ROMANIZATION IN ART
Art shows a rather different picture. Here we reach definite survivals
of Celtic traditions. There flourished in Britain before the Claudian
conquest a vigorous native art, chiefly working in metal and enamel, and
characterized by its love for spiral devices and its fantastic use of
animal forms. This art--La Tène or Late Celtic or whatever it be
styled--was common to all the Celtic lands of Europe just before the
Christian era, but its vestiges are particularly clear in Britain. When
the Romans spread their dominion over the island, it almost wholly
vanished. For that we are not to blame any evil influence of this
particular Empire. All native arts, however beautiful, tend to disappear
before the more even technique and the neater finish of town
manufactures. The process is merely part of the honour which a coherent
civilization enjoys in the eyes of country folk. Disraeli somewhere
describes a Syrian lady preferring the French polish of a western boot
to the jewels of an eastern slipper. With a similar preference the
British Celt abandoned his national art and adopted the Roman provincial
fashion.
He did not abandon it entirely. Little local manufactures of pottery or
fibulae testify to its sporadic survival. Such are the brooches with
Celtic affinities made (as it seems) near Brough (Verterae) in
Westmorland, and the New Forest urns with their curious leaf ornament
(Fig. 14),[1] and above all the Castor ware from the banks of the Nen,
five miles west of Peterborough. We may briefly examine this last
instance.[2] At Castor and Chesterton, on the north and south sides of
the river, were two Romano-British settlements of comfortable houses,
furnished in genuine Roman style. Round them were extensive pottery
works. The ware, or at least the most characteristic of the wares, made
in these works is generally known as Castor or Durobrivian ware. Castor
was not, indeed, its only place of manufacture. It was produced freely
in northern Gaul, and possibly elsewhere in Britain.[3] But Castor is
the best known and best attested manufacturing centre, and the easiest
for us to examine. The ware directly embodies the Celtic tradition.
It is based, indeed, on classical elements, foliated scrolls,
hunting scenes, and occasionally mythological representations (Figs. 15,
16). But it recasts these elements with the vigour of a true art and in
accordance with its special tendencies. Those fantastic animals with
strange out-stretched legs and backturned heads and eager eyes; those
tiny scrolls scattered by way of decoration above or below them; the
rude beading which serves, not ineffectively, for ornament or for
dividing line; the suggestion of returning spirals; the evident delight
of the artist in plant and animal forms and his neglect of the human
figure--all these are Celtic. When we turn to the rarer scenes in which
man is specially prominent--a hunt, or a gladiatorial show, or Hesione
fettered naked to a rock and Hercules saving her from the
monster[4]--the vigour fails (Fig. 17). The artist could not or would
not cope with the human form. His nude figures, Hesione and Hercules,
and his clothed gladiators are not fantastic but grotesque. They retain
traces of Celtic treatment, as in Hesione's hair. But the general
treatment is Roman. The Late Celtic art is here sinking into the general
conventionalism of the Roman provinces.
[Footnote 1: For the New Forest ware see the _Victoria Hist. of
Hampshire_, i. 326, and _Archaeol. Journal_, xxx. 319. The Brough
brooches have been pointed out by Sir A.J. Evans, whose work on Late
Celtic Art is the foundation of all that has since been written on it,
but have not been discussed in detail.]
[Footnote 2: _Victoria Hist. of Northamptonshire_, i. 206-13; Artis,
_Durobrivae of Antoninus_ (fol. 1828).]
[Footnote 3: For the Belgic 'Castor ware' see the Belgian _Bulletin des
commissions royales d'art et d'archéologie_ (passim); H. du Cleuziou,
_Poterie gauloise_ (Paris, 1872), Fig. 173, from Cologne; _Sammlung
Niessen_ (Köln, 1911), plates lxxxvii, lxxxviii; Brongniart, _Traité des
arts céram._, pl. xxix (Ghent and Rheinzabern). M. Salomon Reinach tells
me that the ware is not infrequent in the departments of the valleys of
the Seine, Marne, and Oise. The Colchester gladiator's urn mentioning
the Thirtieth Legion (C.R. Smith, _Coll. Ant._, iv. 82, C. vii. 1335, 3)
may well be of Rhenish manufacture.]
[Footnote 4: This, or the corresponding scene of Perseus and Andromeda,
is a favourite with artists in northern Gaul and Britain. It occurs on
tombstones at Chester (_Grosvenor Museum Catalogue_, No. 138) and Trier
(Hettner, _Die röm. Steindenkmäler zu Trier_, p. 206), and Arlon
(Wiltheim, _Luciliburgensia_, plate 57), and the Igel monument. For
other instances see Roscher's _Lexikon Mythol._, under 'Hesione'.]
[Illustration: FIG. 14. FRAGMENTS OF NEW FOREST POTTERY WITH LEAF
PATTERNS. (_From Archaeologia_).]
[Illustration: Fig. 15. URNS FROM CASTOR, NOW IN PETERBOROUGH MUSEUM.
(P. 41)]
[Illustration: FIG. 16. HUNTING SCENES FROM CASTOR WARE (ARTIS,
DUROBRIVAE). (SEE PAGE 41.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 17. HERCULES RESCUING HESIONE. (_From a piece of
Castor ware found in Northamptonshire._ C.R. Smith, _Coll. Ant._, vol.
iv, Pl. XXIV.)]
A second instance may be cited, this time from sculpture, of important
British work which is Celtic, or at least un-Roman (Frontispiece). The
Spa at Bath (Aquae Sulis) contained a stately temple to Sul or Sulis
Minerva, goddess of the waters. The pediment of this temple, partly
preserved by a lucky accident and unearthed in 1790, was carved with a
trophy of arms--in the centre a round wreathed shield upheld by two
Victories, and below and on either side a helmet, a standard (?), and a
cuirass. It is a classical group, such as occurs on other Roman reliefs.
But its treatment breaks clean away from the classical. The sculptor
placed on the shield a Gorgon's head, as suits alike Minerva and a
shield. But he gave to the Gorgon a beard and moustache, almost in the
manner of a head of Fear, and he wrought its features with a fierce
virile vigour that finds no kin in Greek or Roman art. I need not here
discuss the reasons which may have led him to add the male attributes to
a properly female type. For our present purpose the important fact is
that he could do it. Here is proof that, once at least, the supremacy of
the dominant conventional art of the Empire could be rudely broken
down.[1]
[Footnote 1: For the details of the temple and pediment see _Vict. Hist.
Somerset_, i. 229 foll., and references given there. I have discussed the
artistic problem on pp. 235 and 236.]
A third example, also from sculpture, is supplied by the Corbridge Lion,
found among the ruins of Corstopitum in Northumberland in 1907 (Fig.
18). It is a sculpture in the round showing nearly a life-sized lion
standing above his prey. The scene is common in provincial Roman work,
and not least in Gaul and Britain. Often it is connected with graves,
sometimes (as perhaps here) it served for the ornament of a fountain.
But if the scene is common, the execution of it is not. Artistically,
indeed, the piece is open to criticism. The lion is not the ordinary
beast of nature. His face, the pose of his feet, the curl of his tail
round his hind leg, are all untrue to life. The man who carved him knew
perhaps more of dogs than lions. But he fashioned a living animal.
Fantastic and even grotesque as it is, his work possesses a wholly
unclassical fierceness and vigour, and not a few observers have remarked
when seeing it that it recalls not the Roman world but the Middle
Ages.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Arch. Aeliana_, 1908, p. 205. I owe to Dr. Chalmers
Mitchell a criticism on the truthfulness of the sculpture.]
[Illustration: FIG. 18. THE CORBRIDGE LION. (P. 43.)]
These exceptions to the ruling Roman-provincial culture are probably
commoner in Britain than in the Celtic lands across the Channel. In
northern Gaul we meet no such vigorous semi-barbaric carving as the
Gorgon and the Lion. At Trier or Metz or Arlon or Sens the sculptures
are consistently classical in style and feeling, and the value of this
fact is none the less if (with some writers) we find special
geographical reasons for the occurrence of certain of these
sculptures.[1] Smaller objects tell much the same tale. In particular
the bronze 'fibulae' of Roman Britain are peculiarly British. Their
commonest varieties are derived from Celtic prototypes and hardly occur
abroad. The most striking example of this is supplied by the enamelled
'dragon-brooches'. Both their design (Fig. 19) and their gorgeous
colouring are Celtic in spirit; they occur not seldom in Britain; on the
Continent only four instances have been recorded.[2] Here certainly
Roman Britain is more Celtic than Gallia Belgica or the Rhine Valley.
Yet a complete survey of the brooches used in Roman Britain would show a
large number of types which were equally common in Britain and on the
Continent. Exceptions are always more interesting than rules--even in
grammar. But the exceptions pass and the rules remain. The Castor ware
and the Gorgon's head are exceptions. The rule stands that the material
civilization of Britain was Roman. Except the Gorgon, every worked or
sculptured stone at Bath follows the classical conventions. Except the
Castor and New Forest pottery, all the better earthenware in use in
Britain obeys the same law. The kind that was most generally employed for
all but the meaner purposes, was not Castor but Samian or _terra
sigillata_.[3] This ware is singularly characteristic of
Roman-provincial art. As I have said above, it is copied wholesale from
Italian originals. It is purely imitative and conventional; it reveals
none of that delight in ornament, that spontaneousness in devising
decoration and in working out artistic patterns which can clearly be
traced in Late Celtic work. It is simply classical, in an inferior
degree.
[Footnote 1: Michaelis, Loeschke and others assume an early intercourse
between the Mosel basin and eastern Europe, and thereby explain both a
statue in Pergamene style which was found at Metz and appears to have
been carved there and also the Neumagen sculptures. As all these pieces
were pretty certainly produced in Roman times, the early intercourse
seems an inadequate cause. Moreover, Pergamene work, while rare in
Italy, occurs in Aquitania and Africa, and may have been popular in the
provinces.]
[Footnote 2: I have given a list in _Archaeologia Aeliana_, 1909, p.
420, to which four English and one foreign example have now to be added.
See also Curle, _Newstead_, p. 319, and R.A. Smith, _Proc. Soc. Ant.
Lond._, xxii. 61.]
[Footnote 3: I may record here a protest against the attempts made from
time to time to dispossess the term 'Samian'. Nothing better has been
suggested in its stead, and the word itself has the merit of perfect
lucidity. Of the various substitutes suggested, 'Pseudo-Arretine' is
clumsy, 'Terra Sigillata' is at least as incorrect, and 'Gaulish' covers
only a part of the field (_Proc. Soc. Antiq. Lond._, xxiii. 120).]
[Illustration: FIG. 19. 'DRAGON-BROOCHES' FOUND AT CORBRIDGE (1/1). (P.
44.)]
The contrast between this Romano-British civilization and the native
culture which preceded it can readily be seen if we compare for a moment
a Celtic village and a Romano-British village. Examples of each have
been excavated in the south-west of England, hardly thirty miles apart.
The Celtic village is close to Glastonbury in Somerset. Of itself it is
a small, poor place--just a group of pile dwellings rising out of a
marsh, or (as it may then have been) a lake, and dating from the two
centuries immediately preceding the Christian era.[1] Yet, poor as it
was, its art is distinct. There one recognizes all that general delight
in decoration and that genuine artistic instinct which mark Late Celtic
work, while the technical details of the ornament, as, for example, the
returning spiral, reveal their affinity with the same native fashion. On
the other hand, no trace of classical workmanship or design intrudes.
There has not been found anywhere in the village even a _fibula_ with a
hinge instead of a spring, or of an Italian (as opposed to a Late
Celtic) pattern. Turn now to the Romano-British villages excavated by
General Pitt-Rivers at Woodcuts and Rotherley and Woodyates, eleven
miles south-west of Salisbury, near the Roman road from Old Sarum
(Sorbiodunum) to Dorchester in Dorset.[2] Here you may search in vain
for vestiges of the native art or of that delight in artistic ornament
which characterizes it. Everywhere the monotonous Roman culture meets
the eye. To pass from Glastonbury to Woodcuts is like passing from some
old timbered village of Kent or Sussex to the uniform streets of a
modern city suburb. Life at Woodcuts had, no doubt, its barbaric side.
One writer who has discussed its character with a view to the present
problem[3] comments, with evident distaste, on 'dwellings connected with
pits used as storage rooms, refuse sinks, and burial places' and
'corpses crouching in un-Roman positions'. The first feature is not
without its parallels in modern countries and it was doubtless common in
ancient Italy. The second would be more significant if such skeletons
occupied all or even the majority of the graves in these villages.
Neither feature really mars the broad result, that the material life was
Roman. Perhaps the villagers knew little enough of the Roman
civilization in its higher aspects. Perhaps they did not speak Latin
fluently or habitually. They may well have counted among the less
Romanized of the southern Britons. Yet round them too hung the heavy
inevitable atmosphere of the Roman material civilization.
[Footnote 1: The Glastonbury village was excavated in and after 1892 at
intervals; a full account of the finds is now being issued by Bulleid
and Gray (_The Glastonbury Lake Village_, vol. i, 1911), with a preface
by Dr. R. Munro. The finds themselves are mostly at Glastonbury.]
[Footnote 2: Described in four quarto volumes, _Excavations in Cranborne
Chase, &c._, issued privately by the late General Pitt-Rivers, 1887-98.]
[Footnote 3: Vinogradoff, _Growth of the Manor_, p. 39. A parallel to
the non-Roman burials found by General Pitt-Rivers may be found in the
will of a Lingonian Gaul who died probably in the latter part of the
first century. Apparently he was a Roman citizen, and his will is drawn
in strict Roman fashion. But its last clause orders the burning of all
his hunting apparatus, spears and nets, &c., on his funeral pyre, and
thus betrays the Gaulish habit (Bruns, p. 308, ed. 1909).]
The facts which I have tried to set forth in the preceding paragraphs
seem to me to possess more weight than is always allowed. Some writers,
for instance M. Loth, speak as if the external environment of daily
life, the furniture and decorations and architecture of our houses, or
the clothes and buckles and brooches of our dress, bore no relation to
the feelings and sentiments of those that used them. That is not a
tenable proposition. The external fabric of life is not a negligible
quantity but a real factor. On the one hand, it is hardly credible that
an unromanized folk should adopt so much of Roman things as the British
did, and yet remain uninfluenced. And it is equally incredible that,
while it remained unromanized, it should either care or understand how
to borrow all the externals of Roman life. The truth of this was clear
to Tacitus in the days when the Romanization of Britain was proceeding.
It may be recognized in the east or in Africa to-day. Even among the
civilized nations of the present age the recent growth of stronger
national feelings has been accompanied by a preference for home-products
and home-manufactures and a distaste for foreign surroundings.