This art of realistic portraiture, then, is claimed as the great contribution of ancient Rome to artistic progress. It yet remains to be shown that any part of the work was done by native artists. At present the evidence is all in favour of Greek authorship. But the Romans may claim the credit of demanding or even inspiring realism. Roman archæologists, especially those who, like Wickhoff and Mrs. Strong, are concerned to plead the cause of Roman originality in art, often seem to assume that the Greeks of the best period could not express individuality, in fact that the ideal tendency of their statues, portraits included, is due to convention if not to the sheer limitations of their craftsmanship. Elsewhere we have seen that much of the apparent simplicity of Greek work of the best period is really elaborate self-restraint. All their religious ideas forbade them to express divinity with any marks of time or place upon face or feature. So when it came—as it came slowly—to portraying a statesman like Pericles, or a monarch like Alexander, they deliberately honoured them by idealising them and smoothing away the accidentals. Thus they concealed the inordinately long skull of Pericles by depicting him in a helmet. They could be realistic enough when they chose to be, but that was never in the adornment of temples except just so far as to indicate the barbarity of Centaurs or Giants in contrast to the perfection of the Greek. Myron’s Cow has perished without offspring, but the slave-boys on the tombstones are realistic enough—to say nothing of the Ludovisi Reliefs. Realism was no new discovery of the Romans. On the contrary, so far as it was an innovation it was an act of indulgence, a breaking down of self-imposed barriers. Even then, was it inspired by any abstract passion for the naked truth, such as moved Cromwell to command his portrait-painter to include the warts? Not entirely. The Romans were a rhetorical, not a realistic people. I believe that Roman realism in portraiture is chiefly due to the national custom of preserving the imagines taken from the death-masks of the illustrious dead. On Greek soil the Greek artists were still idealising their portraits—witness the fine head of Mithradates on the coins of Pontus;[39] but when their Roman sitters asked for realism they gave it—gave it sometimes with the unexpected thoroughness of Mr. Sargent. Besides coins and statues there are very fine portraits on the gems of the first century B.C.
Towards painting too we saw that the Romans had inherited some traditional bent. We hear of Greek painters highly esteemed at Rome in this period as well as of imported Greek pictures fetching enormous prices. The Romans loved colour, and their villa walls were commonly stuccoed and painted, if not incrusted with marble, while their floors began to be inlaid with pictorial mosaic. But we have little or nothing of this date to show. It should, however, be noted that the graphic taste of the Romans together with their habit of treating art as mere decoration was now leading to a new phase of pictorial sculpture which will have important effects in the bas-relief work of the Augustan period. In revenge Italy was now turning out a system of plastic decoration for vases in the Aretine pottery[40] which was new and full of possibilities.
Plate XXIX. TWO VIEWS OF THE PONT DU GARD
On the whole the verdict must go against Rome—at any rate republican Rome—as regards artistic originality. The Rome of Cicero’s day was amazingly rich and dreadfully poor. It had a high culture in some respects, but it was too corrupt, morally and politically, to produce good work of its own. If there had been any possible rival in the field, Rome would assuredly have perished in the course of that distracted century. If she had perished then, what would she have left to the world? A few second-hand comedies, Lucretius, Catullus, and Cicero; a small equivalent for all the blood that she had shed, and all the groans of her provincials.
IV
AUGUSTUS
ultima Cumæi uenit iam carminis ætas;
magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo.
iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna,
iam noua progenies cælo demittitur alto.
Vergil.
