The home of the “collector,” and consequently of his faithful companion, the faker, was Rome.
The Roman was not a born lover of art. In fact during the early and primitive period of its existence Rome had not only been somewhat negative as regards art, but was even rather averse from its enjoyment. It took centuries for the Roman to overcome the belief that matters of art were trifling amusements that might be left as toys to their conquered people. Thus for a long time Romans saw in the enjoyment of art the chief source of the weakening and degeneration of the enemies they had subjugated. Springing from a progeny of soldiers and agriculturists, born to conquer the world, the Roman citizen assumed as an aphorism the Virgilian saying that his sole duty was to subjugate enemies, by granting them pardon or humiliating their pride.
Thus the early Romans not only show great ignorance as to marvels of art, but even contempt for them. When art treasures were brought to Rome as booty for the first time by Marcellus from conquered Sicily the Senate censured such an innovation. Fabius Maximus, called the “shield of Rome,” rose among others in protest, saying that after the siege of Tarentum, he, unlike Marcellus, had brought home only gold and valuable plunder. As for statues, more especially images, he had preferred to leave to the conquered people “their enraged gods.” In fact the only statue Fabius took away from Tarentum was the Hercules of Lysippus, a bronze colossus which must have appealed to him either for its heroic size or the large quantity of material.
A type of the early ignorant Roman art collector is given by Lucius Mummius, the general who destroyed Corinth, and of whom Velleius Paterculus tells (I, 13) that in sending to Rome what might be styled the artistic booty of the destroyed city he consigned the statues and paintings to those in charge of the transport with the warning that should the goods be lost they would be held responsible and would have to reproduce them all at their own expense.
Even when with the progress of time art was finally appreciated in Rome, the old contempt for it was transferred in a way from the product to the maker. Thus with the feeling that seems to characterize the parvenu in art, and with inexplicable inconsistency, the Roman lover of art persisted in seeing in the artist either a slave or a good-for-nothing, and never for a moment regarded the artist as worth the consideration he granted to art. Notwithstanding his belief of being a lover of art and an intelligent connoisseur, Cicero calls statues and paintings toys to amuse children (oblectamenta puerorum). In his fourth oration, In Verrem, he candidly confesses that he fails to understand the importance attached by Greeks to those arts which the Romans most rightly despise.
Valerius Maximus, who lived at the time of Tiberius, that is to say when Rome had fully completed its education in art, calls the profession of the painter a vile occupation (sordidum studium), and wonders how Fabius, a Roman and patrician, can bring himself to sign his painting with full name and qualification, “Fabius Pictor” (VIII, 14, 6).
In one of his letters (No. 88) Seneca, the contemporary of Nero, states that sculpture and painting are unworthy to be classified as liberal arts. Petronius, the magister elegantiorum of Rome, two hundred years after the destruction of Corinth, that is to say when Rome had reached its maturity in the understanding of art, calls Apelles, Phidias and other famous artists of Greece, crack-brained (græculi delirantes).
With such an innately negative sense of art and strong racial prejudice, it is not surprising that when brought to an appreciation of art by circumstances, the Romans, though willing and fully prepared to pay extravagant prices for works of art, should still retain their old contempt for artists, those græculi delirantes who had come to beautify the Capital as slaves or tempted by gain.
As a result of this peculiar feeling and in full contrast with the Greek sentiment which has handed down to posterity a great deal about the artists who lived in Athens and the honours they received, Rome has preserved for us hardly a name of painter, sculptor or architect. And they must have been legion if we consider the magnitude of the work accomplished. Vitruvius (VII, 15) informs us that Damophilus, Gorgas, Agesilas, Pasiteles and other artists were called to Rome by Julius Cæsar, and that so many Greek artists were in Rome that when the temple of Jupiter Olympicus was to be finished in Athens the citizens were obliged to send to Rome, as none of their architects were to be found in Greece.
It is interesting to trace how the Romans gradually became collectors of art, and how there gradually developed in Rome a whole world of lovers of art with all its true and fictitious enthusiasms, furnishing a group of varied types of collectors not altogether dissimilar from those of our modern society of lovers of art.