapter is a mere compilation of that elaborate work, ("History of
the City of Rome,") which may be said to be exhaustive. Mabillon and
Montfaucon--two French Benedictines--rendered great service in the
seventeenth century to Roman topography. Edward Burton and Richard
Burgess wrote descriptions of Roman antiquities, now superseded by the
writings of those great German scholars, who made a new epoch of Roman
topography--Niebuhr, Bunsen, Platner, Gerhard, and Rostell, who,
however, have succeeded in throwing doubt on many things supposed to be
established. One of the most learned treatises on ancient Rome is the
celebrated _Handbuch_ of Becker. Stephano Piale and Luigi Canina
are the most approved of the modern Italian antiquarians.

[Relocated Footnote:

[Sidenote: Mausoleum of Augustus.]

[Sidenote: Those who were buried in it.]

"This enduring structure, which survived the conflagrations, the wars,
and the anarchies of fifteen hundred years, consisted of a large tumulus
of earth, raised on a lofty basement of white marble, and covered on the
summit with evergreens in the manner of a hanging garden. On the summit
was a bronze statue of Augustus himself, and beneath the tumulus was a
large central hall, round which ran a range of fourteen sepulchral
chambers, opening into this common vestibule. At the entrance were two
Egyptian obelisks, fifty feet in height, and all around was an extensive
grove divided into walks and terraces. The young Marcellus, whose fate
was bewailed by Virgil, was its first occupant. Here was placed Octavia,
the neglected wife of Antony, and Agrippa, the builder of the Parthenon,
and Livia, the beloved wife of Augustus, and beside them the first
imperator himself. Here were the poisoned ashes of the noble Germanicus,
borne from Syria; here the young Drusus, the pride of the Ciaudian
family, and at his side the second Drusus, the son of Tiberius. Here
reposed the dust of Agrippina, after years of exile, by the side of her
husband, Germanicus; here Nero and his mother, Agrippina, and his
victim, Britannicus; here Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and all the
other Caesars to Nerva. Then the marble door was closed, for the
sepulchral cells were full."--Story's _Roba di Roma_.]

CHAPTER IV.

ART IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

In my enumeration of the external glories of the Roman world, I only
attempted to glance at those wonders which were calculated to strike a
traveler with admiration. Among these were the great developments of
Art, displayed in architecture, in statuary, and in painting. But I only
enumerated the more remarkable objects of attraction; I did not attempt
to show the genius displayed in them. But ancient art, as a proud
creation of the genius of man, demands additional notice. We wish to
know to what heights the Romans soared in that great realm of beauty and
grace and majesty.

[Sidenote: Origins and principles of art.]

[Sidenote: Fascinations of art.]

[Sidenote: Development of art.]

[Sidenote: Glory of art.]

The aesthetic glories of art are among the grandest triumphs of
civilization, and attest as well as demand no ordinary force of genius.
Art claims to be creative, and to be based on eternal principles of
beauty, and artists in all ages have claimed a proud niche in the temple
of fame. They rank with poets and musicians, and even philosophers and
historians, in the world's regard. They are favored sons of inspiration,
urged to their work by ideal conceptions of the beautiful and the true.
Their productions are material, but the spirit which led to their
creation is of the soul and mind. Imagination is tasked to the uttermost
to portray sentiments and passions. The bust is "animated," and the
temple, though built of marble, and by man, is called "religious." Art
appeals to every cultivated mind, and excites poetic feelings. It is
impressive even to every order, class, and condition of men, not,
perhaps, in its severest forms, since the taste must be cultivated to
appreciate its higher beauties, but to a certain extent. The pyramids
and the granite image temples of Egypt must have filled even the rude
people with a certain awe and wonder, even as the majestic cathedrals of
mediaeval Europe, with their imposing pomps, stimulated the poetic
conceptions of the Gothic nations. Art is popular. The rude savage
admires a gaudy picture even as the cultivated Leo X. or Cardinal
Mazarini bent in admiration before the great creations of Raphael or
Domenichino. Art appeals to the senses as well as to the intellect and
the heart, and is capable of inspiring the passions as well as the
loftiest emotions and sentiments. The Grecian mind was trained to the
contemplation of aesthetic beauty in temples, in statues, and in
pictures; and the great artist was rewarded with honors and material
gains. The love of art is easier kindled than the love of literary
excellence, and is more generally diffused. It is coeval with songs and
epic poetry. Before Socrates or Plato speculated on the great certitudes
of philosophy, temples and statues were the pride and boast of their
countrymen. And as the taste for art precedes the taste for letters, so
it survives, when the literature has lost its life and freshness. The
luxurious citizens of Rome ornamented their baths and palaces with
exquisite pictures and statues long after genius ceased to soar to the
heights of philosophy and poetry. The proudest triumphs of genius are in
a realm which art can never approach, yet the wonders of art are still
among the great triumphs of civilization. Zeuxis or Praxiteles may not
have equaled Homer or Plato in profundity of genius, but it was only a
great age which could have produced a Zeuxis or Praxiteles. I cannot
place Raphael on so exalted a pinnacle as Luther, or Bacon, or Newton,
and yet his fame will last as long as civilization shall exist. The
creations of the chisel will ever be held in reverence by mankind, and
probably in proportion as wealth, elegance, and material prosperity
shall flourish. In an important sense, Corinth was as wonderful as
Athens, although to Athens will be assigned the highest place in the
ancient world. It was art rather than literature or philosophy which was
the glory of Rome in the period of her decline. As great capitals become
centres of luxury and display, artists will be rewarded and honored. The
pride of a commercial metropolis is in those material wonders which
appeal to the senses, and which wealth can purchase. A rich merchant can
give employment to the architect, when he would be disinclined to reward
the critic or the historian. Even where liberty and lofty aspirations
for truth and moral excellence have left a state, the arts suffer but
little decline. The grandest monuments of Rome date to the imperial
regime, not to the republican sway. When the voice of a Cicero was mute,
the Flavian amphitheatre arose in its sublime proportions. Imperial
despotism is favorable to the adornment of Paris and St. Petersburg,
even as wealth and luxury will beautify New York. When the early lights
of the Church were unheeded in the old capitals of the world, new
temples and palaces were the glory of the state. Art was the first to be
revived of the trophies of the old civilization, and it will be the last
to be relinquished, by those whom civilization has enriched. Art excites
no dangerous passions or sentiments in a decaying monarchy, and it is a
fresh and perpetual pleasure, not merely to the people, but to the
arbiters of taste and fashion. The Popes rewarded artists when they
crushed reformers, and persecuted inquiring genius. The developments of
art appeal to material life and interests rather than to the spiritual
and eternal. St. Paul scarcely alludes to the material wonders of the
cities he visited, even as Luther was insensible to the ornaments of
Italy in his absorbing desire for the spiritual and moral welfare of
society. Art is purely the creation of man. It receives no inspiration
from Heaven; and yet the principles on which it is based are eternal and
unchangeable, and when it is made to be the handmaid of virtue, it is
capable of exciting the loftiest sentiments. So pure, so exalted, and so
wrapt are the feelings which arise from the contemplation of a great
picture or statue, that we sometimes ascribe a religious force to the
art itself, while all that is divine springs from the conception of the
artist, and all that is divine in his conception arises from sentiments
independent of his art, as he is stimulated by emotions of religion, or
patriotism, or public virtue, and which he could never have embodied had
he not been a good man, rather than a great artist, or, at least,
affected by sentiments which he learned from other sources. There can be
no doubt that, through the vehicle of art, the grandest and noblest
sentiments may be expressed. Hence artists may be great benefactors; yet
sometimes their works are demoralizing, as they appeal to perverted
taste and passions. This was especially true in the later days of Rome,
when artists sought to please their corrupt but wealthy patrons. The
great artists of Greece, however, had in view a lofty ideal of beauty
and grace which they sought to realize without reference to profit, or
worldly advantage, or utilitarian necessities. Art, when true and
exalted, as it sometimes is, and always should be, has its end in
itself. Like virtue, it is its own reward. Michael Angelo worked,
preoccupied and wrapt, without the stimulus of even praise, even as
Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination gave form and
reality. Art is therefore self-sustained, unselfish, lofty. It is the
soul going forth triumphant over external circumstances, jubilant and
melodious even in poverty and neglect, rising above the evils of life in
its absorbing contemplation of ideal loveliness. The fortunate accidents
of earth are nothing to the true artist, striving to reach his ideal of
excellence,--no more than carpets and chairs are to a great woman pining
for sympathy or love. And it is only when there is this soul-longing to
reach the excellence it has conceived for itself alone that great works
have been produced. The sweetest strains of music sometimes come from
women where no one listens to their melodies. Nor does a great artist
seek or need commiseration, if ever so unfortunate in worldly
circumstances. He may be sad and sorrowful, but only in the profound
seriousness of superior knowledge, in that isolation to which all genius
is doomed.

[Sidenote: Great artists labor from inspiration.]

We have reason to believe that the great artists of antiquity lived, as
did the Ionic philosophers, in their own glorious realms of thought and
feeling, which the world could neither understand nor share. Their ideas
of grace and beauty were realized to the highest degree ever known on
earth. They were expressed in their temples, their statues, and their
pictures. They did not live for utilities. When art became a utility, it
degenerated. It became more pretentious, artificial, complicated,
elaborate, ornamental even, but it lacked genius, the simplicity of
power, the glory of originality. The horses of the sun cannot be made to
go round in a mill. The spiritual must keep within its own seclusion, in
its inner temple of mystery and meditation.

[Sidenote: Grecian art consecrated to Paganism.]

[Sidenote: Greatness and beauty of Grecian art.]

[Sidenote: Grecian admiration of art.]

Grecian art was consecrated to Paganism, and could not therefore soar
beyond what Paganism revealed. It did not typify those exalted
sentiments which even a Gothic cathedral portrayed--sacrifice; the man
on the cross; the man in the tomb; the man ascending to heaven. Nor did
it paint, like Raphael, etherial beauty, such as was expressed in the
mother of our Lord, her whom all generations shall bless, _regina
angelorum, mater divinae gratiae_. But whatever has been reached by the
unaided powers of man, it reproduced and consecrated, and it realized
the highest conceptions of beauty and grace that have ever been
represented. All that the mind and the soul could, by their inherent
force, reach, it has attained. Modern civilization has no prouder
triumphs than those achieved by the artists of Pagan antiquity in those
things which pertain to beauty and grace. Grecian artists have been the
schoolmasters of all nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture,
and painting. How far they themselves were original we cannot decide,
although they were probably somewhat indebted to the Assyrians and
Egyptians. But they struck out so new a style, and so different from the
older monuments of Asia and Egypt, that we consider them the great
creators of art. But whether original or not, they have never been
surpassed. In some respects their immortal productions remain objects of
hopeless imitation. In the realization of ideas of beauty which are
eternal, like those on which Plato built his system of philosophy, they
reached absolute perfection. And hence we infer that art can flourish
under Pagan as well as Christian influences. We can go no higher than
those ancient Pagans in one of the proudest fields of civilization; for
art has as sincere and warm admirers as it had in Grecian and Roman
times, but the limit of excellence has been reached. It is the mission
of our age to apply creative genius to enterprises and works which have
not been tried, if any thing new is to be found under the sun. Nor was
it the number and extent of the works of art among the Greeks and
Romans, nor their perfection, which made art so distinguishing an
element of the old civilization. It was the spirit of the age, the
absorption of the public mind, the great prominence which art had in the
eyes of the people. Art was to the Greeks what tournaments and churches
were to the men of the Middle Ages, what the Reformation was to Germany
and England in the sixteenth century, what theories of political rights
were to the era of the French Revolution, what mechanical inventions to
abridge human labor are to us. The creation of a great statue was an
era, an object of popular interest--the subject of universal comment. It
kindled popular inspirations. It was the great form of progress in which
that age rejoiced. Public benefactors erected temples, and lavished upon
them the superfluous wealth of the State. And public benefactors, in
turn, had statues erected to their memory by their grateful admirers.
The genius of the age expressed itself in marble histories. And these
histories stand in the mystery of absolute perfection--the glory and the
characteristic of a great and peculiar people.

[Sidenote: Principles of art.]

[Sidenote: Devotion of the Greeks for Art.]

Much has been written on those principles upon which art is founded, and
great ingenuity displayed. But treatises on taste, on beauty, on grace,
and other perceptions of intellectual pleasure, are not very
satisfactory, and must be necessarily indefinite. In what does beauty
consist? Do we arrive at any clearer conceptions of it by definitions?
Whether beauty, the chief glory of the fine arts, consists in certain
arrangements and proportions of the parts to a whole, or in the fitness
of means to an end, or is dependent on associations which excite
pleasure, or is a revelation of truth, or is an appeal to sensibilities,
or is an imitation of Nature, or the realization of ideal excellence, it
is difficult to settle and almost useless to inquire. "Metaphysics,
mathematics, music, and philosophy have been called in to analyze,
define, demonstrate, and generalize." [Footnote: Cleghorn, _Ancient
and Modern Art_, vol. i. p. 67.] Great writers have written ingenious
treatises, like Burke, Alison, and Stewart. Beauty, according to Plato,
is the contemplation of mind; Leibnitz maintained it consists in
perfection; Diderot referred beauty to the idea of relation; Blondel
asserted it was harmonic proportions; Peter Leigh speaks of it as the
music of the eye. Yet everybody understands what beauty is, and that it
is derived from Nature, agreeable to the purest models which Nature
presents. Such was the ideal of Phidias. Such was it to the minds of the
Greeks, who united every advantage, physical and mental, for the
perfection of art. Nor could art have been so wonderfully developed had
it not been for the influence which the great poets, orators,
dramatists, historians, and philosophers exercised on the inspiration of
the artists. Phidias, being asked how he conceived the idea of his
Olympian Jupiter, answered by repeating a passage of Homer. We can
scarcely conceive of the enthusiasm which the Greeks exhibited in the
cultivation of art. Hence it has obtained an ascendency over that of all
other nations. Roman art was the continuation of the Grecian. The Romans
appreciated and rewarded Grecian artists. They adopted their
architecture, their sculpture, and their paintings; and, though art
never attained the estimation and dignity in Rome that it did in Greece,
it still can boast of a great development. But, inasmuch as all the
great models were Grecian, and appropriated and copied by the Romans,--
inasmuch as the great wonders of the "Eternal City" were made by
Greeks,--we cannot treat of Roman art in distinction from Grecian. And
as I wish to show simply the triumph of Pagan genius in the realm of
art, and most of the immortal creations of the great artists were
transported to Rome, and adorned Rome, it is within my province to go
where they were originally found.

"Tu, regere imperio populos, Romane, memento!
Hae tibi erunt artes."

[Sidenote: Art first impressive in achitecture.]

The first development of art was in architecture, not merely among the
Greeks, but among the older nations. Although it refers, in a certain
sense, to all buildings, yet it is ordinarily restricted to those
edifices in which we recognize the principle of beauty, such as
symmetrical arrangement, and attractive ornaments, like pillars,
cornices, and sculptured leaves.

The earliest buildings were houses to protect men from the inclemencies
of the weather, and built without much regard to beauty; but it is in
temples for the worship of God, that architecture lays claim to dignity.
It was the result of devotional feelings; nor is there a single instance
of supreme excellence in art being reached, which was not sacred, and
connected with reverential tendencies. In the erection and decoration of
sacred buildings there was a profound sentiment that they were to be the
sanctuaries of God, and genius was stimulated by pious emotions. In
India, in Egypt, in Greece, in Italy, the various temples all originated
in blended superstition and devotion. Nor did the edifice, erected for
religious worship, reach its culminating height of beauty and grandeur
until that earnest and profoundly religious epoch which felt as injuries
the insults offered to the tomb which covered the remains of the Saviour
of the world. Then arose those hoary and Gothic vaults of Cologne and
Westminster, the only modern structures which would probably have called
out the admiration of an ancient Greek.