grammarian and no mean poet, was reputed the second of Roman orators.
Of that we have little means of judging. Certainly he could quell a
mutiny by a speech, and his Commentaries were not the least wonderful
of his achievements. Professedly they are mere notes for a real
historian--by “historian” the Romans always meant “orator”--to dress
up for literature. They are mere despatches intended to inform the
senate and the world of the progress of his campaigns. They were
written at odd moments in a prodigiously active life. Their style
is so simple and so correct that we cast them as pearls before the
fourth-form schoolboy. Yet they are in reality a triumphant product of
the rhetorical art; so simple, they must be honest; so modest, they
must be candid. You would scarcely think that they are a defence or
a vindication. In the same easy flow of narrative breathless escapes
are concealed. Who remembers from his schooldays Cæsar’s description
of that moment, so pregnant with human destiny, when the eagle first
alighted on our shores in the hands of the gallant centurion of the
Tenth Legion? Cæsar seems more like a Greek than a Roman in his
directness as in his reticence. Fortunately for history Cæsar had
far more natural curiosity than most of the Romans. It is surprising
how little Cicero really tells us of Roman or Cilician life in all
his voluminous correspondence. But Cæsar went out to explore as well
as to conquer. It may even be true that his visit to Britain was,
as he asserts, partly due to curiosity. He notes our little insular
peculiarities--our custom of sharing wives, our habit of keeping the
hare, the hen, and the goose as pets because our religion forbids us
to eat them. He sees the superior civilisation of Kent. He observes
our clothing of skins, our dyeing ourselves blue with woad, our long
hair and moustaches, our horsemen and charioteers, our innumerable
population and crowded buildings, our plenteous store of cattle,
our metals--bronze, iron, and tin. He is equally observant in Gaul
and Germany. The debt that history owes to him for these records is
incalculable.
Lesser lights such as Sallust and Nepos dabbled in history and have
had the good fortune to survive. Livy, though he wrote under Augustus,
is a true Republican in mind and sympathy. His majestic history of
Rome is the work of a rhetorician setting out to extol the glories of
the Republic. Although he sometimes displays a rudimentary critical
instinct in comparing his authorities, his main task was to Latinise
Polybius and to embellish with first-century style the dry annals of
Fabius Pictor and Licinius Macer. It is not the least of our many
grievances against the monks that they allowed so much of Livy to
disappear.
The golden age of classical literature covers this last half-century
of the Republic and the first half-century of the Empire. There is, on
the whole, little trace of division between the general character of
Republican and Imperial letters except that with Augustus the principal
writers are definitely engaged under the Emperor’s banner of reform.
The main characteristic of both is rhetoric and convention. It is to
Alexandria and its state-fostered writing-club that the world owes
convention in literature. The Romans drew their inspiration from Greece
but mainly from Alexandria, and as literature at Rome was now chiefly
in the hands of a clique of nobles it was possible for a classical
style to grow strong there. Cicero and his friends evolved a style, not
only of literature but even of thought, which could pronounce itself
as “urbane,” and all else as barbarian or rustic. Roman literature
of the first centuries before and after Christ was as much under the
domination of epithets like “urbane” and “humane” as was the literature
of the eighteenth century under “elegant” and “ingenious.” Even Livy as
an outsider was suspected of mingling “Patavinity” with his Latinity.
It is the aristocracies of literature, such as the court of Louis XIV.
or of Charles II., or such as the coffee-house cliques of Addison’s
day or the Johnsonian clubs, which create and maintain our periods of
classical convention.
Literature, as we have already seen occasion to remark, since it
works in the most plastic medium, is generally the first of the arts
to develop; and literature is only yet beginning. But then Rome
borrowed her arts wholesale from Greece, and thus her culture has no
true infancy. The burning problem of Roman originality in Art must be
reserved until we reach the Augustan age. For the present we must still
deny the existence of any really spontaneous art growth at Rome during
the Republic. Where native art may be looked for with the highest
probability of finding it is in architecture, portrait-sculpture, and
painting; in architecture, partly because the Romans had a natural
passion for building and partly because their religious and social
habits called for quite distinct types of construction in palaces,
halls, amphitheatres, triumphal arches, _fora_, and other secular
buildings upon which the Greeks had wasted little of their attention;
in portraiture because it was a peculiar custom at Rome to make and
display images of their ancestors, whereas the Greeks in their love
of the ideal had until latterly shrunk from the presentation of
casual human lineaments and still idealised them as far as possible,
and also because the Etruscans, who were the first nurses of Roman
culture, had developed portraiture for themselves; and in painting,
partly owing to the same Etruscan influence and partly because the
Romans, using inferior building materials such as brick, limestone, and
terra-cotta covered with stucco, were naturally drawn to mural painting
for the sake of ornament. But if we look for originality here we are
disappointed. Undoubtedly hundreds of magnificent villas were being run
up all over Italy from Como to Sorrento, but a Roman villa was more
an affair of landscape gardening than of architecture. It consisted
mainly of a series of courts and colonnades sprawling at large over
the ground. The walls were built of coarse tufa or peperino; they were
only just beginning to be incrusted with marble slabs. As a city Rome
was still contemptible--a huddled mass of narrow, tortuous alleys.
Augustus swept away as much of it as he could afford to demolish, and
his historians remark that “he found Rome built of brick and left it
built of marble.” There were of course ancient temples, venerable with
dignity, and no doubt to us they would have seemed beautiful with
the picturesqueness of antiquity. But with Gracchans and Marians and
Clodians rioting at large through the city, many of these venerable
shrines were destroyed by fire. The Roman ruins as seen by the modern
traveller are almost all of Imperial times. The great Temple of Jupiter
on the Capitol was rebuilt four times. The round temple of Vesta was
frequently destroyed and restored. Although for religious reasons the
plan of the original was generally preserved in these rebuildings, the
details were in accordance with the style of the day. Nevertheless the
plans are interesting. The round shrines of Vesta and Mater Matuta[30]
are clearly an architectural development from a round hut constructed
of wood with a thatched roof. Indeed the Temple of Vesta is said to
have been modelled on the hut of Romulus. It was perhaps originally the
king’s house in which the princesses tended the sacred fire. The Temple
of Jupiter Capitolinus also was, if we may trust the coins, built on an
un-Greek plan with three naves instead of a single nave with aisles.
The only two considerable relics of Republican architecture are the
Tabularium and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, both dating from the
period of Sulla. In that period, when Rome had just discovered Greek
culture, when the armies of Sulla and Lucullus came home laden with
Greek spoil, there was a temporary outburst of artistic activity at
Rome. It was, however, entirely in the hands of foreign artists.
In 143, Metellus, the victor of Macedonia, built the first marble
temple at Rome in the Campus Martius. Sulla himself carried off the
huge columns of the unfinished temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens to
adorn the Roman Capitol. The Cyprian Greek Hermodorus was employed
to construct temples and docks. The Romans had indeed their native
principles of building, which from a merely constructive point of view
were in advance of anything that the Greeks had evolved for themselves.
Greek architecture of the best period had been almost exclusively
devoted to the service of religion. Their efforts were almost limited
to the perfecting of the Doric and Ionic temple, and when they had to
build a secular building like the gate of the Acropolis, they were
still content with a mere adaptation of Doric temple to their new
purpose. Their building material was marble, and with their peculiar
artistic discretion the Greeks saw that marble was at its best in
the austere lines of pediment and columns. But the Romans, before
they imported marble, had made a beginning with brick and cement,
which require quite different methods of architecture. In prehistoric
“Servian” days they had discovered or learnt from the Etruscans
the use of the vault and arch, at any rate for tunnels, but it is
characteristic of their artistic poverty that they had made little
architectural use of these important principles. The triumphal arch
seems to have been a Roman invention, and several triumphal arches were
built in republican days, but unfortunately we have no information as
to their style. The Sullan revival of art was purely an importation of
foreign models. In the Temple of Fortuna Virilis built in 78 B.C. we
see how the Romans used their imported architecture.[31] The graceful
Ionic columns support nothing. They are used for ornament as the West
African native uses his European clothes. The Greeks had indeed used
engaged columns, as in the Erechtheum, to complete the design where
there was no space for a free colonnade, but the Romans built them into
their walls for the sake of ornament. This is typical. Culture was to
the Greeks a vital part of their existence, to the Romans it was an
embellishment.
But Roman architecture, having made this effort, had relapsed again
until the days of the Cæsars. There was more destroying than building
in the evil days of Cicero’s prime. The selfish plutocrats were too
busy building their villas to give a thought to the gods’ or the city’s
adornment.
It was much the same with the other arts. Take the coins, for example.
The clumsy copper _As_, with the head of Janus on the obverse and the
prow of a ship on the reverse,[32] had of old weighed 12 ounces. All
through republican history it was gradually shrinking; in 217 B.C. it
was fixed at one ounce, in 89 B.C. at half an ounce. Long before that,
however, silver had taken its place. As we have remarked, silver was
not coined, though no doubt it circulated, at Rome before 268 B.C..
From 217 onwards silver became the real standard of value, and about 80
B.C. the copper coinage ceased altogether for a time. Not only were the
original designs of the “heavy copper” borrowed from Greece, but there
is not the least sign in the Roman coinage of any artistic development
as time progresses. Simply, as Head remarks, “the degree of excellence
attained in any particular district depended upon the closeness of
its relations, direct or indirect, with some Greek city, or at least
with a population imbued with the spirit of Greek art.” There are
coins of Sulla, both silver and gold, doubtless of Greek workmanship,
which display fairly artistic designs.[33] But the coins of Antony
and Cleopatra, interesting as they are historically, and designed, of
course, in the Hellenised East, are much inferior.[33] We notice an
attempt at portraiture, but the striking resemblance between the Roman
triumvir and the Egyptian queen suggests the question which of the pair
was the original.
In sculpture, too, the most ardent supporters of Roman originality can
find little to comfort them in the closing century of the Republic. We
have seen how the victories of Mummius and his successors had created
a taste and a market for Greek works of art. With those of Sulla and
Lucullus immense quantities of loot had crossed the Adriatic, and
Rome began to be what New York is now, the home of connoisseurs and
collectors. As connoisseurs are wont to do, the Roman millionaires
studied commercial values rather than artistic qualities. No doubt in
time their taste improved from the days when Mummius had warned his men
that any of the Greek masterpieces destroyed in transit would have to
be replaced by new ones. But they still went very largely by the names
of the artists: a genuine Praxiteles or Scopas was worth immense sums.
Every villa now required statues for its adornment--Greek originals,
if possible; if not, copies. For the most part they were reckoned
purely as objects of value along with handsome tables, vases, bowls,
and signet-rings. When Cicero buys Greek statues he prefers Muses to
Bacchantes as being more appropriate to his studies. The question of
artistic value scarcely enters his mind. The most famous named sculptor
of this period is the Italian-Greek Pasiteles, who visited Rome about
90 B.C. and there made original statues for Roman temples. Pasiteles,
of course, was of the Hellenic decline. He was a metal-worker by
training, and his work is like that of Cellini, more decorative than
creative. It is jewellery on a large scale. He evolved no new style of
his own, but set himself to copy and elaborate ancient types to meet
the artificial demand for antiquities. Many of the “archaistic” works
in our museums belong to this period of production, and as decoration
many of them are extremely charming. We have other names of the
Pasitelean school, all Greek, such as Stephanus and Menelaus, but there
is very little originality or interest in them. The Venus Genetrix in
the Louvre is undoubtedly a fine statue, and is probably a faithful
copy of the original by Arcesilaus of the first century B.C.[34] But
the face, at any rate, quite visibly goes back to the Greek sculpture
of the fifth century, and perhaps, as has been suggested, to Alcamenes.
It is in the treatment of the transparent drapery that the present
artist shows his skill. Skill there was in abundance in those Greek
chisels of the first century; even the Farnese Hercules of Glycon
and the Medici Venus[35] are astonishing as efforts of chisel-craft,
utterly debased and debasing as they are.
We know from history that portrait statues had long been common at
Rome. The forum was full of them. We saw in an earlier chapter how
the old Etruscans had placed terra-cotta portraits of the deceased
upon their tombs, and how the old Romans preserved wax images of
their forefathers for use at funerals. Most primitive peoples have
an instinctive dread of portraiture as a sort of blasphemy. Perhaps
the early growth of facial portraiture at Rome was helped by the
worship of a man’s _genius_, his luck, his spirit, his guardian
angel. The genius naturally was depicted in the likeness of the man
himself. So the _imagines_ in a Roman atrium were no mere portraits of
defunct ancestors. Rather they were visible presentments of invisible
presences. Unfortunately very few unquestionably genuine examples of
republican portraiture have survived. Portraits of ancient celebrities
were freely constructed at all times, and it is not easy to date them.
We have not at Rome as we have in Greece a clear line of artistic
development which enables the trained archæologist to date any casual
work of art to within half a century almost at a glance. It is now a
question of employing more or less skilful Greeks. It is probable that
most of the portraits already illustrated in this book were executed
under the Cæsars, but they may well go back to earlier if ruder
likenesses, and in any case the portraits are interesting for their
own sake. The portraits of Julius Cæsar, both the white marble bust in
the Vatican Museum[36] and the still more striking example in black
basalt in the Barracco Museum at Rome, are, however, almost certainly
of contemporary or, at the latest, Augustan date, so real and vivid is
the portraiture. There is another very fine black basalt head of Julius
in Berlin,[37] but its authenticity has been questioned. It certainly
corresponds very closely with the profile of the dictator on his
coins.[38] The bust of M. Brutus may also be identified by comparison
with the coins. That of Cicero is probable but not so certain.
This art of realistic portraiture, then, is claimed as the great
contribution of ancient Rome to artistic progress. It yet remains to
be shown that any part of the work was done by native artists. At
present the evidence is all in favour of Greek authorship. But the
Romans may claim the credit of demanding or even inspiring realism.
Roman archæologists, especially those who, like Wickhoff and Mrs.
Strong, are concerned to plead the cause of Roman originality in
art, often seem to assume that the Greeks of the best period could
not express individuality, in fact that the ideal tendency of their
statues, portraits included, is due to convention if not to the sheer
limitations of their craftsmanship. Elsewhere we have seen that much
of the apparent simplicity of Greek work of the best period is really
elaborate self-restraint. All their religious ideas forbade them to
express divinity with any marks of time or place upon face or feature.
So when it came--as it came slowly--to portraying a statesman like
Pericles, or a monarch like Alexander, they deliberately honoured them
by idealising them and smoothing away the accidentals. Thus they
concealed the inordinately long skull of Pericles by depicting him
in a helmet. They could be realistic enough when they chose to be,
but that was never in the adornment of temples except just so far as
to indicate the barbarity of Centaurs or Giants in contrast to the
perfection of the Greek. Myron’s Cow has perished without offspring,
but the slave-boys on the tombstones are realistic enough--to say
nothing of the Ludovisi Reliefs. Realism was no new discovery of the
Romans. On the contrary, so far as it was an innovation it was an act
of indulgence, a breaking down of self-imposed barriers. Even then,
was it inspired by any abstract passion for the naked truth, such as
moved Cromwell to command his portrait-painter to include the warts?
Not entirely. The Romans were a rhetorical, not a realistic people.
I believe that Roman realism in portraiture is chiefly due to the
national custom of preserving the _imagines_ taken from the death-masks
of the illustrious dead. On Greek soil the Greek artists were still
idealising their portraits--witness the fine head of Mithradates on the
coins of Pontus;[39] but when their Roman sitters asked for realism
they gave it--gave it sometimes with the unexpected thoroughness of Mr.
Sargent. Besides coins and statues there are very fine portraits on the
gems of the first century B.C.
Towards painting too we saw that the Romans had inherited some
traditional bent. We hear of Greek painters highly esteemed at Rome in
this period as well as of imported Greek pictures fetching enormous
prices. The Romans loved colour, and their villa walls were commonly
stuccoed and painted, if not incrusted with marble, while their floors
began to be inlaid with pictorial mosaic. But we have little or nothing
of this date to show. It should, however, be noted that the graphic
taste of the Romans together with their habit of treating art as mere
decoration was now leading to a new phase of pictorial sculpture which
will have important effects in the bas-relief work of the Augustan
period. In revenge Italy was now turning out a system of plastic
decoration for vases in the Aretine pottery[40] which was new and full
of possibilities.
On the whole the verdict must go against Rome--at any rate republican
Rome--as regards artistic originality. The Rome of Cicero’s day was
amazingly rich and dreadfully poor. It had a high culture in some
respects, but it was too corrupt, morally and politically, to produce
good work of its own. If there had been any possible rival in the
field, Rome would assuredly have perished in the course of that
distracted century. If she had perished then, what would she have left
to the world? A few second-hand comedies, Lucretius, Catullus, and
Cicero; a small equivalent for all the blood that she had shed, and all
the groans of her provincials.
IV
AUGUSTUS
ultima Cumæi uenit iam carminis ætas;
magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo.
iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna,
iam noua progenies cælo demittitur alto.
VERGIL.
Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue, from which my text is quoted,
is often called the “Messianic Eclogue.” It is a strange poem. In the
midst of a book of pastoral eclogues very closely modelled on the
Idylls of Theocritus, the young poet from Mantua inserts one in which
he invites the Sicilian Muses, that is, the Muses of Theocritus, to
assist him in a loftier strain than usual. His poem is a vision, a
prophecy of a return of the golden age to accompany the birth of a
child. It is not easy to determine what child. The poem was written
for the consulship of Pollio, who had helped Vergil to recover his
paternal farm. Thus it is very probable that the poem was really a
piece of very gross flattery directed to a patron. Nevertheless the
prophecies of peace on earth which it foreshadows chime so strangely
with the Messianic language of Isaiah that the scholars of the Middle
Ages alternatively placed Vergil among the prophets or condemned him
as a wizard. But apart from that approaching event to be witnessed in
an obscure village of the client-princedom of Judæa there was even
in secular history a general expectation of better days to come.
The Virgin Justice did in sober fact return to the Roman world when
Octavian, in 29 B.C., came home to celebrate his triumph over the three
continents.
I make high claims for Octavian[41]--or as he may now be called by
anticipation “Augustus”--in history. Julius Cæsar has usurped the
credit of inventing that wonderful system the Roman Empire. The credit
really belongs to Augustus. Monarchy, indeed, had for two generations
at the least become inevitable at Rome, as everybody, from Catiline to
Cicero, was bound to admit. In the scramble to realise it Julius Cæsar
had won the day and had thereupon proceeded to introduce his conception
of its proper form. He died before his plans were perfected and we
have no means of knowing his inner purpose. But we know that he had
spurned the dignity of the senate, had taken some of the paraphernalia
of royalty and set up his statue alongside of the old kings of Rome.
His plan of a naked despotism had failed, because he had not reckoned
with the tyrannicide sentiment of the Roman nobles. His assassination
was no mere episode or accident. It was impossible to live like an
oriental despot in the republican city without an oriental bodyguard.
Julius Cæsar had failed through pride. When he fell, the whole dreary
round of proscriptions, triumvirate, and civil wars had to begin again.
The inevitable monarchy had to be devised afresh on a different basis:
that was the task of Augustus. He devised it in such a manner that it
lasted in the West for just five centuries and in the East for nearly
fifteen. Indeed it can hardly be said to be totally extinct now in the
twentieth. Judged by results then, the work of Augustus was clearly
a consummate piece of statesmanship. When we consider the methods by
which that result was obtained we shall, I think, esteem Augustus as
the greatest statesman in the history of the world.