Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

In reviewing the arts of Rome, as in the corresponding chapter on the productions of Greece, we will first consider their architecture, and then the subordinate departments of plastic and pictorial works. Roman, Greek, and Egyptian architecture are to be viewed as constituting but one vital and continuous trunk; each having grown out of its predecessor, and the last destined to produce yet another and, perchance, a nobler growth.

The Romans were not originally an art-loving people, and never did any thing valuable of that kind for themselves. From the time of their foundation down to B.C. 167, they were entirely dependent upon the inhabitants of Etruria, and upon the Greeks from that time till their dominion was past. They began by conquest, and employed such talents as they could best subdue. The architecture which the Etruscans are supposed to have brought with them from Asia Minor, derived thither from Assyria, was employed as the most powerful principle of support, and the most facile means of extension. By means of this, the whole city was undermined by drains, inclosed with cuneiform stones, and immense fabrics rose on the seven hills. Vastness of size, and the absence of elegance, characterized their monuments from the first. A debased type of Doric was their favorite style in the early period, as in the great temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which was adorned with figures prepared by the Tuscans in baked clay, or terra-cotta, and, when finished, sent to Rome. The use of the arch no doubt introduced a new and valuable principle of construction, and of great utility when consistently employed. But, unfortunately, the Greek outlines were still adhered to mainly, and imposture from the very outset ever characterized monumental art in the hands of the Roman race. False entablatures were fabricated; the arch, as a constructive element, was concealed; and as the real formation of the building could not be shown, sham features and fanciful ornaments were multiplied for the vile ends of disguise. During the great age of Grecian art, not a single specimen of concave roofing, scarcely a sloping jamb, was produced; if any approach to either was found, it was never in the pure Doric, but only in the semi-Pelasgic Ionic order. It shows how much more Rome was Etruscan than Greece Pelasgic, that it was left to that inartistic people to create domical buildings, and to carry them to the degree of perfection they did in their circular peristylar temples, and more especially in the Pantheon. That edifice, the great masterpiece and symbol of its age, and which has never been excelled, is at the same time the most striking exemplification of the vicious innovation made by combining rectilinear and circular forms. The Greeks never built round temples. The choragic monument of Lysicrates, and tower of the Winds, were mere playthings, produced at the latest period of architectural excellence; but even these were fine specimens of original invention and truthful execution. It was not at Athens, but at Rome, that architects endeavored to enhance their reputation, by secreting the real features of their work.

But when the arch is made the life of the whole building, standing out in all its boldness and majesty, the work is infinitely nobler than when accompanied by the incongruous Grecian mask. The original Etruscans had the independence so to use the grand principle they were the first properly to appreciate, and the creations of their hands are of the greatest intrinsic worth. Their roads and bridges, tombs and city walls, cloacæ and tunnels are so extraordinary that, after twenty-five centuries, they remain unsurpassed even by their gigantic conquerors. They drained marshes, cultivated barren plains, and brought Italy from a savage state to that degree of civilization which enabled the Romans to profit by, more than the great originals who prepared the field of their first occupancy, and then were displaced. Such is necessarily the history of human progress, when excellence of a given kind is made to yield to some other superior force, but which in turn will succumb to the same law, and contribute to the greatest good of the greatest number in the end.

It is interesting to reflect on the contrast which existed between the architectural principle of two great primordial people in almost simultaneous developement. At a time when her existence was scarcely known to the refined republics of Greece, the barbarian state on the banks of the Tiber began to employ the mightiest of mechanical discoveries, through the means of which vast spaces were roofed in with stone or brick, while, through ignorance or contempt of it, the most glorious temples of Pentelic marble remained exposed to shower and sun, or were imperfectly sheltered by a covering of wood. The sewers of Rome were a vast improvement in practical mechanics over the structures at Athens; and if Etruscan genius had been permitted to work out completely its own ideas, a simple, noble, and majestic style would doubtless have been developed. As it was, their rudest works announced the fundamental principles of excellence and consistency which belonged not to edifices of greater ambition; and Rome had the honor of transmitting a prolific germ under the westering sun, where it arose and justly claimed to be considered the noblest offspring of the human mind.

When the principle of mutual support was hit upon, and the arch sprang self-balanced from impost to impost, the Roman was put in possession of an immense advantage over the restricted capacities of the Greek entablature. He was no longer tied to the width or length of quarried blocks, put in vertical or horizontal positions, but could bend more pliant materials in yet firmer construction upward and outward to an illimitable extent. In its use they soon became the best builders the world had ever seen, and the worst architects. The magnitude of their great works, and boldness of execution, the vastness of design and mechanical skill, displayed in their existing monuments, compel us to admire the constructive talent of Rome, as Greece taught us to revere inventive genius. Unyielding energy and graceful elegance are brought into striking contrast. On the one hand, we behold the same iron greatness, indomitable will, and union of physical with moral vigor, combined with indifference to intellectual beauty, which bent alike the material and political world beneath the yoke of old Rome. On the other hand, in the Grecian temple shines the purest product of mind, perfect in symmetry, chaste in ornament, and resplendent with all the attractions of immortal youth. The best and only satisfactory works of the Romans are those we usually classify under the head of engineering; such as roads, bridges, aqueducts, and fortifications, and these are projected on a scale, and executed with a solidity, worthy of the greatness of their empire. But in architecture properly so called, nothing of their creation is to be admired but the colossal mass, and its constructive extravagance.

As the idea of the beautiful is a principle divinely positive in the arts and life of the Greeks, so greatness defined everything in the Roman contest for supremacy, and was the central point around which developed all the historical impressiveness of their character. Of all arts architecture most admits of artificial beauty, which they could not confer, and therefore they made it only great. Chaste elegance, that genuine sense of the artist, was never born in the Roman mind; but they possessed uncommon force of nature, and best succeeded in stamping on their fabrics the air of undaunted firmness in the struggle of rude reality. The Roman style is rugged even to uncouthness, but it has the redeeming quality of actually speaking the mind of its authors, the whole course of whose history was indomitable will. The conquest of the world, and not the perfection of art, was their destiny; not the sudden achievement of a few assaults, the results of which should perish with their fortunate leaders, but the gradual advance of a single one, through many champions, destined through all vicissitudes to universal empire. From the first moment Rome appears on the political stage, this one great mission is manifest in all her action and arts. Never was greatness more truly national, but it was in diametrical contrast to the glory of the Grecian race. Individuals stood forth among the latter, in every separate department of intellectual proficiency, which rendered each a distinct model; but at Rome, with a longer list of great men than any other nation, their personal being is lost in that of the state. Camillus, Curius, and Scipio had no aim or aspiration of their own; they existed but to fortify and extend the commonwealth in their own generation, and to transmit the like calling to their successors. Rome only had a personal existence; her bravest children might perish, but herself the eternal, was unaffected; others, to whose fortunes she was equally indifferent, would arise to take their places in the continuous battle of seven centuries to attain the subjugation of the world. It was for Rome alone of all nations to return thanks to a vanquished general for not having despaired of the republic. She never could produce or appreciate mere art and beauty, and whatever of elegant refinement the Augustan age finally possessed was a borrowed gift which the holders knew not how to exercise.

Of those states which were grouped around the Mediterranean sea, Greece was certainly the intellectual mistress; but the Romans, by situation and race, inherited from them all whatever had before been accumulated in Asia and Africa, amalgamated the diversified elements into one empire of brute force, and thus opened the way for a more glorious progress. As a political phenomenon she stood alone, an empire aggregated out of discordant materials; not a mere conquest, like that of Alexander, to fall to pieces at the death of him who created it, but a coerced combination, substantiated by steadiness of purpose, and energy in administration, that half awed, half conciliated, its subjects in their bonds, and which caused the empire, externally, to cohere long after its heart had become corrupt, and the system was rotten to the core. The wealth of Rome could purchase, and her power could compel, the arts of conquered nations; and her political relations enabled her to accumulate in the metropolis those treasures which purer hands had created, and which her love of ostentation rendered it desirable she should possess. But we believe there is not extant one single passage of a Roman author, that shows a knowledge of what true art is, or what are its legitimate uses. From the fall of Carthage to the age of Constantine, not one general effort to achieve a noble end dignifies the annals of that belligerent people; but sickening scenes of domineering vice succeed each other, till the mind shrinks from the revolting picture. As long as they could live in idleness, or struggle in battle, as long as the streets were filled with pageants, and amphitheatres reeked with martyr-blood, they cared not what new tribe was butchered by their master, or how the so-called liberties of Rome were trampled upon. It is vain to expect beautiful art to flourish under such auspices. One shudders at the thought that those servile, bloody hands could fashion forms of representative excellence, or that minds which revelled in such scenes could admire its creations when exhibited before them.

In attempting to estimate correctly the architecture of Rome, or any of her correlative arts, we must apply a mode of criticism which is entirely inapplicable to those styles of which we have hitherto treated. In Greece, we can contemplate an artistic work with the same unmingled delight we feel when studying a work of nature; but, in Rome, there is no one building on which we look with unqualified pleasure, none in which imperfections are not obvious to the most uncritical eye. In every instance, the destroying hand of time has been merciful, in hiding defects, and concealing vulgarities, so that the chief attractions that remain are the result of his hallowing touch, and the halo of association which spreads around excrescences that, in their nakedness, would shock and disgust us. When their artists attempted an exalted range of invention, they wandered into exaggerated forms of Titanic strength, and here their loftiest flight was terminated. They were blinded to the path of spiritual beauty, and in striving to storm heaven, and compel divinity, they failed in all their presumptuous endeavors. That which was born and slowly nurtured on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates, suddenly sprang into its manhood of superlative worth in Greece, and perished at Rome in decrepitude and crime.

Under the reign of the first Tarquin, Rome was fortified, cleansed, and somewhat embellished. The low grounds about the Forum were drained, which prepared the way for the second Tarquin to construct that Cloaca Maxima, which was every way a masterly work. Servius Tullius enlarged the city, and completed the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, B.C. 508. As the name imports, it stood on the Mons Capitolinus, and embraced four acres of ground. It was twice destroyed, and twice rebuilt on the same foundation, by Vespasian, and Domitian. It is impossible now to trace the architecture of the Romans during the three hundred and sixty-three years which transpired between the time of their last king, and the subjugation of Greece by that people, in the year B.C. 145. But many of their grandest structures yet remain, and there is no great difficulty in estimating their comparative value.

The Doric order of the Greeks had degenerated sadly in style and design, before the Romans began to build; besides, it was utterly unsuited to their use, since they had neither sculpture nor painting with which it should be completed and adorned. But it was in keeping with their inartistic character to adopt what they could not comprehend, and yet further degrade its already attenuated columns into a closer resemblance to the wooden posts of their Etruscan teachers. No specimen of the Ionic order probably existed in Italy, anterior to the epoch of Roman superiority, and the imitation of it was, therefore, not attempted till a late period. In the times of imperial voluptuousness, however, they did use it to some extent, and succeeded in degrading that delicate type of art more grossly even than they did the sturdy Doric. Nothing could be more lean and ungraceful than the Ionic order became in the hands of Roman builders, who, having no skill of their own as architects, were successful only in defacing what departed genius had produced.