No More Learning

The senator was supposed to be no worse and no better than other senators, nor at all to differ from them. It was not necessary and not desirable that any burgess should surpass the rest, whether by showy silver plate and Hellenic culture, or by uncommon wisdom and excel lence. Excesses of the former kind were punished by the censor, and for the latter the constitution gave no scope.
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The Rome of this period belonged to no individual ; it was necessary for all the burgesses to be alike, that each of them might be like a king.
No doubt, even now Hellenic individual development asserted its claims by the side of that levelling system ; and the genius and force which it exhibited bear, no less than the tendency to which it opposed itself, the full stamp of that great age. We can name but a single man in connection with it ; but he was, as it were, the incarnation
807.
812. of the idea of progress. Appius Claudius (censor 442 ; 296. consul 447, 458), the great-great-grandson of the decemvir,
was a man of the old nobility and proud of the long line of his ancestors; but yet it was he who set aside the restriction which confined the full franchise of the state to the freeholders 396), and who broke up the old system of finance (p. 85). From Appius Claudius date not only the Roman aqueducts and highways, but also Roman jurisprudence, eloquence, poetry, and grammar. The
of table of the legts aciiones, speeches committed to writing and Pythagorean sentences, and even innovations orthography, are attributed to him. We may not on this account call him absolutely democrat or include him in that opposition party which found its champion in Manius Curius 395); in him on the contrary the spirit of the ancient and modern patrician kings predominated —the spirit of the Tarquins and the Caesars, between whom he forms connecting link in that
five hundred years' interregnum of extraordinary deeds and ordinary men. So long as Appius Claudius took an active part in public life, in his official conduct as well as his general carriage he disregarded laws and customs on all hands with the hardihood and sauciness of an Athenian till, after having long retired from the political stage, the blind old man, returning as were from the tomb at the decisive
Moment, overcame king Pyrrhus in the senate, and first
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formally and solemnly proclaimed the complete sovereignty of Rome over Italy 22). But the gifted man came too early or too late the gods made him blind on account of his untimely wisdom. was not individual genius that ruled in Rome and through Rome Italy was the one immoveable idea of policy —propagated from generation to generation in the senate —with the leading maxims of which the sons of the senators became already imbued, when in the company of their fathers they went to the council and there at the door of the hall listened to the wisdom of the men whose seats they were destined at some future time to fill. Immense successes were thus obtained at an immense price; for Nike too followed by her Nemesis. In the Roman commonwealth there was no special dependence on any one man, either on soldier or on general, and under the rigid discipline of its moral police all the idiosyncrasies of human character were extinguished. Rome reached greatness such as no other state of antiquity attained but she dearly purchased her greatness at the sacrifice of the graceful variety, of the easy abandon, and of the inward freedom of Hellenic life.
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ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
CHAPTER IX ART AND SCIENCE
The The growth of art, and of poetic art especially, in antiquity
was intimately associated with the development of national festival. festivals. The thanksgiving-festival of the Roman com
munity, which had been already organized in the previous period essentially under Greek influence and in the first instance as an extraordinary festival, — the ludi maximi or Romani 293), —acquired during the present epoch a longer duration and greater variety in the amusements. Originally limited to one day, the festival was prolonged by an additional day after the happy termination of each of
509. 494. the three great revolutions of 245, 260, and 387, and thus at the close of this period had already duration of four days. 1
The account given by Dionysius (vi. 95 comp. Niebuhr, ii. 40) and by Plutarch (Camill. 42), deriving his statement from another passage in Dionysius regarding the Latin festival, must be understood to apply rather to the Roman games, as, apart from other grounds, strikingly evident from comparing the latter passage with Liv. vi. 43 (Ritschl, Parerg. p. 313). Dionysius has—and, according to his wont when in error, persistently — misunderstood the expression ludi maximi.
There was, moreover, a tradition which referred the origin of the national festival not, as in the common version, to the conquest of the Latins by the first Tarquinius, but to the victory over the Latins at the lake Regillus (Cicero, de Div. 26, 55 Dionys. vii. 71). That the important statements preserved in the latter passage from Fabius really relate to the ordinary thanksgiving-festival, and not to any special votive solemnity, evident from the express allusion to the annual recurrence of the celebration, and from the exact agreement of the sum of the expenses with the statement in the Pseudo-Asconius (p. 14a Or. ).
national
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A still more important circumstance was, that, probably
on the institution of the curule aedileship (387) which was 367. from the first entrusted with the preparation and oversight
of the festival 383), lost its extraordinary character
and its reference to special vow made by the general,
and took its place in the series of the ordinary annually recurring festivals as the first of all. Nevertheless the government adhered to the practice of allowing the spectacle proper—namely the chariot-race, which was the principal performance —to take place not more than once
at the close of the festival. On the other days the multitude were probably left mainly to furnish amusement
for themselves, although musicians, dancers, rope-walkers, jugglers, jesters and such like would not fail to make their appearance on the occasion, whether hired or not But about the year 390 an important change occurred, which 364. must have stood in connection with the fixing and prolonga
tion of the festival, that took place perhaps about the same time. A scaffolding of boards was erected at the expense of The
the state in the Circus for the first three days, and suitable Roman T(j
representations were provided on for the entertainment of the multitude. That matters might not be carried too far however in this way, fixed sum of 200,000 asses (^2055) was once for all appropriated from the exchequer for the expenses of the festival; and the sum was not increased up to the period of the Punic wars. The aediles, who had to expend this sum, were obliged to defray any additional amount out of their own pockets and not probable that they at this time contributed often or considerably from their own resources. That the new
stage was generally under Greek influence, proved by its very name (scaena, 07071^). was no doubt at first designed merely for musicians and buffoons of all sorts, amongst whom the dancers to the flute, particularly those then so celebrated from Etruria, were probably the most
VOX* u 39
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distinguished ; but a public stage had at any rate now arisen in Rome and it soon became open also to the Roman poets.
There was no want of such poets in Latium. Latin " strolling minstrels " or " ballad-singers " (grassatores, spa- tiatores) went from town to town and from house to house, and recited their chants (saturae, i. 35), gesticulating and dancing to the accompaniment of the flute. The measure was of course the only one that then existed, the so-called Saturnian 289). No distinct plot lay at the basis of the chants, and as little do they appear to have been in the form of dialogue. We must conceive of them as re sembling those monotonous — sometimes improvised, some times recited—ballads and tarantelle, such as one may still hear in the Roman hostelries. Songs of this sort accord ingly early came upon the public stage, and certainly formed the first nucleus of the Roman theatre. But not only were these beginnings of the drama in Rome, as everywhere, modest and humble; they were, in remark able manner, accounted from the very outset disreputable. The Twelve Tables denounced evil and worthless song- singing, imposing severe penalties not only upon incanta tions but even on lampoons composed against fellow- citizen or recited before his door, and forbidding the employment of wailing-women at funerals. But far more severely, than such legal restrictions, the incipient exercise of art was affected the moral anathema, which was denounced against these frivolous and paid trades by the narrowminded earnestness of the Roman character. " The trade of poet," says Cato, " in former times was not respected any one occupied himself with or was
hanger-on at banquets, he was called an idler. " But now any one who practised dancing, music, or ballad- singing for money was visited with double stigma, in consequence of the more and more confirmed disapproval
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of gaining a livelihood by services rendered for remunera tion. While accordingly the taking part in the masked farces with stereotyped characters, that formed the usual native amusement 291), was looked upon as an innocent youthful frolic, the appearing on public stage for money and without mask was considered as directly infamous, and the singer and poet were in this respect placed quite on level with the rope-dancer and the harlequin. Persons of this stamp were regularly pronounced by the censors (p. 63 /. ) incapable of serving in the burgess-army and of voting in the burgess-assembly. Moreover, not only was the direction of the stage regarded as pertaining to the province of the city police — fact significant enough even in itself—but the police was probably, even at this period, invested with arbitrary powers of an extraordinary character against professional stage-artists. Not only did the police magistrates sit in judgment on the performance after its conclusion —on which occasion wine flowed as copiously for those who had acquitted themselves well, as stripes fell to the lot of the bungler—but all the urban magistrates were legally entitled to inflict bodily chastisement and imprisonment on any actor at any time and at any place. The necessary effect of this was that dancing, music, and poetry, at least so far as they appeared on the public stage, fell into the hands of the lowest classes of the Roman burgesses, and especially into those of foreigners and while at this period poetry still played altogether too significant part to engage the attention of foreign artists, the statement on the other hand, that in Rome all the music, sacred and profane, was essentially Etruscan, and consequently the ancient Latin art of the flute, which was evidently at one time held high esteem 291), had been supplanted foreign music, may be regarded as already applicable to this period.
There no mention of any poetical literature. Neither
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Registers of magis trates.
100 ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
the masked plays nor the recitations of the stage can have had in the proper sense fixed texts ; on the contrary, they were ordinarily improvised by the performers themselves as circumstances required. Of works composed at this period posterity could point to nothing but a sort of Roman "Works and Days" — counsels of a farmer to his son,1 and the already-mentioned Pythagorean poems of Appius Claudius (p. 94), the first commencement of Roman poetry after the Hellenic type. Nothing of the poems of this epoch has survived but one or two epitaphs in Saturnian measure (p. 93).
Along with the rudiments of the Roman drama, the rudiments of Roman historical composition belong to this period; both as regards the contemporary recording of remarkable events, and as regards the conventional settle ment of the early history of the Roman community.
The writing of contemporary history was associated with the register of the magistrates. The register reaching farthest back, which was accessible to the later Roman inquirers and is still indirectly accessible to us, seems to have been derived from the archives of the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter ; for it records the names of the annual presidents of the community onward from the consul Marcus Horatius, who consecrated that temple on the 13th Sept. in his year of office, and it also notices the
vow which was made on occasion of a severe pestilence
under the consuls Publius Servilius and Lucius Aebutius 468. (according to the reckoning now current, 291), that thence
forward a nail should be driven every hundredth year into the wall of the Capitoline temple. Subsequently it was
> A fragment has been preserved :—
Hiberoo pulrere, verno Into, grandia farra Camille metes —
We do not know by what right this was afterwards regarded as the oldest Roman poem (Macrob. Sat. v. 20 ; Festus, Ep. v. Jlaminius, p. 93, M. ; Serv. on Virg. Georg. i. 101 ; Flin. xvii. 2. 14).
chap, IX ART AND SCIENCE 101
the state officials who were learned in measuring and in writing, or in other words, the pontifices, that kept an official record of the names of the annual chief magistrates,
and thus combined an annual, with the earlier monthly, calendar. Both these calendars were afterwards compre hended under the name of Fasti —which strictly belonged only to the list of court-days. This arrangement was probably adopted not long after the abolition of the monarchy ; for in fact an official record of the annual magistrates was of urgent practical necessity for the purpose of authenticating the order of succession of official documents. But, if there was an official register of the consuls so old, it probably perished in the Gallic conflagra
tion (364) ; and the list of the pontifical college was sub- 390, sequently completed from the Capitoline register which
was not affected by that catastrophe, so far as this latter reached back. That the list of presidents which we now have — although in collateral matters, and especially in genealogical statements, it has been
supplemented at pleasure from the family pedigrees of the nobility — is in substance based from the beginning on contemporary and
credible records, admits of no doubt. But it reproduces
the calendar years only imperfectly and approximately: for the consuls did not enter on office with the new year, or even on a definite day fixed once for all ; on the con trary from various causes the day of entering on office was fluctuating, and the interregna that frequently occurred between two consulates were entirely omitted in the reckoning by official years. Accordingly, if the calendar years were to be reckoned by this list of consuls, it was necessary to note the days of entering on and of demitting office in the case of each pair, along with such interregna as occurred ; and this too may have been early done. But besides this, the list of the annual magistrates was adjusted to the list of calendar years in such a way that a
Capitoline **"
No era was formed for ordinary use; but in ritual matters they reckoned from the year of the consecration of the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter, from which the list of magistrates also started.
The idea naturally suggested itself that, along with the names of the magistrates, the most important events occur ring under their magistracy might be noted ; and from such notices appended to the catalogue of magistrates the Roman annals arose, just as the chronicles of the middle ages arose out of the memoranda marginally appended to the table of Easter. But it was not until a late period that the pontifices formed the scheme of a formal chronicle (liber annalis), which should steadily year by year record the names of all the magistrates and the remarkable events. Before the
loa ART AND SCIENCE book ii
pair of magistrates were by accommodation assigned to each calendar year, and, where the list did not suffice, intercalary years were inserted, which are denoted in the later (Varronian) table by the figures 379-383, 421, 430,
445i 453- From 291 u. c. (463 B. C. ) the Roman list demonstrably coincides, not indeed in detail but yet on
the whole, with the Roman calendar, and is thus chrono logically certain, so far as the defectiveness of the calendar itself allows. The 47 years preceding that date cannot be checked, but must likewise be at least in the main
609- correct. 1 Whatever lies beyond 245 remains, chrono logically, in oblivion.
408. eclipse of the sun noticed under the 5 th of June 351, by 400. which is probably meant that of the 20th June 354, no solar eclipse was found recorded from observation in the
later chronicle of the city : its statements as to the numbers of the census only begin to sound credible after the begin ning of the fifth century 122, 55) the cases of fines brought before the people, and the prodigies expiated on
The first places in the list alone excite suspicion, and may have been subsequently added, with a view to round off the number of years between the flight of the king and the burning of the city to 120.
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behalf of the community, appear to have been regularly introduced into the annals only after the second half of the fifth century began. To all appearance the institution of an organized book of annals, and — what was certainly associated with it — the revision (which we have just explained) of the earlier list of magistrates so as to make it a year-calendar by the insertion, where
chronologically necessary, of intercalary years, took place in the first half
of the fifth century. But even after it became a practically recognized duty of the pontifex maximus to record year after year campaigns and colonizations, pestilences and famines, eclipses and portents, the deaths of priests and other men of note, the new decrees of the people, and the results of the census, and to deposit these records in his official residence for permanent preservation and for any one's inspection, these records were still far removed from
the character of real historical writings. How scanty the contemporary record still was at the close of this period and how ample room is left for the caprice of subsequent annalists, is shown with incisive clearness by a comparison
of the accounts as to the campaign of 456 in the annal; 29f and in the epitaph of the consul Scipio. 1 The later historians were evidently unable to construct a readable and in some measure connected narrative out of these notices from the book of annals ; and we should have difficulty, even if the book of annals still lay before us with its original contents, in writing from it in duly connected sequence the history of the times. Such chronicles, however, did not exist merely in Rome ; every
Latin city possessed its annals as well as its pontifices, as is clear from isolated notices relative to Ardea for instance, Ameria, and Interamna on the Nar ; and from the collective
1 P. 93. According to the annals Scipio commands in Etruria and his colleague in Samnium, and Lucania is during this year in league with Rome ; according to the epitaph Scipio conquers two towns in Samnium and all Lucania.
Family pedigrees.
mass of these city-chronicles some result might perhaps have been attained similar to what has been accomplished for the earlier middle ages by the comparison of different monastic chronicles. Unfortunately the Romans in later times preferred to supply the defect by Hellenic or
Hellenizing falsehoods.
Besides these official arrangements, meagrely planned
and uncertainly handled, for commemorating past times and past events, there can scarcely have existed at this epoch any other records immediately serviceable for Roman history. Of private chronicles we find no trace. The leading houses, however, were careful to draw up genea logical tables, so important in a legal point of view, and to have the family pedigree painted for a perpetual memorial on the walls of the entrance-hall. These lists, which at least named the magistracies held by the family, not only furnished a basis for family tradition, but doubtless at an early period had biographical notices attached to them. The memorial orations, which in Rome could not be omitted at the funeral of any person of quality, and were ordinarily pronounced by the nearest relative of the deceased, consisted essentially not merely in an enumera tion of the virtues and excellencies of the dead, but also in a recital of the deeds and virtues of his ancestors ; and so
they were doubtless, even in the earliest times, transmitted traditionally from one generation to another. Many a valuable notice may by this means have been preserved ; but many a daring perversion and falsification also may have been in this way introduced into tradition.
But as the first steps towards writing real history
Roman early
history el Rome.
to this period, to it belonged also the first attempts to record, and conventionally distort, the primitive history of Rome. The sources whence it was formed were of course the same as they are everywhere. Isolated names like those of the kings Numa, Ancus, Tullus, to whom the
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chap, IX ART AND SCIENCE
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clan-names were probably only assigned subsequently, and isolated facts, such as the conquest of the Latins by king Tarquinius and the expulsion of the Tarquinian royal house, may have continued to live in true general tradition orally transmitted. Further materials were furnished by the traditions of the patrician clans, such as the various tales that relate to the Fabii. Other tales gave a symbolic and historic shape to primitive national institutions, especially setting forth with great vividness the origin of rules of law. The sacredness of the walls was thus illus trated in the tale of the death of Remus, the abolition of blood-revenge in the tale of the end of king Tatius 190,
the necessity of the arrangement as to the pons sublicius in the legend of Horatius Codes,1 the origin of the provocatio in the beautiful tale of the Horatii and Curiatii, the origin of manumission and of the burgess- rights of freedmen in the tale of the Tarquinian conspiracy and the slave Vindicius. To the same class belongs the history of the foundation of the city itself, which was designed to connect the origin of Rome with Latium and with Alba, the general metropolis of the Latins. Historical glosses were annexed to the surnames of distinguished Romans that of Publius Valerius the " servant of the people" (Pop/tcola), for instance, gathered around
whole group of such anecdotes. Above all, the sacred
tree and other spots and notable objects in the city were associated with great multitude of sextons' tales of the same nature as those out of which, upwards of thousand yean afterwards, there grew up on the same ground the Miraoilia Urbis. Some attempts to link together these different tales —the adjustment of the series of the seven kings, the setting down of the duration of the monarchy at 240 years all, which was undoubtedly based on
This object of the legend clear from Pliny the Elder (H. N. xixvi. 15, 100).
note),
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calculation of the length of generations,1 and even the commencement of an official record of these assumed facts —probably took place already in this epoch. The outlines of the narrative, and in particular its quasi-chronology, make their appearance in the later tradition so unalterably fixed, that for that very reason the fixing of them must be placed not in, but previous to, the literary epoch of Rome. If a bronze casting of the twins Romulus and Remus sucking the teats of the she-wolf was already placed beside
296. the sacred fig-tree in 458, the Romans who subdued Latium and Samnium must have heard the history of the origin of their ancestral city in a form not greatly differing from what we read in Livy. Even the Aborigines —i. e. " those from the very beginning "—that simple rudimental form of historical speculation as to the Latin race—are met
289. with about 465 in the Sicilian author Callias. It is of the very nature of a chronicle that it should attach prehistoric speculation to history and endeavour to go back, if not to the origin of heaven and earth, at least to the origin of the community ; and there is express testimony that the table of the pontifices specified the year of the foundation of Rome. Accordingly it may be assumed that, when the pontifical college in the first half of the fifth century proceeded to substitute for the former scanty records— ordinarily, doubtless, confined to the names of the magis trates—the scheme of a formal yearly chronicle, it also added what was wanting at the beginning, the history of the kings of Rome and of their fall, and, by placing the institution of the republic on the day of the consecration
509. of the Capitoline temple, the 13th of Sept 245, furnished
1 They appear to have reckoned three generations to a hundred years and to have rounded off the figures 933} to 240, just as the epoch between the king's flight and the burning of the city was rounded off to 120 years (p. 103, note). The reason why these precise numbers suggested them selves, is apparent from the similar adjustment (above explained, L 965) of the measures of surface.
CHAP. IX ART AND SCIENCE
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a semblance of connection between the dateless and the annalistic narrative. That in this earliest record of the origin of Rome the hand of Hellenism was at work, can scarcely be doubted. The speculations as to the primitive and subsequent population, as to the priority of pastoral life over agriculture, and the transformation of the man Romulus into the god Quirinus 214), have quite Greek aspect, and even the obscuring of the genuinely national forms of the pious Numa and the wise Egeria by the admixture of alien elements of Pythagorean
primitive wisdom appears no means to be one of the most recent
ingredients in the Roman prehistoric annals.
The pedigrees of the noble clans were completed in
manner analogous to these origines of the community, and were, in the favourite style of heraldry, universally traced back to illustrious ancestors. The Aemilii, for instance, Calpumii, Pinarii, and Pomponii professed to be descended from the four sons of Numa, Mamercus, Calpus, Pinus, and Pompo; and the Aemilii, yet further, from Mamercus, the son of Pythagoras, who was named the " winning speaker "
(aXfiiKoi).
But, notwithstanding the Hellenic reminiscences that
are everywhere apparent, these prehistoric annals of the community and of the leading houses may be designated at least relatively as national, partly because they originated in Rome, partly because they tended primarily to form links of connection not between Rome and Greece, but between Rome and Latium.
was Hellenic story and fiction that undertook the Hellenic task of connecting Rome and Greece. Hellenic legend hStorvol exhibits throughout an endeavour to keep pace with the Rome, gradual extension of geographical knowledge, and to form
dramatized geography the aid of its numerous stories of voyagers and emigrants. In this, however, seldom follows simple course. An account like that of the
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voyages the whole earlier poetry has no knowledge; in Homer Aeneas after the fall of Ilion rules over the Trojans that remained at home.
was the great remodeller of myths, Stesichorus (122- 2QI) who ^Ki m his " Destruction of Ilion " brought Aeneas to the land of the west, that he might poetically enrich the world of fable in the country of his birth and of his adop
tion, Sicily and Lower Italy, by the contrast of the Trojan
424.
io8 ART AND SCIENCE book ii
earliest Greek historical work which mentions Rome, the " Sicilian History " of Antiochus of Syracuse (which ended in 330) — that a man named Sikelos had migrated from Rome to Italia, that to the Bruttian peninsula —such
an account, simply giving historical form to the family affinity between the Romans, Siculi, and Bruttians, and free from all Hellenizing colouring, a rare phenomenon. Greek legend as whole pervaded — and the more so, the later its rise — by tendency to represent the whole barbarian world as having either issued from the Greeks or having been subdued by them and early in this sense spun its threads also around the west For Italy the legends of Herakles and of the Argonauts were of less importance —although Hecataeus after 257) already
497.
with the Pillars of Herakles, and carries the Argo from the Black Sea into the Atlantic Ocean, from the latter into the Nile, and thus back to the Mediterranean — than were the homeward voyages connected with the fall of Ilion. With the first dawn of information as to Italy Diomedes begins to wander in the Adriatic, and Odysseus
in the Tyrrhene Sea 177); as indeed the latter localiza tion at least was naturally suggested by the Homeric con ception of the legend. Down to the times of Alexander the countries on the Tyrrhene Sea belonged in Hellenic fable to the domain of the legend of Odysseus Ephorus, who ended his history with the year 414, and the so-called
acquainted
840.
836.
Scylax (about 418) still substantially follow it. Of Trojan
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heroes with the Hellenic. With him originated the poetical outlines of this fable as thenceforward fixed, especially the group of the hero and his wife, his little son and his aged father bearing the household gods, departing from burning Troy, and the important identification of the Trojans with the Sicilian and Italian autochthones, which is especially apparent in the case of the Trojan trumpeter Misenus who gave his name to the promontory of Misenum. 1 The old poet was guided in this view by the feeling that the barbarians of Italy were less widely removed from the Hellenes than other barbarians were, and that the relation between the Hellenes and Italians might, when measured poetically, be conceived as similar to that between the Homeric Achaeans and the Trojans. This new Trojan
fable soon came to be mixed up with the earlier legend of Odysseus, while it spread at the same time more widely
over Italy. According to Hellanicus (who wrote about 350) Odysseus and Aeneas came through the country of 400. the Thracians and Molottians (Epirus) to Italy, where the Trojan women whom they had brought with them burnt
the ships, and Aeneas founded the city of Rome and named it after one of these Trojan women. To a similar effect, only with less absurdity, Aristotle (370-432) related that an Achaean squadron cast upon the Latin coast had been set on fire by Trojan female slaves, and that the Latins had originated from the descendants of the Achaeans who were thus compelled to remain there and of their Trojan wives. With these tales were next mingled elements from the indigenous legend, the knowledge of which had been diffused as far as Sicily by the active intercourse between Sicily and Italy, at least towards the end of this epoch. In the version of the origin of Rome, which the Sicilian
1 The "Trojan colonies" in Sicily, mentioned by Thucydides, the
884-812,
and others, as well as the designation of Capua as a Trojan foundation in Hecataeus, must also be traced to Stesichorus and his identification of the natives of Italy and Sicily with the Trojans.
pseudo-Scylax,
289. Timaeus.
282.
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Callias put on record about 465, the fables of Odysseus, Aeneas, and Romulus were intermingled. 1
But the person who really completed the conception subsequently current of this Trojan migration was Timaeus of Tauromenium in Sicily, who concluded his historical work with 492. It is he who represents Aeneas as first founding Lavinium with its shrine of the Trojan Penates, and as thereafter founding Rome ; he must also have interwoven the Tyrian princess Elisa or Dido with the legend of Aeneas, for with him Dido is the foundress of Carthage, and Rome and Carthage are said by him to have been built in the same
These alterations were manifestly suggested by cer tain accounts that had reached Sicily respecting Latin manners and customs, in conjunction with the critical struggle which at the very time and place where Timaeus wrote was preparing between the Romans and the Cartha ginians. In the main, however, the story cannot have been derived from Latium, but can only have been the good- for-nothing invention of the old "gossip-monger" himself. Timaeus had heard of the primitive temple of the household gods in Lavinium; but the statement, that these were regarded by the Lavinates as the Penates brought by the followers of Aeneas from Ilion, is as certainly an addition of his own, as the ingenious parallel between the Roman
October horse and the Trojan horse, and the exact inventory taken of the sacred objects of Lavinium—there were, our worthy author affirms, heralds' staves of iron and copper, and an earthen vase of Trojan manufacture ! It is true that these same Penates might not at all be seen by any one for centuries afterwards ; but Timaeus was one of the
1 According to his account Romg, a woman who had fled from Ilion to Rome, or rather her daughter of the same name, married Latinos, king of the Aborigines, and bore to him three sons, Romos, Romylos, and Telegonos. The last, who undoubtedly emerges here as founder of Tusculum and Praeneste, belongs, as is well known, to the legend of Odysseus.
year.
chap. vs. ART AND SCIENCE ill
historians who upon no matter are so fully informed as upon things unknowable. It is not without reason that Polybius, who knew the man, advises that he should in no case be trusted, and least of all where, as in this instance, he appeals to documentary proofs. In fact the Sicilian rhetorician, who professed to point out the grave of Thucydides in Italy, and who found no higher praise for Alexander than that he had finished the conquest of Asia sooner than Iso- crates finished his "Panegyric," was exactly the man to knead the naive fictions of the earlier time into that confused medley on which the play of accident has conferred so sin gular a celebrity.
How far the Hellenic play of fable regarding Italian matters, as it in the first instance arose in Sicily, gained admission during this period even in Italy itself, cannot be ascertained with precision. Those links of connection with
the Odyssean cycle, which we subsequently meet with in
the legends of the foundation of Tusculum, Praeneste, Antium, Ardea, and Cortona, must probably have been already concocted at this period ; and even the belief in
the descent of the Romans from Trojan men or Trojan women must have been established at the close of this epoch in Rome, for the first demonstrable contact between Rome and the Greek east is the intercession of the senate
on behalf of the "kindred" Ilians in 472. That the fable 282. of Aeneas was nevertheless of comparatively recent origin
in Italy, is shown by the extremely scanty measure of its localization as compared with the legend of Odysseus ; and at any rate the final redaction of these tales, as well as their reconciliation with the legend of the origin of Rome, belongs only to the following age.
While in this way historical composition, or what was so called among the Hellenes, busied itself in its own fashion with the prehistoric times of Italy, it left the contemporary history of Italy almost untouched —a circumstance as signi
Opinions.
355. 369)-
While the mass of written legal documents thus in
creased, the foundations of jurisprudence in the proper sense were also firmly laid. was necessary that both the magistrates who were annually changed and the jurymen taken from the people should be enabled to resort to men of skill, who were acquainted with the course of law and knew how to suggest decision accordant with precedents or, in the absence of these, resting on reasonable grounds.
112 ART AND SCIENCE book n
ficant of the sunken condition of Hellenic history, as it is
to be for our sakes regretted. Theopompus of Chios (who 886. ended his work with 418) barely noticed in passing the capture of Rome by the Celts; and Aristotle 432),
Clitarchus Theophrastus 44), Heraclides of 800. Pontus (fabout 450), incidentally mention particular events relating to Rome. only with Hieronymus of Cardia,
who as the historian of Pyrrhus narrated also his Italian wars, that Greek historiography becomes at the same time an authority for the history of Rome.
Among the sciences, that of jurisprudence acquired an invaluable basis through the committing to writing of the 4S1. 450. laws of the city in the years 303, 304. This code, known under the name of the Twelve Tables, perhaps the oldest Roman document that deserves the name of book. The nucleus of the so-called leges regiae was probably not much
Jurispru-
more recent. These were certain precepts chiefly of ritual nature, which rested upon traditional usage, and were probably promulgated to the general public under the form of royal enactments by the college of pontifices, which was entitled not to legislate but to point out the law. Moreover
may be presumed that from the commencement of this period the more important decrees of the senate at any rate — not those of the people — were regularly recorded writing; for already in the earliest conflicts between the orders disputes took place as to their
preservation
a
It is
It
(••
it if
in a
is a
(p.
1),
(p.
(i.
CHAP. ix ART AND SCIENCE 1 13
The pontifices who were wont to be consulted by the people regarding court-days and on all questions of difficulty and of legal observance relating to the worship of the gods, delivered also, when asked, counsels and opinions on other points of law, and thus developed in the bosom of their college that tradition which formed the basis of Roman private law, more especially the formulae of action proper for each particular case. A table of formulae which embraced all these actions, along with a calendar which specified the court-days, was published to the people about 450 by Appius Claudius or by his clerk, Gnaeus Flavius. This attempt, however, to give formal shape to a science, that as yet hardly recognized itself, stood for a long time completely isolated.
Table of
foracdom, 300.
That the knowledge of law and the setting it forth were even now a means of recommendation to the people and of attaining offices of state, may be readily conceived, although
the story, that the first plebeian pontifex Publius Sempro-
nius Sophus (consul 450), and the first plebeian pontifex 304. maximus Tiberius Coruncanius (consul 474), were indebted 280. for these priestly honours to their knowledge of law, is prob
ably rather a conjecture of posterity than a statement of tradition.
That the real genesis of the Latin and doubtless also of the other Italian languages was anterior to this period, and that even at its commencement the Latin language was sub stantially an accomplished fact, is evident from the frag ments of the Twelve Tables, which, however, have been largely modernized by their semi-oral tradition. They contain doubtless a number of antiquated words and harsh combinations, particularly in consequence of omitting the indefinite subject ; but their meaning by no means presents, like that of the Arval chant, any real difficulty, and they exhibit far more agreement with the language of Cato than with that of the ancient litanies. If the Romans at the
Language.
vox- u
40
Technical Kyle.
ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
of the seventh century had difficulty in under standing documents of the fifth, the difficulty doubtless pro ceeded merely from the fact that there existed at that time in Rome no real, least of all any documentary, research.
On the other hand it must have been at this period, when the indication and redaction of law began, that the Roman technical style first established itself—a style which at least in its developed shape is nowise inferior to the
modern legal phraseology of England in stereotyped formulae and turns of expression, endless enumeration of particulars, and long-winded periods ; and which commends itself to the initiated by its clearness and precision, while the layman who does not understand it listens, according to his character and humour, with reverence, impatience, or chagrin.
Moreover at this epoch began the treatment of the native languages after a rational method. About its commence ment the Sabellian as well as the Latin idiom threatened, as we saw 282), to become barbarous, and the abrasion of endings and the corruption of the vowels and more delicate consonants spread on all hands, just as was the
case with the Romanic languages in the fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian era. But reaction set in the sounds which had coalesced in Oscan, and r, and the sounds which had coalesced in Latin, and were again separated, and each was provided with its proper sign
and u, for which from the first the Oscan alphabet had lacked separate signs, and which had been in Latin originally separate but threatened to coalesce, again became distinct, and in Oscan even the was resolved into two signs different in sound and in writing; lastly, the writing again came to follow more closely the pronun ciation —the for instance among the Romans being in many cases replaced r. Chronological indications point
to the fifth century as the period of this reaction; the
"4
beginning
Philology.
(60. Latin for instance was not yet in existence about
300
g
s
(i.
by
i
k,
ga d
: o
;
chap, ix ART AND SCIENCE
115
but was so probably about 500 ; the first of the Papirian 250. clan, who called himself Papirius instead of Papisius, was
the consul of 418; the introduction of that r instead of s 838. is attributed to Appius Claudius, censor in 442. Beyond 312. doubt the re-introduction of a more delicate and precise pronunciation was connected with the increasing influence
of Greek civilization, which is observable at this very period in all departments of Italian life ; and, as the silver coins of Capua and Nola are far more perfect than the contem porary asses of Ardea and Rome, writing and language appear also to have been more speedily and fully reduced to rule in the Campanian land than in Latium. How little, notwithstanding the labour bestowed on the Roman language and mode of writing had become settled at the close of this epoch, shown by the inscriptions preserved from the end of the fifth century, in which the greatest arbitrariness prevails, particularly as to the insertion or omission of m, and in final sounds and of n in the body of a word, and as to the distinguishing of the vowels u and i. 1 probable that the contemporary Sabellians were in these points further advanced, while the Umbrians were but slightly affected by the regenerating influence of
the Hellenes.
In consequence of this progress of jurisprudence and Instruc
grammar, elementary school-instruction also, which in itself t'on* had doubtless already emerged earlier, must have undergone
In the two epitaphs, of Lucius Scipio consul in 456, and of the 298. consul of the same name in 495, m and are ordinarily wanting in the 259. termination of cases, yet Luciom and Gnaivod respectively occur once
there occur alongside of one another in the nominative Cornelia and fttios
cowl, ctsor, alongside of consol, censor aidiles, dedet, ploirume =plurimi)
hec (110m. sing. ) alongside of aidHis, cepit, quei, hic. Rhotacism
already carried out completely; we find duonoro = lonorum), ploirume,
not as in the chant of the Saiii foedesmn, plusima. Our surviving inscrip
tions do not in general precede the age of rhotacism of the older only isolated traces occur, such as afterwards honos, labos alongside of honor, labor; and the similar feminine praenomina, Maio = maios maior) and
itino in recently found epitaphs at Praeneste.
( (;
s
is ;;
0
(
;
d
1
e
It is
d s
is
it,
Exact
Regulation calendar,
Ilfi ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
a certain improvement As Homer was the oldest Greek, and the Twelve Tables was the oldest Roman, book, each became in its own land the essential basis of instruction ; and the learning by heart the juristico-political catechism was a chief part of Roman juvenile training. Alongside of the Latin "writing-masters'' (litieratores) there were of course, from the time when an acquaintance with Greek was indispensable for every statesman and merchant, also Greek "language-masters" {grammatici)} partly tutor-slaves, partly private teachers, who at their own dwelling or that of their pupil gave instructions in the reading and speaking of Greek. As a matter of course, the rod played its part in instruction as well as in military discipline and in police. * The instruction of this epoch cannot however have passed beyond the elementary stage : there was no material shade of difference, in a social respect, between the educated and the non-educated Roman.
That the Romans at no time distinguished themselves in the mathematical and mechanical sciences is well known, and is attested, in reference to the present epoch, by almost the only fact which can be adduced under this head with certainty —the regulation of the calendar attempted by the decemvirs. They wished to substitute for the previous calendar based on the old and very imperfect IrieterU 270) the contemporary Attic calendar of the octaeteris, which retained the lunar month of 29 days but assumed the solar year at 365J days instead of 368J, and therefore, without
Litterator and grammaticus are related nearly as elementary teacher and teacher of languages with us the latter designation belonged by earlier usage only to the teacher of Greek, not to a teacher of the mother- tongue. Litttratus more recent, and denotes not a schoolmaster but a man of culture.
It at any rate true Roman picture, which Plautus [Batch. 431) produces as a specimen of the good old mode of training children J—
. . uii revenisses domum,
Cifuticulo praecinetus in sella afud magistrum adsidtra; Si, librum cum legem, unam peccavisses syllaiam,
Fitrct curium lam macules um, guam est nutrUis pallium
1* is
a
is
;
\
(i.
CHAP. IX ART AND SCIENCE
117
making any alteration in the length of the common year of 354 days, intercalated, not as formerly 59 days every 4 years, but 90 days every 8 years. With the same view the improvers of the Roman calendar intended —while otherwise retaining the current calendar —in the two inter calary years of the four years' cycle to shorten not the inter calary months, but the two Februaries by 7 days each, and consequently to fix that month in the intercalary years at 22 and 21 days respectively instead of 29 and 28. But want of mathematical precision and theological
scruples, especially in reference to the annual festival of Terminus
which fell within those very days in February, disarranged the intended reform, so that the Februaries of the inter calary years came to be of 24 and 23 days,Jand thus the new Roman solar year in reality ran to 3 66 days. Some remedy for the practical evils resulting from this was found in the practice by which, setting aside the reckoning by the months or ten months of the calendar 270) as now no longer applicable from the inequality in the length of the months, wherever more accurate specifications were required, they accustomed themselves to reckon by terms of ten months of solar year of 365 days or the so-called ten-month year of 304 days. Over and above this, there
came early into use in Italy, especially for agricultural purposes, the farmers' calendar based on the Egyptian solar year of 365 days by Eudoxus (who flourished 386).
higher idea of what the Italians were able to do in Structural
tl0
these departments furnished by their works of structural and plastic art, which are closely associated with the mechanical sciences. Here too we do not find phenomena of real originality but the impress of borrowing, which the plastic art of Italy bears throughout, diminishes its artistic interest, there gathers around historical interest all the more lively, because on the one hand
preserves the most remarkable evidences of an international inter-
868.
it
it a
(i. by
;
J is
if
JJT p
A
a
Architec ture.
Etruscan.
Latin.
u8 ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
course of which other traces have disappeared, and on the other hand, amidst the well-nigh total loss of the history of the non-Roman Italians, art is almost the sole surviving index of the living activity which the different peoples of the peninsula displayed. No novelty is to be reported in this period; but what we have already shown 306) may be illustrated in this period with greater precision and on
broader basis, namely, that the stimulus derived from Greece powerfully affected the Etruscans and Italians on different sides, and called forth among the former richer and more luxurious, among the latter — where had any influence at all — more intelligent and more genuine, art.
We have already shown how wholly the architecture of all the Italian lands was, even in its earliest period, per vaded Hellenic elements. Its city walls, its aqueducts, its tombs with pyramidal roofs, and its Tuscanic temple, are not at all, or not materially, different from the oldest Hellenic structures. No trace has been preserved of any advance in architecture among the Etruscans during this period we find among them neither any really new recep tion, nor any original creation, unless we ought to reckon as such the magnificent tombs, e. g. the so-called tomb of Porsena at Chiusi described by Varro, which vividly recalls the strange and meaningless grandeur of the Egyptian pyramids.
In Latium too, during the first century and half of the republic, probable that they moved solely in the previous track, and has already been stated that the exercise of art rather sank than rose with the introduction of the republic 84). There can scarcely be named any Latin building of architectural importance belonging to this period, except the temple of Ceres built in the Circus
498. at Rome in 261, which was regarded in the period of the empire as a model of the Tuscanic style. But towards the close of this epoch new spirit appeared in Italian and
a
it
is (p.
a
it
a
;
by
it
a
(i.
a
chap, IX ART AND SCIENCE
119
particularly in Roman architecture 85); the building of the magnificent arches began. It true that we are not entitled to pronounce the arch and the vault Italian inventions. It well ascertained that at the epoch of the genesis of Hellenic architecture the Hellenes were not yet acquainted with the arch, and therefore had to content themselves with flat ceiling and sloping roof for their temples; but the arch may very well have been later invention of the Hellenes originating in more scientific mechanics as indeed the Greek tradition refers to the natural philosopher Democritus (294-397). With this priority of Hellenic over Roman arch-building the hypo thesis, which has been often and perhaps justly propounded,
quite compatible, that the vaulted roof of the Roman great cloaca, and that which was afterwards thrown over the old Capitoline well-house which originally had pyramidal roof 302), are the oldest extant structures in which the principle of the arch applied for more than probable that these arched buildings belong not to the regal but to the republican period 139), and that in the regal period the Italians were acquainted only with flat or overlapped roofs 302). But whatever may be thought
as to the invention of the arch itself, the application of principle on great scale everywhere, and particularly in architecture, at least as important as its first exposition and this application belongs indisputably to the Romans. With the fifth century began the building of gates, bridges, and aqueducts based mainly on the arch, which thence forth inseparably associated with the Roman name. Akin to this was the development of the form of the round temple with the dome-shaped roof, which was foreign to the Greeks, but was held in much favour with the Romans and was especially applied by them in the case of the cults peculiar to them, particularly the non-Greek worship of Vesta. 1
The round temple certainly was not, as has been supposed, an imita-
The arch,
460-357.
1
is
is
it
is a
a
(i.
(i.
a is
is
;aa
(i.
a
is
;
;
it
is (p.
Plastic and delineative an.
Etruscan.
130 ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
Something the same may be affirmed as true of various subordinate, but not on that account unimportant, achieve ments in this field. They do not lay claim to originality or artistic accomplishment ; but the firmly-jointed stone slabs of the Roman streets, their indestructible highways, the broad hard ringing tiles, the everlasting mortar of their buildings, proclaim the indestructible solidity and the energetic vigour of the Roman character.
Like architectural art, and, if possible, still more com pletely, the plastic and delineative arts were not so much matured by Grecian stimulus as developed from Greek seeds on Italian soil. We have already observed (L 306) that these, although only younger sisters of architecture, began to develop themselves at least in Etruria, even during the Roman regal period ; but their principal development in Etruria, and still more in Latium, belongs to the present epoch, as is very evident from the fact that in those districts which the Celts and Samnites wrested
from the Etruscans in the course of the fourth century there is scarcely a trace of the practice of Etruscan art. The plastic art of the Tuscans applied itself first and chiefly to works in terra-cotta, in copper, and in gold — materials which were furnished to the artists by the rich strata of
tlon of the oldest form of the house ; on the contrary, house architecture uniformly starts from the square form. The later Roman theology associated this round form with the idea of the terrestrial sphere or of the universe surrounding like a sphere the central sun (Fest. v. rutundam, p. 282 ; Plutarch, Num. 1 1 ; Ovid, Fast. vi. 267, seg. ). In reality it may be traceable simply to the fact, that the circular shape has constantly been recognized as the most convenient and the safest form of a space destined for enclosure and custody. That was the rationale of the round thcsaitroi of the Greeks as well as of the round structure of the Roman store-chamber or temple of the Penates. It was natural, also, that the fireplace—that is, the altar of Vesta —and the fire-chamber —that is, the temple of Vesta — should be constructed of a round form, just as was done with the cistern and the well-enclosure ( puteat). The round style of building in itself was Graeco-Italian as was the square form, and the former was appropriated to the store-place, the latter to the dwelling-house ; but the architectural and religious development of the simple tholos into the round temple with pillars and columns was Latin.
chap, ix ART AND SCIENCE iai
day, the copper mines, and the commercial intercourse of Etruria. The vigour with which moulding in clay was prosecuted is attested by the immense number of bas-reliefs
and statuary works in terra-cotta, with which the walls, gables, and roofs of the Etruscan temples were once decor ated, as their still extant ruins show, and by the trade which
can be shown to have existed in such articles from Etruria
to Latium. Casting in copper occupied no inferior place. Etruscan artists ventured to make colossal statues of bronze
fifty feet in height, and Volsinii, the Etruscan Delphi, was
said to have possessed about the year 489 two thousand 265. bronze statues. Sculpture in stone, again, began in Etruria, as probably everywhere, at a far later date, and
was prevented from development not only by internal causes, but also by the want of suitable material ; the marble quarries of Luna (Carrara) were not yet opened. Any one who has seen the rich and elegant gold decora tions of the south-Etruscan tombs, will have no difficulty in believing the statement that Tyrrhene gold cups were valued even in Attica. Gem-engraving also, although more recent, was in various forms practised in Etruria. Equally dependent on the Greeks, but otherwise quite on a level with the workers in the plastic arts, were the Etruscan designers and painters, who manifested extraordinary activity both in outline-drawing on metal and in mono chromatic fresco-painting.
On comparing with this the domain of the Italians Campanlu
proper, it appears at first, contrasted with the Etruscan riches, almost poor in art. But on a closer view we cannot fail to perceive that both the Sabellian and the Latin nations must have had far more capacity and aptitude for art than the Etruscans. It is true that in the proper Sabellian territory, in Sabina, in the Abruzzi, in Samnium, there are hardly found any works of art at all, and even coins are wanting. But those Sabellian stocks, which reached the
Iceman
122 ART AND SCIENCE book ii
coasts of the Tyrrhene or Ionic seas, not only appropriated Hellenic art externally, like the Etruscans, but more or less completely acclimatized it Even in Velitrae, where prob ably alone in the former land of the Volsci their language and peculiar character were afterwards maintained, painted terra-cottas have been found, displaying vigorous and characteristic treatment In Lower Italy Lucania was to a less degree influenced by Hellenic art; but in Campania and in the land of the Bruttii, Sabellians and Hellenes became completely intermingled not only in language and nationality, but also and especially in art, and the Cam- panian and Bruttian coins in particular stand so entirely in point of artistic treatment on a level with the contemporary coins of Greece, that the inscription alone serves to dis tinguish the one from the other.
It is a fact less known, but not less certain, that Latium also, while inferior to Etruria in the copiousness and massiveness of its art, was not inferior in artistic taste and
among these the art of gem-engraving so
prosecuted in luxurious Etruria entirely wanting, and we find no indication that the Latin workshops were, like those of the Etruscan goldsmiths and clay-workers, occupied in supplying foreign demand. It true that the Latin temples were not like the Etruscan overloaded with bronze and clay decorations, that the Latin tombs were not like the Etruscan filled with gold ornaments, and their walls shone not, like those of the Tuscan tombs, with paintings of various colours. Nevertheless, on the whole the balance does not incline in favour of the Etruscan nation.
practical skill. Evidently the establishment of the Romans in Campania which took place about the beginning of the fifth century, the conversion of the town of Cales into a Latin community, and that of the Falernian
territory near Capua into a Roman tribe 463), opened up the first instance Campanian art to the Romans. It true that
diligently
The
a
is is
is in
(i.
chap, IX ART AND SCIENCE
123
device of the effigy of Janus, which, like the deity itself, may be attributed to the Latins 213), not unskilful, and
of more original character than that of any Etruscan work of art The beautiful group of the she-wolf with the twins attaches itself doubtless to similar Greek designs, but was— as thus worked out — certainly produced, not in Rome, at any rate Romans and deserves to be noted that first appears on the silver moneys coined by the Romans in and for Campania. In the above-mentioned Cales there appears to have been devised soon after its foundation peculiar kind of figured earthenware, which was marked with the name of the masters and the place of manufacture, and was sold over
wide district as far even as Etruria. The little altars of terra-cotta with figures that have recently been brought to light on the Esquiline correspond style of representation
as in that of ornament exactly to the similar votive gifts of
the Campanian temples. This however does not exclude Greek masters from having also worked for Rome. The sculptor Damophilus, who with Gorgasus prepared the painted terra-cotta figures for the very ancient temple of Ceres, appears to have been no other than Demophilus of Himera, the teacher of Zeuxis (about 300). The most in- 450. structive illustrations are furnished those branches of
art in which we are able to form comparative judgment,
from ancient testimonies, partly from our own observation. Of Latin works in stone scarcely anything
else survives than the stone sarcophagus of the Roman consul Lucius Scipio, wrought at the close of this period
in the Doric style but its noble simplicity puts to shame
all similar Etruscan works. Many beautiful bronzes of an antique chaste style of art, particularly helmets, candelabra,
and the like articles, have been taken from Etruscan tombs
but which of these works equal to the bronze she-wolf erected from the proceeds of fines 458 at the Ruminal 29«. fig-tree in the Roman Forum, and still forming the finest
partly
in
a
by
in
is
it
(i.
;
it
; is
a
if a
a by
;
is
ia4
ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
ornament of the Capitol? And that the Latin metal- founders as little shrank from great enterprises as the Etruscans, is shown by the colossal bronze figure of Jupiter
293. on the Capitol erected by Spurius Carvilius (consul in 461) from the melted equipments of the Samnites, the chisellings of which sufficed to cast the statue of the victor that stood at the feet of the Colossus ; this statue of Jupiter was visible even from the Alban Mount. Amongst the cast copper
coins by far the finest belong to southern Latium ; the Roman and Umbrian are tolerable, the Etruscan almost destitute of any image and often really barbarous. The fresco-paintings, which Gaius Fabius executed in the temple
302. of Health on the Capitol, dedicated in 452, obtained in design and colouring the praise even of connoisseurs trained in Greek art in the Augustan age ; and the art-enthusiasts of the empire commended the frescoes of Caere, but with still greater emphasis those of Rome, Lanuvium, and Ardea, as masterpieces of painting. Engraving on metal, which in Latium decorated not the hand-mirror, as in Etruria, but the toilet-casket with its elegant outlines, was practised to a far less extent in Latium and almost exclusively in Praeneste. There are excellent works of art among the copper mirrors of Etruria as among the caskets of Praeneste ; but it was a work of the latter kind, and in fact a work which most probably originated in the workshop of a Praenestine master at this epoch,1 regarding which it could with truth be affirmed that scarcely another product of the graving of antiquity bears the stamp of an art so finished in its beauty and characteristic expression, and yet so perfectly pure and chaste, as the Ficoroni cista.
Character Ara
can art.
The general character of Etruscan works of art on the one hand, sort of barbaric extravagance material
Novius Plaulius (p. 8a) cast perhaps only the feet and the group on the lid the casket itself may have proceeded from an earlier artist, but hardly from any other than a Praenestine, for the use of these caskets was substantially confined to Praeneste.
1 ;
a
in
is,
CHAr. IX ART AND SCIENCE
135
as well as in style ; on the other hand, an utter absence of original development. Where the Greek master lightly sketches, the Etruscan disciple lavishes a scholar's diligence ; instead of the light material and moderate proportions of the Greek works, there appears in the Etruscan an ostentatious stress laid upon the size and costliness, or even the mere singularity, of the work. Etruscan art cannot imitate with out exaggerating ; the chaste in its hands becomes harsh, the graceful effeminate, the terrible hideous, and the volup tuous obscene ; and these features become more prominent, the more the original stimulus falls into the background and Etruscan art finds itself left to its own resources. Still
more surprising is the adherence to traditional forms and a traditional style. Whether it was that a more friendly con tact with Etruria at the outset allowed the Hellenes to scatter there the seeds of art, and that a later epoch of hostility impeded the admission into Etruria of the more recent developments of Greek art, or whether, as is more probable, the intellectual torpor that rapidly came over the nation was the main cause of the phenomenon, art in Etruria remained substantially stationary at the primitive stage which it had occupied on its first entrance. This, as is well known, forms the reason why Etruscan art, the stunted daughter, was so long regarded as the mother, of Hellenic art Still more even than the rigid adherence to the style traditionally transmitted in the older branches of art, the sadly inferior handling of those branches that came into vogue afterwards, particularly of sculpture in stone and of copper-casting as applied to coins, shows how quickly the spirit of Etruscan art evaporated. Equally instructive are the painted vases, which are found in so enormous numbers in the later Etruscan tombs. Had these come into current use among the Etruscans as early as the metal plates decor ated with contouring or the painted terra-cottas, beyond doubt they would have learned to manufacture them at
North Etruscan and South Etruscan art.
126 ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
home in considerable quantity, and of a quality at least relatively good; but at the period at which this luxury arose, the power of independent reproduction wholly failed —as the isolated vases provided with Etruscan inscriptions show — and they contented themselves with buying instead of making them.
But even within Etruria there appears a further remark able distinction in artistic development between the southern and northern districts. It is South Etruria, particularly in the districts of Caere, Tarquinii, and Volci, that has preserved the great treasures of art which the nation boasted, especially in frescoes, temple decorations, gold ornaments, and painted vases.