PLATE LXII
Roman Mural Reliefs.
With the exception of the Roman subjects from the circus and arena, the remaining subjects are purely decorative, and of little interest; the former, some of which have reference to the conquest of Dacia, admit of the dating of the reliefs in the reign of Trajan. Others depict gladiators contending with lions; chariots racing in the circus, which is indicated by the obelisks and other adornments of the spina; or colonnades adorned with statues of boxers and victorious athletes.[[2600]] Some of the Egyptian subjects are interesting for their local colouring, with their representations of the Nile, on which pygmies ply a boat, among hippopotami, crocodiles, and lotos-flowers, and ibises[[2601]]; but these compositions are more curious than artistically effective.
II. Sculpture
1. ROMAN STATUES AND STATUETTES
In the earlier ages of Rome the laws and institutions, based without doubt on the sentiments of the people, were unfavourable to art. Numa was said to have prohibited the representation of the deity in human form,[[2602]] and the statues of great men were not allowed to exceed three Roman feet. To women the privilege of having statues was not conceded until much later. Pliny constantly compares the luxury of his own day with the simplicity of early times, to the disadvantage of the former, dwelling fondly on the times when men could be content with plain terracotta images, and it was not necessary or possible to make a display of silver and gold.
Most of the ancient statues of the Romans were of terracotta, a fact to which constant allusion is made by their writers. Juvenal speaks of “a fictile Jove, not spoiled by gold”[[2603]] and Propertius speaks of the early days of the golden temples, when their gods were only of clay.[[2604]] Similarly Pliny expresses his surprise that, since statuary in Italy goes back to such a remote period, statues of clay should even in his day still be preferred in the temples.[[2605]] Vitruvius alludes to the favourite Tuscan fashion of ornamenting pediments with signa fictilia,[[2606]] examples of which, he says, may be seen in the temple of Ceres in the Circus Maximus (see below), and the temple of Hercules at Pompeii. Cicero speaks of a statue of Summanus on the pediment of the Capitoline temple “which at that time was of terracotta,”[[2607]] and Livy[[2608]] tells how in 211 B.C. a figure of Victory on the apex of the pediment of the temple of Concord was struck by lightning and fell, but was caught on the antefixal ornaments, also figures of Victory, and there stuck fast. Though not stated to be of terracotta, these figures would hardly be of any other material at that period. Other allusions may be found in Ovid and Seneca.[[2609]]
In the early days of the Republic art was clearly at a very low ebb—in fact, Roman art can hardly be said to have existed—and everything was either borrowed from the Etruscans or imported from Greece. Hence the statues of terracotta which adorned their temples are spoken of as signa Tuscanica. The most celebrated works in ancient Rome were made by artists of Veii or the Volscian Fregellae, such as the famous quadriga on the pediment of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and the statue of the god himself, described elsewhere (p. [314]), which were made by Veientine artists in the time of Tarquinius Priscus. Numa, ever attentive to Roman arts and institutions, is said to have founded a corporation or guild of potters.[[2610]] In 493 B.C. Gorgasos and Damophilos, natives of Himera in Sicily, ornamented with terracotta reliefs and figures the temple of Ceres at Rome (now Santa Maria in Cosmedin).[[2611]] Their work, which is alluded to by Vitruvius in the passage referred to above, was probably Greek rather than Etruscan in style, as we have seen to be the case generally with the archaic terracotta relief-work of Italy (p. [317]). In the reign of Augustus the temple was restored, and so great was the esteem in which the works of these old masters were held that they were taken out of the walls and framed in wood.