Aradus is an open quadrangular enclosure, excavated in rock, with a
throne in the centre for the worship of Astarte and Melkarth; this
is the only Phœnician temple discovered in Phœnicia, except a small
monolithal temple at Ornithopolis, about nine miles from Tyre, of
high antiquity, dedicated apparently to Astarte. I wish however to
direct your attention to the characteristic feature of Phœnician
architecture, its enormous blocks of stone bevelled at the joints.
You have them in the walls of Aradus and in other places in
Phœnicia. They are also found in the temple of the Sun at Baalbec,
and may with great probability, I conceive, be regarded as
Phœnician; though the rest of the beautiful architectural remains
there are Greco-Roman of the Imperial period, and perhaps the best
specimens of their kind in existence. Among other Phœnician
antiquities we have sarcophagi, and sepulchral chambers for
receiving them, also very beautiful variegated glass found over a
good part of Europe and Asia, commonly called Greek, but perhaps
more reasonably presumed to be Phœnician. Most of the remains found
on the sites of the Phœnician settlements are either so late
Phœnician, or so little Phœnician at all, as at Carthage, that I
shall make no apology for passing over both them, and the few
exceptions also, just alluding however to the existence of a
remarkable hypæthral temple in Malta, which I myself saw nearly
twenty years ago, not long, I believe, after it was uncovered. With
regard to the strange vaulted towers of Sardinia, called Nuraggis,
they may be Phœnician or Carthaginian, but their origin is
uncertain. “All Phœnician monuments,” says Mr Kenrick, “in countries
unquestionably occupied by the Phœnicians are recent[12].” He makes
the remark in reference to the Lycian archæology. Whether the
Lycians were of Phœnician origin or not, their rock-temples and
rock-tombs, abounding in sculptures (illustrative both of their
mythology and military history), shew that they were not much behind
the Greeks in the arts. With the general appearance of their
Gothic-like architecture, and of their strange bilingual
inscriptions, Greek and Lycian, we are of course familiarised by the
Lycian Room in the British Museum. With regard to the relation of
Phœnician and Lycian archæology to the history of the peoples
themselves, it must be sufficient to say, that their history, both
literary and monumental, is quite fragmentary; in the case of
Phœnicia the literary notices perhaps preserve more to us than the
monumental; in regard to Lycia the remark must rather be reversed.
Footnote 12:
_Phœnicia_, p. 88. London, 1855. See also Smith’s _Dict. of Greek
and Roman Geography_, s. v. Phœnicia and Lycia.
From Phœnicia, which first carried letters to Greece, let us also
pass to Greece. But Greece, in the sense in which I shall use it,
includes not only Greece Proper, but many parts of Asia Minor, as
well as Sicily and the Great Greece of Italy. And here I must
unwillingly be brief, and make the splendid extract from Canon
Marsden, quoted before, in some degree do duty for me. But think for
a minute first on its architecture, I do not mean its earliest
remains, such as the Cyclopian walls and the lion-gate at Mycenæ,
and the so-called treasury of Atreus, which ascend to the heroic
ages or farther back, but its temple architecture. Before I can name
them, images of the Parthenon, the Erectheum, the temple of Jupiter
Panhellenius at Ægina, the temple of Apollo Epicurius at Phigalia or
Bassæ, that of Concord (so-called) at Agrigentum, the most perfect
in Sicily, the three glorious Doric temples of Pæstum, the Ionic
ruins of Branchidæ, will, I am confident, have arisen before your
eyes. Many of us perhaps have seen some of them; if not, we all feel
as though we had. Think of its sepulchral monuments, which are in
the form of temples; and first of Queen Artemisia’s Mausoleum, the
most splendid architectural expression of conjugal affection that
has ever existed, the wonder of the world, with its colossal statue
of her husband and its bas-reliefs by Bryaxis and Scopas and other
principal sculptors; and remember that we have these in our national
museum. Various fine rock-tombs, likewise in the form of temples,
occur in Asia Minor, _e.g._ that of Midas at Nacoleia, the Lion-tomb
at Cnidus, the necropolis at Telmessus.
The transition from temples and tombs to statuary is easy, as these
were more or less decorated with its aid. Although we still possess
the great compositions of some of the first sculptors and
brass-casters, for example, the Quoit-thrower of Myron, the
Diadumenos of Polycleitus, (_i.e._ a youth binding his head with a
fillet in token of an athletic victory,) and perhaps several of the
Venuses of Praxiteles; yet it is needless for me to remind you that
these with few exceptions are considered to be copies, not
originals. But yet there are exceptions. “The extant relics of Greek
sculpture,” says Mr Bunbury, “few and fragmentary as they
undoubtedly are, are yet in some degree sufficient to enable us to
judge of the works of the ancient masters in this branch of art. The
metopes of Selinus, the Æginetan, the Elgin, and the Phigaleian
marbles, to which we now add the noble fragments recently brought to
this country from Halicarnassus, not only serve to give us a clear
and definite idea of the progress of the art of sculpture, but
enable us to estimate for ourselves the mighty works which were so
celebrated in antiquity[13].” Of bronzes of the genuine Greek
period, which we may call their metal statuary, the most beautiful
that occur to my remembrance are those of Siris, now in the British
Museum. They are considered by Brönsted to agree in the most
remarkable and striking manner with the distinctive character of the
school of Lysippus. But most of the extant bronzes are, I believe,
of the Roman period, executed however, like their other best works,
by Greco-Roman artists.
Footnote 13:
_Edinburgh Review_ for 1858, Vol. CVIII. p. 382. I follow common
fame in assigning this article to Mr Bunbury; few others indeed
were capable of writing it. Besides the sculptures named by him we
have in the British Museum a bas-relief by Scopas, as it is
thought, who may also be the author of the Niobid group at
Florence; likewise the Ceres (so-called) from Eleusis, and the
statue of Pan from Athens, now in our Fitzwilliam Museum. For
other antique statues and bronzes and for the later copies see
Müller’s _Ancient Art_, passim.
With the Greek schools of painting, Attic, Asiatic, and Sicyonian,
no less celebrated than their sculpture, it has fared far worse.
There is not one of their works surviving; no, not one. Of these
schools and their paintings I need not here say anything, as I am
concerned only with the archæological monuments which are now in
existence. But the loss is compensated in some degree by the
paintings on vases, in which we may one day recognise the
compositions of the various great masters of the different schools,
just as in the majolica and other wares of the 16th and following
centuries we have the compositions of Raffaelle, Giulio Romano, and
other painters. “The glorious art of the Greek painters,” says K. O.
Müller, the greatest authority for ancient art generally, “as far as
regards light, tone, and local colours, is wholly lost to us; and we
know nothing of it except from obscure notices and later
imitations;” (referring, I suppose, to the frescoes of Herculaneum
and of Pompeii more especially;) “on the contrary, the pictures on
vases with thinly scattered bright figures give us the most exalted
idea of the progress and achievements of the art of design, if we
venture, from the workmanship of common handicraftsmen, to draw
conclusions as to the works of the first artists[14].” But of this
matter and of the vases themselves, which rank among the most
graceful remains of Greek antiquity, and are found over the whole
Greek world, I shall say no more now, as they will form the subject
of my following lectures. We have also many terra cottas of delicate
Greek workmanship, mostly plain, but some gilded, others painted,
from Athens, as well as from a great variety of other places, of
which the finest are now at Munich. Relief ornaments, sometimes of
great beauty, in the same material, were impressed with moulds, and
Cicero, in a letter to Atticus, wishes for such _typi_ from Athens,
in order to fix them on the plaster of an atrium. Most of those
which now remain seem to be of Greco-Roman times.
Footnote 14:
_Ancient Art and its Remains_, p. 119. Translated (with additions
from Welcker) by Leitch. London, 1852. This invaluable work is a
perfect thesaurus for the student, and will conduct him to the
most trustworthy authorities on every branch of the subject.
Of the art of coinage invented by the Greeks and carried by them to
the highest perfection which it has ever attained, a few words must
now be said. The history of a nation, said the first Napoleon, is
its coinage: and the art which the Greeks invented became soon
afterwards, and now is, the history of the world. Numismatics are
the epitome of all archæological knowledge, and any one who is
versed in this study must by necessity be more or less acquainted
with many others also. Architecture, sculpture, iconography,
topography, palæography, the public and private life of the ancients
and their mythology, are all illustrated by numismatics, and
reciprocally illustrate them.
Numismatics give us also the succession of kings and tyrants over
the whole Greek world. In the case of Bactria or Bactriana, whose
capital Bactra is the modern Balk, this value of numismatics is
perhaps most conspicuous. From coins, and from coins almost alone,
we obtain the succession of kings, beginning with the Greek series
in the third century B.C., and going on with various dynasties of
Indian language and religion, till we come down to the Mohammedan
conquest. “Extending through a period of more than fifteen
centuries,” says Professor H. H. Wilson, “they furnish a distinct
outline of the great political and religious vicissitudes of an
important division of India, respecting which written records are
imperfect or deficient[15].”
Footnote 15:
_Ariana Antiqua_, p. 439. London, 1841. For the more recent views
of English and German numismatists on these coins, see Mr Thomas’s
_Catalogue of Bactrian Coins_ in the Numismatic Chronicle for
1857, Vol. XIX. p. 13 sqq.
Coins are so much more durable than most other monuments, that they
frequently survive, when the rest have perished. This is well put by
Pope in his Epistle to Addison, on his Discourse on Medals:
Ambition sighed, she saw it vain to trust
The faithless column and the crumbling bust,
Huge moles whose shadows stretched from shore to shore,
Their ruins perished and their place no more.
Convinced she now contracts her vast design,
And all her triumphs shrink into a coin.
A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps,
Beneath her palm here sad Judæa weeps;
Now scantier limits the proud arch confine;
And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine;
A small Euphrates thro’ the piece is rolled,
And little eagles wave their wings in gold.
The Medal, faithful to its charge of fame,
Through climes and ages bears each form and name;
In one short view subjected to our eye,
Gods, emperors, heroes, sages, beauties, lie.
Regarded simply as works of art the coins of Magna Græcia and
Sicily, more especially those of Syracuse and its tyrants, as well
as those of Thasos, Opus, and Elis, also the regal coins of Philip,
Alexander, Mithridates, and some of the Seleucidæ, are amongst the
most exquisite productions of antiquity. Not even in gem-engraving,
an art derived by Greece from Egypt and Assyria, but carried by her
to the highest conceivable perfection, do we find anything superior
to these. I must, before quitting the subject of numismatics,
congratulate the University on the acquisition of one of the largest
and most carefully selected private collections of Greek coins ever
formed, viz. the cabinet of the late Col. Leake, which is now one of
the principal treasures of the Fitzwilliam Museum.
Inferior as gems are to coins in most archæological respects,
especially in respect of their connection with literary history, and
though not superior to the best of them artistically, gems have
nevertheless one advantage over coins, that they are commonly quite
uninjured by time. Occasionally (it is true) this is the case with
coins; but with gems it is the rule. Of course, to speak generally,
the art of gems, whose material is always more or less precious, is
superior to that of coins, which were often carelessly executed, as
being merely designed for a medium of commercial exchange. High art
would not usually spend itself upon small copper money, but be
reserved for the more valuable pieces, especially those of gold and
silver[16]. The subjects of gems are mostly mythological, or are
connected with the heroic cycle; a smaller, but more interesting
number, presents us with portraits, which however are in general
uninscribed. At the same time, by comparing these with
portrait-statues and coins we are able to identify Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Demosthenes, Alexander the Great, several of the
Ptolemies, and a few others; most of which may have been engraved by
Greco-Roman artists. But the catalogue of authentic portraits
preserved to us, both Greek and Roman, is, as K. O. Müller observes,
now very much to be thinned.
Footnote 16:
This remark however must not be pressed too closely. Certain small
Greek copper coins of Italy, Sicily, &c., are exceedingly
beautiful.
With regard to ancient iconography in general, coins, without doubt,
afford the greatest aid; but no certain coin-portraits are, I
believe, earlier than Alexander[17]. The oldest Greek
portrait-statue known to me is that of Mausolus, now in the British
Museum; but the majority of the statues of Greek philosophers and
others are probably to be referred to the Roman times, when the
formation of portrait-galleries became a favourite pursuit. With the
Greeks it was otherwise; the ideal was ever uppermost in their mind:
they executed busts of Homer indeed and placed his head on many of
their coins; but of course these were no more portraits than the
statues of Jupiter and Pallas are portraits. With regard to the
relation of Greek archæology to the history of Greece, both the
monuments and the literature are abundant, and they mutually
illustrate one another; and the same remark is more or less true for
the histories of the nations afterwards to be mentioned, upon which
I shall therefore not comment in this respect.
Footnote 17:
I am aware that there are reasons for believing that a Persian
coin preserves a portrait of Artaxerxes Mnemon, who reigned a
little earlier.
From Greece, who taught Rome most or all that she ever knew of the
arts, we pass to the contemplation of the mistress of the world
herself. She found indeed in her own vicinity an earlier
civilisation, the Etruscan, whose archæological remains and history
generally are amongst the most obscure and perplexing matters in all
the world of fore-time. The sepulchral and other monuments of
Etruria are often inscribed, but no ingenuity has yet interpreted
them. The words of the Etruscan and other Italian languages have
been recently collected by Fabretti. There is some story about a
learned antiquary after many years’ research coming to the
conclusion that two Etruscan words were equivalent to _vixit annos_,
but which was _vixit_, and which _annos_, he was as yet uncertain.
We have also Etruscan wall-paintings, and various miscellaneous
antiquities in bronze, and among them the most salient peculiarity
of Etruscan archæology not easily to be conjectured, its
elegantly-formed bronze mirrors. These, which are incised with
mythological subjects, and often inscribed, have attracted the
especial attention of modern scholars and antiquaries, who have
gazed upon them indeed almost as wistfully as the Tuscan ladies
themselves.
But Greece had far more influence over Roman life and art than
Etruria.
Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes
Intulit agresti Latio.
Accordingly, Greek architecture (mostly of the later Corinthian
style, which was badly elaborated into the Composite) was imported
into Rome itself, and continued to flourish in the Greek provinces
of the empire. Temples and theatres continued much as before; but
the triumphal arch and column, the amphitheatre, the bath and the
basilica, are peculiarly Roman.
The genius of Rome however was essentially military, and the stamp
which she has left on the world is military also. Her camps, her
walls, and her roads, _strata viaram_, which, like arteries,
connected her towns one with another and with the capital, are the
real peculiarities of her archæology. The treatise on Roman roads,
by Bergier, occupies above 800 pages in the _Thesaurus_ of Grævius.
Instead of bootlessly wandering over the width of the world on
these, let us rather walk a little over those in our own country,
and as we travel survey the general character of the Roman British
remains, which may serve as a type of all. In the early part of this
lecture, I observed that we, in common with the rest of Western
Europe, find in our islands weapons which belong to the stone,
bronze, and iron periods; and here also, as in other places, the
last-named period doubtless connects itself with the Roman. But
besides these, we have other remains, many of which may be referred
to the Celtic population which Cæsar had to encounter, when he
invaded our shores. These remains may in great part perhaps (for I
am compelled to speak hesitatingly on a subject which I have studied
but little, and of which no one, however learned, knows very much)
be anterior to Roman times. Of this kind are the cromlechs at
Dufferin in South Wales, in Anglesey, and in Penzance, of which
there are models in the British Museum; of this kind also are, most
probably, the gigantic structures at Stonehenge, about which so much
has been written and disputed. The British barrows of various forms
and other sepulchral remains may also be referred, I should
conceive, in part at least, to the pre-Roman Celtic period. The
earlier mounds contain weapons and ornaments of stone, bronze and
ivory, and rude pottery; the later ones, called Roman British
barrows, appear mostly not to contain stone implements, but various
articles of bronze and iron and pottery; also gold ornaments and
amber and bead necklaces. Other sepulchral monuments consist merely
of heaps of stones covering the body which has been laid in the
earth. Many researches into this class of remains have of late years
been made, and by none perhaps more patiently and more successfully
than by the late Mr Bateman, in Derbyshire. The archæology of Wales
has also been made the special object of study by a society formed
for the purpose. Some tribes of the ancient Britons were certainly
acquainted with the art of die-sinking, and a great many coins,
principally gold, are extant, some of which may probably be as early
as the second century before Christ. They are, to speak generally,
barbarous copies of the beautiful gold staters of Philip of Macedon,
which circulated over the Greek world, and so might become known to
our forefathers by the route of Marseilles.
With these remarks I leave the Celtic remains in Britain; all
attempts to connect together the literary notices and the
antiquities of the Celts and Druids, so as to make out a history
from them, have been compared to attempts to “trace pictures in the
clouds[18].” Still we may say to the Celtic archæologist,
Θαρσεῖν χρὴ, φίλε Βύττε, τάχ’ αὔριον ἔσσετ’ ἄμεινον.
Footnote 18:
_Pict. Hist. of England_, Vol. I. p. 59. London, 1837.
One day matters may become clearer by the help of an extended and
scientific archæology.
But of the Romano-British remains it may be necessary to say
something. When we look at the map in Petrie’s _Monumenta Historica
Britannica_, in which the Roman roads are laid down by their actual
remains, we see the principal Roman towns and stations connected
together by straight lines, which are but little broken. So numerous
are they that we might almost fancy that we were looking at a map in
an early edition of a _Railway Guide_. In this county they abound
and have been very carefully traced, and both here and in other
counties are still used as actual roads. In a few instances
mile-stones have also been found. In our own country, cut off, as
Virgil says, from the whole world, we do not expect the splendid
monuments of Roman greatness, yet even here the temple, the
amphitheatre and the bath are not unknown; and in our little Pompeii
at Wroxeter we have, if my memory deceive me not, some vestiges of
fresco-painting, an art of which we have such beautiful Roman
examples elsewhere. But everywhere we stumble upon camps and villas;
everywhere
The tesselated pavements shew
Where Roman lamps were wont to glow.
And of these lamps themselves we have an infinite number and
variety, and on many of them representations of the games of the
circus and of various other things, formed in relief; a remark which
may also be made of their fine and valuable red Samian ware;
fragments of which are commonly met with, but the vases are rarely
entire. Of their other pottery, and of their glass and personal
ornaments, and miscellaneous objects, I must hardly say any thing;
but only observe that the Romans have left us a very interesting
series of coins relating to Britain; Claudius records in gold the
arch he raised in triumphant victory over us: in the same way
Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Septimius Severus, besides building their
great walls against us, have, as well as Caracalla and Geta, struck
many pieces in silver and copper to commemorate our tardy
subjugation. The British emperors or usurpers, Carausius and
Allectus, have also left us very ample series of coins, and indeed
it is by these, much more than by the monuments of letters, that
their histories are known. In the fourth and fifth centuries the
monetary art declined greatly in the Western Empire, and was on the
whole at a very low ebb in the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, and in
the middle ages, generally, throughout Europe.
At Constantinople a new school of Roman art arose, which exercised a
powerful influence on medieval art in general. Soon after the
foundation of Constantinople, Roman artists worked there in several
departments with a skill by no means contemptible, though of a
strangely conventional and grotesque character; and from them, as it
would seem, the medieval artists of Central and Western Europe
caught the love of the same crafts, and carried them to much higher
excellence. I would allude in the first place, as being among the
earliest, to ivory carvings, principally consular diptychs. From the
time of the emperors it was the custom for consuls and other curule
magistrates to make presents both to officials and their friends of
ivory diptychs, which folded together like a pair of book-covers, on
which sculptures in low relief were carved, as a mode of announcing
their elevation. From the fourth and fifth centuries down to the
fourteenth we find them, some of the earliest with classical
subjects, as the triumph of Bacchus, probably of the fourth century;
but mostly with Scriptural ones, or with representations of consuls.
Some of these are enriched with jewellery. The inscriptions
accompanying them are either in Greek or in Latin. In Germany they
occur in the Carlovingian period, though rarely, and in France and
Italy later still. Perhaps it should be mentioned that the ivory
episcopal chair of St Maximian at Ravenna, a work of the sixth
century, is the finest example extant of this class of antiques, and
is doubly interesting as being one of the very few extant specimens
of furniture during the first three centuries of the middle ages.
Various casts of medieval ivories, it may be added, have been
executed and circulated by the Arundel Society.