CHAPTER IV.

ART IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

In my enumeration of the external glories of the Roman world, I only attempted to glance at those wonders which were calculated to strike a traveler with admiration. Among these were the great developments of Art, displayed in architecture, in statuary, and in painting. But I only enumerated the more remarkable objects of attraction; I did not attempt to show the genius displayed in them. But ancient art, as a proud creation of the genius of man, demands additional notice. We wish to know to what heights the Romans soared in that great realm of beauty and grace and majesty.

[Sidenote: Origins and principles of art.]

[Sidenote: Fascinations of art.]

[Sidenote: Development of art.]

[Sidenote: Glory of art.]

The aesthetic glories of art are among the grandest triumphs of civilization, and attest as well as demand no ordinary force of genius. Art claims to be creative, and to be based on eternal principles of beauty, and artists in all ages have claimed a proud niche in the temple of fame. They rank with poets and musicians, and even philosophers and historians, in the world's regard. They are favored sons of inspiration, urged to their work by ideal conceptions of the beautiful and the true. Their productions are material, but the spirit which led to their creation is of the soul and mind. Imagination is tasked to the uttermost to portray sentiments and passions. The bust is "animated," and the temple, though built of marble, and by man, is called "religious." Art appeals to every cultivated mind, and excites poetic feelings. It is impressive even to every order, class, and condition of men, not, perhaps, in its severest forms, since the taste must be cultivated to appreciate its higher beauties, but to a certain extent. The pyramids and the granite image temples of Egypt must have filled even the rude people with a certain awe and wonder, even as the majestic cathedrals of mediaeval Europe, with their imposing pomps, stimulated the poetic conceptions of the Gothic nations. Art is popular. The rude savage admires a gaudy picture even as the cultivated Leo X. or Cardinal Mazarini bent in admiration before the great creations of Raphael or Domenichino. Art appeals to the senses as well as to the intellect and the heart, and is capable of inspiring the passions as well as the loftiest emotions and sentiments. The Grecian mind was trained to the contemplation of aesthetic beauty in temples, in statues, and in pictures; and the great artist was rewarded with honors and material gains. The love of art is easier kindled than the love of literary excellence, and is more generally diffused. It is coeval with songs and epic poetry. Before Socrates or Plato speculated on the great certitudes of philosophy, temples and statues were the pride and boast of their countrymen. And as the taste for art precedes the taste for letters, so it survives, when the literature has lost its life and freshness. The luxurious citizens of Rome ornamented their baths and palaces with exquisite pictures and statues long after genius ceased to soar to the heights of philosophy and poetry. The proudest triumphs of genius are in a realm which art can never approach, yet the wonders of art are still among the great triumphs of civilization. Zeuxis or Praxiteles may not have equaled Homer or Plato in profundity of genius, but it was only a great age which could have produced a Zeuxis or Praxiteles. I cannot place Raphael on so exalted a pinnacle as Luther, or Bacon, or Newton, and yet his fame will last as long as civilization shall exist. The creations of the chisel will ever be held in reverence by mankind, and probably in proportion as wealth, elegance, and material prosperity shall flourish. In an important sense, Corinth was as wonderful as Athens, although to Athens will be assigned the highest place in the ancient world. It was art rather than literature or philosophy which was the glory of Rome in the period of her decline. As great capitals become centres of luxury and display, artists will be rewarded and honored. The pride of a commercial metropolis is in those material wonders which appeal to the senses, and which wealth can purchase. A rich merchant can give employment to the architect, when he would be disinclined to reward the critic or the historian. Even where liberty and lofty aspirations for truth and moral excellence have left a state, the arts suffer but little decline. The grandest monuments of Rome date to the imperial regime, not to the republican sway. When the voice of a Cicero was mute, the Flavian amphitheatre arose in its sublime proportions. Imperial despotism is favorable to the adornment of Paris and St. Petersburg, even as wealth and luxury will beautify New York. When the early lights of the Church were unheeded in the old capitals of the world, new temples and palaces were the glory of the state. Art was the first to be revived of the trophies of the old civilization, and it will be the last to be relinquished, by those whom civilization has enriched. Art excites no dangerous passions or sentiments in a decaying monarchy, and it is a fresh and perpetual pleasure, not merely to the people, but to the arbiters of taste and fashion. The Popes rewarded artists when they crushed reformers, and persecuted inquiring genius. The developments of art appeal to material life and interests rather than to the spiritual and eternal. St. Paul scarcely alludes to the material wonders of the cities he visited, even as Luther was insensible to the ornaments of Italy in his absorbing desire for the spiritual and moral welfare of society. Art is purely the creation of man. It receives no inspiration from Heaven; and yet the principles on which it is based are eternal and unchangeable, and when it is made to be the handmaid of virtue, it is capable of exciting the loftiest sentiments. So pure, so exalted, and so wrapt are the feelings which arise from the contemplation of a great picture or statue, that we sometimes ascribe a religious force to the art itself, while all that is divine springs from the conception of the artist, and all that is divine in his conception arises from sentiments independent of his art, as he is stimulated by emotions of religion, or patriotism, or public virtue, and which he could never have embodied had he not been a good man, rather than a great artist, or, at least, affected by sentiments which he learned from other sources. There can be no doubt that, through the vehicle of art, the grandest and noblest sentiments may be expressed. Hence artists may be great benefactors; yet sometimes their works are demoralizing, as they appeal to perverted taste and passions. This was especially true in the later days of Rome, when artists sought to please their corrupt but wealthy patrons. The great artists of Greece, however, had in view a lofty ideal of beauty and grace which they sought to realize without reference to profit, or worldly advantage, or utilitarian necessities. Art, when true and exalted, as it sometimes is, and always should be, has its end in itself. Like virtue, it is its own reward. Michael Angelo worked, preoccupied and wrapt, without the stimulus of even praise, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination gave form and reality. Art is therefore self-sustained, unselfish, lofty. It is the soul going forth triumphant over external circumstances, jubilant and melodious even in poverty and neglect, rising above the evils of life in its absorbing contemplation of ideal loveliness. The fortunate accidents of earth are nothing to the true artist, striving to reach his ideal of excellence,--no more than carpets and chairs are to a great woman pining for sympathy or love. And it is only when there is this soul-longing to reach the excellence it has conceived for itself alone that great works have been produced. The sweetest strains of music sometimes come from women where no one listens to their melodies. Nor does a great artist seek or need commiseration, if ever so unfortunate in worldly circumstances. He may be sad and sorrowful, but only in the profound seriousness of superior knowledge, in that isolation to which all genius is doomed.

[Sidenote: Great artists labor from inspiration.]

We have reason to believe that the great artists of antiquity lived, as did the Ionic philosophers, in their own glorious realms of thought and feeling, which the world could neither understand nor share. Their ideas of grace and beauty were realized to the highest degree ever known on earth. They were expressed in their temples, their statues, and their pictures. They did not live for utilities. When art became a utility, it degenerated. It became more pretentious, artificial, complicated, elaborate, ornamental even, but it lacked genius, the simplicity of power, the glory of originality. The horses of the sun cannot be made to go round in a mill. The spiritual must keep within its own seclusion, in its inner temple of mystery and meditation.

[Sidenote: Grecian art consecrated to Paganism.]

[Sidenote: Greatness and beauty of Grecian art.]

[Sidenote: Grecian admiration of art.]

Grecian art was consecrated to Paganism, and could not therefore soar beyond what Paganism revealed. It did not typify those exalted sentiments which even a Gothic cathedral portrayed--sacrifice; the man on the cross; the man in the tomb; the man ascending to heaven. Nor did it paint, like Raphael, etherial beauty, such as was expressed in the mother of our Lord, her whom all generations shall bless, _regina angelorum, mater divinae gratiae_. But whatever has been reached by the unaided powers of man, it reproduced and consecrated, and it realized the highest conceptions of beauty and grace that have ever been represented. All that the mind and the soul could, by their inherent force, reach, it has attained. Modern civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists of Pagan antiquity in those things which pertain to beauty and grace. Grecian artists have been the schoolmasters of all nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. How far they themselves were original we cannot decide, although they were probably somewhat indebted to the Assyrians and Egyptians. But they struck out so new a style, and so different from the older monuments of Asia and Egypt, that we consider them the great creators of art. But whether original or not, they have never been surpassed. In some respects their immortal productions remain objects of hopeless imitation. In the realization of ideas of beauty which are eternal, like those on which Plato built his system of philosophy, they reached absolute perfection. And hence we infer that art can flourish under Pagan as well as Christian influences. We can go no higher than those ancient Pagans in one of the proudest fields of civilization; for art has as sincere and warm admirers as it had in Grecian and Roman times, but the limit of excellence has been reached. It is the mission of our age to apply creative genius to enterprises and works which have not been tried, if any thing new is to be found under the sun. Nor was it the number and extent of the works of art among the Greeks and Romans, nor their perfection, which made art so distinguishing an element of the old civilization. It was the spirit of the age, the absorption of the public mind, the great prominence which art had in the eyes of the people. Art was to the Greeks what tournaments and churches were to the men of the Middle Ages, what the Reformation was to Germany and England in the sixteenth century, what theories of political rights were to the era of the French Revolution, what mechanical inventions to abridge human labor are to us. The creation of a great statue was an era, an object of popular interest--the subject of universal comment. It kindled popular inspirations. It was the great form of progress in which that age rejoiced. Public benefactors erected temples, and lavished upon them the superfluous wealth of the State. And public benefactors, in turn, had statues erected to their memory by their grateful admirers. The genius of the age expressed itself in marble histories. And these histories stand in the mystery of absolute perfection--the glory and the characteristic of a great and peculiar people.

[Sidenote: Principles of art.]

[Sidenote: Devotion of the Greeks for Art.]

Much has been written on those principles upon which art is founded, and great ingenuity displayed. But treatises on taste, on beauty, on grace, and other perceptions of intellectual pleasure, are not very satisfactory, and must be necessarily indefinite. In what does beauty consist? Do we arrive at any clearer conceptions of it by definitions? Whether beauty, the chief glory of the fine arts, consists in certain arrangements and proportions of the parts to a whole, or in the fitness of means to an end, or is dependent on associations which excite pleasure, or is a revelation of truth, or is an appeal to sensibilities, or is an imitation of Nature, or the realization of ideal excellence, it is difficult to settle and almost useless to inquire. "Metaphysics, mathematics, music, and philosophy have been called in to analyze, define, demonstrate, and generalize." [Footnote: Cleghorn, Ancient and Modern Art, vol. i. p. 67.] Great writers have written ingenious treatises, like Burke, Alison, and Stewart. Beauty, according to Plato, is the contemplation of mind; Leibnitz maintained it consists in perfection; Diderot referred beauty to the idea of relation; Blondel asserted it was harmonic proportions; Peter Leigh speaks of it as the music of the eye. Yet everybody understands what beauty is, and that it is derived from Nature, agreeable to the purest models which Nature presents. Such was the ideal of Phidias. Such was it to the minds of the Greeks, who united every advantage, physical and mental, for the perfection of art. Nor could art have been so wonderfully developed had it not been for the influence which the great poets, orators, dramatists, historians, and philosophers exercised on the inspiration of the artists. Phidias, being asked how he conceived the idea of his Olympian Jupiter, answered by repeating a passage of Homer. We can scarcely conceive of the enthusiasm which the Greeks exhibited in the cultivation of art. Hence it has obtained an ascendency over that of all other nations. Roman art was the continuation of the Grecian. The Romans appreciated and rewarded Grecian artists. They adopted their architecture, their sculpture, and their paintings; and, though art never attained the estimation and dignity in Rome that it did in Greece, it still can boast of a great development. But, inasmuch as all the great models were Grecian, and appropriated and copied by the Romans,-- inasmuch as the great wonders of the "Eternal City" were made by Greeks,--we cannot treat of Roman art in distinction from Grecian. And as I wish to show simply the triumph of Pagan genius in the realm of art, and most of the immortal creations of the great artists were transported to Rome, and adorned Rome, it is within my province to go where they were originally found.

"Tu, regere imperio populos, Romane, memento! Hae tibi erunt artes."

[Sidenote: Art first impressive in achitecture.]

The first development of art was in architecture, not merely among the Greeks, but among the older nations. Although it refers, in a certain sense, to all buildings, yet it is ordinarily restricted to those edifices in which we recognize the principle of beauty, such as symmetrical arrangement, and attractive ornaments, like pillars, cornices, and sculptured leaves.

The earliest buildings were houses to protect men from the inclemencies of the weather, and built without much regard to beauty; but it is in temples for the worship of God, that architecture lays claim to dignity. It was the result of devotional feelings; nor is there a single instance of supreme excellence in art being reached, which was not sacred, and connected with reverential tendencies. In the erection and decoration of sacred buildings there was a profound sentiment that they were to be the sanctuaries of God, and genius was stimulated by pious emotions. In India, in Egypt, in Greece, in Italy, the various temples all originated in blended superstition and devotion. Nor did the edifice, erected for religious worship, reach its culminating height of beauty and grandeur until that earnest and profoundly religious epoch which felt as injuries the insults offered to the tomb which covered the remains of the Saviour of the world. Then arose those hoary and Gothic vaults of Cologne and Westminster, the only modern structures which would probably have called out the admiration of an ancient Greek.

[Sidenote: Egyptian architecture.]

[Sidenote: Monuments of Egypt.]

[Sidenote: Temple of Carnack.]

[Sidenote: Features of Egyptian art.]

But architecture is conventional, and demands a knowledge of its system and a mind informed as to the principles on which it depends for beauty. Hence, in the oldest temples of India and Egypt, there was probably vastness, without elegance or even embellishment. But no nation ever left structures that, in extent and grandeur, can compare with those of ancient Egypt; and these were chiefly temples. Nothing remains of the ancient monuments of Thebes but the ruins of edifices consecrated to the deity--neither bridges, nor quays, nor baths, nor theatres. It was when the Israelites were oppressed by Pharaoh that the great city of Heliopolis, which the Greeks called Thebes, arose, with its hundred gates, and stately public buildings, and magnificent temples. The ruins of these attest grandeur and vastness. They were built of stone, in huge blocks, and we are still at a loss to comprehend how such heavy stones could have been transported and erected. All the monuments of the Pharaohs are wonders of science and art, especially such as appear in the ruins of Carnack--a temple formerly designated as that of Jupiter Ammon. It was in the time of Sesostris, or Rameses the Great, the first of the Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty, that architecture in Egypt reached its greatest development. Then we find the rectangular cut blocks of stone in parallel courses, and the heavy piers, and the cylindrical column, with its bell-shaped capital, and the bold and massive rectangular architraves extending from pier to pier and column to column, surmounted by a deep covered coping or cornice. But the imposing architecture of Egypt was chiefly owing to the vast proportions of the public buildings. It was not produced by beauty of proportion, or graceful embellishments. It was designed to awe the people, and kindle sentiments of wonder and astonishment. So far as this end was contemplated, it was nobly reached. Even to this day the traveller stands in admiring amazement before those monuments which were old three thousand years ago. No structures have been so enduring as the Pyramids. No ruins are more extensive and majestic than those of Thebes. The temple of Carnack and the palace of Rameses the Great, were probably the most imposing ever built by man. This temple was built of blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand feet long and three hundred wide, with pillars sixty feet in height. But this and other structures did not possess that unity of design, which marked the Grecian temples. Alleys of colossal sphinxes form the approach. At Carnack the alley was six thousand feet long, and before the main body of the edifice stand two obelisks commemorative of the dedication. The principal structures do not follow the straight line, but begin with pyramidical towers which flank the gateways. Then follows, usually, a court surrounded with colonnades, subordinate temples, and houses for the priests. A second pylon, or pyramidical tower, now leads to the interior and most considerable part of the temple, a portico inclosed with walls, which only receives light through the entablature or openings in the roof. Adjoining to this is the cella of the temple, without columns, inclosed by several walls, often divided into various small chambers, with monolith receptacles for idols or mummies or animals. The columns stand within the walls. The Egyptians had no perpetual temples. The colonnade is not, as among the Greeks, an expansion of the temple; it is merely the wall with apertures. The walls, composed of square blocks, are perpendicular only on the inside, and beveled externally, so that the thickness at the bottom sometimes amounts to twenty-four feet, and thus the whole building assumes a pyramidical form, the fundamental principle of Egyptian architecture. The columns are more slender than the early Doric, are placed close together, and have bases of circular plinths; the shaft diminishes, and is ornamented with perpendicular or oblique furrows, but not fluted like Grecian columns. The capitals are of the bell form, ornamented with all kinds of foliage, and have a narrow but high abacus, or bulge out below, and are contracted above, with low, but projecting abacus. They abound with sculptured decorations, borrowed from the vegetation of the country. The highest of the columns of the temple of Luxor is five and a quarter times the greatest diameter. [Footnote: Muller.]

[Sidenote: The Pyramids.]

But no monuments have ever excited so much curiosity and wonder as the Pyramids, not in consequence of any particular beauty or ingenuity, as from their immense size and unknown age. None but sacerdotal monarchs would ever have erected them--none but a fanatical people would ever have toiled upon them. They do not indicate civilization, but despotism. We do not know for what purpose they were raised, except as sepulchres for kings. They do not even indicate as high a culture as the temples of Thebes, although they were built at a considerable period subsequently, even several generations after Sesostris reigned in splendor. The pyramid of Cheops, at Memphis, covers a square whose side is seven hundred and sixty-eight feet, and rises into the air four hundred and fifty-two, and is a solid mass of stone, which has suffered less from time than the mountains near it. And it is probable that it stands over an immense substructure, in which may yet be found the lore of ancient Egypt, and which may even prove to be the famous labyrinth of which Herodotus speaks, built by the twelve kings of Egypt. According to this author, one hundred thousand men worked on this monument for forty years. What a waste of labor!

The palaces of the kings are mere imitations of the temples, and the only difference of architecture is this, that the rooms are larger and in greater numbers. Some think that the labyrinth was a collective palace of many rulers.

Such was the massive grandeur of Egyptian antiquities: at the best curiosities, but of slight avail for moral or aesthetic culture, they yet indicate a considerable civilization at a very remote period--proving not merely by architectural monuments, but by their system of writing, an original and intellectual people. [Footnote: Muller, _Ancient Art_; Wilkinson, _Topog. of Thebes_; Champollion, _Lettres Ecrites d'Egypt_; _Journal des Sav._ 1836; _Encyclopedia Britannica_; Strabo.]

[Sidenote: Babylonian architecture.]

Of Babylonian architecture we know but little, beyond what the Scriptures and ancient authors allude to in scattered notices. But, though nothing survives of ancient magnificence, we feel that a city whose walls, according to Herodotus, were eighty-seven feet in thickness, three hundred and thirty-seven in height, and sixty miles in circumference, and in which were one hundred gates of brass, must have had considerable architectural splendor. The Tower of Belus, the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Obelisk of Semiramis, were probably wonderful structures, certainly in size, which is one of the conditions of architectural effect.

[Sidenote: Tyrian monuments.]

The Tyrians must have carried architecture to considerable perfection, since the Temple of Solomon, one of the most magnificent in the ancient world, was probably built by Phoenician artists. It was not remarkable for size; it was, indeed, very small; but it had great splendor of decoration. It was of quadrangular outline, erected upon a solid platform of stone, and having a striking resemblance to the oldest Greek temples, like those of aegina and Paestum. The portico of the temple, in the time of Herod, was one hundred and eighty feet high, and the temple itself was entered by nine gates thickly coated with silver and gold. The inner sanctuary was covered on all sides with plates of gold, and was dazzling to the eye. The various courts and porticoes and palaces with which it was surrounded, gave to it a very imposing effect.

[Sidenote: Early Doric monuments.]

[Sidenote: The principles of Doric architecture.]

[Sidenote: The features of the Doric order.]

[Sidenote: The Parthenon.]

Architecture, however, as the expression of genius and high civilization, was perfected only by the Greeks. Egyptian monuments were curiosities to the Greek and Roman mind, as they are to us objects of awe and wonder. And as we propose to treat of the arts in their culminating excellence chiefly,--to show what the Pagan intellect of man could accomplish, unaided by light from heaven, we turn to the great teacher of the last two thousand years. It was among the ancient Dorians, who descended from the mountains of Northern Greece eighty years after the fall of Troy, that art first appeared. The Pelasgi, supposed to be Phoenicians, erected cyclopean structures fifteen hundred years before Christ, as seen in the giant walls of the Acropolis, [Footnote: _Dodwell's Classical Tour_, Muller.] constructed of huge blocks of hewn stone, and the palaces of the princes of heroic times, [Footnote: Homer's description of the palace of Odysseus.] like the Mycenaean treasury, the lintel of the doorway of which is one stone twenty-seven feet long and sixteen broad. [Footnote: Mure, Tour in Greece.] But these edifices, which aimed at splendor and richness merely, were deficient in that simplicity and harmony which have given immortality to the temples of the Dorians. In this style of architecture every thing was suitable to its object, and was grand and noble. The great thickness of the columns, the beautiful entablature, the ample proportion of the capital; the great horizontal lines of the architrave and cornice, predominating over the vertical lines of the columns; the severity of geometrical forms, produced for the most part by straight lines, gave an imposing simplicity to the Doric temple. How far the Greek architects were indebted to the Egyptian we cannot tell, for though columns are found amid the ruins of the Egyptian temples, they are of different shape from any made by the Greeks. In the structures of Thebes we find both the tumescent and the cylindrical columns, from which amalgamation might have been produced the Doric column. The Greeks seized on beauty wherever they found it, and improved upon it. The Doric column was not, probably, an entirely new creation, but shaped after the models furnished by the most original of all the ancient nations, even the Egyptians. The Doric style was used exclusively until after the Macedonian conquest, and was chiefly applied to temples. The Doric temples are uniform in plan. The columns were fluted, and were generally about six diameters in height. They diminished gradually from the base, with a slight convexed swelling downward. They were superimposed by capitals proportionate, and coming within their height. The entablature which the column supported is also of so many diameters in height. So regular and perfect was the plan of the temple, that, "if the dimensions of a single column, and the proportion the entablature should bear to it, were given to two individuals acquainted with the style, with directions to compose a temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement, and general proportions." Then the Doric order possessed a peculiar harmony, but taste and skill were nevertheless necessary in order to determine the number of diameters a column should have, and, accordingly, the height of the entablature. The Doric was the favorite order of European Greece for one thousand years, and also of her colonies in Sicily and Magna Graecia. The massive temples of Paestum, the colossal magnificence of the Sicilian ruins, and the more elegant proportions of the Athenian structures, like the Parthenon and Temple of Theseus, show the perfection of the Doric architecture. Although the general style of all the Doric temples is so uniform, yet hardly two temples were alike. The earlier Doric was more massive; the latter were more elegant, and were rich in sculptured decorations. Nothing could surpass the beauty of a Doric temple in the time of Pericles. The stylobate or pedestal, from two thirds to a whole diameter of a column in height, was built in three equal courses, which gradually receded from the one below, and formed steps, as it were, of a grand platform on which the pillars rested. The column was from four to six diameters in height, with twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter supporting the entablature. This again, two diameters in height, was divided into architrave, frieze, and cornice. But the great beauty of the temple was the portico in front, a forest of columns, supporting the pediment, about a diameter and a half to the apex, making an angle at the base of about 14 degrees. From the pediment projects the cornice, while, at the apex and at the base of it, are sculptured ornaments, generally, the figures of men or animals. The whole outline of columns supporting the entablature is graceful, while the variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and capitals produce a grand effect. The Parthenon, the most beautiful specimen of the Doric, has never been equaled, and it still stands august in its ruins--the glory of the old Acropolis, and the pride of Athens. It was built of Pentelic marble, and rested on a basement of limestone. It was two hundred and twenty-seven feet in length, and one hundred and one in breadth, and sixty-five in height, surrounded with forty-eight fluted columns, six feet and two inches at the base, and thirty-four feet in height, while within the peristyle, at either end, was an interior range of columns, standing before the end of the cella. The frieze and the pediment were elaborately ornamented with reliefs and statues, while the cella, within and without, was adorned with the choicest sculptures of Phidias. The grandest was the colossal statue of Minerva, in the eastern apartment of the cella, forty feet in height, composed of gold and ivory; while the inner walls were decorated with paintings, and the temple itself was a repository of countless treasure. But the Parthenon, so regular, with its vertical and horizontal lines, was curved in every line, with the exception of the gable,--pillars, architrave, entablature, frieze, and cornice, together with the basement--all arched upwards, though so slightly as not to be perceptible, and these curved lines gave to it a peculiar grace which cannot be imitated, as well as solidity.

[Sidenote: The Acropolis.]

Nearly coeval with the Doric was the Ionic order, invented by the Asiatic Greeks, still more graceful, though not so imposing. The Acropolis is a perfect example of this order. The column is nine diameters in height, with a base, while the capital is more ornamented. The shaft is fluted with twenty-four flutes and alternate fillets, and the fillet is about a quarter the width of the flute. The pediment is flatter than of the Doric order, and more elaborate. The great distinction of the Ionic column is a base, and a capital formed with volutes, with a more slender shaft. Vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients in architecture, says that, "the Greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the naked simplicity and dignity of a man, and in the other, the delicacy and ornaments of a woman; the base of the Ionic was the imitation of sandals, and the volutes of ringlets."

[Sidenote: Temple of Minerva.]

The Corinthian order exhibits a still greater refinement and elegance than the other two, and was introduced toward the end of the Peloponnesian war. Its peculiarity is columns with foliated capitals, and still greater height, about ten diameters, with a more ornamented entablature. Of this order, the most famous temple in Greece was that of Minerva at Tegea, built by Scopas of Paros, but destroyed by fire four hundred years before Christ.

Nothing more distinguished Greek architecture than the variety, the grace, and the beauty of the mouldings, generally in eccentric curves. The general outline of the moulding is a gracefully flowing cyma, or wave, concave at one end, and convex at the other, like an Italic f, the concavity and convexity being exactly in the same curve, according to the line of beauty which Hogarth describes.

[Sidenote: Architecture among the Greeks seen in greatest perfection in temples.]

The most beautiful application of Grecian architecture was in the temples, which were very numerous, and of extraordinary grandeur, long before the Persian war. Their entrance was always to the west or the east. They were built either in an oblong or round form, and were mostly adorned with columns. Those of an oblong form had columns either in the front alone, in the fore and back fronts, or on all the four sides. They generally had porticoes attached to them. They had no windows, receiving their light from the door or from above. The friezes were adorned with various sculptures, as were sometimes the pediments, and no expense was spared upon them. The most important part of the temple was the cella, where the statue of the deity was kept, and was generally surrounded with a balustrade. Beside the cella was the vestibule, and a chamber in the rear or back front in which the treasures of the temple were kept. Names were applied to the temples, as well as the porticoes, according to the number of columns in the portico at either end of the temple, such as the tetrastyle with four columns in front, or hexastyle when there were six. There were never more than ten columns in front. The Parthenon had eight, but six was the usual number. It was the rule to have twice as many columns along the sides as in front, and one more. Some of the temples had double rows of columns on all sides, like that of Diana at Ephesus, and of Quirinus at Rome. The distance between the columns varied from a diameter and half of a column to four diameters. About five eighths of a Doric temple were occupied by the cella, and three eighths by the portico.

[Sidenote: Simplicity of Grecian temples.]

That which gives so much simplicity and harmony in the Greek temples, which are the great elements of beauty in architecture, is the simple outline, in parallelogrammic and pyramidal forms, in which the lines are straight and uninterrupted through their entire length. This simplicity and harmony are more apparent in the Doric than in any of the other orders, and pertain to all the temples of which we have knowledge. Nor can any improvement be made upon them, or any alteration which does not conflict with established principles. The Ionic and Corinthian, or the Voluted and Foliated orders, do not possess that harmony which pervades the Doric, but the more beautiful compositions are so consummate that they will ever be taken as models of study.

[Sidenote: Matchless proportions of the Grecian temples.]

It is not the magnitude of the Grecian temples and other works of art which most impresses us. It is not for this that they are important models. It is not for this that they are copied and reproduced in all the modern nations of Europe. They were generally small compared with the temples of Egypt, or the vast dimensions of Roman amphitheatres. Only three or four would compare in size with a Gothic cathedral, like the Parthenon, the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. Even the Pantheon at Rome is small, compared with the later monuments of the Caesars. The traveler is always disappointed in contemplating their remains, so far as size is concerned. But it is their matchless proportions, their severe symmetry, the grandeur of effect, the undying beauty, the graceful form which impress us, and make us feel that they are perfect. By the side of the Colosseum they are insignificant in magnitude. They do not cover acres like the baths of Caracalla. Yet who has copied the Flavian amphitheatre? Who erects an edifice after the style of the Thermae? But all artists copy the Parthenon. That, and not the colossal monuments of the Caesars, reappears in the capitals of Europe, and stimulates the genius of a Michael Angelo or a Christopher Wren.

The flourishing period of Greek architecture was during the period from Pericles to Alexander--one hundred and thirteen years. The Macedonian conquest introduced more magnificence and less simplicity. The Roman conquest accelerated the decline in severe taste, when different orders were used indiscriminately.

[Sidenote: Beginning of Roman art.]

[Sidenote: Romans copied the Greeks.]

In this state the art passed into the hands of the masters of the world, and they inaugurated a new era in architecture. The art was still essentially Greek, although the Romans derived their first knowledge from the Etruscans. The Cloaca Maxima was built during the reign of the second Tarquin--the grandest monument of the reign of the kings. It is not probable that temples and other public buildings were either beautiful or magnificent until the conquest of Greece, when Grecian architects were employed. The Romans adopted the Corinthian style, which they made even more ornamental, and by the successful combination of the Etruscan arch with the Grecian column, laid the foundation of a new and original style, susceptible of great variety and magnificence. They entered into architecture with the enthusiasm of their teachers, but, in their passion for novelty, lost sight of the simplicity which is the great fascination of a Doric Temple. "And they deemed that lightness and grace were to be attained not so much by proportion between the vertical and the horizontal, as by the comparative slenderness of the former. Hence we see a poverty in Roman architecture in the midst of profuse ornament. The great error was a constant aim to lessen the diameter, while they increased the elevation, of the columns. Hence the massive simplicity and severe grandeur of the ancient Doric disappear in the Roman, the characteristics of the order being frittered down into a multiplicity of minute details." [Footnote: Memes, _Sculpture and Architecture._] And when they used the Doric at all, they used the base, which was never done at Athens. They also altered the Doric capital, which cannot be improved. Again, most of the Grecian Doric temples were peripteral, that is, were surrounded with pillars on all the sides. But the Romans did not build with porticoes even on each front, but only on one, which had a greater projection than the Grecian. They generally are projected three columns. Many of the Roman temples are circular, like the Pantheon, which has a portico of eight columns projected to the depth of three. Nor did the Romans construct hypaethral temples, or uncovered, with internal columns, like the Greeks. The Pantheon is an exception, since the dome has an open eye; and one great ornament of this beautiful structure is in the arrangement of internal columns placed in the front of niches, composed with antae, or pier- formed ends of walls, to carry an entablature round under an attic on which the cupola rests. They also adopted coupled columns, broken and recessed entablatures, and pedestals, which are considered blemishes. They again paid more attention to the interior than to the exterior decoration of their palaces and baths, as we may infer from the ruins of Adrian's villa at Tivoli, and the excavations of Pompeii.

The Roman Corinthian, like the Greek orders, consisted of three parts, stylobate, column, and entablature, but the stylobate was much loftier, and was not graduated, except in the access before a portico. The column varied from nine and a half to ten diameters, and was always fluted with twenty-four flutes and fillets. The height of the capital is a diameter and one eighth; the entablature varies from one diameter and seven eighths to two diameters and a half. The portico of the Pantheon is one of the best specimens of the Corinthian order. The entablature of the temple of Jupiter Stator, like that of the Pantheon, is two diameters and one half. The pediments are steeper than those made by the Greeks, varying in inclination from eighteen to twenty-five degrees. The mouldings used in Roman architectural works are the same as the Grecian in general form, although they differ from them in contour. They are less delicate and graceful, but were used in great profusion. Roman architecture is overdone with ornament, every moulding carved, and every straight surface sculptured with foliage or historical subjects in relief. The ornaments of the frieze consist of foliage and animals, with a variety of other things. The great exuberance of ornament is considered a defect, although when applied to some structures it is exceedingly beautiful. In the time of the first Caesars architecture had a character of grandeur and magnificence. Columns and arches appeared in all the leading public buildings, columns generally forming the external, and arches the internal construction. Fabric after fabric arose on the ruins of others. The Flavii supplanted the edifices of Nero, which ministered to debauchery, by structures of public utility.

[Sidenote: Changes made by the Romans.]

[Sidenote: Invention of the arch.]

[Sidenote: Uses of the arch.]

The Romans invented no new principle in architecture, except the arch, which was not known to the Greeks, and carried out by them to greater perfection than by the Romans; but this, for simplicity, harmony, and beauty, has never been surpassed in any age, or by any nation. The Romans were a practical and utilitarian people, and needed for their various structures greater economy of material than large blocks of stone, especially for such as were carried to great altitudes. The arch supplied this want, and is perhaps the greatest invention ever made in architecture. No instance of its adoption occurs in the construction of Greek edifices, before Greece became a part of the Roman Empire. Its application dates back to the Cloaca Maxima, and may have been of Etrurian invention. It was not known to Egyptians, or Persians, or Indians, or Greeks. Some maintain that Archimedes of Sicily was the inventor, but to whomsoever the glory of the invention is due, it is certain that the Romans were the first to make a practical application of its wonderful qualities. It enabled them to rear vast edifices into the air with the humblest materials, to build bridges, aqueducts, sewers, amphitheatres, and triumphal arches, as well as temples and palaces; its merits have never been lost sight of by succeeding generations, and it is at the foundation of the magnificent Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Its application extends to domes and cupolas, to arched floors and corridors and roofs, and to various other parts of buildings where economy of material and labor is desired. It was applied extensively to doorways and windows, and is an ornament as well as a utility. The most imposing forms of Roman architecture may be traced to a knowledge of the properties of the arch, and as brick was more extensively used than any other material, the arch was invaluable. The imperial palace on Mount Palatine, the Pantheon, except its portico and internal columns, the temples of Peace, of Venus and Rome, and of Minerva Medica, were of brick. So were the great baths of Titus, Caracalla, and Diocletian, the villa of Adrian, the city walls, the villa of Maecenas at Tivoli, and most of the palaces of the nobility; although, like many of the temples, they were faced with stone. The Colosseum was of travertine faced with marble. It was the custom to stucco the surface of the walls, as favorable to decorations. In consequence of this invention, the Romans erected a greater variety of fine structures than either the Greeks or Egyptians, whose public edifices were chiefly confined to temples. The arch entered into almost every structure, public or private, and superseded the use of long stone beams, which were necessary in the Grecian temples, as also of wooden timbers, in the use of which the Romans were not skilled, and which do not really pertain to the art of architecture. An imposing building must always be constructed of stone or brick. The arch also enabled the Romans to economize in the use of costly marbles, of which they were very fond, as well as of other stones. Some of the finest columns were made of Egyptian granite, very highly polished.

The extensive application of the arch doubtless led to the deterioration of the Grecian architecture, since it blended columns with arcades, and thus impaired the harmony which so peculiarly marked the temples of Athens and Corinth. And as taste became vitiated with the decline of the Empire, monstrous combinations took place, which were a great fall from the simplicity of the Parthenon, and the interior of the Pantheon.

[Sidenote: Magnificence of Roman architecture.]

But whatever defects marked the age of Diocletian and Constantine, it can never be questioned that the Romans carried architecture to a perfection rarely attained in our times. They may not have equaled the severe simplicity of their teachers, the Greeks, but they surpassed them in the richness or their decorations, and in all buildings designed for utility, especially in private houses and baths and theatres.

[Sidenote: The effect of columns in architecture.]

The Romans do not seem to have used other than semicircular arches. The Gothic, or Pointed, or Christian architecture, as it has been variously called, was the creation of the Middle Ages, and arose nearly simultaneously in Europe after the first Crusade, so that it would seem to be of Eastern origin. But it was a graft on the old Roman arch,--in the shape of an ellipse rather than a circle. Aside from this invention, to which we are indebted for the most beautiful ecclesiastical structures ever erected, we owe every thing in architecture to the Greeks and Romans. We have found out no new principles which were not equally known to Vitruvius. No one man was the inventor or creator of the wonderful structures which ornamented the cities of the ancient world. We have the names of great architects, who reared various and faultless models, but they all worked upon the same principles. And these can never be subverted. So that in architecture the ancients are our schoolmasters, whose genius we revere the more we are acquainted with their works. What more beautiful than one of those grand temples which the heathen but cultivated Greeks erected to the worship of their unknown gods: the graduated and receding stylobate as a base for the fluted columns, rising at regular distances, in all their severe proportion and matchless harmony, with their richly carved capitals, supporting an entablature of heavy stones, most elaborately moulded and ornamented with the figures of plants and animals, and rising above this, on the ends of the temple, or over a portico several columns deep, the pediment, covered by chiseled cornices, with still richer ornaments rising from the apices and at the feet; all carved in white marble, and then spread over an area larger than any modern churches, making a forest of columns to bear aloft those ponderous beams of stone, without any thing tending to break the continuity of horizontal lines, by which the harmony and simplicity of the whole are seen. So accurately squared and nicely adjusted were the stones and pillars of which these temples were built, that there was scarcely need of even cement. Without noise or confusion or sound of hammers did those temples rise, since all their parts were cut and carved in the distant quarries, and with mathematical precision. And within the cella, nearly concealed by the surrounding columns, were the statues of the gods, and the altars on which incense was offered, or sacrifices made. In every part, interior and exterior, do we see a matchless proportion and beauty, whether in the shaft, or the capital, or the frieze, or the pilaster, or the pediment, or the cornices, or even the mouldings--everywhere grace and harmony, which grow upon the mind the more they are contemplated. The greatest evidence of the matchless creative genius displayed in those architectural wonders is that, after two thousand years, and with all the inventions of Roman and modern artists, no improvement can be made, and those edifices which are the admiration of our own times are deemed beautiful as they approximate the ancient models which will forever remain objects of imitation, No science can make two and two other than four. No art can make a Doric temple different from the Parthenon without departing from the settled principles of beauty and proportion which all ages have endorsed. Such were the Greeks and Romans in an art which is one of the greatest indices of material civilization, and which by them was derived from geometrical forms, or the imitation of Nature.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Perfection of Grecian sculpture.]

The genius displayed by the ancients in sculpture, is even more remarkable than in architecture. It was carried to perfection, however, only by the Greeks. But they did not originate the art, since we read of sculptured images from the remotest antiquity. The earliest names of sculptors are furnished by the Old Testament. Assyria and Egypt are full of relics to show how early this art was cultivated. It was not carried to perfection as early, probably, as architecture; but rude images of gods, carved in wood, are as old as the history of idolatry. The history of sculpture is in fact identified with that of idols. It was from Phoenicia that Solomon obtained the workmen for the decoration of his Temple. But the Egyptians were probably the first who made considerable advances in the execution of statues. They are rude, simple, uniform, without beauty or grace, but colossal and grand. Nearly two thousand years before Christ, the walls of Thebes were ornamented with sculptured figures, even as the gates of Babylon were of sculptured bronze. The dimensions of Egyptian colossal figures surpass those of any other nation. The sitting figures of Memnon at Thebes are fifty feet in height, and the Sphinx is twenty-five, and these are of granite. The number of colossal statues was almost incredible. The sculptures found among the ruins of Carnac must have been made nearly four thousand years ago. [Footnote: Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians.] They exhibit great simplicity of design, but without much variety of expression. They are generally carved from the hardest stones, and finished so nicely that we infer that the Egyptians were acquainted with the art of hardening metals to a degree not known in our times. But we see no ideal grandeur among any of the remains of Egyptian sculpture. However symmetrical or colossal, there is no expression, no trace of emotion, no intellectual force. Every thing is calm, impassive, imperturbable. It was not until sculpture came into the hands of the Greeks that any remarkable excellence was reached. But the progress of development was slow. The earliest carvings were rude wooden images of the gods, and more than a thousand years elapsed before the great masters were produced which marked the age of Pericles.

It is not my object to give a history of the development of the plastic art, but to show the great excellence it attained in the hands of immortal sculptors.

[Sidenote: Admiration for sculpture among the Greeks.]

[Sidenote: High estimation of sculpture among the Greeks.]

The Greeks had an intuitive perception of the beautiful, and to this great national trait we ascribe the wonderful progress which sculpture made. Nature was most carefully studied, and that which was most beautiful in Nature became the object of imitation. They ever attained to an ideal excellence, since they combined in a single statue what could not be found in a single individual, as Zeuxis is said to have studied the beautiful forms of seven virgins of Crotona in order to paint his famous picture of Venus. Great as was the beauty of Thryne, or Aspasia, or Lais, yet no one of them could have served for a perfect model. And it required a great sensibility to beauty in order to select and idealize what was most perfect in the human figure. Beauty was adored in Greece, and every means were used to perfect it, especially beauty of form, which is the characteristic excellence of Grecian statuary. The gymnasia were universally frequented, and the great prizes of the games, bestowed for feats of strength and agility, were regarded as the highest honors which men could receive--the subject of the poet's ode and the people's admiration. Statues of the victors perpetuated their fame and improved the sculptor's art. From the study of these statues were produced those great creations which all subsequent ages have admired. And from the application of the principles seen in these forms we owe the perpetuation of the ideas of grandeur and beauty such as no other people have ever discovered and scarcely appreciated. The sculpture of the human figure became a noble object of ambition, and was most munificently rewarded. Great artists arose, whose works adorned the temples of Greece, so long as she preserved her independence; and when it was lost, their priceless productions were scattered over Asia and Europe. The Romans especially seized what was most prized, whether or not they could tell what was most perfect. Greece lived in her marble statues more than in her government or laws. And when we remember the estimation in which sculpture was held, the great prices paid for masterpieces, the care and attention with which they were guarded and preserved, and the innumerable works which were produced, filling all the public buildings, especially consecrated places, and even open spaces, and the houses of the rich and great,-- calling from all classes admiration and praise,--it is improbable that so great perfection will ever be reached again in those figures which are designed to represent beauty of form. Even the comparatively few statues which have survived the wars and violence of two thousand years, convince us that the moderns can only imitate. They can produce no creations which were not surpassed by Athenian artists. "No mechanical copying of Greek statues, however skillful the copyist, can ever secure for modern sculpture the same noble and effective character it possessed among the Greeks, for the simple reason that the imitation, close as may be the resemblance, is but the result of the eye and hand, while the original is the expression of a true and deeply felt sentiment. Art was not sustained by the patronage of a few who affect to have what is called taste. In Greece, the artist, having a common feeling for the beautiful with his countrymen, produced his works for the public, which were erected in places of honor and dedicated in temples of the gods." [Footnote: Encyclopedia Britannica, "Sculpture," R. W. T.]

[Sidenote: Phidias and his contemporaries.]

[Sidenote: The statue of Zeus by Phidias.]

But it was not until the Persian wars awakened in Greece the slumbering consciousness of national power, and Athens became the central point of Grecian civilization, that sculpture, like architecture and painting, reached its culminating point of excellence, under Phidias and his contemporaries. Great artists, however, had previously made themselves famous, like Miron, Polycletus, and Ageladas; but the great riches which flowed into Athens at this time gave a peculiar stimulus to art, especially under the encouragement of such a ruler as Pericles, whose age was the golden era of Grecian history. Pheidias or Phidias was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic poetry, sublime and grand. He was born four hundred and eighty-four years before Christ, and was the pupil of Ageladas. He stands at the head of the ancient sculptors, not from what we know of him, for his masterpieces have perished, but from the estimation in which he was held by the greatest critics of antiquity. It was to him that Pericles intrusted the adornment of the Parthenon, and the numerous and beautiful sculptures of the frieze and the pediment were the work of artists whom he directed. His great work in that wonderful edifice was the statue of the goddess Minerva herself, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, standing victorious with a spear in her left hand and an image of victory in her right; girded with the aegis, with helmet on her head, and her shield resting by her side. The cost of this statue may be estimated when the gold alone of which it was composed was valued at forty-four talents. [Footnote: This sum was equal to $500,000 of our money, an immense sum in that age. Some critics suppose that this statue was overloaded with ornament, but all antiquity was unanimous in its admiration. The exactness and finish of detail were as remarkable as the grandeur of the proportions.] Another of his famous works was a colossal bronze statue of Athena Promachus, sixty feet in height, on the Acropolis, between the Propylaea and the Parthenon. But both of these yielded to the colossal statue of Zeus in his great temple at Olympia, represented in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a pedestal of twenty. In this, his greatest work, the artist sought to embody the idea of majesty and repose,--of a supreme deity no longer engaged in war with Titans and Giants, but enthroned as a conqueror, ruling with a nod the subject world, and giving his blessing to those victories which gave glory to the Greeks. [Footnote: The god was seated on a throne. Ebony, gold, ivory, and precious stones formed, with a multitude of sculptured and painted figures, the wonderful composition of this throne.] So famous was this statue, which was regarded as the masterpiece of Grecian art, that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and this served for a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and power in repose among the ancients. It was removed to Constantinople by Theodosius I., and was destroyed by fire in the year 475. Phidias executed various other famous works, which have perished; but even those that were executed under his superintendence, that have come down to our times, like the statues which ornamented the pediment of the Parthenon, are among the finest specimens of art which exist, and exhibit the most graceful and appropriate forms which could have been selected, uniting grandeur with simplicity, and beauty with accuracy of anatomical structure. His distinguishing excellence was ideal beauty, and that of the sublimest order. [Footnote: Muller, De Phidiae Vita.]

[Sidenote: Colossal statues of ivory and gold.]

Of all the wonders and mysteries of ancient art, the colossal statues of ivory and gold were perhaps the most remarkable, and the difficulty of executing them has been set forth by the ablest of modern critics, like Winkelmann, Heyne, and De Quincy. "The grandeur of their dimensions, the perfection of their workmanship, the richness of their materials; their majesty, beauty, and ideal truth; the splendor of the architecture and pictorial decoration with which they were associated, all conspired to impress the beholder with wonder and awe, and induce a belief of the actual presence of the god."

[Sidenote: The school of Praxiteles.]

After the Peloponnesian War, a new school of art arose in Athens, which appealed more to the passions. Of this school was Praxiteles, who aimed to please, without seeking to elevate or instruct. No one has probably ever surpassed him in execution. He wrought in bronze and marble, and was one of the artists who adorned the Mausoleum of Artemisia. Without attempting the sublime impersonation of the deity, in which Phidias excelled, he was unsurpassed in the softer graces and beauties of the human form, especially in female figures. His most famous work was an undraped statue of Venus, for his native town of Cnidus, which was so remarkable that people flocked from all parts of Greece to see it. He did not aim at ideal majesty so much as ideal gracefulness, and his works were imitated from the most beautiful living models, and hence expressed only the ideal of sensual charms. It is probable that the Venus de Medici of Cleomenes was a mere copy of the Aphrodite of Praxiteles, which was so highly extolled by the ancient authors. It was of Parian marble, and modeled from the celebrated Phryne. His statues of Dionysus also expressed the most consummate physical beauty, representing the god as a beautiful youth, crowned with ivy, engirt with a nebris, and expressing tender and dreamy emotions. Praxiteles sculptured several figures of Eros, or the god of love, of which that at Thespiae attracted visitors to the city in the time of Cicero. It was subsequently carried to Rome, and perished by a conflagration in the time of Titus. One of the most celebrated statues of this artist was an Apollo, many copies of which still exist. His works were very numerous, but chiefly from the circle of Dionysus, Aphrodite, and Eros, in which adoration for corporeal attractions is the most marked peculiarity, and for which the artist was fitted by his life with the hetaerae.

[Sidenote: Scopas.]

Scopas was his contemporary, and was the author of the celebrated group of Niobe, which is one of the chief ornaments of the gallery of sculpture at Florence. He flourished about three hundred and fifty years before Christ, and wrought chiefly in marble. He was employed in decorating the Mausoleum which Artemisia erected to her husband, one of the wonders of the world. His masterpiece is said to have been a group representing Achilles conducted to the island of Leuce by the divinities of the sea, which ornamented the shrine of Domitius in the Flaminian Circus. In this, tender grace, heroic grandeur, daring power, and luxurious fullness of life were combined with wonderful harmony. [Footnote: Muller, 125.] Like the other great artists of this school, there was the grandeur and sublimity for which Phidias was celebrated, but a greater refinement and luxury, and skill in the use of drapery.

[Sidenote: Lysippus.]

[Sidenote: The works of Lysippus.]

Sculpture in Greece culminated, as an art, in Lysippus, who worked chiefly in bronze. He is said to have executed fifteen hundred statues, and was much esteemed by Alexander the Great, by whom he was extensively patronized. He represented men, not as they were, but as they appeared to be; and, if he exaggerated, he displayed great energy of action. He aimed to idealize merely human beauty, and his imitation of Nature was carried out in the minutest details. None of his works are extant; but as he alone was permitted to make the statue of Alexander, we infer that he had no equals. The Emperor Tiberius transferred one of his statues, that of an athlete, from the baths of Agrippa to his own chamber, which so incensed the people that he was obliged to restore it. His favorite subject was Hercules, and a colossal statue of this god was carried to Rome by Fabius Maximus, when he took Tarentum, and afterwards was transferred to Constantinople. The Farnese Hercules and the Belvidere Torso are probably copies of this work. He left many eminent scholars, among whom were Chares, who executed the famous Colossus of Rhodes, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, who sculptured the group of the "Laocoon." The Rhodian School was the immediate offshoot from the school of Lysippus at Sicyon, and from this small island of Rhodes the Romans, when they conquered it, carried away three thousand statues. The Colossus was one of the wonders of the world, seventy cubits in height, and the Laocoon is a perfect miracle of art, in which group pathos is exhibited in the highest degree ever attained in sculpture. It was discovered in 1506 near the baths of Titus, and is one of the choicest remains of ancient plastic art.

The great artists of antiquity did not confine themselves to the representation of man; but they also carved animals with exceeding accuracy and beauty. Nicias was famous for his dogs, Myron for his cows, and Lysippus for his horses. Praxiteles composed his celebrated lion after a living animal. "The horses of the frieze of the Elgin Marbles appear to live and move; to roll their eyes, to gallop, prance, and curvet; the veins of their faces and legs seem distended with circulation. The beholder is charmed with the deer-like lightness and elegance of their make; and although the relief is not above an inch from the back-ground, and they are so much smaller than nature, we can scarcely suffer reason to persuade us they are not alive." [Footnote: Flaxman, Lectures on Sculpture.]

[Sidenote: Cameos and medals.]

The Greeks also carved gems, cameos, medals, and vases, with unapproachable excellence. Very few specimens have come down to our times, but those which we possess show great beauty both in design and execution.

[Sidenote: Sack of the Grecian cities.]

Grecian statuary commenced with ideal representations of deities, and was carried to the greatest perfection by Phidias in his statues of Jupiter and Minerva. Then succeeded the school of Praxiteles, in which the figures of gods and goddesses were still represented, but in mortal forms. The school of Lysippus was famous for the statues of celebrated men, especially in cities where Macedonian rulers resided. Artists were expected henceforth to glorify kings and powerful nobles and rulers by portrait statues. The plastic art then degenerated. Nor were works of original genius produced, but rather copies or varieties from the three great schools to which allusion has been made. Sculpture may have multiplied, but not new creations; although some imitations of great merit were produced, like the "Hermaphrodite," the "Torso," the Farnese "Hercules," and the "Fighting Gladiator." When Corinth was sacked by Mummius, some of the finest statues of Greece were carried to Rome, and after the civil war between Caesar and Pompey the Greek artists emigrated to Italy. The fall of Syracuse introduced many works of priceless value into Rome; but it was from Athens, Delphi, Corinth, Elis, and other great centres of art, that the richest treasures were brought. Greece was despoiled to ornament Italy. The Romans did not create a school of sculpture. They borrowed wholly from the Greeks, yet made, especially in the time of Hadrian, many beautiful statues. They were fond of this art, and all eminent men had statues erected to their memory. The busts of emperors were found in every great city, and Rome was filled with statues. The monuments of the Romans were even more numerous than those of the Greeks, and among them some admirable portraits are found. These sculptures did not express that consummation of beauty and grace, of refinement and sentiment, which marked the Greeks; but the imitations were good. Art had reached its perfection under Lysippus; there was nothing more to learn. Genius in that department could soar no higher. It will never rise to loftier heights.

[Sidenote: Degeneracy of art among the Romans.]

It is noteworthy that the purest forms of Grecian art arose in its earlier stages. In a moral point of view, sculpture declined from the time of Phidias. It was prostituted at Rome under the emperors. The specimens which have often been found among the ruins of ancient baths make us blush for human nature. The skill of execution did not decline for several centuries; but the lofty ideal was lost sight of, and gross appeals to human passions were made by those who sought to please corrupt leaders of society in an effeminate age. The turgidity and luxuriance of art gradually passed into tameness and poverty. The reliefs on the Arch of Constantine are rude and clumsy compared with those on the Column of Marcus Aurelius.

[Sidenote: Imitation of ancient art.]

But I do not wish to describe the decline of art, or enumerate the names of the celebrated masters who exalted sculpture in the palmy days of Pericles, or even Alexander. I simply allude to sculpture as an art which reached a great perfection among the Greeks and Romans, as we have a right to infer from the specimens which have been preserved. How many more must have perished, we may infer from the criticisms of the ancient authors! The finest productions of our own age are in a measure reproductions. They cannot be called creations, like the statue of the Olympian Jove. Even the Moses of Michael Angelo is a Grecian god, and the Greek Slave a copy of an ancient Venus. The very tints which have been admired in some of the works of modern sculptors are borrowed from Praxiteles, who succeeded in giving an appearance of living flesh. The Museum of the Vatican alone contains several thousand specimens of ancient sculpture which have been found among the debris of former magnificence, many of which are the productions of Grecian artists transported to Rome. Among them are antique copies of the Cupid and the Faun of Praxiteles, the statue of Demosthenes, the Minerva Medica, the Athlete of Lysippus, the Torso Belvidere, sculptured by Apollonius, the Belvidere Antinous, of faultless anatomy and a study for Domenichino, the Laocoon, so panegyrized by Pliny, the Apollo Belvidere the work of Agasias of Ephesus, the Sleepy Ariadne, with numerous other statues of gods and goddesses, emperors, philosophers, poets, and statesmen of antiquity. The Dying Gladiator, which ornaments the capitol, alone is a magnificent proof of the perfection to which sculpture was brought centuries after the art had culminated at Athens. And these are only a few which stand out among the twenty thousand recovered statues which now embellish Italy, to say nothing of those which are scattered over Europe. We have the names of hundreds of artists who were famous in their day. Not merely the figures of men are chiseled, but animals and plants. Nature, in all her forms, was imitated; and not merely Nature, but the dresses of the ancients are perpetuated in marble. No modern sculptor has equaled, in delicacy of finish, the draperies even of those ancient statues, as they appear to us after the exposure and accidents of two thousand years. No one, after a careful study of the museums of Europe, can question that, of all the nations who have claimed to be civilized, the ancient Greek and Roman deserve a proud preeminence in an art which is still regarded as among the highest triumphs of human genius. All these matchless productions of antiquity, it should be remembered, are the result of native genius alone, without the aid of Christian ideas. Nor, with the aid of Christianity, are we sure that any nation will ever soar to loftier heights than did the Greeks in that proud realm which was consecrated to Paganism.

* * * * *

We are not so certain in regard to the excellence of the ancients in the art of painting as we are in reference to sculpture and architecture, since so few specimens have been preserved. We have only the testimony of the ancients themselves; and as they had so severe a taste and so great susceptibility to beauty in all its forms, we cannot suppose that their notions were crude in this great art which the moderns have carried to so great perfection. In this art the moderns may be superior, especially in perspective and drawing, and light and shade. No age, we fancy, can surpass Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the genius of Raphael, Correggio, and Domenichino blazed with such wonderful brilliancy.

Nevertheless, we read of celebrated schools among the ancients, all of which recognized form as the great principle and basis of the art, even like the moderns. The schools of Sicyon, Corinth, Athens, and Rhodes were indebted for their renown, like those of Bologna, Florence, and Rome, to their strict observance of this fundamental law.

[Sidenote: Antiquity of painting.]

[Sidenote: Painting among the Egyptians.]

Painting, in some form, is very ancient, though not so ancient as the temples of the gods and the statues which were erected to their worship. It arose with the susceptibility to beauty of form and color, and with the view of conveying thoughts and emotions of the soul by imitation. The walls of Babylon were painted after Nature with different species of animals and combats. Semiramis was represented on horseback, striking a leopard with a dart, and her husband Ninus wounding a lion. Ezekiel (viii. 10) represents various idols and beasts portrayed upon the walls, and even princes, painted in vermilion, with girdles around their loins (xxiii. 14, 15). In ages almost fabulous there were some rude attempts in this art, which probably arose from the coloring of statues and reliefs. The wooden chests of Egyptian mummies are painted and written with religious subjects, but the colors were laid without regard to light and shade. The Egyptians did not seek to represent the passions and emotions which agitate the soul, but rather to authenticate events and actions; and hence their paintings, like hieroglyphics, are inscriptions. It was their great festivals and religious rites which they sought to perpetuate, not ideas of beauty or grace. Hence their paintings abound with dismembered animals, plants, and flowers, censers, entrails,--whatever was used in their religious worship. In Greece, also, the original painting consisted in coloring statues and reliefs of wood and clay. At Corinth, painting was early united with the fabrication of vases, on which were rudely painted figures of men and animals. Among the Etruscans, before Rome was founded, it is said there were beautiful paintings, and it is probable they were advanced in art before the Greeks. There were paintings in some of the old Etruscan cities which the Roman emperors wished to remove, so much admired were they even in the days of the greatest splendor. The ancient Etruscan vases are famous for designs which have never been exceeded in purity of form, but it is probable that these were copied from the Greeks.

[Sidenote: Cimon of Cleona.]

But whether the Greeks or the Etruscans were the first to paint, the art was certainly carried to the greatest perfection among the former. The development of it was, like all arts, very gradual. It probably commenced by drawing the outline of a shadow, without intermediate markings; the next step was the complete outline with the inner markings, such as are represented on the ancient vases, or like the designs of Flaxman. They were originally practiced on a white ground. Then light and shade were introduced, and then the application of colors in accordance with Nature. We read of a great painting by Bularchus, of the battle of Magnete, purchased by a king of Lydia seven hundred and eighteen years before Christ. And as the subject was a battle, it must have represented the movement of figures, although we know nothing of the coloring, or of the real excellence of the work, except that the artist was paid munificently. Cimon of Cleona is the first great name connected with the art in Greece, and is praised by Pliny, to whom we owe the history of ancient painting more than to any other author. He was contemporary with Dionysius in the eightieth Olympiad. He was not satisfied with drawing simply the outlines of his figures, such as we see in the oldest painted vases, but he also represented limbs, and folds of garments. He invented the art of foreshortening, or the various positions of figures, as they appear when looking upward or downward and sideways, and hence is the first painter of perspective. He first made muscular articulations, indicated the veins, and gave natural folds to drapery. [Footnote: Pliny, xxxv. 34.]

[Sidenote: Greatness of Polygnotus and his school.]

A much greater painter than he was Polygnotus of Thasos, the contemporary of Phidias, who came to Athens about the year 463 B.C., one of the greatest geniuses of any age, and one of the most magnanimous; and had the good fortune to live in an age of exceeding intellectual activity. He was employed on the public buildings of Athens, and on the great temple of Delphi, the hall of which he painted gratuitously. He also decorated the Propylaea, which was erected under the superintendence of Phidias. His greatness lay in statuesque painting, which he brought nearly to perfection by the ideal expression, the accurate drawing, and improved coloring. He used but few colors, and softened the rigidity of his predecessors by making the mouth of beauty smile. He was the first who painted woman with brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. He gave great expression to the face and figure, and his pictures were models of excellence for the beauty of the eyebrows, the blush upon the cheeks, and the gracefulness of the draperies. He was a great epic painter, as Phidias was a sculptor, and Homer a poet, since he expressed not passion and emotion only, but ideal character. He imitated the personages and the subjects of the old mythology, and treated them in an epic spirit. He strove, like Phidias, to express character in repose. His subjects were almost invariably taken from Homer and the Epic cycle. His pictures had nothing of that elaborate grouping, aided by the powers of perspective, so much admired in modern art. His figures were grouped in regular lines, as in the bas-reliefs upon a frieze. He painted on panels which were afterward let into the walls. He used the pencil, instead of painting in encaustic with the cestrum.

Among the works of Polygnotus, as mentioned by Pliny, [Footnote: H. N. xxx. 9, s. 35.] are his paintings in the Temple at Delphi, in the Portico called Poecile at Athens, in the Propylaea of the Acropolis, in the Temple of Theseus, and in the Temple of the Dioscuri at Athens. He took his subjects from the whole range of Epic poetry, but we know nothing of them except from the praises of his contemporaries. [Footnote: Pausanias, x. 25-31.] His great merit is said to have consisted in accurate drawing, and in giving grace and charm to his female figures. He painted in a truly religious spirit, and upon symmetrical principles, with great grandeur and freedom, resembling Michael Angelo more than any other modern artist. Like the Greeks, he painted with wax, resins, and in water colors, to which the proper consistency was given with gum and glue. The use of oil was unknown. The artists painted upon wood, clay, plaster, stone, parchment, but not upon canvas, which was not used till the time of Nero. They painted upon tablets or panels, and not upon the walls. These panels were framed and encased in the walls. The style or cestrum used in drawing, and for spreading the wax colors, was pointed on one end and flat on the other, and generally made of metal. Wax was prepared by purifying and bleaching, and then mixed with colors. When painting was practiced in water colors, glue was used with the white of an egg or with gums, but wax and resins were also worked with water, with certain preparations. This latter was called encaustic, and was, according to Plutarch, the most durable of all methods. It was not generally adopted till the time of Alexander the Great. Wax was a most essential ingredient, since it prevented the colors from cracking. Encaustic painting was practiced both with the cestrum and the pencil, and the colors were also burnt in. Fresco was used for coloring walls, which were divided into compartments or panels. The Fresco composition of the stucco, and the method of painting, preparing the walls for painting, is described by the ancient writers: "They first covered the walls with a layer of ordinary plaster, over which, when dry, were successively added three other layers of a finer quality, mixed with sand. Above these were placed three layers of a composition of chalk and marble-dust, the upper one being laid on before the under one was dry, by which process the different layers were so bound together that the whole mass formed one beautiful and solid slab, resembling marble, and was capable of being detached from the wall and transported in a wooden frame to any distance. The colors were applied when the composition was still wet. The fresco wall, when painted, was covered with an encaustic varnish, both to heighten the color and preserve it from the effects of the sun or the weather. But this process required so much care, and was attended with so much expense, that it was used only in the better houses and palaces." The later discoveries at Pompeii show the same correctness of design in painting as in sculpture, and also considerable perfection in coloring. The great artists of Greece were both sculptors and painters, like Michael Angelo. Phidias and Euphranor, Zeuxis and Protogenes, Polygnotus and Lysippus, were both. And the ancient writers praise the paintings of these great artists as much as their sculpture. The Aldobrandini Marriage, found on the Esquiline Mount, during the pontificate of Clement VIII., and placed in the Vatican by Pius VII., is admired both for drawing and color. Polygnotus was praised by Aristotle for his designs and by Lucian for his color. [Footnote: Poetica of Aristotle, c. 286. Imagines of Lucian, c. 7.]

[Sidenote: Contemporaries of Polygnotus.]

Dionysius and Micon were the great contemporaries of Polygnotus, the former of whom was celebrated for his portraits. His pictures were deficient in the ideal, but were remarkable for expression and elegant drawing. [Footnote: Plutarch, _Timol._ 36.] Micon was particularly skilled in painting horses, and was the first who used for a color the light Attic ochre, and the black made from burnt vine twigs. He painted three of the walls of the Temple of Theseus, and also the walls of the Temple of the Dioscuri.

[Sidenote: The school of Apollodorus.]

With Apollodorus, of Athens, a new development was made in the art of painting. Through his labors, about 408 B.C., dramatic effect was added to the style of Polygnotus, without departing from his pictures as models. "The acuteness of his taste," says Fuseli, "led him to discover that, as all men were connected by one general form, so they were separated each by some predominant power, which fixed character and bound them to a class. Thence he drew his line of imitation and personified the central form of the class to which his object belonged, and to which the rest of its qualities administered, without being absorbed; agility was not suffered to destroy firmness, solidity, or weight; nor strength and weight agility; elegance did not degenerate to effeminacy, nor grandeur swell to hugeness." [Footnote: Fuseli, Lect. I.] His aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the semblance of reality. He painted men and things as they really appeared. He also made a great advance in coloring. He invented chiaro-oscuro. Other painters had given attention to the proper gradation of light and shade; he heightened this effect by the gradation of tints, and thus obtained what the moderns call tone. He was the first who conferred due honor on the pencil--"primusque gloriam penicillo jure contulit." [Footnote: Pliny, H. N. xxxv. 11.]

[Sidenote: Peculiarities of Zeuxis as a painter.]

This great painter prepared the way for Zeuxis, [Footnote: Born 455 B.C.] who belonged to his school, but who surpassed him in the power to give ideal form to rich effects. He began his great career four hundred and twenty-four years before Christ, and was most remarkable for his female figures. His "Helen," painted from five of the most beautiful women of Croton, was one of the most renowned productions of antiquity, to see which the painter demanded money. He gave away his pictures, because, with an artist's pride, he maintained that their price could not be estimated. There is a tradition that Zeuxis laughed himself to death over an old woman painted by him. He arrived at illusion of the senses, regarded as a high attainment in art, as in the instance recorded of his grapes. He belonged to the Asiatic school, whose head- quarters were at Ephesus, the peculiarities of which were accuracy of imitation, the exhibition of sensual charms, and the gratification of sensual tastes. He went to Athens about the time that the sculpture of Phidias was completed, which modified his style. His marvelous powers were displayed in the contrast of light and shade which he learned from Apollodorus. He gave ideal beauty to his figures, but it was in form rather than in expression. He taught the true method of grouping, by making each figure the perfect representation of the class to which it belonged. His works were deficient in those qualities which elevate the feelings and the character. He was the Euripides rather than the Homer of his art. He exactly imitated natural objects, which are incapable of ideal representation. His works were not so numerous as they were perfect in their way, in some of which, as in the Infant Hercules strangling the Serpent, he displayed great dramatic power. [Footnote: Lucian on Zeuxis.] Lucian highly praises his Female Centaur as one of the most remarkable paintings of the world, in which he showed great ingenuity in his contrasts. His Jupiter Enthroned is also extolled by Pliny, as one of his finest works. He acquired a great fortune, and lived ostentatiously.

[Sidenote: Parrhasius of Ephesus.]

Contemporaneous with him, and equal in fame, was Parrhasius, a native of Ephesus, whose skill lay in accuracy of drawing, and power of expression. He gave to painting true proportion, and attended to minute details of the countenance and the hair. In his gods and heroes, he did for painting what Phidias did in sculpture. His outlines were so perfect as to indicate those parts of the figure which they did not express. He established a rule of proportion which was followed by all succeeding artists. While many of his pieces were of a lofty character, some were demoralizing. Zeuxis yielded the palm to him, since he painted a curtain which deceived his rival, whereas Zeuxis painted grapes which deceived only birds. He was exceedingly arrogant and luxurious, and boasted of having reached the utmost limits of his art. He combined the magic tone of Apollodorus with the exquisite design of Zeuxis, and the classic expression of Polygnotus.

[Sidenote: Contemporaries of Zeuxis.]

Many were the eminent painters that adorned the fifth century before Christ, not only in Athens, but the Ionian cities of Asia. Timanthes of Sicyon was distinguished for invention, and Eupompus of the same city founded a school. His advice to Lysippus is memorable--"Let Nature, not an artist, be your model." Protogenes was celebrated for his high finish. His Talissus took him seven years to complete. Pamphilus was celebrated for composition, Antiphilus for facility, Theon of Samos for prolific fancy, Apelles for grace, Pausias for his chiaro-oscuro, Nicomachus for his bold and rapid pencil, Aristides for depth of expression.

[Sidenote: Art culminates in Apelles.]

[Sidenote: The Venus of Apelles.]

The art probably culminated in Apelles, the Titian of his age, who united the rich coloring and sensual charms of the Ionian with the scientific severity of the Sicyonian school. He was contemporaneous with Alexander, and was alone allowed to paint the picture of the great conqueror. He was a native of Ephesus, studied under Pamphilus of Amphipolis, and when he had gained reputation he went to Sicyon and took lessons from Melanthius. He spent the best part of his life at the court of Philip and Alexander, and painted many portraits of these great men and of their generals. He excelled in portraits, and labored so assiduously to perfect himself in drawing that he never spent a day without practicing. [Footnote: Pliny, xxxv. 12.] He made great improvement in the mechanical part of his art, and also was the first who covered his picture with a thin varnish, both to preserve it and bring out the colors. He invented ivory black. His distinguishing excellence was grace, "that artless balance of motion and repose, springing from character, founded on propriety, which neither falls short of the demands nor overleaps the modesty of Nature." [Footnote: Fuseli, Lect. I.] His great contemporaries may have equaled him in perspective, accuracy, and finish; but he added a grace of conception and refinement of taste which placed him, by the general consent of ancient authors, at the head of all the painters of the world. His greatest work was his Venus Anadyomene, or Venus rising out of the sea, in which female grace was personified. The falling drops of water from her hair form a transparent silver veil over her form. It cost one hundred talents, [Footnote: 243 pounds x 100 = 24300 pounds x 5 = $121,500.] and was painted for the Temple of Aesculapius at Cos, and afterwards placed by Augustus in the temple which he dedicated to Julius Caesar. The lower part of it becoming injured, no one could be found to repair it. Nor was there an artist who could complete an unfinished picture which he left. He was a man who courted criticism, and who was unenvious of the fame of rivals. He was a great admirer and friend of Protogenes of Rhodes, who was his equal in finish, but who never knew, as Apelles did, when to cease correcting. [Footnote: Cicero, _Brut._ 18; _De Orat._ iii. 7. Martial, xxx. 9. Ovid, _Art. Anc._ iii. 403. Pliny, xxxv. 37.]

[Sidenote: Introduction of pictures into Rome.]

After Apelles, the art of painting declined, although great painters occasionally appeared, especially from the school of Sicyon, which was renowned for nearly two hundred years. The destruction of Corinth by Mummius, B.C. 146, gave a severe blow to Grecian art. He carried to Rome more works, or destroyed them, than all his predecessors combined. Sylla, when he spoiled Athens, inflicted a still greater injury, and, from that time, artists resorted to Rome and Alexandria and other flourishing cities for patronage and remuneration. The masterpieces of famous artists brought enormous prices, and Greece and Asia were ransacked for old pictures. The paintings which Aemilius Paulus brought from Greece required two hundred and fifty wagons to carry them in the triumphal procession. With the spoliation of Greece, the migration of artists commenced, and this spoliation of Greece and Asia and Sicily continued for two centuries; and such was the wealth of Rhodes in works of art that three thousand statues were found for the conquerors. Nor could there have been less at Athens, Olympia, or Delphi. Scaurus had all the public pictures of Sicyon transported to Rome. Verres plundered every temple and public building in Sicily.

[Sidenote: High value placed by them on painting.]

Thus Rome was possessed of the finest paintings of the world, without the slightest claim to the advancement of the art. And if the opinion of Sir Joshua Reynolds is correct, art could soar no higher in the realm of painting, as well as of statuary. Yet the Romans learned to place as high value on the works of Grecian genius as the English do on the paintings of the old masters of Italy and Flanders. And if they did not add to the art, they gave such encouragement that, under the emperors, it may be said to have been flourishing. Varro had a gallery of seven hundred portraits of eminent men. [Footnote: Pliny, H. N. xxx. 2.] The portraits as well as the statues of the great were placed in the temples, libraries, and public buildings. The baths especially were filled with paintings.

[Sidenote: Subjects among the Greeks.]

The great masterpieces of the Greeks were either historical or mythological. Paintings of gods and heroes, groups of men and women, in which character and passion could be delineated, were the most highly prized. It was in the expression given to the human figure--in beauty of form and countenance, in which all the emotions of the soul as well as the graces of the body were portrayed--that the Greek artists sought to reach the ideal, and to gain immortality. And they painted for people who naturally had taste and sensibility.

[Sidenote: Landscape Painting.]

Among the Romans, portrait, decorative, and scene painting engrossed the art, much to the regret of such critics as Pliny and Vitruvius. Nothing could be in more execrable taste than a colossal painting of Nero, one hundred and twenty feet high. From the time of Augustus, landscape decorations were common, and were carried out with every species of license. Among the Greeks we do not read of landscape painting. This has been reserved for our age, and is much admired, as it was at Rome in its latter days. Mosaic gradually superseded painting in Rome. It was first used for floors, but finally walls and ceilings were ornamented with it, like St. Peter's at Rome. Many ancient mosaics have been preserved which attest beauty of design of the highest character, like the Battle of Issus, lately discovered at Pompeii.

In fact, neither statuary nor painting was advanced by the Romans. They had no sensibility, or conception of ideal beauty. The divine spark of genius animated the Greeks alone. Still the wonders of Grecian art were possessed by the Romans, and were made to adorn those grand architectural monuments for which they had a taste. Greek productions were not merely matters of property, they were copied and reproduced in all the cities of the Mediterranean; and though no artist of original genius arose from Augustus to Constantine, galleries of art existed everywhere in which the masterpieces of Polygnotus, Pausias, Aristides, Timanthes, Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Pamphilus, Euphranor, Protogenes, Apelles, Timomachus, and of other illustrious men, were objects of as much praise as the galleries of Dresden and Florence.

[Sidenote: Probable perfection of the ancients in painting.]

"The glorious art of these masters, as far as regards tone, light, and local color," says Muller, "is lost to us, and we know nothing of it except from obscure notices and later imitations; on the contrary, the pictures on vases give us the most exalted idea of the progress and achievements of the arts of design." [Footnote: Muller, Ancient Art, 143.] It is surprising that, with four colors, the Greeks should have achieved such miracles of beauty and finish as are represented by the greatest cities of antiquity. The great wonders of the schools of Ephesus, Athens, and Sicyon have perished, and we cannot judge of their merits as we can of the statues which have fortunately been preserved. Whether Polygnotus was equal to Michael Angelo, Zeuxis to Raphael, and Apelles to Titian, we have no means of settling. But it is scarcely to be questioned that critics like the Greeks, whose opinions respecting architecture and sculpture coincide with our own, could have erred in their verdicts respecting those great paintings which extorted the admiration of the world, and were held, even in the decline of art, in such high value, not merely in the cities where they were painted, but in those to which they were transferred. What has descended to our times, like the mural decorations of Pompeii and the designs on vases, go to prove the perfection which was attained in painting, as well as sculpture and architecture.

[Sidenote: Perfection of art among the ancients.]

And thus, in all those arts of which modern civilization is proudest, and in which the genius of man has soared to the loftiest heights, the ancients were not merely our equals: they were our superiors. It is greater to originate than to copy. In architecture, in sculpture, and in painting the Greeks attained absolute perfection. Any architect of our time, who should build an edifice in different proportions than those which were recognized in the great cities of antiquity, would make a mistake. Who can improve upon the Doric columns of the Parthenon, or the Corinthian capitals of the Temple of Jupiter? Indeed, it is in proportion as we accurately copy the faultless models of the age of Pericles that excellence with us is attained. When we differ from them we furnish grounds of just criticism. So, in sculpture, the Greek Slave is a reproduction of an ancient Venus, and the Moses of Michael Angelo is a Jupiter in repose. It is only when the artist seeks to bring out the purest and loftiest sentiments of the soul, and such as only Christianity can inspire, that he may hope to surpass the sculpture of antiquity in one department of the art alone--in expression, rather than beauty of form, on which no improvement can be made. And if we possessed the Venus of Apelles, as we can boast of having the sculptured Venus of Cleomenes, we should probably discover greater richness of coloring, as well as grace of figure, than in that famous Titian which is one of the proudest ornaments of the galleries of Florence, and one of the greatest marvels of Italian art.

* * * * *

REFERENCES.--Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art; Muller's Remains of Ancient Art; A. J. Guattani, Antiq. de la Grande Grece; Mazois, Antiq. de Pomp.; Sir W. Gill, Pompeiana; Donaldson's Antiquities of Athens; Vitruvius, Stuart, Chandler, Clarke, Dodwell, Cleghorn, De Quincey. These are some of the innumerable authorities on Architecture among the ancients.

In Sculpture, Pliny and Cicero are the most noted critics. There is a fine article in the Encyclopedia Britannica on this subject. In Smith's Dictionary are the lives and works of the most noted masters. Muller's Ancient Art alludes to the leading masterpieces. Montfaucon's Antiquite expliquee en Figures; Specimens of Ancient Sculpture, by the Society of Diettanti, London, 1809; Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by Taylor Combe; Millin, Introduction a l'etude des Monumens Antiques; Monumens Inedits d'Antiquite figuree, recuellis et publies par Raoul- Rochette; Gerhard's Archaol. Zeit.; David's Essai sur le Classement Chronol. des Sculpteurs Grecs les plus celebres.

In Painting, see Caylus, Memoires de l'ac des Inscr. Levesque, sur les Progres successifs de la Peinture chez les Grecs; I. I. Grund, Mahlerei der Griechen; Meyer's Kunstgischichte; Muller, Hist, of Ancient Art; Article on Painting, Ency. Brit., Article "Pictura," Smith's Dict.; Fuseli's Lectures; Sir Joshua Reynolds' Lectures. Lanzi's History of Painting refers to the revival of the art. Vitruvius speaks at some length on ancient wall paintings. The finest specimens of ancient painting are found in catacombs, the baths, and the ruins of Pompeii. On this subject, Winckelmann is the great authority.

CHAPTER V.

THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION.

[Sidenote: The Roman creators of civilization.]

[Sidenote: The Romans sought to govern.]

[Sidenote: The Romans sought to govern through laws.]

[Sidenote: Roman sense of justice.]

It is not from a survey of the material grandeur, or the arts, or the military prowess of Rome that we get the highest idea of her civilization. These indicate strength and even genius; but the checks and balances which were gradually introduced into the government of the city and empire, by which society was kept together, and a great prosperity secured for centuries, also show great foresight and practical wisdom. A State which favored individual development while it promoted law and order; which secured liberty, while it made the government stable and respectable; which guaranteed rights to the poorer citizens, while it placed power in the hands of those who were most capable of wielding it for the general good, is well worth our contemplation. The idea of aggrandizement was, it must be confessed, the most powerful which entered into the Roman mind; but the principles of national unity, the welfare of citizens, the reign of law, the security of property, the network of trades and professions, also received attention there. The aspirations for liberty and national prosperity never left the Roman mind. The Romans were great creators of civilization, though in a different sense from the Greeks. What the principles of art were to the Greeks, those of government were to the Romans. If the Greeks made statues, the Romans made laws. If the former speculated on the beautiful, or the good, or the true, the latter realized the boast of Diogenes--the power to govern men. The passion for government was the most powerful which a Roman citizen felt, next to the passion for war. For five hundred years after the expulsion of the kings, there was the most perfect system of checks and balances in the government of the state known in the ancient world, and which is scarcely rivaled in the modern. Power was so wisely distributed that not even a successful general was able to gain a dangerous preeminence. Every citizen was a politician, and every Senator a statesman. For five hundred years there was neither anarchy nor military despotism. If every citizen knew how to fight, every citizen also knew how to govern, to submit. No consul dared to exceed his trust; no general, till Caesar, ventured to cross the Rubicon. The Roman Senate never lost its dignity-- a supreme body which controlled all public interests. The Romans were sufficiently wise to bend to circumstances. Though proud, the patricians made concessions to plebeians whenever it was necessary. The right of citizenship was gradually extended throughout the Empire. Paul lived in a remote city of Asia Minor, but, by virtue of his citizenship, could appeal to a higher court than that of the governor. The Romans succeeded, by their wisdom, in extending their institutions over the countries they had conquered; and every part of the Empire was well governed even when military despotism had overturned the ancient constitution. There were, of course, cases of extortion and injustice, and most governors made large fortunes; yet the provinces were better administered, and the rule was more in accordance with justice than under the native princes. Throughout the vast limits of the Empire, life and property were safe, and the roads were free of robbers; nor were there riots in the cities, except on very rare occasions, in which they were put down with merciless severity. Yet a few hundred men were enough to preserve order in the largest cities, and a few thousand in the most extensive provinces. Even under the most tyrannical emperors, justice and order were enforced. The government was never better administered than by Tiberius, and further, was never better administered than when he was abandoned to pleasure in his guarded villa at Capri. There was the passion to govern the world, but in accordance with laws. The rule of the Romans was not that of brute force, even when the army was at the control of the Emperors. The citizens, to the last, enjoyed great social and political rights. They had great immunities, in reference to marriage, and the making of wills, and the possession of property. Their persons were secured from the disgrace of corporal punishment; they could appeal from the decision of magistrates; they were eligible to public offices; they were exempted from many oppressive taxes which still grind down the people in the most civilized states of Europe. The government of Octavius was the mildest despotism ever known to the ancient world. That Ulysses of state craft exercised the most extensive powers under the ancient forms, and all the early emperors disguised rather than paraded their powers. Contented with real power, the Roman was careless of its display. He had the tact to rule without seeming to rule; but rule he must, though not until he had first learned to obey-- obedience to laws and domination were inseparably connected. This made the Roman yoke endurable, because it was not offensive or unjust. The Romans were masters of the world by conquest, yet ruled the world they had subdued by arms in accordance with laws based on the principles of equity. This sense of justice, in the enjoyment of unbounded domination, undoubtedly gave permanence to their government. The centurion was ever present to enforce a decree, but the decree was in accordance with justice. This was the idea, the recognized principle of government, although often abused. Paul appealed to Caesar. He might have been released by the governor, had he not appealed. Here was justice to Paul in allowing the appeal; and still greater justice in keeping him in bonds until acquitted by Caesar himself. [Sidenote: Degeneracy under emperors.]

[Sidenote: Skill of the Romans for government.]

[Sidenote: On what the prosperity was based.]

[Sidenote: Government the great art and science of the Romans.]

[Sidenote: Prosperity of the government.]

It must, however, be confessed that, after the Caesars were fairly established on their throne, a great indifference to public affairs ensued. Every office was then, directly or indirectly, in the hands of the emperor. Cicero expressed the popular sentiment of his day when he said, "that was the most perfect government which was a combination of popular and aristocratic authority;"--but in the eighth century of the city, the system of checks and balances would have fallen to pieces in the hands of a degenerate people. A constitutional monarchy even was no longer possible. The vices of the oligarchy, and the fierce reactions of the democracy, had destroyed all the dreams of the earlier patriots. The mass of the people had long been passive under the sway of factions and political intriguers, and they resigned themselves to the despotism of the emperor without a struggle. But even in this degradation the power of government remained among the leading classes. The governors of provinces, taken generally from the Senate and the nobles, were skillful in their administration of public affairs. They were enlightened in all political duties. The traditional ideas of government survived for several generations, even as the mechanism of the army made it powerful after all real spirit had fled. The Roman still regarded himself as the favorite of the gods, destined to achieve a vast mission, even the reduction of the world to political unity. Augustus made every effort, while he reigned, in the ruin of political institutions, to revive the forms and traditions of other days. The patricians were favored and honored, and the Senate still was made to appear august, with a prostrate world at its feet, to which it was bound to dictate laws and institutions. Political unity was the grand idea of the Romans, and this idea has survived to our own times. It was one of the great elements of Roman civilization. Universal empire was based, in the better days of the Republic, on public morality, in the iron discipline of families, in a marvelously well-trained soldiery, in a military system which made the civil society an army almost ready for the field, in a recognition of public rights and duties, in a wise system of colonization, in conciliatory conduct to the conquered races, and in a central power as the dispenser of all honor and emoluments. The civil wars broke up, in a measure, this wise and considerate policy; still citizenship extended to all parts of the empire, even when it was manifest it must soon fall into the hands of barbarians. And as for the administration of justice, it was probably better conducted under the emperors than under the supreme rule of the Senate. Even bad emperors knew how to govern. To the Roman mind every thing was subordinate to the art of government. And every characteristic fitted the Romans to govern--energy of will, practical good sense, the conception of justice, an unyielding pride, fortitude, courage, and lust of power. And the spirit of domination was carried out into every thing. It was made a science, an art. Whatever would contribute to the ascendency of the state was remorselessly adopted; whatever would interfere with it was abandoned or swept away. Fierce and tolerant by turns, and as circumstances prompted--such was the Roman. With submission life was easy, and the government was mild. And the supreme government rarely entrusted power except to faithful, capable, and patriotic rulers. The wisest and best were selected for important offices. The governors of provinces were men of great experience; they were generals and senators who had passed their term of active service. They easily made great mistakes. They carried out the policy of the State. They were acquainted with laws, and the customs of the people whom they ruled. They were versed in the literature of their day. They were men of dignity and fortune. They were moderate, conciliatory, and firm. They were models for rulers for all subsequent ages. There were, of course, exceptions, but the small number of riots and rebellions shows the contentment of the people, for they were not ground down by oppressive laws and exactions, until their spirit was broken. How munificent were the emperors to such cities as Athens and Alexandria! Athens was the seat of learning and culture, to the very end of the empire. Arts and literature and science were fostered in all the cities. They were adopted as parts of the empire, not treated like conquered territories. After the destruction of Carthage, the Romans had no jealousy of cities that once were equals. Their arts were made to subserve Roman greatness, indeed, but they were left free to develop their resources. The development of resources was a vital principle of the Roman government. Spain, Syria, and Egypt, were never more prosperous than under the imperial rule. All the provinces were more thriving under the emperors than they had been under their ancient kings, until the era of barbaric invasions. If war had been the mission of the republic, peace was the pride of the empire. There were no wars of importance for three hundred years, except those of necessity. The end of the emperors was to govern, to preserve peace, and secure obedience to the laws.

[Sidenote: The aristocracy the real rulers of the state.]

[Sidenote: Defects of Democratic ascendency.]

[Sidenote: The people unfit to govern when unenlightened.]

[Sidenote: Popular element in the Roman state.]

[Sidenote: Rich Plebeians had a great influence in the government.]

But we must bear in mind that, whatever were the popular rights enjoyed in the republican era, and however vast were the powers wielded by the emperors after liberty had fled, yet the constitution of Roman society was essentially aristocratic. All the great conquests were made under the rule of patricians, and all the leading men under the emperors were nobles. The government was virtually, from first to last, in the hands of the aristocracy. Still there was an important popular element, especially in the latter days of the republic, to which revolutionary leaders appealed, like the Gracchi, Marius, Catiline, and Caesar. One of the most humiliating lessons which we learn of antiquity, we are forced to own, was the signal incapacity of the people to govern themselves, when they had obtained a greater share of power than the old constitution had allowed. The republic did not long survive when successful generals and eloquent demagogues were sustained by the people. Had Rome been a democracy, as some suppose, the empire never could have been established. We comfort ourselves, however, by the reflection, that when the people surrendered themselves to factions and demagogues and tyrants, they were both ignorant and depraved. Self- government has never yet succeeded, because there have never been virtue and intelligence among the masses. So long as we can boast of virtue and intelligence among the people, we need not despair with the government in their hands. An enlightened self-interest will suggest the wisest policy. We only despair of the government of the people when they are ignorant, brutal, and wicked. As there was no period in the ancient world when they were not unenlightened, we are reconciled to the fact that a wise and vigorous administration of public affairs was always conducted by kings or nobles who had intelligence and patriotism, if they were proud and imperious. Whatever faith we may justly cherish in reference to popular sovereignty, grounded on the principles of natural justice, and the hopes which are held out as the fruit of Christian ideas, still, as a fact, there is but little in the history of the Roman commonwealth which reflects much glory on the people, except when controlled and marshalled by the aristocracy. Just so far as the popular element prevailed, the state was hurried on to ruin. The aristocratical element had the ascendency when Rome was most prosperous and most respected. Yet, while the Roman constitution was essentially aristocratic for five hundred years, it had a strong popular element mingled with it. The patricians had the chief power, but they were not lords and masters in so absolute a sense as to trample on the people with impunity, nor were they able to deprive them of their rights, or of all share in the government. They were not feudal nobles, nor a Venetian oligarchy. And yet it were a mistake to suppose that the distinction between the classes implied that the aristocratic power was lodged with the patricians alone. The patricians were not necessarily aristocrats, nor the plebeians a rabble. The political distinctions passed away without destroying social inequalities. There were great families among the plebeians which really belonged to the aristocratic class, at least in the time of Cicero. Aristocracy may have been based on birth, as in England, but it was sustained by wealth, as in that country. A very rich man gained, ultimately, admission to the noble class, as Rothschild has in London. Without wealth to uphold distinctions, any aristocracy soon becomes contemptible. That organization of society is most aristocratic which confers great political and social privileges on a few men, and retains these privileges from generation to generation, as in France during the reign of Louis XV. The state of society at Rome under the republic, favored the monopoly of offices among powerful families. It was considered very remarkable for even Cicero to rise to the highest honors of the state with his magnificent genius, character, attainments, and services; but he shared the consulship with a man of very ordinary capacity. The great offices were all in the hands of the aristocracy, from the expulsion of the kings to the times of Julius Caesar. Even the tribunes of the people ultimately were selected from powerful families.

[Sidenote: The Patricians.]

[Sidenote: The Roman Gens.]

The Roman people--_Romanus populus_--under the kings, the original citizens, were the warriors who built Rome, and conquered the surrounding cities and districts. They were called patres, which is synonymous with Patricians. [Footnote: Cicero, _De Repub._, ii. 12 Liv., i. 8.] They were united among themselves by kindred and by political and religious ties. They supported themselves by agriculture although engaged continually in war. They consisted originally of three tribes, which gradually were united into the sovereign people. The first tribe was a Latin colony, and settled on the Palatine Hill; the second were Sabine settlers on the Quirinal; the third were Etruscans, who occupied the Caelian. They were distinct, at first, and were not united fully till the time of Tarquinius Priscus, himself an Etruscan. [Footnote: Dionys., ii. 62.] As there were no other Roman citizens but these patricians, they had no exclusive rights under the kings, and hence there was then no aristocracy of birth. Each of these three tribes of citizens consisted of ten curiae, and each curia of ten decuries, or gentes. The three tribes, therefore, contained three hundred gentes. A gens was a family, and the gentes were aggregates of kindred families. [Footnote: Nieb., Lect. V.] The name of a gens was generally characterized by the termination eia or ia, as Julia, Cornelia, and it is to be presumed that each gens had a common ancestor. But with the growth of the city it came to pass that a gens often included a great number of families; we read of three hundred Fabii forming the gens Fabia in the year 275. These families composed, ultimately, the aristocracy. They were the people who filled all offices, and alone had the right of voting in the assemblies. As the gentes were subdivisions of the three ancient tribes, the populus alone had gentes, so that to be a patrician and to have a gens were synonymous. With the growth of Rome new gentes or families were added which did not claim descent from the ancient tribes. The powerful gens of the Claudia came to Rome with Atta Claudius, their head, after the expulsion of the kings. Tullus Hostilius incorporated the Julii, Servilii and other gentes with the patricians. This ruling class, the descendants of the conquerors, became a powerful aristocracy, and ultimately learned to value pride of blood. There are very few names in Roman history, until the time of Marius, which did not belong to this noble class. What proud families were the Servilii, the Claudii, the Julii, the Cornelii, the Fabii, the Valerii, the Sempronii, the Octavii, the Sergii, and others. [Footnote: Liv., i. 33. Dionys., iii. 31.]

The Equites were originally elected from the patricians, and were cavalry soldiers, and did not form a distinct class till the time of the Gracchi. They were composed of rich citizens, whose wealth enabled them to become judices. They had the privilege of wearing a gold ring, and had seats reserved for them, like the Senate, at the theatre and circus. They increased in number with the increase of wealth, and formed an honorable corps from which the highest officers of the army and the civil magistrates were chosen. Admission to this body was an introduction to public life, and was a test of social position. It was composed of rich plebeians as well as patricians, and was based wholly on wealth. Pliny says, "It became the third order in the state, and to the title of Senatus Populusque Romanus, there began to be added, et Equestris ordo."

[Sidenote: The Roman plebs.]

[Sidenote: The tribunes.]

[Sidenote: Gradual increase of their power.]

[Sidenote: Their usurpations.]

Beside this Romanus populus, which constituted the ruling class under kings, was another body, made up of conquered people. In early times their number was small, nor did they appear as a distinct class until the reign of Tullus Hostilius. After the subjection of Alba, the head of the Latin Confederacy, great numbers were transferred to Rome, and received settlements on the Caelian Hill, and were kept under submission to the patricians. As the Roman conquests extended, their numbers increased, until they formed the larger part of the population. They were called plebs, or commonalty, and had no political privileges whatever. They had not even the right of suffrage; but they were enrolled in the army, [Footnote: Liv., i. 33. Dionys., iii. 31. ] and made to bear the expenses of the state. At first they were not allowed to intermarry with the patricians. Their oppression provoked resistance. The struggle which ensued is one of the most memorable in Roman history. The haughty oligarchy were obliged gradually to concede rights. These rights the plebs retained. First they gained a law which prevented patricians from taking usurious interest. They secured the appointment of tribunes for their protection. Soon after they had the right of summoning before their own Comitia tributa any one who violated their rights. In 449 they had influence sufficient to establish the Connubium, by which they could intermarry with patricians. In 421 the plebeians were admitted to the quaestorship. Then, after a fierce contest, they were made decemvirs. Their next right was the dignity of the consulship, and led to the dictatorship. In 351 they secured the censorship, and in 336 the praetorship. Political distinctions now vanished. The possession of a share of the great offices created powerful families, and these were incorporated with the aristocracy. The great privilege of securing tribunes was the first step to political power, and the most important in the constitutional history of the state. And it was the tribunes who gradually usurped the greatest powers. They assumed the right, in 456, of convoking even the Senate. They also had the right to be present in the deliberations of the Senate; as their persons were inviolable, they interceded against any action which a magistrate might undertake during his term of office, and even a command issued by a praetor. They could compel the Senate to submit a question to a fresh consultation, and ultimately compelled the consuls to appoint a dictator. Their power grew to such a height that they acquired the right of proposing to the Comitia tributa, or the Senate, measures on nearly all the important affairs of the state, and finally were elected from among the Senators themselves.

[Sidenote: Advancement of Plebeians.]

Through the institution of tribunes, and other circumstances, especially the increase of wealth, the plebeians, originally so unimportant and insignificant that they could not obtain admission into the Senate, nor the high offices of state, nor the occupancy of the public lands, ultimately obtained all the rights of the patricians, so that gradually the political distinctions between patricians and plebeians vanished altogether, 286 B.C., and the term populus was applied to them as well as to the patricians. [Footnote: Liv., iv. 44; v. 11,12. Cicero _de Repub._, ii. 37.]

[Sidenote: Gradual increase of their power.]

These rights were only secured by bitter and fierce contests. The plebeians, during their long struggle, did not seek power to gratify their ambition, but to protect themselves from oppression. Nor was the power which they obtained abused until near the close of the Republic.

But while they ultimately were blended, politically, with the patricians, still the latter monopolized most of the great offices of the state until the time of Cicero, and socially, always were preeminent. Yet there were many noble plebeian families who were blended with the aristocratic class. Aristocracy survived, after the political distinctions between the two classes were abrogated. Rome was never a democracy. Great families, whether patrician or plebeian, controlled the State, either by their wealth or social connections. The Roman nobility was really composed of all the families rendered illustrious by the offices they had filled. And as the great officers were taken generally from the Senate, that body was particularly august.

[Sidenote: The Senate.]

[Sidenote: The prerogative of Senators.]

Until the usurpation of Caesar, the Senate was the great controlling power of the republic. It not only had peculiar privileges and powers, but a monopoly of offices. It always remained powerful, in spite of the victories of the plebeians. The laws proclaimed equality, but for fifty- nine years after the plebeians had the right of appointment as military tribunes, only eighteen were plebeians, [Footnote: _Hist. Julius Caesar_, by Napoleon; chap. ii. 5.] while two hundred and forty-six were patricians; and while the right of admission to the Senate was acknowledged on principle, yet no one could enter it without having obtained a decree of the censor, or exercised a curule magistracy,-- favors almost always reserved for the aristocracy. The Senate was a judicial and legislative body, and numbered for several centuries but three hundred men, selected from the patricians. At first they were appointed by the kings, afterwards by the consuls, and subsequently by the censors. But as all those who had been appointed by the populus to the great offices had admission into this body, the people, that is, the patricians, virtually nominated the candidates for the Senate. But all magistrates were not necessarily members of the Senate, only those whom the censors selected from among them, and the curule magistrates during their office. It was from these curule magistrates that vacancies were filled up. The office of senator was for life. When the plebeians obtained the great offices, the Senate of course represented the whole people, as it formerly had represented the populus. But it was never a democratic assembly, for all its members belonged to the nobles. It required, under Augustus, 1,200,000 sesterces to support the senatorial dignity. Only a rich man could be, therefore, a senator. Nor could he carry on any mercantile business. The Senate was ever composed of men who had rendered great public services, or who were distinguished for wealth and talents. It was probably the most dignified and the proudest body of men ever assembled. The powers of the Senate were enormous. It had the general superintendence of matters of religion and foreign relations; it commanded the levies of troops; it regulated duties and taxes; it gave audience to ambassadors; it proposed, for a long time, the candidates for office to the _Comitia_; it determined upon the way that war should be conducted; it decreed to what provinces the consuls and praetors should be sent; it appointed governors of provinces; it sent out embassies to foreign states; it carried on the negotiations with foreign ambassadors; it declared martial law in the appointment of dictators, and it decreed triumphs to fortunate generals. In short it was the supreme power in the state, and was the medium through which all the affairs of government passed. It was neither an hereditary, nor a popular body, yet represented the state--at first the patrician order, and finally the whole people, retaining to the end its aristocratic character. The senators wore on their tunics a broad purple stripe,--a badge of distinction, like a modern decoration,--and they had the exclusive rights of the orchestra at theatres and amphitheatres. [Footnote: See article in Smith's _Dict. of Ant._, by Dr. Schmitz.] Under the emperors, the Senate was degraded, and was made entirely subservient to their will, and a mouth-piece; still it survived all the changes of the constitution, and was always a dignified and privileged body. It combined, in its glory, more functions than the English Parliament; it was convoked by the curule magistrates, and finally by the tribunes. The most ancient place of assembly was the Curia Hostilia, though subsequently many temples were used. The majority of votes decided a question, and the order in which senators spoke and voted was determined by their rank, in the following order: president of the Senate, consuls, censors, praetors, aediles, tribunes, quaestors. Their decisions, called Senatus Consulta, were laws--_leges_--and were entrusted to the care of aediles and tribunes. [Footnote: Nieb. _Roman Hist._, viii. p. 264.]

[Sidenote: The Senate composed of patricians and plebeians.]

[Sidenote: The Senate hold the great offices of state.]

Such was the Roman Senate--an assembly of nobles, whether patrician or plebeian. The descendants of all who had filled curule magistracies were nobiles, and had the privilege of placing in the atrium of the house the images and titles of their ancestors--an heraldic distinction in substance. And as the patricians carried back their pedigree to the remotest historical period, there was great pride of blood. Few plebeians could boast of a remote and illustrious ancestry, and every plebeian who obtained a curule office, was the founder of his family's nobility, like Cicero--a novus homo. This nobility contrived to keep possession of all the great offices, and it was difficult for a new man to get access to their ranks. The distinction of Patrician and Plebeian was secondary, after the Gracchi to that of Nobilitas, yet it was rare to find a patrician gens the families of which had not enjoyed the highest honors many times over. Thus the aristocracy was composed of the families of those who had held the highest offices of the state; but as these offices were controlled by the Senate and enjoyed by the patricians chiefly, it was difficult to determine whether nobility was the result of patrician blood, or the possession of great offices. A man could scarcely be a patrician who had not held a great office; nor could he often hold a great office unless he were a patrician. The great offices were held in succession by the members of the Senate. The two consuls, the ten tribunes, the eight praetors in the time of Sulla--the twenty quaestors, together with the governors of provinces, and the generals who were selected from the Senate, or belonged to it, would necessarily compose a large part of the nobility, when their term of office lasted but a limited time, so that a senator with any ability was sure, in the course of his life, of the highest honors of the state.

[Sidenote: But only those who had distinguished themselves.]

The great executive officers, therefore, belonged to the noble class, not of necessity, but as a general thing. Cicero was a novus homo, and yet rose by his talents to the highest dignities. It was rare, however, to confer the highest offices on those who had not distinguished themselves in war. Military fame, after all, gave the greatest prestige to the Roman name. Consuls commanded armies, but they would not have been chosen consuls except for military, as well as political, talent.

[Sidenote: The Consuls.]

The consul was, after the abolition of the monarchy, the highest officer of the state. It was not till the year 366 B.C. that a plebeian obtained this dignity. The powers of consuls were virtually those of the old kings, with the exception of priestly authority. They convened the Senate, introduced ambassadors, called together the people, conducted elections, commanded the armies and never appeared in public without lictors. Nor were they shorn of their powers till Julius Caesar assumed the dictatorship. The whole internal machinery of the state was under their control. But their term of office lasted only a single year. Their election took place in the Comitia Centuriata.

[Sidenote: The censors.]

The censors were next in dignity, and like the consuls, there were two, and elected in the same manner under the presidency of a consul; only men of consular rank were chosen to this high office, and hence it was really higher than the consulship. The censors were chosen for a longer term than the consuls, and had the oversight of the public morals, the care of the census, and the administration of the finances. They could brand with ignominy the highest persons of the state, and could elect to the Senate, and exclude from it unworthy men. They had, with the aediles, the control of the public buildings and all public works. They could take away from a knight his horse, and punish extravagance in living, or the improper dissolution of the marriage rite. They were held in the greatest reverence, and when they died were honored with magnificent funerals.

[Sidenote: The praetors.]

Next in rank were the praetors, at first two in number, and ultimately sixteen. They exercised the judicial power, both in civil and criminal cases.

[Sidenote: The aediles.]

The aediles were also curule magistrates, and to them was entrusted the care of the public buildings, and the superintendence of public festivals. They were the keepers of the decrees of the Senate, and of the plebiscita. They superintended the distribution of water, the care of the streets, the drainage of the city, and the distribution of corn to the people. It was their business to see that no new deities were introduced, and they had the general superintendence of the police, and the inspection of baths. Their office entailed large expenses, and they were forced into great extravagance to gain popularity, as in the case of Julius Caesar and Aemilius Scaurus; but the aediles exercised extensive powers, which, however, were essentially diminished under the emperors.

[Sidenote: The tribunes.]

Allusion has already been made to the tribunes, in connection with the development of the plebeian power. At first they were only two, then in creased to five, and finally to ten. It was their business to protect the plebs from the oppression of nobles, but their authority was so much increased in the time of Julius Caesar that they could veto an ordinance of the Senate. [Footnote: Caesar, De Beil Civ., 1, 2.] They not only could stop a magistrate in his proceedings, but command their viatores to seize a consul or a censor, to imprison him, or throw him from the Tarpeian rock. [Footnote: Liv. ii. 56, iv. 26; Cicero, De Legibus, iii. 9.] The college of tribunes had the power of making edicts. After the passage of the Hortensian law, there was no power equal to theirs, and they could dictate even to the Senate itself. In the latter days of the republic, the tribunes were generally elected from among the senators. It was the vast influence which the people had obtained through the tribunes which led to the usurpation of Caesar; for he, as well as Marius, rose into power by courting them against the interests of the aristocracy.

[Sidenote: The quaestors.]

The last of the great magistrates whose office entitled them to a seat in the Senate were the quaestors, who had charge of the public money. Originally only two in number, they were raised by Sulla to twenty, and by Caesar to forty, for political influence. As the Senate had the supreme direction of the finances they were merely its agents or paymasters. The proconsul or praetor, who had the administration of a province, was attended with a quaestor to regulate the collection of the revenues. The quaestors also were the paymasters of the army.

Such were the great executive officers of the state, having a seat in the Senate, and belonging to the noble class by their official position as well as by birth. No one could be consul until he had passed through all these offices successively, except the censorship.

[Sidenote: Pontifex maximus.]

There was, however, another great Roman dignitary who held his office for life, which was one of transcendent importance. He was at the head of the college of priests, which had the superintendence of all matters of religion. The college of pontiffs, of which, under Julius Caesar, there were sixteen, were not priests, but stood above all priests, and regulated the worship of the gods, and punished offenses against religion. The chief pontiff lived in a public palace in the Via Sacra, and might also hold other offices. It is a great proof of the talents of Caesar and of the estimation in which he was held, that, at the age of thirty-seven, he was chosen to this high dignity, against the powerful opposition of Catulus, prince of the Senate, and when he had only reached the aedileship.

[Sidenote: Assemblies of the people.]

[Sidenote: The Comitia Cenuriata.]

In regard to the assemblies of the people, where they voted for the great officers of state, it must be borne in mind that they were not made up of the rabble, but of the populus or the patricians till nearly the close of the republic. Each of the thirty curia had its building for the discussion of political and legal questions. They had also collectively an assembly, called Comitia Curiata, where the people voted on the measures proposed by the magistrates. The votes were given by the curiae, each curia having one collective vote. The assembly originated nothing, but decided upon the life of Roman citizens, upon peace and war, and the election of magistrates. This was the primitive form under the kings. But Servius Tullius instituted the Comitia Centuriata, and hence divided the populus into six property classes, and one hundred and ninety-three centuriae. The first class was composed of ninety-eight centuriae, with a property qualification of one hundred thousand asses; the second of twenty-two centuriae with seventy-five thousand asses; the third of twenty, with fifty thousand asses; the fourth of twenty-two, with twenty-five thousand asses; the fifth of thirty, with eleven thousand asses; and the sixth of any one of those below twelve and a half minae. Yet this class was the most numerous. The wealthier classes voted first, and when a majority of the centuries was obtained the voting stopped. Hence the power was virtually in the hands of the rich; for, united, they made a majority before the poorer classes were called upon to vote. The Comitia Centuriata elected the magistrates and made laws, and formed the highest court of appeal, but all its decisions had to be sanctioned by the curiae, although in course of time the curia was a formality. The centuries met in the Campus Martius, and were presided over by the consuls, who read the names of the candidates. In the assemblies by centuries, the vote of the first class prevailed over all the others; in the comitia by curiae the patricians were supreme.

[Sidenote: The Comitia Tributa.]

[Sidenote: Decline of power of the comitia.]

The Comitia Tributa represented the thirty Roman tribes according to the Servian constitution, to whom was originally given the right to elect inferior magistrates. This was a plebian assembly, and had very insignificant powers, chiefly relating to the local affairs of the tribes. But when these tribes began to be real representatives of the people, with the increase of the plebeian classes, matters affecting the whole state were brought before them by the tribunes. This gave to the assembly the initiative of measures, which was sanctioned by a law of L. Valerius Publicola, B.C. 449. This law gave to the decrees passed by the tribes the power of a real lex, binding upon the whole people, provided it had the sanction of the Senate and the populus in the Comitia Centuriata. In 287 B.C. the Hortensian law made the plebiscita independent of the sanction of the Senate. When the plebeians began to be recognized as an essential element in the state, it was found inconvenient to have the first class, which included the equites, so greatly preponderant in the comitia of the centuries; and it was designed to blend the Comitia Centuriata and the Tributa in such a manner as to make only one assembly. This took place after the completion of the thirty-five tribes, B.C. 241. The citizens of each tribe were divided into five property classes, and each tribe into ten centuries, making three hundred and fifty centuries. This comitia was far more democratic than the comitia of the centuries, and was guided by the tribunes. When all the Italians were incorporated with the thirty- five tribes, violence and bribery became the order of the day. Sulla took away the jurisdiction of the people, and Julius Caesar encroached still more on popular rights when he decided upon peace and war in connection-with the Senate--which great question was formerly settled by the comitia alone. The people retained nothing under him but the election of magistrates, which amounted to little, since Caesar had the right to appoint half the magistrates himself, with the exception of the consuls. After the death of Caesar, the comitia continued to be held, but was always controlled by the rulers, whose unlimited powers were ultimately complied with without resistance. Finally the comitia became a mere farce, and all legislation passed away forever, and was completely in the hands of the emperor and Senate.

[Sidenote: The nobles retain the chief ascendency.]

[Sidenote: The dictator.]

[Sidenote: The idea of popular government.]

[Sidenote: The Senate retains all real power.]

Thus it would appear that the Roman constitution was essentially aristocratic, especially for three hundred years after the expulsion of kings. The Senate and the populus had the whole power. Gradually, as wealth increased, the equites became an influential order, not less aristocratical than the patricians. The plebs were not of much consideration till the time of the Gracchi, and always obtained office with difficulty. It was two hundred years after the expulsion of kings before the plebeians could even obtain a share of the public lands. So long as the aristocracy preserved their virtue and patriotism, the state was most ably administered, and continually increased in wealth and power. The conquest of Italy was entirely under the regime of nobles, and even when wealthy plebeian families mingled with the ancient patricians there was still great difficulty in reaching preferment, without the advantages of birth. [Footnote: Mommsen, Roman Hist., i. p. 241.] In fourteen years, from 399 to 412, the patricians allowed only six plebeians to reach the consulship. The lives of the citizens were protected by the laws, but public opinion remained powerless at the assassination of those who incurred the hatred of the Senate. The comitia were free, but the Senate had at its disposal either the veto of the tribunes or the religious scruples of the people, for a consul could prevent the meeting of the assemblies, and the augurs could cut short their deliberations. Even the dictatorship was often a means of oppressing the plebs, and was a lever in the hands of the aristocracy, since the dictator was appointed by the consuls under the direction of the Senate. [Footnote: Liv., viii. 23.] He was a patrician as a matter of course, until the political distinctions between patrician and plebeian were removed, and had absolute authority for six months. He was not held responsible for his acts while in office, [Footnote: Becker, Handbuch der Romanisch Alterthumer, vii. p. 2; Nieb. History of Rome. vol. i. p. 563.] nor was there any appeal from his decisions. He was preceded by twenty-four lictors, and was virtually supreme. Between 390 and 416 there were eighteen dictators. The Senate thus remained all-powerful, in spite of the victories of the plebeians, and such were its patriotism and intelligence that it preserved its preponderance. It was during the conquest of Italy that aristocratic power shone in all its splendor, and the most able men were entrusted with public affairs. Every thing was sacrificed to patriotism, and discipline was enforced with cruelty. The most powerful patricians readily exposed their lives in battle, and a town became a people which ultimately embraced the world. When the plebeians had grown to be a power the decline of the republic commenced, and a new organization was necessary. Great chieftains became dictators for life, and the imperial sceptre was seized by an unscrupulous but enlightened general. The Roman populus in an important sense carried out the great idea of self- government, but, strictly speaking, self-government, as applied to the people generally, never existed in the Roman Commonwealth. But the idea was advanced which gave birth to future republics. Nor did the fall of the old patrician oligarchy divest the Roman commonwealth of its aristocratic character, for a new aristocracy arose. When the plebeian families obtained the consulate and other high offices of state, they were put on a level with the old patrician families, and were allowed the privilege of placing the wax images of their illustrious ancestors in the family hall, and to have these images carried in the funeral procession. As curule magistrates, they had a seat in the Senate, and wore the insignia of rank--the gold finger-ring and the purple border on the toga. "The result of the Licinian laws," says Mommsen, "in reality, only amounted to what we now call the creation of a new batch of officers." [Footnote: Mommsen, B. III. c. xi.] As all the descendants of those who had enjoyed the curule magistracy were entitled to the privilege of these distinctions, the nobility became hereditary. And as the great officers of state were generally selected from this class, since they controlled the comitia, the nobility was not merely hereditary, but it was a governing nobility. The nobility had the possession of the Senate itself. It monopolized the great offices of state. The stability of the Roman aristocracy is seen in the fact, that, from the year 388 to 581, when the consulate was held by one patrician and one plebeian, one hundred and forty of the consuls, out of the three hundred and eighty-six, belonged to sixteen great houses. The Cornelii furnished thirty consuls in one hundred and ninety-three years, the Valerii eighteen, the Claudii twelve, the Aemilii fifteen, the Fabii twelve, the Manlii ten, the Postumii eight, the Servilii seven, the Sulpicii eight, the Papirii four, to say nothing of other curule offices. Thus the nobility was not composed exclusively of patrician families, although these were the most numerous, but of old plebeian families also, in the same way that the English House of Lords is composed of families which trace their origin to Saxons as well as Normans, although the Normans, for several centuries, were the governing class. And as the House of Lords has accessions occasionally from the ranks of the people, in consequence of great wealth, or political interest, or eminent genius, or signal success in war, so the Roman nobility was increased, as old families died out, by the successful generals who gained the great offices of state. Marius arose from the people, but his exploits in the field of battle insured his entrance among the nobility in consequence of the offices he held, even as the Lord Chancellors of England, who have been eminent lawyers merely, are made herditary peers in consequence of their judicial position.

[Sidenote: Roman citizens.]

The Roman burgesses again were any thing but a rabble. They were composed of men of standing and wealth. If they did not compose the motive-power, they constituted a firm foundation of the state. They had a clear conception of the common good, and a sagacity in the election of rulers, and a spirit of sacrifice for the general interests. They had a lofty patriotism that nothing could seduce. The rabble of Rome were of no account until the enormous wealth of the senatorial houses raised up clients and parasites. And when this rabble, who were merely the dependents of the rich, obtained the privilege of voting, then the decline of liberties was rapid and fearful, since they were merely the tools of powerful demagogues.

[Sidenote: Balance of power.]

Thus among the Romans, until the prostration of their liberties, the powers of government were not in the hands of kings, as among the Orientals, nor in those of the aristocracy, exclusively, nor in those of the people; but in all combined, one class acting as a check against another class. They were shared between the Senate, the magistrates, and the people in their assemblies. Theoretically, the populus was the real sovereign by whom power was delegated; but, for several centuries, the populus meant the patricians, who alone could take part in the assemblies. The preponderating influence was exercised by the Senate. The judicial, the legislative, and the executive authority were as clearly defined as in our times. The magistrates were all elected by the Senate or the people, and sometimes proposed by the one and confirmed by the other. No case, involving the life of a Roman citizen, could be decided except by the Comitia Centuriata. The election of a magistrate, or the passing of a law, though made on the ground of a senatus consultum, yet required the sanction of the curiae. In legislative measures, a senatus consultum was brought before the people by the consul, or the senator who originated the measure, after it had previously been exhibited in public for seventeen days. The inferior magistrates, whose office it was to superintend affairs of local interest, were elected by the Comitia Tributa. All the magistrates, however great their power, could, at the expiration of their office, be punished for transcending their trust. No person was above the authority of the laws. No one class could subvert the liberties and prerogatives of another. The Senate had the most power, but it could not ride over the Constitution. The consuls were not the creatures of the Senate; they were elected by the centuries, and presided over the Senate, as well as the assembly of the people. The abuse of power by a consul was prevented by his colleague, and by the certainty of being called to account on the expiration of his office. His power was also limited by the Senate, since he was dependent upon it. There was no absolute power exercised at Rome, except by the dictators, but they were appointed only in a national crisis, and then only for six months. Unless their power were perpetuated, not even they could overturn the constitution. The senators again, the most powerful body in the state, were not entirely independent. They could not elect members of their own body, nor keep them in office. The censors had the right of electing the senators from among the ex-magistrates and the equites, and of excluding such as they deemed unworthy. And as the Senate was thus composed wholly of men who had held the highest offices or had great wealth, it was a body of great experience and wisdom. Yet even this august assembly was obliged to submit to the introduction of any subject of discussion by the tribune. What a counterpoise to the authority of this powerful body were the tribunes! From their right of appearing in the Senate, and of taking part in its discussions, and from their being the representatives of the whole people, in whom power was supposed primarily to be lodged, they gradually obtained the right of intercession against any action which a magistrate might undertake during the time of his office, and without giving a reason. They could not only prevent a consul from convening the Senate, but could veto an ordinance of the Senate itself. They could even seize a consul and a censor and imprison him. Thus was power marvelously distributed, even while it remained in the hands of the higher classes. The people were not powerless when their assemblies could make laws and appoint magistrates, and when their tribunes could veto the most important measures. The consuls could not remain in office long enough to be dangerous, and the senators could be ejected from their high position when flagrantly unworthy. "The nobiles had no legal privileges like a feudal aristocracy, but they were bound together by a common distinction derived from a legal title, and by a common interest; and their common interest was to endeavor to confine the election to all the high magistracies to the members of their own body." The term nobilitas implied that some one of a man's ancestors had filled a curule magistracy, and it also implied the possession of wealth. Theoretically it would seem that the nobiles were very numerous, since so many people can ordinarily boast of an illustrious ancestor; but practically the class was not so large as we might expect. A noble might be poor, but still, like Sulla, he remained noble. The distinction of patrician was, long before the reforms of the Gracchi, of secondary importance; that of nobilitas remained to the close of the republic. The nobility kept themselves exclusive and powerful from the possession of the great offices of state from generation to generation; they prevented their own extinction by admitting into their ranks those who distinguished themselves to an eminent degree.

[Sidenote: The reign of demagogues.]

But this state of things applied only to the republic in its palmy days. When democratical influences favored the ascendency of demagogues,--thus far in the history of our world, the inevitable consequence of a greater extension of popular liberties than what the people are prepared for,-- then wholesome restraints were removed, and the people were the most enslaved, when they thought themselves most free. There is no more melancholy slavery than the slavery of the passions. Ignorant self- indulgent people are led by their passions; they are rarely influenced by reason or by enlightened self-interest. Those who most skillfully and unscrupulously appeal to popular passions, when the people have power, have necessarily the ascendency in the community. The people, deceived, flattered, headstrong, follow them willingly. In times of war, and especially among a martial people, military chieftains, by inflaming the warlike passions, by holding out exaggerated notions of glory, by appealing to vanity and patriotism mingled, have ever had a most extraordinary influence in republics. They have also great influence in monarchies, when the monarch is crazed by the passion of military success. Monarchs, with the passions of the people, are led by men who flatter them even as the people are led. Hence the reign of favorites with kings. The ascendency of favorites, with sovereigns like Louis XIII., or even like Louis XIV., is maintained by the same policy as that which animated Marius and Caesar, or animates the popular favorites of our times. And this ascendency may be for the better or the worse, according to the character of the demagogue rulers, or royal favorites. When a Richelieu or a Cavour holds the reins, a country may be indirectly benefited by the wisdom of their public acts. When a Buckingham or a Catiline prevails, a nation suffers a calamity. In either case, the power which is conceded to be legitimate becomes a mockery. With Caesar, the popular power is a mere name, even, as with Richelieu, the kingly is a shadow. In the better days of the Roman republic, the executive power was kept in a healthy state by the great authority of the Senate, and the senatorial influence was prevented from undue encroachment by the watchfulness of the tribunes. And when the aristocratical ascendency was most marked, the aristocratical body had too much virtue and ability to be enslaved by ambitious and able men of their own number. Had the Roman Senate, in the height of its power, been composed of ignorant, inexperienced, selfish, unpatriotic members, then it would have been easy for a great intellect among them, whether accompanied by virtue or not, by appealing perpetually to their pride, to their rank, to their privileges, to their peculiar passions, to have led them, as Pitt led the House of Commons. The real rulers of our world are few, in any community, or under any form of government. They are always dangerous, when there is a low degree of virtue or intelligence among those whom they represent. Certain it is, that their power is nearly absolute when they are sustained by passion or prejudice. The representative of a fanatical constituency has no continued power, unless he perpetually flatters those whom, in his heart, he knows to be lost to the control of reason. And his influence is greater or less, according to the strength of the popular passions which he inflames, or in which, as is often the case, he shares. The honest representative of fanatics is himself a fanatic. Thus Cromwell had so great an ascendency with his party, because he felt more strongly than they in matters where they sympathized. But the liberties of Rome were not overturned by fanatical rulers, but by those who availed themselves of the passions which they themselves did not feel, in order to compass their selfish ends. And that is the greater danger in republics--that bad men rise by the suffrage of foolish people whom they deceive, by affecting to fall in with their wishes, like Napoleon and Caesar, rather than that honest men climb to power by the very excess of their enthusiasm, like Cromwell, or Peter the Hermit. Hence a Mirabeau is more dangerous than a Robespierre. The former would have betrayed the people he led; the latter would have urged them on to consistent courses, even if the way was lined with death. Had Mirabeau lived, and retained his power, he would have compromised the Revolution, of which Napoleon was the product, and the work would have had to be done over. But Robespierre pushed his principles to their utmost logical sequence, and the nation was satisfied with their folly, in a practical point of view. Napoleon arose to rebuke anarchy as well as feudal kings, and though maddened and intoxicated by war, so that his name is a Moloch, he never dreamed of restoring the unequal privileges which the Revolution swept away.

[Sidenote: Greatness of the constitution.]

The Roman constitution, as gradually developed by the necessities and crises which arose, is a wonderful monument of human wisdom. The people were not ground down. They had rights which they never relinquished; and they constantly gained new privileges, as they were prepared to appreciate them, or as they were in danger of subjection by the governing classes. They never had the ascendency, but they enjoyed renewed and increasing power, until they were strong enough to tempt aristocratic demagogues and successful generals. When Caesar condescended to flatter the people, they had become a power, but a power incapable of holding its own, or using it for the welfare of the state. Then it was subverted, as Napoleon rode into absolute dominion over the bridge which the Revolution had built. And the Roman constitution was remarkable, not only because it prevented a degrading subjection of the masses, even while it refused them the rights of government, but because it maintained a balance among the governing classes themselves, and restricted the usurpations of powerful families, as well as military heroes. For nearly five hundred years, not a man arose whom the Romans feared, or whom they could not control--whom they could not at any time have hurled from the Tarpeian rock had he contemplated the subversion, I will not say of the liberties of the people, but of the constitution which made the aristocracy supreme. There were ambitious and unscrupulous men, doubtless, among those fortunate generals whom the Senate snubbed, and whom the people adored. But, great as they were in war, and powerful from family interest and vast wealth, no one of them ever dared to make himself supreme until Caesar passed the Rubicon--not Scipio, crowned with the laurels which he had taken from the head of Hannibal; not Marius, fresh from his great victories over the barbaric hosts of northern Europe; not even Sulla, after his magnificent conquests in the east, and his triumph over all the parties and factions which democracy raised against him. Pompey may have contemplated what it was the fortune of Caesar to secure. But that pompous magnate could have succeeded only by using the watchwords and practicing the acts to which none but a demagogue could have stooped. Before his time, at least for fifty years, there were too many men in the Senate who had the spirit of Cato, of Cicero, and of Brutus.

[Sidenote: The Revolution.]

[Sidenote: Effects of imperial rule.]

But, tempora mutantur. When the Senate was made up of men whom great generals selected, whether aristocratic sycophants or rich plebeians; when the tribunes played into the hands of the very men whom they were created to oppose; when the high priest of a people, originally religious, was chosen without regard to either moral or religious considerations, but purely political; when the high offices of the state were filled by senators who had never seen military life except for some brief campaign; when factions and parties set old customs aside; when the most aristocratic nobles sought entrance into plebeian ranks in order, like Mirabeau, to steal the few offices which the people controlled, and when the people, mad and fierce from demoralizing spectacles, raised mobs and subverted law, then the constitution, under which the Romans had advanced to the conquest of the world, became subverted. Under the emperors, there was no constitution. They controlled the Senate, the army, the tribunals of the law, the distant provinces, the city itself, and regulated taxes and imposed burdens, and appointed to high offices whomever they wished. The Senate lost its independence, the courts their justice, the army its spirit, and the people their hopes. Yet the old form remained. The Senate met as in the days of the Gracchi. There were consuls and praetors still. But it was merely equites or rich men who filled the senatorial benches--tools of the emperor, as were all the officers of the state. The government of nobles was succeeded by the government of emperors who, in their turn, were too often the tools of favorites, or of praetorian guards, until the assassin's dagger cut short their days.

[Sidenote: The rule of emperors a necessity.]

This is not the place to speculate on the good or evil which resulted from this change in the Roman government. Most historians and philosophers agree that the change was inevitable, and proved, on the whole, benignant. It was simply the question whether the Romans should have civil wars and anarchies and factions, which decimated the people, and kept society in a state of fear and insecurity, and prevented the triumph of law, or whether they should submit to an absolute ruler, who had unbounded means of doing good, and whom interest and duty alike prompted to secure the public welfare. The people wanted, above all things, safety, and the means of prosecuting their various interests. Under the emperors they obtained the greatest boons possible, when the condition of society was hollow and rotten to the core. The people were governed, sometimes wisely, sometimes recklessly, but there were order and law for three hundred years. It little mattered to the vast population of the empire who was supreme master, provided they were not oppressed. The proud Imperator, the title and praenomen of all the Roman monarchs, and which had been invented for Octavian, remained the fountain of law, the arbiter of all interests, the undisputed ruler of the world. The old offices nominally remained, but, by virtue of the censorship, the emperor had the power of excluding persons from the Senate, and of calling others into it. Thus the august body which was, under the republic, the counterpoise to executive authority, was rendered dependent on the imperial will. There was no Senate, but in name, when it could be controlled by the government. It became a mere form, or an instrument in the hands of the administration, to facilitate business. By obtaining the proconsular power over the whole of the Roman Empire, Octavian made the provincial governors his vicegerents. The tribunicia potestas which he also enjoyed, enabled him to annul any decree of the Senate, and of interfering in all the acts of the magistrates. An appeal was open to him, as tribune, from all the courts of justice; he had a right to convoke the Senate, and to put any subject under consideration to the vote of senators. Augustus even seized the pontificate, which office, that of Pontifex Maximus, put into his hands all the ecclesiastical courts. As tribune and censor, he also controlled the treasury, so that all the powers of the state were concentrated in him alone--that of consul, tribune, censor, praetor, and high priest. What a power to be exercised by one man in so great an empire! The Roman constitution was subverted when one man usurped the offices which were formerly shared by many. No sovereign was ever so absolute as the Roman Imperator, since he combined all the judicial, the executive, and the legislative branches of the government; that is, he controlled them all.

[Sidenote: The old forms of government preserved.]

Yet the old machinery was kept up, the old forms, the old offices in name, otherwise even Augustus might not have been secure on his throne. The Comitia still elected magistrates, but only such as were proposed by the government. The Senate assembled as usual, but it was composed of rich men, merely to register the decrees of the Imperator. The consuls were elected as before, but they were mere shadows in authority. The only respectable part of the magistracy was that which interpreted the laws. The only final authority was the edict of the emperor, who not only controlled all the great offices of state, but was possessed of enormous and almost unlimited private property. They owned whole principalities. Augustus changed the whole registration of property in Gaul on his own responsibility, without consulting any one. [Footnote: Niebuhr, Lecture 105.] His power was so unlimited that soldiers took the oath of allegiance to him, as they once did to the imperium populi Romani. His armies, his fleets, and his officers were everywhere, and no one dreamed of resisting a power which absorbed everything into itself.

[Sidenote: The imperial power unable to save the state.]

It is altogether another question whether the prosperity of the state was greater or less after the subversion of the constitution. For three hundred years the state was probably kept together by the ancient mechanism controlled by one central will. The change from civil war and party faction to imperial centralized power, considering the demoralized condition of society, was doubtless beneficial. The emperor could rule; he could not, however, conserve the empire. Doubtless, in most cases, he ruled well, since he ruled by the of great experience and ability. It is peculiarly the interest of despots to have able men as ministers. They never select those whom they deem to be weak and corrupt; they are simply deceived in their estimate of ability and fidelity. For several generations, the provinces had experienced governors, the armies had able generals, the courts of law learned judges. The provinces were not so inexorably robbed as in the time of Cicero. The people had their pleasures and spectacles and baths. Property was secure, unless enormous fortunes tempted the cupidity of the emperors. Justice was well administered. Cities were rebuilt and adorned. Rome owed its greatest monuments of art to the emperors. There was a cold and remorseless despotism; but the unnoticed millions toiled in peace. Literature did not thrive, since that can only live with freedom, but art received great encouragement, and genius, in the useful professions, did not go unrewarded. The empire did not fall till luxury and prosperity enervated the people and rendered them unable to cope with the barbarian hosts. Rome was never so rich as when she fell into the hands of Goths and Vandals. But the empire, under the old constitution, might have protected itself against external enemies. The mortal wound to Roman power and glory was inflicted by traitors.

* * * * *

AUTHORITIES.--Niebuhr, Lectures on the History of Rome; Mommsen, History of Rome; Arnold, History of Rome; Merivale, History of the Romans; Gibbon, Decline and Fall; Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities gives the details, and points out the old classical authorities, as does Napoleon's Life of Caesar. Dionysius, Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, Cicero, Sallust, all shed light on important points. See also Gottling, _Gesch der Rom. Staat_. A large catalogue of writers could be mentioned, but allusion is only made to those most accessible to American readers.