[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 113.--WORLD AS CONCEIVED ABOUT A.D. 100.]
Sound methods of discovering lat.i.tude and longitude were not yet in use, and therefore a map of the world according to ideas current in the first century would present a strange aspect to us. There is much error in the placing of towns or districts upon their parallels; and coasts or mountain ranges, particularly, of course, on the outskirts of the empire or in the less familiar lands beyond its bounds, are perhaps made to run north instead of north-west, or east instead of south-east. It follows that measurements of distances especially across the wider seas, were often very inaccurate, although within and about the Mediterranean there was so much traffic and such close observation of the stars that the errors were gradually reduced. The mariner, when he did not follow the coast and guide his course by familiar landmarks, steered by the stars, but of these he had a very intimate knowledge, to which he joined a close observation of the prevailing direction of the winds at the various seasons. There was a well-ordered system of lighthouses, and charts and mariners" guides were not wanting. In the winter months navigation over long distances was regularly suspended, and ships waited in port for the spring.
So far as acquaintance with the world was concerned, we have sufficient evidence that the trader knew his way very well down the African coast as far as Zanzibar, and along the southern sh.o.r.es of Asia as far as Cape Comorin. With Ceylon his acquaintance was vague, and only by tradition did he know of Further India by way of the sea and of China by way of the land. In the interior of Africa the caravans reached the Oases, and by way of Nile or caravan there was trade with the Soudan. Outside the Straits of Gibraltar, the Canary Islands and Madeira--known indiscriminately as the "Fortunate Isles,"
or "Isles of the Blest"--were in touch with the port of Cadiz. The shape of Great Britain beyond England was indefinite, although it was known to be an island, with the Shetlands lying beyond. Ireland was also recognised as an island and its relative size was not greatly misconceived. The chief misconception in this corner of Europe was that of orientation, Britain being placed either far too near or far too parallel to Spain (through a large error as to the shape of the Bay of Biscay). Meanwhile the coast of the Netherlands and Germany was made to run in a line much too closely parallel to the eastern sh.o.r.es of Britain. Scandinavia was known from navigating explorers and from the amber trade, but was commonly regarded as a large island.
Knowledge of the Baltic did not extend beyond about the modern Riga, and of the whole region thence to the Caspian only the dimmest notions were entertained.
From what has been said concerning the calculation of the earth"s diameter and of the distances of the sun and moon, it may be readily understood that the ancient mathematician had arrived at great proficiency in the geometrical branch of mathematics. This should cause no surprise when we remember what is meant by "Euclid." That eminent genius had lived at Alexandria three centuries and a half before the age of Nero, and he by no means represents all that was known of such mathematics at the latter date. The ancients were quite sufficiently versed in the solution of triangles to have made the necessary calculations in geography and astronomy, if they had but possessed the right instruments. Perhaps only an expert should deal--even in the few sentences required for our purpose--with such matters as the calculation of the capacity and proportional relations of cylinders, or with the mechanics and hydrostatics of Archimedes.
That philosopher so far understood the laws of applied force that he had boasted: "Give me a place to stand on and I will move the world."
What he and others had learned concerning fluid pressure, or concerning pulleys, levers, and other mechanical devices, had not been lost by the Greeks and had been borrowed from them for full practical use by the Romans. They knew how to lift huge weights, and how to hurl heavy missiles by the artillery previously mentioned. Experiments had been made at Alexandria in the use of steam-power, but had led to nothing practical. It is obvious also from their buildings and works of engineering, even without explicit statement, that they well understood the distribution of weight and the laws of stability. The laws of acoustics were understood with sufficient clearness to make them applicable with success to theatres. In practical mensuration--a daily necessity for men who were perpetually allotting lands or marking out camps--the Romans were experts. In pure arithmetic the contemporary world had made some considerable advance, such as in the extraction of square-roots and cube-roots; but, as has been already said, the Roman interest was virtually confined to such arithmetic or mathematics as appeared to possess some bearing on actual use.
Of chemistry, in the modern scientific sense, the ancients knew almost nothing. Empirically they were aware of certain properties exhibited by substances, and could perform certain manipulations; but, like moderns down to a very recent time, they had no real understanding of the quant.i.tative or qualitative relations of elements. Long ago Greek philosophy, followed by the Epicurean school, had set forth an "atomic theory," which on the surface is surprisingly like the modern chemical hypothesis; but this contained strange and illogical features and had no connection with actual practice. In this department the chief proficiency of the world of this date lay in metallurgy, in which the processes empirically discovered, chiefly by Egyptians and Phoenicians, were closely similar to those now employed. They thoroughly understood the smelting of ores, but could render no scientific account of the processes. Botany was in a very crude condition, scarcely extending beyond such knowledge as was required on the one hand for farming and horticulture, and on the other for the vegetable medicines used by contemporary physicians.
The doctoring of the time was also, of course, largely empirical, but a.s.suredly hardly more so than it was a century or so ago, and distinctly more rational than it became in the Middle Ages. We cannot conceive of a reputable doctor at Rome prescribing the nauseous mediaeval absurdities. Practical surgery must have been surprisingly advanced, and there is scarcely a modern surgeon who does not exclaim in admiration of the instruments discovered at Pompeii and now preserved in the Naples Museum (see FIG. 69). In physic it is, of course, tolerably certain that many of the remedies or methods of treatment were of the sound and simple kind discovered by the long experience of mankind and often put in use by our grandmothers.
The defect contemporary medicine was that it was almost wholly empirical. The ancient surgeon could doubtless perform ordinary operations--amputations and excisions--with neatness, and the ancient physician knew perfectly well what to do with the ordinary complaints--the fevers and agues, the bilious attacks, the gout, or the dropsy--but he was baffled by any new conditions. Moreover, if he could diagnose and cure, he could seldom prevent, inasmuch as he had little understanding of the causes of maladies. He had everything to learn in regard to sanitation and the preventing of infection. A plague would sometimes kill half the people in a town or district, and the loss of 30,000 persons in the metropolis would probably appear to most Romans as a visitation of the G.o.ds, nor is it certain that the doctors would generally disagree with that view. Though there were many quacks, it is not the case that the reputable medical men--most of them Greek, some of them Romans, who borrowed a Greek name because it "paid"--lacked the scientific spirit or such knowledge as the time afforded. They went to the medical school at Alexandria or elsewhere, and studied their treatises on physic and anatomy, but, at least in the latter subject, they were sadly hampered. Dissection of human bodies was forbidden by law as being a desecration of the dead, and though it might sometimes be practised _sub rosa_, it was the general custom to perform the dissections on other animals, particularly monkeys, and to argue thence erroneously to mankind.
CHAPTER XXI
PHILOSOPHY--STOICS AND EPICUREANS
With such an unsatisfactory equipment of science, and with such a vague and morally inoperative religion, it was no wonder that the higher minds of the contemporary world turned to the study of philosophy. Of such studies there had been many schools or sects, but at this date we have chiefly to reckon with two--the Stoics and Epicureans. There were, it is true, the Academics, who disputed everything, and held no doctrine to be more true than its contrary.
There were Eclectics, who picked and chose. But the majority of those who affected a positive philosophy attached themselves either to the Stoic or else to the Epicurean system, not necessarily with orthodox rigidity on every point, but as a general guide--at least in theory--to the conduct of life. Where we belong to a certain religious denomination or church, and "sit under" a certain cla.s.s of preachers, they belonged to a certain school of philosophy, and attended the lectures of certain of its expounders. Instead of a chaplain or parish clergyman they engaged or a.s.sociated with an expert in their special system. But just as the Frenchman remarked, "_Je suis catholique, mais je ne pratique pas_," so might one be in principle a good Stoic without much exercise of the accepted doctrines. The distinction between the tenets of the two great schools was wide, but within each school itself individuals might differ as widely as "Broad Church"
from whatever its opposite may be called. The choice between the two schools was mainly a matter of temperament. Persons of the sterner type of mind, caring comparatively little for the physical comforts and gracious amenities of life, and possessed of a strong sense of duty and decorum--inclined, perhaps, not only to piety and self-abnegation, but also to be somewhat dour and uncompromising--were naturally attracted to Stoicism. Those of the complementary character preferred the doctrines of Epicurus. The Stoics were the Pharisees, the Epicureans the Sadducees, of pagan philosophy. As the Pharisees were the most Hebraic of the Hebrews, so it was Stoicism that came to be the characteristic Roman creed. The ordinary Roman had been brought up in the tradition of obeying the law of the state and the claims of duty; he had high notions of personal dignity and a leaning to the heroic virtues. Give him a strong, consistent, and elevating religion and he would be normally a pious man. Stoicism supplied him with a standard which was in keeping with such tendencies. About Epicureanism there was nothing heroic or elevating.
Put briefly, and therefore crudely, the Epicurean doctrine was that happiness is the end of life. What men seek, and have a right to seek, is the most pleasant existence. Our conduct should secure for us as much real pleasure as possible. Now at first sight this looks like what it was opprobriously called by its enemies, "the philosophy of the pig-sty." It by no means meant this to its founder. For what is "pleasure"? Not by any means necessarily the gratification of the moment, physical or otherwise. A present pleasure may mean future pain, either of body or of mind. Wrong actions and b.e.s.t.i.a.l enjoyments bring their own penalty. You must choose wisely, and so direct your life that you suffer least and enjoy most consistently. Temperance and wisdom are therefore virtues necessary to a true Epicurean. You desire health; therefore you will live, as Epicurus lived, on simple and wholesome food. You desire tranquillity or peace of mind; therefore you will abstain from all perverse acts and gratifications, desires and emotions, which disturb that peace. In short the thing to be sought is nothing else but this grateful composure of mind--a thing which you cannot have if you are always wanting this or that and either abusing or misusing your bodily or mental functions, or needlessly mortifying yourself. To the plain man this apparently meant "Take life easily and keep free of worry." Naturally the plain man"s ideas of taking life easily became those of taking pleasures as they come, indolently accepting the agreeables of life and feeling no call to make much of its duties. It is all very well for a high-minded philosopher to avoid a pleasure in order to avoid its pain, and to realize that a pleasure of the mind is worth more than a pleasure of the body, but one cannot expect the ordinary pupil--the _homme moyen sensuel_--to comprehend this att.i.tude with heartiness sufficient to put it into practice. It followed therefore that the Epicurean tended, not only to become lazy, but to become vicious, or to make light of vices. This was not indeed true Epicureanism, and Epicurus is not to blame for it; it simply shows that Epicureanism, whatever its logical or other merits, provided no sufficient stimulus to a right life. As regards theology the position of the school was that there might very well be such things as higher beings--there was nothing in physical philosophy to make them any more impossible than a man or a fish--but that, if they existed, they were not concerned with man"s affairs; his moral conduct, like his sacrifices and prayers, was not matter for their consideration. No need, therefore, to let superst.i.tion worry you, or to trouble about future punishment. Conduct your life according to the same principles laid down, and let the G.o.ds--if there be any--look to themselves. Naturally the result of such a position is that ceasing to regard the G.o.ds means ceasing to believe in them, and, as a Roman writer says: "In theory it leaves us the G.o.ds, in practice it abolishes them."
The other school--that of the Stoics--is perhaps less easily comprehended, nor can it be said that its doctrines were always quite so coherent. Again we may put the position briefly, and therefore, perhaps, only approximately. The rule of life is to live as "nature"
directs. Nature has its laws, which you cannot disobey with impunity.
The law of nature is the mind of G.o.d. The material universe is the body, G.o.d is its soul, and He directs the workings of nature with foreknowledge and perfect wisdom. If man can only be brought to act in strict accordance with the mind of G.o.d--or law of nature--he is sure of perfect well-being, because he can do nothing as it should not be done. If he can only arrive at such perfect operation of his mental processes, he will necessarily be the perfect speaker, the perfect ruler, the perfect craftsman, the perfect performer of every task, including the securing of his own happiness. Doubtless this is logical enough, but how is one to attain to such right mental operations, and to become what was called a "sage"? Only by acting always according to reason and not according to pa.s.sion. That and that alone is "virtue."
The divine mind is not swayed by pa.s.sion--by hope, fear, exultation, or grief--but only and always by reason. Learn therefore to obey reason and reason only. Do not permit yourself to be drawn from the true path by fear of threats, even of death, nor by grief, even for your dearest friends. Such feelings warp your reason, distract your judgment, and deflect you from the right course. When pa.s.sion--feeling--comes in conflict with reason, you must drive feeling away. Your reason may not always be right; nevertheless it is the best guide you have, and you must cultivate it to act as rightly as possible. Remember that the power to act in accordance with the divine mind--the law of nature--lies in your own will; things external have nothing to do with that straight-forward proceeding--they cannot help you, and you must not let them hinder you. The condition of your mind is everything; as long as its operation is right, you are living in the right way. Your mind may act as rightly in poverty as in riches; you may be equally wise and virtuous whether you have the external advantages or not. You must therefore learn to ignore these things--pain, grief, fear, joy, and all the other perturbing influences. Cultivate, therefore, right reason and the absence of emotions.
This, you will say, is a very high, unattainable, if not inhuman, standard. Quite so, and therefore, while Epicureanism often produced vicious men, this often produced pretenders and even hypocrites.
Nevertheless it is better to set oneself a high standard than a low one, and a Roman who endeavoured to control himself by reason, and to place himself above fear and pain, was thereby on the way to be brave, patient, truthful, and just. Those who would see what high character could be a.s.sociated with Stoicism--whether as the result or as the motive of the choice of the school--should read Epictetus, whose text, written early in the next century, was "sustain and abstain," and also the great-minded gentle Emperor Marcus Aurelius. A logical outcome of Stoicism was that you should say only the thing which reason approved, and say it unafraid. A good republican virtue, this, but under the emperors a dangerous one, as an honest Stoic like Thrasea found out.
In practice there was naturally much qualifying or mellowing of the rigid Stoic att.i.tude: the exigencies of actual life had to be met part of the way, and both Greek and Roman Stoics were often only Stoics in part--the complete "sage" was of course impossible.
As for the G.o.ds, it is obvious that the Stoics were pantheists; there was one G.o.d, and He was the soul of the universe. They also, of course, recognised His providence. What then of the G.o.ds of the state?
Some did not attempt to discuss them. Others treated the various so-called separate deities in the list as being only so many manifestations or avatars of the same divine power, and whether they were content or not with that attempt at harmonisation, who shall say?
Meanwhile, at least in the eastern part of the empire, you might meet with another type of philosopher, the Cynic, belonging to the same school as the famous Diogenes, who had lived in that large earthenware jar commonly known as his "tub." Like the Stoic, the Cynic held that externals were of no value, and therefore he contented himself with a piece of bread, a wallet full of beans, and a jug of water. Like the Stoic, he believed in perfect freedom of speech, and therefore he spoke loudly and often abusively of all and sundry who appeared to him to deserve it. Some such men doubtless were sincere enough, like the earlier hermits or preaching friars, but many of them were simply idle and virulent impostors who thoroughly deserved that name of the "dog"
which was commonly given to them, and which came to designate their school.
The mention of impostors and hypocrites brings us naturally to a point which may have been foreseen. To the ancient world the professional philosophers were the nearest approach to our professional clergy.
They affected an appearance accordingly; and the philosopher was regularly known by his long beard, his coa.r.s.e cloak, and his staff.
But, alas! there were many who disgraced their cloth. There were Stoic teachers who practised all manner of secret vices, and whose behaviour was in outrageous contradiction to their creed of the "absence of emotions." There were not only many Honeymans, there were many Stigginses. There were idlers and vagabonds on a level with the mendicant friars and pardon-sellers of the time of Chaucer. There were pompous hypocrites. Also side by side with the serious and earnest philosopher, as deeply learned in the books of his sect as a modern divine, there were charlatans and dabblers. It is unfortunately in this last light that the Apostle Paul appeared to the professional Stoic and Epicurean teachers of Athens. They were the finished products of the philosophic schools of the most famous universities, while he was supposed by them to be teaching some new kind of philosophy. Philosophers were apt to be itinerant, and St. Paul was looked upon as but another of these new arrivals. In his language they detected what seemed to be borrowed notions not consistently bound together, and they therefore called him by a name which it is not easy to translate. Literally it is "a picker up of seeds"--that is to say, a sciolist who gathers sc.r.a.ps from profounder people and gives them out with an air. Perhaps the nearest, although an undignified, word is "quack." That Paul possessed a knowledge of Greek philosophy, and particularly of Stoicism, is practically certain. He came from Tarsus in Cilicia, and Cilicia was the native home of many leading Stoics, including its greatest representative in all antiquity. He had been taught by Gamaliel, who was versed in "the learning of the Greeks."
His address at Athens was deliberately meant to bear a relation to the philosophy of the experts who were present, but necessarily it could only introduce a few salient allusions, such as even a dabbler could have picked up, and we can hardly blame the specialists for their erroneous judgment. As he says himself: "The Greeks demand philosophy; but we proclaim a Messiah crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks a folly."
To discuss further the moral ideas of the Roman world would consume more s.p.a.ce and time than can be afforded here. It may, however, be worth while to mention that suicide was commonly--and especially by the Stoics--looked upon as a natural and blameless thing, when calm reason appeared to justify the proceeding, and when due consideration was given to social claims. To seek a euthanasia in such cases was an act of wisdom. Belief in an underworld or an after life was not rare among the common people, but it certainly did not exist in any force among the cultivated cla.s.ses. It was taught neither by philosophy nor by the religion of the state. Yet the sense that rewards or punishments are unfairly meted out in this world was strong in many a mind, and this is one of the facts which account for the hold taken upon such minds, first by the religion of Isis, and then in a still greater and more abiding measure by Christianity.
CHAPTER XXII
THE ROMAN PROFUSION OP ART
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 114.--THE DYING GAUL.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 115.--A "CANDELIERA" OR MARBLE PILASTER OF THE BASILICA AEMILIA.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 116.--FRAGMENTS OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE REGIA.]
It would be a more than agreeable task to deal at some length with the art of the Roman world of this period, but the subject is vast, and demands a treatise to itself. How general was the love of art--or at least the recognition of its place in life--must be obvious to those who have seen the great collections in Rome, gathered partly from the city itself and partly from the towns and country "villas" of Italy, and those in the National Museum at Naples, acquired mainly from the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Nor are we amazed merely at the quant.i.ty of statues, statuettes, busts, reliefs, paintings, mosaic gems and cameos, and artistically wrought objects and utensils, which have been preserved while so many thousands of such productions have disappeared in the conflagrations of Rome, the vandalisms of the ignorant, or the kilns and melting-pots of the Middle Ages. The quality is still more a source of delight than the quant.i.ty. This last sentence, of course, contains a truism, since art is no delight without high quality. If we had only preserved to us such masterpieces as the Capitoline Venus, the Dying Gaul, the Laoc.o.o.n, the Dancing Faun, the so-called Narcissus, and the Resting Mercury, we should realise something of the exquisite skill in plastic art which had been attained in antiquity and has never been attained since. But we might perhaps imagine that these were altogether exceptional pieces and the choicest gems possessed by the world of the time. Yet the preservation of these is but an accident, and there is no reason to believe them to be more than survivals out of many equally excellent. On the contrary, our ancient authorities--such as the elder Pliny--prove that there was a mult.i.tude of similar creations contained in public buildings alone.
Pompeii, it has already been said more than once, was a provincial town in no way distinguished for the high culture of its inhabitants; yet there is scarcely a house of any consideration which has not afforded some example of fine art in one form or another. We know that several of the Roman temples--such as those of Concord in the Forum and of Apollo on the Palatine--were veritable galleries of masterpieces; and that the rich Romans adorned both their town houses and country villas with dozens of statues, colossal, life-size, or miniature, by distinguished masters. But still more striking is the fact that the comparatively small homes of Pompeii often possessed a work for which no price would now be too large, and of which we are content even to obtain a tolerably good copy. At Herculaneum there evidently lived persons of greater literary and artistic I refinement than at Pompeii, and the discoveries from that only very partially excavated town make an incalculably rich show of their own. What then would be the case with Naples, Baiae, the resorts all along the coast as far as the Tiber, the luxurious villas on the Alban Hills, and the great metropolis itself?
Yet the fact of this universal recognition of art is scarcely made so impressive by these collected specimens of perfect taste and perfect execution, as it is incidentally by observing the delicate and graceful finish of some moulding on a chance fragment from a building, such as the Basilica Aemilia or the office of the Pontifex in the Forum, or the exquisite chiselling of trailing ivy upon a cup from Herculaneum (FIG. 56), or the dainty pattern wrought on no more important a thing than a bucket (FIG. 58), or the graceful shape imparted to a household lamp (FIG. 54). Water could hardly be permitted to spout in a peristyle or garden without doing so from some charming statuette, animal figure, or decorative mask or head. When fine art is sought in things like these, we may guess how uncompromisingly it was sought in things more avowedly "on show."
The age with which we have been dealing fell within the most flourishing period of Roman, or rather Graeco-Roman, taste and craftsmanship. A hundred years later both taste and execution were declining, and by the age of Constantine--two centuries and a half after Nero--not one artist could pretend to achieve such work as had belonged to a mult.i.tude between the reigns of Augustus and Hadrian.
It is not indeed probable that, even at our date, the large and n.o.ble simplicity of the older Greek masters could be rivalled. It is not probable that most of the former creations of art still preserved could have been wrought as originals by any Greek or Roman artist living in the time of Nero. Nevertheless technical craftsmanship was still superb, and while the contemporary artist could not create a splendid original, he was at least able to create an almost perfect copy. The Roman public buildings and private houses were enriched with a host of such copies, or, when not exact copies, with modifications which, though not improvements, were at least such as could not offend by displaying a lack of technical mastery. Let us grant that it was for the most part Greeks who were the artists; nevertheless the Greek is an active member of the Roman world and of its metropolitan life, and he executes his work to the order of the Roman state or the Roman patron; and therefore the art of the time deserves to be called Roman in that sense. There is little doubt that the Romans, if left to themselves, would have developed only the solid, or the gorgeous, or the baroque. But influences which penetrate a society are part of that society, and the Greek influence accepted by the Roman becomes a Roman principle.
Perhaps it is also true that many a Roman who possessed fine works of art, and even exquisite ones, was not in reality a true connoisseur; that, even if he were, he lacked instructive and ardent appreciation of art for its own sake; and that, like his cultivation of intellectual society or learning, his cultivation of art was rather that of a man determined to be on a level with the culture of his times. Nevertheless the fact is palpable, that the cultivation was there, and was displayed in public architecture and in household embellishment in a way which puts the modern world to shame. With us art is a luxury for the few, and a keen enjoyment for still fewer; in the age of Nero it penetrated the life of every cla.s.s.
In architecture the native Roman gift was for the practical combined with the ma.s.sive and grandiose. The structures in which they themselves excelled were the amphitheatre, the public baths, the triumphal arch, the basilica, the bridge, and the aqueduct. Their mastery of the arch, their excellent concrete, and their engineering genius, enabled them to produce works in this kind which had had no parallels in the Greek world. Nor had the Greeks felt the same need for such buildings. They had been innocent of gladiatorial shows, and they had been unfortunately too innocent of large conceptions in the way of water-supply. When an amphitheatre or aqueduct of the Roman kind was to be found in the graecized half of the empire, it was constructed under Roman influence. The modern may well afford to wonder at and envy the profusion of such structures in the ancient world. How n.o.ble and at the same time how strong was the work of the Romans when they undertook to supply even a provincial town with abundant and adequate water, is manifest from such aqueducts as are still to be seen at Nimes (FIG. 1) or at Segovia. In other architectural conceptions the Romans of the time of Nero mainly followed the Greek lead and employed Greek artists. The architectural "orders" were Greek, with sundry Graeco-Roman modifications, particularly in the way of more ornate or fantastic Corinthian capitals; the notions of sculptural decoration were equally of h.e.l.lenic origin. Their theatres also were of the Greek kind adapted in non-essentials to the somewhat different conditions of a Roman performance. The Greek taste in decoration was the simpler and purer: the Roman cultivated the sumptuous and the ornate, sometimes, with conspicuous success, often with an overloaded effect. As Friedlander (who, however, deals with a much longer period than ours) puts the matter: "Nowhere, least of all at Rome, was an important public building erected without the chiseller, the stucco-worker, the carver, the founder, the painter, and mosaic-maker being called in. Statues, single or in groups, filled gables, roofs, niches, interstices of columns, staircases in the temples, theatres, amphitheatres, basilicas, public baths, bridges, arches, portals, and viaducts. . . .
Triumphal arches generally had at their summits equestrian figures, trophies, chariots of four or six horses, driven by figures of victory. Reliefs and medallions bedecked the frieze, and reliefs or paintings the walls; ceilings were gay with stucco or coloured work, and the floors with glittering mosaics. All the architectural framework, supports, thresholds, lintels, mouldings, windows, and even gutters were overloaded with decorative figures."
It was above all in plastic art that the contemporary world was enormously rich. Not only could no public building dispense with such decorations as those above mentioned; no private house of the least pretensions was without its statues, busts, statuettes, carved reliefs, and stucco-work. Never was statuary in marble or bronze so plentiful in every part of the empire, in public squares, or in the houses of representative people--in reception-hall, peristyle court, garden, or colonnade. Portrait statues in the largest towns were to be counted by hundreds, and sometimes by thousands. Men distinguished in war, in letters, in public life, and in local benefactions were as regularly commemorated by statues or busts as they are in modern times by painted portraits. Sometimes--unlike the modern portraits of course--these were paid for by the recipient of the compliment. In the comparatively unimportant Forum of Pompeii there stood five colossal statues, between seventy and eighty life-size equestrian statues, and as many standing figures, while the public buildings surrounding this open s.p.a.ce contained their dozen or twenty each. As has been said already, most of the best work in sculpture--apart from these bronze and marble portraits of contemporaries--was reproduction of Grecian masterpieces dating from the time of Pheidias onward. Particularly did the Roman affect the more elaborate work of the period of the later "Macedonian" kings. Where the actual work was not exactly copied it at least supplied the main conception or motive. It followed naturally that there would be in existence many copies of the same piece, and, in procuring these, both the public and the householder would feel relieved of any danger of betraying the wrong taste. The workshops or studios of Greek artists turned out large numbers of a given masterpiece--a Faun, a Venus, or a Discobolus--at prices from 50 or so upwards. It followed also that there were numerous imitations pa.s.sed off as originals, and many a wealthy man boasted of possessing an "original" or a genuine "old master"--a Praxiteles or a Lysippus--when he owned but a clever reproduction. The same remark applies, not only to the statues, but to the genre-groups and animal forms of which such fine examples can be seen in the Vatican Museum, and also to silver cups by "Mentor" or to bronzes of Corinth.
Petronius, the coa.r.s.e but witty "arbiter of taste" under Nero, mocks at the vulgar _nouveau riche_ who imagined that the Corinthian bronzes were the work of an artist named Corinthus.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 117.--WALL-PAINTING. (Woman with Tablets.)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 118.--WALL-PAINTING FROM HERCULANEUM. (Women playing with Knuckle-Bones.)]
Next to sculpture came painting, and in this art Romans themselves appear to have often acquired a technical skill which rivalled that of the Greeks. There is also plenty of evidence that among the pictorial artists there were no few women. For us practically the only painting of the time which has been preserved is that upon the walls of private houses, and it is probable that we see some of the worst specimens of the kind as well as some of a high order of excellence. It is not difficult to distinguish between the truly artistic design and colouring of wall-pictures in the House of Vettii or of the "Tragic Poet" and the crude journeyman work in sundry other Pompeian houses which must have belonged to anything but connoisseurs. Paintings, it must be remembered, were the ancient wall-papers, as well as the ancient pictures. Here, as in sculpture, we find the same or similar motives and groupings repeated in a way which shows that the painter--or rather the collaborating painters--must have been reproducing or adapting an original which was particularly admired or had obtained a fashionable vogue. The wall-pictures, done in fresco or distemper and in various dimensions, fall into four main cla.s.ses.
There are landscapes, from a pretty realistic garden scene to a fantastic stretch of sea and land diversified with woods, rocks, figures, and buildings. There are subjects from mythology and from poetical "history" or legend, chiefly representing "moments of dramatic interest." There are genre-pictures, such as those of the Cupids acting as goldsmiths, oil-dealers, or wine-merchants. Finally there are pictures of still-life--of fishes, birds, fruits, and other objects--often admirable in their kind. Serving as frame or setting to many of the scenes there are architectural paintings--sometimes in complicated but highly skilful perspective, but often extremely unreal and confusing in conception--representing columns and pediments of buildings. It must here suffice to offer one or two characteristic examples out of the mult.i.tude of wall-paintings which have been found (see also Figs. 43, 44).
Though Romans themselves, and even persons of standing, sometimes dabbled in the fine arts, it is unquestionable that they commonly regarded the professional artist as only a superior tradesman. They admired his skill, but rendered little esteem to the man. A Roman knight or a Roman lady might occasionally paint for pleasure; Nero himself might model a figure or handle a brush; but so soon as art ceased to be dilettante and became a calling, so soon as its work was produced for payment, the artist ranked with other hirelings, however superior he might be in kind. Seneca expresses an open contempt, although he is perhaps, here as elsewhere, judging by a standard more severe than that of his contemporaries in general. To some extent this att.i.tude is explained by the very abundance of objects of art, and by the immense number of artists, now nameless, belonging to the period; it is also to some extent excused by the fact that the craftsmanship, however consummate, was not at this period accompanied by the originality of the great Greek times from which it borrowed. Much of the work--particularly perhaps in painting and metal-chasing--was done by slaves. Apart from this consideration, the studios were so numerous and taught so well, that there must have been thousands of persons working either alone or co-operatively, whose position, however excellent the performance, became a.n.a.logous to that of a house-decorator. On a wall to be painted in fresco a number of painters would be employed together. Throughout the Roman world, wherever works of art were wanted, the professional would travel, often with his a.s.sistants, and take up a contract. In modern parlance, the communities requiring some monument of art "called for tenders"
and were p.r.o.ne to accept the lowest.
Whatever abundance of art the Roman world cultivated and possessed; however indispensable to a public place was a wealth of buildings with lavish decoration of sculptured pillars, of statues, or of triumphal arches; however necessary to a private house were originals, supposed originals, and copies in the way of statuary, paintings, bronzes, mosaics, and other means of artistic adornment; it is very doubtful whether any large number of Romans entertained that spontaneous enjoyment of the beauty of art which is known as genuine "artistic feeling." In their literature we look in vain for any expression of enthusiasm on the subject. There are many references to works of art, but none which possess any intense glow of warmth. Doubtless art was so abundant that, as has already been said in reference to the appreciation of natural beauty, the absence of "gush" need not indicate absence of real enjoyment. Enjoyment there was, but it was apparently for the most part the enjoyment either of the collector or of the man who realises that an appreciation of art demands a large place in culture, and who is determined to be as well supplied and as well informed as his neighbour, while his judgment of a piece of work, though far from unintelligent, and often excellent in regard to principles of design and technical execution, is mainly the result of a deliberate training and cult, and is in consequence somewhat chill and detached.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 119.--LYRE AND HARP.]
Of music the Romans were pa.s.sionately fond, but the music itself was of a description which perhaps would hardly commend itself to modern notions, particularly those of northern Europe. The instruments in use were chiefly the harp, the lyre, and the flageolet (or flute played with a mouthpiece). To these we may add for processions the straight trumpet and the curved horn, and, for more orgiastic occasions or celebrations, the panpipes, cymbals, and tambourine or kettledrum.