CHAPTER II
COLLECTOMANIA IN ROME
Collectomania develops—Rampant parvenuism in Rome—Extravagant prices paid for art and curio—Faking arrives—Good and foolish collectors as seen by writers and satirists of the time—Art dealing—The septæ, shops and auction rooms.
Such was the earliest type of the real collector of art in Rome, a first phase in a city where the passion for art was, generally speaking, rarely genuine. This phase led first to the acquisition of what might be styled something between ambition and love of display. Then the trade in objects of art eventually appeared, and as a logical consequence, imitation and fraudulent art finally had their scope. Fictitious masterpieces of painting and sculpture, often signed, as in modern times, with the forged names of noted artists, were already on the market before Cicero’s time. “Odi falsas inscriptiones statuarum alienarum” (I hate the forged inscriptions on statues not one’s own), remarks Cicero, who although somewhat of a collector himself never missed a chance to ridicule the pretentious amateur lost in hysterical ecstasy before imitations supposed to be original works, or of fanning the art lover’s pseudo-enthusiasm for the work of Polycletus, which was extremely fashionable at one time among art collectors.
Thus forgery received a great impulse when art reached its climax in Rome and multiplied the number of collectors, dragging after it in its triumphal march wealth and all the fickle forces of wealth. Taste in art, then, became apparently more exclusive, or rather, according to Quintilian, more unstable in its standards. “Nowadays,” says the Latin rhetorician and critic, “they prefer the childish monochrome works of Polycletus and Aglæphon to the more expressive and more recent artists.” Yet, very likely not understanding this not unusual love for the archaic and the odd, so common in collectors of all ages, Quintilian cannot explain the preference for work he considers gross, except by fashion or what we should call to-day a snobbish sentiment. Criticizing the art in vogue, he adds, in fact: “I should call this art childish compared to that of most illustrious artists who came afterwards, but in my judgment it is, of course, only pretension” (XII, 10).
It is evident that with the Romans as with us—the times are not entirely dissimilar; indeed but for art critics, the new modern fad, they might be called identical—prices paid for works of art, or simple curiosities, became freakish and fabulous, going up or down in a single period according to fickle fashion. The momentary passion for murrhines, for instance, tempted a collector to pay for one of these cups of fluor-spar a sum approximating to £14,200. Another mania succeeded, that of tables made of citrus, a species of rare wood, possibly Thuja, grown on the slopes of Mount Athos. Cathegus invested in one of these fashionable tables a sum equivalent to twelve thousand pounds. Then at another time wrought silver becomes the rage, and prices for this article soon reached absurd figures. When Chrysogon, Sulla’s wealthy freedman, was bidding at an auction for a silver autepsa (a plate warmer), people standing outside the auction room imagined he was buying a farm from the high sum he offered.
As might be expected, high prices tempted brainless parvenus. There were many in Rome like that Demasippus of whom Horace said, “Insanit veteres statuas Demasippus emendo” (Sat., 3), the type of a snobbish visionary and sham art-seeker who bought roughly carved statues, supplying their defects with his fancy, and who, in speaking of his historical pieces, stated that to be admitted into his very choicest collection a basin must at least have served Sisyphus, son of Æolus, as a foot-bath!
Next to this foolish type of collector of art Rome possessed a great many other characters, who, like those of to-day, might be classified as odd specimens of art lovers.
“Isn’t Euctus a bore with his historical silver?” asks Martial, adding that he would rather eat off the common earthenware of Saguntus than hear all the gabble concerning Euctus’ table-silver. “Think of it! His cups belonged to Laomedon, king of Troy. And, mind, to obtain these rarities Apollo played upon his lyre and destroyed the wall of the city by inducing the stones to follow him by his music.” But concerning this odd type of collector Martial merits quotation. “Now, what do you think of this vase?” asks Euctus of his table companions. “Well, it belonged to old Nestor himself. Do you see that part all worn away, there where the dove is? It was reduced to that state by the hand of the king of Pylos.” Then showing one of those mixing bowls that Latins called crater, “This was the cause of the battle between the ferocious Rheucus and the Lapithæ.” Naturally every cup has its particular history. “This is the very cup used by the sons of Eacus when offering most generous wine to their friend—That is the cup from which Dido drank to the health of Bythias when she offered him that supper in Phrygia.” Finally, when he has bored his guests to death, Euctus offers them, in the cup from which Pyramus used to drink, “wine as young as Astyanax.”
Trimalcho is so well known that we are dispensed from a detailed illustration. Petronius must have drawn from life this capital character of his Satyricon. Like Euctus, Trimalcho extols the historical merits of his articles of virtu; he has the same mania for inviting people to his table and forcing them to admire his rarities. He talks very much in the same manner as the type quoted by Martial. Thus he informs his guests that his Corinthian vases are the best and most genuine in existence, because they were made at his order by a workman named Corinth. As a side explanation of this remark, fearing that the guest might suppose he did not know the historical origin of the metal, he adds: “Yes, yes, I know all about it. Don’t take me for an ignoramus. I know the origin of this metal perfectly well. It was at the capture of Troy, when Hannibal, a shrewd brigand by the way, threw on to a burning pyre all the statues of gold and silver and bronze. The mixture of the metals produced the alloy from which goldsmiths have made plates, vases and figures. From this, of course, comes the name of Corinth to designate this mix-up of three metals, which, of course, is no more any of the three!” Trimalcho also possesses a cup with a bas-relief representing Cassandra cutting her children’s throats. Not content with this gorgeous historical blunder, and forgetting that he is talking of the bas-relief of a cup, Trimalcho adds as an artistic comment that the bodies of Cassandra’s children are so life-like that one might suspect they had been cast from nature.