to carry with us the light that we have obtained from the study of
its literature. For Augustus and his assistants were attempting
precisely similar ends in both regions. With temples, baths, circuses,
amphitheatres, colonnades, libraries, and statues the new regime was
to flourish its magnificence in the eyes of the world and, above all,
to dazzle the citizens of Rome, fill up the emptiness of their lives,
and make them forget, if it were possible, the magnitude of their loss.
Money was lavished upon this object by the emperor and all his friends,
and the building activity which transformed Rome from a city of brick
into a city of marble must have given work and pay to vast numbers of
the poor. But the magnificence has all perished, as all magnificence
must, and it is left for us by the study of a few ruined monuments, a
few statues and busts, an altar here, a cornice there, to estimate the
spirit of Rome in conformity with its literature.
Roman art supplied much of their inspiration to the artists of the
Renaissance. Michael Angelo and Raphael learnt their art by copying
the antiquities, and much of the Renaissance architecture was direct
imitation of the Augustan age. But with the birth of archæology as a
science in the nineteenth century, scholars became accustomed to leap
straight over the Roman era, or to regard it merely as a phase of the
Hellenistic decline. From that view, undoubtedly erroneous and unjust,
there has latterly been an attempt to escape. Wickhoff and Riegl, whose
foremost interpreter in this country is Mrs. Strong, have argued that
Roman art has an existence _per se_, not only possessing characteristic
excellences of its own, but in many points transcending the limits
of Greek art. To such pioneers we owe a deep debt of gratitude. They
have undoubtedly drawn our attention to real merits and real steps
of progress in the art of the Romans. But on the whole they have
failed, as it seems to an onlooker, to prove their case. Partly it is
in the long run a question of taste. A convinced Romanist like Mrs.
Strong displays for our admiration many works of art which trained
eyes, accustomed to Greek and modern art, often refuse to admire. I
would take as an instance the well-known “Tellus Group,” a slab from
the Augustan Altar of Peace,[49] preserved in the Uffizi Gallery at
Florence. To me it seems a laborious composition, executed with care
and skill, but wholly without inspiration or imagination. It is purely
conventional allegory. How would the designer of an illuminated ticket
for an agricultural exhibition depict Mother Earth? He would design
a group (would he not?) with a tall and richly bosomed lady for his
central figure, he would put two naked babes upon her lap, at her feet
would be a cow and a sheep, while the background would be filled with
flowers and trees. The cornucopia would occupy a prominent position.
If he were asked to fill his space with additional figures, he would
throw in Air and Water, one on each side, designed on the same plan.
There would be little motive in the group, little connection between
the figures. The designer’s aim would be that the spectator in a casual
glance might observe the fitness of it all--Earth sitting between Air
and Water--note it, and pass on. This is just what the Roman artist
has done. He has earned his money. He has carved most skilfully and
diligently, he has introduced all the conventional emblems. He has
drawn his metaphor from stock. I cannot see that he has put any love
or religion or indeed faith of any kind into his work. The only thing
my eye cares to dwell upon is the absurdity of Air, who is riding
(backwards) on a wholly inadequate swan, pretending to form one of a
group with the immovably seated Earth. This then is the first point of
criticism against the Romanists. I have put it as a mere subjective
impression, which involves simply a question of taste. But in reality
it is more. They are failing or have failed to make out their case,
chiefly because the critical world of art-lovers declines to follow
their expressions of enthusiasm, and can give reasons for its refusal.
Secondly, we have a right to ask the apostles of Roman art what they
mean by their claims. How justly may we call works like the Altar of
Peace,[50] or even the Column of Trajan, “Roman Art”? Was any of it
executed by Roman artists? We have just read the true Roman attitude
towards art in Vergil’s scornful _excudent alii_. We may be sure that
the Altar of Peace was executed by Greeks. The only named sculptors
of the period are Greeks. This is indeed admitted, but then the
Roman claim takes one of two forms, (1) that work executed in the
Roman Empire may be called Roman, which is absurd, or (2) that apart
from mere execution there are in the work certain characteristic
innovations which are due to Roman inspiration. The latter claim is
true, to some extent, and important.
Just as Mæcenas “plucked the ear” of the poets, and instructed them
when to sing or when to refrain from singing of kings and battles, so
the patron of art gave instructions to the Greek artists. It is clear
enough what instructions he gave. Like Cromwell he cried “Paint me as
I am, warts and all. Leave your idealism, your perfect profiles, your
serene gods in the tranquillity of Olympus, and depict men with the
living emotions displayed in frown and wrinkle.” That was excellent
advice, no doubt, but he seems to have gone further. He seems, like the
good Dr. Primrose, to have demanded value for his money by insisting
upon so many portraits to the square yard of surface to be decorated.
Is not this the explanation of the crowded figures in the new style
of relief work, as exhibited at Rome from the Altar of Peace to the
Column of Trajan? In the friezes of the Mausoleum, the fourth-century
Greek sculptors had discovered the advantage of free spacing so that
each figure has a value of its own. The florid taste of the millionaire
Attalids of Pergamum had made a reactionary movement in the direction
of crowded and tangled forms. Now these Roman friezes carry the demand
a stage further. In these processions we have a compact mass of faces,
each admirably and no doubt faithfully portrayed, but ruining by their
very numbers the artistic success of the whole. The spectator is not
to admire a composition. As in Frith’s “Derby Day” he is to pick out a
face here and there and cry “That is Agrippa: that is Messalla: that is
Germanicus.” In its essence such a demand is not the mark of a people
with any sense of art. On the contrary it is the measure of their
crudity and Philistinism. Nevertheless this new demand enabled the
versatile Greek genius to win for itself fresh triumphs, especially in
realistic portraiture and narrative relief-work.
Part of the claim which Wickhoff and his followers make for the
originality of Roman art is based upon the belief that the limitations
of Greek art are not self-imposed; for example, that the Greeks did not
know how to express emotion in the plastic arts, that they could not
make realistic portraits, that through ignorance they never perceived
the beauty of a stark corpse, that Pheidias lacked the intelligence
to find a dramatic centre for the Parthenon frieze, and so forth.
Such assumptions as these are easily disproved. Greeks were capable
of realism (witness the Ludovisi reliefs[51]) but they preferred to
idealise. In portraying giants, barbarians, or slaves they could
express transient emotions, but for Greeks and gods in statuary they
deliberately preferred serenity. The Greeks sought to conceal their art
rather than to display it, as we have learnt from the discovery of the
subtle secrets of their architecture, and it is rash to assert of any
principle of craftsmanship that the Greeks did not know it. Many of the
claims of Rome to originality may be refuted by this consideration.
What I believe to be the true statement of the case is this: Greek
art did not come to an end with the death of Praxiteles or the Roman
conquest. Its central impulse passed over from the impoverished
mainland to the still flourishing communities of the East, to Antioch
on the Mæander where the Aphrodite of Melos was produced, to Rhodes
where the Laocoön was carved, to Ephesus, and farther east still, even
into Parthia and possibly India. It was by no means stereotyped but
still producing new forms to meet fresh demands, as for sarcophagi in
Sidon, or for paintings and mosaics in Egypt. In the course of this
period the art of the Greeks was much influenced by the East. The
Romans at first were content to take Greek art as they found it. In the
days of Mummius they were merely like rich transatlantic collectors in
search of beautiful, still more of precious and unique, commodities.
They had no doubt some slaves of their own working in Rome at the
arts and crafts. Some of these would be Greeks of inferior birth and
capacity reproducing old Greek work for the Roman market. But some of
them may well have been Italians, some Etruscans preserving the old
artistic traditions of their race. This “collecting” era lasted down to
the time of Augustus. We have seen it as late as Cicero and Atticus.
There was little demand for new creations in those days. Few temples
were being built. The artists were still scattered about the Levant.
There was little to attract them to Rome.
But when Augustus decided to build a new Rome of marble, founding or
restoring his eighty temples, with arches and theatres innumerable all
over the Empire, there must have been a great influx of artists from
Greece and Asia Minor. Now begins an art to which we may fairly apply
the term Græco-Roman in the sense that it was the work of Greek artists
under oriental influences supplying Roman demands. The new demands
entailed still further artistic developments; some of them, but not
all, to be regarded by those who view the history of art as a whole, as
improvements. One main effect of Roman conditions was that art largely
ceased its service of religion and became devoted to secular purposes.
Thus the limitations of the best Greek art, self-imposed as they were,
now broke down. The effect is seen especially in portraiture, where
the Romans had a tradition of realism resulting from the use of the
death-mask in making wax images of the illustrious deceased. Hence in
the decoration of the great Altar of Peace at Rome, the Greek artists,
who would naturally have produced a frieze of gods or idealised
worshippers, were asked for portraits of the men of the day. I think
it is clear that enormous skill was devoted to the likenesses of men
and very little care to the gods. The composition of the whole was of
little account. A little later the demand for historical reliefs on
arches and columns was met by the development of quite new features in
the art of sculpture, namely, those spatial or tridimensional effects
of perspective which are so remarkable on the Trajan column.[52] This
art seems to have begun in Alexandrian times but Rome may claim the
credit for its development. It was necessary, if sculpture was to do
that for which it was surely never intended--to tell a story. The
Parthenon frieze was religious ornament, the Trajan column is secular
history. When the Romans required ornament they were content with
decoration merely and the artists complied with the wonderful skill
which they had probably learnt in Asia. Never have there been such
exquisite natural designs in wreaths and festoons of flowers and fruit
as in the sculpture of the Augustan age.[53] It is the same with the
art of the goldsmith, as we see in the wonderful discoveries of silver
made at Hildesheim and Bosco Reale[54] or in the great imperial cameos
wrought in sardonyx.[55] There was money and skill in plenty. But what
was lacking was a spirit to animate it.
If we could be sure of our ground in setting down realism as the Roman
contribution to the history of Art, it would be a great achievement
for Rome. Realism is undoubtedly a fine thing though idealism is a
finer. Unfortunately it seems that Hellenic art in the eastern centres
was developing realism, or at least illusionism, for itself on its
own soil. On the whole, in the controversy between the archæologists,
Strzygowski, who claims the East as the inspiring force in Roman days,
seems to have the best of it. The coins of Asia Minor present realistic
portraiture quite distinct from that which was native on Roman
soil. Thus the exquisite festoons of flowers, fruit, and birds, all
botanically and anatomically correct to the last feather or stamen, are
probably the product of Greece and the East. But we may well believe
that the nature of the Roman patron’s demands assisted this movement.
The Roman, if we may judge by Pliny the Roman art-critic, was just the
man to insist that an apple should not resemble a pear or to count the
petals of a poppy. This sort of criticism affords excellent discipline
for the artist. The statues of the period, such as the Venus Genetrix
by Arcesilaus in the Louvre[56] and the Orestes and Electra group by
Stephanus at Naples, are not very interesting works. They are plainly
late-born issues of Greek sculpture, though in the latter there is an
attempt at expression which seems to be derived from the influence of
portraiture. The “Electra,” for example, has the same look in her eyes,
a frowning look as of one standing in strong sunlight, that we see in
the portrait of Agrippa. Portraiture had taught the sculptor of this
day new secrets about the setting of the human eye. They had learnt the
effect produced by deepening the hollow under the brow and by making
the direction of the glance diverge from that of the head and body. But
much of this was a legacy from Scopas. In little things like the hang
of Electra’s robe there is visible degeneration. Here, as in the Tellus
Group, the contour of the bosom is made to support the falling drapery,
an unnatural and very unpleasing effect.
The architecture of the period is distinguished by similar
characteristics. It is distinctly Græco-Roman with much of the subtle
harmony of fine Greek work lost. The temples are, on the whole, the
least interesting part of the work, for they are pale copies of Greek
architecture not always very artistically adapted. A good many of the
ruined monuments of Rome to which the pious traveller now directs
his footsteps date from the Augustan period. Many of the temples of
the Republic were now rebuilt on the old plan with more sumptuous
materials, as, for example, the round shrine of Mater Matuta,[57]
commonly called the Temple of Hercules. Technical innovations
include the debasement of the Doric column by omitting those subtle
flutings which gave it all the grace whereby its strength was saved
from clumsiness, and by erecting it upon a pedestal. But the Romans
preferred the more exuberant Corinthian order with its florid capital
of acanthus foliage, a type which the Greeks had used very sparingly
and seldom externally. Again, the Romans had discovered improved
methods of construction which enabled them to use a wider span in
roofing, but they made no artistic advantage out of this fact. On the
contrary, by dispensing with the _peristyle_ or surrounding colonnade
they rendered the exterior of their temples much less interesting. The
principal surviving relics of Augustan temples are eight columns of
the Temple of Saturn[58] which still stand in the Forum at Rome. The
celebrated Pantheon[59] is now recognised to be a work of Hadrian’s
time though its plan probably repeats that of the temple erected on
the site by Agrippa. But the clearest picture of the ecclesiastical
architecture of the day is to be seen on the reliefs of the Altar of
Peace, which reproduce the appearance of actual temples with almost
photographic exactitude. The finest extant example is undoubtedly the
temple at Nismes, known as the Maison Carrée,[60] a graceful erection
of this period which exhibits the Corinthian style without undue
extravagance.
As the Romans of this day had scarcely any trace of genuine religious
feeling it is not surprising that they had little of their own to
contribute to temple architecture except wealth and magnificence. But
they were naturally devoted to building and that was the favourite
extravagance of the rich. Nothing but a few pavements survives of
all the handsome villas which dotted the hill-sides at Tibur and
Præneste, or lined the coast at Baiæ, Naples, and Surrentum. But there
are several secular buildings of Augustan date in which we can see a
handsome Græco-Roman style of architecture wherein Greek columns and
entablatures were used by Roman architects chiefly as ornament. The
Theatre of Marcellus,[61] built in 13 B.C., still presents considerable
remains, which though much defaced exhibit an appearance of bygone
splendour. The lower story is Doric, the second is Ionic, and the third
which has perished was probably in the Corinthian style. We may judge
its effective appearance from the copy of its elevation which Michael
Angelo produced in his design for the inner court of the Farnese Palace
at Rome.[62] The Renaissance learnt much of its architecture from
Augustan Rome and these very designs may be seen springing up around
us to-day in the banks and town-halls of London. Thus Augustan Rome
holds a supremacy for secular building even greater than Periclean
Athens achieved for temples. Where magnificence and solidity--and it
may be added cheapness--are the principal motives of construction, the
Græco-Roman style of the First Century B.C. is unmatched.
The most gorgeous of the architectural creations of Augustus was,
however, that Temple of Mars the Avenger which he set up in memory
of his triumph over Antony and his punishment of the conspirators.
Round it was a piazza (forum) adorned with imaginary portrait statues
of all the Roman heroes of history with biographical inscriptions
on the bases. In all the Augustan culture we see the impress of the
prince’s own Græco-Roman taste. It was all planned to achieve his
object of dazzling the multitude and yet gaining over to his side the
highest intellect and taste of his day. His own tastes were refined
and fastidious: he hated extravagance and utility was always before
his eyes. “He read the classics in both tongues” says Suetonius,
“principally in order to find salutary precepts and examples for public
and private life. He would copy these out word for word and send them
to his servants or to the governors of armies and provinces or to the
magistrates of the city whenever they required his admonitions. He
used to read whole volumes to the Senate, and often publish them in an
edict.” We learn further that he always prepared his more important
orations most carefully, writing them down and keeping the manuscript
close at hand. This practice he followed even in his discourse with his
wife. Augustan culture has just this quality: it takes immense pains
and succeeds by virtue of them. It lacks a good deal in spontaneity but
it makes up in excellence of technique.
VI
THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE
Ambitionem scriptoris facile auerseris, obtrectatio et liuor pronis
auribus accipiuntur quippe adulationi fœdum crimen seruitutis,
malignitati falsa species libertatis inest.--TACITUS.
In these words, pregnant and terse as ever, Tacitus gives us a key to
the true reading of imperial Roman history. “It is easy,” he says,
“to discount the self-interest of the historian and to reject his
eulogies, but his malicious criticisms are greedily swallowed. For
flattery bears the odious stamp of servility, while malignity wears
the false disguise of independence.” Thus out of his own mouth the
foremost historian of the early Empire gives us the right to read the
literary sources in a spirit favourable to the emperors. So when the
historians describe Tiberius as a bloodthirsty tyrant who hid himself
away in the island of Capri, and there (at the age of seventy!) began
to devote himself to disgusting orgies of lust and cruelty, we shall
prefer to reject that story as absurd, and to regard Tiberius as a
proud and reserved aristocrat who found it impossible to tolerate the
mixture of adulation and spite with which he was treated by the other
nobles of Rome, and withdrew from the capital in order to escape it.
When Gaius (Caligula) is represented as a lunatic, we merely understand
that he was unpopular; when we are told that he made his horse a
consul, we recognise a satirist’s humorous exaggeration of his neglect
of some noble family’s claims to that office; when we read that he
set his army to collect oyster shells on the coast of Normandy, we
only conclude that his surrender of the projected invasion of Britain
was a subject of ridicule in Rome. Claudius is described as a stupid
and clumsy pedant, deformed and inarticulate: in reality he seems to
have been a scholar with a leaning towards antiquarian and republican
traditions. Even in the case of Nero, the savage ferocity with which he
is charged is chiefly due to the fact that his hand lay heavy on the
senators. He was undoubtedly popular with the commons, and his real
offence was to possess more refinement and culture than was considered
proper in a Roman noble, to be too fond of Greeks and art and music.
Nevertheless it is impossible to write history in whitewash, and the
only safe method of dealing with a period like this is to ignore the
personalities on the throne of the Cæsars, and to attempt a broad
treatment of the general tendency of these times.
But by neglecting the gossip and the personalities we do, I fear, run
the risk of missing much of the interest of the period, and perhaps we
lose an important part of the truth. We must not allow ourselves to
be wholly deprived of that impression of purple and splendour which
hangs about the Golden House of Nero, nor to forget the taint of crime
which clings to the palaces of the Cæsars. The latter in particular is
an essential part of imperial history. As we have seen, this Empire
founded on compromise was and remained illegitimate. The succession
was always open to question; there was no law of heredity. This fact
was emphasised by the barrenness of the Roman aristocracy. For a
hundred years no prince had a son to succeed him, so that the palace
was always full of intrigue. Finally, the wickedness of the women is
one of the most sinister features of the time. Though it was, indeed,
no innovation of the Empire, it now gains a terrible significance
in the dynastic conflicts which surrounded the throne. Every one of
the early reigns is stained with murders and fearful crimes in the
palace. No doubt much of this history is false and malicious. For
example, it is by no means likely that Germanicus was poisoned. There
were always scandal-mongers to hint at poison when any member of the
ruling house died of disease. But even with the most liberal discount
for exaggeration, the record is a black one. Let us select two typical
stories, in order to suggest the kind of satanic halo which surrounds
the imperial houses, as the ancient historians depict them.