CONFIRMATIONS OF THE EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT HISTORIANS, DERIVABLE FROM
INDEPENDENT SOURCES.
Most of the principal facts mentioned by ancient historians, as well
as many particulars of less importance, are confirmed by evidence that
is altogether independent, both in its nature, and in the channels
through which it has reached us. In truth, although the narratives of
historians serve to connect and explain the entire mass of information
that has descended to modern times, relative to the nations of
remote antiquity, they are far from being the sole sources of that
information:--perhaps they hardly furnish so much as a half of the
materials of history. These independent sources of information may be
classed under the following heads:--
1. The remains of the _general_ literature of the nations of
antiquity:--their poetry, and their oratory especially, and their
philosophical treatises.
2. Chronological documents or calculations.
3. Facts--geographical and physical, which are unchanged in the lapse
of time.
4. Those institutions, usages, or physical peculiarities of nations,
which have been subjected to little change.
5. The existing monuments of ancient art--paintings, sculptures, gems,
coins, and buildings.
The information derivable from these sources answers two distinct
purposes, namely--in the first place, that of contributing to the
amount of our knowledge of the state of civilization among ancient
nations; and then that of furnishing the means of corroborating or
of correcting the assertions of historians on particular points. It
is obvious that to go through the particulars that are comprehended
under the general heads above-named, or to do so with any degree of
precision, would greatly exceed the limits of this book; indeed, the
object aimed at in it will be sufficiently attained by merely pointing
out, in a few instances, what is the nature, and what is the value of
this sort of corroborative evidence.
1. Corroboratory evidence, derived from books--coming as it does
through similar, if not the very same channels with those through which
we receive the works of historians, and being of the same external
form--is likely to produce less impression on the mind than its real
validity ought to command. And yet, when it comes to be examined in
detail, nothing can be more conclusive than the proof which thus arises
from coincidences of names and allusions, such as are found scattered
through the works of dramatists, orators, poets, and philosophers, with
the more formal statements of contemporary historians. If, for example,
the Greek dramatic writings--those of Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
Aristophanes, and the Orations of Demosthenes, are collated with the
narrations of Thucydides, Xenophon, Diodorus, and Plutarch;--or if
the Epistles and the Orations of Cicero, and the Satires of Horace,
and of Juvenal, are compared with the historical works of Livy, of
Sallust, of Tacitus, and of Dion Cassius, so many points of agreement
present themselves, as must convince every one that these historical
assertions, and these allusions, must have had a common origin in
actual facts.
Yet it is not merely by presenting special coincidences, on particular
points, that the remains of ancient literature confirm the evidence of
historians; but it is also by furnishing such pictures of the people
among whom they were current, as to all points of their political,
religious, and social condition, as consist with the representations
of historians. To exhibit the full force of this sort of evidence, let
it be imagined that the names of men, and of cities, and countries,
having been withdrawn from the works of the classical poets, orators,
and philosophers, it were attempted to associate, as countrymen and
contemporaries, Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, with Cicero, Horace
and Seneca; or Tacitus, Cæsar and Suetonius, with Isocrates, Plato and
Æschylus: every page in the one class of writers, would present some
incongruity with the accounts given of the people by the others. On
the contrary, in perusing the contemporary writers of the same nation,
whatever may be the diversities of their style or subject, we feel
that they were all surrounded by the same objects, and that they were
subjected to the same influences.
2. Those corroborative evidences that are derived from chronological
inscriptions, or from astronomical calculations, have served in some
notable instances to confirm, or to correct, the testimony of ancient
writers, in a very conclusive manner. It should be remembered that
ancient historians, being destitute for the most part of sufficiently
precise chronological information, and being themselves also less
observant of dates than the modern style of historical composition
demands, leave the subject open to many difficulties; and to these
difficulties is added that uncertainty which belongs peculiarly, as
we have before remarked, to whatever relates to numbers, in the text
of ancient authors. It must not however be supposed that ancient
chronology is altogether unfixed; for though it may be impossible now
to determine the precise time of many events, the results of different
lines of calculation are seldom so widely discordant as to be of much
importance in the general outline of history.
3. Those inequalities of the earth’s surface which have undergone
no great change within the historic period, and also the course of
rivers, and the peculiarities of climate, and the vegetable and animal
productions of each country, though they are not absolutely immutable,
have not, even in the lapse of many ages, undergone any such changes
as to perplex us in fixing the identity of ancient and modern names.
There are now open to our observation, the same scenes, and the
same physical appearances which were described, or alluded to, by
historians, twenty centuries ago; and finding, as we do, their accounts
of these permanent objects to accord with present and well-known facts,
we accept such coincidences as a pledge of the general accuracy and
authenticity of the writings in question: for if an historian is proved
to have been careful to obtain correct information on points that were
indirectly connected with his subject, it is but just to believe that
he was at least equally exact in regard to events, and to what belongs
more immediately to his narrative.
We have already adverted to the geographical accuracy of Herodotus,
and have remarked that the descriptions he gives of countries, and of
their productions, are such, for the most part, as to put it beyond
doubt that he had himself seen most of the objects which he describes.
That the Greek historians should be exact in what relates to the
geography and productions of their own narrow soil, is nothing more
than what must be expected. But when we find them accurate also in
their descriptions of regions remote from Greece, and which were very
imperfectly known to their countrymen in general, they furnish a proof
of authenticity that may be extended to cases in which we are obliged
to accept their testimony unsupported by other evidence.
A pertinent instance of this kind is furnished in the case of
Arrian’s history of Alexander’s expedition--his Indian history, and
his description of the shores of the Indian Ocean. The geographical
details which occur in these works are, in general, so exact that
modern travellers find little difficulty in identifying almost every
spot he mentions. This proof of accuracy well supports the claim to the
possession of authentic information which is advanced by the author at
the commencement of his work, where he declares that his history has
been compiled from the memoirs of Ptolemy and of Aristobulus--two of
Alexander’s generals; and that he had collated their assertions on all
points, and had added, from other sources, only such particulars as
seemed to be the most worthy of credit.
Now when Arrian’s history of Alexander’s expedition is compared with
that of Quintus Curtius, on points of geography, it will be found that
the latter writer was either utterly ignorant on the subject, or that
he was quite indifferent as to the correctness of his statements. This
proof therefore of want of diligence, or want of information, detracts
very greatly from the historian’s authority on all points which rest on
his sole testimony. We might say that it is fatal to his credit, in all
such instances. Although an able and attractive writer, Curtius awakens
the reader’s suspicion by the very character of his style, which
betrays his fondness for decoration and enlargement:--this suspicion
is then not a little enhanced when we meet with direct evidence of his
inaccuracy, in matters of fact.
The permanence of the names of places, under many modifications
in the value of vowels or consonants, affords a very curious, as
well as important means of authenticating the assertions of ancient
historians. Innumerable instances might be adduced in which the names
of obscure villages in Asia Minor, Armenia, Persia, Arabia, Palestine,
Egypt, and Nubia, recall to every reader’s recollection the names
occurring in the ancient histories of the same countries. Those remote
names could never have found their way into the pages of the Greek and
Roman historians if they had not sought, or had not carefully employed,
genuine documents in the composition of their works.
In many particulars the statements of the ancient geographers--Strabo,
Ptolemy, Pliny, Stephen of Byzantium, and Pausanias, are at variance
with each other, and with the narratives of contemporary historians;
but in by far the greater number of instances there is nearly as much
accordance as is usually found among modern travellers. And when the
ancient geography, whether collected from geographers or historians,
comes to be collated with the modern--whatever difficulties may here
and there present themselves in the way of a perfect conciliation, no
one can doubt that the former--taken as a whole--is a genuine account
of facts, collected with industry, by actual observation.
4. A similar species of confirmation arises from a comparison of the
descriptions given by ancient historians of the physical peculiarities,
the manners, and the usages of nations, with facts known to attach to
the modern occupants of the same countries. If national manners and
usages are less permanent than the features of the country, or than the
productions of the soil, they are much more so than might be supposed,
when we recollect how many revolutions have swept across the surface
of society in the course of ages. Though man is not absolutely the
creature of the soil that supports him, and though he does not retain
every peculiarity which descends to him from his progenitors, yet
neither is he ever free from some permanent mark of tribe, of climate,
or of locality. Or if, by the development of mind, and the advance of
civilization, his circumstances and his manners undergo, apparently,
a thorough change, yet even then will there remain many lesser
indications of his obsolete condition; and many habits and usages, that
are too minute and trivial to have attracted attention--if they did not
awaken historical recollections, will continue to identify the modern
with the ancient race. Four conquests, and eighteen centuries, have not
wholly obliterated from the English people all traces of their British
ancestors; and in some races, for example--the Egyptian, the Arabian,
the Jewish, and the Scythian, a much more perceptible sameness has been
maintained throughout even a longer course of ages.
Such living monuments of antiquity are not only highly curious in
themselves, but they are very significant in illustration of ancient
history. Yet it must be acknowledged that the materials for this kind
of confirmatory comment are the most abundant where they are of the
least value; and often the scantiest, where they would be the most
prized. For it is among half civilized nations, that manners and
modes of life are permanent; while the advance of intelligence and
refinement produces changes so great as to leave only the faintest
traces of aboriginal characteristics. Thus, in the plains of Asia, and
in the deserts of Africa, we find nations which, as to their physical
peculiarities, their manners and their usages, differ little, if at
all, from the descriptions given of their predecessors on the same soil
by Herodotus, or Strabo. Meanwhile the successive occupants of the
European continent--active, intelligent and free, have passed under all
forms of human life, and therefore have retained few resemblances to
their remote ancestors.
One climate, indeed, necessitates a much greater degree of permanency
in the habits of the people than another. The fervours of the
equatorial regions, and the rigours of the north, subdue man to a
passive conformity with certain modes of life. These extremes of
temperature avail much to vanquish his individual will, to forbid the
caprices of his tastes, and to restrain his invention. But in temperate
climates, almost every mode of life is found to be practicable, and
almost all modes will therefore in turns be practised.
The permanency of manners, even where the most extensive revolutions
have taken place, is strikingly displayed among the modern people of
Greece. The successive generations of six-and-twenty centuries have
passed away since the Iliad and Odyssey were composed; and yet, when
the ancient race, as it is described by Homer, comes to be compared
with the modern people, the points of sameness are very many. Not
only is the language essentially the same; but the modes of thinking
and feeling--the superstitions--the costumes--the habits of the
inhabitants of particular spots have, in a large number of instances,
been very little affected by the lapse of time. If the peculiarities
of the race, as described by Homer, may still be recognised, it is
no wonder if we find, in the present manners of the people, numerous
illustrations of the pictures drawn by the historians of a later
age. The descriptions given by Cæsar and Tacitus of the manners of
the Gauls, Britons, and Germans, are capable of receiving a like
authentication, though not in an equal degree, from usages still
existing among the northern nations of Europe.
5. The existing remains of ancient art would very nearly supply the
materials for a body of history, even if all books had perished. These
relics sometimes serve to establish particular facts, and sometimes
they afford ground from which to deduce general inferences, relative
to the wealth, the power, and the intelligence of the nations to whom
they belonged. In either case the evidence they yield is of the most
conclusive kind; for the solid material is actually in our hands,
and it is before our eyes, and in most cases it can be liable to no
misinterpretation.
So extensive are the inferences that may fairly be derived from these
existing remains, that, as to some ancient nations, we know far more
from _this_ source, than is to be gathered from the entire evidence of
written history: this, at least, is certain, that what is thus learned,
if it be in some respects vague, possesses more of the substantial
quality of knowledge, and much better deserves to be called _history_
than do those bare catalogues of the names of kings, which are often
dignified with the term. A name, or twenty names, unconnected with
general facts--or a date, serving only to bring a mere name into its
proper place in a chronological chart, may indeed impart the semblance
of history, but it affords almost nothing of the substance. What we
gather, for example, from written history, relative to the Assyrian
empire, or to the early kingdoms of Greece, is much less significant
than are the historical inferences relative to the people of Egypt,
which are fairly deducible from the remains of their architecture.
The existing monuments of art, which are available as sources of
historical information, are, 1. buildings and public works; 2.
sculptures and gems; 3. inscriptions and coins; 4. paintings, mosaics,
and vases; and 5. implements and arms.
For the purpose of confirming, or correcting, or illustrating, the
assertions of historians on particular points, recourse must most
often be had to the evidence of inscriptions and coins; and every
one knows that from these sources all the leading facts of Greek
and Roman history may be authenticated. The latter are especially
important, both on account of the information they convey, and of
the mode of its transmission to modern times. No one could call in
question the utility of inscriptions for the illustration of history:
but the student who cannot devote his undivided attention to the
subject, or who has not access to the fullest and best sources of
information, may very probably waste his time upon documents that he
will afterwards discover to be extremely fallacious. In no department
of antiquarian learning have misrepresentations, deceptions, and
errors of inadvertency more abounded. Authors who were long regarded
as unexceptionable authorities are found to deserve little confidence,
and on such points a writer who is not worthy of great confidence, is
worthy of none.
Coins are concise public records. The device they bear is seldom
devoid of some significant allusion to the peculiar pretensions of
the realm or city; the image, corresponding in form and expression
with sculptures or descriptions, fixes the identity of the personage;
and the legend furnishes names, and other specific notices. Coins,
therefore, concentrate several kinds of evidence; and, like books, by
their multitude, by their wide diffusion, and by the mode of their
conservation to modern times, they are, with very few and unimportant
exceptions, placed far beyond the reach of fraud or deception. The
cabinets of the opulent, in all countries, are filled with series
of these historical records; and the spade is every day turning up
counterparts to those already known. Statues and buildings have been
discovered here and there; but coins are the produce of every soil
which civilization has at any time visited.
Sculptures are either historical or poetical; those of the first kind
yield a confirmation to history which, though indefinite, is worthy of
attention. That the principal personages whose names occur in history
were represented by the artists of their times, is not only probable,
but is a well-known fact. Statues or busts of the most distinguished
public persons were given to the world by several artists, and they
were placed in all the principal cities of the republic or the
empire, that claimed any reflection of their glory. The principle of
competition among artists would secure some tolerable uniformity--the
uniformity of resemblance to the originals, among these statues and
busts; nor do we at all pass the bounds of probability in supposing
them to be, in general, real and good portraits. There is, besides,
in most of them, an air of individuality, which at once convinces the
practised eye of their authenticity.
So much as this being assumed, the congruity of these forms with the
character of the men, as it is presented on the page of history,
carries with it a proof of the truth of those records which few
observers of the human physiognomy will feel disposed to question.
In order to perceive the force of this kind of evidence it is not
necessary to call for the aid of any system of physiognomical science
(so called); every one’s intuitive discernment will suffice for the
purpose. Let the simplest observer of faces and forms, who has read the
history of Greece and Rome, look round a gallery of antique statues
and busts; and he will be in little danger of misnaming the heads of
Themistocles and of Alexander, of Plato and of Cicero, of Phocion and
of Alcibiades, of Demosthenes and of Euclid, of Julius Cæsar and of
Nero. To those whose eye is exercised in the discrimination of forms,
the best executed of these antique heads speak their own biography
with a distinctness that gives irresistible attestation to the
accounts of historians.
Mythological or poetical sculptures afford inferences of a more general
kind; most of which are suggested also by an examination of the
temples of which they were the furniture. The exquisite forms of the
Grecian chisel declare that the superstition they embodied, although
it was frivolous and licentious, was framed more for pleasure than for
fear;--that it was rather poetical than metaphysical. They do indicate
certainly that the religious system of the people was not sanguinary
or ferocious; and that it was not fitted to be the engine of priestly
despotism. One would imagine that the ministers of these deities were
more the servants of the people’s amusements, than the tyrants of their
consciences, their property, and their persons.
The Grecian sculptures give proof that the superstition to which they
belonged, however false or absurd it might be, was open to all the
ameliorations and embellishments of a highly refined literature. In
contrast with these are the sacred sculptures of India, which disgust
us as undisguised and significant representatives of the horrid vices
enjoined and practised by the priests. But the lettered taste of the
Greeks taught their artists to invest each attribute of evil with some
form of beauty. The hideousness of the vindictive passions must be hid
beneath the character of tranquil power; and the loathsomeness of the
sensual passions must be veiled by the perfect ideal of loveliness.
Art, left to itself, does not adopt these corrections; nor do the
authors of superstitious systems ask for them. There must be poetry,
there must be philosophy at hand, to whisper cautions to the wantonness
of art, and to confine its exuberances within the limits of propriety.
When the remains of ancient structures are examined for the purpose of
collecting thence historical information, they must be viewed under
three distinct aspects; namely--the resources that were required for
their construction--the purposes to which they were devoted, and the
taste which they display. A few instances will show the nature, and
the extent of the inferences that may fairly be drawn from such an
examination.
The remains of Egyptian architecture have long outlasted the fame of
the men whose names they were charged to transmit to distant times. Or
if some few names have been handed down by historians, or have been
drawn from their hieroglyphical concealments by the genius of modern
research, the whole amount of such discoveries may be comprised in a
few lines, and it falls very far short of conveying anything like a
history of the people. But some general facts relative to the wealth,
the commerce, the industry, the institutions, the manners, and the
superstitions of the Egyptians, have been reported by historians; and
the descriptions of that country and of its people, given by Herodotus,
Strabo, Diodorus, and Plutarch, confirmed as they are by incidental
allusions in other writers, and especially by a few significant
expressions occurring in the Jewish Scriptures, afford a tolerably
complete idea of this, the most extraordinary of all nations--ancient
or modern. Now this testimony of the historians is corroborated, with
a peculiar distinctness, by those ruins which still lead hosts of
travellers to the banks of the Nile.
These stupendous remains attest, in the first place, the unbounded
wealth that is affirmed by historians to have been at the command of
the Egyptian monarchs;--a wealth derived chiefly from the extraordinary
fertility of the country, which, like the plains of Babylon, yielded
a three hundred-fold return of grain. And as the revenues of a vast
empire were added to the home resources of the Babylonian monarchs,
so the products of a widely extended commerce came in to augment the
treasures of the Egyptian kings. The mouths of the Nile were the
centres of trade between the eastern and the western worlds; and that
river, after depositing a teeming mud in one year, bore upon its bosom
in the next, the harvest it had given, for the feeding of distant and
less fertile regions. Nor was the industry of the people--numerous
beyond example, wanting to improve every advantage of nature. But
for whom was this unbounded wealth amassed, or under whose control
was it expended? The testimony of historians coincides with that
of the existing ruins in declaring that a despotism--political and
religious--of unexampled perfection, and very unlike anything that has
since been seen, disposed of the vast surplus products of agriculture
and of commerce for the purposes of a gigantic egotism.
By what forms of exaction or of monopoly the Egyptian kings held
at their command the property and the services of the people,
cannot be certainly determined; but it seems as if one only centre
of real possession was acknowledged, and that habits of thinking
and acting--bound down to unalterable modes, by a thousand threads
of superstitious observance, favoured the tranquil transfer of all
rights to the head of the state. With such resources therefore at his
disposal, and with a people much better fitted by their temperament and
habits for labour than for war--the inhabitants of fertile plains have
ever been less warlike than those of mountainous regions--the master
of Egypt might find it easy to expend his means in realizing monstrous
architectural conceptions.
That degree of scientific skill in masonry which belongs to a middle
stage of civilization, in which the human faculties are but partially
developed, is what the accounts of historians would lead us to
expect; and it is just what these remains actually display. There is
science--but there is much more of cost and of labour than of science.
The works undertaken by the Egyptian builders were such as a calculable
waste of human life would be certain to complete; but they were not
such as involve a mastery of practical difficulties by means which
mathematical genius must devise.
The Egyptian builders could rear pyramids, or excavate catacombs, or
hew temples from out of solid rocks of granite; but they attempted no
works like those that were executed by the artists of the middle ages.
For to poise so high in air the fretted roof and slender spire of a
Gothic Minster required a cost of mind greater far than appears to have
been at the command of the Egyptian kings.
The purposes to which the structures of Egypt apparently were devoted,
agree also with the accounts of historians. The established despotism
was indeed such as to permit capricious sovereigns to indulge their
personal vanity without restraint; nevertheless, better and more wise
maxims of government were acknowledged, and often followed; and so
it is that the traces of public works of vast extent, and of great
utility, everywhere attest the intelligence and the good dispositions
of some of the Egyptian kings. Canals, piers, reservoirs, aqueducts,
are not less abundant than temples and pyramids. Indeed, the temples
of Egypt must not be placed altogether to the account either of the
vanity of kings, or of the pride of priests; for as the Roman emperors
expended a portion of the tribute of the world in the erection of
theatres for the gratification of favoured provinces, so the Egyptian
kings, for the pleasure of their subjects, reared, in all parts of
the land, those sacred menageries of worshipful bulls, crocodiles,
cows, apes, cats, dogs, onions, and other--the like august symbols of
the common religion. It is recorded that the two kings whose names
were held in execration by posterity on account of the cruel labours
they exacted from their people, were not builders of temples--but of
pyramids.
A mound of earth, one foot in height, satisfies that feeling of our
nature which impels us to preserve from disturbance the recent remains
of the dead; but a pyramid five hundred feet in height was not too tall
a tomb for an Egyptian king! The varnished doll, hideous to look at,
into which the art of the apothecary had converted the carcase of the
deceased monarch, must needs rest in the deep bowels of a mountain of
hewn stone! More complete proof of the utter subjugation of the popular
will in ancient Egypt cannot be imagined than what is afforded by the
fact, that so much masonry should have been piled, for such a purpose,
almost to the clouds. The pyramids could never touch the general
enthusiasm of the people, they could only gratify the crazy vanity of
the man at whose command they were reared. These tapering quadrangles,
as they were the product, so they may be viewed as the proper images
of a pure despotism; vast in the surface it covers, and the materials
it combines, the prodigious mass serves only to give towering altitude
to--a point.
A literature like that of Greece would have protected the Egyptians
from the toils of building pyramids:--for, had they possessed poets
like Homer, historians like Thucydides, and philosophers like
Aristotle, their kings would neither have dared, nor indeed have
wished, to attach their fame to bulks of stone, displaying no trace
of genius, either in the design, or the execution. The Egyptian kings
consigned their names to the custody of pyramids, which have long since
betrayed the trust.--The Greeks committed the renown of their chiefs to
the frail papyrus of the Nile, and the record has shown itself to be
imperishable.
The accordance of the taste displayed in the forms and embellishments
of the Egyptian temples, with the temperament and the institutions
of the people, as described by historians, deserves to be noticed;
though, of course, no very positive conclusions ought to be drawn
from facts of this class. It is the province of art, whatever may be
the material upon which it works, to combine, in various proportions,
the two elements of effect--sameness and difference--uniformity
and variety--harmony and opposition. A work of art in which these
principles should be wholly disjoined, or which should exhibit only
one of them--if that were possible--might amaze the spectator, but
could never produce pleasure. To combine them in exact accordance
with the intended effect of the work, is the perfection of art. If
the impression to be produced inclines to the side of grandeur and
sublimity, the principle of sameness or uniformity must predominate;
and every variety that is admitted in the embellishments must be
quelled by constant repetitions in the same form. But if the sentiment
to be awakened is that of pleasure--gaiety, and voluptuousness, the
second principle, or that of difference, variety, and opposition, must
triumph over the first. Now a uniform preference of one of these styles
in works of art, must be held to characterise the prevailing temper of
the people whom they are intended to please.
But now the Egyptian architecture is distinguished, perhaps beyond that
of any other people, by its subjection to the law of uniformity, and
by the apparent aim of the artist to vanquish the imagination of the
spectator by an aspect of sublimity; to kindle the sentiment of awe
was the intention; and bulk and sameness were the means.
This character of Egyptian art, which prevails almost without exception
among the existing remains of the more ancient structures, comports
well with the idea of the subjugation of the people beneath a system
of stern religious and civil despotism. And yet further, it has a
remarkable significance when considered in its relation to the nature
of the worship to which these temples were devoted. While we gaze with
amazement and awe at the massy buttresses of these structures--at their
towering obelisks--at their long ranges of columns, formed as if to
support the weight of mountains, and at the colossal guards of the
portico, we have to recollect that these temples were the consecrated
palaces of crocodiles, of cows, of ichneumons, of dogs, cats, or apes.
It seems as if, for the very purpose of effecting the most complete
degradation of the popular mind, the national superstition had been
framed from the vilest materials it was possible to find; while,
to enhance and secure its influence, a nobly-imagined art combined
every element of awful grandeur. The imagination was first seduced by
a show of sublimity, in order that the moral sense might, the more
effectually, be, in the end, trodden in the dust.
The mathematical ornaments, and the vegetable imitations of the
Egyptian architecture might be noticed, which, besides being admirably
imagined and executed, are in perfect harmony with the general taste of
the buildings, and thus consist with what we suppose to have been its
main intention. But the character of the human figures attached to many
of the temples, demands attention.
Not a few of these figures exhibit the highest degree of
excellence--within certain bounds; these bounds are--a strict adherence
to the national contour and costume (neither of which could have been
preferred by artists who had seen the people of Europe and Asia) and a
rigid observance of architectural directness of position. In a very few
examples the artists so far transgressed the rules thus imposed upon
them, as to prove that they had the command of attitudes more varied
than those which ordinarily they exhibited; indeed, it is contrary to
all analogy to suppose, that so much executive talent should exist
along with an incapacity to give more life and variety to the figure.
The Chinese, who as artists are vastly inferior to the ancient Egyptian
sculptors, ordinarily pass far beyond them as to the range of action
and position which they give to their human figures. Even if a taste
so rigid had belonged to the first stage of art, it must--unless
otherwise restricted, have admitted amelioration in the course of time.
The artists of a second age would no doubt have sought reputation by
venturing beyond the limits within which their predecessors had been
confined.
It seems then hardly possible to find a reason for that frozen
uniformity which is exhibited in the Egyptian sculptures, unless we
suppose that art--like everything else, was the slave of an omnipresent
despotism. The human forms which support the porticos or roofs, stand
and look as if they knew themselves to be in the presence of Superior
Power, Freedom of position, or an attitude of force, or of agility, or
even of inattentive repose, or any indication of individual will, would
have broken in upon the idea of universal subjection. The master of
Egypt must look upon no forms that do not speak submission.
And yet there is an air of serenity (though it be not such as springs
from the consciousness of personal dignity) tending towards gaiety, in
most of these sculptures: the look indeed is altogether servile; yet
it is unrepining, and it seems to express entire acquiescence in that
immutable order of things which transferred the rights of all to one.
That such a condition of the social system as this actually existed in
the times when the Egyptian temples were reared, must not be positively
affirmed, merely on the grounds above mentioned; but if, amidst the
ill-founded encomiums bestowed upon the Egyptian institutions by
ancient historians, there may clearly be traced the indications of a
state of unexampled subjection to fixed modes of action in the social,
the religious, and the political systems of the people, the existing
monuments of their architecture and sculpture are to be acknowledged
as according well with these indications. Yet if this accordance were
thought to be fanciful, let it be attempted to associate our notions
of the Grecian people, and their institutions, with the Egyptian
architecture and sculpture.--It would be impossible to combine ideas so
incongruous.
The Grecian architecture, although its elements were evidently derived
from that of Egypt, is contrasted with it in almost every point. The
people to whom these comparatively diminutive, and yet faultless
structures belonged, manifestly, were not masters of boundless national
wealth; but their intelligence so much exceeded their resources that
they at once reached the highest point of art, which is to induce upon
its materials a new value--a value so great, that the mere cost of the
work is forgotten. In surveying the Egyptian temples we wonder at the
wealth that could suffice to pay for them; in viewing those of Greece
we only admire the genius of the architect who imagined them, and the
taste of the people who admired them.
The plains of Greece are burdened by no huge monuments, the only
intention of which is to crush the common feelings of a nation beneath
the weight of one man’s vanity; but its surface was thick set with
temples which were the property of all--temples, free from gloom, and
unstained with cruel rites.
A more striking point of contrast cannot be selected than that
presented by a comparison of the human figures (above-mentioned) that
are attached to the Egyptian temples, with those that decorate the
Grecian architecture. The Grecian caryatides assume the attitude of as
much liberty, ease, and variety of position as may comport with the
burdensome duty of supporting the pediment: they give their heads to
the mass of masonry above them--not with the passiveness of slaves,
but as if with the alacrity of free persons. The Egyptian figures
stand like the personifications of unchanging duration; but as to the
Grecian caryatides, one might think that they had but just stepped up
from the merry crowd, and were themselves the pleased spectators of the
festivities that are passing before them.
The Roman architecture, as compared with that of India or of China,
is only so far less barbarous, as it is more Grecian. In the arts the
Romans were imitators, and they are hardly ever to be admired when they
wandered from their pattern. Those structures in which they might best
claim the praise of originality--namely--their vast amphitheatres, are
rather monuments of wealth, luxury, and native ferocity of character,
than of taste or intelligence.
The structures which shed the greatest lustre upon the Roman name, are
those public works--roads, bridges, and aqueducts, which, in almost
every country of Europe, mark the presence of their legions; and these
attest that vigour of character--that unconquerable perseverance--that
regard to utility, and especially, that steady pursuit of universal
empire, which history declares to have characterised the Roman people
and government.
The student of history, although he may not have access to museums,
and although costly antiquarian publications should never come into
his possession, may find, even in his seclusion, some visible and
palpable proofs of the authenticity of the Roman historians; for the
circuit of a few miles in many districts of the British Islands, will
offer illustrations of the narratives of Cæsar, of Tacitus, and of
Suetonius. Though the occupation of Britain by the Romans was of
shorter continuance than that of almost any other country--included
within the empire, and though their possession of the island was
always partial and disturbed, they yet made themselves so much at
home with our ancestors as that our soil teems with the relics of
their sojourn of three hundred years. Roman camps, roads, walls, and
baths;--mosaics, vases, weapons, utensils, and coins, are as abundant,
almost, in England as in Italy; and they are quite abundant enough to
substantiate the proud glories that are claimed for the Roman arms by
their historians.
If then there were room to entertain a doubt of the authenticity of the
body of ancient history--taken in the mass; or if the credibility of a
single author comes to be questioned; or if a particular fact be opened
to controversy, it is far from being the case that we are left to rely,
alone, upon the validity of general arguments in proof of the apparent
competency, veracity, and impartiality of the ancient historians; on
the contrary, we may, in almost all cases, appeal to unquestioned
facts, supporting the affirmative side of such questions. For instance,
we may compare the testimony of the historians themselves--one with
another; or with that of contemporary writers in other departments
of literature, whose allusions to public events or persons are of an
incidental kind; or we may compare the descriptions that are given by
historians of natural objects, or of national peculiarities, with the
same objects or peculiarities--still existing; or, to take a method
still more precise, and still more palpably certain, we may read
upon the face of marble, or brass, or gold, or silver, or precious
stones--long buried in the earth, explicit records of the very events,
or memorials of the very persons, mentioned by historians. Or we
may examine the remains of public works and buildings, described by
historians, and find them accordant with their accounts of the power,
tastes, and habits of the people that reared them.
Notwithstanding all these means of proof, various as they are, there
may yet remain some points of history that are not satisfactorily
attested, or that are liable to reasonable suspicion; yet as to the
great mass of facts, these will be found to be so fully established as
to render scepticism regarding them altogether absurd.
But now the proof which establishes the general authenticity of ancient
historians, and which demonstrates that their writings are, in the
main, what they profess to be--that is--genuine narratives of events,
composed and published in the age to which they are usually assigned,
carries with it, by implication, a proof of the genuineness of other
remains of ancient literature. If, for example, we have under our
touch, palpable evidence that the works of Tacitus are genuine and
authentic, we can no longer deny that the raft on which ancient books
floated down through so many ages was substantially secure; and we may
safely conclude that whatever mists may seem to hang over some parts
of the channel of transmission, the vessel and its cargo did actually
pass, undamaged, through the gloom of ages.
Though this inference may be applicable to the remains of ancient
literature more in the mass, than in detail; it nevertheless possesses
a conclusive force when brought to bear upon vague and sweeping attacks
upon the genuineness and integrity of ancient writings, as if they
were incapable of any certain proof. Those who profess to entertain
doubts of this sort, do not ordinarily apply themselves with care to
the examination of any one instance, nor attempt patiently to refute
particular proofs; but rather they fling about broad assertions,
tending to destroy all confidence in the process and medium through
which the records of antiquity have been conveyed to modern times.
Now to such vague insinuations, a full and sufficient reply is given,
when we adduce demonstrative proof of the authenticity of historical
works which could not have contained consistent and circumstantial
truth unless they had actually been written in the age to which they
are attributed. If then _some_ books have descended--entire, through
eighteen or twenty centuries, others may have done so; and if so, then
no objection can be maintained against ancient books, _à priori_; nor
can any suspicion rest upon particular works--except such as may be
justified by specific proofs of spuriousness.