Art
Artistic Endowment of the Italians
Poetry is impassioned language, and its modulation is melody. While
in this sense no people is without poetry and music, some nations
have received a pre-eminent endowment of poetic gifts. The Italian
nation, however, was not and is not one of these. The Italian is
deficient in the passion of the heart, in the longing to idealize
what is human and to confer humanity on what is lifeless, which
form the very essence of poetic art. His acuteness of perception
and his graceful versatility enabled him to excel in irony and in
the vein of tale-telling which we find in Horace and Boccaccio,
in the humorous pleasantries of love and song which are presented
in Catullus and in the good popular songs of Naples, above all in
the lower comedy and in farce. Italian soil gave birth in ancient
times to burlesque tragedy, and in modern times to mock-heroic
poetry. In rhetoric and histrionic art especially no other nation
equalled or equals the Italians. But in the more perfect kinds of
art they have hardly advanced beyond dexterity of execution, and
no epoch of their literature has produced a true epos or a genuine
drama. The very highest literary works that have been successfully
produced in Italy, divine poems like Dante's Commedia, and historical
treatises such as those of Sallust and Macchiavelli, of Tacitus and
Colletta, are pervaded by a passion more rhetorical than spontaneous.
Even in music, both in ancient and modern times, really creative
talent has been far less conspicuous than the accomplishment which
speedily assumes the character of virtuosoship, and enthrones in
the room of genuine and genial art a hollow and heart-withering
idol. The field of the inward in art--so far as we may in the case
of art distinguish an inward and an outward at all--is not that
which has fallen to the Italian as his special province; the power
of beauty, to have its full effect upon him, must be placed not
ideally before his mind, but sensuously before his eyes. Accordingly
he is thoroughly at home in architecture, painting, and sculpture;
in these he was during the epoch of ancient culture the best disciple
of the Hellenes, and in modern times he has become the master of
all nations.
Dance, Music, and Song in Latium
From the defectiveness of our traditional information it is
not possible to trace the development of artistic ideas among the
several groups of nations in Italy; and in particular we are no
longer in a position to speak of the poetry of Italy; we can only
speak of that of Latium. Latin poetry, like that of every other
nation, began in the lyrical form, or, to speak more correctly,
sprang out of those primitive festal rejoicings, in which dance,
music, and song were still inseparably blended. It is remarkable,
however, that in the most ancient religious usages dancing, and
next to dancing instrumental music, were far more prominent than
song. In the great procession, with which the Roman festival of
victory was opened, the chief place, next to the images of the gods
and the champions, was assigned to the dancers grave and merry.
The grave dancers were arranged in three groups of men, youths,
and boys, all clad in red tunics with copper belts, with swords
and short lances, the men being moreover furnished with helmets,
and generally in full armed attire. The merry dancers were divided
into two companies--"the sheep" in sheep-skins with a party-coloured
over-garment, and "the goats" naked down to the waist, with a buck's
skin thrown over them. In like manner the "leapers" (-salii-)
were perhaps the most ancient and sacred of all the priesthoods,(1)
and dancers (-ludii-, -ludiones-) were indispensable in all public
processions, and particularly at funeral solemnities; so that
dancing became even in ancient times a common trade. But, wherever
the dancers made their appearance, there appeared also the musicians
or--which was in the earliest times the same thing--the pipers.
They too were never wanting at a sacrifice, at a marriage, or at
a funeral; and by the side of the primitive public priesthood of
the "leapers" there was ranged, of equal antiquity although of far
inferior rank, the guild of the "pipers" (-collegium tibicinum-(2)),
whose true character as strolling musicians is evinced by their
ancient privilege--maintained even in spite of the strictness
of Roman police--of wandering through the streets at their annual
festival, wearing masks and full of sweet wine. While dancing thus
presents itself as an honourable function and music as one subordinate
but still necessary, so that public corporations were instituted
for both of them, poetry appears more as a matter incidental and,
in some measure, indifferent, whether it may have come into existence
on its own account or to serve as an accompaniment to the movements
of the dancers.
Religious Chants
The earliest chant, in the view of the Romans, was that which the
leaves sang to themselves in the green solitude of the forest. The
whispers and pipings of the "favourable spirit" (-faunus-, from
-favere-) in the grove were reproduced for men, by those who had
the gift of listening to him, in rhythmically measured language
(-casmen-, afterwards -carmen-, from -canere-). Of a kindred nature
to these soothsaying songs of inspired men and women (-vates-) were
the incantations properly so called, the formulae for conjuring
away diseases and other troubles, and the evil spells by which they
prevented rain and called down lightning or even enticed the seed
from one field to another; only in these instances, probably from
the outset, formulae of mere sounds appear side by side with formulae
of words.(3) More firmly rooted in tradition and equally ancient
were the religious litanies which were sung and danced by the Salii
and other priesthoods; the only one of which that has come down to
us, a dance-chant of the Arval Brethren in honour of Mars probably
composed to be sung in alternate parts, deserves a place here.
-Enos, Lases, iuvate!
Ne velue rue, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores!
Satur fu, fere Mars! limen sali! sta! berber!
Semunis alternei advocapit conctos!
Enos, Marmar, iuvato!
Triumpe!-
Which may be thus interpreted:
To the gods:
-Nos, Lares, iuvate!
Ne veluem (= malam luem) ruem (= ruinam), Mamers,
sinas incurrere in plures!
Satur esto, fere Mars!
To the individual brethren:
In limen insili! sta! verbera (limen?)!
To all the brethren:
Semones alterni advocate cunctos!
To the god:
Nos, Mamers, iuvato!
To the individual brethren:
Tripudia!-(4)
The Latin of this chant and of kindred fragments of the Salian
songs, which were regarded even by the philologues of the Augustan
age as the oldest documents of their mother-tongue, is related
to the Latin of the Twelve Tables somewhat as the language of the
Nibelungen is related to the language of Luther; and we may perhaps
compare these venerable litanies, as respects both language and
contents, with the Indian Vedas.
Panegyrics and Lampoons
Lyrical panegyrics and lampoons belonged to a later epoch. We might
infer from the national character of the Italians that satirical
songs must have abounded in Latium in ancient times, even if their
prevalence had not been attested by the very ancient measures of
police directed against them. But the panegyrical chants became
of more importance. When a burgess was borne to burial, the bier
was followed by a female relative or friend, who, accompanied by a
piper, sang his dirge (-nenia-). In like manner at banquets boys,
who according to the fashion of those days attended their fathers
even at feasts out of their own houses, sang by turns songs in
praise of their ancestors, sometimes to the pipe, sometimes simply
reciting them without accompaniment (-assa voce canere-). The custom
of men singing in succession at banquets was presumably borrowed
from the Greeks, and that not till a later age. We know no further
particulars of these ancestral lays; but it is self-evident that
they must have attempted description and narration and thus have
developed, along with and out of the lyrical element, the features
of epic poetry.
The Masked Farce
Other elements of poetry were called into action in the primitive
popular carnival, the comic dance or -satura-,(5) which beyond
doubt reached back to a period anterior to the separation of the
stocks. On such occasions song would never be wanting; and the
circumstances under which such pastimes were exhibited, chiefly
at public festivals and marriages, as well as the mainly practical
shape which they certainly assumed, naturally suggested that several
dancers, or sets of dancers, should take up reciprocal parts;
so that the singing thus came to be associated with a species of
acting, which of course was chiefly of a comical and often of a
licentious character. In this way there arose not merely alternative
chants, such as afterwards went by the name of Fescennine songs, but
also the elements of a popular comedy--which were in this instance
planted in a soil admirably adapted for their growth, as an acute
sense of the outward and the comic, and a delight in gesticulation
and masquerade have ever been leading traits of Italian character.
No remains have been preserved of these -incunabula- of the Roman
epos and drama. That the ancestral lays were traditional is
self-evident, and is abundantly demonstrated by the fact that they
were regularly recited by children; but even in the time of Cato
the Elder they had completely passed into oblivion. The comedies
again, if it be allowable so to name them, were at this period and
long afterwards altogether improvised. Consequently nothing of
this popular poetry and popular melody could be handed down but
the measure, the accompaniment of music and choral dancing, and
perhaps the masks.
Metre
Whether what we call metre existed in the earlier times is doubtful;
the litany of the Arval Brethren scarcely accommodates itself to
an outwardly fixed metrical system, and presents to us rather the
appearance of an animated recitation. On the other hand we find in
subsequent times a very ancient rhythm, the so-called Saturnian(6)
or Faunian metre, which is foreign to the Greeks, and may be
conjectured to have arisen contemporaneously with the oldest Latin
popular poetry. The following poem, belonging, it is true, to a
far later age, may give an idea of it:--
Quod re sua difeidens--aspere afleicta
Parens timens heic vovit--voto hoc soluto
___
Decuma facta poloucta--leibereis lubentis
____ _____
Donu danunt__hercolei--maxsume--mereto
_____
Semol te orant se voti--crebro con__demnes.
__--'__--'__--'__^/ __--'__--'__--'_^
That which, misfortune dreading--sharply to afflict him, An anxious
parent vowed here,--when his wish was granted, A sacred tenth for
banquet--gladly give his children to Hercules a tribute--most of
all deserving; And now they thee beseech, that--often thou wouldst
hear them.
Panegyrics as well as comic songs appear to have been uniformly
sung in Saturnian metre, of course to the pipe, and presumably in
such a way that the -caesura- in particular in each line was strongly
marked; and in alternate singing the second singer probably took
up the verse at this point. The Saturnian measure is, like every
other occurring in Roman and Greek antiquity, based on quantity;
but of all the antique metres perhaps it is the least thoroughly
elaborated, for besides many other liberties it allows itself the
greatest license in omitting the short syllables, and it is at the
same time the most imperfect in construction, for these iambic and
trochaic half-lines opposed to each other were but little fitted
to develop a rhythmical structure adequate for the purposes of the
higher poetry.
Melody
The fundamental elements of the national music and choral dancing
in Latium, which must likewise have been established during this
period, are buried for us in oblivion; except that the Latin pipe
is reported to have been a short and slender instrument, provided
with only four holes, and originally, as the name shows, made out
of the light thighbone of some animal.
Masks
Lastly, the masks used in after times for the standing characters
of the Latin popular comedy or the Atellana, as it was called:
Maccus the harlequin, Bucco the glutton, Pappus the good papa, and
the wise Dossennus--masks which have been cleverly and strikingly
compared to the two servants, the -pantalon- and the -dottore-, in
the Italian comedy of Pulcinello--already belonged to the earliest
Latin popular art. That they did so cannot of course be strictly
proved; but as the use of masks for the face in Latium in the case
of the national drama was of immemorial antiquity, while the Greek
drama in Rome did not adopt them for a century after its first
establishment, as, moreover, those Atellane masks were of decidedly
Italian origin, and as, in fine, the origination as well as
the execution of improvised pieces cannot well be conceived apart
from fixed masks assigning once for all to the player his proper
position throughout the piece, we must associate fixed masks with
the rudiments of the Roman drama, or rather regard them as constituting
those rudiments themselves.
Earliest Hellenic Influences
If our information respecting the earliest indigenous culture and
art of Latium is so scanty, it may easily be conceived that our
knowledge will be still scantier regarding the earliest impulses
imparted in this respect to the Romans from without. In a certain
sense we may include under this head their becoming acquainted with
foreign languages, particularly the Greek. To this latter language, of
course, the Latins generally were strangers, as was shown by their
enactment in respect to the Sibylline oracles;(7) but an acquaintance
with it must have been not at all uncommon in the case of merchants.
The same may be affirmed of the knowledge of reading and writing,
closely connected as it was with the knowledge of Greek.(8) The
culture of the ancient world, however, was not based either
on the knowledge of foreign languages or on elementary technical
accomplishments. An influence more important than any thus imparted
was exercised over the development of Latium by the elements of the
fine arts, which were already in very early times received from the
Hellenes. For it was the Hellenes alone, and not the Phoenicians
or the Etruscans, that in this respect exercised an influence on
the Italians. We nowhere find among the latter any stimulus of
the fine arts which can be referred to Carthage or Caere, and the
Phoenician and Etruscan forms of civilization may be in general
perhaps classed with those that are hybrid, and for that reason
not further productive.(9) But the influence of Greece did not
fail to bear fruit. The Greek seven-stringed lyre, the "strings"
(-fides-, from --sphidei--, gut; also -barbitus-, --barbitos--),
was not like the pipe indigenous in Latium, and was always regarded
there as an instrument of foreign origin; but the early period at
which it gained a footing is demonstrated partly by the barbarous
mutilation of its Greek name, partly by its being employed even in
ritual.(10) That some of the legendary stores of the Greeks during
this period found their way into Latium, is shown by the ready
reception of Greek works of sculpture with their representations
based so thoroughly upon the poetical treasures of the nation; and
the old Latin barbarous conversions of Persephone into Prosepna,
Bellerophontes into Melerpanta, Kyklops into Cocles, Laomedon into
Alumentus, Ganymedes into Catamitus, Neilos into Melus, Semele into
Stimula, enable us to perceive at how remote a period such stories
had been heard and repeated by the Latins. Lastly and especially,
the Roman chief festival or festival of the city (-ludi maximi-,
-Romani-) must in all probability have owed, if not its origin,
at any rate its later arrangements to Greek influence. It was an
extraordinary thanksgiving festival celebrated in honour of the
Capitoline Jupiter and the gods dwelling along with him, ordinarily
in pursuance of a vow made by the general before battle, and
therefore usually observed on the return home of the burgess-force
in autumn. A festal procession proceeded toward the Circus staked
off between the Palatine and Aventine, and furnished with an arena
and places for spectators; in front the whole boys of Rome, arranged
according to the divisions of the burgess-force, on horseback and
on foot; then the champions and the groups of dancers which we have
described above, each with their own music; thereafter the servants
of the gods with vessels of frankincense and other sacred utensils;
lastly the biers with the images of the gods themselves. The
spectacle itself was the counterpart of war as it was waged in
primitive times, a contest on chariots, on horseback, and on foot.
First there ran the war-chariots, each of which carried in Homeric
fashion a charioteer and a combatant; then the combatants who had
leaped off; then the horsemen, each of whom appeared after the Roman
style of fighting with a horse which he rode and another led by the
hand (-desultor-); lastly, the champions on foot, naked to the girdle
round their loins, measured their powers in racing, wrestling, and
boxing. In each species of contest there was but one competition,
and that between not more than two competitors. A chaplet rewarded
the victor, and the honour in which the simple branch which formed
the wreath was held is shown by the law permitting it to be laid
on the bier of the victor when he died. The festival thus lasted
only one day, and the competitions probably still left sufficient
time on that day for the carnival proper, at which the groups of
dancers may have displayed their art and above all exhibited their
farces; and doubtless other representations also, such as competitions
in juvenile horsemanship, found a place.(11) The honours won in
real war also played their part in this festival; the brave warrior
exhibited on this day the equipments of the antagonist whom he had
slain, and was decorated with a chaplet by the grateful community
just as was the victor in the competition.
Such was the nature of the Roman festival of victory or city-festival;
and the other public festivities of Rome may be conceived to
have been of a similar character, although less ample in point of
resources. At the celebration of a public funeral dancers regularly
bore a part, and along with them, if there was to be any further
exhibition, horse-racers; in that case the burgesses were specially
invited beforehand to the funeral by the public crier.
But this city-festival, so intimately bound up with the manners
and exercises of the Romans, coincides in all essentials with the
Hellenic national festivals: more especially in the fundamental
idea of combining a religious solemnity and a competition in warlike
sports; in the selection of the several exercises, which at the
Olympic festival, according to Pindar's testimony, consisted from
the first in running, wrestling, boxing, chariot-racing, and throwing
the spear and stone; in the nature of the prize of victory, which
in Rome as well as in the Greek national festivals was a chaplet,
and in the one case as well as in the other was assigned not to the
charioteer, but to the owner of the team; and lastly in introducing
the feats and rewards of general patriotism in connection with
the general national festival. This agreement cannot have been
accidental, but must have been either a remnant of the primitive
connection between the peoples, or a result of the earliest
international intercourse; and the probabilities preponderate in
favour of the latter hypothesis. The city-festival, in the form
in which we are acquainted with it, was not one of the oldest
institutions of Rome, for the Circus itself was only laid out in the
later regal period;(12) and just as the reform of the constitution
then took place under Greek influence,(13) the city-festival may
have been at the same time so far transformed as to combine Greek
races with, and eventually to a certain extent to substitute them
for, an older mode of amusement--the "leap" (-triumpus-,(14)), and
possibly swinging, which was a primitive Italian custom and long
continued in use at the festival on the Alban mount. Moreover,
while there is some trace of the use of the war-chariot in actual
warfare in Hellas, no such trace exists in Latium. Lastly, the
Greek term --stadion-- (Doric --spadion--) was at a very early period
transferred to the Latin language, retaining its signification,
as -spatium-; and there exists even an express statement that the
Romans derived their horse and chariot races from the people of
Thurii, although, it is true, another account derives them from
Etruria. It thus appears that, in addition to the impulses imparted
by the Hellenes in music and poetry, the Romans were indebted to
them for the fruitful idea of gymnastic competitions.
Character of Poetry and of Education in Latium
Thus there not only existed in Latium the same fundamental elements
out of which Hellenic culture and art grew, but Hellenic culture
and art themselves exercised a powerful influence over Latium in
very early times. Not only did the Latins possess the elements
of gymnastic training, in so far as the Roman boy learned like
every farmer's son to manage horses and waggon and to handle the
hunting-spear, and as in Rome every burgess was at the same time
a soldier; but the art of dancing was from the first an object
of public care, and a powerful impulse was further given to such
culture at an early period by the introduction of the Hellenic
games. The lyrical poetry and tragedy of Hellas grew out of songs
similar to the festal lays of Rome; the ancestral lay contained the
germs of epos, the masked farce the germs of comedy; and in this
field also Grecian influences were not wanting.
In such circumstances it is the more remarkable that these germs
either did not spring up at all, or were soon arrested in their
growth. The bodily training of the Latin youth continued to be
solid and substantial, but far removed from the idea of artistic
culture for the body, such as was the aim of Hellenic gymnastics.
The public games of the Hellenes when introduced into Italy, changed
not so much their formal rules as their essential character. While
they were intended to be competitions of burgesses and beyond doubt
were so at first in Rome, they became contests of professional
riders and professional boxers, and, while the proof of free and
Hellenic descent formed the first condition for participating in
the Greek festal games, those of Rome soon passed into the hands
of freedmen and foreigners and even of persons not free at all.
Consequently the circle of fellow-competitors became converted into
a public of spectators, and the chaplet of the victorious champion,
which has been with justice called the badge of Hellas, was afterwards
hardly ever mentioned in Latium.
A similar fate befel poetry and her sisters. The Greeks and Germans
alone possess a fountain of song that wells up spontaneously; from
the golden vase of the Muses only a few drops have fallen on the
green soil of Italy. There was no formation of legend in the strict
sense there. The Italian gods were abstractions and remained such;
they never became elevated into or, as some may prefer to say,
obscured under, a true personal shape. In like manner men, even the
greatest and noblest, remained in the view of the Italian without
exception mortal, and were not, as in the longing recollection
and affectionately cherished tradition of Greece, elevated in the
conception of the multitude into god-like heroes. But above all
no development of national poetry took place in Latium. It is
the deepest and noblest effect of the fine arts and above all of
poetry, that they break down the barriers of civil communities and
create out of tribes a nation and out of the nations a world. As
in the present day by means of our cosmopolitan literature the
distinctions of civilized nations are done away, so Greek poetic
art transformed the narrow and egoistic sense of tribal relationship
into the consciousness of Hellenic nationality, and this again
into the consciousness of a common humanity. But in Latium nothing
similar occurred. There might be poets in Alba and in Rome, but there
arose no Latin epos, nor even--what were still more conceivable--a
catechism for the Latin farmer of a kind similar to the "Works and
Days" of Hesiod. The Latin federal festival might well have become
a national festival of the fine arts, like the Olympian and Isthmian
games of the Greeks. A cycle of legends might well have gathered
around the fall of Alba, such as was woven around the conquest of
Ilion, and every community and every noble clan of Latium might
have discovered in it, or imported into it, the story of its own
origin. But neither of these results took place, and Italy remained
without national poetry or art.
The inference which of necessity follows from these facts, that the
development of the fine arts in Latium was rather a shrivelling up
than an expanding into bloom, is confirmed in a manner even now not
to be mistaken by tradition. The beginnings of poetry everywhere,
perhaps, belong rather to women than to men; the spell of incantation
and the chant for the dead pertain pre-eminently to the former,
and not without reason the spirits of song, the Casmenae or Camenae
and the Carmentis of Latium, like the Muses of Hellas, were conceived
as feminine. But the time came in Hellas, when the poet relieved
the songstress and Apollo took his place at the head of the Muses.
In Latium there was no national god of song, and the older Latin
language had no designation for the poet.(15) The power of song
emerging there was out of all proportion weaker, and was rapidly
arrested in its growth. The exercise of the fine arts was there
early restricted, partly to women and children, partly to incorporated
or unincorporated tradesmen. We have already mentioned that funeral
chants were sung by women and banquet-lays by boys; the religious
litanies also were chiefly executed by children. The musicians formed
an incorporated, the dancers and the wailing women (-praeficae-)
unincorporated, trades. While dancing, music, and singing remained
constantly in Greece--as they were originally also in Latium--reputable
employments redounding to the honour of the burgess and of the
community to which he belonged, in Latium the better portion of the
burgesses drew more and more aloof from these vain arts, and that
the more decidedly, in proportion as art came to be more publicly
exhibited and more thoroughly penetrated by the quickening impulses
derived from other lands. The use of the native pipe was sanctioned,
but the lyre remained despised; and while the national amusement of
masks was allowed, the foreign amusements of the -palaestra- were
not only regarded with indifference, but esteemed disgraceful. While
the fine arts in Greece became more and more the common property of
the Hellenes individually and collectively and thereby became the
means of developing a universal culture, they gradually disappeared
in Latium from the thoughts and feelings of the people; and, as
they degenerated into utterly insignificant handicrafts, the idea
of a general national culture to be communicated to youth never
suggested itself at all. The education of youth remained entirely
confined within the limits of the narrowest domesticity. The boy
never left his father's side, and accompanied him not only to the
field with the plough and the sickle, but also to the house of
a friend or to the council-hall, when his father was invited as a
guest or summoned to the senate. This domestic education was well
adapted to preserve man wholly for the household and wholly for
the state. The permanent intercommunion of life between father
and son, and the mutual reverence felt by adolescence for ripened
manhood and by the mature man for the innocence of youth, lay at the
root of the steadfastness of the domestic and political traditions,
of the closeness of the family bond, and in general of the grave
earnestness (-gravitas-) and character of moral worth in Roman life.
This mode of educating youth was in truth one of those institutions
of homely and almost unconscious wisdom, which are as simple as
they are profound. But amidst the admiration which it awakens we
may not overlook the fact that it could only be carried out, and
was only carried out, by the sacrifice of true individual culture
and by a complete renunciation of the equally charming and perilous
gifts of the Muses.
Dance, Music, and Song among the Sabellians and Etruscans
Regarding the development of the fine arts among the Etruscans
and Sabellians our knowledge is little better than none.(16) We
can only notice the fact that in Etruria the dancers (-histri-,
-histriones-) and the pipe-players (-subulones-) early made a trade
of their art, probably earlier even than in Rome, and exhibited
themselves in public not only at home, but also in Rome for small
remuneration and less honour. It is a circumstance more remarkable
that at the Etruscan national festival, in the exhibition of which
the whole twelve cities were represented by a federal priest, games
were given like those of the Roman city-festival; we are, however,
no longer in a position to answer the question which it suggests,
how far the Etruscans were more successful than the Latins in
attaining a national form of fine art beyond that of the individual
communities. On the other hand a foundation probably was laid in
Etruria, even in early times, for that insipid accumulation of learned
lumber, particularly of a theological and astrological nature, by
virtue of which afterwards, when amidst the general decay antiquarian
dilettantism began to flourish, the Tuscans divided with the Jews,
Chaldeans, and Egyptians the honour of being admired as primitive
sources of divine wisdom. We know still less, if possible, of
Sabellian art; but that of course by no means warrants the inference
that it was inferior to that of the neighbouring stocks. On the
contrary, it may be conjectured from what we otherwise know of
the character of the three chief races of Italy, that in artistic
gifts the Samnites approached nearest to the Hellenes and the
Etruscans were farthest removed from them; and a sort of confirmation
of this hypothesis is furnished by the fact, that the most gifted
and most original of the Roman poets, such as Naevius, Ennius,
Lucilius, and Horace, belonged to the Samnite lands, whereas
Etruria has almost no representatives in Roman literature except
the Arretine Maecenas, the most insufferable of all heart-withered
and affected(17) court-poets, and the Volaterran Persius, the true
ideal of a conceited and languid, poetry-smitten, youth.
Earliest Italian Architecture
The elements of architecture were, as has been already indicated,
a primitive common possession of the stocks. The dwelling-house
constitutes the first attempt of structural art; and it was the
same among Greeks and Italians. Built of wood, and covered with a
pointed roof of straw or shingles it formed a square dwelling-chamber,
which let out the smoke and let in the light by an opening in the
roof corresponding with a hole for carrying off the rain in the
ground (-cavum aedium-). Under this "black roof" (-atrium-) the
meals were prepared and consumed; there the household gods were
worshipped, and the marriage bed and the bier were set out; there
the husband received his guests, and the wife sat spinning amid the
circle of her maidens. The house had no porch, unless we take as
such the uncovered space between the house door and the street,
which obtained its name -vestibulum-, i. e. dressing-place, from
the circumstance that the Romans were in the habit of going about
within doors in their tunics, and only wrapped the toga around
them when they went abroad. There was, moreover, no division of
apartments except that sleeping and store closets might be provided
around the dwelling-room; and still less were there stairs, or
stories placed one above another.
Earliest Hellenic Influence
Whether, or to what extent, a national Italian architecture arose
o ut of these beginnings can scarcely be determined, for in this
field Greek influence, even in the earliest times, had a very
powerful effect and almost wholly overgrew such national attempts
as possibly had preceded it. The very oldest Italian architecture
with which we are acquainted is not much less under the influence
of that of Greece than the architecture of the Augustan age. The
primitive tombs of Caere and Alsium, and probably the oldest one
also of those recently discovered at Praeneste, have been, exactly
like the --thesauroi--of Orchomenos and Mycenae, roofed over with
courses of stone placed one above another, gradually overlapping,
and closed by a large stone cover. A very ancient building at
the city wall of Tusculum was roofed in the same way, and so was
originally the well-house (-tullianum-) at the foot of the Capitol,
till the top was pulled down to make room for another building.
The gates constructed on the same system are entirely similar in
Arpinum and in Mycenae. The tunnel which drains the Alban lake(18)
presents the greatest resemblance to that of lake Copais. What are
called Cyclopean ring-walls frequently occur in Italy, especially
in Etruria, Umbria, Latium, and Sabina, and decidedly belong in
point of design to the most ancient buildings of Italy, although
the greater portion of those now extant were probably not executed
till a much later age, several of them certainly not till the
seventh century of the city. They are, just like those of Greece,
sometimes quite roughly formed of large unwrought blocks of rock
with smaller stones inserted between them, sometimes disposed
in square horizontal courses,(19) sometimes composed of polygonal
dressed blocks fitting into each other. The selection of one or
other of these systems was doubtless ordinarily determined by the
material, and accordingly the polygonal masonry does not occur in
Rome, where in the most ancient times tufo alone was employed for
building. The resemblance in the case of the two former and simpler
styles may perhaps be traceable to the similarity of the materials
employed and of the object in view in building; but it can hardly
be deemed accidental that the artistic polygonal wall-masonry, and
the gate with the path leading up to it universally bending to the
left and so exposing the unshielded right side of the assailant to
the defenders, belong to the Italian fortresses as well as to the
Greek. The facts are significant that in that portion of Italy
which was not reduced to subjection by the Hellenes but yet was
in lively intercourse with them, the true polygonal masonry was at
home, and it is found in Etruria only at Pyrgi and at the towns,
not very far distant from it, of Cosa and Saturnia; as the design
of the walls of Pyrgi, especially when we take into account the
significant name ("towers"), may just as certainly be ascribed to
the Greeks as that of the walls of Tiryns, in them most probably
there still stands before our eyes one of the models from which
the Italians learned how to build their walls. The temple in fine,
which in the period of the empire was called the Tuscanic and was
regarded as a kind of style co-ordinate with the various Greek
temple-structures, not only generally resembled the Greek temple
in being an enclosed space (-cello-) usually quadrangular, over
which walls and columns raised aloft a sloping roof, but was also
in details, especially in the column itself and its architectural
features, thoroughly dependent on the Greek system. It is in accordance
with all these facts probable, as it is credible of itself, that
Italian architecture previous to its contact with the Hellenes was
confined to wooden huts, abattis, and mounds of earth and stones,
and that construction in stone was only adopted in consequence of
the example and the better tools of the Greeks. It is scarcely
to be doubted that the Italians first learned from them the use of
iron, and derived from them the preparation of mortar (-cal[e]x-,
-calecare-, from --chaliz--), the machine (-machina-, --meichanei--),
the measuring-rod (-groma-, a corruption from --gnomon--, --gnoma--),
and the artificial latticework (-clathri-, --kleithron--). Accordingly
we can scarcely speak of an architecture peculiarly Italian. Yet
in the woodwork of the Italian dwelling-house--alongside of
alterations produced by Greek influence--various peculiarities may
have been retained or even for the first time developed, and these
again may have exercised a reflex influence on the building of
the Italian temples. The architectural development of the house
proceeded in Italy from the Etruscans. The Latin and even the
Sabellian still adhered to the hereditary wooden hut and to the
good old custom of assigning to the god or spirit not a consecrated
dwelling, but only a consecrated space, while the Etruscan had
already begun artistically to transform his dwelling-house, and to
erect after the model of the dwelling-house of man a temple also
for the god and a sepulchral chamber for the spirit. That the
advance to such luxurious structures in Latium first took place
under Etruscan influence, is proved by the designation of the
oldest style of temple architecture and of the oldest style of house
architecture respectively as Tuscanic.(20) As concerns the character
of this transference, the Grecian temple probably imitated the
general outlines of the tent or dwelling-house; but it was essentially
built of hewn stone and covered with tiles, and the nature of the
stone and the baked clay suggested to the Greek the laws of necessity
and beauty. The Etruscan on the other hand remained a stranger to
the strict Greek distinction between the dwelling of man necessarily
erected of wood and the dwelling of the gods necessarily formed
of stone. The peculiar characteristics of the Tuscan temple--the
outline approaching nearer to a square, the higher gable, the
greater breadth of the intervals between the columns, above all,
the increased inclination of the roof and the singular projection
of the roof-corbels beyond the supporting columns--all arose out
of the greater approximation of the temple to the dwelling-house,
and out of the peculiarities of wooden architecture.
Plastic Art in Italy
The plastic and delineative arts are more recent than architecture;
the house must be built before any attempt is made to decorate
gable and walls. It is not probable that these arts really gained
a place in Italy during the regal period of Rome; it was only
in Etruria, where commerce and piracy early gave rise to a great
concentration of riches, that art or handicraft--if the term be
preferred--obtained a footing in the earliest times. Greek art,
when it acted on Etruria, was still, as its copy shows, at a very
primitive stage, and the Etruscans may have learned from the Greeks
the art of working in clay and metal at a period not much later than
that at which they borrowed from them the alphabet. The silver
coins of Populonia, almost the only works that can be with any
precision assigned to this period, give no very high idea of Etruscan
artistic skill as it then stood; yet the best of the Etruscan works
in bronze, to which the later critics of art assigned so high a
place, may have belonged to this primitive age; and the Etruscan
terra-cottas also cannot have been altogether despicable, for the
oldest works in baked clay placed in the Roman temples--the statue
of the Capitoline Jupiter, and the four-horse chariot on the roof
of his temple--were executed in Veii, and the large ornaments of a
similar kind placed on the roofs of temples passed generally among
the later Romans under the name of "Tuscanic works."
On the other hand, among the Italians--not among the Sabellian
stocks merely, but even among the Latins--native sculpture and
design were at this period only coming into existence. The most
considerable works of art appear to have been executed abroad.
We have just mentioned the statues of clay alleged to have been
executed in Veii; and very recent excavations have shown that works
in bronze made in Etruria, and furnished with Etruscan inscriptions,
circulated in Praeneste at least, if not generally throughout
Latium. The statue of Diana in the Romano-Latin federal temple on
the Aventine, which was considered the oldest statue of a divinity
in Rome,(21) exactly resembled the Massiliot statue of the Ephesian
Artemis, and was perhaps manufactured in Velia or Massilia. The
guilds, which from ancient times existed in Rome, of potters,
coppersmiths, and goldsmiths,(22) are almost the only proofs of
the existence of native sculpture and design there; respecting the
position of their art it is no longer possible to gain any clear
idea.
Artistic Relations and Endowments of the Etruscans and Italians
If we endeavour to obtain historical results from the archives of
the tradition and practice of primitive art, it is in the first place
manifest that Italian art, like the Italian measures and Italian
writing, developed itself not under Phoenician, but exclusively
under Hellenic influence. There is not a single one of the aspects
of Italian art which has not found its definite model in the art
of ancient Greece; and, so far, the legend is fully warranted which
traces the manufacture of painted clay figures, beyond doubt the
most ancient form of art in Italy, to the three Greek artists,
the "moulder," "fitter," and "draughtsman," Eucheir, Diopos, and
Eugrammos, although it is more than doubtful whether this art came
directly from Corinth or came directly to Tarquinii. There is
as little trace of any immediate imitation of oriental models as
there is of an independently-developed form of art. The Etruscan
lapidaries adhered to the form of the beetle or -scarabaeus-, which
was originally Egyptian; but --scarabaei-- were also used as models
for carving in Greece in very early times (e. g. such a beetle-stone,
with a very ancient Greek inscription, has been found in Aegina),
and therefore they may very well have come to the Etruscans through
the Greeks. The Italians may have bought from the Phoenician; they
learned only from the Greek.
To the further question, from what Greek stock the Etruscans in
the first instance received their art-models, a categorical answer
cannot be given; yet relations of a remarkable kind subsist between
the Etruscan and the oldest Attic art. The three forms of art, which
were practised in Etruria at least in after times very extensively,
but in Greece only to an extent very limited, tomb-painting,
mirror-designing, and graving on stone, have been hitherto met with
on Grecian soil only in Athens and Aegina. The Tuscan temple does
not correspond exactly either to the Doric or to the Ionic; but in
the more important points of distinction, in the course of columns
carried round the -cella-, as well as in the placing of a separate
pedestal under each particular column, the Etruscan style follows
the more recent Ionic; and it is this same Iono-Attic style of
building still pervaded by a Doric element, which in its general
design stands nearest of all the Greek styles to the Tuscan. In
the case of Latium there is an almost total absence of any certain
traces of intercourse bearing on the history of art. If it was--as
is indeed almost self-evident--the general relations of traffic
and intercourse that determined also the introduction of models
in art, it may be assumed with certainty that the Campanian and
Sicilian Hellenes were the instructors of Latium in art, as in
the alphabet; and the analogy between the Aventine Diana and the
Ephesian Artemis is at least not inconsistent with such an hypothesis.
Of course the older Etruscan art also served as a model for Latium.
As to the Sabellian tribes, if Greek architectural and plastic art
reached them at all, it must, like the Greek alphabet, have come
to them only through the medium of the more western Italian stocks.
If, in conclusion, we are to form a judgment respecting the artistic
endowments of the different Italian nations, we already at this
stage perceive--what becomes indeed far more obvious in the later
stages of the history of art--that while the Etruscans attained to
the practice of art at an earlier period and produced more massive
and rich workmanship, their works are inferior to those of the
Latins and Sabellians in appropriateness and utility no less than
in spirit and beauty. This certainly is apparent, in the case of
our present epoch, only in architecture. The polygonal wall-masonry,
as appropriate to its object as it was beautiful, was frequent in
Latium and in the inland country behind it; while in Etruria it was
rare, and not even the walls of Caere are constructed of polygonal
blocks. Even in the religious prominence--remarkable also as
respects the history of art--assigned to the arch(23) and to the
bridge(24) in Latium, we may be allowed to perceive, as it were,
an anticipation of the future aqueducts and consular highways of
Rome. On the other hand, the Etruscans repeated, and at the same
time corrupted, the ornamental architecture of the Greeks: for
while they transferred the laws established for building in stone
to architecture in wood, they displayed no thorough skill of
adaptation, and by the lowness of their roof and the wide intervals
between their columns gave to their temples, to use the language
of an ancient architect, a "heavy, mean, straggling, and clumsy
appearance." The Latins found in the rich stores of Greek art
but very little that was congenial to their thoroughly realistic
tastes; but what they did adopt they appropriated truly and
heartily as their own, and in the development of the polygonal
wall-architecture perhaps excelled their instructors. Etruscan art
is a remarkable evidence of accomplishments mechanically acquired
and mechanically retained, but it is, as little as the Chinese, an
evidence even of genial receptivity. As scholars have long since
desisted from the attempt to derive Greek art from that of the
Etruscans, so they must, with whatever reluctance, make up their
minds to transfer the Etruscans from the first to the lowest place
in the history of Italian art.
Notes for Book I Chapter XV
1. I. XII. Priests
2. I. XIII. Handicrafts
3. Thus Cato the Elder (de R. R. 160) gives as potent against sprains
the formula: -hauat hauat hauat ista pista sista damia bodannaustra-,
which was presumably quite as obscure to its inventor as it is to
us. Of course, along with these there were also formulae of words;
e. g. it was a remedy for gout, to think, while fasting, on some
other person, and thrice nine times to utter the words, touching
the earth at the same time and spitting:--"I think of thee, mend
my feet. Let the earth receive the ill, let health with me dwell"
(-terra pestem teneto, salus hie maneto-. Varro de R. R. i. 2,
27).
4. Each of the first five lines was repeated thrice, and the call
at the close five times. Various points in the interpretation are
uncertain, particularly as respects the third line. --The three
inscriptions of the clay vase from the Quirinal (p. 277, note)
run thus: -iove sat deiuosqoi med mitat nei ted endo gosmis uirgo
sied--asted noisi ope toilesiai pakariuois--duenos med faked
(=bonus me fecit) enmanom einom dze noine (probably=die noni) med
malo statod.-Only individual words admit of being understood with
certainty; it is especially noteworthy that forms, which we have
hitherto known only as Umbrian and Oscan, like the adjective -pacer-
and the particle -einom with the value of -et, here probably meet
us withal as old-Latin.
5. I. II. Art
6. The name probably denotes nothing but "the chant-measure,"
inasmuch as the -satura- was originally the chant sung at the
carnival (II. Art). The god of sowing, -Saeturnus- or -Saiturnus-,
afterwards -Saturnus-, received his name from the same root; his
feast, the Saturnalia, was certainly a sort of carnival, and it is
possible that the farces were originally exhibited chiefly at this
feast. But there are no proofs of a relation between the Satura
and the Saturnalia, and it may be presumed that the immediate
association of the -versus saturnius- with the god Saturn, and the
lengthening of the first syllable in connection with that view,
belong only to later times.
7. I. XII. Foreign Worships
8. I. XIV. Introduction of Hellenic Alphabets into Italy
9. The statement that "formerly the Roman boys were trained in
Etruscan culture, as they were in later times in Greek" (Liv. ix.
36), is quite irreconcilable with the original character of the
Roman training of youth, and it is not easy to see what the Roman
boys could have learned in Etruria. Even the most zealous modern
partizans of Tages-worship will not maintain that the study of the
Etruscan language played such a part in Rome then as the learning
of French does now with us; that a non-Etruscan should understand
anything of the art of the Etruscan -haruspices- was considered,
even by those who availed themselves of that art, to be a disgrace
or rather an impossibility (Muller, Etr. ii. 4). Perhaps the
statement was concocted by the Etruscizing antiquaries of the last
age of the republic out of stories of the older annals, aiming
at a causal explanation of facts, such as that which makes Mucius
Scaevola learn Etruscan when a child for the sake of his conversation
with Porsena (Dionysius, v. 28; Plutarch, Poplicola, 17; comp.
Dionysius, iii. 70). But there was at any rate an epoch when the
dominion of Rome over Italy demanded a certain knowledge of the
language of the country on the part of Romans of rank.
10. The employment of the lyre in ritual is attested by Cicero
de Orat. iii. 51, 197; Tusc. iv. 2, 4; Dionysius, vii. 72; Appian,
Pun. 66; and the inscription in Orelli, 2448, comp. 1803. It
was likewise used at the -neniae- (Varro ap. Nonium, v. -nenia-
and -praeficae-). But playing on the lyre remained none the less
unbecoming (Scipio ap. Macrob. Sat. ii. 10, et al.). The prohibition
of music in 639 exempted only the "Latin player on the pipe along
with the singer," not the player on the lyre, and the guests at meals
sang only to the pipe (Cato in Cic. Tusc. i. 2, 3; iv. 2, 3; Varro
ap. Nonium, v. -assa voce-; Horace, Carm. iv. 15, 30). Quintilian,
who asserts the reverse (Inst. i. 10, 20), has inaccurately
transferred to private banquets what Cicero (de Orat. iii. 51)
states in reference to the feasts of the gods.
11. The city festival can have only lasted at first for a single
day, for in the sixth century it still consisted of four days of
scenic and one day of Circensian sports (Ritschl, Parerga, i. 313)
and it is well known that the scenic amusements were only a subsequent
addition. That in each kind of contest there was originally
only one competition, follows from Livy, xliv. 9; the running
of five-and-twenty pairs of chariots in succession on one day was
a subsequent innovation (Varro ap. Serv. Georg. iii. 18). That
only two chariots--and likewise beyond doubt only two horsemen
and two wrestlers--strove for the prize, may be inferred from the
circumstance, that at all periods in the Roman chariot-races only
as many chariots competed as there were so-called factions; and of
these there were originally only two, the white and the red. The
horsemanship-competition of patrician youths which belonged to
the Circensian games, the so-called Troia, was, as is well known,
revived by Caesar; beyond doubt it was connected with the cavalcade
of the boy-militia, which Dionysius mentions (vii. 72).
12. I. VII. Servian Wall
13. I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform
14. I. II. Religion
15. -Vates- probably denoted in the first instance the "leader of
the singing" (for so the -vates- of the Salii must be understood)
and thereafter in its older usage approximated to the Greek
--propheiteis--; it was a word be longing to religious ritual,
and even when subsequently used of the poet, always retained the
accessory idea of a divinely-inspired singer--the priest of the
Muses.
16. We shall show in due time that the Atellanae and Fescenninae
belonged not to Campanian and Etruscan, but to Latin art.
17. Literally "word-crisping," in allusion to the -calamistri
Maecenatis-.
18. I. III. Alba
19. Of this character were the Servian walls. They consisted
partly of a strengthening of the hill-slopes by facing them with
lining-walls as much as 4 metres thick, partly--in the intervals,
above all on the Viminal and Quirinal, where from the Esquiline
to the Colline gate there was an absence of natural defence--of an
earthen mound, which was finished off on the outside by a similar
lining-wall. On these lining-walls rested the breastwork. A trench,
according to trustworthy statements of the ancients 30 feet deep
and 100 feet broad, stretched along in front of the wall, for
which the earth was taken from this same trench.--The breastwork
has nowhere been preserved; of the lining-walls extensive remains
have recently been brought to light. The blocks of tufo composing
them are hewn in longish rectangles, on an average of 60 centimetres
(= 2 Roman feet) in height and breadth, while the length varies
from 70 centimetres to 3 metres, and they are, without application
of mortar, laid together in several rows, alternately with the long
and with the narrow side outermost.
The portion of the Servian wall near the Viminal gate, discovered in
the year 1862 at the Villa Negroni, rests on a foundation of huge
blocks of tufo of 3 to 4 metres in height and breadth, on which was
then raised the outer wall from blocks of the same material and of
the same size as those elsewhere employed in the wall. The earthen
rampart piled up behind appears to have had on the upper surface
a breadth extending about 13 metres or fully 40 Roman feet, and
the whole wall-defence, including the outer wall of freestone, to
have had a breadth of as much as 15 metres or 50 Roman feet. The
portions formed of peperino blocks, which are bound with iron
clamps, have only been added in connection with subsequent labours
of repair.--Essentially similar to the Servian walls are those
discovered in the Vigna Nussiner, on the slope of the Palatine
towards the side of the Capitol, and at other points of the Palatine,
which have been declared by Jordan (Topographic, ii. 173), probably
with reason, to be remnants of the citadel-wall of the Palatine
Rome,
20. -Ratio Tuscanica,: cavum aedium Tuscanicum.-
21. When Varro (ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 31; comp. Plutarch
Num. 8) affirms that the Romans for more than one hundred and
seventy years worshipped the gods without images, he is evidently
thinking of this primitive piece of carving, which, according to
the conventional chronology, was dedicated between 176 and 219, and,
beyond doubt, was the first statue of the gods, the consecration
of which was mentioned in the authorities which Varro had before
him. Comp, above, XIV. Development of Alphabets in Italy.
22. I. XIII. Handicrafts
23. I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods
24. I. XII. Pontifices
End of Book I
TABLE OF CALENDAR EQUIVALENTS--A. U. C vs. B. C.
A.U.C.* B.C. B.C. A.U.C.
-----------------------------------------------------------
000 753 753 000
025 728 750 003
050 703 725 028
075 678 700 053
100 653 675 078
125 628 650 103
150 603 625 128
175 578 600 153
200 553 575 178
225 528 550 203
250 503 525 228
275 478 500 253
300 453 475 278
325 428 450 303
350 303 425 328
375 378 400 353
400 353 375 378
425 328 350 403
450 303 325 428
475 278 300 453
500 253 275 478
525 228 250 503
550 203 225 528
575 178 200 553
600 153 175 578
625 128 150 603
650 103 125 628
675 078 100 653
700 053 075 678
725 028 050 703
750 003 025 728
753 000 000 753
*A. U. C.--Ab Urbe Condi (from the founding of the City of Rome)