Inferior as gems are to coins in most archæological respects, especially in respect of their connection with literary history, and though not superior to the best of them artistically, gems have nevertheless one advantage over coins, that they are commonly quite uninjured by time. Occasionally (it is true) this is the case with coins; but with gems it is the rule. Of course, to speak generally, the art of gems, whose material is always more or less precious, is superior to that of coins, which were often carelessly executed, as being merely designed for a medium of commercial exchange. High art would not usually spend itself upon small copper money, but be reserved for the more valuable pieces, especially those of gold and silver[[16]]. The subjects of gems are mostly mythological, or are connected with the heroic cycle; a smaller, but more interesting number, presents us with portraits, which however are in general uninscribed. At the same time, by comparing these with portrait-statues and coins we are able to identify Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Alexander the Great, several of the Ptolemies, and a few others; most of which may have been engraved by Greco-Roman artists. But the catalogue of authentic portraits preserved to us, both Greek and Roman, is, as K. O. Müller observes, now very much to be thinned.
[16]. This remark however must not be pressed too closely. Certain small Greek copper coins of Italy, Sicily, &c., are exceedingly beautiful.
With regard to ancient iconography in general, coins, without doubt, afford the greatest aid; but no certain coin-portraits are, I believe, earlier than Alexander[[17]]. The oldest Greek portrait-statue known to me is that of Mausolus, now in the British Museum; but the majority of the statues of Greek philosophers and others are probably to be referred to the Roman times, when the formation of portrait-galleries became a favourite pursuit. With the Greeks it was otherwise; the ideal was ever uppermost in their mind: they executed busts of Homer indeed and placed his head on many of their coins; but of course these were no more portraits than the statues of Jupiter and Pallas are portraits. With regard to the relation of Greek archæology to the history of Greece, both the monuments and the literature are abundant, and they mutually illustrate one another; and the same remark is more or less true for the histories of the nations afterwards to be mentioned, upon which I shall therefore not comment in this respect.
[17]. I am aware that there are reasons for believing that a Persian coin preserves a portrait of Artaxerxes Mnemon, who reigned a little earlier.
From Greece, who taught Rome most or all that she ever knew of the arts, we pass to the contemplation of the mistress of the world herself. She found indeed in her own vicinity an earlier civilisation, the Etruscan, whose archæological remains and history generally are amongst the most obscure and perplexing matters in all the world of fore-time. The sepulchral and other monuments of Etruria are often inscribed, but no ingenuity has yet interpreted them. The words of the Etruscan and other Italian languages have been recently collected by Fabretti. There is some story about a learned antiquary after many years’ research coming to the conclusion that two Etruscan words were equivalent to vixit annos, but which was vixit, and which annos, he was as yet uncertain. We have also Etruscan wall-paintings, and various miscellaneous antiquities in bronze, and among them the most salient peculiarity of Etruscan archæology not easily to be conjectured, its elegantly-formed bronze mirrors. These, which are incised with mythological subjects, and often inscribed, have attracted the especial attention of modern scholars and antiquaries, who have gazed upon them indeed almost as wistfully as the Tuscan ladies themselves.
But Greece had far more influence over Roman life and art than Etruria.
Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes
Intulit agresti Latio.
Accordingly, Greek architecture (mostly of the later Corinthian style, which was badly elaborated into the Composite) was imported into Rome itself, and continued to flourish in the Greek provinces of the empire. Temples and theatres continued much as before; but the triumphal arch and column, the amphitheatre, the bath and the basilica, are peculiarly Roman.
The genius of Rome however was essentially military, and the stamp which she has left on the world is military also. Her camps, her walls, and her roads, strata viaram, which, like arteries, connected her towns one with another and with the capital, are the real peculiarities of her archæology. The treatise on Roman roads, by Bergier, occupies above 800 pages in the Thesaurus of Grævius. Instead of bootlessly wandering over the width of the world on these, let us rather walk a little over those in our own country, and as we travel survey the general character of the Roman British remains, which may serve as a type of all. In the early part of this lecture, I observed that we, in common with the rest of Western Europe, find in our islands weapons which belong to the stone, bronze, and iron periods; and here also, as in other places, the last-named period doubtless connects itself with the Roman. But besides these, we have other remains, many of which may be referred to the Celtic population which Cæsar had to encounter, when he invaded our shores. These remains may in great part perhaps (for I am compelled to speak hesitatingly on a subject which I have studied but little, and of which no one, however learned, knows very much) be anterior to Roman times. Of this kind are the cromlechs at Dufferin in South Wales, in Anglesey, and in Penzance, of which there are models in the British Museum; of this kind also are, most probably, the gigantic structures at Stonehenge, about which so much has been written and disputed. The British barrows of various forms and other sepulchral remains may also be referred, I should conceive, in part at least, to the pre-Roman Celtic period. The earlier mounds contain weapons and ornaments of stone, bronze and ivory, and rude pottery; the later ones, called Roman British barrows, appear mostly not to contain stone implements, but various articles of bronze and iron and pottery; also gold ornaments and amber and bead necklaces. Other sepulchral monuments consist merely of heaps of stones covering the body which has been laid in the earth. Many researches into this class of remains have of late years been made, and by none perhaps more patiently and more successfully than by the late Mr Bateman, in Derbyshire. The archæology of Wales has also been made the special object of study by a society formed for the purpose. Some tribes of the ancient Britons were certainly acquainted with the art of die-sinking, and a great many coins, principally gold, are extant, some of which may probably be as early as the second century before Christ. They are, to speak generally, barbarous copies of the beautiful gold staters of Philip of Macedon, which circulated over the Greek world, and so might become known to our forefathers by the route of Marseilles.