CHAPTER II

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ROME.

INTRODUCTION.

We now approach the last revolution that completed and closed the great cycle of the arts and civilisation of the ancient world. We have seen Art spring Minerva-like, perfect from the head of her great parent, in Egypt. We have admired it in Assyria, rich, varied, but unstable; aiming at everything, but never attaining maturity or perfection. We have tried to trace the threads of early Pelasgic art in Asia, Greece, and Etruria, spreading their influence over the world, and laying the foundation of other arts which the Pelasgi were incapable of developing. We have seen all these elements gathered together in Greece, the essence extracted from each, and the whole forming the most perfect and beautiful combinations of intellectual power that the world has yet witnessed. We have now only to contemplate the last act in the great drama, the gorgeous but melancholy catastrophe by which all these styles of architecture were collected in wild confusion in Rome, and there perished beneath the luxury and crimes of that mighty people, who for a while made Rome the capital of Europe.

View them as we will, the arts of Rome were never an indigenous or natural production of the soil or people, but an aggregation of foreign styles in a state of transition from the old and time-honoured forms of Pagan antiquity to the new development introduced by Christianity. We cannot of course suppose that the Romans foresaw the result to which their amalgamation of previous styles was tending; still they advanced as steadily towards that result as if a prophetic spirit had guided them to a well-defined conception of what was to be. It was not however permitted to the Romans to complete this task. Long before the ancient methods and ideas had been completely moulded into the new, the power of Rome sank beneath her corruption, and a long pause took place, during which the Christian arts did not advance in Western Europe beyond the point they had reached in the age of Constantine. Indeed, in many respects, they receded from it during the dark ages. When they reappeared in the 10th and 11th centuries it was in an entirely new garb and with scarcely a trace of their origin—so distinct indeed that it appears more like a reinvention than a reproduction of forms long since familiar to the Roman world. Had Rome retained her power and pre-eminence a century or two longer, a style might have been elaborated as distinct from that of the ancient world, and as complete in itself, as our pointed Gothic, and perhaps more beautiful. Such was not the destiny of the world; and what we have now to do is to examine this transition style as we find it in ancient Rome, and familiarise ourselves with the forms it took during the three centuries of its existence, as without this knowledge all the arts of the Gothic era would for ever remain an inexplicable mystery. The chief value of the Roman style consists in the fact that it contains the germs of all that is found in the Middle Ages, and affords the key by which its mysteries may be unlocked, and its treasures rendered available. Had the transition been carried through in the hands of an art-loving and artistic people, the architectural beauties of Rome must have surpassed those of any other city in the world, for its buildings surpass in scale those of Egypt and in variety those of Greece, while they affect to combine the beauties of both. In constructive ingenuity they far surpass anything the world had seen up to that time, but this cannot redeem offences against good taste, nor enable any Roman productions to command our admiration as works of art, or entitle them to rank as models to be followed either literally or in spirit.

During the first two centuries and a half of her existence, Rome was virtually an Etruscan city, wholly under Etruscan influence; and during that period we read of temples and palaces being built and of works of immense magnitude being undertaken for the embellishment of the city; and we have even now more remains of kingly than we have of consular Rome.

After expelling her kings and shaking off Etruscan influence, Rome existed as a republic for five centuries, and during this long age of barbarism she did nothing to advance science or art. Literature was almost wholly unknown within her walls, and not one monument has come down to our time, even by tradition, worthy of a city of a tenth part of her power and magnitude. There is probably no instance in the history of the world of a capital city existing so long, populous and peaceful at home, prosperous and powerful abroad, and at the same time so utterly devoid of any monuments or any magnificence to dignify her existence.

When, however, Carthage was conquered and destroyed, when Greece was overrun and plundered, and Egypt, with her long-treasured art, had become a dependent province, Rome was no longer the city of the Aryan Romans, but the sole capital of the civilised world. Into her lap were poured all the artistic riches of the universe; to Rome flocked all who sought a higher distinction or a more extended field for their ambition than their own provincial capitals could then afford. She thus became the centre of all the arts and of all the science then known; and, so far at least as quantity is concerned, she amply redeemed her previous neglect of them. It seems an almost indisputable fact that, during the three centuries of the Empire, more and larger buildings were erected in Rome and her dependent cities than ever were erected in a like period in any part of the world.

For centuries before the establishment of the Roman Empire, progressive development and increasing population, joined to comparative peace and security, had accumulated around the shores of the Mediterranean a mass of people enjoying material prosperity greater than had ever been known before. All this culminated in the first centuries of the Christian era. The greatness of the ancient world was then full, and a more overwhelming and gorgeous spectacle than the Roman Empire then displayed never dazzled the eyes of mankind. From the banks of the Euphrates to those of the Tagus, every city vied with its neighbour in the erection of temples, baths, theatres, and edifices for public use or private luxury. In all cases these display far more evidence of wealth and power than of taste and refinement, and all exhibit traces of that haste to enjoy, which seems incompatible with the correct elaboration of anything that is to be truly great. Notwithstanding all this, there is a greatness in the mass, a grandeur in the conception, and a certain expression of power in all these Roman remains which never fail to strike the beholder with awe and force admiration from him despite his better judgment. These qualities, coupled with the associations that attach themselves to every brick and every stone, render the study of them irresistibly attractive. It was with Imperial Rome that the ancient world perished; it was in her dominions that the new and Christian world was born. All that was great in Heathendom was gathered within her walls, tied, it is true, into an inextricable knot, which was cut by the sword of those barbarians who moulded for themselves out of the fragments that polity and those arts which will next occupy our attention. To Rome all previous history tends; from Rome all modern history springs: to her, therefore, and to her arts, we inevitably turn, if not to admire, at least to learn, and if not to imitate, at any rate to wonder at and to contemplate a phase of art as unknown to previous as to subsequent history, and, if properly understood, more replete with instruction than any other form hitherto known. Though the lesson we learn from it is far oftener what to avoid than what to follow, still there is such wisdom to be gathered from it as should guide us in the onward path, which may lead us to a far higher grade than it was given to Rome herself ever to attain.

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